Britney and K-Fed, then Jon and Kate, now . . . Ace and Allah splitsville?

Little Miss Attila brings us rumors of the latest celebrity breakup. Before Christmas, Ace of Spades trashed Mitch McConnell as a sellout bastard. Allahpundit responded with a contemptuous sneer.

Next: Ace loads up to .13 on Valu-Rite vodka, gets slapped around like Mrs. Charlie Sheen. Then Allahpundit hires publicist Stan Rosenfield to say, in effect, "that bitch Ace deserved it."

Four out of five doctors agree: Health care debate causes mental illness

Things are getting crazy, with lots of Left-on-Left action. Via Ace of Spades, Obama's apologists are excoriated by . . . wait for it . . . Glenn Greenwald:

We've long heard -- from the most blindly loyal cheerleaders and from Emanuel himself -- that progressives should place their trust in the Obama White House to get this done the right way, that he's playing 11-dimensional chess when everyone else is playing checkers, that Obama is the Long Game Master who will always win. Then, when a bad bill is produced, the exact opposite claim is hauled out: it's not his fault because he's totally powerless, has nothing to do with this, and couldn't possibly have altered the outcome. From his defenders, he's instantaneously transformed from 11-dimensional chess Master to impotent, victimized bystander.

Barack Obama has indisputably performed his first true miracle. A year ago, Rush Limbaugh was the only guy talking like that. Charles Johnson to accuse Glenn Greenwald of raaaaacism in 3, 2, 1 . . .

Ace: 'Foam-flecked buffoon' Sullivan doesn't have 'stupid queerbait readers'

Sorry, Ace, I disagree with your walkback. If "queerbait" is a homophobic putdown, it's a putdown that a lot of gay guys employ, generally to describe an ostensibly straight guy who seems . . . well, potentially available.

Like Charlie Crist. Or Rahm Emanuel, so my gay sources tell me. And those same sources say that gay men in Chicago swear there used to be a tall semi-Kenyan guy who was, as we might say, no stranger to the community.

But that stuff is mere gossip, and is not germaine to the question of whether it was fair of you to use "queerbait" to describe Sully's readership. The larger point, I think, is that not all gay people run around looking for excuses to be offended, and are themselves not averse to applying certain pejoratives -- "nelly," "swish" etc. -- to other gay people, especially ones they don't like.

And as for "queerbaits," who doesn't know the type of person described? I just noticed Little Miss Attila referencing a post by Cynthia Yockey about appropriate use of the term "dyke." Well, not all lesbians are dykes, and some women who look or act like dykes are actually straight.

If we didn't all have our insensitivity detectors set on "stun," tiptoeing around in fear of accidentally offending someone, maybe more people would be encouraged to criticize Sullivan's ongoing melodrama -- and the stupid queerbait readers who dig it.

Andrew Sullivan was outed by Michelangelo Signorile and, rather than leading Sully to question the hyper-politicization of sexuality, the experience led him to become SuperGayMan, the caped crusader for same-sex marriage. Sully let himself be trapped in a box, defined by his enemies, taking refuge in a ridiculous more-gay-than-thou stance.

His sexual persona is intrinsic to his politics and vice-versa. You know who he reminds me of? Bill Maher, who hates feminism and Christianity with equal fury because both belief-systems stand opposed to selfish little worms like Bill Maher gettin' some.

So I don't think you should have walked back the "queerbait" putdown, Ace. The rest of your critique of Sully is pure genius.

P.S.: To any readers intrigued by my assertion of familiarity with gay culture: (a) I majored in drama in college, (b) I was once the only straight guy working in the men's wear department of a department store, and (c) I hang out with lots of libertarians. However, (d) my wife and I have been married 20 years with six kids. If I'm overcompensating, I'm doing it right.

P.P.S.: Meredith Baxter gay? That's a big loss for the team. But what about her 15-year marriage to David Birney? Was she just fakin' it? Her inner lesbian straining for release? And why didn't her inner lesbian break free earlier, say about 1982, in a video with Phoebe Cates?

Never mind . . .

Whereas Stacy and I were not bright enough to think of this

by Smitty (h/t Little Miss Attila)

Ace has the details of that whole pesky 'accuracy' problem over at the Daily DogDish.

That mindless 'integrity' thing seems a real disadvantage. When we keep things as accurate as possible, admit fault when it occurs, and seek to spread the credit as much as possible, it really gets in the way of building an air of invincibility.

Stacy, should we consider a bout of cretinism, for purely scientific purposes? It worked for Al Gore, didn't it? Maybe this fetishing of fact is foolishness.

UPDATE: Credit Where Credit Is Due
By Robert Stacy McCain
Last night Aleister at American Glob called me to talk blogging and during the course of our conversation, I mentioned that Ace of Spades and Allahpundit were the two bloggers whom I most strived to emulate when I began blogging.

It's the irreverence toward Big Shots, see? Also, the self-deprecating humor, the running jokes, and the knowing attitude toward the interests of the readership. Beyond the value of the news aggregation and commentary, there is a shtick, so that regular readers feel themselves part of the gang, sharing the inside jokes.

Blogging is by its nature a collaborative effort. No blog is an island, and to pretend that one blogger is omniscient and omnicompetent is a pretense that won't fool anybody who pays attention.

Did I notice Patrick Appel's response to complaints from Sullivan's readers about the guest-blogging situation? Yes, it was briefly noted here Tuesday morning.

Did I give it the Mother Of All Fiskings that Ace has provided? No, I didn't. And considering that he actually beat me to it by three hours or so, thanks to Smitty for giving Ace props for making the most of the motherlode:

Because like a lot of people who never had any particular talent, Sullivan was endlessly promoted far beyond his abilities, and now that he is a "name," he intends to sell the only thing of any value he has -- that name -- and simply pay some hacks intern-level wages to ghost-blog for him while he conducts in-depth examinations of Sarah Palin's upper fallopian tubes.

