Debunking the Left's Latest Blame-Righty Smear Campaign

Inveterate propaganda pimps and shameless liars.

At Michelle Malkin's, "Debunking the Blame Righty propagandists…again":

Here we go again. Liberal media outlets CNN and MSNBC have joined forces with the biased, numbers-cooking Southern Poverty Law Center and New America Foundation to foment renewed fear and hatred of conservative Americans.

Their latest talking point: “Right-wing” terrorists have caused more American deaths than Islamic jihadists since 9/11.

CNN ran with the “story” first. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow hopped on the bandwagon tonight and the Blame Righty echo chamber is whipping up another witch-hunt frenzy.

According to these divisive and demagogic fear-mongers, “right-wingers” have killed 34 people since 9/11 for “political reasons,” including the three innocent victims of last week’s Kansas City Jewish community center shootings, while jihadists have killed 21. MSNBC and CNN viewers are eating it all up with ghoulish enthusiasm. It’s the Obama DHS right-wing terrorism report all over again.

A closer look at the rigging of this latest phony factoid simply confirms the malevolent intention of so-called objective journalists to marginalize conservative political speech and dissent. And it confirms once again the corruption of purportedly objective “hate watch” groups, which are staffed and supported by progressives bent on criminalizing their opponents out of the public square.

Let’s start with the terror toll count date. Carving out the 2,997-person death toll from the 9/11 jihadist attacks is a rather convenient way to rig the scales, isn’t it? Only if we close our eyes and pretend away the bloodiest terrorist attack on American soil perpetrated by Islamic murderers is it possible to promote the Left’s moral equivalency on who our real enemies are.

Once you whitewash 9/11 out of your calculations, the rest of the smear job is easy-peasy. As usual, it involves dishonest inflating of “right-wing” incidents and dishonest deflating of left-wing and jihadist incidents.

The conservatives-are-worse-than-jihadists casualty data, for example, counts Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn, who killed a heroic security guard, as a “right-winger.” As I’ve pointed out before, Von Brunn was neither “left” nor “right.” He was a rage-filled maniac and 9/11 truther who hated Fox News and Rupert Murdoch.

Also counted as “right-wing” in the CNN/MSNBC/SPLC data: Andrew Joseph Stack. He’s the lunatic who flew a small plane into an Austin, Texas, office complex that contained an Internal Revenue Service office in 2010. He injured several people and killed himself. Within minutes of the story breaking, a furious left-wing blogger at the popular Daily Kos website — where countless Democratic leaders have guest-posted — fumed: “Teabagger terrorist attack on IRS building.” The article immediately cast blame on the anti-tax Tea Party movement: “After months of threats on the United States government, and government institutions, the Anti-Government forces known as the teabaggers have struck with their first 911 (sic) inspired terrorist attack.” But as I reported at the time, Stack’s ranting suicide manifesto:

…targeted “puppet” George W. Bush, murderous health care insurers and the pharmaceutical industry.

The “manifesto” ended:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

*****

The dishonesty of violence-politicizing leftists — once again forcing Americans of good will to defend themselves against conniving “hate watch” haters — is beyond sickening. It’s evil.

Read it all at that top link.

And yes, they're evil, to the core.

RELATED: "The Democrat Party's Racial Regression."

Never forget: the Democrats are the party of hate.

The Crisis of Liberaltarian Intellectualism

In yesterday's entry, "Liberaltarianism and Intellectual Dishonesty," I focused on the ideological incoherence, intellectual pedestrianism, and moral perfidy of the left-libertarians who are often labeled "liberaltarians" (with most of my attention directed at Mark Thompson's League of Ordinary Gentlemen).

Robert Stacy McCain kicked up a bit of a controversy with his critical comments on these folks, "The Luxury of 'Liberaltarianism'," and he's generated a new (and quite raw) response from Ron Chusid at Liberal Values: "Must You Be Out of Touch With Reality to Be An Economic Conservative?" These passages are particularly juicy:

The current left/right divide is now primarily over social issues, civil liberties, and one’s position on the Iraq war, with economic issues no longer providing a clear delineation between left and right. The left/right continuum has increasingly become based upon two parameters: support for liberty on the left in contrast to the authoritarianism of the right and support for science, reason, and a reality-based view of the world on the left versus the reactionary opposition to modernity, science, and reason from the right. This division can be seen in Robert Stacy McCain’s response to Wilkinson’s views on liberal/libertarian fusionism ...

Ron cites a passage from Robert's post that stresses the bedrock of Middle American "Rotarianism" and the religious traditionalism of the Republican base. He then continues:

In expressing this belief in creationism, McCain already demonstrates a limited ability to either think rationally or to coherently comment on the issues of a twenty-first century world. The degree to which he is out of touch with reality also comes from the manner in which his views of liberals comes from a Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity promoted stereotype as opposed to anything which exists in the real world.

The typical liberal is just as likely as most conservatives (and more likely than Rush Limbaugh) to be in a traditional marriage, go to work every day, and abstain from drug use. The difference between liberals and social conservatives is not as much life style as the toleration of other life styles. Many of us live a basically conservative life style but do not feel the drive seen among conservatives to use the power of the state to impose their life style and personal choices upon others ....

Obama’s victory was an example of the emergence of socially liberal and economically conservative or pragmatic voters as we had a significant impact in both the Democratic primaries and the general election. All of us affluent wine and latte drinking liberals who enjoy and understand the virtues of the free market are still around despite all the opposition from both the Clintonistas and Palinistas. Our views may or may not win in future elections, but we have become a force to counter both the views of the big-government elements of the left and the authoritarian right.

Genuine thanks should be tendered here to Ron Chusid, who has provided a fabulous window into the mind of those of contemporary left-libertarianism.

Robert Stacy McCain has already replied to Chusid's piece, in "Faux Argument," where he writes:

Chusid's "about" page envisions a point at which "Republicans break free of their control by the religious right and neoconservatives." I'll let the neocons defend themselves, but what harm exactly has the "religious right" done to deserve Chusid's contempt or hostility? Who does he have in mind by this term, "religious right"?

Well, as a bonafide (and increasingly despised) neocon, I'll take that as my entree into this stage of the debate (and be sure to check Robert's link). So, first notice all of Ron Chusid's demonic attacks on traditionalists as backwater yahoos, as "authoritarian" and "reactionary" people who oppose "modernism" and "science." These people are also unable to "think rationally" or "comment coherently" on the issues, and are thus unfit for life in the "twenty-first century world." Further, with full obligation to the nihilist fever swamps of the netroots left, people like this take all their talking points from "Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity promoted stereotypes."

Okay, this is all quite interesting. No, wait ... it's more, it's utterly fascinating actually, unbelievable in fact, since it's defies reason that for all of Chusid's hot and heavy upturned cosmopolitanism, he still claims left-libertarians are practically jonesing to be "in a traditional marriage."

But wait! Traditionalism is bad, right? Shouldn't Ron be repudiating that old fashion stuff, not embracing it. I mean really, if these backwoods yokels are so ignorant and reactionary, you'd think the enlightened types like Ron Chusid would be beating a path to abondon such "stereotypical" lifestyles faster than you can say Stonewall. It's all so mid-twentieth-century like.

