Kausfails

In which we learn that the well of wingnut welfare has run dry for Senator-wannabe Mickey Kaus:

One of the key innovations of the Kaus for Senate campaign was supposed to be the combination of this pre-existing blog and the campaign web site. Readers would stop by the blog and while they were here they'd hit the contribution button to the right and send some money to get the message out to non-readers. Synergy! Well ... it's not working, people! Or, at least, it's stopped working. ...

I'm shocked that the throngs of Democrats who privately urged Mickey to run and claimed they endorsed his message are, in fact, broke-ass chumps (or maybe they just enjoy a good laugh -- ed.). Perhaps Kaus can blame it on the campaign finance laws, as even his Republican constituency doesn't want to be seen as giving money to Fred Thompson II: Electorate Boogaloo.

On the other hand, Kaus is claiming he's raised somewhere between 10 and 20K -- no accounting problem there! -- and his only expenses are a filing fee, a shitty website template and one ad on Ann Alchouse's blog. Yet he's begging for more cash. So much for claims of fiscal responsibility.

The Rover Boy

Anyone who thinks that Mark "Little Mort" Halperin is anything other than a Republican stooge should read this tribute to Willard and the Turd:

Rove also shows some vulnerability when discussing his own tribulations; even his staunchest critics might feel a twinge at the scorching account of his family’s ordeal during the C.I.A. leak investigation, as he tried to fend off prosecutors while his wife tried to ward off the press.

Little Mort fetches for the G.O.P. like Dick Morris in the presence of a five-dollar whore.

Lame Canada

Re: this:

1. Why is it bigger outrage for Comedy Central to bleep "Mohammed" out of South Park than to do the same with the words "fuck" or "cocksucker?" If I understand correctly, Parker and Stone already bleep those words out before submitting their cartoons to the network (presumably they either agreed to do that or know it would happen if they didn't). No one simpers about free speech or censorship when South Park is shown with "cunt" removed. Is it any less censorious to bleep words because of fear of economic harm or government regulation than it is because of a threat of violence? In the latter case, the channel at least has the justification of protecting of its employees from the threat.

2. Instead of Draw Mohammed Day, wouldn't be a bit more ballsy, not to mention on point, to ridicule the dickheads who issued the threat? Last time I checked, Mohammed was dead. He's not objecting, and whatever remains of his corpse not going to harm anyone. If Bill Donahue is being a homophobic dick, do you draw Jesus or the Pope giving blowjobs?

3. Parker and Stone shouldn't be killed for their opinions. They should be killed for Baseketball. Repeatedly.

The Galt Boat, Soon Will be Making Another Run

A remake of Out to Sea, starring Libertarian Fonzie and his fellow Koresh apologists as the dinner dates of elderly Rand acolytes. Watch for Somali pirates in the third act:

Event Highlights...

You've never been on a cruise like this! Join Reason's A-team of journalists, policy wonks, and special guests for an amazing week of thought-provoking seminars and stimulating discussions aboard the luxurious Celebrity Solstice. With exclusive cocktail parties, special dinners, and fun excursions with fellow Reasonistas, it will be a week you'll never forget!

In addition to all the wonderful activities aboard the Celebrity Solstice and in port, this exclusive The Reason Cruise event includes:

...

-- Port charges, taxes, fuel surcharges, and government fees.

Damn! That's gotta hurt.

Might I Suggest "Every Sperm Is Sacred"?

A lark at the expense of the Pontiff for Perverts:

An internal Foreign Office memo about this September's papal visit to Britain which started as a Friday afternoon joke, today has resulted in a formal government apology to the Vatican.

The memorandum, apparently written following a brainstorming session by a group of junior civil servants planning events for the four-day visit by Pope Benedict XVI, suggested among other ideas that he might like to start a helpline for abused children, sack "dodgy" bishops, open an abortion ward, launch his own brand of condoms, preside at a civil partnership, perform forward rolls with children, apologise for the Spanish armada and sing a song with the Queen.

One online commenter critical of the Foreign Office sniffed, "Once Oxbridge scrapped its Latin entrance paper and oiks began to be actively encouraged to apply, this sort of degeneration was almost bound to happen." I should say so -- no reference to reinstatement of the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity.

Kaus Gets V.D.

The endorsement, that is.

Whether his writing style is the product of syphilitic dementia is a question on which I offer no opinion.

Midget Mickey Kaus proves his Democratic bona fidss by buying an ad on Ann Alchouse's blog, insulting Senator Boxer on FOX News and linking to Ron Paulnuts. Still no disclosure of Kaus's positions beyond his hatred of unions and Ezra Klein.

(At his blog. Not worth the trip.)

Big Pharma Still On The Hillbilly Heroin

According to tonight's Countdown, Rush "Anal Cyst" Limbaugh today blamed President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno for Ruby Ridge. Big Pharma must be reading Reason while shooting up again.

I'll post a link if I can find one.

Althouse Teabags President Clinton

You can't accuse Ann Alchouse of Clinton Derangement Syndrome, since she's deranged about a large number of things. But her delusions regarding President Clinton are among her most abundant and fragrant.

