An Unhelpful Debate — For the Obama Cult!

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Obama Matrix":

Liberals and the media are attempting to explain President Obama's anemic debate performance by claiming that he was merely "rusty" and out of practice, or he doesn't watch enough MSNBC, or he was consumed by the burdens of the office. Maybe it was all those security briefings he's not attending between the fundraisers and political rallies.

This may be comforting to his supporters, but our reading is that something far different was on display Wednesday night. For the first time, the carefully crafted campaign illusions that the President has constructed were exposed. Mitt Romney had the audacity to describe Mr. Obama's record and his own agenda in ways that the American public has rarely heard. The Obama Matrix collapsed into bits on the Denver stage.

The most instructive exchange came early, after Mr. Obama had already denounced Mr. Romney's "central economic plan" for the third time. He repeated his lines from the stump about Mr. Romney's $5 trillion tax cut for millionaires and billionaires that "dumps those costs on middle-class Americans" and raises their taxes by $2,000.

Mr. Romney has no such plan. Mr. Obama simply made it up, with an assist from one of his former economists and others at a liberal Washington think tank. Mr. Romney said as much categorically. He then added that Mr. Obama would continue to make the accusation, on the theory that incantation could make it true, "but that is not the case, all right?" and "I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families."

Mr. Obama was nonplused, perhaps because he had come to believe what he was saying in the bubble of his campaign rallies and unquestioned by the media. The best reply he could offer was that, "Well, for 18 months he's been running on this tax plan. And now, five weeks before the election, he's saying that his big, bold idea is 'never mind.'" But for 18 months it has been Mr. Obama who has campaigned against a mirage of his own imagining. No wonder he was stumped.

Then there was health care, when Mr. Obama claimed the Romney-Ryan Medicare reforms would force seniors to pay $6,000 a year and leave "folks like my grandmother at the mercy of the private insurance system."

But Mr. Romney didn't sound like a wild-eyed radical as he patiently described his own "premium support" ideas, which would simply require traditional Medicare to compete with the private market and let seniors "make their own choice." If government is better, he added, that's fine, but "my experience is the private sector typically is able to provide a better product at a lower cost."

The former Governor sounded reasonable and pragmatic, and some pundits are now claiming that he changed his platform or that he is trying to dump GOP "extremist" ballast. He didn't and he doesn't have any. He described his center-right reforms truthfully. The Obama cheerleaders were shocked that Mr. Romney's remarks didn't repeat the Obama-created caricature that they've spent months broadcasting as if it were gospel.

The other illusion that exploded Wednesday is the one Mr. Obama tells about his own Presidency. He always mentions the recession he inherited and the many great feats he will perform in his second term. What he rarely mentions are the last four years...

He can't mention the last four years, because he's kept none of his campaign promises on fixing the economy and he hasn't improved the lives of the American people.

But read the whole thing.

And then check this sad and truly disturbed editorial at the New York Times, "An Unhelpful Debate" (via Memeorandum). The editors are nearly as deluded as the Democrat campaign staffers attempting to spin a "strong" Obama debate performance Wednesday in Denver. The left has been hit hard. You don't recover from something like that very quickly, but it's excruciatingly painful to even watch these people groping their way back to reality. This whole thing has been like prying open the cult of this presidency to reveal a diseased rotting rump of a political movement attempting to wring reelection from the collapsing facade of those heady times of four years ago.

Photo Credit: The People's Cube.

Deliberate and Organized Attack in Benghazi

This is the latest spin on the administration's FUBAR response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.

See the Washington Post, "In statement, spy chief’s office defends evolving accounts of Benghazi attack, cites shifting intelligence":

The office of the nation’s spy chief issued a statement Friday defending the Obama administration’s accounts of the siege of U.S. missions in Libya, saying it only became clear in the aftermath that it was “a deliberate and organized terrorist attack.”

The statement appeared aimed at quieting criticism, mostly from Republicans, of the administration’s shifting characterizations of a Sept. 11 assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. Officials initially described the attack as spontaneous but in recent days have said it was an act of terrorism with links to al-Qaeda.

The release from the office of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. came as lawmakers sought more details about the siege in Benghazi. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a letter to the State Department on Thursday posing questions about intelligence leading up to the attack and the adequacy of the security at U.S. compounds.

Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper, said that U.S. agencies have altered their assessments based on intelligence that has emerged through an ongoing investigation.

“In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo,” Turner said. That information was conveyed to administration officials as well as members of Congress.

But analysts have since “revised our initial assessments to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists,” Turner said. “Some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaeda.”

The release marks a rare instance in which the intelligence director’s office has weighed in through a public statement on details of an event overseas, let alone one that remains under investigation during a presidential campaign. In an e-mail, Turner indicated that the director’s office, while seeking to stay out of the political fray, became convinced that it should clarify the intelligence community’s position.

“I put out the message because I think it’s important that people understand that early reports are often wrong or incomplete, but our intelligence community continues to work around the clock to gather details and understand exactly what happened in Benghazi,” Turner said.

And here's the editorial at WaPo, "Stop playing politics with the Benghazi attack":

THE OBAMA administration’s descriptions of what happened Sept. 11 in the Libyan city of Benghazi have evolved in a way that some — including congressional Republicans — find suspicious. Initially, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described an “attack” in which “heavily armed militants” assaulted a U.S. compound, leading to the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Four days later, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said that “extremist elements” had joined a demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate against an anti-Muslim video.