But more than that, the truth is the left-libertarians aren't at all in favor of "greater liberty" and "free markets." I mean take a look around. Some of the same folks who're are now key proponents of the liberaltarian movement are some of the biggest apologists for state centralization of the economy (only the Obama administration hasn't yet "incorporated" enough "libertarian thinking") and they advocate the violent supression of the free speech rights of marriage traditionalists, as we've seen in California with the extremist left-wing backlash to the passage of Proposition 8. Indeed, basic religious freedom of expression itself is totally under fire by these very same "libertarians" (yo, look out Mormons), although someone's forgetting that religious liberty is the very first item selected for protection in the First Amendment, and is historically guarded as a key foundation of a free people. It's thus exceedingly strange for one who promotes "liberal values" to make such hackneyed attacks on conservatives as this. Aren't there enough Daily Kos clones online?

Further, Ron Chusid doesn't understand economics himself if he thinks the Obama administration's getting anywhere closer to freedom anytime soon. There's been all kinds of attacks on the new stimulus legislation and the process, from bloat to the absence of transparency. But as a killer of liberty, this one's got to take the cake. On the question of parental autonomy alone, as Michael Franc noted Thursday, the Obama-Democratic left evisicerate families by guaranteeing that children would be able to receive family planning benefits without parental knowledge whatsoever! It must be a violation of libertarian logic of historic proportions for someone like Ron Chusid to be railing away at country bumpkins while simultaneously claiming to be an advocate for family traditionalism amid the biggest expansion of state power in 75 years. God, there's got to be a bigger bogeyman than flag-waving creationists who want to have babies!

To be sure, what about this notion that libertarians are just like marriage traditionalists except they don't "impose their life style and personal choices upon others"? Is there any particular age, for example, in which libertarians have decreed it as being okay for kids to have sex and bear children? Of course, folks like me - us "evil neocons" - might sound a little "authoritarian" when rejecting juvenile liberaltarian licentiousness as social policy. You know, some people might actually be inclined to think that their "life style" is actually the superior one for the preservation of life and liberty, and the recreation of preferred standards of right.

I mean really, I'm just blown away here ...

When did left-libertarians abandon universal morals? Can Ron Chusid and his brethren even be taken seriously, when by implication the libertarian thesis holds that every human action, every decision made on the basis of personal liberty, is of equal benefit to the regeneration of moral society? It certainly seems that way, when we have examples (only the most recent) of people like Nadya Suleman - the now notorious "Octomom" - having aggressive fertility treatments at will, essentially on demand, with the demonstrated results likely to put taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in public-benefit expenses. Is that something that's truly in the public good? Whoo hoo, liberaltarians! More choice, more freedom, more out-of-wedlock fertility "science" enabled babies!

The fact is, choice is the handmaiden of responsibility. Liberaltarians, or progressive conservativces, blah, blah, as far as I can see, are hardline leftists who are afraid to admit it, so they cloak themselves in a bunch of incoherent hogwash about superior knowledge of free markets while their electoral "choices" empower Democratic mandarins who are now advancing a proletarian-minded leftist-authoritarianism hell-bent on dismantling the institutions of liberty that have made and kept this nation great for over 200 years.

We're facing a complete bankruptcy of intellectual honesty and moral righteousness, and Ron Chusid's ilk are blazing the trail down the highway of good intentions. So, who really is so "unprepared" for a life of increasing complexity in modernity? Don't bet on the completely bereft liberaltarians, who in fact offer nothing more than the losing hand of demonic compromise to a secular messianism of libertine supremacy.

Think Progress Lies About McCain - Again!

I've become increasingly convinced of the left's fundamental dishonesty - that is, it appears untruthfulness is a core component of radical left-wing ideology.

I frequently expose the left's anti-intellectualism in my writing (see, for example, "Barack Obama, the Netroots, and the "Vital Center" of American Politics"), but extreme mendacity is also a common characteristic of many of those in the left blogosphere.

The proposition is illustrated with reference to Think Progress, the left-wing blogging project editied by Faiz Shakir. Earlier this year Think Progress falsely accused John McCain of plagairism, and was forced to issue an apology.

Also, in April, Gateway Pundit called out Think Progress for its scurrilous Iraq reporting, " 'Think Progress' Publishes Misleading Troop Withdrawal Post."

So it's no surprise that Think Progress is at it again, with a post attacking John McCain as out of touch on gasoline prices.

Patterico has a nice takedown of the accusations:

Think Progress has a post titled McCain: I ‘Don’t See How It Matters’ That I Don’t Know The Price Of Gas. Wow, that sounds pretty bad. Let’s take a look:

In a telephone interview with the Orange County Register earlier this week, John McCain acknowledged he was unaware of the price of gas.

Jeez. That’s really awful. But let’s take a look at the actual exchange that Think Progress is citing:

WICKSOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?

MCCAIN: Oh, I don’t remember. Now there’s Secret Service protection. But I’ve done it for many, many years. I don’t recall and frankly, I don’t see how it matters.

Later in the interview, McCain says:

I’ve been on the campaign trail for so long I don’t remember when I last filled up my own gas tank, but I certainly did for many, many, many years and I understand the difficulties and challenges that it poses for the people of California and my home state of Arizona.

Think Progess cites this as evidence of “McCain’s cluelessness about gas prices.”

But McCain isn’t saying he doesn’t know the price of gas. He is saying that he doesn’t remember the last time he pumped his own gas, and how much it cost then.

So, does John McCain know the cost of a gallon of gas in America? Yes, he does. Here’s a news story from June 18:

“The price of a gallon of gas in America stands at more than four dollars. Yesterday, a barrel of oil cost about 134 dollarsm” said McCain.

Again, that McCain quote is from June 18 — six days before the O.C. Register interview that Think Progress uses to claim McCain doesn’t know the price of gas.

This Think Progress post is a lie. At best, the story is that McCain doesn’t remember the last time he pumped his own gas. Even that is a non-story, since nobody pumps their own gas while on the campaign trail. Someone ask Obama when he last pumped his own gas.

Of course, not all lefty bloggers spread crude falsehoods to advance their political agenda. Still, the leftist project is so intellectually and morally bankrupt that even the mainstream media has made bashing liberals a regular pastime.

Related: Don't miss the comments at the Think Progress post, where one of the readers writes:

Did he really pump his own gas for many, many years? I highly doubt it since self service pumps weren’t around until the late 70’s early 80’s. By that time he was married to Cindy and I’m sure the servants filled the cars in that household. If McCain pumped his own gas it would have been for just a couple of years and then it was still possible to go into service stations that offered either self serve or full service options. I truly doubt he has ever gotten out of a limo or car and pumped his own gas.

The "early 1970s" would be more accurate, but who cares about accuracy when you can smear Cindy McCain as "First Junkie."

Leftist Hypocrisy All the Way Down

The great bulk of recent blogging has covered the virtually unlimited examples of radical left-wing hypocrisy.

