FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

The Ahmed Muhamed case got me thinking of Stiff Little Fingers, which got me thinking of The Undertones, which got me playing The Undertones all afternoon. Loov-ley. 
• Did you know Breitbart.com has a Doritos tag? And no, it's not there to get Jonah Goldberg to come over more often -- it's to denounce the homosexual menace of Rainbow Doritos packaging, which was created to celebrate Frito-Lay's partnership with the It Gets Better project. (Frito-Gay, amirite #c'monbrodon'tleavemehanging.)  It Gets Better was created to keep young gays from killing themselves, which is of course unconscionable in Breitbart world, so John Nolte demands Frito-Lay explain how they can support a project founded by Dan Savage, who has not shown proper deference to bigots, and another operative warns readers of other gay snack foods  so they don't accidentally turn Game Day into Gay Day and convert their beer buddies. (Breitbart.com also reports that the gay Doritos are "a variation of the standard Cool Ranch-flavored chips," which makes sense because they taste like cum.) But American Thinker does B-bart one better by giving an asylum window to one Ed Straker (h/t Will Menaker), who may be a Poe but so what this is awesome:

Furthermore, I think we should push other companies to launch pro-heterosexual campaigns. Perhaps we could persuade a hot dog maker and a hot dog bun company to do a joint effort promoting man-woman relationships. 

Until we try sexualizing food like the left does, we'll never know. And if we think like the left, we desperately need to find out.

Maybe he should marry a chalupa in protest of Obergefell -- or infiltrate gayism, then take it down from the inside. Politics is down-low of culture, comrade!

• It may seem weird to you that, while you look at the Texas clockmaking student's case (made a digital clock, brought it to school, got arrested) and see sad bigotry thwarting the admirable intellectual ambitions of a second-generation immigrant kid, some other people see unearned Muslim-American privilege (or, in the case of some prominent nuts, a conspiracy to let jihadis take over America). But remember, these guys are convinced that America has already been taken over by the Kenyan pretender Barack Obama, and that his seven-year reign of terror has so changed America that it no longer behaves in ways they're accustomed to seeing: Instead of siding with the authorities, people are siding with the powerless, dark-skinned kid. And not just people: MIT, Facebook, and other companies have all told him that, in effect, it gets better. It's interesting that conservatives have been crying because the kid who got suspended for a Pop-Tart gun and others similarly hassled  didn't get all this attention. But those cases actually did get attention -- not only from conservatives, but from the so-called liberal MSM, because everyone loves a bureaucrats-gone-wild story. And from all I can see, conservatives merely turned these teachable moments into more sour grievance to steep in; while supporters of Ahmed Mohamed have reached out to him, encouraged his scholarship, and made something positive out of the experience. Maybe that's why they're so pissed.

BRINGING A CORKED FORK TO A CULTURE WAR.

Remember when some nudniks put up a few posters of Obama as The Joker Except Socialist and declared a groundswell? No? Well, that's understandable.

How about anti-Obama billboards, which moved such dignitaries as Jonah Goldberg to exegesis ("In an academic setting, one could defend at least some of the ideas captured in the billboard; Lord knows I've tried")? No? That's understandable, too.

How about those Miss Me Yet billboards? Come on, they were all over the news and still have a Wikipedia page! They're the reason Obama didn't get re-elected in an alternative universe.

How about those other times when a couple of guys put up some posters about Obama or some other Democrat and it was big news among the belligerati?

Well, guess what:

‘STENCH OF CORRUPTION': ANTI-HILLARY STREET ART HITS L.A. AHEAD OF FUNDRAISERS

Several pieces of artwork critical of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have appeared around Los Angeles and Beverly Hills ahead of a trio of pricey fundraisers the candidate will attend this week...

Did you hear that? Breitbart.com says several pieces!

Of course, anti-Hillary street art is nothing new; just last month, an unknown artist posted signs all around Brooklyn that lampooned Clinton supporters for claiming certain words used to describe her were sexist.

Everybody to mom's basement for the afterparty! And wait'll the sheeple get a load of the #Benghazi blimp!

IT CAN'T MISS.