Among the Daily Dish hacks paid intern-level wages? Conor Friedersdorf. Just sayin' . . .

And just sayin' is, of course, also stolen from Ace. The hacks here are unpaid, not even intern-level wages.

'Your secret racist buddy'

Ace is not him:

If you have a racial axe to grind, if you are kind of pissed off about minorities, stop posting on the subject. You are embarrassing yourselves, you are embarrassing me, you are embarrassing everyone else here.
If you think that I am secretly winking at you telling you I just hit the Racism Button and it's okay to start with the racial jibes, you are wrong.
If you think I am your secret racist buddy, who speaks in "code" but you "get" what I'm really saying, you are wrong. I hate you. I despise you. . . .

Ah, yes. The nudge-nudge, wink-wink. The experience of Michael Douglas's Falling Down character in that military surplus store, where the neo-Nazi says, "You're one of us!" and Douglas says, "No, I'm not!" (And kills the guy.)

Last year I went to New York to cover Bob Barr's appearance on The Colbert Report. Afterwards, there was some kind of debate at the Lolita Bar. I didn't cover the debate, but filed my American Spectator report from the bar, which has free Wi-Fi.

There was this young guy who seemed fascinated that I was actually a real honest-to-God journalist, and he started talking to me, asking questions, which is annoying when I'm on deadline. Anyway, I tried to be polite, but there was a kind of stalker thing going on, which I couldn't figure out.

So finally, the debate ended, I hit my deadline and filed my story. Then we all got taxis and went to a cigar bar in Greenwich Village, where Barr and the Libertarian Party brain trust could relax and socialize.

The younger stalker guy was at the cigar bar, too, and started talking to me again. He engaged in the kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink sort of talk that such people do -- trying to draw me out on some subject alien to my knowledge or interest -- until finally he satisfied my curiosity: He was a Jew-hater.

So I made a quick and diplomatic disengagement, and avoided the guy thereafter. You can't reason with people like that and there's no point talking to them. Because they are often mentally unstable, however, you have to be careful how you deal with them or they could flip out and make your life hell.

Kooks in the Office Lobby
This wasn't my first such encounter, BTW. Why do these anti-Semites tend to react this way when they are introduced to a real honest-to-God journalist? They're like the people who periodically show up in the lobbies of newspaper offices with axes to grind -- usually against their ex-wives -- claiming to be the victims of foul miscarriages of justice that they expect you, the newspaper staffer, to rectify by doing some of that "investigative journalism" stuff they've seen on TV.

For the past 16 hours, I've been effectively offline because of a computer glitch, so I haven't had time to figure out exactly what is happening in the blogosphere regarding the Patterico situation. Dafydd ab Hugh has written a couple of guest posts there, evidently engaged in my defense, and some of what he says in this post is worth considering.

Mike LaRoche at South Texian is also on the case, as are others whom I don't have time to link right now, since I'm on a borrowed computer and have other work to do. Let me quote a passage from my 1996 debate with white separatist Dennis Wheeler that I think is being overlooked or underemphasized:

To say that one wishes better racial relations in a real sense is not to endorse the prevailing view of "diversity through homogenization." I recently saw a young black woman that I had once knew when I was a smalltown sportswriter and she was a high school track star. She is originally from New York and had just gotten out of the Air Force a few months earlier and returned to Georgia. After some friendly banter, I asked her if she thought race relations were better or worse in the South than elsewhere in the country. About the same, she said, but then she immediately began a discussion of interracial relationships and how these are less accepted in the South.
This struck me as odd: Why should attitudes toward dating/marriage between the races be considered a litmus test of racial harmony? After all, as she later made clear, many blacks are extremely disapproving of such relationships. And yet an acceptance of "Jungle Fever" (Spike Lee movie about blackwhite dating, for those who've missed their multicultural sensitivity training sessions) is held out to us as the ultimate test of whether or not we're "racists."

So you see that, rather than engaging in some hypothetical third-bong-hit-in-the-dorm-room discussion of an idealized utopia, I was citing a particular real-world example -- an actual conversation with a personal friend, whom I could name -- that seemed relative to the debate. And my young friend was talking in particular about black people in the South being less approving of interracial relationships.

That ought not be overlooked. I'm not trying to pull the "some of my best friends" defense, merely pointing out that I was trying to explain reality, rather than to express my own personal ideal.

In his own introduction to the debate, Wheeler notes that "several people adopt a Libertarian view on race," and in response to the same long post I've just excerpted, Wheeler says:

Reduced to its essence, this was another manifestation of the Libertarian argument of "get the government out of the issue."

What Wheeler says, intending "Libertarian" as a pejorative, certainly ought to serve as a stout defense to any accusation that I am a "white supremacist." The two accusations are fundamentally incompatible.

Harshing a Utopian's Mellow
What Wheeler couldn't get past, really, was the problem that racial reality -- life as it is actually lived -- does not conform to his own theoretical ideal. Only by extremely coercive government measures could Wheeler's racialist utopia be obtained; even if one endorsed such coercion, there is nothing like a political consensus to pursue such a policy; and if there ever were an effective majority in favor of a racial-separatist policy, this would lead us straight to the conundrum of minority rights in a democratic society.

Wheeler's programme -- and Daffyd ab Hugh notices I used the British spelling, as I'd been immersed in reading Winston Churchill in 1996 -- was a non-starter, and whatever anyone thinks of Wheeler's racial opinions, his argument amounted to an attempt to persuade people to follow him in a lemming march off the cliff into the abyss of an irrelevant fringe.

