DC has announced that one of its prominent superheroes will come out of the closet soon. I predict they will go with Power Girl or Wonder Woman because they are two of the safest choices the company can make.

It wasn’t long ago that Grant Morrison announced that Batman was gay. At the time I said that my assumption was that he really just wanted to get the editorial ball rolling in that direction, and perhaps he did. Although, according to DC, President Obama helped them “evolve” on the issue:

Honchos at Superman’s comic book home, DC Comics, said this weekend that one of their most identifiable (but as of yet unnamed) straight characters will soon be coming out of the closet, according to a report.

At the Kapow Comic Convention held last weekend in London, DC co-publisher Dan DiDio said the publisher would be reintroducing a previously existing character who would now be “one of our most prominent gay characters,” the website BleedingCool.com reports.

Didio said DC’s position had shifted on the subject since he said in an interview last year that any homosexual characters would be new introductions, and that none of their existing characters’ sexual orientations would shift.

DC vice president Bob Wayne likened DC’s change in tune to President Obama’s shift on gay marriage, explaining that DC’s policy “has evolved,” the report says.

DC’s original plan — to introduce new gay characters instead of switching the sexuality of existing characters — was the appropriate step. As I said before, when editors go out of their way to shoehorn the Progressive worldview down their readers’ throat it backfires. If DC decides to take a character with a history that includes heterosexual relationships and says, “Just so you know, The Flash, Barry Allen … yeah, he’s gay now,” it’s jarring. People don’t like when the integrity of a character or his continuity is messed with; if they freak out over superpower alterations you can bet they’d freak out if Dan DiDio said, “Superman always had a thing for Jimmy Olsen. We’ll be exploring that relationship this summer.”

My guess is that if DC is going to make one of their heavy hitters attracted to the same sex it will make Wonder Woman a lesbian. The company will want all the attention that comes with its “evolution,” but they won’t want to annoy the guys who still buy the comics. She’s a character whose had her past messed with multiple times, so it’s not as if they can’t change it back. She also came from a land of Amazon women … so it would be hard to argue with an editor who took the next logical step in regards to romance for that world.

However, my Wonder Woman prediction is mostly based on one simple opinion: It’s perhaps the most cowardly choice DC can make for such a “brave” evolution. DC’s editors don’t care about religious objections to their decision — they care about sales. They will make the most money on big-busted, scantily clad women making out in the pages of their comic. Need a quick cash cow? Do a cover with Woman Woman making out with another lady. They will even make variant covers (I guarantee it). The number of complaints DC will receive from a guy-guy decision will be much higher than if they go with girl-girl. I’m not saying that it’s right — I’m just acknowledging reality. And again, this all depends on DC not pulling a fast one (no Flash-pun intended) and naming a lower-tier character as its gay superhero.

Only choosing Power Girl might be more cowardly. She’s a woman who is a prominent character, but not really on the level of Wonder Woman. She falls in that grey area in between, because all comic fans know who she is but yet the average person on the street would not.

So there you have it: Wonder Woman or Power Girl. Those are my predictions. When the actual decision is made I’ll be blogging on it. See you then.

Marvel has officially killed Spider-Man. They did it before with his deal, for all intents and purposes, with the devil. And now they’ve done it again by turning him into such a pacifist clown that his lack of moral clarity actually makes him an accomplice to evil. Correction: Writer Dan Slott’s pacifist-clown take on Spider-Man has made him an accomplice to evil.

Case-in-point would be Marvel’s current storyline, ‘Ends of the Earth.” In it, Doctor Octopus has come up with a plan that could seal the ozone layer and save humanity, but the technology — that only he possesses — could also be used to bring about world-wide genocide. Isn’t the ozone layer so … 1989? Regardless, Spider-Man is convinced his enemy is going to trick the international community into agreeing with him and kill billions with the push of a button.

That is precisely what seems to happen, which makes the “amazing” Spider-Man’s actions leading up to the event so maddening (and that’s not even counting the “one man’s hero is another man’s terrorist” moral relativism that’s dished up by a supporting character).

It all starts with a race to stop a number of satellites from being made, some of which are being put together in North Korea — home of the world’s very notorious, very real gulags. A member of Spidey’s team sets explosives at the factory, taking out all the tech and presumably the North Korean soldiers guarding it. Peter Parker then channels Jimmy Carter, berating the hero: “No one dies! Understood?” Sadly, it turns out the North Koreans — those giving direct aid in an effort to cause a mass-extinction event — were led to safety!