From: Central Committee
To: The Brethren
Re: Bruce Jenner - Next Steps

Now that Bruce Jenner has come out as both a woman and a Republican, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Some of us are apparently sticking with the traditional conservative approach toward LGBT issues. In fact we’ve heard from a few of you who disapprove of our use of the term “LGBT,” suggesting we revert instead to the schoolyard phrases favored by our movement's founders. But the Central Committee thinks these comrades are missing a big opportunity.

We direct your attention to John Nolte of Breitbart.com. John is no friend to gay and trans people, as shown by his columns such as “GAY MARRIAGE IS THE MEDIA'S VEHICLE, DESTINATION IS TO DESTROY THE CHURCH” and “BULLYING GLAAD GOES ON ANOTHER CENSORSHIP RAMPAGE,” and his Homer Simpsonesque jokes about homosexuals. Yet when Jenner came out, John grasped the nettle. First he announced that liberals are the real bigots. This is SOP, though we give John credit for claiming that “the last person to use the word ‘fag’ in my presence was a liberal celebrity, and the look on my face made vocalizing my disapproval unnecessary.” Imagine, John hanging out with liberal celebrities, let alone intimidating them with his facial expressions! We applaud his nerve.

But John pushed things further in a way I’m not sure many of us fully appreciate. Please note this line from his column:

Unlike the elite media, conservatives and Christians are the true liberals.

And this one:

Like sex outside of marriage or lying, homosexuality is a sin, being gay is not. 

Now, to an outsider this will sound like gibberish, or perhaps even typos; but if you’ve been attending our workshops, you will recall our maxim, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few logical chains.”

Let’s be honest: Gay rights has been a disaster for our movement; we’re losing share on it every day, and for various reasons (cough deep south cough) we can’t back down on policy. But John’s assertions may flip the board for us if we follow up properly.

First, if we can get voters to accept, even on a subconscious level, John's proposition that conservatives are the real liberals and that being gay is not the same thing as being homosexual, we may shake up the current paradigm to the point that voters don’t know what to believe.

And that’s when we’ll activate our follow-plan — one we caution must remain top secret until after the roll-out, and for which we are currently seeking volunteers.

The theme we’ll be promoting is this: Conservatives are not only the real liberals — they’re also the real gays.

You will notice the people identified as “gay” at present are mostly college-educated and high-earning, and favor hair and clothing styles most citizens cannot afford either financially or socially. They also have a strong interest in the arts. It should be clear that these so-called gay people are actually just liberal elitists, pretending to be gay because they think it makes them look like victims, which is the highest aspiration of the liberal (see also their tiresome identification with black people and women).

Many of these “gays” even go to the extreme measure of having sex with members of their own gender, often on a regular basis, which only shows how desperately they pursue the mantle of victimhood.

Conversely, real gays (that is, conservatives) don’t need to make a show of their status by having gay sex. They are good Christian people, married or attracted to members of the opposite gender, who oppose gay marriage and the liberal fascist attempt to force other Christians to make cakes for them — and just happen to be gay.

Volunteers for this project will be expected to come out as gay. You may let it be known, in a casual way, that you’re not that kind of gay, but you must be disciplined enough not to make a big deal of it. If your status is challenged, simply say: Who are you to define me, to tell me how to define myself? Show sympathy for their blinkered vision, and pray (good and loud, and where people can hear you) for your oppressors to learn toleration.

Keep your temper as liberals sputter and make themselves unattractive over this; soon enough, when the idea has taken hold, you will be able to post photographs of your opposite-sex partners with captions like “I love my gay husband” so no one gets the wrong idea. After a while, when gay marriage bans and RFRAs have been instituted with the support of us gays — and our straight allies — people will come to wonder what all the fuss was about back in the dark, dead days of discrimination. Then we will truly be able to say that we have overcome.

AXELROD, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD.

This is masterful trolling:

Barack Obama was "bullshitting" his opposition to gay marriage and support for civil unions during his 2008 presidential campaign, according to a new book authored by former senior White House adviser David Axelrod. 

Time magazine reported Tuesday that the longtime Obama confidant said in his new book, "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics," that he counseled then-senator Obama to soften his position on gay marriage for political reasons. 

"Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’” Axelrod wrote, as quoted by Time...

"I’m just not very good at bullshitting," Obama told Axelrod after one of those events, as quoted by Time.

Normal people will go, "Yeah, so?" Even Lincoln was doing the "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it" thing as late as 1862. Getting elected President in a nation always verging on a majority makeup of Snopeses requires some finesse.

But among the abnormal, by which I mean conservatives, it's a different story. So roll out the argh-blargh and mutter-sputter! Joel B. Pollak at Breitbart.com:

OBAMA’S GAY MARRIAGE LIE WAS A LIE ABOUT HIS FAITH, TOO... 

"Obama Misled Nation” is almost a perennial headline–it applies to nearly everything the president does. Yet it is important to be clear about the nature of this particular lie. 

Obama did not just pretend to oppose a controversial position. He pretended to hold that view as a matter of his Christian faith. 

Thus he made Christians look bigoted -- by acting the bigot and thus getting them to vote for him! HE IS THE FATHER OF LIES! Next, Noah Rothman at Hot Air:

Obama... spent the next 16 years hiding his politically inconvenient opinions from the public until they became acceptable to a majority. There’s nothing especially shocking about that, but the fact that this fails to astonish is itself a lamentable condition. 

[Blink. Blink.]

...This level of cynicism, the expectation that obviously our political leaders would mislead us about what they truly believe, cannot be healthy in the long run. 

Yeah, the first two hundred years of knowing that politicians lie were alright, but now it's getting a little old. I know, let's elect that Duck Dynasty guy.

Most of the brethren apply their traditional Crisis of Credibility bullshit -- "It’s liars all the way down in this administration," hehindeeds Ole Perfesser Instapundit; "Obama lied about opposing gay marriage, contrived the 'God’s in the mix' stuff, isn’t an Honest Politician," huffs Guv'nah Charles C.W. Cooke; "Obama Adviser Says Obama Repeatedly Lied About Gay Marriage for Political Gain... Related: They Lied: Obamacare’s 12 false premises and broken promises," report those lovable libertarians at Reason (read the comments for extra libertarianism, by which I mean loss of faith in humanity).

But we see their point -- the political repercussions could be severe: Maybe word will spread to Alabama, and the Democrats will have a hard time winning elections there!

UPDATE. Oh man:

That monster! Or maybe the Daily Caller doofus who wrote this thinks Sasha and Malia are the monsters, for helping Nobama pretend he used to be regular Christian fag-hater in order to hornswoggle the American People into gayness. Just look at them in the picture, acting like a regular family!

Next we have neo-neocon. The entire tortured mess is hilarious -- sort of Murder in the Cathedral meets Blood Feud -- but there are two stop-the-show moments:

Over the years Americans have become cynical about lying presidents. Some date that cynicism—or at least a great leap forward for that cynicism—to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal and the fact that Clinton survived it. The left, of course, says “Bush lied” about WMDs, but the right points out that Bush relied on intelligence reports around the world that were mistaken, and that is different than a lie, and that a lie would have been wrong.

So what if he turned a formerly functional Middle East republic into a slaughterhouse and killed thousands of innocent people? He may be a war criminal, but he's not a liar!

[NOTE: I haven't seen any reactions from the black religious community yet, but it's possible they might be quite displeased at this news. It's one thing to change your mind on something; it's another to lie to religious people about your religious beliefs.]

"Why is that white lady staring at us from the bushes? It's like she wants ask us something but she's scared."

THE YEAR IN BULLSHIT, PART TWO.

(Here's the second installment of a year-end bottom-ten of the lowlights of 2014, culled from my archives and elsewhere. The first installment is here. Read 'em and weep!)

7. Impeachment for the hell of it. Conservatives have been threatening to impeach Obama since 2009. You’d think the schtick would have gotten tiresome even to them by now, particularly when their favorite impeachable offenses, like #Benghazi, keep going belly-up in their own Congressional committees.