Labels like "libertarian" and "pragmatic" are used as epithets by some conservatives, who insist that a particular ideal (and always their own ideal, of course) must be the object of conservative thought and that no practical considerations should prevent the pursuit of that object. Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Cons" nonsense was one form of this idealistic conservatism, a philosophy that tended toward a disengagement with real-world politics, even as it made foolish concessions to liberalism. (See Jonah Goldberg's lengthy response to Dreher's book or my own brief review.)

If by "pragmatic," you mean that we are seeking to deal with actual problems with realistic measures, who would argue against pragmatism? It does not mean we are unprincipled, only that we aren't engaged in mere academic speculation about rainbow-and-unicorn utopias. And if you say we are "libertarian," does this mean that we have no ideals beyond the limitation of government? Of course not.

So you've seen how I dealt with Wheeler's white separatism, and his accusation that my "Libertarian view on race" was an apostasy. Now, more than a dozen years later, I find myself dealing with an entirely opposite accusation, that I am some kind of hateful bigot -- based in large measure on the arguments I made against Wheeler!

Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Ace isn't "your secret racist buddy." There seem to be some people who want you think I am. My cosmic point, however, is that it doesn't matter whether you're "racist" or not, or whether you think I'm "racist" or not. Your opinions are your own, and even a fool has a right to his folly. (There's that libertarian thing again, see?)

The Road to Johnsonism
Patterico's liberal troll TimB said I should "be separated from the mainstream dialogue" -- that is to say, TimB has appointed himself Mainstream Dialogue Czar.

What part of "fuck you" is so hard to understand, Tim?

A commitment to free debate doesn't require Ace to let his comment field fill up with noxious stuff. He has one of the most wide-open comment fields on the Internet, and whatever caused him to brandish the banhammer, it must have been pretty bad.

The comments here are moderated. I don't ban people. There are just some comments I don't approve. And maybe I approve some that I shouldn't. Pixels are free, but I am proprietor of this particular slice of bandwidth, and trolls -- who try to hijack discussions for their own purposes, including efforts to disparage the very purpose of the blog -- are not welcome.

TimB can log into Blogger and have his own blog (call it "TimB's Dishonest Liberal Troll Blog") in a matter of minutes. Alas, Charles Johnson has already cornered the market on that.

Patterico, as blog aficionados are aware, is an assistant D.A. in California, and he seems to display a prosecutorial zeal toward me. Hell, the only time I ever set foot in his jurisdiction was when I changed planes at LAX. What's his beef?

My readers are hitting the tip jar to send me to Pasadena, so if the D.A.'s got a warrant, maybe he'll send some detectives to get tough with me next month on my way to the BCS championship. Which is why I'm thinking of bringing my Samoan attorney along for the ride . . .

THE DISCUSSION CONTINUES . . .

Some topics are best left to Ace of Spades

For example, the suicide of 52-year-old Mike "Christine" Penner, two years after the L.A. Times sportswriter wrote a column with these immortal words:

During my 23 years with The Times' sports department, I have held a wide variety of roles and titles. . . . Today I leave for a few weeks' vacation, and when I return, I will come back in yet another incarnation. As Christine. . . . I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words.

Many years to "work up the courage" -- and two years later, he/she kills him/herself. Over to you, Ace.

Booze-blogging?

Stephen Green of VodkaPundit is widely hailed as the inventor of drunk-blogging -- i.e., live-blogging an event while under the influence. I had the opportunity during the 2008 Democratic National Convention to actually watch the master at work, and attest that the man can, as the late poet Ronnie Van Zant once said, "drink enough whiskey to float a battleship around."

I've never tried drunk-blogging myself, at least not on purpose, although there may have been occasions -- including Election Night at the Hotel Saranac -- when the deadline pressure required me to self-medicate to counteract the effects of my massive coffee intake.

All of that, however, is prelude to a discussion of booze-blogging, which is blogging about booze. Given that this site is the originator of Rule 5 Sunday -- the weekly babe-blogging roundup -- you might suppose that the natural booze-and-broads pairing would replicate itself on the 'sphere. Yet until this morning, I didn't even know there was such a thing as booze-blogging.

Then I got an e-mail from Doug Winship of the Pegu Blog, who informed me that he found "How to Get a Million Hits" inspirational. Doug wanted to pass along the news that, just as political bloggers are encroaching on the Old Media's turf, so it is that booze-bloggers are exposing booze bias among the snobs:

Unless you spend a lot of time in wine chat rooms, you may have missed the recent controversies involving critic Robert Parker. The short version: Parker's publication, the Wine Advocate, was found to be violating its own strictures against freebies and fraternizing with wine importers, and a contributor he hired gave a high rating to a wine based on a sample that seemed to bear little resemblance to what was available on retail shelves. The back-to-back scandals . . . came to light via several wine Web sites, including Parker's own online discussion board. The Internet angle is actually the most significant aspect of this story, for it underscores how profoundly technology is changing the relationship between wine critics and consumers -- the relationship between you and me.

Personally, I avoid wine just like I avoid whiskey (ever since Jack Daniel and I had a bad night at Ralph and Millie's Christmas party a few years ago). Above all, however, I avoid snobbery.

Beer snobs get on my nerves. It pains me to see these poseurs pestering a bartender in quest of some obscure imported premium ale -- dark as sin, with the flavor and texture of a peat bog -- just so their friends won't see them drinking a Bud.

The Internet revolutionizes everything it touches, from poker to politics to porn. The 'Net has also apparently revolutionized snobbery, enabling status-seekers to go online and find highfalutin stuff with which to impress their peers -- including pricey call girls. But a whore is a whore is a whore, and a beer is a beer is a beer, and all these Veblenian status-displays don't change the basic facts.

