More on the Mount Vernon Statement

I suggested earlier that I had some problems with the Mount Vernon Statement. I noted then Glenn Reynolds argued that the manifesto was heavy on limited government principles. I responded by suggesting that Mount Vernon's pledge to protect "family, neighborhood, community, and faith" essentially creates a mandate for governmental activism in the furtherance of protecting life. (Perhaps that means returning to federalist principles allowing states to regulate reproductive health and preserve the lives of the not yet born.) There have been a number of responses to the Mount Vernon Statement, and perhaps none more perverted than Daniel Larison's. It's quite odd for people to situate themselves as genuine conservatives while at the same time rejecting a forward foreign policy outlook (and the rejection of American national security leadership in the world). I'll be coming back to some of those themes later. For now, though, Michelle Malkin weighs in on another problematic area. See, "An Inconvenient Question About the Mount Vernon Statement":

Today is the opening of the Conservative Political Action conference (CPAC) — the storied annual gathering of the Right. As I noted the other day, it’s also the season for a bumper crop of conservative manifestos, action plans, and ideological contracts.

The Mount Vernon Statement, which lays out broad principles for “constitutional conservatism,” has garnered the most buzz. An elegant tribute to limited government and the Founding Fathers, the document carries the signatures of movement leaders, Beltway heavyweights, and veteran activists. Two of the most prominent backers: the American Conservative Union’s David Keene and Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist. Keene and Norquist are also CPAC chairman and CPAC board member, respectively, and partners in the Constitution Project.

I have an inconvenient, but necessary, question for those who sign their names:

Do you agree with Keene and Norquist’s views on national security and immigration enforcement?

Because in the name of “constitutional conservatism,” Keene and Norquist support the Obama/Democrat majority approach of civilian trials for terrorists. And in the name of “constitutional conservatism,” Norquist supports de facto open borders and dangerous pandering to Muslim grievance-mongers.

Here’s a bracing reminder of Keene and Norquist’s statement chastising Republicans for opposing the KSM/Gitmo civilian trials in NYC, Illinois, and elsewhere on American soil:

The scaremongering about these issues should stop.

Using a state of the art but little used prison facility like the one at Thomson, Illinois – with any appropriate security upgrades our law enforcement professionals deem necessary – makes good sense for the tax payers who invested $145 million in the facility and who are seeing millions wasted every month at the costly, inefficient Guantanamo facility. It makes sense for the community which will benefit from the related employment and has absolutely no reason to fear that prisoners will escape or be released into their communities.

But most of all it makes sense for America because it is a critical link in the process of closing Guantanamo and getting this country back to using its tried and true, constitutionally sound institutions. (emphasis added)

GOP MA Sen. Scott Brown opposes civilian trials for jihadists and made it a key campaign item. The Republican leadership on Capitol Hill opposes civilian trials for jihadists. A majority of Americans oppose civilian trials for jihadists. And it’s a sure bet that the vast majority of grass-roots activists at CPAC oppose civilian trials for jihadists.

Which makes them all “scaremongers” who oppose “constitutional conservatism,” I guess.

More later ...

RELATED: From Politico, "Marco Rubio: Belle of the CPAC Ball" (via Memeorandum).

Karen Allow and Baby LuLu

I suggested yesterday that folks should be following Karen Alloy. I think she's extremely talented, and beautiful as well. She's kinda crazy too, for example, in posting photos of her derriere to Twitpics. I did not notice, however, that she'd also posted a picture of her baby breastfeeding. A commenter posted a heads up at my post. And that was followed by a response from my good friend Opus #6, who says, "Get your minds out of the gutter!"

Actually, don't know where the gutter thing comes from, but apparently Karen Allow, who is unmarried, has gotten a lot of flak from people about single parenthood:

I have found myself in a very profound life-changing situation this year.

As a divorced mother of two, facing single parenthood with a newborn baby has never frightened me. If anything, it encouraged me to hold my head up high and work harder.

There still seems to be this icky stigma about single parents that I’m getting from my online world. And it’s manifested into a burning curiosity to know more about her father to the point of demanding and pushing the issue on every video I post.

I owe no explanation. My Soul is and will continue to remain intact. The only person I owe anything to is LuLu and that time will come soon enough… Trust me.

I think Karen's a good mom. And I don't know if she has plans to marry or will stay single to raise her family. I think marriage is best for a family, and I know Karen's on the market. So it's going to be alright. And while I doubt that I'd have posted pictures like that to Twitpic (of my booty or my baby nursing), I think she's right to tell her idiot critics to STFU.

Anyway, note to readers: It's a brave new world online. I'm going to be writing about it, with all the fleshy and messy contradictions and outrage. It's what I do. Read my blog if you want, but the same folks who say "get your mind out of the gutter" are probably not so thrilled that Karen Alloy's a single mom. (And note that Opus is "a single mother of 6 kids ages 21 years to 2 years," which is both awesome and interesting, given the context). I love all of my women visitors, like MacGinn and Opus #6. But guys and dolls blog differently. Sometimes it's best to go with the flow.

And with that, folks should head over to Theo Spark's!

Robert Plant on Link Wray

Well it's good to see other conservatives blogging about rock and roll. From AOSHQ, "Review: It Might Get Loud."

Here is my absolute favorite moment of the movie.

All those guitar gods whose solos you play air-guitar to? You know what they do in their downtime?

They play air-guitar to their guitar gods.

This movie really made me want to listen to Zeppelin again. And Link Wray. And The Jam (The Edge cites The Jam's appearance on TOTP as opening his eyes to music).

And also... U2. Because I never liked U2, because I didn't like Bono. But The Edge, on the other hand, is such a... cool, understated guy, I think he completely balances out Bono's annoying messianism and makes it okay for me to like the band. The Edge here really was the star, because everything he said was interesting and just... pure information. Just very much fact, fact, interesting anecdote, fact, insight, small amusing joke, fact, fact, fact.

