Ah, it has been a very manly 24-hour period. Shaved my head, pumped some iron, practiced knife tossing, bought some cheap American beer, made a big damn pot of chili, finished reading a book about the CIA -- and now I plan to spend the evening listening to the really butch parts of La Boheme.

First, though, a few words on the Obama front.

A site called Pandagon has (allegedly) identified the PUMA movement as a massive Republican plot. All of those writers who have done so much to create this movement don't really exist, y'see. It's all a Potemkin Village, created by GOP consters.

Look at how Pandagon scribe Amanda Marcotte defines the movement:

Female Clinton supporters who are so bitter about her loss that they will throw equal pay, reproductive rights, the environment, and a chance at peace under the bus to get their revenge by voting for McCain.

"Female"? Please re-read the opening paragraph of this very post. I'll say it again: This isn't about Hillary Clinton; this is about Barack Obama. The guy is a crook and a chronic liar. He is no progressive; he merely plays one on TV. His support for Georgia's John Barrow is but the latest piece of evidence proving the point.

Our beef is with the Lightbringer, with his repellent cult of personality, and with the progressive movement itself. I hold Barack Obama personally responsible for every insane, paranoid, libelling thing said on Kos and the other cultic campgrounds.

To cite but one example: When Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame came out for Hillary, the Kossacks spread conspiracy stories about them! Moulitsas censored all pro-Hillary commenters, yet he allowed the Obots to call for the Wilsons to be jailed.

The Obots continue to fire off threats of violence against any who displease them, including yours truly. And they will not hesitate to use dastardly tricks to shut down blogs they don't like.

This disgusting behavior has gone on for half-a-year, and no amount of kumbaya-ing will eradicte those memories. Yet the Pandagon-style progs refuse to admit what they've done. They'll attack. They will insult. They'll sneer: "Where ya gonna go?" They'll bring up Roe-v-Wade incessantly. But they won't apologize.

Obots are psychologically incapable of dropping their arrogance for twenty consecutive seconds. They can't even fake humility when doing so would help them tactically. They would rather scrape their nipples off with a vegetable peeler than admit that they fucked up.

Pandagon writer Amanda Marcotte reaches the heights of silliness in her attempt to "prove" the John McCain holds PUMA's leash. Even though the movement started on the Confluence with Riverdaughter and other former Kossack writers, and even though many a well-known prog-in-exile (including yours truly) has pushed the thing along, Marcotte pretends that the entire thing was started by one Darragh C. Murphy, who appears to have given John McCain $500 in the year 2000.

That, says Marcotte, proves it's all a big fat Republican plot!

Actually , Marcotte's post proves that we are dealing with a big fat Obama plot -- since she lightly re-writes an Obot "talking point" previously sent to this blog, and to other blogs. The term for this sort of practice is, I believe, Astroturf. In other words, Marcotte simply re-typed a message handed to her by Obama Central.

The PUMA blogs, by contrast, do what they do on their own. We have no Comintern, no Central Commitee, no leaders, no home office, no money. Hillary has told Dems to support the Lightbringer, and we have told her no can do.

I have not received any communication from John McCain's people. Nobody pays me a dollar.

Don't believe it? Still think that McCain is behind PUMA?

Then try this experiment. Work up your own PUMA blog, using material pilfered from other sites. In an hour's time, you should have a pretty good similacrum of the real thing. After you've done that task, ask the McCain people for some financial backing.

Wait for the money to come rushing in.

Alas, you'll have to wait quite awhile. In the meantime, wave hi to Jesus as he comes back, goes away, then comes back again. That's how long you'll be waiting.

The Big Big Cash goes to the pro-Obama blogs. One behind-the-scenes source tells me that much of the money for a certain well-funded pro-O operation does not come, as is generally supposed, from the former hubby of the site's proprietor. (I'll have much more to tell on that score if I can get verfication.) Everyone knows that Moulitsas is rolling in the long green. Josh Marshall doesn't seem to be hurting.

And yet we're supposed to believe that the PUMA people have been purchased. Riiiiiiiiight.