Doug Hoffman to Conservatives: 'Take Back the Party!'

From Doug Hoffman's column at the New York Post, "Take Back the Party!":

At this time, three months ago, I was wrestling with a decision. A decision as to whether or not to run in a special election to fill the seat vacated by the new secretary of the Army, John McHugh. If you had told me 90 days later I would be penning an op-ed piece for the New York Post, I would have laughed in disbelief. I would have laughed even louder had you told me that I would be receiving endorsement and support from political leaders like Fred Thompson, former Majority Leader Dick Armey, or Sarah Palin. Or appearing on broadcast media with national audiences, as their hosts peppered me with questions about the future of the GOP and our nation.

You see I’m not a professional politician; I’ve never sought elected office. I grew up poor in Saranac Lake, in the heart of the Adirondacks. My siblings and I were raised in a single-parent household by our mother. We worked to help her pay the mortgage. But, like so many others in this great land, I worked hard, got a good education, did a six-year stint in the military, married, landed a good job with a “big eight” accounting firm and started living the American dream.

It’s funny what can happen in America, when you are able to dream and have the courage to follow your dreams. At 27 I was hired as controller of the organizing committee for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Three years later I bought the accounting firm that employed my mother. Now I have six offices spread across the northern reaches of New York and a dozen other small businesses in the Adirondacks that employ my wife, children and hopefully someday, my grandchildren. I am living the American Dream.

The reason I’m running for office is to ensure that others share the same opportunities.

The rest is here.

Hat Tip: Robert Stacy McCain.

Update on Derrion Albert Gang Melee Murder

Update to my report, "'The Providence Effect': Astonishing Educational Achievement, 'The Way It Should Be Done'."

There I quoted the Chicago Tribune on the administration's response to the Derrion Albert killing:

President Barack Obama is sending Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Chicago this week in the wake of the fatal beating. Obama's spokesman has indicated the administration is preparing an initiative to address the national issues of youth crime and violence.

Now check out Joanne Jacob's report at Pajamas Media, "Response to School Violence Is Inadequate":

“Quiet and order” are the “foundation of learning” at UNO charter schools in Chicago, reports Education Week. Educated in a safe, disciplined, school community, UNO’s students – mostly low-income and Latino — outperform the average for Chicago public school students.

For many students in the city that used to “know how,” school is a chaotic and dangerous place — and getting home is even worse. Last year, 34 Chicago students died violently, usually off campus, and 290 were wounded in shootings.

The latest victim, 16-year-old Derrion Albert, is different for two reasons: He was an honor student who stumbled into a brawl between two warring factions at Fenger “Academy” High School. More important, the brutal assault was videotaped by a classmate’s cellphone and shown on the Internet.

In response to the furor, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, pledged federal support to fight youth violence. So far, that amounts to $25 million for crime prevention nationwide.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley pledged more police protection for students on the perilous way home and GED programs for dropouts.

Fenger will get $500,000. As they talked in a downtown hotel, another fight broke out outside Fenger, despite a police presence.

Even before Albert’s murder, Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman announced a $30 million a year violence prevention plan that targets students who fit a profile that predicts who is most likely to be a victim of violence. (They’re also likely to be perpetrators, but that’s not the PC spin.) Black males from troubled families who are in special education or alternative schools are likely to be involved in violence, the data show. These students are behind in credits, skip school more than 40 percent of the time, and commit one serious school violation per year.

The 1,200 who best fit the profile will be offered paid jobs to keep them busy and matched with “advocates” and social workers.

There will no jobs for students like Derrion Albert, who show up, do the work, and follow the rules. They don’t fit the profile.

More at the link (and specifically, more on in-classroom methods to get troublemakers out of class and keep student learning on track).

Time to Topple the Iranian Regime

From Michael Ledeen, at the Weekly Standard, "We Have Met the Enemy ... And it is Iran":

Speaking publicly about the role of Iran in Afghanistan--which is substantial, and about which we have considerable information--seems to be taboo for our current leaders. This is neither new nor surprising. Iranians, and Iranian-trained terrorists from organizations such as Hezbollah, have been killing Americans for years. The Bush administration, for example, had similar information about Iran's role in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and top officials did their best to suppress it. According to reporter Bob Woodward, a top State Department official knew that Iran had committed "acts of war" against our troops in Iraq and kept that information from the president, fearing a forceful response.

Nonetheless, we learned a lot about Iranian activities against our troops, both because the basic elements in the lethal roadside bombs were traced to Iran, and because Iranian military officers (from the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force) were captured in Iraq and provided details of the mullahs' training, arming, funding, and protection of insurgents sent to kill Americans and other coalition forces.

This information was not limited to Iraq. During the initial assault against the Taliban following 9/11, Special Forces found Iranian assassins operating against us, and by late 2007, there was abundant public testimony about Iran's activities in Afghanistan.

Former White House counter--terrorism official Richard Clarke pointed out in the summer of 2007 that the Taliban were using heavy arms, C-4 explosives, and advanced roadside bombs. "It is inconceivable," he said, "that it is anyone other than the Iranian government that's doing it."

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said at the same time, "There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this. It's certainly coming from the government of Iran."

General Dan McNeill, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, announced that "the Iranian military was involved in a shipment of sophisticated explosive devices intercepted [in September 2007] .  .  . in western Afghanistan."

The Iranians' attacks on American forces were nothing new; they were only the most recent in a war that began in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution's seizure of power in Tehran. Soon thereafter, Iran raced to the top of our list of state sponsors of terror, and it is still there today. Those well-known chants of "Death to America!" are not slogans for domestic consumption; they describe the central thrust of Iranian foreign policy. The mullahs are now part of a global anti-American alliance that includes Syria, Russia, Eritrea, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, along with terrorist organizations from Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad to the Colombian FARC.

Therefore, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, no matter how well we do, no matter how many high-level targets we eliminate, no matter how many cities, towns, and villages we secure, unless we defeat Iran we will always be designing yet another counterinsurgency strategy in yet another place. We are in a big war, and Iran is at the heart of the enemy army. Alas, no American president since the Islamic Revolution has been willing to face the consequences of Iran's war against America. Most of the time, our leaders have refused to accept the fact that Iran will do everything possible to dominate or destroy us. Instead of trying to defeat the mullahs, every president has sought rapprochement, just as Obama is doing now.

RTWT.

The Goldstone Report: Rewarding Palestinian Terror

Lally Weymouth recently interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From the Washington Post (via Memeorandum):

Q: What did you think of the Goldstone report?

