Ann Coulter’s recent playful little exercise in trangressive speech has provoked a veritable stampede of conservative bloggers to the Politically Correct Amen-corner to warble forced hallelujahs to tolerance of “the love which hardly ever shuts up these days,” and to establish each and every one his (or her) own credentials as respectable, properly-behaved little boys and girls, distancing themselves from the taboo-violator who said a bad word.

Little Miss Attila has turned into Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Polly, and is sermonizing and making “a stand for political civility” by publishing a PC-Loyalty Oath for rightwing bloggers to sign. We liked her better in barbarian mode.

Bah, humbug! We always thought the basis for being conservative, rather than liberal, was having a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

Besides, as the left is always explaining to us, transgressive statements which epater les bourgeoisie are supposed to applauded for their courage, and looked upon as highly therapeutic forms of truth-telling, vitally-needed to shake up the hypocrisy of Society.

Moreover, since none of these right bloggers actually used the naughty word publicly themselves, what on earth are they apologizing for?

It is a sad commentary in itself that one mischievous blonde can, simply by including a pejorative (which everyone knows, and everyone has used) in a throwaway quip, provoke these pathetic public displays of groveling in the direction of conformity and political correctness.

Actually, if one considered the matter properly, a joking reference to certain epicene characteristics observable in one particular democrat candidate by the application of a pejorative is not required to be construed as ipso facto insulting to every member of the entire class of persons to which such a term could potentially be applied.

If Ann Coulter had referred instead to Mr. Edwards professionally, as a “shyster,” would you feel obliged to apologize to every attorney in the country? Presumably not. One naturally assumes that attorneys actually do exist who do not really merit that pejorative epithet.

We would contend, in precisely the same way in the present context, that there is no necessary reason to assume that everyone who is an X is also inevitably a Y.

A web-site formerly named “Great Firewall Of China,” now Comparitech, will test any website address to see if it is accessible to Chinese users.

My result is:

Your URL is Blocked!

This week the stock market experienced the largest decline in equity prices in four years.

A Tuesday selloff dropped the Dow Jones Average 416 points, and a dismal week ended with the Dow losing 3.3 percent, the S&P 500 4.4 percent and the Nasdaq 5.9 percent. It even cost me money. AP

So, what really caused this hideous and dramatic market downturn?

US News’ senior writer James Pethokoukis thinks he knows.

The observant Mr Pethokoukis identifies the cause as none other than the Blogosphere’s own Matt Drudge, who on Tuesday February 27th, just about the time the stock market’s ship hit the rocks, posted the following headline:

01:28:35 Greenspan Warns of Likely Recession… *

linking to an AP article featuring the same, basically misleading, headline.

As Pethokoukis ruefully notes:

the Maestro was hardly so definitive as Drudge made him out to be. Here is what Greenspan said, according to AP:

“When you get this far away from a recession invariably forces build up for the next recession, and indeed we are beginning to see that sign. For example in the U.S., profit margins … have begun to stabilize, which is an early sign we are in the later stages of a cycle. While, yes, it is possible we can get a recession in the latter months of 2007, most forecasters are not making that judgment and indeed are projecting forward into 2008 … with some slowdown.”

Frankly, Greenspan’s remarks were hardly any more revealing than the opaque testimony he used to give to Congress.

Michael S. Malone, at ABC, read the Pethokoukis article, and agrees. He philosophizes about how we all read news these days, and how markedly the Internet is making the paleomedia obsolete, concluding on the subject of that rascal Drudge tanking the stock market for us:

That’s what Matt Drudge did, and now it seems he can move the entire world economy. When was the last time a New York Times headline did that?

All I can say is: Do us a favor, Matt, please say something positive next week.

Right Wing News emailed more than 240 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to answer 8 questions. The results below were based on 63 responses.

We here at NYM were not invited to participate, but we won’t let that stop us.

1) Do you think the surge should go forward?

