Those links don't prove anything about Ritter. Mostly they're about his friend, who does appear implicated.

Just more allegations and inferred malfeasance. Even if the money for the documentary had its origin in the Oil-For-Food scandal, that doesn't prove Ritter knew this, nor that Ritter was influenced to warp any facts in the documentary over it.

The most obvious proof I have of that, is that no WMDS were ever found in Iraq. That would seem to imply no matter how the documentary was funded or whatever Ritter's intentions were, it was factually true, which in the end is all that matters.

Ritter even goes to lengths to explain steps he took to verify the source of the money, and specifically talks about the attempts to bribe him and his refusal to accept. Most bribees don't tell you about people trying to bribe them. They just take the money and run.

Again, none of this distracts me from the central point: Fred Hiatt and the neo-cons were completely and repetitively wrong about Iraq, have shown no remorse nor change in thinking that indicates a fresh approach to Iran, and are likely wrong there too. Ritter was right, and no allegations of bribery, pedophilia nor any other dreck the right wing attack machine can create will change that.

Doesn't really qualify. For one thing he's more of a libertarian than a conservative, and for another, no conservative admits things like:

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it."

or, apropo to this thread:

"Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation’s capital, begin thinking of themselves as participants in the political process instead of glorified stenographers."

And while he is funny, when he goes ideological he is not, to wit:

"The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal."

Neither insightful nor funny, and more worthy of a coulter novel than anything else.

or this:

"Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free— indeed, sanctimonious— way for "progressives" to be racists."

Weak tea.

So maybe he's funny and a conservative, but he is not a "funny conservative"

Are you looking for something provocative and insulting? Something humourous? Merely descriptive?

I ask because your first two books make a concerted effort to pull in conservative readers. If you title the book as an attack on Republican manly wimps, it will certainly attract liberal readers but drive away others.

So if you have any insight into what philosophy you want behind the title that might help.

Conservative He-Men: Proof that bad things come with small packages

I propose "A Confederacy of Wimps"

Along those lines:

All Bark, no Fight

works too.

Yellow Dawn

Triumph of the Ill

Revenge of the Turds

Hamburger Shill

All Cowards on the Conservative Front

Flaunting Dauntless

Counterfeit Courage

Contrived Courage

Meretricious Mettle

Feigned Fortitude

(I like alliteration)

Shallow Valour

So, it IS ad hominum argument but you urge lefties to get as down and dirty as the right. Sorry, but we should be better that that. We, at least, think about what we are doing. There ARE a lot of people in the middle and lefties need to appeal to them and being as insulting as the right makes those in the center ignore us as well as the right.

First, I don't think the point is to get "as dirty as the right" but merely to respond in kind, as a means of revealing how empty their preferred means of discourse is. It's not about calling them cowards or chickenhawks or pudgy weaklings, but about exposing that mode of argument as unenlightening. If, as we believe, on rational merits our arguments win, then let's make sure the fight doesn't get decided on scurrilous grounds by hitting the right just as hard to even out the score on that.

Second, your assertions about the vast middle and how to appeal to them have absolutely no grounding. It's a good piece of Broderism I might say. Are people in the middle somehow more high minded and turned off by low rhetoric? Well if so, they should have voted for John Kerry, who stuck solely to the high road. Glenn's whole point is how these right wing tactics are both low, and effective.

People do respond to lizard brain tactics, often to the exclusion of high reasoning. Beer commercials have hot girls in them, not empirical double blind taste studies demonstrating their product tastes better for a reason. Ultimately, why would political choices be so different than how people decide what beer or car to buy?

No, actually, the point is that his looks might not be irrelevant. If he is compensating for his own securities as a man, the fact that he looks like a pudgy weakling is highly relevant.

The sample size is too small for a scientific generalization, but I'll say I'm not shocked that he looks the way he does. You actually don't see very many Clint Eastwood-esque people running around calling others crybabies and accusing men of lactating now do you? Are we supposed to assume there is no correlation to this?