By the end of last week, White House spokesman Jay Carney was calling the incident a “terrorist attack” but adding that it was likely “the result of opportunism” and not planned. But then Wednesday, Ms. Clinton suggested that al-Qaeda’s North African branch, operating from a safe haven in Mali, could have had a hand in the assault. Al-Qaeda and other terrorists, she said, “are working with other violent extremists to undermine the democratic transitions underway in North Africa, as we tragically saw in Benghazi.”

Critics see in this a deliberate attempt by the administration to portray the Benghazi violence as a spontaneous response to the video, as opposed to a terrorist attack that was timed for Sept. 11 and possibly planned by al-Qaeda. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and three other Republicans have demanded in a letter that Ms. Rice explain how she “could characterize an attack on a U.S. consulate so inaccurately,” while a group of congressmen accused the administration of adopting “a pre-9/11 mind-set — treating an act of war solely as a criminal matter.”

In fact, political calculations appear to have infected the rhetoric of all sides. The White House was slow to place the modifier “terrorist” in front of the word “attack,” at a time when President Obama claims credit on the campaign trail for the “decimation” of al-Qaeda. He continued to focus on the offending video — which also provoked demonstrations outside U.S. embassies in Cairo and around the Muslim world — long after it became clear that the Benghazi attack was the work of well-organized combatants who, among other things, accurately aimed mortar fire at an unmarked U.S. compound located half a mile from the consulate...

I'll have more later...

'Comment is Free' Fires Joshua Treviño After Just 10 Days

There's a lot of his stuff I disagree with, but he's a firecracker on Twitter. Extremely interesting man. And it's no surprise that The Guardian canned his ass in less than two weeks. Amazing he was even given a slot over there in the first place.

At the Times of Israel, "In firing Treviño, Guardian’s hypocrisy laid bare."

Dear IDF: If you end up shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla -- well, most Americans are cool with that. Including me.
— Joshua Treviño (@jstrevino) June 25, 2011

The Guardian’s August 15 announcement that Joshua Treviño would be joining its US politics team provoked predictable outrage by some of the most virulent Israel-haters.

One of the first screeds published on the appointment of Treviño was by “one-stater” racist Ali Abunimah, himself a contributor at the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” through June 2009, who wrote a piece for Al Jazeera, as well as several others at his own Electronic Intifada site, to protest the Guardian’s apostasy.

MJ Rosenberg and Richard Silverstein also condemned the appointment. On August 19, the Guardian published a letter criticizing the appointment of Treviño, by a who’s who of anti-Israel campaigners, chastising the Guardian for employing someone they characterized as holding “extremist views.”

The main complaint of all Treviño’s critics is the now-famous flotilla-related tweet by Treviño in June 2011 – 106 characters which, according to Abunimah and his anti-Zionist friends, represent “incitement to murder”....

The hypocrisy of this group of hardcore Israel-haters and apologists for Islamist extremists — who comically wear the mantle of “anti-racists” — is staggering. None of these sensitive souls was the least bit bothered by “Comment is Free” publishing, for instance, Azzam Tamimi – who supports suicide bombing against Israelis.

Indeed, in 2011, Guardian editors published a letter by a UK professor explicitly endorsing, on ethical grounds, deadly terrorist attacks by Palestinians on Israeli civilians — a decision which was later defended by Guardian readers’ editor Chris Elliott. And none of those protesting Treviño’s appointment have seen fit, of course, to object to the fact that the Guardian has repeatedly published articles by Hamas leaders....

The Guardian’s recent addition to its stable of writers of anti-Zionist blogger Glenn Greenwald, who has a long record of advancing explicitly anti-Semitic tropes on his blog at Salon, about the power of the Jewish lobby over the US government, is another example of the institution’s selective tolerance of bigotry.

Sure enough, the Guardian fired Treviño, citing a completely bogus conflict of interest as the cause, when the fact is that the paper gave in to pressures from extremists and those who wish the Guardian to remain an echo-chamber for shrill and malign anti-Zionist rhetoric.

The supreme hypocrisy of the Guardian has been laid bare, as it demonstrates that it is morally unburdened by hideously anti-Semitic, pro-terror commentators and journalists but will cravenly give in to arguments by extremists suggesting that those on the mainstream American right — commentators who take the threat to Western values posed by Islamist terrorism seriously — are beyond the pale.

There's more at the link.

I don't really read the Guardian, but it's not that much different from left's maelstrom of hatred at most other outlets for progressivism. People like that want to destroy their opponents, not debate them. And they especially want to destroy someone like Treviño, who is so exceptionally good at exposing them for their evils.

And see Treviño's commentary here, "My 2011 Gaza flotilla tweet: a clarification."

Hat Tip: Carl in Jerusalem.

New York Times Says GOP Riven by Factions, Cites Mostly Establishment Types Who Spite the Tea Party

I don't recall George Pataki as a big tea party champion, and former veep Dan Quayle is interviewed. Dan Quayle? See, "A Party of Factions Gathers, Seeking Consensus":

It is common for parties out of power to suffer an extended identity crisis. The Democrats struggled for 12 years until Bill Clinton emerged to unite left and center in an uneasy alliance to capture the White House. It has been happening to Republicans for at least four years as different conservative factions have competed for dominance and as outside forces, from the grass-roots Tea Party activists to “super PACs” and other groups financed by wealthy conservatives, have to some degree undercut the party establishment.

But in some ways, the Republican Party today appears more factionalized — ideologically, politically and culturally — than Republican leaders said they could remember in recent history.

There are evangelicals, Tea Party adherents, supply-siders who would accept no tax increases and a dwindling band of deficit hawks who might. There are economic libertarians who share little of the passion that social conservatives hold on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. There are neoconservatives who want a hard line against Iran and the Palestinians, and realists who are open to diplomatic deal-cutting.