Fortunately, Doug Winship appears to strive against such bibulous pretensiousness, although he hasn't gotten down in the gutter with Valu-Rite vodka, the favorite swill of hobo-killers.

You've got to admire the populism of a guy who writes about drinking at Disney World. No cork-sniffing epicurean would admit such a thing, lest he be shunned by sommeliers.

Good luck with that, Dr. Jones

“That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?"
-- Dr. Phil Jones, trying to explain the "hide the decline" e-mail in the massive scandal now known as ClimateGate

Thanks to Ace of Spades for catching that. Y'know, it's the darned irony that makes me smile about this.

It would seem that Dr. Jones is claiming that he's been smeared on the basis of somebody else's writing taken out of context. Terrible when things like that happen . . . right, Stogie?

You'll pay for this, Jules Crittenden!

In writing about Andrew Sullivan, the city editor of a Boston newspaper manages to use two painfully suggestive terms, "bottomless" and "cavernous." I'm billing him for two cases of industrial-strength brain bleach.

Meanwhile, I previously overlooked the latest not-to-be-missed Ace beatdown on Sully's latest excursion to insanity. And Michelle Malkin is moved to mercy:

Perhaps the publisher and editors of the august Atlantic magazine should consider giving the man an extended sick leave.
Or at least some Zyprexa.

About three bottles of Zyprexa ought to do the trick, if washed down with enough whiskey. Mercy.

Quite possibly the funniest AOSHQ thread since the 'Paul Anka Integrity Kick'

What were the very worst songs of the 1970s? Well, Laura W. started with "Sometimes When We Touch" -- a serious contender -- and it descended from there into coffee-spewing hilarity..

How far did it go? Three words: The Banana Splits.

French Vogue: White model in blackface

As Dave Barry says, I'm not making this up. Among popular American pastimes, denouncing the French ranks up there with baseball, so it would be un-American not to denounce the French for this hateful atrocity.

What has often happened to me over the years is that, in attempting to explain and understand Frenchiness as a cultural phenomenon, I have exposed myself to charges of defending France -- indeed, some people have even gone so far as to accuse me of being de facto pro-French.

Well, the natural reaction to such a vile accusation is to deny it, to attempt to disassociate oneself from the despicable doctrine of Francophilia. Ah, but that approach never works.

Once you come under the penumbra of suspicion, you are guilty until proven innocent and every little item in your resume is examined from the accuser's perspective: Didn't you once wear a Pierre Cardin tie? And is it not a fact, sir, that you took two years of French in high school? What are we to make of the fact that you sometimes make reference to le mot juste and other such Frenchified notions?

Therefore, the correct response is to lean into the accusation. If it is absurd to say that I am a Francophile -- as I assure you it is -- then why not treat it as a joke?

Have fun with your oh-so-serious accusers with a bit of high-concept humor at their expense. Make a little double-entendre (oops!) playing with the accuser's Javert-like quest for the smoking gun -- j'accuse! -- that proves what a degenerate Frog-lover you really are.

What, then, shall I say about French Vogue displaying 26-year-old Dutch supermodel Lara Stone in blackface? To quote Ace of Spades: "I'd hit it."

I'll be in my bunk . . .

The BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA Heard 'Round the World!

Allahpundit kept his powder dry for weeks, held his fire until the right moment, and then this evening -- discussing the less-than-stellar re-launch of GOP.com -- he finally touched the fire to the wick:

Oh, and apologies to LGF on behalf of our "wingnut blog" for failing to cover this sooner. Granted, there were not one but two items about it sitting in Headlines for hours, but when a site that gave up blogging about Iran and the New York City terror plot to focus on the urgent threat from creationism tells you you’re falling down on the job, you listen.

OK, so all the people who have been ragging on Allah in the Hot Air comment threads now owe him a huge apology. Whatever wrong Allah has done in the past, you've got to wipe the slate clean after that one.

For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them . . . and they shall not escape.
-- I Thessalonians 5:3 KJV

Thus does the Hindenberg-at-Lakehurst implosion of LGF occur, as Darleen Click finds Mad King Charles using the fake-but-accurate standard against Rush Limbaugh.

Remember how long Pamela Geller had to wait for her vindication, and never doubt for a minute that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwhind.

THE FLEMISH MENACE!

UPDATE: Dan Riehl joins the Bwaaahahahahaha Chorus:

I know Charles Johnson has denied ever performing oral sex on a lizard. But . . .

And you just knew the AOSHQ Morons were going to have a field day.

OMG! Ashley Herzog has decided to prove once and for all she's a natural blonde!

Photographic proof, IYKWIMAITYD!

Not since Little Miss Attila published those nude photos of Hannah Giles has such a scandal rocked the conservative blogosphere. BTW, both Ace of Spades and Matthew Vadum claim to have seen Little Miss Attila topless at CPAC a couple of years ago, but they're probably just joking.

Speaking of natural blondes, everybody's favorite strawberry blonde, Becky Banks Brindle, will be having her big church wedding to Allen "Big Al" Brindle next weekend in Pittsburgh. Allen is very tall and has incredibly large hands, which probably explains why Becky dragged him to a courthouse in Virginia in December to stake her legal claim to the breathtaking awesomeness for which "Big Al" is legendary.

Now, just to make their mutual satisfaction copacetic with The Man Upstairs, the suspiciously happy couple -- we notice that "Trout Pout" has been smiling rather blissfully since December -- will be doing the formal religious acknowledgement of their blessed union.

In case anyone's been wondering why Becky hasn't been blogging much lately, it's probably because she's been so busy (a) planning her wedding, and (b) serving up hot home-cooked deliciousness to sate her hubby's voracious appetite. Nudge, nudge.

