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An army of "articulate, brave and joyful conservative" women is "changing the face of American politics"

"I've found it. The 2010 race about which I can get motivated the way I was motivated by Scott Brown v. Martha Coakley," writes Professor Jacobson. "The mainstream media and nutroots have made Sharron Angle target no. 1; that's all I needed. The Democrats have a strategy of crazy because their policies have been so disastrous and their rule so inept." Click here for Fox News report (above) and here to contribute. We sent along a little something this very morning.

"Michele Bachmann, another rising star in the Republican Party, is getting noticed precisely because she is an articulate, brave and joyful conservative," writes Bruce Walker in "The Year of the Conservative Woman" at American Thinker, driving home the point about this "Year of the Woman 2.0" that eludes our fellow opinionators of the legacy media caught in the amber of their postmodern feminism:

… but none of the dreary groups pretending to champion women is touting her for higher office, or even reelection.

The affable WaPo media reporter Howard Kurtz's attempt to make sense of it all is typical of the old media's failure to grasp the larger picture (although we credit him for seeking our old blogfriend Ed Morrissey's opinion):

When several Republican women won their primaries on Tuesday, I started thinking about whether the media would dub this another Year of the Woman. Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey said he doubted it, since in his view the mainstream press only likes to celebrate Democratic women, as in 1992.

"I don't agree with that, but I also couldn't shake the feeling that this year would not get such a label."

And why not? Kurtz mumbles something about Hillary and Palin as pioneers and then tosses the ball to colleague Anne Kornblut:

With victories by several prominent women in Tuesday's primary elections came the familiar declarations that a 'year of the woman' is underway. But in at least five races, something even more remarkable occurred: The candidates' gender never became much of an issue …

"That may be the most striking development," observes Kurtz, still not grasping the dynamics of what his lying eyes are telling him:

Once upon a time — 1984, actually — there was a huge discussion of how aggressive Vice President George H.W. Bush could afford to be in his debate against Geraldine Ferraro. Even in 2000, when Rick Lazio walked over to Hillary Clinton during a Senate debate, he was castigated for invading her space. Now, women punch back with the best of them — and that's a measure of equality.

In fact, they're so equal that they now have to fight off allegations of infidelity, if Nikki Haley's experience in the South Carolina governor's race is any indication.

We say bring 'em on! This newly energized conservative army of woman warriors, their hearts and minds not hobbled by postmodern feminism's identity-politics imperative, is unafraid to boldly go where too few women in this land of the free and home of the brave have gone before.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Are we suffering from a surfeit of unsexy overexposure?

'Does wearing sexy lingerie under the burka subvert the burka?" asks Amba in the comments to our previous post, crossposted at Cloven Not Crested, "Exposed: What really goes on beneath the burka":

Is it actually sexier that way — is the ad pro-burka?? Are we suffering from a surfeit of unsexy overexposure, compared to, say, the Japanese who could go wild at the sight of the back of a fully kimono'ed geisha's neck? Does the ad thus imply that concealment by the burka actually empowers a woman’s sexuality? Should we take up wearing burkas over our bikinis? What kind of dhimmitude is that? Of a piece, I would say, with the sinister Western attraction to Islam because it is so filled with moral fervor, purity, and conviction.

The "sinister" — left in Latin —Western attraction to Islam appears alive and well, exclusively on the left side of the aisle, where a fellow feeling for a dictatorship of relativism keeps the romance alive. But the Liaison Dangereuse lingerie ad's "message" is in the eye of the beholder. Over here on the right side of the aisle, discreetly armed with our bikini beneath our street clothes, we look to the Tea Partiers for "moral fervor, purity and conviction," and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, unveiled, is giving us the "common-sense porn" — Glenn Beck's words — that floats our boat. Following the distaff glories of yesterday's primaries, we're looking for some hot and heavy conservative commonsense porn now through November from the ladies that lunch.

Update: Woo hoo! Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link.

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Exposed: What really goes on beneath the burka

"Now THIS is how you hit back at the oppression of women in the Muslim world," twittered Newsbusters blogger Lachlan Markay this afternoon, linking a brilliantly provocative Liaison Dangereuse lingerie ad that turns Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils on its head and puts Victoria's Secret to shame. Set against the smoky, sultry strains of a ney — the flute of classical Arabic music — and tambourine, the camera's eye caresses a smoky, sultry woman getting ready to go out on the town. Depending upon your perspective, you'll either love or hate the surprise ending.

