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Sweet William F. Buckley on a popsicle stick! What’s next, home-made holiday decorations with John Derbyshire? Are Ramesh Ponnuru, Rich Lowry and David Freddoso going to cooperate on a team knitting project? Can we anticipate a special Bloggingheads video featuring Jonah and Peter braiding each other’s hair? Will Kathryn Jean advise girls just when to let that special boy reach second base? It’s ESPN’s Page 2 all over again:

So, Sarkozy wins election as prime minister of France, pretends to live with his second wife who had previously left him, and apparently did so again, secretly divorces said wife and announces it as a fait accompli, then starts ostentatiously dating Carla Bruni, a former model who is now a singer. He makes sure to be photographed in bathing suits on a beach in Egypt, thereby offending the Muslim natives, but very effectively showing off his girlfriend’s fabulous figure. Now he announces that the relationship is “serious,” and floats rumors of marriage.

The question is, does marrying the trophy girlfriend five minutes after the ex-wife dumped him make him look better or worse.

I think I speak for a sizeable percentage of current and former National Review subscribers when I say: WHO GIVES A FLYING, FORNICATING RODENT’S POSTERIOR about who, or what, a French politician is dating in his spare time!

I seem to recall a historical epoch when conservatives didn’t give a damn about cheese-eating surrender monkeys, period. Yes, this is just National Review’s Corner, not the magazine proper, but seriously, it’s hardly a wonder that today’s conservatism is mutating into big government liberalism lite with ideological champions like this standing atop history, pondering where European politicos are placing their penises. Silver lining: if you didn’t understand where that scathing contempt for the current state of conservative punditry which may have peeked through just a little bit during the Liberal Fascism interview came from, well, perhaps this insightful and important post on the current state of French politics may explain a part of it.

On a tangential and largely unrelated note – I’m hardly a Frum fan, but say what you will about the man, at least he’s a political pundit who still harbors an interest in actual American politics – I found this comment about his new book to be somewhat amusing:

I’m delighted by the media attention. But I have to confess, it’s becoming clear to me: Republicans and conservatives are very resistant to the message of Comeback.

I haven’t read it, so I don’t have an opinion on it. But if it’s anything like An End to Evil, one can only conclude Republicans and conservatives probably SHOULD be very resistant to its message, which based on the publisher’s Amazon description apparently includes the following:

A conservative commitment to make private-sector health insurance available to every American – NO

Lower taxes on savings and investment financed by higher taxes on energy and pollution – NO

Federal policies to encourage larger families – DEPENDS

Major reductions in unskilled immigration – YES, DEFINITELY

A genuinely compassionate conservatism, including a conservative campaign for prison reform and government action against the public health disaster of obesity – FINE… HOLY CATS, YOU DIDN’T SAY THIS WAS A COMEDY, MR. FRUM!

A new conservative environmentalism that promotes nuclear power in place of coal and oil – WHATVER

Higher ethical standards inside the conservative movement and the Republican party – YES, LONG OVERDUE

A renewed commitment to expand and rebuild the armed forces of the United States—to crush terrorism—and get ready for the coming challenge from China – MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE GOALS

Again, I can’t speak for the book proper, but as for this little list of ideological cross-dressing, it’s an incoherent and self-contradictory platform that has no chance of either being adopted by the Republican party or being meaningful in any significant fashion. Frum’s may have a point about the limited appeal of genuine conservatism today, but what’s the point of killing conservatism to save the party brand?

So notes Casey, in the note accompanying this post at Reason:

“It was the debate,” said a female voice. This male group of pundits looked over and saw Rachel Sklar of the Huffington Post. “The likeability question.” She was talking about the moment in the debate when Charlie Gibson suggested Clinton had a likeability problem, Clinton parried (“That hurts my feelings!”) and Obama leaned into the mic and said “You’re likeable enough.” The camera caught him the second he closed his mouth, looking down, unsmiling, writing notes.

The guys in the room sort of just stood there. I can’t read their minds, but mine was swirling. You know, I’d noticed women at one of the debate-watching parties biting their lips when Obama said that. If Obama had said something like “Well, I like you” or if he’d just kept his mouth shut, Hillary’s Monday tears wouldn’t have had the same impact. “That set up the emotional moment,” Sklar said.

So I’m pretty convinced now: That one-liner swung the primary.

For the record, I don’t buy it. I think it had far more to do with all those reports of ballots running short. While women are far too easily manipulated to be permitted to vote in any rational society* that values human liberty, I think it’s far more likely that the emergency ballots arrived with Team Clinton-approved votes cast on them than buy into the notion that a meaningless exchange not seen by most of those voting somehow managed to cause a seismic shift in political allegiances.