A: I thought there were limits to hypocrisy but I was obviously wrong. The so-called human rights commission accuses Israel that legitimately defended itself against Hamas of war crimes. Mind you, Hamas didn't commit just one type of war crime. It committed four. First, they called for the destruction of Israel, which under the U.N. Charter is considered a war crime -- incitement to genocide; secondly, they fired deliberately on civilians; third, they hid behind civilians; and fourth, they've been holding our captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, without access to the Red Cross, for three years.

And who gets accused of criminal behavior at the end of the day? Israel that sent thousands of text messages and made tens of thousands of cellular phone calls to Palestinian civilians [to warn them to evacuate]. This inversion of justice is patently absurd.

People here appear to feel the Goldstone report is very unfair, but some have called for an internal inquiry. What is your position?

We've had 26 allegations investigated. Not because of the U.N. decision but because this is our procedure. We've investigated people for wrong behavior. We've put people on trial in the past because we're a functioning democracy. We'll do it in this case too. But what the Goldstone report actually accuses Israel of is deliberately targeting civilians, which is patently false.

So you're not in favor of an independent inquiry?

We're looking into that not because of the Goldstone report but because of our own internal needs.

The best way to defuse this issue is to speak the truth because Israel was defending itself with just means against an unjust attack. Serious countries have to think about adapting the laws of war in the age of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. If the terrorists believe they have a license to kill by choosing to kill from behind civilian lines, that's what they'll do again and again. What exactly is Israel supposed to do?

That's why you think the report is so dangerous?

This gives terrorist regimes a new weapon against democracies and even against non-democracies -- it allows them to attack entire cities with weapons of mass terror and get away with it simply because they fire the rockets from populated areas. In the case of Hamas, they deliberately targeted civilians while hiding behind civilians. So our attempted surgical strikes would be attacked as [acts of] war criminals. There's a world of difference between the incidental civilian casualties that are tragic in any war and the deliberate targeting of civilians.

Now [comes] the new tactic, which is the deliberate targeting of civilians while using civilians as a human shield. A double war crime. [But] the U.N. commission in Geneva added insult to injury by condemning Israel. It's a complete inversion of the facts, which is more[or] less what this report does. It just stands truth and justice on its head. So the simplest way to deal with this [report] is to tell the truth. The United States did that with great clarity.

See also, Honest Reporting, "The Goldstone Report: Rewarding Palestinian Terror":

BACKGROUND SUMMARY

The United Nations fact-finding mission examining Israel's Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza has been published. Headed by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, the mission's 575-page report (PDF format) found that "Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity."

Here, we provide an overview of some of the failings the Goldstone Report, including:

• Israel did not deliberately target the civilian population of Gaza and, in fact, made efforts to prevent civilian casualties that no other army in the world would have done.
• Contrary to the assertions of Goldstone, Hamas did use Palestinian civilians as human shields.
• The Goldstone Report is not objective and is, in fact tainted by bias and politicization, both from the UN Human Rights Council and members of the mission itself.
• The report relied upon the contributions of anti-Israel non-governmental organizations and unreliable Palestinian "eyewitnesses."
• Israel respects human rights and has a sophisticated legal and judicial system. Hamas does not. Yet the report has created an unjust equivalence of a democratic state with a terror organization.

More at the link.

TEA PARTY: The Documentary Film

Via Skye at Midnight Blue, check out the trailer for TEA PARTY: The Documentary Film:

The Tea Party movement of 2009 shocked the political establishment, the nation at large and left a big media machine dizzy in its wake. How did it happen? Where did it come from? Now, experience the story of the movement that's driving our national dialogue against big government spending and a Constitution under assault. "Tea Party: The Documentary Film" follows the struggles of five grassroots individuals and their transformation from home town rally goers and rally organizers to national activists in the 912 March on Washington. In the process, the film reveals what is at the heart of this nationwide surge of civic engagement - a return to and respect for a Constitutionally limited government, personal responsibility and fiscal restraint at the Federal level.

The film's website is here.

Unlike Collapse, I'm really interested in this one.

San Francisco Protestors Denounce Olmert as 'War Criminal'‎, Attempt Citizens' Arrest

Radical activists attempted a "citizens' arrest" of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmertj during his speech to the World Affairs Council in San Francisco this week. The San Jose Mercury News has the report, "Ex-Israeli Prime Minister Heckled on San Francisco Visit":

Protesters heckled former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during a speech in San Francisco Thursday, denouncing him as a war criminal and demanding his arrest.
As soon as Olmert took the stage at the Westin St. Francis Hotel — and following a warning by the discussion's moderator that no disturbances would be tolerated — a woman and man rose from their seats and shouted: "war criminal," "mass murderer."

Minutes after they were pushed out by police, another person stood up and yelled, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

All in all, more than 20 people interrupted Olmert's 90-minute appearance, during which he answered questions on Middle East peace, Iran, the Lebanon War in 2006 and last winter's Gaza offensive, which was the point of attack for the protesters.

The protest was sponsored by all the hardline anti-Israel groups, including Code Pink "Women for Peace," who I reported last night were granted access to President Barack Obama during his recent fundraising trip to San Fran. See,"Jodie Evans and the Obama-Hollywood-Terrorist Connection."

And if you'll notice at the video, the San Francisco chapter of the Hamas-backing International ANSWER Coalition was out in force.

'Mobilizing Conference' for Public Schools Revives '60s-Era Campus Radicalism

At last weekend's ANSWER's "teach-in" on Afghanistan, one of the speakers was Tamara Khoury of Students Fight Back, a college protest group out of Cal State Fullerton. Ms. Koury denounced the "war economy" that was siphoning funds from public education: "I can't get into my classes, my tuition this year was doubled, and yet hundreds of billions go wage criminal war against innocent people each year. This must end."

It turns out that Students Fight Back is a campus front group for the ANSWER Coalition, and the group's support from terrorist-backing organizations is just the beginning. With the the slow pace of economic recovery in California, radical activists around the state are taking advantage of the current "crisis of capitalism" to decry budget cuts and organize "collective action" for the "struggle" of the working class. Check the website for the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. And notice the classic raised fist of international solidarity at the announcement:

Actually, a number of campus "direct action" campaigns have been taking place over the last few weeks. Just this week, activists at CSU Fullerton mounted a protest called "Furlough Fest" to resist the three-day cutbacks that idled the campus. Students "occupied" the college green, and activists set up tents and camped out overnight to decry cancellation of classes." ANSWER's Students Fight Back was a key organizing cell for an earlier action on September 29th. That event came on the heels of the September 24th mobilization at UC Santa Cruz, which was billed as a part of "a day of action at all UCs across the state." Dubbed the "Occupation of the Graduate Student Commons at UC Santa Cruz," the mobilization was an element of the larger campaign of grassroots resistance. According to organizers, "a single day of action, announced in advance, is not enough. Escalation is absolutely necessary."