Yes (61) — 97%
No (2) — 3%

Yes

2) Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)– 84%
No (10) — 16%

Yes

3) Do you believe that the wall on the border will ever actually be completed?

Yes (6) — 10%
No (56) — 90%

No

4) Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?

Yes (0) — 0%
No (59) — 100%

No

On the following four questions, bloggers were asked to select one of the options presented (because some bloggers skipped particular questions, gave answers that weren’t listed, or gave answers that were difficult to categorize, there are not 63 responses to every question.)

5) Illegal Immigration.

A) Would you prefer an illegal immigration bill that tackled border security and enforcement issues only? (46) — 77%

B) Would you prefer a comprehensive bill that tackled border security and enforcement issues, created a legal status for the people who are here illegally, created a guest worker program, and increased the number of foreigners allowed to become American citizens? (14) — 23%

B – I disagree with much of the Right on illegal immigration. I think the problem is with the fact that we have immigration laws and policies which conflict with our labor needs, so we don’t really want to enforce them. We want cheap labor which is not available domestically, but we also don’t want to let those foreigners in. It’s just the usual American “wanting it both ways” problem.

6) Which of the following Democratic candidates do you think would be the toughest opponent for a Republican candidate in 2008?

A) Hillary Clinton (38) — 63%

B) John Edwards (9) — 15%

C) Barack Obama (13) — 22%

A – Not that I think Hillary is all that tough to beat, if we only had a worthwhile candidate ourselves.

7) If you were grading George Bush on his foreign policy for his presidency so far, would you give him an:

A or B (35) — 56%
C (18) — 29%
D, E, or F (10) — 16%

D – Did not invade Syria or Iran. Failed to democratize Iraq properly by a serious occupation over a significant period of time before granting any form of home rule. Has not invaded Venezuela or Cuba.

8 ) If you were grading George Bush on his domestic policy for his presidency so far, would you give him an:

A or B (17) — 27%
C (26) — 41%
D, E, or F (20) — 32%

C- – His tax cuts were good but not great, but he certainly did manage to turn the economy around very quickly. He is guilty, however, of the devastatingly disastrous failure to put the country on a wartime footing, and to prosecute domestic activities undermining National Security, the war effort, and American morale, thus losing public support.

photo by Linda Davidson — The Washington Post

Today’s Washington Post profiles the Conservative blogosphere’s female answer to George Patton, our own lovely and talented Michelle Malkin, offering this (overly mild) representative quotation:

The donkey party,” she wrote last fall, “is led by thumb-sucking demagogues in prominent positions who equate Bush with Hitler and Jim Crow, call him a liar in front of high school students and the world, fantasize about impeachment and fetishize the human rights of terrorists who want to kill me. Put simply: There are no grown-ups in the Democrat Party.”

Read the whole thing.

Things are not going so well for Conservatism today. The movement has fragmented here and there. Libertarians like Glenn Reynolds don’t want to consider themselves conservatives these days. Former comrades-in-arms, like Andrew Sullivan and John Cole, have jumped the fence to the left. And the inimitable Taki Theodoracopulos has wandered off into the Paleocon fever-swamp where Pat Buchanan got lost.

The New York Post today reports that Taki is starting his own blog, titled Taki’s Top Drawer, with a self-described mission “to shake up the world of so-called ‘conservative’ opinion.”

For the past ten years at least, the conservative movement has been dominated by a bunch of pudgy, pasty-faced kids in bow-ties and blue blazers who spent their youths playing Risk in gothic dormitories, while sipping port and smoking their father’s stolen cigars. Thanks to the tragedy of September 11—and a compliant and dim-witted president—these kids got the chance to play Risk with real soldiers, with American soldiers. Patriotic men and women are dying over in Iraq for a war that was never in America’s interests. And now these spitball gunners, these chicken hawks, want to attack Iran—which is no threat to the U.S. at all.