But it’s a key part of the job of professional propagandists to tart up old schtick. In 2014 National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy, previously best known as a torture enthusiast, published Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment. Impeachment, he explained elsewhere, “is not a legal matter; it is a political remedy.” The Founders left “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” vague for that reason; presumably there were no impeachments before Andrew Johnson’s because all our earlier Presidents, including national-bank-buster Andrew Jackson, were scrupulous about the Constitutional order, unlike Obama -- whom we can’t get at, sighed McCarthy, because nowadays “we put our faith in law, not judgment, and it becomes a ready-made excuse for inaction while the lawyers temporize.” Another black crook works the system!

This may be why top conservatives such as Sarah Palin, Joe Miller and Rep. Steve King felt free to rev up the impeachotron without coherent legal justifications when Obama announced executive action on immigration last summer. When Democrats began to notice and comment on this impeachment chatter, however, conservatives changed direction, suggesting Obama was actually trying to get impeached, despite their best efforts to stop him.  This "might be the first White House in history trying to start the narrative of impeaching their own president," cried GOP House Whip Steve Scalise. "Does Obama WANT to Get Impeached?" asked National Review's Rich Lowry. "Such a calculation — amnesty-by-fiat to deliberately court impeachment — is breathtakingly cynical," look-who's-talkinged Charles Krauthammer.

Fox News even recruited McCarthy to tell viewers that his book — which, I remind you, is called Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment — isn’t an argument for impeaching Obama.

Assuming this isn't a misguided effort to get Obama's supporters on board, this seems to be conservatives' way of coping with memories of the disastrous Clinton impeachment while leaving their options open. If they can pretend that, should impeachment come, it really won't have anything to do with what they actually want, maybe they won't get the same treatment Newt Gingrich got when, unable to resist their new majorities in both houses of Congress, they finally succumb to temptation.

6. The Gruber maneuver. We’re at a strange place in the history of Obamacare: conservatives hate it and insist no one wants it, but insurance-starved citizens are rushing to obtain it. Republicans are understandably scared to repeal it, and hope like hell the Supreme Court will do it for them with the mother of all nuisance lawsuits, or one of the others they have lined up.

If SCOTUS doesn’t oblige, the new GOP two-house majority may not have the balls to return America to its old Pay or Die healthcare system without serious backup. So, in the absence of a believable Republican alternative, conservatives seek ways to make the program look so bad voters won’t mind when it croaks. Most of their 2014 arguments in that line — for example, that Obamacare is bad because it lets people quit jobs they don’t want, or that the long lines of people waiting for Obamacare remind them of “Venezuelans waiting in bread lines” — didn’t get very far.

But then some guy circulated some tapes of one Jonathan Gruber referring to the role of voter ignorance in getting Obamacare passed, and the brethren hit the battlements, denouncing Gruber and convincing House Republicans to get up a committee to yell at him.

What government position does Gruber occupy? None; he’s a freelance policy expert who helped the Democrats build the ACA (and helped Mitt Romney build You-Know-Who-care in Massachusetts). But Gruber had an unofficial title — Architect of Obamacare! When the shit hit the fan, this led to the following hilarious Google News results:

If that weren’t enough, investigative outfits like Breitbart.com dug up more connections between Gruber and the Feds — for example, “OBAMA CLAIMED TO HAVE 'STOLEN IDEAS' FROM GRUBER IN 2006.” He was practically a member of the family!

Why all this effort just to elevate an enemy consultant? I mean, even Alger Hiss had a real government job. Well, like Hiss, Gruber is a pointy-head with much book-larnin’. Plus, he had suggested, in his muttering way, that Americans were stupid, and one of the pillars of conservatism (along with tax breaks for the wealthy and persecution of minorities) is resentment against them high-toned liberals who look down on you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and your simple ways. Connect that with Obamacare and you’ve got something.

Thus, we got headlines like “Obamacare Architect: Yeah, We Lied to The ‘Stupid’ American People to Get It Passed” and “Gruber Got 24 Times the Average ‘Stupid’ American’s Salary for Obamacare Work” (he’s hoity-toity and rich — prob’ly cosmopolitan and rootless, too!). “So the left has disdain for average Americans?” said Flopping Aces. “Tell me something we don’t already know.” Ah, but soon the whole world would know, thanks to the rhetorical genius of Trey Gowdy!