More than anything, the party is racked by the challenge to the establishment from Tea Party outsiders, who are demanding a purge of incumbents who play by a set of rules that many of these Republicans reject.

“The party itself is in a transition time,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 Republican in the House. Highlighting a shift in the House to a younger and less traditional generation of conservative leaders, he said, “My theory is the Senate is like a country club and the House is much like having a breakfast at a truck stop.”

Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican running for the Senate, said that if Republicans won in November, the magnitude of the country’s fiscal problems — and the general agreement among Republicans about addressing them by reducing spending — would overcome any jockeying among factions.

“I think the fiscal issues we face are so big and so overwhelming that there’s little reason to focus on the other things,” Mr. Flake said. “That makes it by definition easier to manage, because those issues are so big and require so much work.”

It may not be easy. When Republican leaders sought to push the party’s nominee, Representative Todd Akin, out of the Senate race in Missouri, for saying women who are victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant, Mike Huckabee, the conservative talk-show host and 2008 presidential candidate, came to his defense.

“In a party that supposedly stands for life, it was tragic to see the carefully orchestrated and systematic attack on a fellow Republican,” Mr. Huckabee wrote in an e-mail to supporters.

This article's the lead story at the paper's front page, so no doubt the editors think "factionalism" is the defining element of the party. But remember, this is the paper marked by a "progressive worldview," as Arthur Brisbane put it, so limited government principles --- and living within one's means --- are ridiculed as "extremist" (or "racist," if you're criticizing the president).

More at that top link, FWIW.

Radical 83-year-Old Spits in Face of Mitt Romney Supporter

Some reports indicated the 83-year-old perp is a Planned Parenthood extremist, so it figures.

At Lonely Con, "Video: Woman Spits in Face of Romney Supporter."

And Marooned in Marin, "#NEW TONE: Liberal Spits In Face of Female Romney Supporter."

You gotta love how the Romney supporters smacked that lady on the head. Progressives need more of that, being smacked down when they commit their vile, socially repugnant acts, which is pretty much all the time.

Is SPLC a 'Hate Group'?

The left's über race-baiter Mark Potok of SPLC responds to the Family Research Council, "SPLC: Family Research Council License-to-Kill Claim ‘Outrageous’" (at Memeorandum):

... FRC President Tony Perkins attacked the SPLC, saying it had encouraged and enabled the attack [on the Council's headquarters] by labeling the FRC a “hate group.” The attacker, Floyd Corkins, “was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Perkins said. “I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.”

Perkins’ accusation is outrageous. The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.

The gentleman doth protest too much (and apologies to the noun "gentlemen").

Labeling every single person or group you disagree with on policy grounds is not "fact-based criticism." It's demonization, which is why SPLC is under fire for giving cover to hate.

Here's your hate, on steroids: "Depraved Homosexuals Blame Family Research Council for 'Climate of Violence' After Leftist Attempts Massacre."

More from Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "After DC Attack, Law Center Deserves Flak":

After holding off on making any statement about the shooting attack on his group’s Washington headquarters by a critic of their positions on social issues, the Family Research Center’s Tony Perkins spoke out today and placed at least some of the blame for the incident on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a generally respected liberal watchdog group. This will come as a shock to many whose knowledge of the SPLC comes from the good press it gets for its work over the years monitoring extremist hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. But in recent years, they have expanded their definition of a hate group to include not just the likes of David Duke and neo-Nazis but non-violent conservative advocacy groups. While the SPLC says it condemns violence, their actions have placed a bull’s eye on groups it dislikes and rendered them vulnerable to intimidation.

According to the SPLC’s way of thinking groups like the Family Research Center that oppose abortion and gay marriage are pretty much the moral equivalent of the Klan. Shockingly, the SPLC also lists on their website’s roster of haters people like Washington think tanker Frank Gaffney because of his position on the threat from Islamist terror groups like the Muslim Brotherhood which they interpret as a form of Islamophobia. Indeed, Gaffney is listed on the SPLC’s website on a roster of profile of hatemongers such as Louis Farrakhan and a leader of a white nationalist militia. While one may disagree with the Family Research Council’s religious conservatism or Gaffney’s ideas about the threat from shariah law, the idea that they deserve to be placed in such a context is outrageous. In doing so, they are also responsible for creating an atmosphere in which those who take such positions are to be intimidated into silence. Yesterday’s events ought to cause the Law Center to rethink its irresponsible labeling of political opponents.

The Law Center gained a certain degree of fame and respectability as a more secular counterpart to the Anti-Defamation League, which also monitors hate groups from a Jewish perspective. But the SLC seems to have made a strategic decision in recent years that it might be easier to raise money if it increased its scope from activities monitoring genuine hate groups to advocates of causes that they dislike like such as the Family Research Center who are deeply unpopular among liberal donors.

Recently, the Law Center has also taken up the largely bogus charge that America is suffering from a wave of Islamophobia. In doing so, it put Gaffney in their cross hairs and has now taken to treating the former Reagan administration Defense Department official as being no different than David Duke or Farrakhan. Just as outrageous is that, as Lori Lowenthal Marcus writes in the Jewish Press today, they have teamed up with the likes of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) to support the branding not just Gaffney but scholar Daniel Pipes and his Middle East Forum and investigative journalist Steven Emerson as part of a network of hate against Muslims. Again, one needn’t agree with Gaffney, Pipes or Emerson on every position they take, but the idea that they can be treated like KKK members is a frightening example of the way the left operates these days...

