Isn't it Beautiful?

I am about to go to bed. I was just watching the last of "Mad Men" Season One on my computer and of course, rather than immediately turning the damn thing off, I started surfing. Because, you know, quite a lot might have happened this Sunday evening since the last time I checked, at 7:30.

Well, nothing has (why have those damned East Coast bloggers given up their post at the early hour of 1 am?), so I decided to check out National Review's Corner (background here). They are the hard-core center of the Republican lollypop, loyal to the last lick. For sheer entertainment, it's difficult to do better these days than a saunter through their rantings. The Corner's quandry is that the members are trapped in a wicked logical tangle. At the end of their battles with this logic, they lie there, like practitioners of jujitsu who have knotted their limbs, even as their foes watch on in fascination. The problem starts here: Republicans are infallible. American voters are infallible. Democrats are all-encompassing evil--and worse, they're pretentiously evil. Therefore, American voters will ....

The only real way to carry on is to carry on, damn reality. I don't know that they'll be able to admit Obama has won until 2011, when the next election is imminent, by which time the recess of history will fail to register as relevant. Meanwhile, they create edifices of solipsism, hoping that if they talk only among themselves, they'll last that long. Example:

Did You See This One? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

IBD/TIPP Poll - Posted 26 Oct 08-(Obama 44.59%, McCain 43.66%)

I repeat: This presidential election is not over.

Nor are the Senate races over. And I might point out: We're going to want as many Republicans in the Senate as possible whomever is president. We're going to need every member potentially swayed by conservatism we can get ... There will be fights with the White House in either administration! We'll have more of a fighting chance with, say 43 or 44 Republicans and a Palin veep.

Update/Correction:Mea Culpa: An e-mail:

K-Lo: Careful with that IBD number you posted. IBD's tracking poll for today isn't out yet. My understanding is that someone re-weighted yesterday's IBD number with 2004 turnout percentages. That may be valid and may even be a better predictor than most of the other polls we're seeing but I don't believe it's accurate to suggest those are the actual IBD numbers.

My sloppy Blackberry-posting aside, it still isn't over.

10/26 12:29 PM

Relying on a single poll where McCain is within a point is itself an act of enormous energy, like admiring the American flag on the Titantic as it slips into the ocean. But then it turns out that's not even true; the poll is a fiction. The flag was actually a piece of debris flying off the deck as fleeing passengers dive into the icy ocean. Oh well, never mind, isn't it still beautiful?

Now to bed. As soon as I see if Josh has anything new up...

Socialist?

In addition to the charges that Obama's Muslim, Arab, a terrorist (or friends thereof), and so on is this new one: he's a socialist. What the hell? I spend too much times watching videos of rabid McCain crowds (see here, here, and here for examples), but it has some benefits. I can trace the waves of talking points as they sweep through the right wing echo chamber. (In one of those videos, a woman screamed at the camera about the enormous crimes Obama committed through his dealings with ACORN. Asked when she first heard about ACORN, she said, "today." Wind 'em up and watch 'em go...)

Socialism is the new meme. When I do a search on it, I find the usual far-right sites you'd expect--Free Republic, AIM, etc. I have a hard time believing that every person at a McCain rally spends time at the internet's fringe, though. I have no doubt that almost no one screaming at these rallies knows what socialism is. It's a word with vague connotations; if you think liberal means "evil," then socialist must be akin to "devil worship." And somehow, the talking point is out. Add "socialist" to the anti-Obama spin. Check.

Is there something in the left-behind books that warns of the rise of socialism that could account for this? Anyone know how this bogeyman, a particularly spectral and unimaginable bogeyman, could have so panicked the already-hysterically panicked right?

An Inconvenient Nobel

The righties are none too pleased about Al's win. A sampling of the hysteria from around the blogosphere for those of you who like a nice breakfast of schadenfreude.

From irony-averse Right Wing Nut House
I can never decide whether Gore is being used by the Luddites, the one worlders, the NGO’s, the anti-globalists, and the anti-industrialists as a front man for the implementation of their political agendas or whether he actually agrees with many of their ideas. The fact is, it’s not about the science. It’s never been about the science.... Global warming is mostly about politics which is why Gore has probably done so well in promoting it. It has left the realm of science and entered the world of religion – a belief system with dogma, sacraments, and penalties for apostasy. [He goes on in this vein for a few more paragraphs.]

Pirate's Cove dips into the well of conspiracy theory
he Surrender Monkey is extremely pleased with today’s news. While it does not involve Liberal surrender to a violent extremist group, it involves the Goracle, Global Warming hysteria, AND the United Nations, who/which the Nobel Prize Committee has surrendered to [Al Gore]... I wonder how much Gore actually makes as one of the founders of the Alliance for Climate Protection, considering it is a organization that he himself started, and serves as chairman of the board. Perhaps someone out there in Blogo Land knows how to get ahold of their money filings.

Power Line, funny as ever
How about some recognition for the scientists of Laputa discovered by Gulliver in the course of his travels? Is it too late to recognize them for their fine efforts to extract sunlight from cucumbers? (Thanks to reader Anthony Ragan for his contribution.)

I will conclude with an example that inadvertently stands as a symbol for all the righty reactionaries, from the (never) reality-based:

Michelle Malkin
While envirozealots celebrate the Goracle’s coronation, Jim Hoft notes that University of Illinois has just reported that ice cap growth in the Antarctic is at its highest level in recorded history.

There is a meme in the rightosphere that Al Gore's science is tragically flawed and that the entire global warming phenomenon is built upon a hoax--all of these blogs (and on to infinity) repeat the meme and carelessly record non-science. It is no surprise that these are the same folks who argue against science on a raft of GOP initiatives; yet where global warming is concerned, they become experts.

Well, if you follow Michelle Malkin's cherry-picked fact (suggestive, in its isolation, of her flat-earth view) you find a journal recording the catastrophic loss of arctic ice on the other pole. See if the "fact" Malkin selected supports her theory after all (emphasis mine):

Just when you thought this season's cryosphere couldn't be more strange .... The Southern Hemisphere sea ice area narrowly surpassed the previous historic maximum of 16.03 million sq. km to 16.17 million sq. km. The observed sea ice record in the Southern Hemisphere (1979-present) is not as long as the Northern Hemisphere. Prior to the satellite era, direct observations of the SH sea ice edge were sporadic.

The NH sea ice area reached an historic minimum on September 16, 2007 (2.92 million sq. km), representing a 27% drop in sea ice coverage compared to the previous (2005) record NH ice minimum.

(No.)

Al won the Nobel, righties are apoplectic in defeat, and I am enjoying the view.

___

Update: Okay, this one's a little too amusing to leave out. The National Review is apparently not taking it very well. Via Kevin Drum:

Who Else Should Al Gore Share the Prize With? [Iain Murray]

How about that well known peace campaigner Osama Bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore's stance — and that of the Nobel committee — in his September rant from the cave.