Update: Way cool: NewsBusters' Editors' pick!

Update II: From our imail correspondent, a woman of the world:

The post is fabulous. It reminds me of the Secret Lives of Plants.

Update III: Maggie's links.

Crossposted ar Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Rima Fakih and a cloister of nuns, sisters under the skin?

"Rima Fakih is Gorgeous; That is All," The Anchoress — aka Elizabeth Scalia — titled her definitive and richly-linked take on the swirl of frothy and sometimes frothing-at-the mouth commentary that followed in the wake of the crowning of Muslim beauty Miss Michigan as Miss USA last night. AP photo.

"The contrast between images of the Catholic American women [below] and the Muslim American woman [above] of your previous post leaves me speechless" we twittered The Anchoress this afternoon, referencing her two latest blogposts. "Write about it!," she twittered back. "I hadn't thought of it, and must dash out to volunteer at hospital."

"A Plethora of Nun Pictures," was the title of Scalia's post immediately following the one about Rima Fakih's triumph (top photo). Here the photographer catches a moment in the "solemn professions" of a group of Benedectines of Mary, "really great pictures giving a good sense of the meaning of community and sisterhood."

What does a scantily-clad beauty queen of Lebanese descent have to do with a cloister of fresh-faced nuns habited from head to toe? It has something to do with the promise of the First Amendment's establishment clause, together with the Nineteenth Amendment that granted us the right to vote in this land of opportunity where a woman is free to pursue her own vision of her best and truest self. We used to call this Shining City Upon a Hill a "melting pot," a term in disfavor now among politically correct elites and their fellow travelers in the media who would impose a stultifying identity politics of grievance upon the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Fortunately, the Michigan community of Arab immigrants where Miss USA 2010 grew up never got the memo, according to this CNN report:

"For once, we're talking about beauty and not terror," said Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab-American News, in Dearborn, Michigan, who knows Fakih and her family.

He and about 150 other Arab-Americans watched the pageant unfold on a 100-inch television screen at La Pita Restaurant in Dearborn, which was packed with her friends …

"This sends a signal that we're part and parcel of this great country … this is a part of being American. The American dream is still alive and kicking. Nobody can tell us that a Muslim cannot make it. Yes, we can make it."

The Anchoress quips, "Who needs 'smart' diplomacy? Bring on the pretty girls!"

Update: Dan Drezner has the last word:

A Very Important Post about …beauty pageant controversies

Update II: "My own response has been reduced to sputtering incoherence," confesses Rick Moran, fed up with "many on the right who have exploded in anger and cries of 'dhimmitude' because a Muslim woman was named Miss USA." So there.

Update III: Michelle Malkin's "Buzzworthy" links!

Update IV: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Althouse.

Crossposted at Liberty Pundits and Cloven Not Crested.

May murdered baby girls haunt your dreams, Mr. President

The preening perversion of men who would murder children fresh out of their mother's womb for the crime of being born female sickens our heart and soul. Hatred and fear — side by side with love and adoration — of the female of the species is universal throughout all cultures, of course, but common sense would have told Communist Chinese functionaries that killing the girls would lead to a generation of desperate men. Common sense? Unintended consequences? That's never been part of the utopianist statist's palette. They know better than we what's best for us, and our individual hopes and dreams and human nature be damned. Above, Mary Cassatt's "La Toilette," oil on canvas c. 1891, The Art Institute of Chicago.

"May murdered baby girls haunt your dreams, Mr. President," we twittered in horror at the latest brain-dead outrage perpetrated by the current holder of the Leader of the Free World Seat. A horrified, outraged Jay Nordlinger at The Corner explains:

We, the United States, have been having human-rights talks with China. Our side is apparently led by Michael Posner, an assistant secretary of state. I will quote from an Associated Press report:

Posner said in addition to talks on freedom of religion and expression, labor rights and rule of law, officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination.

He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its [their?] own a new immigration law in Arizona that requires police to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally.

I hope I have read that incorrectly, or am interpreting it incorrectly. Did we, the United States, talking to a government that maintains a gulag, that denies people their basic rights, that in all probability harvests organs, apologize for the new immigration law in Arizona? Really, really?