The story then moves on to an interrogation scene, where Peter must extract information from Flint Marko (aka, Sandman) as to the location of another weapons factory.With Flint not wanting to talk, a team member begins the equivalent of waterboarding to get the intelligence she needs. Spider-Man acknowledges that he would have caved in to appeals for the “pretty please” approach if the terrorist foot soldier had pleaded with him for just a bit longer. Once again, a braver hero must pick up the slack for Spider-Man’s ineptitude. There is never really any acknowledgement by the characters that Spider-Man is out of his league, or that his “peace at any cost” mentality will actually bring out his worst fears: Word-wide death and destruction.

The new Spider-Man waffles on water boarding a guy who could help stop the death and destruction of billions of lives. Let’s just rename Peter Parker ‘Jimmy Carter’ and get it over with.

There is really no way to spin this (no pun intended) into the character’s favor. If good and evil exists — if it is real — then there should be no hesitation by the true hero to do what is right when the moment calls. Not using deadly force for a purse snatcher? Sure. I get it. Freaking out over the death of soldier-scum enablers of one of the most vile, despicable regimes in the world? No excuse. In this day and age, Spider-Man will make a deal with the devil but he won’t kill a few North Korean soldiers when the fate of the world hangs in the balance and the situation demanded it? Thanks a lot, Marvel: You’ve turned my childhood hero into a morally bankrupt loser, sailing through life without a rudder.

My spider-sense is tingling, and it’s telling me Marvel’s Dan Slott might want to talk to Shin in Geun, who escaped from North Korea’s infamous Camp 14, before he writes another issue.

Spider-Man’s moral compass broke and billions of people may have died. But hey, at least he can pat himself on the back because he saved the lives of the North Korean Communist goons who helped bring about hell on earth.

Needless to say, those days are over. Recently, conservatives have come out with guns blazing, shooting down the early efforts of the Obama campaign and the mainstream media to create narratives and frame the debate. Comedy Central has taken notice, which means that many, many other liberals have as well.

Comedy Central’s Gonzalo Cordova put it this way:

Today Former White House Press Secretary Bill Burton attempted to start a hashtag game called #RomneyYachtNames. It’s so unfunny and forced, it’s exactly the kind of thing that would trend on Twitter. And it did, but not the way Bill Burton intended.

Conservatives hijacked the hashtag and soon started their own called #ObamaYachtNames. …

But that’s not the only conservative hashtag game that’s caught in this week. Just in the past few days, the ones I’ve seen: #MorePopularThanObamaBudget, #ObamaInHistory, #ObamaFirsts, #LowerUnderObama,
#ObamaBedtimeStories, #HomophonesforObama. If you feel like punishing yourself, just scroll down @MichelleMalkin Twitter feed. Re-tweeting the unfunniest garbage tweets she can find is apparently a hobby of hers.

Everyone in power deserves to be ridiculed. If that wasn’t true, we’d be wasting our time with this blog (instead of just wasting your time with this blog). I don’t have a problem with these hashtag games politically. I have a problem with these hashtag games comedically.

As Christian Toto points out, Cordova doesn’t really believe that. What Comedy Central means is that conservatives in power deserve to be ridiculed. And that’s why Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Reddit and a whole host of other platforms will drive liberals batty as we go forward. There is a new crop of conservatives out there like nothing they’ve ever seen:

• We read Hayek during the day, and at night we make jokes about Sylvester Stallone throwbacks like Cobra.
• We read Russel Kirk, but we’ll put it down in a heartbeat on opening night for the next Christopher Nolan flick.
• We buy books by Arthur C. Brooks, but we also purchased The Walking Dead in our local comic shop long before anyone thought it would make compelling television.
• We love Thomas Sowell, but we also love … Apollo Creed.

Note to Comedy Central: There is no tomorrow. We’ve been waiting for this moment for quite some time, and now you’re going to have deal with us. And Cordova — we’re not talking our eyes off of you … even when we bow.

It is extremely interesting that JPMorgan Chase — historically a solid investment bank — makes some dunderhead investments and loses $2 billion, and suddenly it’s getting investigated by the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, the United States Postal Service loses billions every year and nobody bats an eyelash.