The UC Santa Cruz action was quite a serious business. Students occupied campus buildings for five hours, and the university has released a formal policy on police reactions to the demonstrations. One student announced that protesters were sending a message about "an actual shift in power relations." He said, "We have the capacity, if we act in concert, to stop the university from functioning." Photographs from the occupation show protesters marching with militant signs, for example: "Demilitarize and De-Privatize Our University," and "Dismantle UC Regents - Demand Student Collective Self-Determination."

Marc Bousquet, a hardline professor at Santa Clara University, published an interview with a student cadre at the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Will Occupation Become a Movement?" The interview followed a second round of direct action at UC Santa Cruz. Bousquet asked what were the next steps for Occupy California!:

We should all look forward to, and prepare ourselves for, a far longer struggle, a struggle for which these actions, regardless of what one thinks of them, do not serve as inspirations but rather as concrete expressions of what is felt by countless others across the system and world.

The is clearly the language of international solidarity and revolutionary struggle.

In the fact, Socialist Worker, the Marxist-Leninist organ of the International Socialist Organization, published a big background report on the student mobilizing conference, of which the occuption movement is clearly aligned, "Organizing the Fight for Public Education":

There are different political ideas among of these groups of people, running from moderate liberals to socialists and anarchists, and all points along the spectrum.

And there is no agreement on tactics. Some students and teachers believe that lobbying elected officials is essential, while others have taken direct action to occupy buildings or liberate libraries closed due to budget cuts.

The socialists are particularly invested in the potential of the events to bring about a revolutionary crisis in the state educational system. Last week, Professor Julian DelGaudio, who is the faculty organizer for Long Beach City College's local ANSWER cell, distributed a letter to the editor from the Berkeley Daily Planet, written by Eugene Ruyle, an emeritus professor at Long Beach State: "Don’t Let the University Interfere with Your Education":

As a congressional candidate of the socialist Peace and Freedom Party (District 10, 2008), I would remind everyone that, ultimately, the solution to California's budgetary problems lies in the socialist transformation of the global economy, based on the principles of peace, democracy, equality, and ecology, and led by the workers of the world organized as the ruling class. I do not suggest that students and workers simply wait for The Revolution, however. Instead, I urge them to challenge the existing system ...

Again, clear talk of revolutionary transformation. And while Ruyle's manifesto was actually quite bourgeois in its program (salary rollbacks and budget reform are among the planks), it's unlikely that the restless youth will sit around for too long waiting for the legislative and electoral initiatives needed to actualize the left's transformational agenda.

Indeed, students just this week organized a walkout and militant takeover over the library at Fresno State University. According to Indy Media, the occupation was one of the "largest mobilizations since the 60s":

The rally before the march was well attended, fluctuating from 100-300 students and faculty. People spoke and expressed their shared rage. This was followed by a march of well over 600 students chanting things like "no cuts! no fees! education should be free!" and "hey! hey! ho! ho! Welty's gotta go!"

It's unclear what impact all of this protest activity will have over the long term. California holds a gubernatorial election next year, and the budget crisis will be the central issue facing the electorate, combined perhaps with a popular movement for constituational change through the initiative process (simple majority to pass the state budget, for example). But like the antiwar student protesters of the 1960s, radical street activists are clearly impatient, militant, and just can't wait. Some of the sponsoring organizations have clear ties to international organizations hostile to the United States, and for a genuine revival of the campust uprisings during the Vietnam era we'd need to see direct action leading to revolutionary agitation and political violence against established authority.

Unlike during the '60s, student protesters today don't have the draft as the central rallying institution of injustice and oppression to resist. Students today will not be sent to fight and die in the jungles of Indochina in an "imperial" war of aggression against the "indigenous" Vietnamese population. Without that, the current movement will lack urgency and historical inevitability.

What's not unlikely, however, is the emergence of a new cadre of communist extremists who form a revolutionary vanguard with plans to topple the capitalist regime. Certainly the ANSWER Coaltion continues its work to speed up the contradictions of capitalism and the triumph of the working class. Should the language of "criminal wars" overseas and "catastrophic" corruption and "privatization" of the university elicit a true violent response, California could well be in for a reprise of the campus violence that rocked the nation during the peace movement years ago.

In 1968, student extremists occupied the campus at Columbia University for five days. College dean Henry Coleman was held hostage for 24 hours. Mark Rudd, the leader of the campus cell of Students for a Democratic Society, described the resistance as leading the way toward a Marxist revolution. Tom Hayden, a SDS national leader, claimed that the Columbia occupation "opened a new tactical stage in the resistance movement." When police cracked down on protesters, many innocent bystanders got caught up in the violence. Militant organizers used the widening confrontation to expand the coalition seeking to overthrow the system. Protests spread to other universities thereafter. Harvard University was gripped with its own student takeover in 1969. The same violent police response in Cambridge turned the radical minority there into martyrs when police stormed University Hall to put down the unrest. Movement organizers sought to exploit the official response to gain sympathy for communism. Campus turmoil continued, and in October 1969 the Weatherman faction of the SDS organized the Days of Rage protests in Chicago to bring down the system once and for all. Thereafter, throughout the early-1970s, domestic terrorist groups and revolutionary totalitarians continued to make war upon the U.S. government.

And so, forty years later, student activists are pushing to reignite the potential violence of the earlier protest generation. One might well hope that California enjoys an economic recovery in the short term, and that the "crisis of capitalism" is delayed long enough to avoid inevitable bloodshed and mayhem that comes from the kind of militant activism that we're seeing today.

Collapse: A Documentary Film by Chris Smith

Just now, in my in-box, from crazed former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney:

Hello! As many of you know, Mike Ruppert is singularly responsible for confirming from the inside what many of us on the outside knew: that the black community didn't have the infrastructure to import and distribute crack cocaine from which it still reels today, but the CIA did.

Mike was on it on September 11th! And explained it to us in his book, "Crossing the Rubicon."

