A Twisted, Tortured Shrivel

PM Updated: A little more fisking and video at bottom.

David MacDonald's Devil Girl from Mars (1954), via Jimmy at Pinterest.

That's actually a phrase used in David Brooks's latest attempt ("Donald Trump's Sad, Lonely Life") to demonstrate that the Trump phenomenon has no relationship to conservative ideology or the Republican party:

Imagine if you had to go through a single day without sharing kind little moments with strangers and friends.

Imagine if you had to endure a single week in a hate-filled world, crowded with enemies of your own making, the object of disgust and derision.

You would be a twisted, tortured shrivel, too, and maybe you’d lash out and try to take cruel revenge on the universe. For Trump this is his whole life.

Lift that barge, clutch them pearls

Update: Welcome Mike's Blog Round Up readers!

Erich Erichssohn, in it up to his neck. Via Welcome to Pottersville.

I'm about to do something I hope I'm never compelled to do again: agree about something with famed Iraq combat attorney (well, maybe that's not what it's called, but he gives the impression it's a thing) and National Review hack David French, who writes:

Approximately 98 percent of the professional politicians, pundits, and consultants embroiled in the conversation over Trump’s comments about Kelly, in which he may or may not have said that her tough questions at Thursday’s GOP debate were due to menstruation, are most assuredly not “offended” or “outraged” by his words. Quite the opposite: In the political world, there is something like an electric shock of glee that passes through the community when someone says something “outrageous.” Controversy is energizing. Consultants, candidates, and pundits immediately begin working the angles...

Kid killers respond

Image via Skydancing.

Erick Erickson writes:

I must offer up my sincerest apologies to the kid killing caucus that took it on the chin or other body parts in Texas last night.

After days on end of abortion supporters in Texas holding up coat hangers and then, yesterday, throwing feces, urine, and tampons in defense of killing kids, I tweeted out a link to a coat hanger wholesale store.

The kid killers were offended.

Now, I expected them to be offended because I was mocking their hyperbole. But they actually seem to think I was seriously suggesting some policy for the GOP.

Dear Erick,

You really are a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy when it comes to spelling your name, aren't you? How about "Ericqk"? Just to be sure.

Coat hangers are the GOP policy. Like Mafia rum-running was President Harding's. Dr. Gosnell's late-term abortion abattoir existed because Pennsylvania banned abortion after 20 weeks, as a direct and inevitable consequence. It is so weird how you guys are always saying "If guns are outlawed only outlaws" etc. (not that anybody for gun control has ever suggested outlawing guns, speaking of hyperbole, though I do think it is time to repeal the Second Amendment), but cannot grasp this simple fact. I think you do grasp it. I think you want to see women murdered with coat hangers because they had some pleasure of which you disapproved. But don't say I don't have a sense of humor about it. It's just a little dark.

And also speaking of hyperbole, kid killers? Gosh, Erick, you need to lighten up a little. To us cultural relativists, that thing is not a kid—it's a fibroid tumor with fingernails.

Image by Awomynous (breeder with sense of humor, probably pro-choice).

Ericqk, last Thursday:

When I talk about my faith and my views on gay marriage or abortion, liberals are convinced I must be lying when I say I have gay friends and pro-abortion friends and we get along just fine and they are wonderful people. Surely I must think they are going to hell and how could those people be friends with me. Folks, I think we’re all going to hell, but by the grace of God.

His pro-abortion friends are such wonderful people that they don't object when he calls them "kid killers". 

Cheap shots 11/16

Erick the Drastick looking for true conservative candidates on the Jersey shore.  Pompier art by Evariste-Vital Luminais (1897).

Erick Erickson at RedState brings out the big guns:

I think it is incumbent on each and every conservative and conservative organization, with this deadline upon us, to make a very simple pledge:
We will not support the re-election of any Republican Governor who creates a healthcare exchange in his or her state. Further, we will oppose for the nomination to the Presidency, any Republican who creates a healthcare exchange in his or her state.

In fact, I will go first.
Should any Republican Governor set up a health care exchange in his or her state, I’ll support their primary challenger and I sure will not support him or her for President in 2016.

Tremble, governors! Save us from the cholerick Norsemen!

Jan Huling, Poopyhead (or possibly Poppyhead). From  Society for Contemporary Craft.

Grover Norquist:

"The president was committed; elected on the basis that he was not Romney and Romney was a poopy head and you should vote against Romney and he won by two points," Norquist said on CBS' "This Morning" Monday. "But he didn't make the case that we should have higher taxes and higher spending, he kind of sounded like the opposite."

Why has the White House not come out to deny calling Romney a poopy head? What are they trying to hide?

Succubus (uncredited), from ViciousMim.

For some reason, the Washington Post wants us to know that Petraeus was fully conscious:

“Obviously, he knew about the relationship for months, he knew about the affair, he was in it, so yes, he was not going to resign,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and Petraeus’s executive officer during the Iraq “surge,” who spoke Monday with the former general for about half an hour. “But once he knew it was going to go public, he thought that resigning was the right thing to do. There is no way it would have remained private.”

But how many months did he know about it? When did he first become suspicious that he might be having an affair? What was the confirming evidence?

Douche.

Most utterly douche proposed explanation:

The Man Called Petraeus had an extramarital affair because his wife was hanging out with Elizabeth Warren (should have been home polishing his medals with the hem of her négligée).

Maybe if Holly Petraeus spent a little less time at the CPFB.......
— Michael Goldfarb (@thegoldfarb) November 9, 2012

Elizabeth Warren and her homewrecking staffers not even in Washington yet and already threatening national security.
— Michael Goldfarb (@thegoldfarb) November 9, 2012

Paul Ryan, numbers guy:

"The numbers we were looking at looked like we stood a pretty good chance of winning. So, when the numbers came in, going the other direction. When we saw the turnout that was occurring in urban areas that were unprecedented, it did come as a bit of a shock. So, those are the toughest losses to have -- the ones that catch you by surprise." 
-- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an interview with WISN-TV.

Not a word guy, at any rate. Or not when he attempts to come up with phrases that are unprecedented.

"Hello my name is the count, and they call me this because i love to count, Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah" . By xxMysticalxx, at DeviantArt.