* Do relax, my dear suffrage enthusiasts, as American society is not the least bit rational nor does it value human liberty. Rest assured that your sacred vote will remain unmolested until everything collapses around your ears and voting is the very least of your concerns.

I know some of you are a little down about the back of the hand that the “Live Free or Die” voters showed to Ron Paul, and by extension, the basic concepts of freedom, human liberty and small government. (Well, not Bane, of course, considering his three-fer yesterday with Paul and Obama both losing and the upset win for Ms Sexy Cankles. Throw in a fat-bottomed peasant woman, a few dead Iraqis, and a new C&C expansion pack and that big, sensitive heart would have given out from a surfeit of sheer happiness.)

The reality is that it was always going to be this way. Today’s snowball’s chance is no different than yesterday’s. Rationally, you know it. Spiritually, you know it. Emotionally, you know it. This doesn’t make your defiance pointless or worthless, to the contrary, it makes it all the more important. When you resist the elite’s siren call to serfdom, you are not battling for your country, that fate was settled long ago. You are battling for your soul and for your mind. That’s not only a battle well worth fighting, it’s one that no one else can fight for you.

Die Gedanken, sie sind frei, a man once said. Only you can enslave your thoughts, and despair and bitterness are forms of slavery in themselves. So, keep your wits about you, pop some popcorn, and enjoy the show. You have front row seats at what may be one of the more interesting points in world history and it would truly be a shame to not make the most of them.

Of course, I doubt that’s why Captain Ed seems so pleased with the death knell for small government conservatism in America:

It’s been more than 14 hours since I posted about the TNR story, and so far … nothing. I really expected to find scores of outraged commentary in the Disqus moderation queue when I woke up this morning, but so far, it’s been as quiet as a church mouse.

That’s likely because those who value freedom are in the process ceasing to concern themselves with those who don’t. While we’ll never stop standing up for that which we believe, there’s no point in wasting time casting pearls before the stubbornly swinish. I certainly saw no reason to educate the willfully ignorant about a story that was refuted long ago by both Texas Monthly and the New York Times. I was amused, however, to see one of his commenters add: “Goodbye Paulistinians — please, don’t ever come back!”

Don’t worry, we won’t. Remember this, those of you who belong to the unwanted ten percent, when those who spurn you today are begging you to return to the Republican fold in November because the Lizard Queen is about to win the Mostest Importantest Election Ever. Remember: you’re crazy, they don’t want you or your ideals, and serfdom is no more desirable when preceded by an (R).

To quote the great Emmitt Smith: “Don’t quit, don’t even quit!”

Heh heh heh:

After Iowa, Clinton and her aides seemed resigned to a second straight setback. But polling place interviews showed that female voters—who deserted her last week—returned to her column in New Hampshire column. She also was winning handily among registered Democrats. Obama led her by an even larger margin among independents, but he suffered from a falloff in turnout among young voters compared with Iowa.

Word of Clinton’s triumph set off a raucous celebration among her supporters at a hotel in Manchester—gathered there to celebrate a New Hampshire primary every bit as surprising as the one 16 years ago that allowed a young Bill Clinton to proclaim himself “the comeback kid.”

I did warn you that setback and glorious comeback made for a more inspiring story than a long and boring coronational march, didn’t I? However, I was admittedly expecting it her “comeback” to take place after New Hampshire, not in it. I guess the machine got a little worried at how far the stalking horse was getting ahead of the winner. There will be a lot of talk about how her crying made the difference, but don’t buy it. That’s just the plot hook and it’s a lame one at that.

Another factor that should have been kept in mind is that the number of Democrats willing to vote against a half-black candidate like the Magic Negro was always going to be higher than the polls report when the vote takes place in private – like New Hampshire – than in public – like Iowa.

It’s also disappointing, though not the least bit surprising, to see that ten percent appears to be the ceiling on Republicans genuinely interested in smaller government. So be it.

The OC adds his similarly cynical take on the matter:

As I expected, they’re using the 1992 script again. “Counted out after her stunning loss in Iowa and seemingly fading in the polls, Clinton dug deep into her reserves of courage and inner strength and fought her way back to the top in New Hampshire.”

The peons love come-from-behind victory stories, doncha know.

I still hold by my earlier prognostication: that she’s got some great dirt on Obama that she’s just waiting for the perfect moment to deliver. Expect the coup de grace to fall on Sunday, February 3 (two days before Super Duper Tuesday), and expect it to be delivered by the always reliable Clinton henchmen at “60 Minutes.”

You can tell by the way he moves his walk
He’s a media ho, no time to talk.
Hooked on that Washington porn
He’s been selling himself since he was born.
Ron Paul’s not on, he’s not O.K.
So we must look the other way.
You should try to understand
The Fox News effect on Man.

