Now this is how you start a Monday morning

It's 10 AM out here in Colorado and my coffee hasn't kicked in yet. So can somebody else please go over to RedIvy, read this, then come back and tell me what the fuck this dude is talking about? I gather it has something to do with Ron Paul, but that's about all I got. And anyone who makes analogies about "savages being given a slice of pie" is surely destined for Internet stardom, so we really ought to get on this...

UPDATE: DID YOU KNOW? "Our tax is a burden to choke on the bromides provided on a platter of charm, radicalism and novelty." NOW YOU KNOW!

Kick-ass

What I learned from RedIvy today: you don't mess with Frances Martel.

And if the angle from which this particular reader criticizes homosexuality [link for context] is religious... I have to question what kind of God this wrathful evangelical deity really is, and why He is so desperate to smite everyone. Does He have nothing better to do, like create beauty in nature or answer the prayers of the faithful? My Christian God (and His Son), the one I talk to and worship every day, who in name and denomination is the same as yours, is kind, loving, forgiving, and understanding. He interprets sin and deprivation as an exclusive choice of the sinner, and not something thrust upon him from above (or below). Gays and lesbians can engage in sinful debauchery in the same way that straight individuals can, and aren’t considered sinners by default more than any of us are. I do not pretend to read the mind of the Lord, but if I am to believe that whole New Testament thing as the true way to lead one’s life(which I do), I cannot believe that God creates some people more sinful than others, or that there are sins that He is not willing to forgive.

...It is highly irritating to me that any mention of [Rachel] Maddow in the media has to come hand-in-hand with her sexuality, as if it were relevant to her occupation. Read any piece about her success and you’ll see what I mean. Those that abuse the stereotype will claim that she is “asking for it” with her short hair and, uh, eloquence, and all those “masculine” features like “snark” and “education”. Never mind that she rarely engages in discussion of gay and lesbian issues on MSNBC- she’ll talk about them when they’re relevant (she does have an extensive history in gay rights advocacy), but the scope of her political lens is much broader. She was “asking for it,” just for leaving the kitchen and not bowing down to the Valley Girl-esque image of the socially traditional newsgirl. Taking issue with her political beliefs (I myself disagree with her on almost every single point) is completely fair and, I believe, warranted. She’s practically wrong about everything, and it’s her choice to be so. Taking issue with her sexuality- which is neither here nor there in the political world- is disrespectful and uncalled for.

It’s almost as if the more envious elements of the media want to chalk up her success to her sexuality and not her talent, as if she is a product of this new socialist “Affirmative Action” thing and not a respectable pundit. And envy is always a thing to be mocked, traditional or otherwise.

FRANCES MAD. FRANCES SMASH.

...As much as I despise libertarianism -- and boy, do I ever -- I have to admit that the Internet, and the Republican Party, would be better if they had more people like Frances Martel in them. At least, they'd be more entertaining.

Conservative logic at its finest

Here are two pieces of information:

1. Cornell University does not permit the carrying of concealed weapons, and the Cornell student council concurs with this policy.
2. Last week, a popular lunch truck on the Cornell campus was robbed by a man with a handgun.

Can you guess how these two things are related? No? Then you don't write for RedIvy:

The Student Assembly would probably say that the robber forgot about Cornell’s “gun-free” status because it wasn’t advertised widely enough. I would venture a guess that the robber knew with absolute certainty that the lunch truck operators could in no way defend themselves against a gun.

Campus security could not prevent Virginia Tech, or Northern Illinois, or the lunch truck robbery. When will we learn our lesson?

Yes. Because if the cooks and the robber had BOTH been armed, it would have gone so much better. (Sidenote: The guy was arrested, immediately. By, what are those people called... oh yeah, police.) Seriously, we ought to just mandate that all campus fast-food outlets be stocked with AK-47s. Then there won't be any gun violence at all!

Ladies and gentlemen, your elite Republican intelligentsia, hard at work.

Above: Cornell University

...Oh, and consider this for a moment: "Virginia Tech, or Northern Illinois, or the lunch truck robbery." Dude. Perspective. I hate the Ivy League...

Shorter RedIvy

• Allow me to cover myself when presenting a fabricated story as fodder for half-century old conservative wheezing by disclaiming the fact that the story is, in fact, fabricated.

Above: according to an unreliable source of the guy who pumped my gas's unreliable source, when you smoke this your hands look THIS BIG.

These brown people in the street make it most inconvenient to get to the bank

It is a point of infinite sadness to me that our little corner of the blogging world doesn't have any good analogs to The Corner or Ace o' Spades or The Daily Kitten—that is, amusing heaps of rich cultural offal with which the beautiful Lollerz garden might be fertilized.

And so, if I could find some way to set my RSS reader to "yelp of glee" when RedIvy adds something new, I'd certainly do it.

Shall we gaze upon the latest in Ivy-ennobled conservative baton-twirling?

Harvardmarine observes that May Day is a good time to reflect on the 'rule of law' in America, a point on which I can muster no disagreement, as far too few maypole celebrations have been given the proper administration of police brutality and tear gas in the past few years.

Says the inimitable Victor Davis Hanson:

“The government’s attitude at all levels is to punish the dutiful citizen’s misdemeanors while ignoring the alien’s felony, on the logic that the former will at least comply while the latter either cannot or will not.”

Above: Noted professor Victor Davis Hanson demonstrates that whites can pull off grape picking and ill-fitting sweaty T-shirts just as well as any immigrant.

Adds harvardmarine,

What use are our laws when it is permissible for non-citizens to march the streets, flaunting their strength in numbers, despite their vacuous logic?

For some reason, I am entirely unable to make the three clauses of this sentence cooperate with each other. Our laws are bankrupt if non-citizens can be on our streets? Or only if there's lots of them? Or only if they are poor logicians? What about hordes of foreign tourists in Harvard Yard who arrive en masse in the hopes that touching John Harvard's foot will get their children into a good school? Is that OK?

Maybe it was a rhetorical strategy: ask them "what use are our laws" and then just throw in a string of random qualifiers. Tee-hee: our laws are never of any use! Get it?

Finally, a quiz for RedIvy's three or four readers:

I’ll ask of our writers and readers: If one is to call themselves a Conservative, whom are you critical of in the immigration debate? The governments (US, Mexico, et al) complicit in the illegal activities? The people crossing the border illegally? The business interests that benefit from cheap labor? Or the citizens (in the US, Mexico, et al) that are not outraged enough to protest/take action?

Surely this is not a secret caving in to the fact that we only have a certain amount of vitriol to go around! C'mon: the RedIvy I knew would've blamed at least three if not four of those, and probably would've thrown some hate over at the MSM as well. What's going on? Are we all tuckered out from arguing with Snoop Dogg?

The questionable rhetorical value of 'my dear boy'

Lately my blog diet has been made up mostly of a number of blogs (Alicublog, Sadly, No!, Whiskey Fire, World-O-Crap, et al.) that make a profitable living off of the stinkiest dredge and sludge from the bottom of Wingnut River. It's amusing stuff, and they hardly have to do much work to make it look hilarious—that part of the job is largely taken care of the wingnuts themselves. It's not pleasant work all the time (Roy Edroso compares his work to being "addicted to dogshit smoothies"), but somebody's got to do it.

So I was somewhat jealous, wondering why no craptastic drawls full of English-mangling bluster make their way to my corner of the blog world. And that's exactly when sonnybobiche over at RedIvy hurled this beautiful pop-fly of a post right into my hands. It was like a stenchy nugget dropping from heaven.

Shall we don the gloves and enter Bizarro Land?

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