Well said. And Tobin goes on to note the irony of the SPLC allying with genuinely hateful groups like the Center for American Progress, which has been roundly criticized by Jewish organizations for its reprehensible anti-Semitism. But as Tobin points out, that's the way it is on the left nowadays. The SPLC, by its own logic, could be smeared as a "hate group."

And here's David Sessions at the left-wing Daily Beast, "Is the Family Research Council Really a Hate Group?":

Conservatives were outraged when the SPLC revised its list of hate groups in 2010, adding the Family Research Council and the American Family Association. The shooting on Wednesday brought the ire flooding back, as conservative journalists and bloggers insisted that the SPLC is the true hate group. Maggie Gallagher, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, linked to a 2010 article that quoted a SPLC research director saying her group sees no difference between anti-gay evangelical groups and white supremacists. “Trying to lump Tony Perkins with the guy who shot people at the Sikh temple is morally bankrupt on its face,” Gallagher wrote.

William Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School and author of the conservative blog Legal Insurrection, has attacked the SPLC for, in his view, expanding its focus to include more mainstream conservative political groups as well as racist groups. On Wednesday, Jacobson repeated the implication that the SPLC’s designation of the Family Research Council as a hate group is based on FRC’s opposition to gay marriage. “SPLC gave cover to those who use the ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate group’ labels to shut down political and religious speech, and now it has spiraled out of control,” Jacobson wrote.

There is no doubt that Perkins, the Family Research Council, and other conservatives are deploying the shooting to score political points. But they have raised a substantive concern that defies a simple answer, especially in a situation fraught with political and religious tension: which organizations can fairly be called hate groups? Can a word like “hate,” packed with visceral connotations, be part of a civilized debate about a public-policy issue?

More at the link.

Even Brian Levin, of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at CSU San Bernardino, cited by Sessions, rejects the "hate group" designation for FRC.

Tony Perkins comments are seen at the video here, "Before Shooting: Southern Poverty Law Center Put Family Research Council on ‘Hate Map’."

IMAGE CREDIT: Digger's Realm, "Hate and Slander For Profit - Part 1."

National Stagnation or Renewal? Why Romney Picked Ryan

From Kim Strassel, at the Wall Street Journal, "Why Romney Chose Ryan":

His running mate offers Romney the opportunity to explain to Americans that they have a choice between national stagnation and renewal.

Mitt Romney did much more this weekend than announce a running mate. He unveiled a significant change in strategy. The 2012 election is now a choice, not just a referendum.

Conservatives have spent much of this summer reassuring themselves. They've pointed out the extraordinary sums President Obama has thrown at crippling Mr. Romney. They've noted how ugly and brutal those attacks have been. They've comforted themselves that, for all the smears, Mr. Romney is within a few points of the incumbent in national tracking polls.

Yet the same can be said on the other side. The economy is teetering, the deficit exploding, the nation unhappy with his signature legislation. Daily, Mr. Romney beats the White House with these failures. But he has barely moved the polling dial.

Mr. Romney's choice of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, one of the party's star reformers, is an attempt to break out of the stalemate, change the dynamic. It was foremost a shrewd acknowledgment on Mr. Romney's part that his path to the White House is going to take more than pointing out the obvious. He needs to run on bold ideas, as Mr. Ryan has, and convince Americans those ideas are the way to prosperity.

In fairness, the Romney campaign had the elements in place. It's taken some time, but Mr. Romney today is sporting a fairly bold reform agenda, from his tax cuts to his Medicare reforms, to his vow to end ObamaCare. And the candidate has been dutifully repeating that this election is a choice between two very different futures for the country. Yet his policy and his words were largely lost amid his campaign's intense focus on the president.

Mr. Ryan provides the crucial shift in emphasis, the opportunity to go on offense. We will now have a focus on, and explanation of, the choice between stagnation and renewal. This is what Mr. Ryan excels at—not just crafting ideas, but explaining them in a positive and serious way. This ability is why the congressman—despite his supposedly extremist reform blueprint and budget (says the left)—has continued to win a district that in 2010 went for Mr. Obama.

Continue reading.

Progressives Attack Paul Ryan: 'Zombie-Eyed Granny-Starving Wingman'

It begins.

Team Obama's already out of the blocks with a web-ad hit piece, via Gateway Pundit, "Let the Smears Begin!… Team Obama Releases Anti Romney-Ryan Video Following VP Announcement." And see Lonely Con, "Is the Obama Campaign Sending Out Random Texts to Americans’ Cell Phones?"

And I tweaked the "zombie granny-starving wingman" from Firedoglake's biggest asshole, TBogg, "Feel the Mittmentum: The Ryaning." Also at FDL, from David Dayen, "Thoughts on the Paul Ryan VP Selection" (a useful piece, by the way, despite the false attacks on conservatives, for it clarifies the stark divide facing the campaigns).

And here's Charles Pierce at Esquire, "Paul Ryan: Murderer of Opportunity, Political Coward, Candidate for Vice President of the United States" (via Memeorandum):

Leave it to Willard Romney, international man of principle, to get himself bullied into being bold and independent.

Make no mistake. In his decision to make Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, his running mate, Romney finally surrendered the tattered remnants of his soul not only to the extreme base of his party, but also to extremist economic policies, and to an extremist view of the country he seeks to lead.

Typical, but "murderer of opportunity" is way out there. The Other McCain has more, "New Democrat Campaign Message: Grandma, Cliff, Some Assembly Required."

And Twitchy is on fire, for example, "Another leftist lie: Paul Ryan ‘wants to end Medicare’." There's more at Twitchy's Paul Ryan page.

