Buncha Savages In This Town, I Tellya

Apparently more than one car in the neighborhood got this treatment. I guess I should be glad that this year’s crop of undergrads is supporting a local business like Tedeschi, but it’s still irritating to find a wang drawn on my car’s windshield.
Stupid vandals

I mean, since they’ve gone with Circus Peanuts as their medium, they could at least have picked Jumbo The Elephant as their subject.

Arguing about the end of “Edgar Sawtelle.”

As much as I try to stir debate on all kinds of topics (hello, ad-hominem attacks on Jeff Jacoby!) but the one thing that gets more people commenting here is “Edgar Sawtelle,” the Hamletesque tale of a rural Wisconsin family of dog breeders. So far, I’ve racked up thirty-nine comments. My usual average is somewhere just north of zero.

Send Jeff Jacoby To Somalia

Jeff Jacoby takes the seventh-grader’s approach to politics today by arguing that the “government which governs least, governs best.” I hope this means that he’s headed immediately for Somalia, where nongovernance has turned the nation into a libertarian paradise.

I’ve sent him a snippy letter, of course, and if it doesn’t make it into the Globe I’ll post it here later.

I understand that the WSJ has to appease the bloodthirsty maniacs who constitute its core audience, and that explains (but does not excuse) the publication of editorials denouncing civil rights and social security as the products of drunkenly irresponsible legislatures.

But is there any reason for Jacoby to get a podium in Boston? If the Globe is so hard up for cash, why not drop the waste of space and put the savings into articles on items of actual local interest by decent writers with worthwhile opinions, like Joel Brown?

What Could Be Worse Than The Creeping Socialism Of The New Deal? Civil Rights!

I’m constantly amazed that the WSJ has such wingnuts in charge of its editorial page. Most of America, for example, likes having a safety net that keeps Grandma from eating dog food. Not the Journal, though. Today, they are warning us that a Democratic majority could bring such dangerous and damaging legislation as we haven’t seen since socialists did things like bring electricity to the rural poor:

The nation has had prior almighty Senates, of course, and it hasn’t been pretty. Free of the filibuster check, the world’s greatest deliberative body tends to go on benders. It was a filibuster-proof Democratic majority (or near to it, in his first years) that allowed FDR to pass his New Deal. It was a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate that allowed Lyndon Johnson to pass his Great Society.

Given the economic news these days, it’s particularly striking that the WSJ should come out against a program that helped lift the nation out of the Great Depression, or that they should oppose the idea that federal spending might go to public works rather than KBR, Exxon, and Halliburton.

And then there’s this: 

Note, however, that it could have been worse…. Johnson ran the risk that the GOP would ally with Southern Democrats. There was some check.

Yes, the WSJ just said it was grateful for racist Dixiecrats blocking civil rights legislation. Just a quick reminder that if you’re just not comfortable with brown folks, you need to join the GOP.

While we’re thinking of false beliefs that would be laughable if they weren’t so harmful, have a look at this list of the Five Most Hilariously Boneheaded Anti-Obama Smears. (Note: I don’t generally like Alternet, but this is better than average for them.)