Dozens Killed in Moscow Suicide Bombing

So far, 31 people reported killed (at BBC and Memeorandum).

And at Atlas Shrugs, "Islamic Terror Attack: Homicide Bomber Kills At Least 31 Human Beings UPDATE: Bomb Packed with Shrapnel." Plus, at Wall Street Journal, "Deadly Explosion Rocks Moscow Airport":

A suicide attacker detonated a bomb at Russia's busiest airport Monday, killing at least 31 people and wounding more than 100 others, authorities said.

The 4:32 p.m. blast near the international arrivals area of Moscow's Domodedovo airport was the country's worst terrorist attack since twin bombings left 40 dead in the Moscow subway last March.

President Dmitry Medvedev convened an emergency meeting of top law-enforcement officials and ordered airport and other transportation security tightened across the country. He said the "preliminary" indications were that it was a terrorist attack.

Officials at Domodedovo, south of the capital, said the airport was still functioning. Some international flights were diverted to other Moscow airports, where security was also tightened.

The blast took place outside a security zone near the baggage claim area, near the Asia Kafe, where people await arriving passengers, Interfax news agency said, quoting the Federal Customs Service.

Russian news agencies quoted security officials as saying the bomb, laced with metal pieces to increase its power to kill, was detonated in the crowd of people meeting arriving passengers. The blast was equal to seven kilograms (15 pounds) of TNT, the reports said.

ADDED: The New York Times reports that this video "appears to show the smoke and flames in the terminal and then the bodies of victims of the blast":

Progressive Heads Explode as Olbermann Exits Stage Left — Or, Stage Right?

Yeah, Keith Olbermann was out at MSNBC because he wanted more money, that damned capitalist pig. All those years of progressive rants topped off with pure hypocrisy. It's too good, really.

But by the looks of the progressive reaction across the web, Obermann's departure was the biggest conspiracy since "Bush died and people lied." (More on that here.) Moonbattery has the roundup of heads exploding on Twitter. But pea-brained progressive Green Eagle ups the ante, hilariously, "Goodbye Keith":

In all my reporting on the idiocies and lies of the wingnuts, here's one thing I found just too boring and stupid to follow: the fact that, virtually every day, there are stories about a supposed attempt by the left to silence right wing talk radio, and TV liars like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Despite the fact that there is not a shred of evidence for this claim, they go on with this nonsense endlessly, like the equally fictional war on Christmas.

Well, here's the reality of press suppression in this country: MSNBC just fired their top-rated broadcaster. And make no mistake about the reason: it was solely because he dared to tell the truth in public. And if you think Rachel, Ed Schultz, and that clown O'Donnell don't get the message, you really are fooling yourself. If Keith is expendable they all are. It is apparently tolerable for CNN to employ the right wing hatemonger and professional liar Erick Erickson. But being a moderate liberal is too much for this country to allow anyone a public voice.

But of course, whoever owns these networks has the right to fire anyone they want, right? And thanks to the sainted Ronald Reagan, no one owns the media anymore but the rich. How many times have you heard decisions like this justified by claims that "it's just business" or that it's all about profits and not about the person's political views at all? Well, I'd like someone to explain to me how it's all about profits when a network fires its most highly rated star.

This is not a minor moment in our history as a nation. It is a major legitimation of the right to stifle dissent. It is a giant step toward fascism; and I am not using the term figuratively. When it becomes acceptable for the rich and powerful to stifle dissent, totalitarianism is on the way.

Oh brother. Could you just make that "goodbye cruel world!"

Wait! I'm supposed to be civil!

Anyway, more from Kyle-Anne Shriver, "Don’t Cry for Olbermann":

That’s it, folks. Keith Olbermann is — and always has been — nothing but a loud-mouthed, adolescent wannabe. In short, it’s not hard to see why Comcast balked at paying little Keith more money. What is difficult to imagine is why they ever put him up against an accomplished journalist like Bill O’Reilly in the first place.