And from John Podhoretz, at Commentary, "Paul Ryan and Liberal Glee":

The selection of Paul Ryan has been greeted with a wild joy on Twitter, and not just by conservatives; I’ve seen hundreds of liberals celebrate the choice. A spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Jesse Ferguson, said this: “So this is what xmas morning feels like?” The idea here is that Ryan is the perfect target for Democrats because he has proposed specific budget cuts and the overhaul of Medicare, while supporting tax reform that would lower rates on the wealthy....

More important is the quality of the glee itself. It’s an ongoing liberal political-character flaw. So insulated ... are many, if not most, American liberals that they simply presume that which they despise is inherently despicable, and that what they fear is inherently fearful. As they gather in their echo chamber, all they hear are voices resounding with the monstrousness of redesigning Medicare and the parlousness of cutting the federal budget. They genuinely do not know that budget cutting is popular, even if only in theory, and that tens of millions of voters do understand the notion that the government is living far beyond its means. From what we can gather, in fact, these are exactly the sorts of ideas that speak to independent voters and have since the days of Ross Perot.

Ryan is a formidable presence in American politics. Generally speaking, formidable players do formidable things. The glee of the Left suggests its folk are so excited by what the Obama campaign can dish out that they are unprepared for what Ryan and Romney can dish out right back.

They're not "liberals." They're neo-socialist progressives. Other than that, Podhoretz is dead on.

More at Memeorandum.

#RomneyRyan2012 — Mitt Romney Announces Paul Ryan as Vice Presidential Nominee

I'm tired. I stayed up past Midnight. After I woke up to pee I realized Romney'd be making his announcement in less than an hour. So I got up. I haven't had coffee yet. I think I'll lie back down for awhile.

In the meantime, here's the New York Times, "Vice-Presidential Choice Shakes Up November Contest."

It's a great pick. The secular-collectivist left would have gone after any Romney pick with remorseless villainy. The only variation we'd see are the specific smears. With Ryan, get ready for tons more grandma-over-the-cliff style attacks. Get ready for extremist anti-Catholic bigotry and "pro-choice" fearmongering, like NARAL:

NARAL: Ryan "supported'Let Women Die Bill' which wld allow hospitals to refuse to provide a woman emergency abortion even if she cld die"
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) August 11, 2012

Check William Jacobson's comments along these lines, "Romney-Ryan 2012."

And Glenn Reynolds has a huge roundup, "And on the day Ryan was picked, it’s worth pointing out that we’ve gone 1200 days now without a budget."

On twitter, it's #RomneyRyan2012.

And you can tweet the veep nominee @PaulRyanVP:

.@paulryanvp Welcome aboard. We love you, man! #RomneyRyan2012
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 11, 2012

More at Memeorandum.

I'lll be updating throughout the day, after I wake up.

Homosexual Couples Under Pressure to 'Have Children'

Funny, isn't it?

Homosexuals can't "have children." They can adopt them, or they can get a sperm donor and then raise a child that's biologically related to one of the parents, or they can have a surrogate mother bear the child, or they can ... so forth and so on.

All that, but they cannot "have" their own child. Perhaps that's why the New York Times changed its headline, from "Gay Couples Face Pressure to Have Children" to "Male Couples Face Pressure to Fill Cradles."

Folks can read it at that second link, but note this interesting observation at Patheos:

Tellingly, the article has a gaping hole, a kind of journalistic elephant in the room. While the story points out that some states do not allow same sex couples to adopt, there are no critical voices in the piece. At all. No one who might have qualms about the notion of gay parents — for moral, ethical or religious reasons— is heard from.

Well, the Times can't have critical voices of dissent. That'd spoil the left's extremist agenda.

And don't forget, "It Sucks for Children of Same-Sex Couples."

PREVIOUSLY, "Marriage and Procreation: Bodily Union of Spouses," and "Real Marriage is the Union of Husband and Wife."

The Oak Creek Massacre and Political Ideologies

Bob Belvedere has an interesting post, "Sikh Shooting: Don’t Buy The Leftist Lies."

Read it all at the link. I wouldn't go quite that far to say that fascism is entirely a left-wing phenomenon, and it's not true that totalitarianism is entirely found on the left of the spectrum. It would require a book-length exegesis to square the point, although Bob's right to push back against the mainstream progressive meme that  the "neo-Nazis" are associated with conservative politics. They aren't. (Speaking of books, Robert Paxton's got one of the best volumes on this, The Anatomy of Fascism.)

That said, Jonathan Capehart needs a smack over the head, the idiot. At WaPo, "Sikh temple shooting: A ‘lone wolf’ in Wisconsin":

The Department of Homeland Security warned us about the likes of Wade Michael Page, the alleged gunman who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc.

In an April 2009 report , entitled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” DHS warned that “lone wolves . . . embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.” It went on to say that “white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy — separate from any formalized group — which hampers warning efforts.” And it noted that military expertise and knowledge made lone wolves especially dangerous.

WaPo even embeds the report at that piece. And that trash report was widely condemned at the time, as bad research and abject political trash. Notice how it's sure coming in handy now.

FLASHBACK: From Michelle, "Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real":

I have covered DHS for many years and am quite familiar with past assessments they and the FBI have done on animal rights terrorists and environmental terrorists. But those past reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.

By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.

In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.

The issue isn't so much that there's are far-right reactionary ideologies. It's the double standard that progressives employ to destroy the American right by falsely equating libertarian-conservatives with the 20th century racist ideologies of pre-WWII Europe.

The Left's Fascist Response to Chick-fil-A

See Elizabeth Scalia, "Chick-fil-A: if you’re not sure, this is how fascism works."

RELATED: From Robert Stacy McCain, "It’s Homophobolicious!"