Gruber testified, and for the brethren it was Watergate all over again, only this time a real bad guy was under siege. “At critical points, of course, Gruber couldn’t recall,” reported Scott Johnson of Power Line. “He couldn’t recall if he had heard his friends in the Obama administration discuss the need to conceal the Obamacare tax on health insurance… When Gruber says, ‘I honestly do not recall,’ the ‘honestly’ puts screaming exclamation points on his lying.” “For those keeping track, that is not a ‘no,’” scrupled Noah Rothman of Hot Air. Sounds like Gruber was in real danger of losing his imaginary job!

When insulted Americans did not descend on Washington with pitchforks, conservatives bitched that the press was engaged in a Gruber cover-up (“Besieged by stupid Americans, Media circles the wagons around Gruber,” headlined Hot Air), notwithstanding the hundreds of thousands of videos of Gruber available on the internet. Breitbart.com actually attacked the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column on Gruber’s testimony, not because they defended Gruber, but because they “really should have bumped their rating from 2 to 3 Pinocchios,” and offered 1,538 words in defense of this proposition.

It seems like another wash-out — but Judge Andrew Napolitano, frequent Fox News guest nut, holds out hope that the Gruber maneuver will convince someone, at least: “Now we all know this was done intentionally, and guess what?” he told NewsMax. “The Supreme Court now knows this as well… If this phrase, this admission by this professor, gets before the Supreme Court, Obamacare loses." Now who thinks other people are stupid?

5. All the free speech money can buy. In 2014, conservatives were very concerned about free speech. Not everyone’s free speech, of course — for example, if you recently protested police brutality, Rudolph Giuliani and others said at year’s end, your speech caused two NYPD officers to be killed, so shut up. No, they were mostly concerned, as they usually are, with the rights of the wealthy and the powerful.

There was a big uproar in the spring, for instance, when seniors at some colleges decided they didn’t want conservatives to speak at their commencement ceremonies. Some people might imagine that was their call to make — after all, no one has a Constitutional right to a well-paid speaking engagement before an unwilling audience. But conservatives felt differently: “Critics rail against liberal bias for commencement speakers,” reported the Washington Times, quoting an activist who complained of “a severe bias against conservative viewpoints.” The expected follow-up, in which the Times revealed that DJs at graduation parties were biased against country music, was never published.

“Liberal bias at America’s universities is on display more than ever during this year’s commencement season,” reported Claire E. Healey at TownHall. For instance: “Robert Birgeneau, a chancellor at the University of California when police broke up an Occupy protest, refused to attend Haverford College’s ceremony to receive an honorary degree when students and faculty made objections.” The nerve of the guy!

Their biggest upset was saved for former Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was deprived of $35,000 from Rutgers University when students squawked. “Mob rule,” cried Sonny Bunch of the Washington Free Beacon; “Censorship 1, Condoleezza Rice 0,” tallied Dick Polman. National Review’s Jonah Goldberg actually compared Rice not getting the gig to the Palmer Raids of the early 20th Century, and huffed that on campus “social or administrative policing of thought crimes is all the rage.” (“Social” policing means people just don’t want to listen to you, I guess, which is Liberal Fascism farrrt.)

When both the free-speaker and the organization that didn’t want to hear it were rich and powerful, conservatives split the difference and took the side of… well, see if you can figure it out:

In April Brendan Eich was dismissed as Mozilla CEO after the company’s Board of Directors learned he’d supported an anti-gay-marriage drive. It’s not as if the brethren were saying that corporations couldn’t fire people for their speech — perish the thought! In fact, one Eich defender, PJ Media’s Bryan Preston, originally demanded that Mozilla employees who said they wanted Eich gone be “fired summarily,” before exploding with rage when the board instead dumped Eich.

No, it was the gay angle that turned Eich’s dismissal, in the eyes of some, from acceptable corporate behavior to an attack on straightness and on Christian morality itself. Imagine, firing an CEO for insulting homosexuals, which once was de rigueur for a successful exec! Why, soon they’ll be purging Klansmen from the C-suites… whoops, that already happened, or so it seemed, with the Donald Sterling fiasco in the NBA. Yes, a few dozen billionaires desired to disassociate from a team owner who had made racist statements, and once again conservatives rushed to defend the defenestratee.