Page was cool too, but he didn't talk as much. I didn't get the sense of him I got about The Edge ....

I haven't seen "It Might Get Loud." In fact, I'm just now hearing about it! But I'm initially fascinated because my station, 100.3 The Sound, plays Zeppelin all the time. I've been wanting to writing about them. But secondly, recall that I blogged recently on Link Wray. And I could not believe me ears when I first heard his jams!

So look at Jimmy Page's excitement above! Same kind of emotion! That is so cool. And playing vinyl 45s!

Added bonus: Here's the movie's trailer. I'll definitely keep my eye's out for this, and will report back once I see it:

Pakistan's Nuclear Posture

Well, it's not all babe-blogging and punk flashbacks around here! [Here, actualy.] I do actually find time to read some professional literature -- although that won't matter to those attacking me as a shitty political scientist! (I'll respond to that later ... idiots!)

Anyway, here's a great piece from the latest International Security, Vipin Narang's, "Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability." From the introduction:

On November 26, 2008, terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba—a group historically supported by the Pakistani state—launched a daring sea assault from Karachi, Pakistan, and laid siege to India’s economic hub, Mumbai, crippling the city for three days and taking at least 163 lives. The world sat on edge as yet another crisis between South Asia’s two nuclear-armed states erupted with the looming risk of armed conflict. But India’s response was restrained; it did not mobilize its military forces to retaliate against either Pakistan or Lashkar camps operating there. A former Indian chief of Army Staff, Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury, bluntly stated that Pakistan’s threat of nuclear use deterred India from seriously considering conventional military strikes. Yet, India’s nuclear weapons capability failed to deter subconventional attacks in Mumbai and Delhi, as well as Pakistan’s conventional aggression in the 1999 Kargil War. Why are these two neighbors able to achieve such different levels of deterrence with their nuclear weapons capabilities? Do differences in how these states operationalize their nuclear capabilities—their nuclear postures—have differential effects on dispute dynamics? ....

To many scholars and practitioners, the world’s grimmest security concerns converge in Pakistan. Pakistan has supported the Taliban, against which the Pakistan Army is fighting a de facto civil war; it supports cross-border terrorism in India, provoking periodic crises in South Asia; and, of course, it has a growing nuclear arsenal. In addition to the risk of inadvertent nuclear use by the Pakistan Army, the arsenal could be vulnerable to malicious elements within the state, whose acquisition of nuclear material or weapons could be catastrophic for regional and international security. Pakistan’s designation as one of the United States’ “major non-NATO” allies cannot obscure concerns in Washington that Pakistan may be the world’s worst security nightmare. Given this nexus of instability, a sober analysis of the pressures and compulsions of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program is of critical importance to South Asian and international security.

It's available in PDF, and while long, it's worth a look.

Narang lays out the evolution of Pakistan's strategic doctrine, which deviates dramatically from the expected predictions of traditional deterrence theory. Especially fascinating is the concept of "catalytic" deterrence, a posture Pakistan adopted to "catalyze" U.S. intervention during a South Asian crisis. The regime in Islamabad would move toward nuclear use amid military confrontations to "signal" to the United States a potentially catastrophic security breakdown. Nuclear mobilization wasn't designed to deter India, but to bring about U.S. intervention: "Pakistan exploited U.S. interests in the region’s stability to impel the United States to intervene on its behalf when its interference in India triggered periodic crises."

There's a summary table on page 45 of the essay. Noteworthy is the theory of why Pakistan's proxy fighting groups (peripheral terrorist organizations like Lashkar) are able to wreak devastating carnage on the Indian state without provoking retaliation against Islamabad. Focusing on "asymmetric escalation," Narang argues that Pakistan relies on a policy of nuclear first use, so that India, while sustaining devastating losses in sub-conventional warfare, hesitates to respond militarily for fear of catatrophic nuclear escalation:

India’s frustration with Pakistan-backed aggression reached deafening heights after roughly a dozen Lashkar-e-Taiba militants executed a precision commando attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008.98 From the outset, India’s Congress government, and even General Malik (ret.), conceded that its military options to retaliate against Pakistan were again limited, because any meaningful strikes risked uncontrollable escalation, possibly quickly up to the nuclear level.99 India was therefore once more largely restrained by Pakistan’s low nuclear threshold from executing retaliatory airstrikes against suspected Lashkar camps in Pakistan. Former Army Chief of Staff Roychowdhury conceded that “Pakistan’s nuclear weapons deterred India from attacking that country after the Mumbai strikes . . . [and] it was due to Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons that India stopped short of a military retaliation following the attack on Parliament in 2001.”

A great piece of research.

More at the link.

Cross-posted from American Power.

The Damned - 'Dozen Girls'

I'll have a longer piece on The Damned later, but enjoy "Dozen Girls," from the band's 1982 LP, "Strawberries." The studio version is at bottom. It's really polished, with feedback-style guitar, but pay attention to Captain Sensible's grinding chords toward the end, at 4:00 minutes. Back in the day, I'd always turn it up even more - these guys rock!

And from this morning, "The Buzzcocks, The Damned to Play the O.C.'s 'MusInk' Festival."

CAIR Takes Aim at CPAC!

Midnight Blue's attending, and there's some generic background at The Guardian, "CPAC 2010: Fired Up and Feisty."

But this is totally predictable, from Fox News, "CPAC Session on Jihad, Free Speech Attracts Complaints":

A panel discussion on the threat posed by "Islamic supremacism," Shariah and political correctness has been scheduled for this week's Conservative Political Action Conference, stirring complaints from some American Muslims that the exercise amounts to Muslim-bashing.

The two-hour session, titled "Jihad: The Political Third Rail," is set for Friday morning, right in the middle of the three-day annual summit of conservative icons and activists in Washington, D.C.