As Reuters reports:

The Postal Service said its loss widened to $3.2 billion in the first three months of 2012 and repeated on Thursday its warning that it will likely default on payments to the federal government unless Congress passes legislation offering some relief. …

The agency, which does not receive taxpayer funds and has been losing billions each year as Americans communicate online, said it lost $2.2 billion in the same period in 2011. …

The Postal Service lost $5.1 billion in fiscal year 2011 and was unable to make a massive annual payment for future retiree health benefits, which is required by law. The agency said much of the loss during the second quarter of 2012 came from setting aside funds for the $11.1 billion that is due this year.

So it “does not receive taxpayer funds” but yet it requires “legislation offering some relief.” Am I living in the Twilight Zone? It doesn’t require taxpayer money, but yet it does to the tune of $5.1 billion dollars if it’s going to survive? How does that work? If someone can tell me how this so-called independent agency can simultaneously be independent from and dependent on the federal government for its survival, please let me know. Has the USPS ever turned a profit in the past decade? If the answer is no, then its “independent” status is moot.

Regardless, the point is, why is JPMorgan Chase being singled out for bad decisions when the United States Postal Service made 5.1 billion bad decisions in a single year?

The FBI has opened an inquiry into the multibillion-dollar trading losses at JPMorgan Chase, stepping up pressure on the bank after key U.S. agencies said they were looking into high-risk trades that first drew regulators’ attention last month.

Do you know what happens when you stop people from taking risks in a capitalistic economy? Answer: You stop people from being rewarded for those risks. JPMorgan Chase, again, has a good track record of making money for its shareholders. The federal government has a great track record of losing trillions of dollars and then telling you not to worry about it. They do that because the politicians in charge now will be dead or long gone by the time you and your kids get run over by a debt-Zamboni the size of a house.

But you should worry about it, and Exhibit A is Greece. The country is imploding before our very eyes, there’s a run on banks and they have no one to blame but themselves. The difference between Greece and the United States is that no one can bail us out. No one. We’re too big, and if we fall it will be the crash heard ’round the world. And like the Greek tragedy happening overseas, it will be our own fault.

In short, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney inadvertently spelled out the limits of the federal government when he admitted reams upon reams of regulation “can’t prevent bad decisions from being made on Wall Street.” Most Democrats are actually calling for more regulation, which does nothing to fix Carney’s astute observation of the human condition and everything to highlight why liberals are incredibly scary; in their insatiable quest to control the uncontrollable they are willing to use any excuse to consolidate more power. They truly believe that if only they have their hands on more levers of power they’d eventually find the right combination pulls and pushes and tweaks to get their desired result: total equality.

But human beings are complex. Some are smart. Others are dumb. Some are ambitious, while others are lazy. Most are honest, but many are devious. And so, the liberals’ plans always fail, but instead of ceding power to capitalism — that beautifully imperfect system that sorts through all the madness better than any other that has ever been devised — they double down. Again and again they ask for more power and more money, and every failure of theirs is attributed to a JPMorgan Chase or Bain Capital or Mitt Romney or some boogeyman that can distract from the failures of centralized planners run amok.

Don’t be distracted by their attempts to draw attention from their abysmal performance. Our elected leaders have composed a national disaster to the tune of $17 trillion dollars. They should be the object of our disdain at this time. An investigation of JPMorgan Chase, you say? I can think of 535 other investigations that would be more worth your time, Attorney General Eric Holder. Hint: They’re all local to Washington, DC.

Newsweek has called President Obama ‘the first gay president.’ If that’s true, why would he have to pupate like some sort of strange insect from anti-gay larva into a gay-friendly butterfly?

Newsweek has declared Barack Obama “The first gay president.” Really? How on earth could a straight man, who describes his metamorphosis on the subject of gay marriage as if he was some larval form of insect that needed to pupate, earn such a distinction? Barack Obama, who “evolved” over the course of decades into “the first gay president,” is most certainly not the first gay president.

Any serious reporter needs to ask President one question: “Do you believe gay sex is a sin?” If his answer is “yes,” then someone needs to ask Newsweek how they came to the conclusion that a gay president could look at gay men and have one of the first thoughts that swirls though his head be ‘sinner.’

If the answer is “no,” then he has some more explaining to do to the black community, particularly the pastors he relies on for support. In fact, a good reporter would also ask President Obama another question: Your campaign released an attack ad on Mitt Romney that labeled him as “backwards” for his stance on gay marriage — one that you held only days ago. If Mitt Romney is “backwards,” does that also mean that the segments of the black community that feel the same way are”backwards”?