Despite the universal envy which their connubial contentment inspires, we all wish them the best, and expect the first of many large-handed blonde Banks/Brindle babies to make its appearance sometime early next summer. Allen's already refused lucrative offers for video of the conception, but maybe if you guys will hit the tip jar, I'll see if I can talk him into arranging for me to take photos of the delivery. IYKWIMAITYD.

(Trust me, Allen: I'm a happily married father of six. As we say at The McCain Institute, if you've seen one episiotomy, you've seen 'em all. This is about neutral, objective professional journalism.)

'He's like a troll with his own website'

This inarguably apt description of LGF's Charles Johnson (hat-tip: Save the GOP) comes from a commenter on a post where Ace of Spades includes this video:

Ace complains:

I am trying to keep this a lively blog for the discussion of multiple topics of general interest, not solely for the discussion of an overrated and now discredited blogger.
Again: I do not object to the discussion. I object to the propensity of the discussion to dominate every single new thread on every single new subject.

Good point. The stock market lost about 40 points today, and I've got other work to do, but if any AOSHQ morons want to stop discussing this in every AOSHQ thread and start discussing it over here, I'd be grateful for the traffic.

BTW, what's up with this "Let's Don't Invite Stacy to Our Smart Girl Summit" deal, Tabitha Hale? You're hanging out with Erick Telford too much . . .

UPDATE: Fighting for Liberty:

LGF will eventually be DailyKos 2.0 as far as I can tell and I’m sure 8 years from now he’ll be touting those famous documents as “real, but inaccurate” or some such thing.

Via 2.0 Blogmocracy.

RECENTLY ON MAD KING CHARLES

• Gates of Vienna to the Cowardly Liar Charles Johnson: Vindication at Last!
• In the famous words of Ernie Anastos . . .
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• The latest from Lydia
• Remember when LGF's gutless God-hater Charles Johnson hated Bush, too?

LGF's Kilgore Trout attacks Hot Air

Ace of Spades has the details of an attack that I had actually predicted Thursday morning in an e-mail to Michelle Malkin.

My son's first football game is today, and I have other commitments this evening. However, I must first make these two brief notes:

• Irving Kristol, R.I.P. A great man, whose influence will be remembered and debated for many years to come. My condolences and sympathy to his family and many friends.
• A friend just told me that Hannah Giles was "hurt" by my seizing the Hannah Giles bikini Google-bomb last week. But I know how the Left works, and I knew what was coming as soon as Hannah became famous, as did other smart conservatives in the blogosphere. Respectful conservative bloggers now own all the top Google-searche results for those photos and Little Miss Attila has also protected this fine Christian girl against Hannah Giles nude and Hannah Giles sex video.

"Angels unaware," as I said in an update just now. And as I've said so many times, "Just because you don't know what I'm doing, don't assume that I don't know what I'm doing."

God bless you, Hannah. And I hope the God-haters will remember: When old No. 27's son says, "I'm going to beat you today," he's not bragging. It is a statement of fact.

Now I must go to my son's football game. Family tradition . . .

UPDATE 5:15 p.m.: Despite some sloppy execution -- Bear Bryant would have those boys running wind sprints Monday until they were spittin' cotton -- my son's team, Brick Squad, scored a 19-6 victory over the So Icy Boys. My son Bob missed a few tackles, but redeemed himself by sacking the quarterback to end the game.

Even if it's only intramural flag football, the victorious tradition must be maintained as a matter of honor.

UPDATE 6:40 p.m.: File this under Bwaahahahahaha: Hot Air just moved LGF from "War On Terror" to "Left Channels" on their blogroll. Screen-cap that, post it on your blog, link here, and you've got yourself a guaranteed link-back.

UPDATE 6:46 p.m.: Fritz Hannah Giles lingerie is learning at Patterico. BTW, we were with Jeff G. in his feud with Patterico, but let bygones be bygones, as I say to my Yankee wife.

Senate condemns ACORN; House expected to approve Hannah Giles bikini photos

Charles Johnson could not be reached for comment:

A poverty-rights group that has drawn the ire of conservatives suffered another setback in Washington on Monday when the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to deny it access to federal housing funds. . . .

"Poverty rights"? I guess that means ACORN fights for people's right to be poor. NTTAWWT, but I don't remember "poverty rights" in the Constitution. Let's see if we can find something a bit more fair and balanced:

A growing number of Republican lawmakers are calling for congressional hearings and IRS audits of ACORN following the release of three videotapes that show the group's employees offering advice to a "pimp" and a "prostitute" on how to skirt the law.
Rep. Steve King, R-IA, said a video released Monday that shows filmmaker James O'Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, getting advice from ACORN employees in Brooklyn, N.Y., on how to launder their earnings and avoid detection while running a prostitution business is "another reason to turn it up" on ACORN.

Much better. Now let's try Ed Morrissey:

Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) introduced an amendment to the HUD and Transportation appropriation bill to strip ACORN of all federal funding. A week ago, Johanns wouldn’t have gotten the amendment to the floor. Today, however, after three straight days of BigGovernment.com’s video exposés of ACORN offices in Washington DC, New York City, and Baltimore offering assistance to pimping, tax evasion, and trafficking in underage Salvadorean girls, Johanns not only got his vote — but he got an impressive bipartisan showing. The Senate passed the Johanns amendment 83-7

Wow, 83-7! Coincidentally, that's exactly the ratio of e-mails I'm getting in favor of my publishing the Hannah Giles bikini photo.