PREVIOUSLY: "Homosexuals Plan 'National Same-Sex Kiss Day' to Protest Chick-fil-A," and "Chick-fil-A Punches Back Against Homosexual Extremist Agenda."

Ho-Hum, Sally Ride Was Lesbian

I cracked open the hard-copy version of the Los Angeles Times this morning with my coffee. Sally Ride's obituary is front page news, "Sally Ride dies at 61; first American woman in space."

It's a straightforward obit, but getting to the end of the piece we have this:

Ride is survived by Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years; her mother, Joyce; her sister, Karen, known as "Bear"; and a niece and nephew.

I thought, great, she's lesbian and decided to keep her personal life private while she pursued her career. She was married in 1982 but divorced five years later with no children. That would be 1987, and in fact, it's quite possible that she left her husband, astronaut Steven Alan Hawley, for a woman. Now that would have been news! She could have caused a sensation, struck a blow against the patriarchy! Women of the world unite! But no, she was at the pinnacle of her profession and decided to continue achieving. She could have come out as lesbian any time after that. Why not? Who knows? But it's not like there wasn't a massive homosexual rights campaign raging all those years. I think she just thought better of it, and went about pursuing her dreams without all the gay extremist showboating. Frankly, just being a woman in space was f-king pathbreaking. No doubt she thought busting through one glass ceiling was enough, at least in her case. Indeed, according to the Times, Ride saw the rights of women as the key civil rights struggle:

In 2001, she founded her own company, Sally Ride Science, to encourage women and especially young girls to become interested in science. She also wrote five children's books encouraging an interest in science.

So it turns out when I logged onto Memeorandum, I found the big headline from the sensationalist BuzzFeed, "First Female U.S. Astronaut, Sally Ride, Comes Out In Obituary." Looks like everyone else wanted Ride out of the closet except Ride.

And here's this at excitable Andrew Sullivan's page, "America's First Woman In Space Was a Lesbian":

Now talk about a buried lede! The only thing preventing the NYT from writing an honest obit is homophobia. They may not realize it; they may not mean it; but it is absolutely clear from the obit that Ride's sexual orientation was obviously central to her life. And her "partner" (ghastly word) and their relationship is recorded only perfunctorily. The NYT does not routinely only mention someone's spouse in the survivors section. When you have lived with someone for 27 years, some account of that relationship is surely central to that person's life. To excise it completely is an act of obliteration. I'm afraid the Beast's tribute is worse. Lynn Sherr manages to write an appreciation which essentially treats Ride as a heterosexual.

The horror!

Homophobia! It's homophobia!

Isn't it always?

Notice that the New York Times "buried the lede!" Imagine what that would been, "Rockin' Sally Ride, First Butch to Blast Into Space, Dies at 61."

And for more humorous pleasure, notice how Towleroad missed the part about Ride's lesbianism, and the readers go batsh*t crazy in the comments: "Towleroad jumps the shark - every hour, on the hour." And note Joe. My. God., "Sally Ride Outed In Obituary," which includes Twitter embeds bemoaning the awful, just awful situation where Ride's partner, Tam, would be "denied" federal survivor's benefits. That would be a monstrous inhumanity, except that according to the Sally Ride Science homepage:

Dr. Tam O'Shaughnessy is the COO and Executive Vice President of Sally Ride Science and a Professor Emerita of School Psychology at San Diego State University. Dr. O'Shaughnessy has been interested in science since she was a little girl.

Right. I'm sure Dr. O'Shaughnessy will live out the remainder of her life in crushing destitution, or at least that's what the idiot progressives would have you believe.

Frankly, Sally Ride is one more example of a great American, a great American who happened to be lesbian. She made a life for herself and her partner and thrived. I mean, what held her back? Nothing. But don't tell that to the hate-addled homosexual progressives currently attempting to dismantle decency and respect in this country.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Twelve Years After Boy Scouts v. Dale, Homosexuals Escalate Extremist Attacks on Traditional Organization

At great letter to the editor at the Los Angeles Times (responding to this idiotic "tolerance" editorial):

The Times' editorial bemoaning the "sad" and "unnecessary" evolution of the Boy Scouts reflected in its exclusion of gays and atheists should instead decry the fact that in many cases, democracy has evolved into a fanatic religion of the equal sign.

The support of Christian churches does not represent any nefarious and new penetration of religion into the Boy Scouts. Since its founding, the Boy Scouts has been based on traditional religious principles — nothing new here. The Supreme Court has affirmed the Boy Scouts' right to express this principle in its membership.

I do not see why it is so hard for some "democrats" to extend their love for equality and free choice to freedom of association. There is nothing to prevent the formation of parallel institutions that articulate their own values.

Jack Kaczorowski
Los Angeles

In fact, the radical homosexuals don't want "parallel institutions." They want to take over and fundamentally transform, as the president pledged, America's traditional institutions. And the leftist's couldn't care less about constitutional niceties such as freedom of speech or freedom of association. Once the homosexual extremists start to tighten their grip --- as they are now all over the nation with their hate-filled agenda --- they just tighten until their targets are near death and frankly give up. In our upside-down world the so-called oppressed have become the oppressors, and they've got an Oppressor-in-Chief in the White House. Thank goodness O's days are numbered. Soon people of values and decency can start rolling back the tide against the homosexual bigots and their disgusting Democrat allies.

Chick-fil-A Punches Back Against Homosexual Extremist Agenda

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Is Chick-fil-A anti-gay marriage? 'Guilty as charged,' leader says."

It's going to be a trend.

The Chick-fil-A fact sheet is here.