Last week's "One Nation" showcased not only the widespread radicalism at the base of the Democrat Party, but also the longstanding official party ties between top Democrat Party organizers and key left-wing movement activists who put together the October 2nd event. But of course neo-commies continue to whine: "But there's no such thing as the monolithic 'left'." We've also had the news of Barack Obama's gangsta rap playlist, which shows how the president has endorsed the racial stereotypes and "pathologies that still haunt and cripple far too many in the black underclass." Where's the outrage against President Obama's racist iPod? We've also had yet another round of classic leftist misogyny with Jerry Brown's "whore" slur of Meg Whitman, but not only has the response been muted (or even buried, in the case of MSNBC), but a purported "women's rights" umbrella group came out to endorse the Democrat candidate within 24 hours of alienating any woman who resents being called a whore. And as I reported today, we saw that Ted Rall, the well-known and award-winning leftist editorial cartoonist, openly proclaimed his call for a revolution against the United States and the installment of a communist dictatorship of the proletariat in its place. On top of that we've got the New York Times and its leftist minions once again distorting the record on Pamela Geller and the opposition to the Ground Zero Cordoba Center. Of course, the great majority of Americans see the mosque project as an affront to the families of the fallen, but the leftists have pushed a false "anti-Muslim" meme that has done nothing except further polarize that nation. (And the left's endorsement of the "Muslim backlash" myth is understandable, since from the academy to the mainstream press and beyond, there's been an open embrace of romanticism and self-denial surrounding radical jihad).

It's all of a piece, as I've said many times. Another one of the hypocrisies of modern times is the deification of Che Guevara to communist sainthood. Humberto Fontova has more on that, "Che Guevara: Guerrilla Doofus and Murdering Coward":

Forty three years ago this week, Ernesto "Che" Guevara got a major dose of his own medicine. Without trial he was declared a murderer, stood against a wall and shot. Historically speaking, justice has rarely been better served. If the saying "What goes around comes around" ever fit, it's here.

"When you saw the beaming look on Che's face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad," said a former Cuban political prisoner Roberto Martin-Perez, to your humble servant here, "you saw there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara." As commander of the La Cabana execution yard, Che often shattered the skull of the condemned man (or boy) by firing the coup de grace himself. When other duties tore him away from his beloved execution yard, he consoled himself by viewing the slaughter. Che's second-story office in Havana’s La Cabana prison had a section of wall torn out so he could watch his darling firing-squads at work.

Even as a youth, Ernesto Guevara's writings revealed a serious mental illness. "My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any vencido that falls in my hands!” This passage is from Ernesto Guevara's famous Motorcycle Diaries, though Robert Redford somehow overlooked it while directing his heart-warming movie.

More at the link.

I'll have more on all of this later. No doubt much of the electorate's repudiation of the Democrats lies in the party's rank dishonesty and hypocrisy, from the president all the way down to the lowest neo-commie netroots bloggers. Meanwhile, previously at American Power: "Progressives Are Communists (If You Didn't Know)."

Repsac3, Hate-Addled Internet Predator, Screams 'Liar' at Virtually Entire World on Politicization of Colorado Shooting

For all of hate-blogger Walter James Casper III's embarrassing, over-the-top bleating, he's in fact never shown that Brain Ross's premature speculation wasn't political. In fact, that Ross sought to tie suspect James Holmes to the tea party was nothing but political, because his statement couldn't be farther from a routine mistake of fact. Ross "investigated" the suspect's name, found out there was a "James Holmes" in Colorado who belonged to tea party groups, and then went on the air with it. He didn't wrongly report the suspect's age or occupation, or some other descriptive non-political fact. He instinctively went with the same well-worn blood libel smear against the allegedly "violent" tea party movement. He was comfortable smearing the tea party for mass murder because that's what network elites do. Simple as that. And of course it was entirely wrong and Ross has been universally condemned for "politicizing" the reporting. Not "misreporting" the story, "politicizing" it in the most disgusting way imaginable. Regina Thomson, President of the Colorado Tea Party Patriots, repudiated Ross's smear as "shameless and reprehensible." This happens every time there's some kind of horrible massacre, for example last year in Tucson. Left-wing journalists, pundits, and bloggers jumped to exploit the bloodshed to destroy conservatives. And that Repsac3 is now so blindingly enraged to be called out on his dishonesty--- when even far-left "Wonkette" called Ross's smear a reprehensible move --- is just, well, pathetic.

And note now that the epic hate blogger didn't think it enough to attack Michelle Malkin, who had written a perfectly reasonable and well-documented report, as a "whiney wingnut victim." No, in his insane descent to dangerous incoherence, he's now basically calling virtually everyone who's responded to the Colorado politicization a "liar":

Politicizing the CO Shootings bit.ly/LEojKb A lie every time @ampowerblog repeats it. ABC ran w/ bad TParty link 2b first, not bias.
— J. Casper (@repsac3) July 22, 2012

Actually, it's Repsac3 who's lying. As I've reported throughout, the condemnation has been virtually universal, left and right, attacking Ross's initial report as disgustingly political. Here's IBD's editorial from Friday, for example, "ABC News' Tea Party Apology Isn't Good Enough":

ABC News quickly apologized after one of its reporters tried to tie the Colorado massacre to the Tea Party. When will the network apologize for the blatant media bias that led to this monumental screw-up?

Less than eight hours after the movie theater shooting spree left 13 dead, "Good Morning America" host George Stephanopoulos turned to reporter Brian Ross who, he said, had "found something that might be significant."

Ross' finding? There's a guy named Jim Holmes who joined the Colorado Tea Party last year.

Stop the presses!

Never mind that a simple online search of the Denver area turns up more than a dozen Jim Holmeses, any one of whom was just as likely to be the shooter as the guy Ross found on the Tea Party site. And never mind that Ross had zip, zero, nada information on the Jim Holmes whose name he did find.

Why bother taking such elemental journalistic steps when you can possibly be the first to tag a right-wing group with a mass shooting?

There's also the question of why Ross' first instinct was to go trolling around Tea Party sites. That, as much as Stephanopoulos and Ross' decision to go on the air with the bogus information, reveals the enormity of the media bias at work here.

This is the same bias that was on glaring display after the Gabby Giffords shooting, when reporters tried — falsely and based on no evidence whatsoever — to pin the shooting on heated Tea Party rhetoric.

It's the same bias that pushed the mainstream press to trumpet unfounded claims that Tea Partyers hurled a racial epithet at a black congressman. And that propelled these same reporters to cover up actual crimes — rapes, murders, destruction of property — perpetrated by their "Occupy Wall Street" friends.

Shortly after Ross' report, ABC News apologized "for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted."

Sorry, but that's not good enough. If ABC News was genuinely sorry, it would take a hard look at how such a fantastically biased report could have made it on the air in the first place.

Exactly right.

And this is the same basic point that Michelle made in her post on Friday, "Blame Righty impulse blows up in media faces…again." And tea party groups are still indignant that they get blood libeled every time there's a national tragedy. See Jennifer Stefano, the Pennsylvania State Director of AFP, at Fox News, "Media must stop falsely accusing the Tea Party every time tragedy strikes."

And here's John Kass, at far-left Chicago Tribune, "ABC makes a wrong — and biased — snap judgment: Colorado massacre quickly becomes political":

How long does it take for a major American television news network to politicize mass murder and blame conservatives for the blood of innocents?

Not long.

It happened on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday morning, as the country woke to the news of the mass murder during the midnight showing of the new Batman movie: A heavily armed man named James Eagan Holmes allegedly killed 12 and injured 58 others in a suburban theater outside Denver.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos, once a top aide to former President Bill Clinton, and ABC reporter Brian Ross teamed up to quickly place the horror at the feet of American conservatives.