At this point, however, I owe a big hat-tip to Ace of Spades, who taught me almost everything I know about the running-gag method of building blog-reader loyalty. Ace blogs with personality and, though his actual self bears an oft-noted resemblance to an Ewok with a law degree, the outrageous humor of his online persona is what sets him apart from grim, humorless bloggers about whom we need not say anything specific at this point.

Humor wins. Humor persuades. And, as Ronald Reagan so often demonstrated, no humor is as winningly persuasive as self-deprecating humor. The guy who tells jokes on himself is telling others, "Hey, I comprehend that I am not exempt from the general ridiculousness of human folly." So when Ace jokes about swilling Valu-Rite vodka and beating up hobos -- he's notoriously hobophobic -- he invites readers to laugh at him, but also with him.

Ace is an acknowledged master of the running gag, and after a while, the running gag becomes an inside joke. Longtime readers bust a gut when he references the Paul Anka Integrity Trip, and part of the joy of recycling an old joke is the fact that only longtime readers will get it. This rewards reader loyalty, you see. "Membership has its privileges," and the longtime AOSHQ Moron gets a special payoff when Ace throws in a Scandi-hating reference to filthy lutefisk-gobblers.

Blog junkies may never get to this level of abstract theory about what makes AOSHQ so darned good, but if you're a middle-aged journalist who just quit the newspaper business and you need to grow a blog readership fast, you're like the engineer at KIA trying to reverse-engineer a Jaguar XJ. That was the kind of raw desperation that led to "How to Get a Million Hits On Your Blog In Less Than A Year."

OK, so one of the terms that Ace taught me is "blog-o-bucks." Readers of a major blogger like AOSHQ picture Ace living the high life in posh surroundings, lighting his imported cigars with twenty-dollar bills and generally, as P.J. O'Rourke once said, "farting through silk."

Alas, it's not as lucrative and as glamorous as all that and, despite his outrageously enviable success, Ace is unlikely to be buying a Gulfstream anytime soon.

If longtime readers suspect this is all leading up to a request that you hit the tip jar -- hey, there's your payoff. Membership has its rewards, and Dave C. at Point of a Gun shows why your contributions to the blog-o-bucks are desperately needed -- to help us blogger dudes hang out with biker chicks who come to D.C. for protest marches.

You really should hit the tip jar, because it enables me to play the comic role of the over-the-hill ladies' man, trying to convince himself he's still got the magic. Which is why I'm so grateful to lady-bloggers like Barbara "Angry Mob" Espinosa:

[T]he night was icing on the cake my new best married friend the infamous Robert Stacy McCain aka The Other McCain in the blog world and famous author arranged what he calls a Smittypalooza at the Army Navy Club. . . . This group of blogger's are the most knowledgable, nicest patriotic Americans you could ever meet. We had a wonderful time talking with a group of intelligent good looking guys who carried on conversations about current events with a few jokes and jabs at each thrown in to keep them on their toes. Afterwards a few of us went out for a bite to eat and always a gentlemen as well as a scholar Wombat Rampant walked us back to our hotel as The Other McCain drove over to the hotel to help me with my computer.

"Help me with my computer." Nudge, nudge. I bet you say that to all the bloggers, Barbara. IYKWIMAITYD. While Mrs. Other McCain is usually jealous of my girlfriends drinking buddies Internet consulting clients, for some reason, she's OK with Barbara.

Oh, yeah -- the string of crossed-out descriptors is another running gag. Schtick, as they say. (Or is it schtupp? I'm confused. Maybe I need to buy a Yiddish-English dictionary. So hit the tip jar.) You might have noticed that Mrs. Other McCain's jealousy is also schtick. Or schtupp. Whatever . . . hit the freaking tip jar.

Now, you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with Hannah Giles bikini photos. Well, if it weren't for Hannah Giles portraying the role of "Kenya" the prostitute, the Senate wouldn't have condemned ACORN. After the ACORN video made news, I started getting random Google hits from people searching for her photo -- which I had posted in July's coverage of the annual YAF conference.

As soon as I realized this, I posted another Hannah Giles photo and, almost immediately, commenters began requesting Hanna Giles bikini photos -- another payoff to loyal readers, who know how I shamelessly milked curiosity about Sarah Palin bikini pics and Carrie Prejean nude for traffic.

This involves a Stupid Blogger Trick known as the Google-bomb, and is also part of the reward of Rule 5, which rivals Rule 2 in popularity in "How to Get a Million Hits On Your Blog In Less Than A Year."

Rule 5A: Everybody loves a pretty girl. And the category of "everybody" includes sick freaks who search for naked photos of celebrities. (Cynthia Yockey actually gets Bea Arthur nude traffic. These people are sick, I tell you.)

These freaks are not just sick, but stupid. Perversion makes people stupid, as you might have concluded from watching TV shows about idiots who haven't yet figured out that every 13-year-old girl in an Internet chat room is either (a) an undercover cop or (b) Chris Hansen of "Dateline NBC."

So it isn't necessary to actually post nude photos of celebrities in order to get Internet traffic from idiots looking for nude photos of celebrities. If a female celebrity makes news, or if any good-looking woman suddenly becomes famous, the smart blogger who acts fast can get traffic by betting on the predictability that perverse idiots will be seeking nude photos, topless photos or bikini photos of her.

It is a fact that, in the 5 a.m. hour, 31% of my traffic was from Google freaks searching for Hannah Giles photos. A fact, but not an accident, because I don't believe in accidents. So any liberal scumbag or Perez Hilton celebrity-blogger slimeball who thinks he's going to cash in on Hannah's sudden fame . . .

Dude. Nobody beats the Rule 5 Google-bomb king. Hannah is protected, you see, and certainly not by the Google-bomb alone. Not even a denunciation by notorious God-hater Charles Johnson can harm her.