Mike is on it in his film CoLLapse, and explains it to us in his new book, "A Presidential Energy Policy."

Mike has taken many bullets for us, so that we may know the truth. Now, several more have been fired at him, but we must deflect them and not allow them to (do what they want to do with all of us with targets on our foreheads and) put this warror down. Mike needs our help.

It turns out that Variance Publications is refusing to publish Ruppert's book, A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-Five Points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money.

The book overlaps with the release of Collapse, a film by director Chris Smith, and featuring Ruppert in an Errol Morris, "Fog of War," kind of documentary experience. I found this review:

The latest documentary from American Movie director Chris Smith takes the form of Errol Morris’ The Fog Of War, and in conspiracy theorist Michael Ruppert, he’s found a subject just as mesmerizing and irreducible as Robert McNamara. A former LAPD narcotics officer and independent journalist, Ruppert’s current obsession is the issue of “peak oil,” the concern that oil production has reached its apex and as fossil fuels decline, our entire industrial infrastructure will collapse along with it. Ruppert has the sort of apocalyptic vision that would make him perfect for Glenn Beck’s “War Room”—or Stephen Colbert’s “Doom Bunker,” for that matter—but he’s not an ideologue, which makes his Chicken Little scenarios more authentic even before you’re confronted with his confident voice and meticulously crafted arguments. That said, Collapse is by no means an endorsement of Ruppert’s worldview; Smith has enough respect for his audience to allow them to sort out whether he’s a soothsayer or a crackpot. It’s possible to come out of the film thinking, “Oh my God, we’re all doomed,” but there’s also a strong suggestion that Ruppert has walled himself into his own point-of-view by accepting only the information that supports his sweeping theories. And in several immensely poignant moments, we can also see an angry, lonely, vulnerable man whose life epitomizes the title as much as the globe does. There are many layers to the man and the movie, and I for one left the theater shaken. Grade: A.

The Collapse webpage is here. I have absolutely no confidence in "peak oil" theories, and since Cynthia McKinney's making the big endorsement above, rest assured Collapse - for all its rave reviews - is in firm company with harline leftist "crisis of capitalism" conspiracies. Might be worth a look for entertainment value, in any case.

Jodie Evans and the Obama-Hollywood-Terrorist Connection

From Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King, "A Name Americans Should Know – Jodie Evans and the Obama-Hollywood-Terrorist Connection":

How much access can a possible agent of influence for state sponsors of terrorism buy from President Barack Obama? For Jodie Evans, a progressive Hollywood activist, the going rate appears to be $30,400 for dinner and a conversation.

Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans.

The Chronicle reports Jodie Evans had a several minutes long conversation with Obama at the fundraiser.

Why does Jodie Evans merit such face time with the president even though she acts as an agent of influence for the anti-American governments of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Middle Eastern terrorists?

Jodie Evans helped rally the Los Angeles progressive community to Obama’s side by co-hosting the first Hollywood fundraiser for Obama in February 2007 along with her partner (and ex-husband) Max Palevsky and the Dreamworks trio of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. Jodie Evans went on to be appointed a fund raiser for Obama.

Over the life of the campaign, Jodie Evans became one of Obama’s top donors, giving the maximum $2300 to his respective primary and general election funds and tens of thousands of dollars more to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund.

Jodie Evans issued several public endorsements of Obama during the campaign targeting the progressive community.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink hosted a get out the vote training effort for Obama in October 2008.

That Jodie Evans is a respected power-player in the Democratic party is no surprise. She worked for Gov. Jerry Brown and managed his 1992 presidential campaign. However, the mainstream media continually gives Jodie Evans a pass, as was noted in this LA Weekly article from 2003 that chastised the Los Angeles Times for ignoring Jodie Evans’ role as a state Democratic party operative in an article on efforts to stave off the recall of her longtime colleague, Gov. Gray Davis.

What is surprising, or should be, is how upfront she is about her pro-terrorist politics and how accepting Obama and her fellow Democrats are of her. That someone with Jodie Evans’ background operates at the presidential level in American politics is extremely disturbing.

I spoke to Jodie Evans on October 7th at the Wilshire protest. See, "Code Pink's Jodie Evans: No 'Rethink' on Afghanistan - 'U.S. Troop Withdrawal Now' ... ANSWER Coalition Decries 'Criminal Occupation'."

My sense is the very first thing Jodie Evans mentioned was Afghanistan. This is exactly the kind of hard-left lobbying that's captured the administration's Afghan policy. Code Pink, along with ANSWER, and hardline blogs like Firedoglake and Newshoggers (to name just two), have aligned with America's enemies.

There's more at the link. The article references Ben Johnson's, "To Fallujah, With Love":

Code Pink purports to be a grassroots organization of antiwar housewives, yet the core leadership met in the 1980s while working on behalf of Central American Communist guerrillas.

Voters Trust Republicans

From Rasmussen, "Voters Trust Republicans More On 10 Top Issues":

For the first time in recent years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The GOP holds double-digit advantages on five of them.

Republicans have nearly doubled their lead over Democrats on economic issues to 49% to 35%, after leading by eight points in September.

The GOP also holds a 54% to 31% advantage on national security issues and a 50% to 31% lead on the handling of the war in Iraq.

But voters are less sure which party they trust more to handle government ethics and corruption, an issue that passed the economy in voter importance last month. Thirty-three percent (33%) trust Republicans more while 29% have more confidence in Democrats. Another 38% are undecided. Last month, the parties were virtually tied on the issue.

Well, interestingly, Dede Scozzafava looks like just the kind of Democrat Republican voters distrust. See Erick Erickson, "Scozzafava Declares Herself Part of Abramoff Wing of GOP: Funnels Campaign Cash to Family":

It appears Dede Scozzafava is funneling RNC, NRCC, and donor dollars through her campaign account to her family.

Scozzafava's a radical leftist (RINO), and a corrupt one at that.

More at Memeorandum.

Postcards from the Wedding Industrial Complex

Rebecca Traister's a hardline feminist blogger at Salon. During last year's presidential campaign, Traister attacked GOP running-mate Sarah Palin in an essay published in September 2008: "Zombie Feminists of the RNC: How Did Sarah Palin Become a Symbol of Women's Empowerment? And How Did I, a Die-Hard feminist, End Up Terrified at the Idea of a Woman in the White House?"