Stephanopoulos: I'm going to go to Brian Ross. You've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.

Ross: There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado tea party site as well, talking about him joining the tea party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado. Stephanopoulos: OK, we'll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much. And that's all it took, a mention, a name, a possible connection about a Jim Holmes joining the tea party movement that is reviled by establishment Democrats and (though not often reported) establishment Republicans. The connection was made. It was artfully done.

But there was one thing wrong with the ABC report.

It was the wrong Holmes.

The Holmes ABC referred to was a middle-aged man. The one arrested with the guns and the gas bombs and the mask and the booby-trapped apartment is James Eagan Holmes, a 24-year-old graduate student who was in the process of dropping out of school.

After an onslaught by bloggers over the Internet on Friday, ABC news issued a correction.

"An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado tea party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect," said ABC News in a statement. "ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted."

We all make mistakes. But this one smacks of political bias. And when you add political bias to the rush of breaking news, as seems to have happened here, things get stinky.

It could have been an honest mistake, perhaps. It might have come across as a mistake if Stephanopoulos had interjected and said, "No, Brian, we don't have enough evidence to make that connection to the tea party." Instead, the former aide to Bill Clinton thanked Ross for his reporting. It's no wonder that virtually the entire political establishment reacted the way it did. ABC News was out there on a limb, as James Taranto reported at the Wall Street Journal --- and for someone to come along and then essentially call all these people "liars" is simply beneath contempt. But that's Walter James Casper for you. He's been working the Internet for years, attempting to undermine and destroy conservatives.

I could keep going, because the examples are all over the web. But in fact there's no need to keep going. The facts are out there, but those blinded by ideological bigotry refuse to see them.

Walter James Casper is now back to stalking this blog and sending me unsolicited tweets. He's even kicked back up the old "American Nihilist" hate-site after I reported it to the Irvine Police Department previously. But it's all of a piece, I guess, as a conservative on the web shining truth on progressive evil. The left tries to shut folks down with stalking and intimidation, but you have to shine a light on the hate and defeat them. It takes a lot of time, but Repsac3 is a particularly resistant form of progressive pestilence. He never went away after being reported to the police, despite announcing that I'd "won the Internet." He just shifted gears a bit, and is now back in the hunt for his next political kill.

PREVIOUSLY: "When Even Sick Left-Wing Sites Like 'Wonkette' Want Brian Ross Fired, Despicable Hate-Blogger Repsac3 Attacks Michelle Malkin as 'Whiney Wingnut Victim'."

BACKGROUND: "Intent to Annoy and the Fascist Hate-Blogging Campaign of Walter James Casper III."

June 3, 2008: Barack Obama Makes a Different Kind of History

I'm watching CNN right now. I felt a profound moment of history earlier as Wolf Blitzer announced that Barack Obama had won enough pledged delegates to secure the Democratic presidential nomination:

Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, according to CNN estimates, making him the first African-American in U.S. history to lead a major-party ticket.

Obama picked up a slew of superdelegate endorsements on Tuesday. Those endorsements, combined with the delegates he's projected to receive from South Dakota's primary, will put him past the 2,118 threshold, according to CNN estimates.

Obama will claim victory during a speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to prepared remarks released by his campaign.

"Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States," he's expected to say.

Obama's achievement is personally bittersweet for me, a victory that feels enormously anticlimactic, if not ominous.

I recall in 1988, as a young Democratic Party idealist, I watched Jesse Jackson's "Common Ground" address to the Democratic National Convention. I thought Jackson said more about the fundamental issues facing the country than any other candidate in the race that year.

While I did not like Michael Dukakis, I believed George H.W. Bush to be an American patriot and a fundamentally decent man. Yet, above the two, I felt that Jackson's eloquence rose to the heights of the great civil rights leaders of the past - even to the standards of Martin Luther King, Jr. After the Reagan years, its seemed to me - as a young man - that the country was moving too far to the right, and that the concerns of the disadvantaged were being swept aside in the tide of a morning-in-America political realignment.

When G.H.W.B. was elected, I saw him as my president, my national leader (there was no demonization of the enemy in my heart), and I believed the country was in good hands - and that perhaps indeed a "kindler, gentler" America might pull back from what many argued was the "greed-is-good" phenomenon of the earlier decade.

But in 1992, after the recession of the time, when many people spoke of an "economic depression," I welcomed the "pulse of morning" that was the promise of William Jefferson Clinton.

Yet by the end of that decade I felt betrayed. The man who had evinced so much vitality and hope, who showed that anyone in America might succeed and attain the most powerful leadership position in the world, betrayed the stature of the office through the dirt and dishonesty of a sexual liaison with a young White House intern.

When Al Gore lost the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, I was not bitter. I saw the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore as legitimate, and I expected that the Democrats would have a shot at returning to the presidency in 2004.

But then we were attacked, on September 11, and for all my shock of the violation of the American mainland, I did not view the war on terror in partisan terms - I believed deeply that the country would rally to a cause greater than the individual, that the fabric of unity in nation would guide us to meet a larger challenge than anything my generation has faced before.

But that did not happen. Hard-left partisans showed little if any support for our deployment in Afghanistan, and I learned the hard way the true nature of the domestic fifth column, in seeing the anti-American attacks on the United States, with calls for "a million Mogadishus." I personally spoke out, at campus "war forums" (actually, antiwar rallies), in solidarity with the Bush adminstration on regime change in Iraq. Since that time I've never wavered in my support for the deployment nor for our troops in the field. Over the past five years, as even some of the most eloquent war supporters threw in the towel, or leaned close to admitting defeat, I never lost hope that our cause was right and just, and that the United States would prevail.

Instead, I have been radicalized by the radicals, and in my teaching and blogging I've resisted - forcefully and relentlessly - the antiwar nihilism on the left, and I have held firm in my unflinching belief that Americans would win, that our troops would take it from Baghdad's Euphrates to the streets of Basra and Fallujah, that we would fight, in the alleys, in the fields, and on the pockmarked highways of death, with their improvised explosive devices. We would never surrender.

So, now, on June 3, 2008, I feel this moment in history has no greater significance than a validation that we have indeed overcome. Today is, more importantly, unlike the day, on June 6, 1944, that Americans embarked on the D-Day invasion of Europe, to liberate the continent from the grips of Nazi totalitarianism. Americans then were united in the cause of a world free of the jackboots of oppression. And we did emerge victorious then, through ups and downs, through setbacks and near defeats, to end the spread of Nazi expansionism and genocide.

I do not see that kind of history in the electoral campaign today. The Democrats today are the party of defeat, and as the netroots hordes have beaten the drums of ignomious retreat, the contenders for the party's nomination have pandered remorselessly to the hell that is far left-wing Bush-hatred, Lieberman derangement, and Israel-bashing anti-Semitism.

The country that the left identifies as the contemporary manifestation of world evil is not the world in which I live. The country denounced as a hopeless abomination of hatred and repression is not the nation to which immigrants from around the world scratch and kick to make it to our shores, to join the great democracy that is the last best hope of freedom. That world that the left identifies as an unmitigated evil is foreign to my identity and sensibility, to my ideal of America as the bastion of universal opportunity.

