Diversity of craziness, that is. Because if all the crazy people were nuts in the same way, it would get boring. Also, they might gang up and present a real danger.

Over at Feral Children, Patrick has put together a jaw-dropping partial list of recently circulated conspiracy theories about matters electoral and political. It's the silly season, sure. But still. Good God.

For added fun, see if you can spot which of the 30 theories Patrick is crazy enough to believe.

Say you write a piece for the Los Angeles Times about Obama's election and what it says about race in America, and include language like this:

Obama is what I have called a "bargainer" — a black who says to whites, "I will never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me." Whites become enthralled with bargainers out of gratitude for the presumption of innocence they offer. Bargainers relieve their anxiety about being white and, for this gift of trust, bargainers are often rewarded with a kind of halo.

And you offer this author blurb at the end:

Shelby Steele is an author, columnist and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Hmm. Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, your readers might have wound up better informed if the author blurb had said this?

Shelby Steele is an author, columnist and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He advanced the same thesis about "bargainers" in his recent book A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama And Why He Can't Win. [Emphasis mine; wrongness in original]

Sure, maybe it's unreasonable to expect him to say "Look, you ought to consider the distinct possibility that I am full of shit, because these are the same theories that led me to publish and promote a book arguing that Obama would never become president." But wouldn't an author with a smidgen of self-respect or intellectual honesty have managed, at least, to sneak in a self-deprecating "Ooops. My bad!" in there someplace?

Via Wolcott.

I'm not disposed to appreciate the term "the Republican brand." It comes off as an empty buzzword of the week. On the other hand, anything that pisses off Michelle Malkin can't be all bad. Absent another shorthand for "that set of ideals that the party uses to sell itself to voters," I'll use it for today.

That said, should the Republican brand change after this election? Can it?

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. . . . but I shall, at least, point.

[n.b.: had Obama lost, there would have been at least as many seething blog posts from liberals. So it goes. I think we can expect to return to Clinton-era hysterical nuttery from the right, instead of Bush-era hysterical nuttery from the left.]

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I'll be the first to admit — I was wrong. Until very recently, I thought it was highly unlikely that the United States would elect a black person as president in my lifetime. I'm pleased that I was so wrong. I'm particularly pleased because of them:

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Patrick, at his promising young blog Social Services for Feral Children, pushes the blogger meme of the day:

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

I'm not going to obey #1, at least not for long. And I don't feel like posting a picture. But in the spirit of compromise, here, via John Scalzi, is a live puppy webcam.

At about 9:45 p.m. in California, two of my electoral hopes for the day that I mentioned earlier have come true — Obama won (rather convincingly at that), and Dole lost. Good luck scraping up your honor, Senator Dole.

I was moved my McCain's speech. He reminded me of why I have liked him in the past, why I favored him for President in 2000, and what the better angels of his nature empower him to be. It was one of the most gracious — and substantively gracious — concession speeches I have ever seen. Good for him.

I started out unimpressed with Obama's speech — the first half struck me as banal and inadequate to the occasion. But the second half was memorable, both in delivery and substance. And Obama's famous self-possession — now renowned to the point of cliche — shone through, both during the speech and afterwards. He looked like a man ready to face the challenges before him. I pray he is.

As I write, California Proposition 8 is winning by about 8 points with 22% of the vote counted. That would be a bitter pill to swallow if it passes. If it does, I will console myself that it represents the past, and that the youth vote on the issue (which very strongly favors marriage equality) is the future.

More tomorrow.

It's good to be back blogging with you again.

I haven't been electioneering much here recently, have I?

To echo Patrick, here are my hopes for the day:

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…where "all that" is "people acting like complete jackholes because it's an election year."

I am looking forward to the foolishness being finished, and ushering in new and different foolishness. This election has brought out the worst in both sides of the aisle.

Case in point: meet Phil Busse, visiting professor at St. Olaf College. Phil Busse, under normal circumstances, would have an excellent shot at being this week's World's Biggest Dipshit. But this is an election year, and competition is fierce, so he's just in the top ten or so.

Why is Phil a dipshit? Well, Phil chose to wrote a meandering and muddle-headed column over at the Huffington Post (where intelligent leftist thought goes to die) smirking and shrugging about how he had stolen McCain signs on the lawns of citizens in his neighborhood. The essay, which makes my fist itch, contains Busse's self-satisfied musings about whether or not his theft is understandable or justifiable and how it fits into the whole mis-en-scene.

Now he's been charged with a misdemeanor and resigned from St. Olaf's. Possibly fearing that his resignation showed good judgment or moral consciousness inconsistent with future employment in academia, he threw in some fatuous whining:

Writing the essay was an opportunity to explore and talk about political speech and the desire that most of us have to express our politics — both in mature and immature ways, and sometimes a mix of the two,” Busse said in the e-mail. “I’m disappointed that most readers seem to have focused on the thefts, and not on the larger thoughts.”

Phil seems to feel that his action was like performance art or a thought experiment, and that it is uncouth to tie it with the surly bonds of law and decent behavior. Shaw foretold him, referring to people who "regard the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in."

Phil Busse, you are a twerp and a bad example.

Can you think of anything more emblematic of the impotence, unseriousness, tone-deafness, dogma-drunkenness, and general fecklessness of modern Democratic politics than a group that is raising money in order to fund a mass mailing of "warning" letters to major Republican donors hoping to deter donations with vaguely worded threats of legal trouble and public exposure? Seriously, my own sympathies aside, if this is how progressive politics brings it when just about every condition is optimal for victory, they deserve to get their asses handed to them in November. It's the law of the jungle — twerps neither survive nor deserve to.

Via Malkin (Who rather dramatically calls this "intimidation," which I would submit requires some actual capacity to intimidate on the part of the actor and some capacity to care on the part of the target. When Paris Hilton's lap dog yaps at a passing car, is the car intimidated?)

We could argue all day about whether this JibJab music video is equally harsh to McCain, Obama, and Clinton. But I thought it was pretty funny, and I found the Obama section hilarious.