Scheduled to speak are Steve Coughlin, a former Pentagon specialist on Islamic law who was fired two years ago, allegedly under pressure from pro-Muslim officials, and Wafa Sultan, an author and prominent critic of Islam. The discussion is billed as a window into Islam's "war on free speech," the "encroachment" of Shariah -- or Islamic law -- in the West and efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate American society.

Overall, CPAC is attuned more to political strategy and domestic issues, but organizers of the "Jihad" session have been trying to stir the pot with what they call a blunt and objective discussion of Muslims' attempts to harm the West while silencing criticism.

Mission accomplished. The pot has been stirred.

"It's unfortunate that a conservative conference would be in any way associated with Muslim bashers and Islamophobes," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It's a free country. They're free to be anti-Muslim bigots if they like, but it's really up to the organizers of CPAC to determine if they're going to allow their conference to be associated with the hate-filled views of those who will be speaking."

The session appears to be attracting attention on both sides of the issue. While CAIR and a few blogs have blasted CPAC for putting on the event, co-host Pamela Geller said she's already gotten hundreds of RSVPs.

"It really will be enormously informative," she said. "Conservatives want to know."

And just as I write this, Pamela posts on the same piece, "FOX News: Hate Sponsors CAIR Smear, Want CPAC to Cancel our FDI Event Jihad, The Political Third Rail":

Here is more proof of why this conference is so very necessary. All you have to do is utter jihad and the smear merchants and their handmaidens come out shooting.

Image Credit: Midnight Blue, "CPAC 2010 – There is an iPhone App For That!"

RELATED: At FrontPage Magazine, "CAIR’s Hamas Co-Conspirator Associates."

Karen Alloy on Twitter!

Man, this woman is crazy - and you should be following her!

'Hot Air' Sold to Salem Communications! - UPDATED!!

I guess Allah won't be calling Michelle "The Boss" over at Hot Air much longer. See Mediaite, "Exclusive: Hot Air Acquired By Salem Communications":

CPAC hasn’t even officially started and already its making news. Mediaite has learned that leading center-right web site Hot Air has been acquired by Salem Communications for an undisclosed sum. Sources close to the deal claim that Michelle Malkin, the conservative pundit and sole owner of Hot Air, has been in talks with Salem for some time, but the announcement was timed to coincide with the Conservative Political Action Conference, which opens tomorrow in Washington D.C.

Hot Air is one of the biggest, most influential conservative sites on the Web and was launched on April 24, 2006, with Michelle Malkin as founder/CEO (though she remains editorially focused on her own blog MichelleMalkin.com and her own writing and television appearances.) Hot Air is managed on a day-to-day basis by editors Ed Morrissey and the mysterious AllahPundit, who are reported to be part of the deal in the sale of to Salem, and absolutely essential to the core value of Hot Air. We are told that, from a user’s perspective, Hot Air will remain the same despite the change in ownership.

This is official. See Hot Air, "Open Thread: Hot Air Acquisition."

I guess a big announcement's forthcoming tomorrow. I wonder how much Salem paid?

And at Glenn Reynolds', "Is InstaPundit for sale, you ask? A better question: Who would buy it?" I haven't read the additional posts at Memeorandum, but I'll try to update later with relevant information.

**********

UPDATE: There's more on this at Atlantic Wire, "Sale of 'Hot Air' Shakes Up Conservative Blogosphere:

Hot Air was an odd property for Malkin, a fierce blogger whose opinions typically fall several degrees to the right of those expressed by Morrissey and Allahpundit. Allahpundit has drawn occasional conservative attacks for his criticism of two Republican untouchables: Sarah Palin and Christianity. The deal is shaking up the conservative blogosphere, with many wondering how the sale will affect Hot Air and its place in the field of Web commentary.

My first reaction was that Michelle's motive for off-loading Hot Air was financial, hence my interest in "how much Salem paid." And certainly, if she's been unhappy with the direction of the commentary over there, she probably would've just hired new bloggers. We'll see, in any case. Robert Stacy McCain takes issue with the Atlantic's piece. But here's this from the comments at Gateway Pundit:

I know it’s somewhat of a cop-out, but I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude on this one. At first blush I have to ask myself why such a seemingly successful outlet would be for sale to begin with. I know that everything’s for sale for a price, but there’s more here than meets the eye, in my opinion.

Ed Morrissey is an outstanding investigator and writer – a virtual blog posting machine. To me, Ed “is” Hot Air, and I’ll continue to follow his posts whether I’m allowed to comment or not (and currently I am). The “mysterious AllahPundit”, not so much.

If there are changes – and I expect there will be several, despite the initial utterances to the contrary – I would expect that Doctor Zero would replace AP as the #2 writer and AP would become a blogosphere “free agent” ...

I've noted recently the Doctor Zero has become one my favorite bloggers, so that'd be a positive change IMHO.

How Conservative is 'The Mount Vernon Statement'?

Check out the Mount Vernon Statement, "Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century." (Via Memeorandum.) Here's the summary:

A Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda.

» It applies the principle of limited government based on the
rule of law to every proposal.
» It honors the central place of individual liberty in American
politics and life.
» It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
» It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.
» It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.

If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.

We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.

How conservative is this manifesto? Is the Constitution of 1787 actually more so a libertarian document?

Here's Glenn Reynolds: "Notice that it’s heavy on small-government stuff, and light on social-issue meddling. I think this supports the notion of a libertarian shift on the right — which I, of course, am happy to see."

I would focus on how we interpret the last clause at the summary, "conservatism's firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith." Will a libertarian interpretation of constitutional originalism provide a necessary and sufficient foundation for the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or, can we justify any room for "social meddling"?

If it were me, I'd go with Richard Land's manifesto, "Stay Faithful to Core Values."