Still the Worst Campaign Ever

Scene deleted from Eyes Wide Shut to avoid NC-17 rating

(courtesy Huffington Post)

The Kaus Kampaign rolls on with yet another three-day hiatus.  This is the weekend of the California Democratic Party Convention. Kaus will lose yet another campaign issue after today, namely, his inability to secure a speaking slot at the Convention.

Where was Kaus this weekend? Apparently not at the anti-immigration rally and counterprotest in Los Angeles. Maybe he was on yet another wingnut radio call-in, or appearing on a local call-in show on community station whose transmitter is powered by a hamster wheel. (At least the latter gave Kaus the opportunity to state his views on the legalization of pot and the all-time best Dead bootlegs.)

Kaus claimed on a Bloggingheads segment that's he's raised around $10K in his campaign to date. When the time for disclosure comes round, it will be interesting to see whether 100 percent or only 99 percent of the campaign contributions came from wingnut bloggers and Ivy League chums who have been subsiding Kaus's career for the past 30 years. It all depends on whether his relatives shut him down completely.

Champions of lost causes would be better off flushing their contributions down Star Parker's toilet. At least Parker put some effort into her campaign website.

I offer my sincere apologies to Ben Domenech if he is offended at all by my repetition of the fact that he is a serial plagiarist.

Confidential to BBC Board of Governors

I am available for the Radio 4 Controller position, Guv'ners.

P.S. -- I am not the fat FOX fuck.

P.P.S. -- Yes, I know about the Trust.

Meegan Is the N___er of the World

Ever wonder why Meegan MeCardle isn't the President of Harvard, the anchor of a network news program and the head writer for The Daily Show?

Well, it's not the reason you've come up with. Let Meegan explain:

Conservatives are, not to overlabor the obvious, marginalized in the cultural elite, even though they are powerful in the political elite. (At least some of the time, anyway). Obviously there's been an enormous amount of ink shed about why this is, but my experience of talking to people who might have liked to go to grad school or work in Hollywood, but went and did something else instead, is that it is simply hogwash when liberals earnestly assure me that the disparity exists mostly because conservatives are different, and maybe dumber.

It's hard to believe that a person capable of writing that last sentence graduated from the University of Chicago and is paid to write for The Atlantic. Meritocracy, my ass.

Although the sentence is incomprehensible, Meegan appears to be saying that certain people who didn't go to graduate school or into show business have told her they're not different or stupid, and thus must have been barred from higher education and the media by nasty liberals who control those enterprises. And I'm here to say that I didn't marry Linda Evangelista because she found me too well-endowed and charming.

MeCardle then goes on to compare her plight (and the plight of her fellow college graduate pals in the media) to that of blacks in a fantasy version of segregated America in the fifties. (Come January 1, 1960 that unpleasantness was all past, don't you know.) Professor Berube has already dispatched that comparison to ashheap of stupidity. More fundamentally, Meegan ignores the fact that education and the media today are lousy with both wingnut institutions and wingnuts working for other, less-overtly wingnut institutions. Her argument rests on the premise that something which isn't true is "obviously" "obvious."

Besides, everyone knows that liberals control the housing market and are conspiring to keep Meegan and Pee-Sud out of their Barbie Dream House. That's a much bigger priority than monopolizing the schools and HBO.

Teabag It Forward

Carl Paladino, Republican, is running on a varation of the Instapundit dodge -- linking isn't endorsement:

"I confess to being human and imperfect, as are all of God's children," Paladino said. "I'm not a racist, and I say that even in some of the emails that they have hacked from my computer."

"To any of the ladies I've offended, I apologize," Paladino said. "I say this to any of the men out there who have never opened a graphic image on the internet, don't vote for me. For those who have, I welcome your vote."

"And if you send me your e-mail address, I'll make sure you open a graphic image. You into animal sex?"

Strangely enough, I've never been sent racist cartoons or photoshops, let alone horse porn. That shit doesn't just show up in your mailbox. And why would you forward something that you weren't endorsing? This defense wouldn't fool an eighty year old who'd never used a computer.

The Kaus Klown Kampaign Rolls On

The sum total of the pint-sized hack's campaign efforts today -- a blogpoll:

Democratic state party chair John Burton is more like:

Given that Kaus offers three choices, he must be a retroactive victim of the teachers' unions.

In playing Rasmussen, our hairless hack has inadvertently revealed the full extent of Kausmentum. His poll, which appears on his campaign website, has been open for 21 hours and only 326 people have voted. And the map indicates that only six of the last fifty poll respondents live in California -- Only one in eight-plus of Kaus's visitors could vote for him if they wanted. What percentage of that traffic comes to KausforSenate.com to laugh isn't known, but I'd put it at 100 percent, with a zero margin of error.

Update (4/12): After the two day mark, Kaus only has 1,854 respondents, and only 5 of the last 50 were from the Golden State. Kaus has been averaging about 100 California voters a day, or at least 100 per day who can muster enough Dem hatred to vote in his poll. All the links to Michael Barone in the world can't revive the Kaus Kampaign.