As hard as I’ve tried, I’ve never really been able to hate Keith Olbermann. He clearly has various and quite intricate female “issues.” He has never been married. His love of fame and money and loose morals have left him with nothing more substantial than his own potty mouth for comfort. And he is getting old fast.

So, maybe I will cry a bit for Olbermann and leave you, dear readers, with this one admonishment:

Whatever you do, Mommas and Daddies, don’t let your sons grow up to be Olbies.

Nothing whatsoever good could ever come of following this reprobate off the cliff into a life of nothing whatsoever worthwhile or in the least bit desirable or admirable.

And that’s all I have to say about Keith Olbermann. I’m just so glad I’m not his mother.

Henry Farrell, GWU Political Scientist, Falsely Attacks Glenn Beck Over Alleged Threats to Frances Fox Piven

Following up on my earlier piece: "New York Times Whitewashes Marxist Revolutionary Frances Fox Piven."

It turns out that George Washington University Political Scientist Henry Farrell has published a spurious diatribe against Glenn Beck and his programming on Marxist Frances Fox Piven: "Violent Threats Against a Political Scientist." In an essentially dishonest essay, Farrell offers the disclaimer that it would be "causally irresponsible" to link harsh political rhetoric with acts of violence "without good evidence."

Okay. No doubt Farrell's being especially careful here, since progressives were widely rebuked for exploiting --- within minutes --- the Arizona shooting for wicked political gain. Interestingly, though, Farrell builds his argument off the erroneous New York Times article cited at my entry above. (And recall that the Times was the leading mainstream press outlet fomenting blood libel against conservatives after Arizona.) And he then writes:

I have no doubt that Fox News is correct in saying that Beck has never directly called for violence against Piven, if only because we would surely know if he had. But if some crazy person does decide to try to murder Piven, it will probably be caused in large part by the rhetoric of Beck and others like him. If it were not for Beck and other, less successful demagogues, Piven's name would only be familiar to those who read the Nation or who have a historical interest in left wing politics.

Actually, notice how Farrell can't place any responsibility on Glenn Beck or Fox News for specifically and allegedly advocating violence against Francis Fox Piven. He's thus reduced to mere "probabilistic" analysis, which in the jargon of political science means, "frankly, I can't predict squat about this." Farrell then cites an August 2010 Dana Milbank hit-piece at Washington Post. Milbank alleges that "an unemployed carpenter" set off to "kill progressives" in San Francisco after being moved to political violence by Glenn Beck. But Milbank offers not a single piece of evidence for his claims, and includes this disclaimer: "It's not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show." Henry Farrell omits that key sentence at his post. And he then once again throws out a disclaimer to his argument before offering a causal hypothesis attacking Glenn Beck:

It is not a good idea to make broad claims about how an atmosphere of violent rhetoric is causally responsible for this or that specific incident without good evidence. However, where there is good evidence of a more specific causal relationship between particular speech acts, and particular outcomes, it's a very different matter. There is good evidence that Beck's targeting of the Tides Foundation very nearly helped cause a major tragedy. There is also good evidence that his targeting of a political science professor is causing death threats and sundry other forms of nastiness. I hope that Piven doesn't suffer anything worse than the (doubtless pretty horrible) forms of verbal assault that she is now undergoing.