PREVIOUSLY: "Waha Bar and Grill Won't Serve Brands Promoting National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC)."

Added: From Linmaster Smith, "Chick-Fil-A Not Exactly ‘Reeling From Backlash’ Against Common-Sense Attitude."

Waha Bar and Grill Won't Serve Brands Promoting National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC)

At KLEW CBS 3, Lewiston, Idaho, "Waha Bar and Grill owners don't carry popular brands due to Christian beliefs" (also at Northwest Cable News, Seattle, and Memeorandum).

At the video, the homosexual extremist group GLAAD spews lies about how Waha Bar's Christian policies will lead to bullying and violence against homosexuals. This is typical leftist bull. Frankly, folks like the Waha owners are just doing what more and more Americans will be forced to do in the years ahead, as the ungodly radical leftists bully mainstream institutions into endorsing their hate and bigotry. Towleroad has more on the hateful gay extremists: "Idaho Bar Refuses to Sell Pepsi, MillerCoors Over Gay Support: VIDEO." (At Memeorandum.)

The Relentless War Against the Family in Britain

From Melanie Phillips, at London's Daily Mail, "The real meaning of lifestyle choice":

The relentless war against the family in Britain continues in the highest court of the land. Baroness Hale, the veteran ‘lifestyle choice’ radical who, as a member of the UK Supreme Court, is the country’s top female judge, has called for cohabiting couples to be given more legal rights.

According to the Times (£) Lady Hale admires the situation in Scotland where the law is different, and in which the Supreme Court recently upheld a ruling by the Edinburgh Court of Session which ordered a man to pay his former cohabiting partner nearly £40,000 after their relationship broke down.

According to Lady Hale, Scottish law on this issue was both ‘practicable and fair.’ She said:

‘It does not impose upon unmarried couples the responsibilities of marriage but redresses the gains and losses flowing from their relationship.’

Family lawyers have backed her up, saying:

‘The current situation for people who live together in England and Wales more often than not creates injustice and hardship, and our current law fails to reflect the way people are choosing to live their lives.’

But the whole point is that cohabitation is the way they are choosing to live their lives. They could choose to get married. They choose not to, because they do not want to be married. They may want to preserve their independence; they may be averse to making a commitment to another person; they may think marriage is an outdated institution. Whatever the reason, it is their choice not to get married.

But marriage is an institution which inescapably confers obligations on those who enter into it. It is a solemn commitment – the most solemn commitment – one person can make to another.  It entails above all obligations between the spouses. The benefits that accrue to marriage are ineradicably bound up with those obligations.

The absence of legal protection in cohabitation follows from the fact that, unlike marriage, cohabitation is a loose partnership between individuals who remain ultimately free of each other; they can walk out of the relationship with no strings attached. This is the ‘lifestyle choice’ they make. If those benefits are bestowed on people who choose not to undertake their concomitant obligations, this is not only fundamentally unjust.  It vitiates the very nature of a contractual or covenantal agreement. If those who choose to duck the commitment of marriage can nevertheless obtain its benefits, this makes a mockery of and undermines the institution of marriage itself.

More at the link.

Marriage is just a politically convenient football for the left. If you're a swinger, who needs it? But if you're a radical homosexual extremist, marriage is the bee's knees. F-king progressive freak jackwagons.

Democrat House Candidate Tammy Duckworth Responds to Rep. Joe Walsh's Attacks

This is yet another one of those times where I'm less than pleased with a sitting Member of Congress, Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois' 8th congressional district. I watched Ashley Banfield's lengthy interview with Walsh the other morning, and video's now available: "Duckworth: Rep. Walsh is extremist loudmouth'."

And then yesterday Duckworth went on the air to respond, seen here with Wolf Blitzer: "Duckworth responds to opponent's attacks."

And read Erick Erikson's takeaway, "I Support Joe Walsh. You Should Too."

Actually, I agree with Erickson, except for a key point: Walsh does indeed come across looking like he's slamming a distinguished veteran who lost both of her legs in combat. Duckworth is an advocate for veterans. She's open about how that's her signature issue. While she's no doubt a far-left opportunist who became antiwar after returning from her service in 2006, running for Congress before the Bush surge, I doubt Walsh will gain much traction with that line of attack. Watch that CNN interview with Banfield. He's not so articulate. Frankly, he comes across like a lout. And while it's not something I followed much, he was also dogged by reports that he dodged his spousal and child support payments.

In any case, it's a battleground district, which CNN is calling one of the nastiest in the country. So, I'll be checking back in on this one.

California State Sen. Mark Leno, Homosexual Rights Extremist, Pushes Legislation Legalizing Multiple Parent Families

San Francisco homosexual Democrat Mark Leno, long criticized as the Bay Area's "kiddie porn king," sponsored the bill. See the Sacramento Bee, "California bill would allow a child to have more than two parents":

Beaver had June and Ward.

Ricky had Ozzie and Harriet.

Mom and Dad, same-sex couples or blended families, California law is clear: No more than two legal parents per child.

When adults fight over parenthood, a judge must decide which two have that right and responsibility – but that could end soon.

State Sen. Mark Leno is pushing legislation to allow a child to have multiple parents.

"The bill brings California into the 21st century, recognizing that there are more than Ozzie and Harriet families today," the San Francisco Democrat said.

Surrogate births, same-sex parenthood and assisted reproduction are changing society by creating new possibilities for nontraditional households and relationships.

Benjamin Lopez, legislative analyst for the Traditional Values Coalition, blasted Leno's bill as a new attempt to "revamp, redefine and muddy the waters" of family structure by a leader in the drive to legalize gay marriage.