If the president and the media want to talk about how great he is on gay rights, let’s really have a conversation. We can start with the president’s own words:

“I’ve been going through an evolution on this issue. … I hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought civil unions would be sufficient … and I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people the word ‘marriage’ was something that evokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs and so forth. But I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I talked to friends and family and neighbors —  when I think about  members of my own staff who are incredibly committed in monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together — … at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

What is marriage, Mr. President? Define marriage. Is marriage just some sort of formal recognition that two people love each other and want to be together for the rest of their lives, or is it something more? Why does the institution exist? Why was this particular union — one between a man and a woman — codified and held in such high esteem across so many cultures for so many generations? What is it about such a union that makes its traditional definition so important to so many societies?

The president never talks about that, you’ll notice. Worse, Robin Roberts is such a hack that she never even bothers to ask the president to explain in more detail why marriage “evokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs.” She doesn’t do that because to dissect what marriage really means would then expose the truth: To change the definition of marriage is to destroy the institution of marriage, since the primary purpose is to make sacrosanct the bond between a man and a woman. The reason for that is because only a man and a woman can come together to form new life, and the healthiest environment for that new life is for it to be in a loving, caring relationship with its biological mother and father.

That is a fact that cuts across religions and cultures. You can be an atheist and the same truth holds true. That is the ideal. That is what we should all aim for, and it is important enough that an institution was created to honor and encourage and nurture it. Too mess with that equation is to open a Pandora’s Box of social ills, and for proof we need to look no further than the welfare state and the decimation of the family unit since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.

You are not the first gay president, Mr. Obama. You never were and you never will be.

Update: Newsweek has an alternate cover. Head on over to Hotair to check out their response.

Liberals are good at revising history, as they now attempt to do with news that Robert Downey Jr. attended a Barack Obama fundraiser. A trip down memory lane reveals they weren’t so warm and fuzzy about him when his politics were in question.

With the news that Robert Downey Jr. attended George Clooney’s $40,000 fundraiser earlier in the week, liberals incredulously asked how conservatives could have ever thought he was a Republican or perhaps even (gasp!) a conservative. As we all know, conservatives are racists, bigots and homophobes, right? Regardless, I will spell it out in ways even liberals with a mind like the Hulk can understand.

People put their children’s drawings on their refrigerator. They put cards from loved ones, their daily calendar and things they’re proud of on it. They put images on it that they don’t mind seeing every time they go to the get something to eat or drink. And so, when GQ Magazine, a piece of liberal propaganda disguised as a men’s magazine, is invited into Downey’s home and finds a picture of him with George and Laura Bush, it sends a message.

There are photos of Downey and Susan taped above the refrigerator: with President Bush and Mrs. Bush; with Tom Cruise, Mrs. Cruise, and Suri in a group hug on-set in Hawaii. The week’s schedule, in brightly colored fonts for easy reading, hangs from the bulletin board—yet another magazine interview tonight, rerecording dialogue tomorrow, a shooting day on Wednesday—along with Downey’s son’s soccer-playoff schedule.

In the liberal mind, such an act would already be considered heresy. But as with any case built on circumstantial evidence, there needed to be more. And so, we introduced the infamous New York Times interview, where Robert Downey Jr. told them that his time spent in prison had a profound impact on his politics; Downey’s liberal Hollywood critics responded by trying to convince people that he really just wanted to swim in Olympic-sized pools of gold like Scrooge McDuck.

“His values are pure Republican values … He’s a serious materialist. He loves the great clothes, the beautiful house, the cool cars. He’s a ‘protect the rich’ guy. Why should the rich have to pay for this or that? The people who have it should keep it, and the people who don’t have it shouldn’t complain.”

When Hollywood liberals start attacking the man, it sends up red flags to the world that they have him on notice: Shut up and keep quiet, “re-educate” yourself, or the character assassination will continue. Now that Downey has given up cold, hard cash to Obama, is he still a materialist? Probably not, since once liberals “evolve” their past is forgotten about the next day.

But let us dig even further back, to see what may have set off our liberal friends to begin with. Perhaps it had something to do with the launch of Andrew Breitbart’s websites, created precisely because Hollywood is the kind of place where in order to network with the elite it’s almost mandatory you attend functions like … a George Clooney, $40,000 a plate Democrat fundraiser. As rumors swelled that Downey was a Republican, the press sought answers. He refused to give them:

Breitbart simply refers to it as a continuous politics and culture posting board, and its underlying, unifying aim is just as simple: “Our goal is to create an atmosphere of tolerance, something that does not exist in this town,” he says. It’s kind of funny and ironic to read about how conservatives are being encouraged to come out of the closet.