Last Images of John F. Kennedy

At Fox News:

Also, at the BBC, Rare Footage of JFK's Arrival in Dallas," and CNN, "Film Released of JFK Arrival in Dallas."Plus, from the New York Times, "Texas: Now Showing, Film of John Kennedy’s Last Day."

'I Am Dr. Amy Bishop!'

Hmm ... this might still work if you replaced the wording with, "I Am Dr. Scotty Lemieux!" (see here and scroll down):

From, "Amy Bishop Was Charged With Assault in 2002 IHOP Dispute:

In March, 2002, Bishop walked into an International House of Pancakes in Peabody with her family, asked for a booster seat for one of her children, and learned the last seat had gone to another mother.

Bishop, according to a police report, strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat and launched into a profanity-laced rant.

When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling "I am Dr. Amy Bishop."

Bishop received probation and prosecutors recommended that she be sent to anger management classes, though it is unclear from court documents whether a judge ever sent her there.

Hat Tip: AOSHQ, "Amy Bishop Charged in 2002 IHOP Pancake Rage Incident."

The Buzzcocks, The Damned to Play the O.C.'s 'MusInk' Festival

Okay, I mentioned the Buzzcocks were playing the O.C. this weekend. It turns out that both The Buzzcocks and The Damned are the featured acts Saturday night at the MusInk Festival. Lots of skatepunks will be there:

I saw Pete Shelley in the early 1980s. See, "Pete Shelley - Homosapien." And I didn't know this about "Homosapien," from Wikipedia, "It was banned by the BBC for explicit reference to gay sex, e.g. the words "homo superior / in my interior." Banned songs? Not so good. Besides, I just liked the beat, LOL!

James B. Webb's no doubt hip to it. He's got the knowledge. NTTAWWT!!

I saw The Damned in concert too many times to recall. I'll post something on that group later.

Gemma Atkinson!

No words needed, except to say there's a reason I check Theo Spark's daily!

Source: Guyism, "Oh, How We Have Missed Gemma Atkinson in Lingerie." Also, at Wikipedia, "Gemma Atkinson."

Ever Fallen in Love With Someone...

Watching "The Bachelor" of late, I've been really thinking about the process of actually falling in love. Last night's episode was pretty intense, by the way: I said to my wife, "This show's more about crushing heartbreak than love sometimes ..."

Anyway, I'll see if I can get more to that effect posted in some thoughts later. In the meantime, here's Pete Shelley and the Buzzcocks, "Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (You Shouldn't've Fallen In Love With)?":

You spurn my natural emotions
You make me feel like dirt
And I'm hurt
And if I start a commotion
I run the risk of losing you
And that's worse ...

More on the Buzzcocks later. They're playing the O.C. this weekend.

As always, see my good friend Anton for more wonderful sounds, "Sunday Music – The Crystal Ship." Also, from Reaganite Republican, "Saturday Night Rock-n-Roll Oldies ... Roxy Music- 1972."

Plus, don't miss Theo's "OMFG!!!", and the Washington Rebel, "Whimsy Kitty."

Sarah Palin, No Lipstick

It's amazing, via Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse, "Sarah Palin with and without her trademark hairstyle, makeup, glasses and accessories."

Click the link and scroll over the pictures for before and after. Freaky almost.

The Real Reason for Evan Bayh's Retirement

From WSJ, "Another Liberal Crackup: The Real Reason Evan Bayh Wants Out of Washington":

The political retirement of Evan Bayh, at age 54, is being portrayed by various sages as a result of too much partisanship, or the Senate's dysfunction, or even the systemic breakdown of American governance. Most of this is rationalization. The real story, of which Mr. Bayh's frustration is merely the latest sign, is the failure once again of liberal governance.

For the fourth time since the 1960s, American voters in 2008 gave Democrats overwhelming control of both Congress and the White House. Republicans haven't had such large majorities since the 1920s. Yet once again, Democratic leaders have tried to govern the country from the left, only to find that their policies have hit a wall of practical and popular resistance.

Democrats failed in the latter half of the 1960s, as the twin burdens of the Great Society and Vietnam ended the Kennedy boom and split their party. They failed again after Watergate, as Congress dragged Jimmy Carter to the left and liberals had no answer for stagflation. They failed a third time in the first two Bill Clinton years, as tax increases and HillaryCare led to the Gingrich Congress before Mr. Clinton salvaged his Presidency by tacking to the center.

A fourth crackup is already well underway and is even more remarkable considering how Democrats were set up for success. Inheriting a recession amid GOP failures, Democrats had the chance to restore economic confidence and fix the financial system with modest reforms that would let them take credit for the inevitable recovery. Yet only 13 months later, Democrats are down in the polls, their agenda is stymied by Democratic opposition, and their House and Senate majorities are in peril as moderates like Mr. Bayh flee the scene of this political accident.

RTWT at the link.

RELATED: Doug Ross, "Top Democrat Strategists Formulate Awesomely Cool Plan to Recover From Bayh Defection: Obama Should Use Bully Pulpit More Often."

Plus, Chris Cillizza, "Winners and Losers From Evan Bayh's Retirement" (via Memeorandum).

Keith Olbermann's Plantation: 'Ask Yourself - Where Are the Black Faces?'

I'm really glad I happened to catch this video, c/o Bruce Miller at The Blue Voice and Blue Texan at Firedoglake. With every passing day I'm more and more convinced that President Barack Obama has worsened race relations in this country. It's something I've written about quite a bit, while rebutting the airheaded nihilists of the radical left. But Keith Olbermann, never failing to astound, really outdoes himself. A man with great power at MSNBC -- and thus the television media -- he hasn't the faintest inclination to responsibility. Anyway, it's a lengthy segment at the video, but worth a look. It illustrates the racist patronism of today's Democratic-left. After attacking citizen patriots as "teabagging racists," Olbermann implores tea partiers to ask themselves, "Where are the black faces" among you?