But even as President Obama's mandarins mock the custodians of the Shining City Upon a Hill and insult all humankind and womankind by their unconscionable sit-down with the perpetrators of genocide and gynocide, a new generation of American women "walk softly but carry a big lipstick," as Lori Ziganto writes at Hot Air:

The left hates that phrase and they have ridiculed me for it on more than one occasion. You see, they don’t get it. It’s not surprising, really, as we’ve all known for some time that while the left trots out the For The Women™ meme constantly, they are anything but. The same way that self-avowed modern-day feminists are anything but feminist. In fact, they are diametrically opposed to feminism, by it’s very definition, because their entire agenda is actually harmful to women. This is why I now call them Femogynists and I’m taking the term feminist back.

True feminists are women like Sarah Palin and Nikki Haley. They are the new faces of feminism. That has a great built-in bonus, too — they are far easier on the eyes and exhibit none of that irksome hysterical screeching like the irrelevant and soon to be extinct femogynists. They, and women like them, are coming to the forefront now.

You go, girls!

Updates: Linked in Michelle Malkin's "Buzzworthy"! And the horror continues as Michelle answers the question "Who is Michael Posner, and why is he apologizing to China? Also linked at Memeorandum and in Pundit & Pundette's "Today's recommended reads". Fausta too.

Crossposted at Liberty Pundits and Cloven Not Crested.

The war between women and men: He is all pine and I am apple-orchard

Detail of "A Mermaid" by English Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse. (Oil on canvas 1901, Royal Academy of Arts, London)

Boys will be boys, and we have no quarrel with Stacy McCain's forthcoming frolicking "National Offend a Feminist Week 2010." Once the Gramscian march through the institutions co-opted the public face of feminism with that whining, male-bashing, soul-deadening, identity-politics odd duck dubbed "Women's Lib" in the Sixties and Seventies last century, we were out of there. But still, like Robert Frost's Yankee individualist yearning to breathe free, there's something there is in this feminine heart that doesn't love a wall:

He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down!"

"Well women, of course are delightful persons, and I hear a strange and strident voice that I think is attempting to stop some of this progress being made in behalf of woman. That's the braless bubblehead, I call them," Sen. Jennings Randolph (D WV) unwittingly presciently told a reporter back in August of 1970 as Women's Liberation, the second wave of Amercan feminism, took center stage in the national debate through promotion of an ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment.

Some insight here from Stuart Shneiderman's essay "Why can't a man be more like a woman?" that may give a little scientific heft to the point we're trying to make regarding why women can't "detatch their emotions from intimate relationships as easily as men" — tear down this wall, Mr. Wonderful! — and vive la différence:

I have occasionally suggested that when teachers and therapists try to make men more sensitive, more empathic, and more deeply feeling beings, they are effectively refusing to accept boys and men for what they are. They are trying, through psychological and other means, to make men more like women…

All of which is to say that I was shocked to read yesterday about experiments in Germany and the United Kingdom where men were treated with a nasal spray containing the hormone oxytocin.

What is oxytocin? It is a hormone that men and women possess, but that women possess in larger quantities. According to the article, it triggers labor pains, helps mothers to bond with their babies, and produces enhanced sensitivity and empathy.

We delved into the earth-shaking implications of the presence or absence of that hormone in early development in our July 2004 post "Oxytocin dearest." But back to Shneiderman:

The article fails to mention that when a woman has a sexual experience her body produces extra oxytocin, thereby drawing her closer to her lover. Researchers call oxytocin the "cuddle hormone."

Oxytocin is one of the primary reasons why women who make a habit of hooking up cannot detach their emotions from their sexual experience as easily as men can.

Forget about making a habit of hooking up. It's part of what it is to be a woman. Or so we think. It's why on some important level we don't quite get the men we love, and they don't quite get us. Or so we think.

Not unrelated: "Do conservative women prefer macho men?"

Update: Stacy McCain puts in a kind word:

… the eloquent Sissy Willis …

See further debating points in our comment #5 at The Real McCain.

Crossposted at Liberty Pundits and Cloven not Crested.

Thad McCotter and the wicked wisp of a woman's hair

   

Michelangelo's Mother of Christ from "Pieta" (left) and "Slinky Knits" two-piece hijab, from our May 2004 post "Life imitates art," wherein we quoted Amir Taheri: "In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic [of Iran], announced that 'scientific research had shown that women’s hair emitted rays that drove men insane' … the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings."