No, June 3, 2008, is unlike that day, almost sixty-four years ago, when our people had a purpose. I see in Barack Obama, in his claim that "this is our moment," as pulling the country irretrievably into a netherworld of amorphous "change," hand-held by the soulless armies of 60s-era radicalism, and by the domestic bombers and black liberationists who populate the flag-crushing backwater of far left-wing multicultural jacobinism.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have now given their speeches. She won't concede, while he calls for a new America of ambiguous "forward movement" to some of partisan transformation.

So, in this historic moment, while I'm genuinely astounded in this nation's ability to open the doors of oppportunity to those who for so long were oppressed under the weight of real racist reaction and gender discrimination, there is little inside me that suggests we are seeing a new Reaganite affirmation of a "city on a hill" or a Clintonian promise of a new "pulse of morning." Instead, it seems that Obama and his hordes represent the new vanguard of the proletariat, who will seek to move this country far away from its historic roots in a political culture of anti-aristocratic egalitarianism and individualism, to a neo-collectivist regime, with higher taxes, regulation, and anti-Republican war-crimes prosecutions at home, combined with foreign policy surrender and unconditional diplomatic appeasement abroad.

That's my take on things. As always, I'll have more later.

The Myth of Democratic-Stimulus Popularity

One of the most common left-wing memes over the last couple of weeks holds that Republicans are "shooting themselves in the foot" in opposing the "a popular initiative backed by a popular congress and a Democratic congressional leadership that, while not particular popular, is still more popular than they are" (via Memeorandum).

I'm not exactly sure what goes on in the minds of radical leftists. No doubt the multi-sensorial elation of the Democrats' endorphinic triumph in November has neutralized the brain's regular neural processes of reasoning for some of these folks. Or, more simply, hubristic totalitarianism by doctrine systematically ignores evidence that repudiates the hegemonic party line of the hard-left Democratic forces.

For example, Rasmussen reported Wednesday that "When it comes to the nation’s economic issues, 67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress." Well, so much for the popularity of the "Democratic congressional leadership." Indeed, as Rasmussen continues, "The new Congress fares worse on this question that the previous Congress."

And how much more popular are the Democrats than their Republican opponents? Not at all, actually, as Michael Barone points out, "Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that Democrats are currently ahead of Republicans by only 40 percent to 39 percent. Given that this generic ballot question over the years has tended to understate Republicans' performances in actual elections, one gathers that if the 2010 election for House seats were held today, Republicans would win or come close to winning a majority of seats—which is to say, they would gain about 40 seats."

On the Democratic economic program, polls have found consistent reservations with the economic stimulus package. In fact, support has been dropping like a rock as the bill's true characterization as an interest group pork-barrel spending boondoggle has taken hold in the popular consciousness.

CBS News last week reported a bare majority supporting the proposal, and the trend line was going down: "Slightly more than half the country approves of President Obama's $800 billion-plus stimulus package, a new CBS News poll finds. But support for the bill has fallen 12 points since January, and nearly half of those surveyed do not believe it will shorten the recession."

What's interesting (and certainly problematic for the Democrats, who have mounted their recovery program under a veil of stealth), is that the more people learn about the plan, the less they like it, as Pew notes: "Those who have heard a lot about the plan express the most skepticism, with 41% saying it is a bad idea compared with 28% of those who have heard only a little. This stands in contrast to the balance of opinion a month ago, when people who had heard a lot about the plan were more likely to back it than those who had heard only a little."

Leftists will cite generic poll findings, like Gallup's, that indicate a broad public backing for the measure, but these results are completely partisan, and backing for the measure among political independents "is totally flat."

Meanwhile, a campaign of political vilification is heating up on the left in the wake of Senator Judd Gregg's withdrawal as President Obama's treasury secretary-designee. Daily Kos is leading the smearing chorus: "Earlier this week we learned that the Republican Party has embraced the tactics of the Taliban, and today the insurgents have adopted another word associated with terrorists: they are "emboldened." Why? Because Judd Gregg changed his mind about heading the Commerce Department."

Apparently, the euphoria of the "Obama Kool-Aid" is wearing off and the nihilist left is reduced to equating U.S. senators of the Repubican Party with the kind of terrorist barbarians who have killed thousands of Americans over the last decade.

Thus, behold the fundamental nature of corruption and dishonesty that is the bailiwick of today's Democratic-left.

The Left's Fundamental Dishonesty

I've commented on the lack of "divine soul" on the left recently, for example, when writing about the radical demonization campaigns against Tim Russert and Jesse Helms.

One aspect found among many left-wing activists and commentators is a blatant disregard for the ideals of truth and fair play. It turns out that Daily Kos is applauding the underhanded tactics of Code Pink operatives in forging fake press passes to gain access to President Bush's 4th of July citizenship ceremony:

Here's how the Kos author describes his collaboration with Medea Benjamin, a Code Pink co-founder:

Early this morning I found an unusual email from Medea Benjamin waiting for me in my inbox. It seems that last week when she was arrested in Florida, they confiscated her Global Exchange press pass, and could I make her another one?

Ever since I figured out how to duplicate Medea's press pass for other members of CodePink, I have been doing so with her blessing.

A look at the Global Exchange website reveals the group as a progressive action lobbying organization, not a news media outlet. That's probably close enough to "journalism" for the postmodern nihilists in our midst.

Hat Tip: LGF

James Webb, Atheist Hypocrite, Loves teh Gays

James Webb, of Brain Rage, was creepily interested in my post last night, "Democratic Values! Left-Wing Alaska Operative 'Ghoulshops' Trig Palin!"

In his entry, "American Power and Trig Palin 'Ghoulshopping', James agrees radical Linda Biegel's Photoshop of Trig Palin was indeed "ghoulish." But then he attempts to walk it back because it wasn't really Trig. It was "just" the "evil" Eddie Burke:

Now while I wouldn't go so far as Don in saying that he's a grotesque ridicule of Down Syndrome I will say that he does indeed look a bit ghoulish ...

Hunh ... (gasping here, eyes bulging out of sockets) ... WTF!! It's ghoulish or it ain't! Help me out, yo!

Oh, you know what? It's not ghoulish if it's Palin's baby, because the Palins are Wasilla hillbillies and Eddie Burke's ... well, he's a "Homophobic, Red Shirt, Bible-Thumping Nazi, Gay Bashing, Tea-Bagging Racist, White Guy Bigot!

Okay, gotcha! That makes it a-okay!

Actually, full snark stop here for a second ... it's not okay!

Weasel Zippers nails it: "Something this vile, mean spirited and vitriolic is the sole property of the left..."

And Texas for Palin adds this, "Shocked? Don't be. These are Democrats. It's what they do. It's who they are."

Conservatives for Sarah Palin have been updating their original post all day, for example, this shocker! "Dr. Chill: Liar, Liar; Now They're Claiming That We Made the Photo Ugly."

But that's just the typical dishonesty and hypocrisy you get from the radical leftists.

Another quick example is James Webb's policy of tracking hit pieces on American Power back to ... wait for it ... American Power!

That's right! Can you believe it?!! This freak, James Webb, writes a post hammering me as representing "everyday stupidity of right-wing religious neoconservatives." And then he tracks-back, twice, like a MOFO LINK WHORE - FREAKING A!!