Read it all at the link. While a number of difficult family situations could arise involving claims from more than two parents, obviously for Sen. Leno this is the main rationale for the law:

A same-sex couple who asked a close male friend to help them conceive, then decided that all three would raise the child.

Shoot, get enough "families" like that and you just have to change the laws again to allow all three of them to marry. The man will have two lesbian wives. Perfect!

This guy Leno is a homosexual extremist par excellence! California's children and families are in the best of hands.

Okay, check this out:

* Leno authored the highly controversial California legislation that forces schools to teach homosexual history to elementary school students. Long championed by progressive educators, the depraved homosexual lobby calls this "queering." More on that here: "California Wants Lesbians as Mandatory 'Role' Models."

* Leno introduced California's SB 1586, called "CeCe's Law," requiring the state to house transgender inmates in "opposite sex" facilities of the California Department of Corrections. Leno is quoted on this: "“It is time we moved past the archaic notion one’s genitals define their gender, especially in a correctional setting,” Leno stated. “CeCe McDonald may be a 6 foot 2 inch black man with a full complement of male genitalia on the outside but on the inside there’s a woman who cannot be safely housed inside a male prison…”"

* Leno opposed California's 2006 ballot initiative Proposition 83, an initiative statute protecting families against the worst of the worst child predators. Leno's alternative to the state's "Jessica's Law" received widespread attention at the time: "Sex Offenders Have a Friend in Sacramento!" As conservative columnist Catherine Seipp asked at the time, "Did you know that in California, child molesters and rapists are a protected class?" See: "The Sex Offender Next Door."

* Leno's "life partner," Douglas Jackson, died of AIDS in 1990, which given the arc of the disease, would have placed him (and Leno) as highly active during the height of the San Francisco AIDS "radical holocaust" that spread "like wildfire" through the city in the mid-1980s, according to David Horowitz in "The Plague Abettors."

* And here's the gay granddaddy of them all. Leno, among many homosexual rights leaders in San Francisco, embraced Larry Brinkin, the gay rights "icon" arrested last week on homosexual pedophile charges. According to this piece on Brinkin's retirement from the Human Rights Commission:

Framed proclamations to Brinkin were presented by representatives from the offices of Senator Tom Ammiano, Senator Mark Leno, and Mayor Gavin Newsom (declaring it “Larry Brinkin Day”). Supervisor Bevan Dufty appeared in person, giving his testimony of the many times he has called on Brinkin to solve problems in the past. Supervisor David Campos said, “It’s not just the work Larry did for the LGBT community that we applaud; it’s what he’s done for so many other communities.” As an example, Campos spoke of Brinkin’s work with immigration and sanctuary in San Francisco. “San Francisco government will never be the same without you,” he said. The Board of Supervisors officially declared it “Larry Brinkin Week.” SF Human Rights Commission presented a certificate of recognition as well. Brinkin received as a retirement gift two tickets to the Mexican Riviera aboard the Sapphire ship. “You know, I’ve done a lot of cruising, but I’ve never been on a cruise,” Brinkin jested.

Yeah. Cruising.

We know all about that. See: "Larry Brinkin, President of the California Association of Human Relations Organizations (CAHRO), Gay Rights Icon, Arrested on Child Pornography Charges," and "Larry Brinkin Update: Homosexual Pedophile Exposes Rank Hypocrisy of Radical Left's 'Social Justice' Agenda."As quoted at the latter entry:

Brinkin thrived for almost a quarter of a century in a setting that promotes the false premise that moral behavior is subject to individual judgment. He was well-respected in a community that makes heroes of people whose primary goal is to undermine traditional values such as marriage, portray as out-of-date the belief that heterosexuality is normal, and endorse all manner of perverse behavior by putting it all under the umbrella of "human rights."

Thrived.

And Sen. Leno has been spreading that same (depraved) thriving jive throughout the states for decades. How disgusting.

Photo Credit: Towleroad, "Sean Penn, Gay Leaders Push for 'Harvey Milk Day' in California."

World Opinion of Barack Obama Declines, Drone Strikes Faulted

Glenn Reynolds frequently jokes as follows, "They told me if I voted for John McCain world public opinion would turn against the United States, and they were right!"

And so they were.

At Pew Research, "Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted":

Global approval of President Barack Obama’s policies has declined significantly since he first took office, while overall confidence in him and attitudes toward the U.S. have slipped modestly as a consequence.

Europeans and Japanese remain largely confident in Obama, albeit somewhat less so than in 2009, while Muslim publics remain largely critical. A similar pattern characterizes overall ratings for the U.S. – in the EU and Japan, views are still positive, but the U.S. remains unpopular in nations such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, support for Obama has waned significantly in China. Since 2009, confidence in the American president has declined by 24 percentage points and approval of his policies has fallen 30 points. Mexicans have also soured on his policies, and many fewer express confidence in him today.

The Obama era has coincided with major changes in international perceptions of American power – especially U.S. economic power. The global financial crisis and the steady rise of China have led many to declare China the world’s economic leader, and this trend is especially strong among some of America’s major European allies. Today, solid majorities in Germany (62%), Britain (58%), France (57%) and Spain (57%) name China as the world’s top economic power.

Even though many think American economic clout is in relative decline, publics around the world continue to worry about how the U.S. uses its power – in particular its military power – in international affairs.

There remains a widespread perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally and does not consider the interests of other countries. In predominantly Muslim nations, American anti-terrorism efforts are still widely unpopular. And in nearly all countries, there is considerable opposition to a major component of the Obama administration’s anti-terrorism policy: drone strikes. In 17 of 20 countries, more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

RTWT.