Whether Sean’s rotten
Or whether he’s forgotten
He’s stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Feel the party breakin’
And the prostitutes shakin’
And he’s stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha,
Stayin’ alive.
Stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha,
Stayin’ alive.

I loved Jamie’s music video as well as the harrowing itself. Deprived of his ability to control the mike, Hannity showed himself to be a coward; he didn’t even have the steel to turn and face his critics. This is true of most of the people in the media, as with only a few exceptions, they’re whiners and criers. They love to dish it out, but they simply cannot take it.

It’s funny, I used to like Fox News and Sean Hannity back when the channel launched. I thought they actually wanted to offer a genuine alternative to the left-liberal media. Now, I simply despise them as shameless defenders of the very evil they pretend to oppose.

I’m not the only one who thinks so either:

The media is generating hate and their own version of blowback. In America, blowback lead to 9/11. What will your blowback lead to? We’re really starting to hate you folks. I was a journalist, I read the NRO, I vote GOP. I hate you. I can’t imagine how others feel right now about reading that misleading crap.

The coming Republican debacle is NOT the result of furious and betrayed conservatives leaving their party, it’s a result of their party’s elite and the “conservative” media dragging their party away from them. George Bush is no conservative. Giuliani is no conservative. Romney is no conservative. McCain is no conservative. And neither is any media whore who champions them.

But McCain and Obama are dominating the early NH results:

In a northern New Hampshire hamlet tradition, voters of Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location cast the first 46 ballots of the primary season—half for Democrats and half for Republicans—at midnight, hours before polls began opening elsewhere at 6 a.m. EST. Polls close at 8 p.m.

Combined results from the two spots showed Obama with 16 votes, Clinton 3, Edwards 3 and Bill Richardson, 1. On the Republican side, McCain received 10 votes, Huckabee 5, Ron Paul 4, Romney 3 and Giuliani 1.

Okay, this may not turn out to be terribly accurate, but then, the various polls are so widely divergent that they can’t possibly be either. And at least these votes will count.

If we’re lucky, if we’re really lucky, an Obama landslide plus a Michigan debacle could knock the Lizard Queen out of the race. But I wouldn’t count on it.

K-Lo complains about how the media isn’t fair to NRO’s favored candidate:

This morning, the Today Show host interviewed Mitt Romney with hostility and Hillary Clinton with protective understanding. He asked Mitt if he’s a liar buying the election and he asked Hillary about her emotions, both aired near the top of the show, Romney was live, Hillary was taped. I hate being the predictable conservative complaining about the mainstream media, but I know what I saw

Yes, this is the EXACT SAME PERSON who was complaining about the way Ron Paul supporters were jeering Sean Hannity. So, if I understand the NRO editor correctly, it is bad for the mainstream media to work against a nominal conservative, but it is entirely correct for the nominally conservative media to work against a genuine conservative.

The current Republican party and its cheerleaders in the media so richly deserve the donkey-shoed buttock-branding for which they appear to be heading fall. It’s so obvious how much they want to be what they pretend to abhor.

Captain Underoos is all but finished. Every day, he makes it more clear that he’s a first-rate phony and fifth-rate demagogue:

“There’s a message that I’ve been talking about from the beginning and that I’ve been hearing from you,” Romney said, “and that is that Washington is broken, that we have to see change in Washington.” On Romney’s left was a large blue poster with the message WASHINGTON IS BROKEN.

On Romney’s left, an equal-size sign said TO DO, and beneath it were the numbers 1-15. Number one was MAKE AMERICA SAFER, with in true Romney fashion three sub-headings, STRONGER MILITARY, BETTER INTELLIGENCE, AND STRENGTHEN ALLIANCES. Number two was END ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. Number three was REDUCE TAXES; four was CUT THE PORK; five was BETTER CARE FOR VETERANS; six was HEALTH INSURANCE FOR EVERYONE; seven was END DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL; eight was MAKE GOVERNMENT SIMPLER, SMALLER; nine was GROW THE ECONOMY & KEEP OUR JOBS; ten was FIX SOCIAL SECURITY; eleven was PUT PEOPLE AHEAD OF SELFISH INTEREST; twelve was STRENGTHEN OUR FAMILIES; and thirteen was BALANCE THE BUDGET. That was the end of it; numbers fourteen and fifteen were blank.

Romney explained that he had been keeping track of the topics people brought up at his “Ask Mitt Anything” meetings, and they formed the basis of the TO DO list. The list was literally unfinished, Romney said, which was why the last two positions were empty. He also confessed that number thirteen, BALANCE THE BUDGET, was not actually printed on the poster board but was lettered on blue tape, so hastily was the graphic put together. “You see at the bottom, it says BALANCE THE BUDGET and it looks like it was taped on?” Romney said. “It was. That was added yesterday, because I was in a meeting just like this in where were we?” Someone said Nashua. “Nashua. Thank you. I was in Nashua, and someone said, ‘How about balance the budget?’ I said absolutely, so we stuck it on there.”

