Watching the Cornholes watch the convention.

The emerging wingnut consensus appears to be that Obama will be defeated by tying him to Some Old Hippie Nobody’s Ever Heard Of. It is obviously a strategy near and dear to their hearts, since an alien coming to Earth six years ago and attempting to learn about American politics by reading broadly in right-wing blogs would have come to the inescapable conclusion that the President was named “Ward Churchill”. Now, Mr. Churchill is not President, but is rather …. some sort of community college professor. I don’t really know. Thanks to the magic of Google, of course, I could easily find out, but I’m taking the principled stand here that certain things are so transcendently trivial that one should work diligently to avoid cluttering one’s beautiful mind with them.  It’s just basic mental housekeeping.  For consider: if I were to read even a single line from Ward Churchill’s biography, the pointless trial of memories and associations that this would create would make it that much harder to quickly recall other, more important pieces of knowledge, such as that amusing anecdote that John Boorman shared during the Director’s Commentary to “Zardoz”, or CPR.  Similarly, despite the fact that Some Old Hippie I’ve Never Of has a pretty short, easily-memorable name, I’m refusing to remember what it is, and I’m just going to call him “Some Old Hippie Nobody’s Ever Heard Of” – “SOHNEHO”, for short.

Anyway, Jonah gets the party started right, taking time out of his busy schedule of shoving fistfuls of frosting into his face to compare Barack Obama/SOHINHO to segregationist Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond.  An exact analogy, except in that Strom Thurmond was a Senator for many decades, and SOHINHO was some big hippie, and also except for everything else, and also STFU.  However, I assume this means Jonah Goldberg will now commence flacking for Barack Obama in a political magazine with a 50+ year history of supporting Black Supremicist terrorism.  Or whatever SOHNEHO did – throw tie-dye dye in people’s faces or write a really radical art movement manifesto or whatever.  Like anyone gives a shit.

Later, Rich Lowry channels some McCain campaign flack complaining that Obama is unfairly linking McCain to the ad linking unfairly linking Obama to SOHNEHO, and presumably tresspassing on his lawn.  This appears to be an eventuality that the McCain campaign was not prepared for – that having your sockpuppets drag up obscure shit from the Sixties makes you sound like a old fool who is obsessed with the fucking Sixties, and everybody starts looking for an assisted living home for you, preferably some place too far away to allow for regular visits.  This complaint of non-involvement is also slightly undercut by the flack in question endorsing every charge in the ad they certainly had nothing to do with, but never mind.  The McCain campaign plans to hit back, hard, with an ad linking Obama to Randee of the Redwoods and the dudes from the Freedom Rock commercial.

Finally, Mark Hemmingway learns that Obama is bring legal and extra-legal measures to bear against the SOHNEHO ad, sputters:

So let me get this straight — the job of the Justice Department is not to go after unrepentant domestic terrorists such as [SOHNEHO], but rather to police campaign ads about [SOHNEHO].

Well, Mark, the job of the Justice Department is not to “go after” people, unless these people have violated these things called “laws”.  There are currently laws about libel and campaign financing and so on, and there are currently no laws against being an old hippie or being somebody nobody’s ever heard of, and so here we are.  These would be the sorts of things that the Department would be expected to work on, Mark, although your and McCain’s boyfriend Bush has mostly had them “go after” people who register black people to vote.  So I wouldn’t worry too much about this being addressed in timely manner, although I would hope and expect that a likely Obama victory would be followed by a significant uptick in IRS/SEC/FBI interests in these folks, and probably many others in your social circle.  I’m investing in Jiffy Pop.

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