Now here's your "die hard" feminist defending fellow (not-so die hard) feminist Jessica Valenti -- who broke with the pack and tied the knot earlier this year -- on her decision to marry TPM blogger Andrew Golis. After Valenti was featured in the New York Times this week, Traister doesn't sound so militant after all:

As life brings us all kinds of surprises and complications, I've found that many people who have strongly held opinions about marriage -- say, a lifelong desire to walk down the aisle in a Princess Di gown and stuff cake in someone's face -- can shift in a heartbeat after befriending one gay couple who can't marry, or falling in love with a partner who doesn't want to, or can't because they're the same gender as you. The personal is political is true in reverse, that the political becomes personal at some point, and can change rapidly. I know some women who talked and talked about weddings when we were younger, and who now find themselves single parents by choice, or in long-term relationships with men or women they don't plan to marry.

This clarifies for me why the Jessica issue is fraught for some people: They see her as trying to have both -- the staunchly held political view, the books about the evils of the Wedding Industrial Complex, the intersectionality-based approach to marriage as an exclusive institution and the Vows column, the bustle, etc. -- without admitting a shift on either side. In a funny way, I wonder if even her anti-wedding detractors would have been more satisfied if she'd just said, "You know, falling in love and getting sucked into the complexities of party-planning has made me feel differently about some aspects of the marriage business." I am not saying that that would have been a good idea, and I am not saying I agree with her detractors. Jessica is my friend and I am very happy for her. I'm just wondering aloud.

Be sure to go back over to Salon and read the other entries. One of the funniest protocols of leftists today is that they can't get married because gays can't get married. That is, a modern leftist heterosexual is required ideologically to substantiate the deviant norms to the radical gay fringe seeking a reengineering of society's institutions. And if for some reason an un-gay progressive woman decides that she'd actually like to, you know, excercise some of her God-given natural essences - like having children - she can expect to be demonized for selling out to the Wedding Industrial Complex. That concept in itself is Marxist-Leninist in its epistemology, and thus for leftists marriage serves to reproduce hieararchies of oppression, and by logical implication, systems of racism.

It's pretty convoluted, but what's especially good is how radical women really don't believe this sh*t after all. You know, as we see in Valenti's case, they might actually fall in love and "die hard" principles be damned! Notice where Traister was all too ready to excoriate Sarah Palin last year -- for example, "The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin's nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for ..." -- now she's just "thinking out loud" at how nice it is for her good friend Jessica to walk down the feaking aisle. Oh, how awful that a fully independent (and rational) woman might actually find enrichment -- God forbid! -- by falling prey to the hegemonic "complexities of party-planning."

Really? Do these people even have a clue? Institutions such as marriage develop over time because social norms coalesce around workable functions of monogamy, economic stability, child-rearing, and the regeneration of values. While femininsts have long repudiated those norms -- just read Andrea Dworkin for some confirmation -- the fundamental crisis of feminism captured by the Valenti wedding should in fact be a point of celebration for conservatives and a victory for conservative values. It's pretty fascinating.

As it is, though, the postmodern truth reinvention complex will devise some new theory seeking to explain the sociological endurance of marriage traditionalism within a neo-radical paradigm of anti-faux feminist progressive praxis.

I can hardly wait!

Hat Tip: Pandagon (where else?).

Obama's Hexagon of Democratic-Socialist Power

From Big Government, "The Hexagon of Progress: Barack Obama – Working Families Party – Democratic Socialists of America – New Party – ACORN – SEIU":

When a candidate of the Democratic or Republican parties is successfully elected President of the United States, it is widely accepted that by virtue of being the highest elected office holder in the party, they are the “leader” of their respective party.

Why would it be any different when it comes to President Obama’s leadership role in his other political party, the Working Families Party?

If the President and his other party are to be held to the same standard as the Republicans, Greens, and Democrats, etc., then by all rights he should be considered the leading force or figure within the Working Families Party.

In reality, no matter how one chooses to define the President’s relationship to his other party, the relationship itself demands a close examination of its platform, background, and history, all of which the President would appear to have endorsed by accepting their nomination.

The full essay is at the link.

It Has Begun: White House Goes 'Khmer Rouge' in Attacks on Fox News

The Obama administration's radical program is becoming increasingy totalitarian, with top operatives adopting Khmer Rouge tactics to shut down press opposition to its social reegineering campaign. Charles Krauthammer has a report, "White House Tactics Go Too Far":

Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he's put a horse's head in Roger Ailes' bed.

Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn't scare easily.

The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House "pool" news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.

This was an important defeat because there's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There's nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.

More at the link (via Memeorandum). And note this from Wikipedia's Khmer Rouge entry:

In power, the Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country from foreign influence, closing schools, hospitals and factories, abolishing banking, finance and currency, outlawing all religions, confiscating all private property and relocating people from urban areas to collective farms where forced labor was widespread ....

The Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population ("New People") into agricultural communes. The entire population was forced to become farmers in labor camps.

Money was abolished, books were burned, teachers, merchants, and almost the entire intellectual elite of the country were murdered, to create the agricultural communism, as Pol Pot thought of it, a reality.

See also, Politico, "Media Matters Coordinates Campaign Against ‘Lethal’ Fox."

Plus, from Big Government, "The Hexagon Of Progress: Barack Obama – Working Families Party – Democratic Socialists Of America – New Party – ACORN – SEIU."

Hoffman in NY-23 Tests Tea Party Movement

From the Politico, "NY-23 Race First Test of Tea Party Power" (via Memeorandum):

Tea party activists from across the nation are rallying around the House special election in upstate New York, viewing it as the first electoral test of the nascent conservative movement’s political muscle.

Organizers up and down the East Coast report that activists are making their way into the campaign offices of Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, with the volunteers focusing their efforts in Oswego, Madison and Jefferson counties. While tea party organizers say the election is a unique opportunity to hold the Democratic and Republican parties to account, much of their energy is being directed against Dede Scozzafava, the GOP establishment-backed nominee whom they view as a squishy moderate who represents all that is wrong with the Republican Party.

“I went here from Washington, D.C., saying, ‘Now what?’” said Jennifer Bernstone, an organizer for Central New York 912, a Syracuse-based tea party group that so far has about 300 members getting out the vote for Hoffman. “Well, here’s the ‘Now what.’”

Numerous anti-Scozzafava websites have emerged across the blogosphere. Dana Loesch, a St. Louis-based activist, has launched “Dump Dede,” a site that tracks nationwide conservative opposition to Scozzafava and urges viewers to “throw your support behind conservatism, ladies and gents; the clock starts now.”