You want to add a policy priority to the Romney administration, should there be one? Just say the word.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Romney may actually be a worse politician than Ron Paul, his executive hair notwithstanding. Because if, unlike Paul, you can’t be sincere, then you have to at least be able to fake being sincere without making it completely obvious to all and sundry that you’re faking it. To paraphrase Vodkapundit, Mitt Romney has experience. Experience with change. Change that only his experience, his experience with change, can bring about.

Meanwhile, back at NRO headquarters, Kathryn Jean fights back her tears at the thought of the conservative commentariat’s declining influence: “Byron’s Piece this morning makes me sad.” I’m guessing that both McCain and Romney will underperform somewhat, which should work to Huckabee’s – and to a lesser extent, Paul’s – advantage.

IG emails in the interest of demonstrating the left-winger’s usual disinterest in intellectual coherency:

Fascism is a form of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the nation or the race as an organic community transcending all otherloyalties. It emphasizes a myth of national or racial rebirth after a period of decline or destruction. To this end, fascism calls for a “spiritual revolution” against signs of moral decay such as individualism and materialism, and seeks to purge “alien” forces and groups that threaten the organic community. Fascism tends to celebrate masculinity, youth, mystical unity, and the regenerative power of violence. Often, but not always, it promotes racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide.

At the same time, fascists may embrace a form of internationalism based on either racial or ideological solidarity across national boundaries. Usually fascism espouses open male supremacy, though sometimes it may also promote female solidarity and new opportunities for women of the privileged nation or race.

Fascism’s approach to politics is both populist–in that it seeks to activate “the people” as a whole against perceived oppressors or enemies–and elitist–in that it treats the people’s will as embodied in a select group, or often one supreme leader, from whom authority proceeds downward. Fascism seeks to organize a cadre-led mass movement in a drive to seize state power. It seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of society to its ideological vision of organic community, usually through a totalitarian state. Both as a movement and a regime, fascism uses mass organizations as a system of integration and control, and uses organized violence to suppress opposition, although the scale of violence varies widely.

Notice that IG offers absolutely no evidence to explain his charge that fascism is “extreme right wing”, he doesn’t even attempt to explain the range of whatever political spectrum he is using. (It’s obviously a very short one equivalent to a color spectum ranging all the way from purple to blue.) He doesn’t bother to think about the dichotomy between the huge contradictions between what would then be two extreme right wings – the libertarian and the fascist – nor the huge similarities between a fascist extreme right wing and a communist extreme left wing.

The conventional academic’s dance is to insist that the spectrum is a circle, in which case the libertarian must be the ultimate centrist between two statist ideologies, which is neither useful in a pragmatic sense nor coherent in a philosophical one.

According to IG, who doesn’t even begin to address the strange fact of how nearly every leading Fascist, Nazi and fascist was not only a left-wing socialist, but continued to describe themselves as socialists throughout. Note too his unavoidable self-contradictions: fascism is national but international, it is sexist but pro-women’s rights, populist but elitist. How very ideologically definitive! Moreover, nearly every point that he tries to make in order to prove fascism’s place on the Right applies nearly as well, or in more than a few cases, better, to every left-wing regime in history dating back to the French Revolution. As Stalin correctly asserted, fascism is to the right of communism, but that’s not the salient point. The salient point is that fascism is distinctly to the left of nearly every other political ideology, including both classical and modern liberalism and libertarianism.

Anyone who still attempts to insist that fascism in all its various forms is not an ideology of the political Left is either historically ignorant, intellectually dishonest or willfully self-deceptive.

MikeH asks about Japanese tin-cans with tracks:

BTW, can anyone clue me into an actual ‘significant tank unit’ in the Japanese Army?

In China, tanks were attached to infantry units for fire support. No tank divisions were created until mid-1942 and none of the formations so formed appeared in battle until 1944. Including self-propelled guns, only 3,500 AFV were built during the war, half by Mitsubishi; the IJA had another 3,000 older vehicles that had been constructed between 1931 and 1940. 1,700 were surrendered to the Allies, some of which were passed onto the Chinese Communists by the Russians.

Types 97A and 97B CHI-HA were the most common, technically considered medium tanks and considered advanced for their 1937 design. They were armed with relative popguns, however, the A with a 57mm main armament and the B with a 47mm gun. 1,500 were produced. Three CHI-HA to a platoon, ten to a company.

And no, I am not such a geek that I rattled that off the top of my head. I had to go to the trouble of leaning over and pulling out my custom ASLRB Chapter H from the bookshelf. Okay, never mind, I’m just going to go kill some Horde now….