A reminder, via Allah, of how great the Onion used to be before it decided to drink the BDS-flavored Kool-Aid:

OVERLAND PARK, KS—-Stung by flagging album sales and Eminem’s supplanting him as Middle America’s worst nightmare, shock rocker Marilyn Manson has embarked on a door-to-door tour of suburbia in a desperate, last-ditch effort to shock and offend average Americans.

“When we first laid eyes on Overland Park, with its neat little frame houses, immaculately landscaped lawns, and SUVs in the driveways, we couldn’t wait to swoop down on it like the Black Death,” said Manson, born Brian Warner in Canton, OH. “We were like, ‘Welcome to our nightmare, you bloated, pustulent pigs.’”

Last Friday at 4 p.m., Mark Wesley, 46, a resident of Overland Park’s exclusive Maple Bluff subdivision, heard the sound of “animal-like shrieking” coming from the vicinity of his front lawn. Upon opening his front door, he was greeted by the sight of a pale and shirtless Manson carving a pentagram into his chest with a razor blade.

“Look at me, suburban dung,” Manson told Wesley. “Does this shock you?”

When Wesley replied no, he said Manson became “petulant.” Recalled Wesley: “He started stamping his feet and shaking his fists, saying, ‘What do you mean no? Aren’t your uptight, puritanical sensibilities offended? Don’t you want to censor me so you don’t have to confront the ugly truth I represent?’ So I say, ‘Well, not particularly.’ Then, after a long pause, he says, ‘Well, screw you, jerk!’ and walks off sulking.”

That evening, Linda Schmidt was preparing to drive her daughter Alyssa to a Girl Scouts meeting when she found Manson standing on her porch draped in sheep entrails.

“I knew who he was, but I was kind of busy and didn’t really have time to chat,” Schmidt said. “He just kept standing there staring at me, expecting me to react in some way.”

Added Schmidt: “I tried to be nice and humor him a little. I said, ‘Yesiree, that sure is some shocking satanic imagery, no doubt about it. And that one eye with no color in the pupil, very disturbing. I’d sure like to suppress that.’ I mean, what do you say to Marilyn Manson?”

Evidently, just what you did, hon:

A deflated Manson remained on Schmidt’s porch as she and Alyssa drove off.

See? Worked like a charm. Funnier still, Allah linked this in the course of blasting Coulter for her latest column, in which her schtick does sorta feel a bit strained and contrived, I’ll admit. Hey, happens to the best of us now and then, and even when she’s not a hundred percent on her game, she still brings off this dead-on observation:

Republicans are always told we’re supposed to vote for Fidel Dumbo if he has an “R” after his name so Republican nominees will be confirmed to the Supreme Court. That is true: Save terrorism, there is no more important issue than a president’s Supreme Court nominees. But Bush had two Supreme Court nominees and Chafee voted against 50 percent of them, so Chafee doesn’t even have that argument going for him.

Chafee explained his vote against Alito – but for John Roberts – by invoking the Democrats’ idiotic talking point about maintaining “balance” on the court.

“Balance,” like “meaningful consultation with the Senate before choosing the nominee,” means precisely one thing: a Republican is in the White House. Democrats subscribe to the Brezhnev doctrine: “What we have, we hold.” Their interpretation of elections they win by a plurality is that they have a mandate for Ruth Bader Ginsburg; their interpretation of elections they lose is that this means they get to block all Republican nominees.

And as if that weren’t enough, Laura also disparagingly linked to Coulter as well, while Ace found this, for those of us who damned near choked from the difficulty of swallowing the idea that swinish former Kleagle “Sheets” Byrd — an acknowledged master at wrangling the pork, and who the Democrats are proud to hail as the “Conscience of the Senate,” for some indeterminate and likely factitious reason — could possibly have had nothing to do with the Secret Hold. Brace yourselves for a shock:

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd admits that he placed a “secret hold” on legislation that would make uncovering the Byzantine world of federal contracting as easy as typing a Google search.

“Senator Byrd wanted time to read the legislation, understand its implications, and see whether the proposal could be improved,” Gavin said.

Byrd has released his hold, now that there “has been time to better understand the legislation,” Gavin said.

“Senator Byrd believes that the bill should be debated and opened for amendment, and not pushed through without discussion,” Gavin said.

“There was an effort to pass a bill on an important subject without debate just before the Senate recess,” Gavin said. Senators have an obligation to their constituents to know what they are voting on before signing off on any proposal, he said.

“On August 2, the last day before a month-long Senate recess, a Senate committee gave its approval to a brand new piece of legislation, cosponsored by Senator Obama and Senator Coburn,” Gavin said. “That same day, there was an effort to rush the legislation through the Senate without any Senator having the chance to ask questions,” he said.

Actually, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs unanimously approved the measure on July 27, the record shows. And an oversight committee held a hearing on the measure on July 18.

Well — glad we cleared that up honorably, and with no reason to resort to any further attention being paid this non-story! Run along now, kids, the grownups have work to do, heah?