Michael Patrick Leahy, a Nashville, Tenn.-area tea party activist, has turned his Drudge Report-like TCOT Report into a constantly updated bulletin board of news and rumors slamming Scozzafava.

“Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, Washington Times, National Review, RedState Join Growing Avalanche of Other Conservatives Calling for Scozzafava to Withdraw from Race in NY 23rd,” blared the site’s headline Thursday afternoon.

“They’re all making a concerted effort for Doug Hoffman, and they are making New York 23 a last stand,” said Erick Erickson, who has been urging tea party activists for months to ramp up electoral efforts against the Republican Party on his influential conservative blog RedState. “New York should be a hill to die on for conservative activists.”

Video Hat Tip: Robert Stacy McCain.

See also, Dana Loesch, "My Latest for Big Government: NY23, GOP, Tea Parties."

Babe Blogging: Camilla Belle

Via Guyism, here's Camilla Belle:

Camilla Belle is a kind of mysterious beauty. I saw her earlier this year in the science-fiction action-thriller Push:

Hat Tip: Theo Spark.

Jamie Leigh Jones: Perfect Victim for Hardline Leftist Media-Complex

I don't know enough to say one way or the other if the allegations of Jamie Leigh Jones are true. But suspicions are raised just by the fact that she's on Rachel Maddow's show to further sweeping allegations of gang rape while working as a contractor in Iraq. Along with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow is the least principled talking head on the air - and that's saying a lot, given the deep bench at both CNN and MSNBC, to say nothing of the Couric/Gibson/Williams nightly news tele-smears. An additional red flag is how Crooks and Liars is pumping up the Maddow episode. Altogether, this leftist media-blogger consortium's not to be trusted:

Interestingly, even the Wikipedia entry raises questions of veracity with Ms. Jones' story.

Keep in mind that the allegations date to July 2005. The timeline tracks with the most violent phase of the Iraq insurgency. There was certainly incentive for the antiwar media and blogging commentariat to elevate Ms.Jones to celebrity status, much like Cindy Sheehan (until she was discarded like an old tampon).

ABC News' Brian Ross interviewed Ms. Jones in December 2007, "Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR."

Rusty Shackleford followed up the interview with this report, "The Perfect Victim Meets the Perfect Villains":

I know I'm going to take a lot of heat for this, but this story just sound so.... well.... er ... far-fetched.

Not the rape part--rape happens all the time (gang rapes, not so much, but occasionally). Not the cover up part--cover ups happen all the time. Not the corporation trying to cover ass part--CYAs happen all the time. Not the administration is covering up part--administrations cover things up all the time.

But combine gang rape + cover up + corporate malfeasance + political intrigue and you have the perfect story. Throw in a crusading lawyer using civil law to find justice when criminal courts have let the victim down and you have the perfect John Grisham book.

Now name KBR, Haliburton, Bush, & set the story in Iraq and you have more than a blockbuster movie pitch-- you also have the perfect conspiracy.

What could be more salacious than this? I can't think of a single thing.

It's perfect. Too perfect.

The kind of story the Left can rally around. The kind of story we aren't allowed to question because, well, questioning the veracity of the claims made by a rape victim makes one worse than pond scum. Automatically.

And normally I agree. Rape victims should be off limits. Too much pain involved. Too many memories of the not so distant past when some argued that the victim somehow brought the crime on themselves. That they deserved it.

Questioning a rape victim is akin to a second rape. Or so I was always taught.

It's why I never personally said anything about the Duke la cross case (lacrosse? whatever). But that same case should remind us that not all rape allegations are true.

The Jamie Leigh Jones case is just, well, difficult to believe. In fact more difficult to believe than the Duke case.

Also, AOSPHQ:

I can't say this is nonsense, but it does all seem a bit hard to believe. And very convenient in terms of a multimillion dollar lawsuit against a very deep-pocketed corporation against whom a significant portion of the public is willing to believe literally anything at all.

Plus, Michelle Malkin, "A Closer Look at those Halliburton/KBR Gang-Rape Allegations":

Halliburton Derangement Syndrome struck the media again this week. ABC News ran big with a story about a “Houston, Texas woman who says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.” The allegations are awful. She may be telling the truth. But beware of the sensationalism and hype.

Ted Frank at Overlawyered has a non-hysterical look at the charges–and how they evolved into an HDS-friendly, made-for-media case:

In February 2006, Jamie Leigh Jones filed an arbitration complaint, complaining that, for her administrative assistant job with KBR in Iraq, she was placed in an all-male dorm for living arrangements, and a co-worker sexually assaulted her. (KBR says the co-worker claimed the sex was consensual, though Jones claims physical injuries, such as burst breast implants and torn pectoral muscles, that are plainly not consistent with consensual sex. The EEOC’s Letter of Determination credited the allegation of sexual assault.)

Fifteen months later, after extensive discovery in the arbitration, Jones, who lives in Houston, and whose lawyer is based in Houston, and who worked for KBR in Houston, sued KBR and a bunch of other entities (including Halliburton, for whom she never worked, and the United States), in federal court in Beaumont, Texas. The claims were suddenly of much more outrageous conduct: the original allegation of a single he-said/she-said sexual assault was now an allegation of gang rape by several unknown John Doe rapists who worked as firemen (though she did make a claim of multiple rape to the EEOC, though it is unclear when that claim was made); she claims that after she reported the rape, “Halliburton locked her in a container” (the EEOC found that KBR provided immediate medical treatment and safety and shipped her home immediately) and she threw in an allegation that a “sexual favor” she provided a supervisor in Houston was the result of improper “influence.” (But she no longer makes the implausible claim that she was living in an all-male dorm in Iraq.)

The US got the claim dismissed quickly (Jones hasn’t yet followed the appropriate administrative claims procedure); the case was transferred back to Houston where it belonged (the trial lawyer’s ludicrous brief in opposition didn’t help). But the fact that the defendants are pointing out that the lawsuit over a pending arbitration violates 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and are asking for the court to mandate only one single proceeding in arbitration rather than a multiplicity of parallel proceedings, is now being treated as a cause célèbre by the left-wing blogosphere in its campaign against the contractual freedom to arbitrate. (Note that two elements explicitly designed to arouse the ire and inflame the passions of the left—Halliburton and gang-rape—only came about after Jones switched attorneys.)

See also, Republicans for Rape, "Rape 'Victim' Jamie Leigh Jones in Her Own Words."