"Morally rancid," says our fave US Rep,Thad McCotter (MI-11) on Fox & Friends this morning talking about the UN's recent election — with a straight face — of the Islamic Republic of Iran to something called the Commission on the Status of Women. Foreign Policy had a great write-up:

Last week just as a senior Iranian cleric declared that women's un-Islamic garb — meaning a wisp of hair showing — is the root of men's immorality and the cause of earthquakes, the regime moved to secure a seat on the UN's Commission for the Status of Women …

The Iranian government by contrast has taken every conceivable step to deter women's progress and institute a regressive regime against gender equality.

We guess it depends upon what your definition of "gender equality" is.

 

The veil should be a choice, not an imposition. Above, Tiny chooses to conceal herself in the shadows amongst the lilacs out front, able to see without being seen as she defends her turf against the intruder.

But back to that wicked wisp of a woman's hair that sets Imamic men to trembling and the planet Earth to shaking. As we wrote years ago in "The woman made me do it, Lord," one of our earliest blogposts, "Is that all it really comes down to?  A man's fear of his own feelings towards women?" A need to control oneself by controlling others? And from a related post, "Life imitates art" (top images and caption):

Remarkable how the misogynist fantasies of a couple of dystopic guys like Mussa Sadr Al-Sadr and Ayman Zawahiri can infect entire generations of muslim youngsters in much the same way that Nazi and marxist ideologies infected everyday folk in the last century.

It looks like we may have been onto something back then in sensing a connection between the psychological dynamics of European and Middle-Eastern ideologies of mass destruction. This from a UK Telegraph review last week, "Roots of Islamic fundamentalism lie in Nazi propaganda for Arab world, book claims":

"The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would have been over long ago were it not for the uncompromising, religiously inspired hatred of the Jews that was articulated and given assistance by Nazi propagandists and continued after the war by Islamists of various sorts," said Jeffrey Herf, a history professor at the University of Maryland …

Islamic fundamentalism, like European totalitarianism in the 20th century, was and is a mixture of very old and very modern elements …

The Nazis relied on radio broadcasts — translated into Arabic — to sow propaganda because of high illiteracy in the Arab world at the time. Although radio ownership was small, it was commonplace for cafes and bazaars to draw large crowds to listen to broadcasts.

Whatever role Nazi propaganda may have played in fanning the fires of ancient tribal hatreds, all utopian ideologies that feed on hatred and fear of "the other" — whether that "other" be women, Tea Partiers [!] or the Jewish people — are doomed to failure because they deny human nature. Thad McCotter expressed the idea most brilliantly in a CPAC showstopper last February:

Now the question is, what is the state of the [Tea Party] movement, even post the election of Senator Brown?

I would argue it is strong, it is healthy. I would argue that we remain philosophical, not ideological because as those who've read Russell Kirk understand, conservatism is the negation of ideology. We fit our mind to the world, not the world to our mind.

Men who would fit women's world to their mind by forcing the veil upon us are in reality attempting a futile veiling of their own fearful human nature. Is it too much of a stretch to posit a similar psychological projection at work in the savage attempts of political elites — who know better than we what is best for us — to silence dissent?

Crossposted at Liberty Pundits.

Do conservative women prefer macho men?

"The iconic actor is lending his famous face to a series of promos for Louis Vuitton’s 'Core Values' ad campaign, scheduled to hit daily newspapers and weekly magazines next week," went the caption of this fall 2008 image of ladykiller Sean Connery (via Fausta's Blog).

"I'm mighty skeptical of the entire premise of the study," we wrote in the comments of Fausta's saucy new post, "The girly-men have it?" Our own take with a twist in a moment, but first a few excerpts from Fausta herself, commenting on "Why Women Don't Want Macho Men," a WSJ article that reports:

New research suggests that women from countries with healthier populations prefer more feminine-looking men …

After crunching the data — including the women’s facial preferences, their country of origin and that country’s national health index — the Face Lab researchers proved something remarkable. They could predict how masculine a woman likes her men based on her nation’s World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancy and the impact of communicable disease. In countries where poor health is particularly a threat to survival, women leaned toward "manlier" men. That is, they preferred their males to have shorter, broader faces and stronger eyebrows, cheekbones and jaw lines …

"Feminine-looking men? Ugh. Must be a generational thing," scoffs Fausta, sizing up a couple of machos and a girly-man:

No contest: Sean at age 79 and Jon at age 39 win over Orlando at age 33. Especially since Orlando waxes his chest hair. Yes, Jon’s only 6 years older than Orlando but Jon looks like a grown-up while Orlando still looks like a kid … The article ends up asking:

"So will it be considered progress if women start pursuing 'metrosexuals'  — impeccable guys who exfoliate, order salads for dinner and carry man purses?"

