What happens if the Republican Party collapses?  Who wins and who loses?  What are the electoral consequences?  What happens to the country in general?  I’d love to hear someone game that scenario out.

To begin, there’s this story about the Obama Administration’s cuts to our missile defense program. That’ll continue, I’d wager.  Progressives believe they have no enemies, after all – only friends they haven’t met (or you know, appeased/surrendered to).

Following that, we’ve got the recent news about a Chinese national selling nuclear weapons materials to the Iranians.  So yeah.  All that political postuing about how “harmless” the “tiny country” of Iran is?  Not so much.

Israel is getting nervous. We really don’t want the Israelis nervous.  Other nations might survive a nuke.  Israel won’t.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on record expressing a desire to “wipe them off the map” … and he and his Mad Mullahs might be just crazy enough to try it.  Moonbats like to insist that he didn’t really say that, but read the BBC article I linked – it’s about Ahmadinejad defending that remark.  Now you can bloody well tell me what he “actually meant.”

Combine that with an anti-interventionist President known for nothing more than a desire to just eat his waffle and things are looking pretty grim.  I had sincerely hoped to avoid nuclear war in my lifetime…  Hooo boy.

Well, the good news is that it doesn’t even have to be Iran who launches!  They work through surrogates and catspaws all the time – just look at the Iranian materiel in Iraq.  One crazy, coked out terrorist getting ahold of a nuke from some friendly benefactors and it’s ALL OVER for the Israelis.

Oh, and I really can’t forget the NorKs and their fun happy time explosion festival.   Nuclear Apocalypse: now 63% more trendy!  In a baffling and completely out-of-character response, the Chicoms are urging “caution” in dealing with this (read: don’t you dare do anything, capitalist pigs).

Update:

Oh … and per a commenter at Hot Air – don’t you all feel better knowing that LEON PANETTA, INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY is in charge?

Notice the tactic of dodging the arguments completely in favor of emotion centric responses and amateur psychoanalysis.    Typically empty-headed spleen venting – utterly iconic of the loud set of the political left.

“He’s certainly got some genuine talent for radio. He knows how to viscerally and directly engage his listeners. But other than that, what’s the attraction?

“Simple, really. The ditto-head audience relies on Limbaugh the same way that a drunk uses a lamp post or the way a fundamentalist zealot relies on Scripture: not for illumination but rather for something to lean on.

“Call Limbaugh’s rants offensive, racist, extremist or just plain intellectually insulting, if it makes you feel better. I think it’s more useful to understand him instead as a form of religious experience, one of the more dogmatic strain. He’s a completely reliable inspiration and reinforcement for those who are embittered and battered and who confuse their natural allies for their enemies. He’s an electronic opiate for the masses. For Limbaugh’s audience is not a happy lot. They are completely convinced that an unholy coalition of liberals, homos, feminazis and overly entitled minorities are responsible for the mess of their own tiny, dead-end lives.

One wonders if it makes the left feel better to imagine that conservatives wander about angered and confused by the strange world in which we find ourselves.  A convenient delusion.

Nothing is more important in our lives than deciding what to do with the time we are given, and then acting on our decisions. Our choices are shaped by our values, and our most important choices are shaped by our deepest values.

Yes, we go to the movies for the pretty girl, the big explosion and the booming soundtrack. But the films that we love – the ones we see over and over again – are movies with storylines that touch our deepest values. We know that we need to make the right choices in our lives, and the best movies inspire us to do just that.

Go read the whole thing.

5. “Jihadi.” The jihad is an internal struggle first, a process of improving one’s spiritual self-discipline and getting closer to God. The lesser jihad is external, validating “just war” when necessary. By calling the groups we are fighting “jihadis,” we confirm their own – and the worldwide Muslim public’s – perception that they are religious. They are not. They are terrorists, hirabists, who consistently violate the most fundamental teachings of the Holy Koran and mainstream Islamic scholars and imams.

My reply?

Oh, so the fact that westerners call them “Jihadis” is what convinces a sizable cross section of the Muslim population to support violence against civilian targets.  That makes all kinds of sense.  It’s because we validate the bad guys, you see.  Our thoughtless discourse is what creates support for terrorism.  Right.

I mean, really.  Go read that.  I found it at the Moron-in-Chief’s place and it wins rather hard.  The LA Times just let a columnist insult its entire readership, which makes me giggle.

This bit in particular gives me Matthewsian Leg-Tingles:

By lifting some typically Rushian piece of outrageous hilarity completely out of context, the distortion gang knows full well it can get you to widen your eyes and open your mouth in the universal sign of Liberal Outrage. Your scrawny chest swelling with a warm sense of completely unearned righteousness, you will turn to your second spouse and say, “I’m not a liberal, I’m a moderate, and I’m tolerant of a wide range of differing views — but this goes too far!”

There is more untruthfulness in that statement than in a speech by President Obama. Even the commas are self-deceiving. You’re not a moderate or you wouldn’t be reading this newspaper. You’re not tolerant of a wide range of views; you are tolerant of a narrow spectrum of variations on your views. And, whatever you claim, you still haven’t listened to Rush Limbaugh.

• I almost – almost linked HuffPo just for the complete experience, but a wise man once said “Never go full retard,” so I didn’t.

Is Ben Stein playing it straight there, or just doing his best J. Swift impression?  I mean, I thought Tropic Thunder was rather funny, but I mean … yikes.  You tell me people.