Freedom or Tyranny: Toward Ideological Reckoning

From Melanie Phillips, "The Clash of Uncivilizations":

The frenzy over the participation of BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time this week has been a classic case of failing to identify the real elephant in the room. By fixating on the ‘far right’ as the supremely evil force in British public life, the mainstream political class has failed to grasp that a half-baked neo-Nazi rabble is not the main issue. There is another more lethal type of fascism on the march in the form of Islamic supremacism.

The Islamists, or jihadis, are intent upon snuffing out individual freedom and imposing a totalitarian regime of submission to religious dogma which erodes and then replaces British and Western values. Now these two types of fascism are doing battle with each other — and with the white working class and lower-middle classes caught between them. For it is the intense anger of these people with the fact that — as they see it — they are the ignored victims of the jihadis that is driving them into the arms of the BNP.

There are, of course, many factors fuelling BNP support. Most broadly, increasing numbers at the lower end of the social scale feel the mainstream parties are ignoring their most pressing concerns. Most of these anxieties involve British national identity: uncontrolled immigration, multiculturalism, the loss to the EU of Britain’s ability to govern itself. Most toxic of all, however, is the threat from Islamic supremacism and the concern of the disenfranchised white voters that the political establishment is supinely going along with the progressive Islamisation of Britain.

All around them they see the establishment responding to Islamist bullying with acts of appeasement. Jihadis parade on the streets threatening to behead infidels — but it is white objectors whose collars are felt by the police. The mainstream political parties are all petrified of saying anything about either the steady encroachment of Islam into Britain’s public space or the linked phenomenon of mass immigration.

So the BNP have been handed an extraordinary electoral advantage: it can tell voters that it is the only party prepared unequivocally to denounce such things. The rise of Nick Griffin is intimately related to the unchecked march of Islamism in Britain. The BNP is, in one sense, merely the other side of the jihadi coin.

It is highly relevant that Griffin is an MEP for North West England — and did not stand in the old National Front power base around London. His party’s new appeal is based on a new power base — the north-west and Yorkshire. Research by academics at Manchester University reveals that support for the BNP is highest in areas of high Pakistani and Bangladeshi concentration — but significantly, not where there are concentrations of Indians. Strikingly, BNP support actually falls away steeply in Afro-Caribbean areas.

So to try to damn the BNP as racist misses the point by a mile. Not that the accusation is untrue — despite its attempt to rebrand itself, the BNP remains a racist party with strong neo-Nazi overtones. But it attracts votes talking about religion and culture. Crucially, it is cynically using the Islamisation of Britain as cover for its animus against all Muslims and non-white people.

There are many British Muslims, after all, who are a threat to no one, who want to enjoy the benefits of a secular society and human rights and are themselves potential victims of Islamism and sharia law. But the BNP seeks to elide this distinction. It hates not just Islamism but all Muslims; indeed, it has seized upon the widespread concern over Islamic extremism to morph seamlessly from Paki-bashing into Muslim-bashing.

The fears it exploits are those of ordinary white folk in areas of high Muslim immigration who have watched the transformation of their neighbourhoods from communities of people like themselves into a landscape they no longer recognise. The voters the BNP are seeking are bewildered and distraught that no one in authority seems to notice or care — and that they are dismissed as ‘racists’ for expressing such concerns.

It is this asymmetry of anger which helps the BNP so much. Those who this week seemed to be risking an aneurysm over Griffin’s TV appearance either dismiss the jihadis as an exaggerated problem — or, on occasion, even march behind their incendiary and hate-driven banners. There is no Griffin-style outrage over the regular appearances in the media by the fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas supporters or Iranian-backed jihadis, even though they endorse terrorism and the extinction of human rights.

Liberal society cannot see them as a threat because, under the prevailing doctrines of multiculturalism and moral relativism, minorities can never be guilty of prejudice or bad deeds. Only the ‘far right’, it appears, can be racist. It is not hard to demonstrate that Islamism is a real and present danger not just to democracy, but to groups such as women, gays, Jews, apostates and liberal Muslims. Yet liberals appear to recognise fascism only if it has a white face.

There's more at the link, but that comment above -- "There are many British Muslims, after all, who are a threat to no one, who want to enjoy the benefits of a secular society and human rights and are themselves potential victims of Islamism and sharia law" -- perfectly captures my thinking on assimilated, even functionally secular, Muslims. In Britain right now, but really no less in this country, if one follows the reporting from anti-Jihad bloggers, a conservative would immediately be denounced as a Nazi by protesting Islamist terrorism with a sign like the one above. The sorry implication is that the radical Islamization of society goes unchecked (for fear of alienating "minorities"); and further, far-right groups become even more extreme in their reciprocal denunciations. That then feeds the media's infatuation with "racists," and the cycle continues on once more. But frankly, those who are doing the best work to combat the true racist Muslim fanaticism are those most willing to speak out against it -- and I would argue that in respectable company it's mainstream neoconservatives who're most willing to call it like they see it. And that includes Melanie Phillips, who when speaking out against "Londonistan," is most likely lumped in with the BNP by her opponents nevertheless, no matter what anti-racist clarity she presents.

And as always, stateside the race card is being slapped down more than ever. If you missed it, go over right now and read Diana West's analysis of the recent Rush Limbaugh controversy -- "Blackballing Conservatism," an essential analysis.

(And by the way, Larisa Alexandrovna continues to pimp out the scourge of "racism" so aggressively she's got race-baiting rug burns to show for it).

So to be clear: I don't hate Muslims, and I don't wish Islam to go to hell. I do think that folks should be to willing to say uncomfortable things about Islam -- like, at its fundamentalist base, it's a "religion of victory." And also, if we're going to fight the Islamists, we're going to need way more clear thinking and differentiation on the threat if the West is to win the battle of public opinion (and the battle over demonic, debilitating political correctness).

Image Credit: Saber Point, "Europe's March to Cultural Suicide."

'Let's Face It ... You Write for the Traffic'

From Jimmie Bise's exceptionally good retirement announcement, "Now It's Time To Say Good Bye (For a While) To All My Company…"

The truth of the matter is the blogging universe is a very crowded place. It is exceedingly difficult, though not impossible, for anyone to shine brightly enough to gain notice. Most bloggers won’t ever shine as brightly as they want, no matter how talented or dedicated they are to building a great blog. After a while, the dedication starts to fade and blogging becomes a lot like work to you, only there’s no paycheck, or if there is, the money comes in at an hourly rate that would embarrass a Chinese sweatshop owner. You end up spending more time trying to figure out how to advertise the posts you’ve already written then you do writing good posts, because what’s the point of writing good posts if no one bothers to read them? You end up chasing the hot topics of the day, hoping that one of your posts hits. Then, when a post does hit, you hope that your writing is good enough and distinctive enough to bring a few of those folks, a fraction of a percent really, back the next day and the day after that.