Most amusing is the reaction from the agent for Robert Downey, Jr., who is believed to be a closet conservative … his publicist will neither confirm nor deny it, saying only, “We unfortunately have no comment, as RDJ does not comment on political matters.” (Opelika-Auburn News, Entering Stage Right, Jan. 6, 2009.)

There is no downside to announcing your political allegiance in Hollywood. None. Conservatives expect artists to be Democrats at this point. Generally, a politically mum A-list Hollywood star in the face of rumors they are conservative is another indicator that they might not fall into line with the “acceptable” positions of the industry’s power players. Refrain from comment, and liberal rags find it “most amusing.”

As I said before, can you blame Robert for not wanting to talk? The guy probably runs the gamut on any number of public policy issues, but was attacked by liberals for either a.) saying his time in prison taught him some lessons that were incompatible with liberalism, and b.) that he’d rather not talk politics and would not do so through his agent, at least as of 2009.

Now that Downey has attended a Barack Obama fundraiser, liberals would have us believe that delusional conservatives created the idea of a Hollywood star that was one of them out of pure desperation. Not true. As much as they want to deny it, liberal attacks on the man were often the catalyst for the conservatives who defended him.

Robert Downey Jr. was at the Republican National Convention in 2008, and yet liberal message boards wonder where anyone ever got the idea he was a Republican. Maybe he should just start the “Iron Man” Party and make everyone happy.

Let me explain: Not 24 hours after Barack Obama evolved from an anti-gay caterpillar into a gay-marriage supporting butterfly, a media-coordinated hit job took place on Mitt Romney, which accused him of being some sort of predatory high school gay-basher … in 1965. You rightly pointed out the absurdity of it all, but then went on to devote an entire show to digging through Obama’s past, accusing him of “bullying” a little girl (He shoved one in elementary school during recess — so what?), and then playing some of the president’s weirder passages from audio versions of Dreams of My Father. In short, you played right into Obama’s hands.

The United State’s is almost 17 trillion dollars in debt. Unemployment is over 8 percent. (The number is even worse considering the stats don’t include those who have simply given up looking for a job.) No one except perhaps Paul Ryan has seriously tried to talk about entitlement reform. And yet, someone as talented as you spends hours dredging up stories the American people already know about President Obama — and determined it wasn’t enough to stop them from pulling the lever for him — in 2008.

President Obama has a record of disaster. If it was a sentence it would be a grammatically incorrect collection of gobbledygook, with only the killing of Osama bin Laden as a properly-executed punctuation mark at the end. Playing clips of Barack Obama saying, “White greed rules a world in need,” from his memoirs is fine … for about five minutes, but there are bigger problems at hand. Let’s talk about the federal government’s greed, to the tune of $17 trillion dollars. Let’s talk about Barack Obama’s greed, through the confiscation of wealth and capital from small and big businessmen across the country. Let’s talk about Facebook co-founders renouncing their citizenship over burdensome taxation, and the billions of dollars that will now be in banks overseas. I know you do that Sean, but all too often it’s as filler to a pie crust made of Obama’s daily foibles and manufactured distractions.

What the American people need right now is a dissection of what, exactly, President Obama’s governance has done to America over the past three years. The base needs to know, in a way they can articulate to their independent friends and family, how the Constitution has been trampled. They need to be able to intellectually break down and convey to others how liberalism has broken down the economy. They need to know about executive order overreach, the expansion of the administrative state, and the gathering threats abroad that have never make the front page headlines because the Washington Post and the New York Times are worried about a forced haircut Romney gave a kid in high school (as opposed the the forced abortions the Chinese government gives its citizens, or the unconstitutional mandates doled out by the White House).

Sean, I think you are indeed a blessing to the conservative movement but I can’t help but think that sometimes your run your show like a celebrity chef cooking up tasty treats for his studio audience, and not the desperately needed boot camp Drill Sergeant who instills purpose and discipline into his troops. Right now Americans need intellectual Drill Sergeants putting minds through combat exercises until election day. They need philosophical training and ammunition because they’ve become soft. Media feeds us ideological swill, but serving conservative cat nip does us no favors either. Now is not the time for Rev. Wright. Now is not the time for Obama’s teenage drug use. Now is not the time for stories about his elementary school playground mishaps.