Considering that I'm sharing very valuable advice with conservative bloggers here, maybe somebody should hit the tip jar. But if you are actually so stupid as to believe I'm going to post Hannah Giles bikini photos . . . hey, you're in luck!

Despite the fact that Hannah is a devout Christian girl the same age as my own daughter, despite the fact that her father, Doug Giles, is a friend of mine and a Christian youth leader -- well-known for his skill with firearms and martial arts -- I am indeed going to post a photo of Hannah in a bikini:

That's Hannah on the left, and there's no need to name the tall blonde on the right. (A good reporter never burns his sources, especially tall blonde sources from Texas.) But if you'll click on the image, it will show the whole photo.

Genius? Maybe, although I'm sometimes kind of sloppy with the HTML code, so e-mail Smitty if you have any problems with that link . . . you sick freaks.

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. . . . Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.
-- Proverbs 31:10, 30 (KJV)

As Doug Giles could certainly tell you, there are lots of people who won't sit still for a sermon, but they love to hear a good joke. Deo Vindice.

Go Phyllis!

Cynthia Yockey rounds up a brutal punk-smacking that Phyllis Chesler laid on Naomi Wolfe who -- I am not making this up -- defended the burqa as "feminist."

My apologies to Cynthia and Phyllis for not noticing earlier, as I get so wrapped up in my own flame-wars that it's like tunnel vision.

Speaking of flame wars and feminism, Little Miss Attila took womynly offense at Ace of Spades after Ace finally lost patience with LGF's Charles Johnson over the Van Jones controversy. In exasperation, Ace's cri de coeur was: "This is like arguing with a woman of the more irrational sort."

Attila acts outraged, but she knows exactly what Ace is talking about. Any argument between a man and a woman will eventually reach the stage at which the woman's key point is, "You are a bad person for disagreeing with me."

In response, the man's argument becomes, "Why don't you shut your stupid mouth and fix me some biscuits?"

Which was essentially what Ace was saying to Charles.

'Ask not what your president can do for you. Ask what you can do . . .'

". . . for your president," says Ace of Spades, translating the teacher's guide to President Obama's Sept. 8 speech to students. Ace is demanding to see an advance text of the speech:

I'm not saying I don't trust you. I'm just saying -- no, I am saying I don't trust you, now that I think about it.

More at Memeorandum, Exurban League, 24Ahead, The Daily Paul, Michelle Malkin, Moe Lane, Hot Air, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, And So It Goes In Shreveport, Pundit & Pundette and Caught Him With a Corndog.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin follows up with a column:

Obama's White House Teaching Fellows include Chicago high school educator Xian Barrett, a fierce opponent of charter schools who founded a "Social Justice Club" and bussed students to protests and Michelle Bissonette, a Los Altos, Calif., teacher who is "focused on developing my leadership as a more culturally and racially conscious educator."
The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. . . .

Read the whole thing and, please, parents, ask yourself: "Why am I entrusting my child's education to unionized government bureaucrats?"

UPDATE II: An excellent suggestion from that role model for America's youth, VodkaPundit:

In impossible times, the only way to be a responsible parent is to do the irresponsible thing. If my son were in a public school…
I’d call him in sick next Tuesday. I’d keep him home. I suggest you do so. I urge you to do so. If pressed, be honest about your reasons -- but be reasonable about presenting them. Otherwise, don’t offer an explanation. Make it a silent protest.

VodkaPundit's a dad now, and I'm sure this will be a teachable moment at his house: "OK, son, today we're going to learn how to make Daddy a martini . . ."

Right-wing kooks spread 'misinformation' that Newsweek's Sharon Begley is ugly

Newsweek's incredibly attractive science editor, Sharon Begley, says that " some of the loudest opposition" to ObamaCare "is the result of confirmatory bias, cognitive dissonance, and other examples of mental processes that have gone off the rails":

Obama's opponents also need to find evidence that their reading of him back in November was correct. They therefore seize on "confirmation" that he wants to, for instance, redistribute the wealth, as in his "spread the wealth around" remark to Joe the Plumber -- finding such confirmation in the claims that health-care reform will do just that, redistributing health care from those who have it now to the 46 million currently uninsured. Similarly, they seize on anything that confirms the "socialist" label that got pinned on Obama during the campaign, or the pro-abortion label -- anything to comfort themselves that they made the right choice last November.

Well, there you have it, folks: It's science, and only crazy people argue with science.

Borderline schizophrenic Jeff Poor of the Media Research Center accuses the stunning Sharon Begley of having an "elitist persona." Obviously, Jeff is suffering from cognitive dissonance, and this derogatory comment is an effort to comfort himself for the feelings of inferiority caused by his recognition that he'll never be worthy of a sexually magnetic woman like Sharon Begley.

Another pathetic example of "mental processes that have gone off the rails"? Ace of Spades, whose pathological obsession with the irresistibly alluring Sharon Begley leads him to "seize on confirmation" that she's hot for him:

• Sharon Begley, May 2007: Bush is mentally ill, suffering from delusions due to deep denial.
• Sharon Begley, June 2007: Democrats lose elections because they target the rational side of the brain, while Republicans target the irrational side.
• Sharon Begley, October 2007: Those who deny global warming are kooks and cranks like those nuts who deny the moon landing.

All of which is clear scientific evidence that Ace of Spades suffers from dangerous erotic compulsions toward Sharon Begley. But then again, don't we all?

Remember, denial is part of the problem. If you think President Obama's modest health-care reform agenda is "socialized medicine" or if -- like Ace -- you refuse to acknowledge your overpowering attraction to Sharon Begley, you have already begun losing touch with reality and should seek professional treatment immediately.