He Hit Me, And It Felt Like The Eucharist

Moldo:

When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women.

I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.

Does anyone believe that Moldo asked a question in words even remotely approximating those used in her column? I don't.

But as Moldo contemplated that imaginary exchange, she had an imaginary Saul on the road to Damascus moment:

How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?

I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.

Really, Moldo? It just now "hit you" now that the Catholic Church treats women as a subordinate class? Have you been in a coma for the last 60 years?

Moldo posits that the Church's sex abuses scandals wouldn't have happened if the patriarchal Church was a bit more "maternal." Of course, Moldo constantly engages in Daddy worship of the Bushes and Cheney, and bashes Obama for being a feminized puss. She enjoys the Church's art and achitecture and designer costumes and adores the perks of her membership in the Catholic Beltway elite. So she'll continue to occupy her privileged pew and occassionally pen a self-serving column scolding the Church she loves so much. And the next time she runs out of Democrats to demean, she'll become a faux feminist again.

Don't get me wrong. Moldo is free to believe any stupid thing she wants. She's free to toss pebbles from her luxury box inside St. Peter's and sob that her high church lifestyle is being ruined by creepy priests. But her column leaves the impression that she, like the Church, thinks the molestation scandal is all about her, and not about the Church's victims.

I've Got Nothing to Do and All Day to Do It

Midget Mickey Kaus is managing approximately one post every other day between his two shitty websites. Most could have been written in under 10 minutes, while Breitbart was smothering Kaus with a pillow.

Kaus' newest campaign issue is himself: He's not getting to speak at the California Democratic Party Convention. Kaus suspects that the "machine" fears his oral abilities. Sane people suspect that Kaus doesn't have any platform or policies to run on. Perhaps the Golden State's electorate is looking for a bold leader who will link to an anti-union article every odd-numbered day. A solon who will beg for campaign contributions before offering solutions. A statesman who will do nothing for weeks except issue a press release about about how mean his party is.

Kaus doesn't deserve a place at the convention because he has nothing to offer. We know you can bitch about the unions, Pee Wee, but why can't you explain what should be done with them? If you can be bothered to offer solutions on your own website, why should the Party assume you would be able to articulate them at a convention?

Senator Boxer can manage to spell out what she stands for on a whole range of issues, including labor issues, even though she faces no competition in the primary. Sure she has financial support beyond the rolls of adult video store tokens Kaus's wingnut pals are sending in, but Kaus pretends to be a professional journalist/blogger. Surely he could manage to pinch out a single page of policy positions and "common sense" ideas -- if he had any. (Maybe Ruth Shalit could plagiarize such a page for him from a Tea Party website.) Right now, Kaus' sole articulated message is that Democrats suck. Sure, it's the only thing he believes, but it's not much of platform.

I wouldn't put my name on this garbage either

At National Review Online, Anonymous, whose spouse traded in his pr0n for the real thing, wants us to get "serious about pornography."

Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined.

Eh, H-P's revenues were $117 billion in 2007, so I think it's safe to say that "all the leading technology companies" had in excess of $97 billion in revenues in 2006. By a wide spread.

Joe Klein -- I mean, Anonymous -- also cites such unimpeachable experts as "an online statistics firm" and the Withers-Poon Institute. If you want to get serious about pornography, Anon., you should stop pulling statistics out of orifices featured in pornography.

Teabaggers In Paradise

Some actual reporting from yr. obedient blogger:

Was out today and saw about fifty teabaggers (probably an overestimate) standing on the sidewalk(s) on three sides of an intersection near two large shopping malls. They held American flags and signs saying "Obama Don't Care," "Repeal Congress," "[something about] Amnesty." One sign advertising a "Tax Day Tea Party Patriots Rally." Mostly older, all white, couple of aged hippie types. Didn't seem all that excited. I guess they were conserving their energy for the 15th. Didn't see any racist signs or weapons. No counterprotestors. Drivers mostly ignored them, from what I could see.

Journalism is hard.

Charlie Rose and the iPad

Worst Roald Dahl book ever.

Just shoot me Charlie Rose now.

(If last night's show wasn't a rerun and was actually the second show on this device w/in the past two months, shoot me too.)

If He Nominates Himself, He Will Not Run

Slaphead Mickey Kaus has taken some campaign advice from Fred Thompson. And rejected it on the ground that it involved too much effort. Cuts into his naptime, perhaps.

At his campaign website, Kaus is posting approximately once every three days.

Apart from that, he's apparently been proofreading his bio on his website:

In the mid-80's, Mickey bagan to champion welfare reform--i.e., replacing a cash dole with work.

I think he means "teabagan."

He appeared on wingnut radio as "Mickey Kuas."

He gave a speech at an event sponsored by the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, although neither he or the the Club apparently made any effort to publicize the event. No YouTube, Kraus?

He even got the URL for his campaign website from Roger Ailes (see here) -- never a good sign.

Volunteer now, so the candidate doesn't have to.

Mickey Kaus has some admirable qualities. I bet he really is a Democrat.