As a communicator of conservative thought — one with a large microphone — you have a responsibility to challenge your audience. Challenging people often means making them uncomfortable or angry, which is a risky proposition for a radio host with sponsors to please. I know that. But challenging the audience is what will help oust Barack Obama from office so he can be replaced with someone who could stop the bleeding.

And so I end with this: Leave Obama’s youth alone. Point out the media bias, make it crystal clear, and then move on to discussing the kind of problems that will bring this country to its knees if we don’t get a handle on them soon. I love the passion you bring to the conservative movement, but ask you not to sling your rhetorical arrows at our opponent’s body armor when his head remains exposed.

You’re a great American,

Douglas

Update: Hannity has read the post, and the tone of his reply suggests he wasn’t thrilled with it. I appreciate him taking the time (I really do), but I will say this: I listen to his show enough to know that he has a tendency to spend time on the side-show stuff that can play into the left’s hands. I also listen to Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin … and have not written comparable pieces on them. There is a reason for that.

For the better part of Barack Obama’s adult life he publicly announced that marriage was between a man and a woman. Less than twenty-four hours after he “evolved” on the issue his campaign put out an attack ad labeling Mitt Romney “backwards” on the issue. Think about that …

After decades of “evolution,” President Barack Obama finally came out of the closet yesterday and admitted that he is in favor of same sex marriage. Like the anti-gay caterpillar in his anti-gay cocoon for decades, he finally transformed into a beautiful gay-marriage supporting butterfly on ABC news for all the world (particularly his Super PAC donors) to see. Fine. We won’t even talk about how it’s called “evolution” when he switches long held positions and a “flip-flop” when when Mitt Romney does the same thing. In fact, I won’t even pass a value judgment on his new found stance.

What I would like to do, however, is to note the campaign ad that came out less than 24 hours later accusing Mitt Romney of being “backwards” on gay marriage, as if Barack Obama has been some gay crusader for the better part of his political career.

So was Barack Obama “backwards” last week? Was he “backwards” for all those years when he couldn’t give an answer on gay marriage, but instead did his professorial parsing and deconstruction of the topic until people left him alone? If the union between a man and a woman — one geared towards procreation — is something that society deems special enough to have its own institution, then the subject immediately becomes a bit more nuanced than “backwards” and “forwards.”

For a guy who gave George Bush a hard time over the “for us or against us” mentality, it’s rather interesting that he would give us “backwards” and “forwards” as the only two options, especially since he’s spent most of his adult life trying to convince the world he lives in the space between.

It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight: The economy stinks. And instead of dealing with the $16 trillion dollars of debt we’ve found ourselves in, we have a president who wants us talking about gay marriage. He thinks you’re so dumb that you won’t understand what he’s doing. A few months ago he was calling Georgetown law students to talk about contraceptives. Then he wanted you focused on Warren Buffett’s secretary. Now, it’s gay marriage. Oddly enough, the federal budget, unemployment and entitlement reform keeps getting pushed aside for things like … “slow jamming” student loan news with Jimmy Fallon.

If you can’t see what’s going on it probably means that you’re in your own cocoon. I suggest breaking out and flying away as soon as possible. The sooner you do, the better off you’ll be.

First, let us revisit Jeff Sharlet’s ‘Welcome to the Occupation.’ (Read the whole thing if you want to know what role Greek anarchist Georgia Sagri played in the movement’s inception.):

“Twice I woke up. Once when a squat woman with dreads down to her knees shuffled by with a broom…and a second time when a deranged man, top-heavy like a bulldog, punched the air above my head, daring anyone to take a shot at him. The occupation’s security, thin-limbed men with walkie-talkies, spread their arms out like birds and surrounded him. “We love you, man,” they said, over and over, containing but never touching. Finally he fled; the scene was too strange for the conventional crazy.”

In one short paragraph we see all of Occupy. There is the “peace-love-dope” contingent — and then there is the “angry deranged man punching the air” wolf pack. He can either roam alone, or in packs of five. The common denominator is that they are all really weird. And so, for every group of directionless hippies who have no long term strategic objective or a coherent plan of action beyond “love” there is one angry malcontent. Sometimes they punch their air, and somethings they seek to destroy property, be it windows, cars, or bridges.