I am not even kidding! Dude! You can't make this sh** up! Check the track-back links, here and here! It's like, yo, he thinks I'm a bro or something!

And guess what? What's so wierd about it is that, yeah, I'm like totally cool with folks leaving their hits in my comments section. I'm a link whore myself, frankly. No shame in it, IMHO, as long as everyone reciprocates.

BUT JAMES WEBB FLIPPED A WIG WHEN I DROPPED MY BLACK FLAG PUNK POST IN HIS COMMENTS A WHILE BACK -or some such bunk, who knows WTF is up with this guy's hysterics??!!

It turns out that James Webb sent me a whacked, totally pissed-off HOLY HELL INDIGNANT e-mail to show it:

I warned you once before Don when you shamelessly linked some post about your skateboarding youth on a completely unrelated comment thread at my site. I left that link up and made it clear that I would delete any future comments not at least tangentially relevant to their posts ...

Okay, okay, what was it? Maybe my post wasn't "tangentially related." It's not like I was trying to rip the guy a new one with, well, stuff like:

The term 'sore losers' seems a bit simplistic and trite to explain this apparent derangement and never ending persecution complex but at this point I can't think of any other rational explanation for this type of behavior.

Sheesh, that's what I get for trying to be a homie! Man, remind me never to try to drop off an old punk rock post at some WANNABE-HIP dude's freaking blog! Forget about, ah ... you know, trying to be, like, friendly!!

But wait!!

That's not all!

James Webb hearts him teh gays, but he doesn't like it one bit when you call him out on it! Remember my post on "How to Get a Blogger Content Warning"? That's where you can find some gay homo-sex blogs by clicking through James's OUT Campaign link. Alexander the Gay's blog pops right up (but wait, don't go there ... unless you're looking to see James' phat-hung Asian dudes!).

It's like I told folks: "Shoot, if you need a happening online portal to teh well-hung gays, James Webb is your man!"

But, boy, did the dude flip his stack at that one! James was steaming hotter than a spooge-soaked hunk of throbbing gristle!!

(Oh yeah, snark's back on here, just in case anyone takes this too seriously.)

I'm surprised too! James is down with the homosexuals, so you wouldn't think he'd get so pissed about giving folks the heads up on his gay-supporting atheism. I mean, really, James is totally down on the e-mails to his bro Andrew Sullivan, and the Atlantic's barebacker even links to James blog! Now that is inside baseball! Switch-hitting too!

NTTAWWT!!

Come out, come out, wherever you are!!

Just be careful dude! With the support of Linda Biegel, James is practically getting over there into Trig-Truther territory! And even more importantly, you've got to look out for that AIDS-related dementia! Pretty soon, we'll have to get Christopher Badeaux to put up a huge bio-piece nailing down James' descent into anti-neocon (anti-Semitic) madness!

But hey, everything's cool, alright?

I'm not going to delete James' spam links in my comments section. Just as long as he stays the f*** back, okay? I like teh gays ... really, some of my best friends ... But frankly, I don't do the flip-floppy on the side!

The Left's Climate of Hate and Libel

Awesome essay from Glenn Reynolds, at WSJ, "The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel" (at Memeorandum):

Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing spree might fill the bill.

With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's words, a "climate of hate."

The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—"lock and load"—and talked about "targeting" opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's district on a list of congressional districts "bullseyed" for primary challenges. When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.

There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source ....

To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on "rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

It's either/or for the progressives, but RTWT.

BooMan responds, for example, repeating the same old line that Loughner was most likely clinically deranged, but it's the rights fault anyway, or it's the right's fault that they're getting blamed, false or not. Got that? Freakin' asshat.

PREVIOUSLY: "Jared Loughner Fixated on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Attended 'Congress On Your Corner' Event in 2007."

And the Megyn Kelly clip is available here as well, in case this one gets pulled down before I'm back online tomorrow morning.

RELATED: Doug Ross, "Which Democrats objected to the use of mass murder as a vehicle for disseminating propaganda?", and "Breaking: Sarah Palin responsible for mass bird kills, genocide in the Sudan, and AT&T's loss of exclusive rights to the iPhone."

Plus, at Gay Patriot, "Why no theories of left-wing responsibility for Reagan’s shooting?", and The Rhetorican, "Alinsky: Original Sin In the Glass House of Eden."

Speaking Truth to Democratic Big Government

Here's how the Los Angeles Times described the Democratic majority's economic stimulus package last week:

With Congress moving toward passage of an $800-billion-plus economic stimulus plan, big government is back. Unabashed. With a vengeance.

The stimulus is bigger than the Pentagon's entire budget. It's more than the United States has spent on the war in Iraq. And its hundreds of provisions reach into almost every aspect of American life - including workers' paychecks, local schools, digital television and modernizing medical records.

Perhaps not since the Great Depression has Congress set out to expand and redefine so dramatically the government's role in the economy, all in one bewilderingly complex blueprint.

Now, this morning's Washington Post reports that a number of top economists concur on the virtually unprecedented scale of the left's stimulus agenda:

With Congress moving closer to adopting a $820 billion stimulus package and the Obama administration poised to unveil a new bank bailout plan, economists say that the federal government is taking its biggest role in the economy in a generation.

States that once aspired to blaze trails independent from Washington are turning to it for money, banks and businesses that once decried regulation now are seeking federal capital, grants or tax cuts and individuals are looking for tax relief.

"This is a seismic shift in the role of government in our society," said Allen Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics. "Those who believe the government can be an effective, positive instrument for good will have another chance to try it," said Sinai, a political independent.

To reiterate Sinai's comment above, this is indeed a "seismic shift," and it foretells a major reorientation of the relationship between government and the individual in society.

Yet, there's a fundamental level of disingenuity in all of the public debate on this. People do not like identifying the ideological implications of this shift to unprecedented state expansion. When conservative commentators attacked the Democrats in 2008 as "socialist" for their big government planning, on health care, tax increases, and government regulation, the left-wing media and bloggers attacked them with an existential ferocity.

This week's cover story at Newsweek continues the essential dishonesty, "We Are All Socialists Now." Authors Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas name not President Barack Obama and the Democrats for our current shift to a European socialist state, but ... wait for it ... George W. Bush:

The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries ....

We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.

This is so dishonest, it's almost sick. Republicans in Congress, during last year's bailout debate, wanted to use big government to rescue markets (and base conservatives howled in disgust every step of the way). Democrats today want to use big government to expand the welfare state to levels that put the Great Society to shame.

The left, in other words, wants to nationalize markets in furtherance of its ideological and programmatic foundations. A look at the House Appropriations Committee's press release, "Summary: American Recovery and Reinvestment," with its smorgasbord of big goverment, pork-barrel spending largesse, should put to rest talk of conservatives as creating the "biggest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years." The Johnson administration created Medicare in 1965. Both parties have accepted the need to support the health care of American retirees.