One thing I can tell you for sure, there may well be some atheists in foxholes—but you’ll never find a neocon. They prefer to send blue-collar kids out to die on their behalf, so they get to feel macho—and make up for all the times they got wedgies in prep school. It shall be our considered task to take on the chicken-hawks of this world, and give them wedgies again.”

We want to reflect a traditional conservatism that prefers peace with honor to proxy wars, Western civilization to multicultural barbarism, Christendom to the European Union, and Russell Kirk to Leon Trotsky. This will undoubtedly infuriate many in the mainstream ‘conservative’ movement, who have transferred their loyalties elsewhere. It’s time to raise their blood pressure a few points—and help them burn off some of those five-course meals they’ve been eating down on K Street.

It doesn’t look like all this is going to work out well at all. A highly dyspeptic Justin Raimondo is leading off today with an attack on loveable old Rush Limbaugh (!), along with lots of others on the Right. But I’ve always liked Taki, so I linked it in the Sound Blogs category (for now). We will make a point of giving Taki a chance, before exiling him to join Kos and Andrew Sullivan.

Hat tip to John Brewer.

The left side of the Blogosphere has been cackling with glee over apparent disproof of the recent John Kerry spurned by troops, eating alone in Iraq story.

Greg Sargent provided the refutation.

it turns out that Kerry was at that table to conduct an off-the-record breakfast discussion with two reporters, so there would have been no reason whatsover for troops to be sitting with them. In fact, Kerry and the reporters even sought out empty seats, I’m told.

The two reporters who met with Kerry that morning are Marc Santora of The New York Times and Mark Danner of The New York Review, The New Yorker and other publications. Both Santora and Danner confimed to me that they met with Kerry — on the morning of Dec. 17, according to Kerry’s office and to Danner. (The person who posted the photo also confirmed that it was taken that morning.)

Danner confirmed to me that he’s the guy with his back to the camera, saying his jacket and the back of his head looked the same as in the photo. He added that his position in relation to Kerry was the same as the photo showed. And here’s what Danner had to say to me about the empty seats: “If there were empty seats it’s because we sought them out. We wanted an empty table so we could talk. It’s that simple.”

The left’s joy is prompted by an opportunity to get the better of Glenn Reynolds, Charles Johnson, Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson of Power-line, and an assortment of lesser right bloggers, including yours truly who took Scott Hennen‘s correspondent’s word for its veracity.

This is a true story…..Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

Well, I certainly have no capability of investigating how well John Kerry was received by interviewing witnesses in Iraq, but common sense does suggest he would not be the most popular political figure in the heart of the typical serviceman.

Mr. Sargent’s refutation consists of a context supplied to that photograph by a couple of liberal journalists who work for liberal publications. These would be exactly the same sort of journalists who assisted Mr. Kerry in repackaging his “‘If you study hard, you get ahead in this life, and if you don’t, you’re going to wind up in Iraq” comment as a failed anti-Bush joke. Why should anyone be willing to take their word about something like this?

A blog much worth visiting devoted to maps. Today’s lead entry is an 18th century German map of “the Empire of Love.”

Hat tip to Matthew MacLean.

Mr. Joseph Rago, the assistant editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal, yesterday attacked bloggers, putting the lot of us in our place with a quotation from Joseph Conrad written by fools to be read by imbeciles, originally intended by Conrad to apply to newspapers.

Charles Johnson announces that the day when the long-dreaded possibility of nuclear blog terrorism becomes a reality has finally arrived.

As LGF puts it:

Iowahawk has become death, the destroyer of blogs.

So, perforce, we humbly pay tribute and link to his post. President Carter, or former Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, will be along shortly to sign the articles of surrender and deliver our share of 8-Ball humanitarian aid.

Every once in a while, one runs into a sympatico blog. On the same Maggie’s Farm I just quoted, I found also:

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Charles Krauthammer

CQ’s anniversary posting celebrates Three years. 8,156 posts. Over 109,000 comments and 16,000 trackbacks. 23 million visits.

Bravo Zulu.

Well done.