And that is where Rich Lowry comes in:

The Cleveland Five are a sad-sack collection of wannabe terrorists if there ever was one. The amateurish young men who plotted to destroy a bridge outside Cleveland last week give the impression of needing the attention of a guidance counselor as much as a federal prosecutor.

But there’s no mistaking the seriousness of their attempted act. They allegedly planted what they thought were live bricks of C-4 underneath a well-traveled bridge connecting two suburban Ohio communities and repeatedly tried to detonate them. …

The Cleveland Five are the pathetic sons of Occupy — rootless, underemployed, drunk on a sophomoric radicalism, alienated from the American system of democratic capitalism to the point of lawlessness. One Occupy leader told the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer that Wright — a drifter with no known address and a vaguely checkered past — struck him as altogether “stereotypical.” …

Blowing up a bridge is like smashing a window — a favorite pastime of the anarchists at Occupy protests on the West Coast — only on a much larger and more hazardous scale. The spirit of nihilistic destructiveness is the same.

As is the flouting of laws and authority. This tendency isn’t limited to anarchists but is at the heart of Occupy. Writing in The Nation, Michael Moore imagines “nonviolent assaults” (whatever that means) on Wall Street and “wave after wave of arrests” in an attempt to shut it down. The romance of confrontation with the police is more central to Occupy than any specific agenda item. The movement welcomes a “diversity of tactics,” which means accepting the masked anarchists who are delighted so long as stuff gets, in the charming words of Wright contemplating his bridge, “f–ed up.”

Rich Lowry shows us that it is much better to set off charges of intellectual explosives than it is to try and purchase them from FBI informants to blow up bridges. When he says “rootless, underemployed, drunk on a sophomoric radicalism, alienated from the American system of democratic capitalism to the point of lawlessness,” he has thrust a verbal bayonet through the heart of the movement and twisted it for good measure.

The drifting mess that is ‘Occupy’ is what you get when you build a movement on the machinations of anarchist Yalies like David Graeber, as Rolling Stone’s ‘Welcome to the Occupation’ points out.

If you lie down with dogs (and homeless men in Zuccotti Park) you will wake up with fleas. If your movement lies down with anarchists, it will wake up with ammonium nitrate residue on its fingers and face and down its pants. (Mix in a little radical Islam and you might find a non-metallic underwear bomb in there.) A better option would be to take a shower, get a job — any job — and become a productive citizen.

Long story short: It’s going to be an interesting year.

Related: Katherine Ernst takes down “Occupy” over at City Journal (You can be the judge if we’re related or not.)

Socialists party in the street in France, victorious over the austerity measures that never really existed.

Did you hear the one about the socialist who just took control of the wheel of France? Instead of tapping on the breaks and straightening out as the cliff approached, he announced plans to floor it and spin the vehicle as hard to the left as possible.

Apparently, Francois Hollande’s plan to save France is to tax rich people at 75 percent of their wealth, hire a bunch of teachers, and spend a whole lot of money. And when France spends even more of the money it doesn’t have they’ll somehow wake up one morning and basic math will have granted the socialists a reprieve. Good plan, guys. I’m looking forward to seeing how that works out for you.

I generally don’t like writing about dead people or dead countries, but I’ll make an exception today. Besides, Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy does a good job explaining just how brain dead our European friends are:

France’s election is supposedly a sign of a backlash against austerity. But spending data shows that the French government hasn’t cut spending or implemented serious reforms. Where are the cuts? Where is the austerity? Yet, newly elected president Francois Hollande has announced that he will jump start the economy by spending more and balance the budget with more taxes. It’s a recipe for disaster.

If the economies of Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and other European nations are suffering, it’s not because of “savage” spending cuts. When spending was actually reduced, the cuts have been relatively small compared to the size of the problem and meaningful structural reforms were seldom implemented. It’s because small spending cuts are overwhelmed by large tax increases.

The socialist kids across the pond are celebrating victory over austerity measures that never happened. It’s really that simple. And when the rich people move and the accounting smoke fades away they’ll be left with the cold, hard truth. And then it will get ugly. Note: France has a history with “ugly.”

I write on the United States because at least we still have a pulse. $16 trillion dollars of debt has a lot of hearts racing right now, but we’re alive. We still have time to get financially healthy before the gluttony does us in.

In the mean time, I have some more reading to do on Europe, my favorite dead man walking.