Let’s face it, if you’re a blogger, you write for the traffic. Sure, sure you blog for the sheer love of writing and all that, but if you didn’t really care about blog traffic, you wouldn’t publish your stuff on the internet, right? If readers really didn’t matter to you, you’d just have a collection of text documents in a folder on your computer. Traffic is what makes all the other aspects of blogging happen. Readers share your work with their friends and family. Readers are leverage you can use with potential advertisers so that you can turn your pennies and hour blogging wage into something more respectable. Readers can even be potential employers, donors, or customers.

But if you aren’t pulling readers and you don’t know why it gets frustrating. Very frustrating.

Well, that’s where I am now. I’m incredibly frustrated with my blogging. I’m not getting the readership I believe I should and I feel like I’m shouting into the wind most days. I’ve used a few of the tips and tricks I’ve read to get more readers, at least the ones I feel comfortable using, and it really hasn’t worked. My inability to turn what I’m told is a bit of writing talent into regular readers has gotten a bit farther under my skin than I like and if I keep going, it’s going to burrow even deeper. So, instead of souring on blogging altogether, I’m going to walk away from it for a little while.

We all feel that way sometimes, and Jimmie's been doing this longer than I have. And Jimmie's a fine blogger and a really good man.

Blogging is definitely work -- you've got to have a passion for it. Lately, I've gotten a lot of sustenance from doing original reporting, and frankly, I think that's where the best blogging's going to be -- original reporting combined with outstanding commentary, and even then it'll still be hard to top the competition. Unlike half a decade ago, blogging is now mainstream at the big media outlets -- like the New York Times and journals of opinion like the Weekly Standard. Interestingly, this week, Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit moved his blog off Blogger and joined the conservative stable at First Things.

I'm going to be hitting one million hits on this blog sometime around the first of the year. That seems to be a big milestone for some successful bloggers, and a benchmark on how it's done. More comment on all of that at that time (but see here and here for inspiration). I can say, in any case, that I'll keep at it as long as the fire still burns, and right now it's crackling pretty good.

P.S. Jimmie's got a new post up, so hopefully he'll be easing back into the blogging routine after taking a short vacation!

Babe Blogging: Hot New Britney Spears Bikini Pics!

Readers know I've got a thing for Britney. The hottie's getting some good buzz this week amid a break from her concert tour in Mexico. From the Sun, "AYE carumba! BRITNEY SPEARS looks cracking in a black bikini":

Also, at TMZ, "The 27-year-old mother of two has the #1 song in the country and curves to go with it."

As always, don't forget Theo Spark for all of your babe blogging needs.

Bachmann, Palin Back Hoffman in NY-23

From the Politico, "Bachmann Backs Hoffman in NY 23." And, from the Weekly Standard, "Breaking: Palin Supports Hoffman."

And then contrast those endorsements to the lead entry at the Memeorandum snapshot, with Newt Gingrich's plea, "On the NY23 Race, We Have A Practical Choice To Make." Notice the fourth entry down is David Frum, "Prelude to Republican Fratricide":

The subtitle to Frum's piece reads:

GOP candidates in New York and New Jersey should be cruising to victory this November. But angry conservatives would rather hand power to Democrats than help moderate Republicans win.

So, you've got a former arch-conservative House Speaker and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush who would rather elect leftist RINOs to office than true conservative standard-bearers. And with Representative Bachmann and Sarah Palin weighing in on the side of Doug Hoffman, the "fratricide" is a figment of David Frum's imagination. All we need is a Charles Johnson post to complete the trifecta (nothing on this currently at LGF, but there will be, bet your bottom dollar).

Actually, Michelle Malkin's post captures it best, "WITHDRAW — It's Time for the GOP to Cut Bait on Radical Leftist Dede Scozzafava."

More on this later.

In the meantime, please join me in making a contribution to Doug Hoffman's campaign. Here's the page, "Doug Hoffman for Congress."

Afghanistan War Teach-In Demands U.S./NATO Out Now! -- A Report By the ANSWER Coalition

I'm guessing ANSWER's administrative apparatchiks don't read FrontPage Magazine. I just got my first e-mail from these folks, despite my essay from earlier this week, "When Defeat is the Answer." (Actually, the PLS organizers have been sending me stuff, but this is the first e-mail from the ANSWER side of things ...)

Here's the text from the e-mail, "Afghanistan War Teach-In Demands U.S./NATO Out Now! -- Hundreds Gather to Renew the Anti-War Struggle" (it's quite a different take than you'll get from my articles):

A report by the ANSWER Coalition

On Saturday, Oct. 17, around 200 people attended a teach-in on the war in Afghanistan at Los Angeles City College, hosted by the ANSWER Coalition.

On the heels of a successful Los Angeles demonstration against the war in Afghanistan on its eighth anniversary, the teach-in brought together students, workers, long-time activists, and people who were new to the movement, all of whom were eager to hear an honest perspective Afghanistan war.

At a time when Afghanistan is being touted as “the good war,” and people in the United States are being bombarded with distortions and falsehoods, the teach-in provided an alternative to the imperialist propaganda. It showed that there are scores of people who are questioning the war and ready to fight back.

The teach-in explored all facets of the occupation of Afghanistan, from Afghanistan’s long history of resistance, to the beginning of U.S. involvement in the region, to the true motives behind the war and how it benefits Wall Street.

The overall theme of the teach-in was "U.S./NATO out now": The anti-war movement must demand a complete, immediate, and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan. Speaker after speaker stressed that there is no justification for U.S. forces to remain in Afghanistan even one day longer.

The keynote speaker was Richard Becker, West Coast Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition. Becker discussed Afghanistan’s largely unknown history, focusing on the designs of Washington to dominate the region for decades. He elucidated the current struggle as one that will heat up since the Obama administration and the Pentagon are deciding what to do next.

I doubt there were more than 75 people were in attendance, but hey, these folks are all about propaganda, so what can you do?

See my complete blog report from the event, "STOP THE WAR! Teach-In on Afghanistan and the Anti-War Struggle - ANSWER L.A."