It's hard to be more racially offensive than this, for Olbermann's whole schtick essentially discounts America's achievement of the civil rights dream, one that culminated in the election of the nation's first black president in 2008. But it's more than that: After decades of Democratic Party policies that have systematically supressed black Americans (keeping them "in their place" through welfare policies of dependency, inner-city housing policies of ethnic warehousing, and voting rights policies of racial recrimination and ghettoization), Olbermann has the temerity to suggest that blacks just can't think for themselves. That's not to discount how the Democratic-left attempts to inculcate the young with the false consciousness of racial grievance and victimology. It's that on top of that Olby is asserting that black patriots need the "massa in de big house" to show them how to live.

The frightening truth for the left is that blacks and other minorities are extremely well represented in the tea party movement (and in fact, MSNBC has a history of trying to hide this). And of course it's leftist condescension in the extreme to suggest opposition to Obama is automatically racist AND that there aren't enough black faces in the crowd.

Olby should get a f**king clue, the bigoted pimp!

In any case, I wrote previously about Mason Weaver, the great SoCal patriot and congressional candidate who just happens to be black. And recall patriot Kenny Gladney,seen here selling Gadsden flags at an event last summer, who was later beaten by SEIU thugs. Keith Olbermann certainly knows of Kenneth Gladney. He slurred him previously as at "teabagger" while spewing lies about the attack by the union goons:

You want black tea partiers, Olby? You got it:

I am the mob (not "black mob," mind you ... just the mob). And there are lots who stand with me, white or black, Hispanic or Asian, or whatever "self-identifying" constituency the left is exploiting for their disgusting race-bait politics of Democratic segregation.

Here's another great non-white tea partier, my friend Michelle Malkin:

So, message to Keith Olbermann: All you've got is fear of racial emancipation. You'll die trying to keep blacks on the plantation. Can't have a free people, color-blind, criticizing the administration in Washington. That'd be, well, unpatriotic.

Anyway, Blue Texan sucks down Olbermann's effluent without a chaser, although Bruce Miller, who attempts a serious criticism of Olby's allegedly flawed case for "racist teabaggers," suffers from another form of hubris. Miller, with no actual citation, makes seemingly knowledgable comments like "patterns of discrimination by race have been copiously documented for decades in hiring, promotion, income, housing, health, education and on and on," only to turn around to credit the utter clown Dave Neiwert as some sort of scholarly authority:

Olbermann could also have pointed to research by people like Dave Neiwert, who actually knows something about far-right groups and their methods and rhetoric and has been chronicling their role in the Tea Party groups.

Actually, no difference: Neither Olbermann nor Neiwert knows shit about the tea parties. Fact is they've got nothing but fiction and lies. Meanwhile, tea party patriots are on the verge of taking back power and restoring the republic.

More on that later ...

UPDATE: Instalanche!!

Amy Bishop Leftist Hate Politics

I've got a Memeorandum thread this morning, first time in a while.

It turns out just writing about the murdering proclivities of radical Obama-backing Harvard professors gets some folks on the radical left pretty angry.

Comrade Repsac3, Commissar of State Security, People's Commissariat for Internet Affairs, who I thought put his Donald-demonology to bed, must have instead been lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to pounce. Here's his post, "Why Donald Douglas is a Scumbag." Yeah, noticing that a Harvard scientist who murders her faculty collegues for failing tenure will engender some emotions like that from folks.

And recall that Comrade Repsac3 attracts some of the most bestial commenters on the web. Here's this from "The Original" (an attack monkey), who invested in a little hate-research over at RateMyProfessors:

What is truly pathetic about DD's RMP page is not the accusations of bias by several students but the number of shill posts obviously written by DD or an accomplice.

Note the number that give basic advice that any instructor would give - come on time; be prepared - and end in "...and you'll do fine." These are only the most obvious. Also notice the relatively large number of rating/comments and the middling scores. There is a strong extremity bias in student comments, especially in self-selected samples such as RMP. Instructors who do not shill tend to collect either relatively few ratings/comments or an above average count of positive/negative comments. Relatively large numbers of comments (as compared to the rates of others in the same department) and middling ratings is a tell-tale sign of balancing poor ratings/comments with shills. Spikes in the frequency near tenure or other decision dates are another tell-tale, as students are generally unaware of these.

Folks can follow Comrade Repsac3's links to RateMyProfessors to confirm The Original's suspicions. I don't read my evaluations, frankly. It's mostly disgruntled students getting their revenge. But Comrade Repsac gets his jollies over there, which helps kindle his warped hatred -- which is all he's got.

Anyway, I got a little additional attention for pointing out that leftists only politicize murders from which they can tar Republicans as evil racists. That explains the title of my post, "Amy Bishop Killed Minorities: Leftists Silent on 'Racist' Rampage; Victims' Families Ask, 'Why Was She Still Teaching?'"

Uber-hypocrite Steve M., who gets my name wrong while attacking me, responds to the race questions:

You know what? I have no freaking idea whether there was a racial motive in these killings. I know that, when you dig into the past, the intended pipe-bomb victim was white, and Bishop's brother was white. Maybe David Douglas has an explanation for how those crimes, if she's guilty of them, fits his new theory of racism. Maybe back then she was trying to eliminate the white race, one whitey every few years, as a revolutionary act. I sure hope he tells us. He has such insight into the criminal mind -- I'm dying to know."

Okay, dying to know?

Then I'll just direct little Stevie over to Dag Blog's entry, "Not About Tenure. Seriously" (with emphasis added):

Friday, at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, a biology professor named Amy Bishop murdered three of her colleagues and wounded three others. Two of the people she wounded are still in critical condition, and I offer my sincere hopes for their complete and swift recovery. The murderer had been denied tenure in the department, and media coverage has centered on the question of tenure. Tenure, that strange and exotic academic rite, is obviously the hook for this story, and the resulting coverage is appalling.

