There's a blogger out there named meatbrain who maintains a blog called ThinkingMeat. If I am not mistaken, the name was inspired by a science-fiction short story by Terry Bisson. This is apt, for the topics and creatures meatbrain deals with are otherworldly.

meatbrain, you see, regularly roots out some of the most pungent blogtrash in all of political cyberspace for the express purpose of exposing their lies, and does this with matter-of-fact panache. He (I believe) and I have crossed paths before, as I know he is familiar with Gribbit and a few other luminaries who travel in the same wobbly circles, throwing punches at shadows and running afoul of reality at every drunken turn.

From what I've seen, responses to these challenges in meatbrain's comments field take one of two general forms: "Have fun with your five readers" or "Get a life, you obsessed %%$^." That a representative of this breed of righty would malign someone for being overly fixated is the height of gurgling irony, but hypocrisy is such an ingrained element in the wingball ethos that about the only remaining irony is for one of them to not exhibit self-contradiction.

Apparently, such dismissals are supposed to represent a surrogate for the facts meatbrain requests, for the latter are never produced.

Something one can't help but notice about the real wingnuts in blog-land (besides the high-frequency paranoia, low intellectual candlepower, and chronic dissembling, that is) is that they cannot, under any circumstances, make a single concession to the left. In their view, the liberals are wrong when it comes to each and every issue. The right is batting not 0.999 but 1.000, and in a just world this would be acknowledged apace.

If a scumball like Tom DeLay takes a fall, it's because he was railroaded. When it's a Dem's turn -- and it will be -- it will be because justice has finally been served, at least in part, for in truth there should be no liberals (= communists, terrorist sympathizers, illegal-immigrant lovers) in Congress at all.

If I'm straw-manning here, trust me, there's a lot more meat than hay in that head. And it's not the kind that thinks.

When especially grandiose scenarios are required to prop up this libs-are-categorically-evil world view, the rabid 'nuts simply conjure them up. They do this even when insider knowledge accessible to at most, say, two dozen people in Washington would be required for confirmation. Many of them make Nathan Bradfield look like an erudite bastion of objective integrity, which is no mean feat.

Yes, anyone can be and say anything on the Internets, and with many thousands of people maintaining regular blogs nowadays, you'll find some real gems. Still, I find wingers' stoic insistence on acid-in-the-eyes blindness to be worthy of some kind of grim tribute. Simply flinging insults around I can understand; we all have things we dislike. But the degree of separation from reality some of these folks manifest summons to mind Walter Mitty after a bad accident in a meth lab.

I happen to not like the current administration and its satellite dingleberries, but if Bush or Rick Santorum or even James Dobson were to do something good, I would acknowledge it. By the same token -- and more pertinently -- if a Democrat were to bungle something or be caught with his pants down or otherwise wash up in the wrong, I would have no problem acknowledging this as well. I'd rather exist under a government that's as trustworthy as can be across the board than "win" by having the present crop of Republicans be involved in another series of destructive f*ckups.

That's the thing about those whose conservatism is so profound and blind that they haven't shaved the left sides of their faces since Bill Clinton first took office. They relish every victory not owing to its potential to benefit America, but because they'll all about keeping score. They reckon that we'd all like to see folks like Newt Gingrich wash up in the obituary pages, or that we're happy when people like Ronald Reagan die. In fact, having them -- and their foul counterparts on the left -- removed from positions of authority is sufficient.

A few months ago the wingers were all yapping and snapping about how the Repubs were going to take the November elections. Instead, they lost both houses. Because it was fairly easy to see this was at least very likely, this outcome opened the curtain to some especially raucous, slapstick theater. Predictably, the election results angered the crank brigade, but didn't didn't stymie them at all. They attributed the results to a votership that in the main failed to get to the polls, with at least 90% of those not turning out being, of course, staunch conservatives. They griped that smear campaigns and the Foley scandal, not the will of (most of) the people, had exploded the true desires of the collective patriotic citizenry. So in reality America is just as red as it was before; sadly, the polls failed to reflect this.

Then, they magically began holding the Dems responsible for every longstanding boondoggle and solecism in every corner of the federal government, and they may even believe it -- groupthink plus a general dearth of cognitive resources is a combination lending itself to phenomenal levels of denial.

Anyway, Cao is obviously either angry even by nutball standards or on the edge of frank mental illness. She and her ilk are like those chattery teeth you find in novelty stores: No brains, no soft edges, just CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK! and spinning in slow, stupid circles until they finally wind down. Then, before long, it's time for another round.

Have a fine weekend.