Not in my book!

Ditto. Our own "crackpot authority" reply in Fausta's comments hints at a vast if unwitting left-wing conspiracy behind the whole enterprise:

Beyond my personal preference for the hot, sexy Sean Connerys of this world over the wussy, waxing metros, I’m mighty skeptical of the entire premise of the study. What is the agenda of the promulgators of this so-called “health index” that declares the US “one of the least healthy” nations, for starters?

The article itself sounds like a pro-Obamacare sermon dressed up as science reporting:

“While Stone Age forces once wired women to associate strong cues of masculinity with their children’s chance of survival, times are changing. The promise of improved health care in America could be one example of a shift."

They make it sound like you can change our basic human nature, evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, with a little social engineering. Typical leftist utopian thinking …

Is it a generational thing? It's likely a cultural artifact of 20-somethings' having been indoctrinated by proselytizers of the cheerless feminism of their mothers' generation. Out in the twittersphere I've been encountering a countertrend of young women who aren't buying what the "progressives" are selling. It would be interesting to poll the masculinity preferences of these fearless woman warriors.

Do conservative women prefer macho men? Someone get Mr. Rasmussen on the phone.

Teabagging Nancy Pelosi: She asked for it!

"The Republicans have Sarah and Michele. They'll clean up Nancy's mess soon enough," we wrote in the comments to Ann Althouse's graphic answer to the question "How do we really feel about Nancy Pelosi?" wherein Althouse enlists her "resident animator Chip Ahoy" to photoshop a picture of Pelosi in her final agony glory "with a teabag dangling down her mouth," at a reader's request. Above photographic image of a stump also gets into the act. Althouse pronounces the final result "a landmark in the journey toward equality for women." Unsafe for work or play.

"The health care battle wasn't Obama's Waterloo, but it may yet be his Bunker Hill," write the Washington Examiner's editors in one of many clear-eyed, we're-gonna-win-this-thing articles, blogposts and tweets out there this morning beckoning us back to the battlefront:

By the time American patriots there ran out of ammo and succumbed to the Redcoats in 1775, they had exacted a terrible toll, leading British Gen. Sir Henry Clinton to remark that "it was a dear-bought victory, another such would have ruined us." Likewise, Obama won on health care, but he lost public opinion. Most Americans believe his signature legislation will either do nothing to help them or will actually worsen their health coverage and drive up costs. The health care debate united more Americans in bipartisan opposition to Obama's government takeover.

But Democrats can still make this November's election significantly worse. Pressing on with the same obsessively partisan agenda Obama began last year will do the trick.

Dana Loesch has facts and figures in a rousing call to arms that's rightfully gone viral, "The socialists won a battle; now it's our turn":

Last night the Democrat party died as it drove a spear through the torso of the Constitution and passed legislation that the majority of Americans overwhelmingly opposed. Nancy Pelosi sauntered into the capitol surrounded by fellow socialists, carrying the gavel used in 1965 to pass the now-bankrupt Medicare.

It was Loesch herself who was one of the early instigators of the Brown Revolution in Massachusetts, when she wrote late December:

As I mentioned on air last week, this could be even bigger than Scozzafava with the right amount of support. While Scozzafava was a stand against the establishment within the GOP, this is a fight against national socialism flown under the guise of health care.

Back to the moment at hand,"forget about flagging pessimists on our side of the debate like Charles Krauthammer," we wrote in the comments at neo's, where our good friend is admonishing her readers to "Stop the whining about 'it can't be repealed.'" As we wrote there:

The powers that be may be slow to catch on, but the Tea Party movement — today’s sons and daughters of liberty! — is not going away. Scott Brown was just an opening shot across the bow of at-sea political elites who would impose their unwanted statist utopia upon us.

Look, instead, to Bill Kristol. He was among the first to suggest Scott Brown run as 41st vote to stop Obamacare. Dems overrode that with dirty tricks, but give us time. Kristol's latest is a rousing call to battle:

"Repeal: a one word agenda for Republicans."