Actually, the only piece of remotely related "evidence" cited at the Milbank essay is a quote from the unemployed carpenter's mother saying her son watched a lot of television. That's it. The rest is pure conjecture, and certainly not any kind of hard data to warrant Farrell's claim that there's "hard evidence" that "Beck's targeting of the Tides Foundation very nearly helped cause a major tragedy." Moreover, there's not much more to Farrell's claim of "good evidence" that Beck is "targeting" Frances Fox Piven. Glenn Beck's a political commentator on a conservative cable outlet. He publishes some of his stuff to his homepage and his political blog, The Blaze. But Farrell is claiming there's a causal relationship between Beck's commentary and hypothesized violence against Piven. This implies a relationship that condition A is the cause of effect B. However, there is no logical reason here to argue that Glenn Beck's own programming (A) would be the cause of violence against Frances Fox Piven (B). The reason, most importantly, as acknowledged by Farrell, is that there's no evidence that Beck has personally called for violence against Professor Piven. So methodologically it can't be said that such an outcome would be determined causally from the broadcasts in a scientifically empirical way. The relationship wouldn't even be true in the probabilistic sense (i.e., drastically reduced degree of predictive accuracy). Farrell's claim rests simply on the fact that Beck frequently reports on Piven's revolutionary agenda. Of course, there are some heated comments at The Blaze website, and there are reports of alleged threatening e-mails. Yet, these cannot be blamed on Glenn Beck, just as the Arizona shooting could not be blamed on Sarah Palin. This is libel. Hostile and threatening comments at online message boards and blog posts are a regular feature of online discourse. And this is to say nothing of secondary variables that could influence potential violence (as in mental instability, like Jared Loughner, who didn't even watch political television or listen to talk radio).

Fact is, Henry Farrell's attack is political and pathetic, just as the unhinged attacks on Sarah Palin after Arizona were political and pathetic. Both are wrong. Both are efforts to delegitimize, marginalize, and silence their targets. It's reprehensible really, especially considering that, indeed, Frances Fox Piven has herself called for revolutionary violence, just last week in fact. As Glenn Reynolds notes, "Praising riots involving Molotov cocktails and people burning to death? Fine. Criticizing a lefty on a cable TV network? Why that’s “hatemongering” and incitement."

Farrell updates his post with a piece from Professor Peter Dreier at Huffington Post, "Glenn Beck's Attacks on Frances Fox Piven Trigger Death Threats." Dreier repeats the allegations of death threats: "Some of Beck's followers have emailed Piven directly." He then posts a number of comments from The Blaze. But all of this is simply backdrop for what's really going on. Dreier is a radical leftist. He teaches at Occidental College, where he's been described as romanticizing "Socialism and Communism, often ignoring the brutal truth about those economic systems, in order to indoctrinate his students." And further, "The professor doesn't use his course just to brainwash his students into the thrills of Socialism and Communism; he uses his course to routinely demean conservatives."

Exactly.

Here's Dreier describing the right's campaign against Piven and her late husband Richard Cloward, from the Huffington Post piece:

Conservatives have been attacking their ideas for decades. But the paranoid demonization of the couple by the extreme Right has escalated since Obama's election.

The story they now tell about Piven can be traced to David Horowitz, a former New Left radical who did an about-face in the 1970s and became a prominent conservative propagandist. In his 2006 book, written with Richard Poe, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, Horowitz identifies the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" outlined in their 1966 Nation article as the centerpiece of the radical blueprint to "collapse" the capitalist system.

Horowitz's idea caught on with other elements of the conservative lunatic fringe, particularly after an African American former community organizer was elected president. A few weeks after Obama's victory, James Simpson penned an article for the right-wing American Thinker entitled, "Cloward-Piven Government," describing their "malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government." The right-wing echo chamber has transformed the duo into Marxist Machiavellis whose ideas have not only spawned an interlocking radical movement dedicated to destroying modern-day capitalism but also, in their minds at least, almost succeeded, as evidenced by what they consider Obama's "socialist" agenda.

Conservative radio jockeys Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin have, on multiple occasions, warned their listeners about the nefarious social scientists. "The Cloward-Piven strategy is essentially what Obama and a number of these people are following," Limbaugh told his listeners on December 18, 2009, "and its ultimate objective is to have everybody in the country on welfare, by destroying it."

Horowitz, the editor of FrontPage, a far-right magazine and website, called Cloward and Piven the "architects" of "radical change." Other right-wing outlets, including American Spectator, The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Free Republic, NewsMax, and WorldNetDaily, have all educated their audiences about how the Cloward-Piven Strategy has infected society like a dangerous left-wing virus.