The New York Times headline for their story today (which doesn't deserve a link) is "At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly, Official Say." There's something appalling about the passive construction in that sentence, as if it's the "setback" that did the killing. But the story, with its emphasis on "the pressure-cooker world of academic startups" is worse. It also undermines its own angle: the killer's potentially lucrative biotech startup was going well. Meanwhile, Inside Higher Ed fautously links to an old article about faculty who have minor breakdowns after being turned down for tenure, as if one could compare a shouting incident or a distarught person climbing up an ivy trellis with cold-blooded murder. (No link for you either, IHD.) The general thrust of the coverage is that the tenure process is so painful and stressful that an otherwise normal person might snap and become violent.

Let me just say, as someone going through the tenure process: bullshit.

On the other hand, the media has had no interest at all in the question of race, although Bishop shot almost every non-white faculty member in the department. (She also shot and wounded two white victims, a professor and a staff member.) She killed both African-American professors in the department (one of whom was too junior to have had anything to do with Bishop's tenure decision). She killed the department chair, who was ethnically South Asian. A Latino faculty member was wounded. There may only be two non-white faculty left in the department. Whether she intended it or not, Amy Bishop effected a racial purge of the Alabama Huntsville biology department. But the press isn't interested in asking whether or not she intended it. Perhaps the question isn't exotic enough.

These murders are not about tenure. They are about Amy Bishop's moral failings. Those failings might or might not include racism. But a person who responds to a career setback by cold-bloodedly murdering three people, and attempting to kill three more, is not the victim of a difficult process. Amy Bishop is a horribly defective human being. Whatever complaints she may have had a week ago, she has forfeited any right to make them.

Jesus Christ!

Seriously. A "racial purge" of the entire Huntsville department! That's what I'm talkin' about!

But the silence on the left is splitting eardrums nationwide. You just can't talk about this stuff! A white Harvard leftist opens fire on a room full of minority professors and students. And we should just STFU and not politicize it? Okay. Sure. Those leftists sure got me beat in the moral equivalence department.

My heart and prayers go out the families of the dead.

Hat Tip: Kathy Shaidle.

Matchmaking: '$55,000 for 28 Months of Unlimited Introductions'

Getting ready to watch "The Bachelor" in a little while. So, let me share some day-after-Valentine's blog stuff. From the Los Angeles Times, "Matchmakers' Personal Touch Thrives Despite EHarmony, Match.com":

Like social networking, which had many dating industry experts inaccurately predicting the demise of paid Internet dating sites, Internet dating hasn't killed matchmaking, but fed it. In fact, the three go hand in hand, leading relationship-minded singles to ever higher levels of paid service.

Though social networking sites such as Facebook may bring people together and do it for free, there's no guarantee that those brought-together people are available and looking for a relationship. And though Internet dating sites such as Yahoo Personals do a better job of bringing together singles who are motivated to get together because they are paying to find dates, they don't always do a good job of sorting out the serious from the players, or even to help individuals select people who are truly good for them.

Personalized matchmakers promise to do just that. Of course, they also charge a higher price — anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000, depending on the exclusivity of the service, the number of matches they've said they'll provide and how willing they are to go the extra mile.

"You're the therapist, the mother, the best friend, the sister, the nonsexual girlfriend. You have to be everything," said Patti Stanger, star of the Bravo reality TV series "The Millionaire Matchmaker" and proprietor of the L.A.-based Millionaire's Club matchmaking service.

"It's not good enough to say, 'Here's a nice girl.' You get them a girl, they'll sleep with that girl, cheat on the girl. Then I've got to get that girl back. I have to go in and do an intervention and be on call seven days a week. That's why I get the big bucks," said Stanger, who charges men a minimum of $25,000 a year and female "millionairesses" $55,000 for 28 months of unlimited introductions. (She finds her female clients take longer to match.)

Whether it's hooking up her clients with a personal stylist to improve their appearance or enrolling them in an improv class to get over their shyness, "there are 5 million things to do," she said. There are more details to attend to with clients: manners, appearance, expectations. "In the old days, it was, 'OK. I know who I'm going to give you. Here she is. Bye.' "

More at the link, especially the discussion of April Beyer of Beyer & Co.

And that's the lovely Karen Alloy at the video.

American Stories

I've probably blogged this Amy Bishop story a bit much. Steve M.'s cynical hypocrisy proves it. He cites the despicable Talking Points Memo as "evidence" that Gregory Girard, arrested on weapons charges in Massachusetts last week, is somehow representative of the tea party patriots. William Jacobson, always circumspect in his analysis, argued that politics is irrelevant in the Bishop case, but he adds an additional point:

Had Bishop's politics been within 100 miles of a Tea Party, Talking Points Memo and Little Green Footballs would have been all over the case making the connection. Just like they did with the similarly disturbed Gregory Girard, who never shot anyone but who "stockpiled" weapons.

But of course, for socialist radicals like Steve M., Gregory Girard's the poster boy for teh AWESOME DHS SEC Janet Napolitano's alleged "fanatical" right wing tea party terrorists. Man, those administration lefties are really on the job! Pure brilliance! If you keep arresting enough Greg Girards folks will think the system really works! (Yo, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- you got game!) And don't even get me going about Steve M.'s Malik Nadal denialism. (No sir, for the "No Mo' Mista Nice Brotha", to even cast suspicion on the Fort Hood jihadi as a fanatical Islamist is raaaacist!!!).

But hey, the lefties are really on a roll today! Check out my new BFF Scotty Eric Kaufman's stretch-a-palooza of an excoriation:

Conservatives complain 1) when liberals ask that any brown person with a funny name not be labeled a jihadist until evidence of such is unearthed, and 2) when mainstream news outlets link the murder of prominent abortion doctors to conservative causes. They fail to see the lack of equivalence: liberals don't espouse jihad against the United States, but conservatives do inspire those on their fringes to engage in politically motivated violence. The politics of the George Tiller murder are an indictment against conservative rhetoric because that rhetoric made Tiller a target; whereas the personal politics of Amy Bishop are utterly irrelevant in the absence of a vocal and sustained opposition to the existence of the university and the tenure system among liberals.