You’ve probably figured it out: Conservatives reliably defend the powerful against the powerless but, when both parties are powerful, they side against the one that associates with the powerless. This, by the way, also explains the modern Democratic and Republican Parties.

(More later.)

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   The imbecility of the Sony/North Korea thing could not achieve full ripeness without a contribution from Jonah Goldberg. He talks about the 1940s, when Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, the creators of Captain America, were getting menaced by New York Nazis, and Fiorello La Guardia phoned them to pledge his support. Alas, New York's current mayor has disappointed Goldberg:

New York mayor Bill de Blasio didn’t call the management of Landmark Theaters in New York, where Sony Pictures was slated to premiere The Interview, and say, “The city of New York will see that no harm will come to you.” He didn’t say much of anything at all.

1.) I wonder if Goldberg called de Blasio's office to confirm this. 2.) I can imagine Landmark receiving such a call and saying, "Thanks a lot, Mayor! Wait'll I tell the management of Sony Pictures that you'll ring the theater with cops if they release the picture -- that ought to change their minds about cyberterrorist threats!" 3.) Doesn't Goldberg know that La Guardia smashed pinball machines, and was therefore a Liberal Fascist? Farrrrrt.

•   Oh Jesus, Goldberg just sent out his G-file email on the same subject. It's not on the internet yet, so allow me to treat you to a key passage:

The collective U.S. response to North Korea’s assault on Sony has been disgusting and dispiriting. I don’t think we should bomb North Korea over this... but the correct response is to flip Kim Jong-un the bird. What form that bird-flipping would take is open to debate.

Open to debate?

I’d like it if the TV networks all ran The Interview at the same time.

 Yeah, let's have a debate about what the nets run. Didn't this guy write a book called Liberal Fascism?

I’d like Barack Obama to call the leaders of the House and Senate to a private screening of The Interview at the White House, just like Woodrow Wilson did with Birth of a Nation.

Wilson, the biggest Liberal Fascist of them all! Goldberg is becoming a National Greatness Conservative, I guess. Wait, it gets betterworse:

Obama’s conduct in this episode has been better than others, but not very good. This is the kind of moment great politicians seize.

"What? Hollywood's making a sequel to Arthur? I'm still president, Mommy, let's nationalize Warner Brothers."

It’s the kind of moment they pray will fall into their lap. First of all, short of C.H.U.D.s, there’s really no better enemy than the North Korean regime. The Left can’t really shout racism about hating on the Norks...

I never thought I'd say this, but I thought this sort of who-would-win-in-a-fight-between-Axl-Rose-and-a-blade-of-grass gibberish was beneath Goldberg. But then, ours is an age of new lows.

•   Michael Coren at Breitbart.com:

AS OBAMA WAVERS, CANADA’S HARPER IS THE TRUE LEADER OF NORTH AMERICAN VALUES

"North American values?" This is weaker than that "Anglosphere" shit.

The Conservative leader has been in office for more than eight years now and his response to the terror attacks was entirely typical. Firm, resolute, controlled, slightly boring but utterly uncompromising.

Boring and uncompromising -- aw, but ain't that North America?

While opposition leaders and liberal newspapers were reluctant to even describe the crimes as terrorism, Harper used the word repeatedly and spoke of the need to combat this darkness internationally as well as domestically. Indeed, along with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot, Harper has led the world in candour concerning Islamist aspirations and the need to affirm western values.

Apparently Harper says "terror" and "Islamicism" a lot, which is why a Mountie can just roll up in ISIS territory drinking a Brador and no one can touch him. Also he's "the first leader to officially boycott Hamas," and thinks "Canada should not have to pay fines and be punished for their environmental policies," and is shutting down Canada's socialized medicine program -- kidding about that last one, guys, but though Coren doesn't approve of everything Harper does, "it’s liberals and socialist who most despise him," and after all isn't trolling what North American Values are all about?