But recall it was also the same "conservative GOP administration" that campaigned for an entire year, unsuccessfully, for the privatization of Social Security as the marquee program in a conservative shift to an "ownership society." The Wall Street Journal laid out the scope of the Bush administration's vision in its essay, "In Bush's 'Ownership Society,' Citizens Would Take More Risk":

President Bush's campaign to revamp Social Security is just the boldest stroke in a much broader effort: To rewrite the government's social contract with citizens that was born of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and expanded by Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

In what Mr. Bush calls an "ownership society," Americans would assume more of the responsibilities - and risks - now shouldered by government. In exchange, the theory goes, they would get the real and intangible benefits of owning their own homes, controlling their retirement savings, and using tax credits or vouchers to shop for education, job training and health insurance.

The emphasis would be on the individual, supplanting a 70-year-old approach in which citizens pool resources for the common good - and government doles out benefits. In the Bush vision, the nation's social safety nets would still exist, but on a smaller scale, targeting the most needy. Others would move to private-market alternatives of their own choosing.

I have seen really nothing in the last year of economic turmoil to convince me that conservatives have abandoned the lost hopes of the Bush administration's vision for an even greater society of individualism and prosperity.

And if there's any evidence that hopes for an opportunity society have been abandoned, it's in the the priorities of the current Barack Obama administration, who has called the challenges facing the country today unequaled in history, and he's announced an unprecedented agenda for massive governmental change to avoid a "catastrophe."

So, while folks may indeed take issue with Republican craveness at Wall Street bailouts - as well as the party's larger historical capitulation to the welfare state since Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964 - at the most basic level of ideology, today's left is on the cusp of achieving it's wildest dreams of the quasi-Marxist Europeanization of American life.

It's time for a little honesty about all of this.

Reality Crashing Down on Obama and the Obama-Cult Media

From Andrew Klavin, at City Journal, "A Fantasy Election, an Imaginary Man":

Even before his inauguration, Barack Obama was an imaginary man, the creation of his admirers. Think back to the 2008 Time magazine cover depicting him as FDR, the Newsweek cover of the same year on which he was shown casting Lincoln’s shadow, or the $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”—this in 2009, less than a year after he had taken office. It was not that Obama had done nothing to deserve these outsized comparisons and honors—it was not just that he had done nothing—it was that he seemed for all the world to be a blank screen on which such hysterical fantasies could too easily be projected, a two-dimensional paper doll just waiting to be dressed in leftist dreams.

This weird quality of emptiness incited the imaginations of his opponents as well. Among the more paranoid on the right, he’s been called several kinds of Manchurian Candidate: a radical disguised as a moderate, a Muslim disguised as a Christian, a foreigner disguised as an American, and so on. The idea was that his hollow identity was his own insidious creation, the result of sealed college records, votes of “present” in the Illinois state senate, and a supra-partisan persona carefully crafted after a scuttled lifetime of revolutionary ferocity.

To be sure, Obama has disowned the depth of his past associations with such fire-breathing America-haters as William Ayers (“A guy who lives in my neighborhood”) and Jeremiah Wright (“He was never my spiritual mentor”) with startling insouciance. And such previous Obamas as the race-baiting, black-talking demagogue of a 2007 video recently covered in full for the first time by The Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson are not at all apparent in the Obama of the Oval Office or the campaign trail—whom he himself describes as a “non-threatening” statesman. But I think the real Obama has been more or less plain to see. Norman Podhoretz described him best in a 2011 Wall Street Journal op-ed: a typical product of the anti-American academic left, committed to transforming U.S. capitalism into a social-democratic system like Sweden’s.

The mystery Obama—the hollow receptacle of out-sized fantasies left and right—is not a creation of his own making, political chameleon though he may well be. It emanates instead from a journalistic community that no longer in any way fulfills its designated function, that no longer even attempts the fair presentation of facts and current events aimed at helping the American electorate make up its mind according to its own lights. Rather, left-wing outlets like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and the like have now devoted themselves to fashioning an image of the world they think their audiences ought to believe in—that they may guide us toward voting as they think we should. They have fallen prey to that ideological corruption that sees lies as a kind of virtue, as a noble deception in service to a greater good.

Theirs are largely passive lies and lies of omission. The active frauds—NBC’s dishonest editing of videos to reflect a leftist worldview, ABC’s allowing Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos to masquerade as a newsman, the Los Angeles Times’ suppressing even the transcript of the video in their possession that shows candidate Barack Obama at a meeting with a PLO-supporting sheik—these are only egregious salients of the more consistent, underlying dishonesty. The real steady-state corruption is revealed in the way Obama scandals like Fast and Furious, Benghazi-gate, and the repeated breaking of federal campaign laws have been wildly underplayed, while George W. Bush’s non-scandals, like the naming of Valerie Plame and the firings of several U.S. attorneys at the start of his second term, were blown out of all proportion.

And it is revealed in Obama’s blankness, his make-believe greatness, and the suppression, ridicule, and dismissal of any evidence that he is not the man this powerful media faction once wanted so badly for him to be...

VIDEO CREDIT: iOWNTHEWORLD.

Sarah Palin Confirms 17 Year-Old Daughter Pregnant

Breaking news has it that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's 17 year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant. Here's Katherine Seelye's report:

The 17-year-old daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, is five months pregnant, Senator McCain’s campaign advisers announced today.

The daughter, Bristol, plans to marry the father, the campaign said.

In a statement, Mrs. Palin said: “Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows that she has our unconditional love and support.”

The announcement was intended to counter rumors by liberal bloggers that Mrs. Palin had claimed to have given birth to her fifth child in April when, according to the rumors, the child was her daughter’s.

Groups that oppose abortion rights had been thrilled with Mr. McCain’s selection of Mrs. Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his running mate, partly because of her opposition to abortion. It is not clear how social conservatives will respond to the latest news.

The campaign intends to cast this as the kind of situation that ordinary American families face.

The McCain campaign says it was aware of her daughter’s pregnancy before it named her as the running mate on Friday.

It's still early, but some initial reaction on the left is cautious. Here's Steve Benen, for example:

Now, there are different schools of thought on this, but I'm very much inclined to think a politician's kids are entirely off-limits for public scrutiny. Bristol Palin's pregnancy has no political relevance whatsoever.

What's interesting is that had the leftist conspiracy mongers not jumped to attack Governor Palin with the most insane rumors imaginable, the Democrats might have been able to make a case of conservative inconsistency in the promotion of family values.

Now, however, Bristol Palin's pregancy and pending marriage to the father look even more likely to endear McCain-Palin to average American household members who share similar everyday challenges in raising functional, healthy families.

My blessings go out to Governor Palin and her loved ones.

**********

UPDATE: This comment from Denise-Mary at Amy Proctor's is a more powerful response to the news of Bristol Palin's pregancy than anything I could say:

If these candidates, McCain-Palin, previously did not have all of my respect, they do now. Palin's straightforward statement effectively quashes any further discussion on the topic. Further, McCain apparently stated he knew of Bristol's pregnancy, and chose Palin as his running mate anyway. My hat's off to both of them. Choosing to keep her child is the most personal decision a young woman can make, and now that she's in the spotlight, will require phenomenal courage.

Of course there will be those who "trash" her and "family values." To those I would say: is not compassion a "family value?"

By the way, I'm a 56-year-old former Dem, female, who aborted a child decades ago. That child still haunts my heart, and will until the day I die. Kudos to Bristol, Palin, and McCain.