Right. Politically motivated violence. Somehow I doubt that's really what's got the goat of these lefties. I mean, there's been absolutlely no outrage -- and I mean NONE -- at such horrendous killings as Fort Hood, and when Abdulmutallab failed to bring down the Detroit-bound airliner, that was evidence that al Qaeda's a "joke," a bunch of "incompetent criminals." Or, ahh ... maybe these attacks weren't "politcally motivated"?

And recall, lefties are getting their jollies attacking me for things I have not said. (I have never hypothesized on Bishop's motives. It's enough fascination at the simple truth of a Harvard leftist in league with some of our worst criminal murderers and jihadi terrorists.) And of course, Steve M.'s reponses are bonus epic fail.

And while Bishop may not have political or racist motives, it's Democratic soft-on-crime radicalism that's likely resulted in the deaths of even more ones (e.g., William Delahunt):

Massachusetts in the 1980s was not a bright spot in American criminal justice. Misguided compassion resulted in the infamous Willy Horton case. Delahuunt himself faced questions about his role in another murder by a furloughed prisoner during his first Congressional race in 1996. There was also the witch hunt of he Fells Acre Day Care case, in which innocent people were convicted of child molestation as well as numerable controversies over decisions to parole felons and of course summering under it all the decades long history of the Boston Archdiocese covering up incidents of priests molesting children and adolescents

But justice delayed is not always justice denied. Stories about Martha Coakley's prosecutorial overreach in continuing the unjust treatment of those convicted in Fells Acres as well as her seeming reluctance to prosecute a local policeman accused of a chilling brutal child rape were part of the local background against which the Brown campaign played out.

Whether this 1986 incident is a one of misguided compassion towards a family that had suffered one tragedy and hoped private counseling would suffice with a serious behavior problem or just a crass cover up among members of the local power structure, renewed interest in the case comes at a bad time for the multi term Congressman.

But that's what you get from the same antiwar lefists, inside the administration and out, now claiming credit for victory in Iraq. No wonder Americans hate people like this.

IMAGE CREDIT: John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778, oil on canvas, 71 3/4 x 90 1/2 in. See, LACMA, "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915," February 28–May 23, 2010:

From the colonial period to the present, Americans have been inventing characters and plots, settings and situations to give meaning to our everyday lives. American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915 includes seventy-five paintings, from before the Revolution to the start of World War I, that tell these stories in scenes of family life and courting, work and leisure, comic mishaps and disasters. These daily experiences were all subject to the artist’s searching and revealing eye and many of the works on view are famous images known to almost every American. Major artists such as Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer, John Singleton Copley and George Caleb Bingham, John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt, are included in this important survey, the first of its kind in over thirty years.

Winslow Homer's one of my favorites. I expect to attend this exhibition, and will write about it here in a few weeks. That'll be a wonderful respite from the crazed radicals of the nihilist left.

Amy Bishop Killed Minorities: Leftists Silent on 'Racist' Rampage; Victims' Families Ask, 'Why Was She Still Teaching?'

I just noticed something about the Amy Bishop case: Her victims were minorities. From left to right at the photo: Dr. Adriel Johnson Sr., Dr. Gopi Podila, and Dr. Maria Davis. The image is from CBS News, "Did Amy Bishop, Accused University of Alabama Shooter, Murder Her Own Brother?"

But I noticed this after watching the clip at ABC's Good Morning America below. And see, "Alabama University Shooting: Suspect Amy Bishop's Violent Past Gets Another Look":

The alleged violent past of the once-seemingly docile University of Alabama professor accused of a fatal shooting rampage has stunned the family of her victims and prompted investigators to probe deeper into her past.

Amy Bishop was a suspect in an attempted mail bombing of a Harvard professor. ABC News has learned that investigators will re-open the 1986 shooting death of professor Amy Bishop's brother. Declared accidental at the time, investigators say they were never comfortable with the ruling.

Investigators also revealed that seven years later, Bishop was the prime suspect in a 1993 mail bombing attempt on a Harvard Medical School professor.

"I just feel angry," LaTasha Davis, step-daughter of shooting victim Maria Davis, told "Good Morning America" today. "How did she even get a job working at the school when she had that type of background?"

This is really something: Not only is Amy Bishop a leftist who killed her brother and got a pass from the politically correct criminal justice system (especially Democratic Congressman and then-Massachusetts DA Bill Delahunt), she's also a suspected pipe bomber who is now accused of premeditated murder of three faculty colleagues who were presiding over her tenure case. But add on top of this the fact that the premeditation included the planned killings of three non-white colleages and this really should be explosive for the radical multiculturalists. They keep looking for "motive" (here) or they suggest that Bishop killed as the "result of growing up in a dysfunctional home" (here), which is a version of the "deranged individual" theory so popular among folks who guffaw at the thought that jihadis might actually wage holy war on the innocents (here). But perish the thought that Bishop's motive could have been racism? Maybe Harvard-trained left-wing professors get a pass on that. Leftists aren't asking, in any case. And there's been a deafening silence of the race of the victims from the Obama-enabling press corps. If the suspected killer of Drs. Johnson, Podila, and Davis had been a fan of Michelle Malkin or Rush Limbaugh, the entire radical netroots would have by now mounted a lynch-mob campaign against the "fanatical right." And that's to say nothing of the Larisa Alexandrovnas and Al Sharptons who'd creep out of their victimology hell-holes to decry the "racist" murders of the diverse faculty members.

But it's a quiet few days on the left. The Amy Bishop case isn't fitting the template for the race-hustling outrage of the moment.
RELATED: "Quincy Man Recalls Amy Bishop Holdup." (Via Memeorandum.) Also blogging, Jules Crittenden and Gateway Pundit.