A taste of Kristol's savory mindfeast, and then head over and treat yourself to the whole thing:

And even on this issue, the message will have to be not just repeal but also replace — replace Obamacare with sensible reforms. What’s more, working out exactly how to repeal and replace the parts of the legislation that will already be in effect is an important task, one to which I know Paul Ryan has already given some thought.

But the details of the replacing and reforming are secondary. Repeal is the heart of the matter. It should be the heart of the message. Think of it this way: This year Obama has handed Republicans a one-item Contract with America, an item a majority of the public supports — opposition to, and therefore repeal of, Obamacare.

Update: "Repeal may be a convenient political rallying point," writes Dan Riehl, with a link, a Thomas Sowell warning and a caveat of his own:

Whether it's an effective solution remains to, hopefully, be seen. John Hawkins has another idea involving de-funding this power grab by a now purely Leftist federal government that effectively abandoned democracy and the Constitution right in front of the news media's cameras, which couldn't have cared less. So, don't look to the media as impartial, let alone an ally. We're on our own, now.

Just a gal sitting in our living room in our virtual pajamas

Who are we that Jim Oliphant of the LA Times/Tribune Papers would cold call us for a phone interview this afternoon on what the heck is really going on here in Massachusetts below the radar? Well, he tells us he did a google search for "scott brown," and there we were above the fold, right below Scott Brown's own campaign site. We've been blogging our tea-partying heart out about Hottie McAwesome since December 9, the day after our native son won the primary. Oliphant's article comes out Sunday. Watch this space.

"For Democrats, it's a nightmarish scenario: A Republican appears to be within striking distance of capturing the Senate seat of the late Edward Kennedy," writes LA Times correspondent James Oliphant, at sea somewhere in the wilds of Gloucester, Massachusetts — the magical landscape of our childhood summers — when he called us out of the blue this afternoon. Just a gal sitting in our living room in our virtual pajamas, we were swept off our slippered feet, of course.

Caption from our September 2004 post "To sleep perchance to blog": Classic pajama in silky satin charmeuse with a subtle luster. An everyday luxury, for sleeping or blogging, from Victoria's Secret.

Oliphant's looking for some local color, perhaps, in this story of a lifetime. We gave him all we've got, and who knows how it will play out in his column Sunday morning? Portrayed by astroturfing leftists as phony baloney, we New England tea partiers are the real thing, grassroots seekers of wisdom and truth horrified at how the international progressivists inside the corridors of power are trying to turn the lights out on this Shining City Upon a Hill. As we told Jim — may we call you Jim? — when he mentioned the hope-and-change optimism of so many of our clueless fellow Americans a year ago, the hope and change are here, but not quite in the way Barack Obama imagined. We owe him for reawakening this sleeping giant just in time to bring the nation back to its senses, starting with electing Scott Brown to the people's seat on Tuesday, January 19. If you're with us, click here to contribute and/or volunteer in the final countdown. Even if we win, there's no guarantee the vox populi will be heard, of course:

Even if Democrats lose the special election to pick a new Massachusetts senator Tuesday, Congress may still pass health-care overhaul through a process called reconciliation, a top House Democrat said.

That procedure requires 51 votes rather than the 60 needed to prevent Republicans from blocking votes on President Barack Obama’s top legislative priorities. That supermajority is at risk as the Massachusetts race has tightened.

“Even before Massachusetts and that race was on the radar screen, we prepared for the process of using reconciliation,” Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said.

Maybe we've never been tempted, but we just don't get how these people can face themselves in the morning light.

Update: Instalanche! Sweet dreams, professor.

Update II: "For now we are the revolution," writes Dan Riehl with a link and a bit of savory philosophizing:

From my earliest days blogging, what excited me most was the ability of the medium to democratize news and information, as well as politics. Just imagine how many more people are getting politically active today - in groups and through relationships that couldn't have existed not long ago.

Update III: Lots more hits and intelligent eyeballs from Michelle Malkin's Buzzworthy!

Update IV: "My 30 years in Democratic politics tells me that Brown is surging because he now has the support of a lot of Democrats — and that will be the biggest surprise from the exit polls Tuesday night," writes John Burke at The Purple Center with a link. Thank you, and welcome aboard!

Update V: Just stumbled on this wicked fun update at Instapundit: Reader EMB Whitton writes: “Sissy Willis for president!” I think she’s much too sane to want the job.