Also, unprincipled left-wing allegations of McCain's dishonesty on prior knowledge of the pregnancy are already flying, although even some of the most ruthless neocon-bashers are hestitant the smear the Palins, so caution may indeed to the norm with this, even on the left.

David Hoogland Noon, Abominable Academic Wretch

UPDATE: Some in the comments are taking exception to my reference to "Lesbian, Gays and Marriage." My bad. The blog is Lawyers, Guns and Money, and the homosexual reference to "LGM" is an inside joke in the context of a comment at this post. At issue here is David Noon's historical imcompetence. I have no clue as to his sexual orientation, and that's his business if he's some postmodern bum jockey.

**********

One of the more amazing things about blogging is that hopelessly obtuse left-wing buffoons can be found in both the depths of the online fever swamps and in what we'd presume to be the refined halls of academe.

It turns out that Dave Noon, of Lesbians, Gays and Marriage (aka LGM) and the University of Alaska Southeast, resides in both places, moving back and forth between each in a manner not unlike a three-toed sloth.

Both Dave Noon and Robert Farley, his similarly dull blogging cohort at LGM, have written poorly-formed essays attacking David Horowitz and Ben Johnson's Party of Defeat. As I've shown in a series of posts at this blog, these two struck out wildly in their attempts to take down Horowitz and Johnson, and in fact their efforts were so bad as to raise serious - even disqualifying - questions of academic competence (and of moral grace as well, for example here).

Noon in particular has had a weird obssession with American Power, and he's gotten to calling me unflattering names like "AmericaneoClown," a perverted version of my online handle. Yet, his tune's changing a bit, in that he's now feigning a faux-elitist detachment in his more recent attempts to smear my reputation. This turn is evident in Noon's latest response to one my recent essays, "Continuing Partisan Debate on Iraq." In that entry I noted Noon's scandalous dishonesty in making historical assertions completely divorced from reality - I mean really, I was literally was shaking my head in a kind of abject disbelief that this man would make such hare-brained claims.

Well, he's done it again. And, frankly, after a while it seems Noon's cluelessness just kind of blurs together into a supreme concerto of imbecilic accomplishment.

In the comments to the post above, Noon writes, "Weber's book, for example, makes nothing close to the argument you claim it does ..."

The reference is to Eugen Weber's, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s, and my description suggesting that it ...

... examines the collapse of national morale in interwar France that contributed to the country's utter collapse in the face of German power in 1940 (not unlike the evaporation of outrage and resolve among the American left since 9/11).

While Noon asserts the book "makes nothing close to the argument you claim it does," he also alleges that I'm "dishonest" (clearly a tit-for-tat play, since I've proved how well the adjective describes his own pseudo-historical project), and then asks with indignation, "Have you even read these book [sic]?", while admitting he has not!

Okay, let's think about this for a minute: I suggested that Weber's book on interwar France "examines the collapse of national morale" that contributed to the "country's utter collapse" in the face of Nazi expansionism in 1940.

Now, looking at my personal copy (which I did not have in front of me when I wrote the original post), the book jacket describes interwar French culture as follows:

Caught between the memory of a brutal war won at frightful cost and fear of another cataclysm, France in the 1930s suffered a failure of nerve...

Turning to page 6 in the introduction, we have this passage:

In rueful retrospect, the 1920s were l'après-guerre, lively and optimistic. The 1930s are distinctly l'avant-guerre: increasingly morose and ill at ease. Contemporaries varied in their perceptions. A few clear-sighted ones seem to have seen war coming since the negotiations at Versailles. More sensed it in the middle thirties, when German rearmament kicked off in deadly earnest and Hitler began to break with treaties that his country had freely signed. By 1936, when the French stood by while German troops reoccupied the Rhineland, France, in some French eyes, began to lose the next war. Internal peace was also badly troubled when the exaltations and anxieties of the Popular Front spurred talk of civil war that might outmatch the bloody war in Spain.

So, we can see, now that I've gone to the source to support my previous comments on the book in a blog post, Dave Noon doesn't know WTF he's talking about. Not only that, the passage above explicitly rebuts Noon's unhinged claim - in the narrow sense, at least - that there's never been a book based on the thesis that a minority party (or coalition of minor parties, as in the French case) that "bears responsibility for taking the country to the brink of ruin" (again, I stress the narrow sense, as to give Noon room to breathe).

But that's not all. Looking further at Weber's book, we see the following passage on page 244, from chapter 9, "The Nightmare of Fear":

Through most of the 1920s the French talked softly and carried a small stick. Their army was understaffed, undermanned, underpaid, and overrated. Their foreign policy pretended first that Germany could be forced to execute the provisions of Versailles, then that it didn't matter if they didn't. One thing no one bothered to pretend was that force existed to be used. As a Communist deputy eager to cut military expenditure asserted, "You don't want any more victgories. It follows that you're building an army to prevent defeat." Renaud Jean was right: The conquering, offensive doctrines that caused so many deaths between 1914 and 1918 had been discarded. Soldiers had learned that enemy fire kills. They distrusted the offensive doctrines of the prewar Staff College, the emphasis on vitalism and will, the prediliction for charges with the bayonet. The dominant doctrine was now that "the power of the defensive constitutes the most important and least questionable lesson of the war." Prudence, protection, avoidance of risk: The army would be ready, but to do nothing much. Was that why, in February 1932, the former Ministry of War became the Ministry of Defense?

Anyone with the slightest inkling of 20th century French history knows that the fall of France to Hitler's armies, in less than three weeks from the start of the German invasion on May 10, 1940, is one of the most ignominious military defeats in modern history.

Unfortunately, Dave Noon, an historian by formal training, does not know this history, and he's admitted to not even reading Weber's research.

If the fall of France, and the comprehensive social decay that led to it, is not a "moral collapse," I don't know what is. Recall too, that the comparison to the American left following the September 11 attacks is completely appropriate. The political and ideological base of today's Democratic Party can only be described as rooting for America's enemies over these last few years. Blinded by an insane hatred for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the entire administrative apparatus - from the Defense Department, to State, Justice, and beyond, the left's done everything that a political opposition possibly could do - short of blowing up Capitol Hill (knock on wood, Bill Ayers, yo!) - to stab American foreign and defense policy in the back. In the case of top Democratic Party officials, the partisan war on American foreign policy began within months after Congress approved a resolution authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime. For the antiwar hordes in the streets and online, opposition to a forward response to aggression against the U.S. began almost as soon as bodies were being recovered at Ground Zero. " MoveOn.org opposed Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the campaign to rout the Taliban from power. And in 2003, Columbia University professor Nicholas De Genova, before a crowd of 3,000 students and faculty, called for "a million Mogadishus" when announcing his opposition to the Bush administration's build-up to Iraq. The examples go on and on, ad infinitum.

Dave Noon, and not to mention Robert Farley and the rest of the whacked nihilist crew at LGM, cheers such ignorant anti-Americanism as some cool postmodernist philosophy of righteous repudiation of this country's culture, tradition, and strength.

Noon, ostensibly a professional academic historian, gives his field of training a bad name; and the rest of his allied dunderheaded intellectual poseurs should refrain from commenting on the scholarly issues of the day, as those with genuine professional acumen haven't the time to sweep up after their all too frequent unhinged (and not unembarrassing) pseudo-academic implosions.