ADDED: Blazing Cat Fur, "Leftist Racial Killing Spree."

AND MORE: See also the first-hand report from Professor Joseph Ng, a former UC Irvine student, who witnessed the murders. Ng confirms Amy Bishop's premeditation and potentially racist motivations. Ng is a Chinese surname. I'll need more information, but so far one-fourth of those at the tenure meeting were ethnic minorities. I'll update later, but it very well could be that Amy Bishop was disgruntled because "quota hires" were denying her tenure. Perhaps the lady was "white trash" and never quite broke out into the more supposedely refined strata of the faculty elite (or, more likely, they're all like that). Boy, this just keeps getting worse for the radical leftists! See, "Former UCI Student Saw Faculty Shootings":

We were 12 all together (including the shooter) sitting around an oval table in a modest size conference room . There were only one door to enter/exit. The shooter was a disgruntled faculty member who didn’t get tenured after several appeals and a law suit. About 30min into the meeting, she got up suddenly, took out a gun and started shooting at each one of us. She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head. Our chairman got it the worst as he was right next to her along with two others who died almost instantly.

That's almost like an assembly line, Che Guevara-ish in fact, or Taliban-ish.

Tea Partiers Storming GOP From the Grassroots

Via Glenn Reynolds, at the Los Angeles Times, "'Tea Party' Activists Filter Into GOP at Ground Level":

First there was the "tea party" protester. Now meet the Tea-publican.

Conservative activists who once protested the political establishment are now flooding the lowest level of the Republican Party apparatus hoping to take over the party they once scorned -- one precinct at a time.

Across the country, tea party groups that had focused on planning rallies are educating members on how to run for GOP precinct representative positions. The representatives help elect county party leaders, who write the platform and, in some places, determine endorsements.

"That's where it all starts. That's where the process of picking candidates begins. It's not from [GOP leader] Michael Steele's office down. It's from the ground up," said Philip Glass, whose National Precinct Alliance is among the groups advocating the strategy. "The party is over for the old guard."

In Arizona and Ohio, Republican Party officials report an increase in candidates running for precinct positions, which often sit open because of a lack of interest.

In South Carolina, a coalition of tea party groups has made a formal agreement with the state GOP to urge its members to get engaged at the precinct level.

In Nevada, a group of "constitutional conservatives" working under the tea party banner has already taken control of the Republican Party in the Las Vegas area, gaining enough strength to elect six of the seven members of the county executive committee.

Glass' group and others say their work is nonpartisan; their hope is that people will reshape both major political parties. But for most of the small-government conservatives of the tea party movement, the Republican Party is a more natural fit.

The shift to local party politics is a notable turn for the group, which emerged in opposition to national financial bailouts supported by both parties.

More at the link.

The piece goes on to note that a lot of local groups are skittish about "being viewed as a party appendage."

That's not true in Orange County, as I've reported a couple of times now. See the comentary at my report from Saturday, "Chuck DeVore Tea Party Rally!"

Thinking About 'The Bachelor'

I watched a lot of television with my family last week, including "The Bachelor" last Monday. I meant to write something about this earlier, but didn't know exactly what to say.

My initial interest in the show was the fantasyland world of Jake, who was lucky to be thrown into the paradise of beauty with all those women seeking his affection, romance, and matrimony. It's a really strange thing, since very few people will ever have a choice like that, even over years of dating. I was getting a kick out of it a couple of weeks ago, and I posted on Ali as a hottie for one of the babe blogging posts.

But scroll ahead at the video to the last couple of panels. Ali comes off as an extreme case. She's almost childish in her self-absorbed indecision. Love does that, I know, but I couln't help feeling for some of the other women, especially Tenley, who -- while obviously self-absorbed by her own divorce (unable to move on) -- seemed more genuine after all compared to Ali.

Also interesting was Vienna, who my wife thinks is too "underclass" for Jake. I've kinda got a soft spot for her, although the US Weekly story last week put a little chill on that: "EXCLUSIVE: Bachelor's Vienna Drained Ex's Savings on Boob Job." See also, "Vienna Girardi Accused of Cheating on Marine Ex, Draining His Bank Account to Pay For Boob Job."

Last Monday's segments featuring Jake meeting the families was riveting television. He's asking the fathers for the hands of their daughters. That's an extremely conservative tradition, and one I think is good. When I first starting having dinner at my wife's dad's house, some of the evenings felt a lot like that. I don't remember specifically asking my father-in-law if I could marry his daughter, but the ritual of approval in those first few months was an extremely powerful experience.

In any case, preview's of tonight's show here. Ali is back!

Joe Biden on Iraq: More on Why People Hate the Democrats

A follow up to my post from the other day, "'In Order to Gain Domestic Power'."

I looked for the video of Vice President's Joe Biden comments on Iraq last week. Betsy Newmark had an awesome post on this, "Joe Biden's Fantasy World":

Joe Biden went on Larry King last night and told us that Iraq could be "one of the great achievements of this administration." This administration? In the fantasy world in which Joe Biden, and perhaps Barack Obama, are the stars of a saga of heroic battles for peace, justice and some other stuff like that what has happened in Iraq is a credit to "this administration."

How about the previous administration whose policies in Iraq Biden and Barack Obama had endlessly criticized and voted against. They both opposed the surge that brought about the situation that Biden now wants to take credit for. And Biden's big proposal was his dopey idea to divide Iraq into three separate territories. And if Obama had had his way, we would have pulled our troops out of there before Bush's administration was even over. The only credit that "this administration" deserves is for not messing too much with the much improved situation that Bush fought to bring to Iraq.

And check out this awesome clip, c/o Voting Female Speaks! ...

More here, "Republicans Object to Biden Taking Credit for Success in Iraq."