The point at which I stopped reading…

Pure Pap for Left-Behind People

David Brooks pretends to be Cameron Crowe but morphs into Concerned Women for America, in "Foul-Mouthed and Fed Up."

If you've been driving around listening to pop radio stations this spring and summer, you'll have noticed three songs that are pretty much unavoidable, and each of them is a long way from puppy love….

This character[-type] is hard-boiled, foul-mouthed, fed up, emotionally self-sufficient and unforgiving. She's like one of those battle-hardened combat vets, who's had the sentimentality beaten out of her and who no longer has time for romance or etiquette. She's disgusted by male idiots and contemptuous of the feminine flirts who cater to them. She's also, at least in some of the songs, about 16.

This character is obviously a product of the cold-eyed age of divorce and hookups. It's also a product of the free-floating anger that's part of the climate this decade….

From the always backpfeifengesicht William Kristol

First the right cheek for "Keep on Surgin'."

[C]ongressional Democrats are also doing a good job of re-McGovernizing their party…. It may be, though, … unjust … to call these Democrats McGovernites. We'll just call them Defeatists, who are willing to ensure a U.S. defeat for the sake of destroying the Bush administration….

And now the left cheek for "Why Bush Will Be a Winner."

I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one….