'Integrity'? Like Paul F***ing Anka, Baby

Ace of Spades mentions "integrity" in discussing his services last year "as an apologist for the horrible candidate John McCain." I traveled a good distance down that particular road myself -- I'd link some of it, if only it weren't so traumatically embarrassing -- but I knew when to pull the ripcord:

John McCain lost the election Sept. 24 and Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. Nothing that is likely to happen between now and Nov. 4 can change this outcome. . . .
Democrats are already rushing to promote Obama's coming victory as a mandate for their "progressive" agenda. Conservatives need to begin telling the true story of McCain's defeat, which must be admitted before it can be explained.

That was published Oct. 7 by The American Spectator, nearly a full month before the election. In fact, my spontaneous reaction Sept. 24 to McCain's stunt ("insane . . . I can't see the benefit, either in terms of policy or politics") was almost a perfect bull's-eye. And let the record show that, once everything was said and done, all informed analysts agreed with me that Crazy Cousin John's support for the bailout was the decisive turning point in his well-deserved defeat. (See also Doug Mataconis: "The McCain Campaign: What Went Wrong.")

The question has since been asked, by friends, whether I have any regrets. Short answer: None at all. I didn't vote for Obama and I didn't vote for Crazy Cousin John. Let other people apologize for their choices, but I have nothing to regret. (Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bob Barr.) So I felt obligated to make this point in my reply to Ace:

If the Republican Party could nominate as its presidential candidate a man whose only apparent political principle has been the advancement of his own ambition and still win, what kind of cynic would call that a good outcome? When the GOP nominates the wrong man, the electoral debacle that inevitably follows cannot be interpreted as evidence that the party should nominate more scoundrels like that.

Which is to say, What Would Paul F***ing Anka Do?

Lots of people disagree with me, and I have no problem with that. They have the right to be wrong. I understand that my habit of being 100% right all the time is annoying to people who are wrong. Yeah, it might be kind of boring if every other blog on the planet was nothing but a series of links like this:

Stacy McCain Is Right!
Once Again, Stacy McCain Is Exactly Right!
How Much More Nail-On-The-Head Accurate Could Stacy McCain Possibly Be?
Holy Freaking Crap! That Guy Could Split Atoms With His Infallible Logic!

Boring, yes. But accurate. What's the point of being a know-it-all if you don't actually know it all? Isn't that why people read Hot Air, because Allah knows everything?

So when I'm right, right, right, right all the time, and other people are reliably wrong like clockwork (e.g., David Brooks), then maybe a good political strategy for the Republican Party would be to listen to me: Do the exact opposite of whatever David Brooks says to do. Cf. "How to Think About Liberalism (If You Must)."

There was a time -- perhaps as recently as yesterday -- when my prophetic omniscience may have been incomplete. As of today, however, just call me Mr. Authoritative Truth. So believe me when I tell you that, even though Ace is wrong about this one thing, he isn't a total whore, no matter what David Frum says.

(Yeah, I did steal that Photoshop. Sue me.)

UPDATE: Linked by Paul Anka Instapundit, and please also see my sentimental tribute to Ace of Spades at the Green Room. And while I have no regrets about my political choices in 2008, that's not the same as having no regrets.

(Regrets? I've had a few, but then again . . .)

UPDATE II: Dan Collins is a genius, and also has some interesting arguments on ObamaCare. Everyone who cares about the future of the Republican Party the conservative cause America the world the universe should commit to memory every priceless word that Dan Collins writes.

UPDATE III: Dr. Melissa Clouthier:

Well, we’re not being screwed, these days. We’re being freaking gang-raped. . . . Does anyone really believe that a John McCain presidency would have sold out the country to the Unions? Does anyone really believe we’d have to be beating back the biggest power grab by the federal government ever?

Yes, and how did this happen? Because I voted for Bob Barr in Maryland? I think not. The GOP nominated as its presidential candidate the only candidate in the primary field for whom I could not vote. (S. 2611.) The most electable candidate in the Republican field, Mitt Romney, quit two days after Super Tuesday.

When the Republican Party nominates a guaranteed loser who -- surprise! -- loses, how is this result to be blamed on those who opposed the nomination, who specifically, accurately and concisely predicted what events would happen? I predicted it on Super Tuesday, and you may read "Bill Kristol & the Idiocy of Hope" -- from Monday, Nov. 3 -- and be assured that I have no regrets about that post, either.

How many times do I have to repeat myself? If you volunteer to be a doormat, don't complain about the footprints on your back.

If the Republican Party can nominate Bozo the Clown with the calm certainty that, on the day before the election, Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes and Sean Hannity will be lecturing conservatives about how important it is that they vote for Bozo -- "That clown is a Great American! He's pulled to within the margin of error in Idaho!" -- whose fault is it that the GOP gets its ass kicked and nobody takes the conservative movement seriously?

Obama, Pelosi and Reid are running roughshod over the Constitution, and this is to be blamed on me?

Fine. It's all my fault. Blame me. Or Sarah Palin. Or Rush Limbaugh. Take your pick. Since it seems absolutely essential to some people that the clueless GOP hacks who orchestrated this disaster never be held accountable for their errors, please don't let me me disturb the search for a convenient scapegoat.

But why keep searching? It was me. Mea culpa.

Whatever you do, don't blame John McCain, or any of the idiots at GOP-HQ who squandered $792 million on the 2008 Republican campaign -- hey, let's hire the Dynamic Duck Duo! -- because if you blame them, somebody might accuse you of trying to be "morally superior."

UPDATE IV: OK, excuse the outburst. I'm just tired, is all. Everybody knows exactly what needs to be done. Except me. I'm the only person in the entire conservative blogosphere who doesn't know anything about politics, or media, or campaigns.

So whatever you do, ignore me -- until it's time to blame me.