It goes on like that for a while, and in fact, it's personal for Dreier. He's an academic radical in the tank for the Democrat Party's socialist/community activist operations. Or as journalist Matthew Vadum indicates, Dreier's an "academic for hire" who "has spent much of the last few years as a paid shill for the organized crime syndicate, ACORN." Dreier wrote a whitewash of ACORN for the American Political Science Association's journal, Perspectives on Politics: "How ACORN Was Framed: Political Controversy and Media Agenda Setting." And as noted at the abstract:

Using the news controversy over the community group ACORN, we illustrate the way that the media help set the agenda for public debate and frame the way that debate is shaped. Opinion entrepreneurs (primarily business and conservative groups and individuals, often working through web sites) set the story in motion as early as 2006, the conservative echo chamber orchestrated an anti-ACORN campaign in 2008, the Republican presidential campaign repeated the allegations with a more prominent platform, and the mainstream media reported the allegations without investigating their veracity ... We demonstrate that the national news media agenda is easily permeated by a persistent media campaign by opinion entrepreneurs alleging controversy, even when there is little or no truth to the story ...

Blah, blah.

It's all a bunch of bull, frankly. As Vadum remarked about the broader whitewashing campaign, "ACORN’s radical allies are now attempting to rewrite history to cast the organized crime syndicate as victim instead of as the prolific victimizer that it has been ever since it was created in 1970."

And this brings us back to Professor Henry Farrell. It's clear from the foregoing that he's not only making bogus claims against Glenn Beck, but that his own ideological program is working in solidarity with the likes of Peter Dreier and other socialist radicals in the academy. What's pathetic is that Farrell posted his smear at The Monkey Cage, which was originally launched by the late George Washington Professor Lee Sigelman, a distinguished political scientist and former editor of both the American Political Science Review and American Politics Quarterly. I seriously doubt that Professor Sigelman would have stood for such rank libels as those posted by the dishonest Henry Farrell. But then, I doubt that Professor Sigelman was a communist propagandist either.

In any case, see also Ron Radosh, "Glenn Beck, Frances Fox Piven, and How the New York Times Falsely Depicts the Controversy."

Newsweek's Arizona Shooting Cover Story Wraps 'Assassin' in American Flag

The article's entitled "The Peculiar Psyche of the American Assassin." Thus, it would seem for Jonathan Alter and Newsweek's editors that the roots of the January 8th shooting are found most prominently in mental illness. But as we read the story, it's clear the Alter's agenda is much larger. He works overtime to place Jared Loughner into the long line of political assassins going back to John Wilkes Booth. It's an extremely strained exegesis. But particularly egregious is the cover image at the hard-copy magazine (which I saw on the newsstand last night). In the current era, frankly, to wrap an ostensibly political actor in the flag is to imply some relationship with the tea parties. I noted this previously with Jill Lepore's scurrilous linkage of Jared Loughner to the "cult of the Constitution." What Alter does is even worse, since in purporting to offer a grand analysis of political assassination in history, he reveals only a cookie-cutter template within which to place the Tucson rampage:

President Obama was right last week to focus his thoughts—and ours—on the victims of the Tucson rampage and the lives they led. Those who gathered that day were doing something fundamentally American: they were meeting with their elected representative at a “Congress on Your Corner” event, participating in the give-and-take of the democratic process. For nearly 200 years, Americans have also been rightly haunted by that strange subspecies of citizen that is their opposite: those who see killing political leaders as a better form of self-expression. They are a sorry lot, mostly a collection of sexually frustrated loners and misfits united only by their common background in social isolation. But they, too, are a longstanding part of the American fabric.

They may have something to teach the rest of us, however unintentionally, about the consequences of our atomized country. Where political violence in other countries is nearly always associated with extremist movements, religious fundamentalism, or criminal organizations, American assassins are usually peculiar stalkers defined less by ideology than vague political and personal grievances.

Jared Lee Loughner would seem to be just the latest to fit this American profile. The 22-year-old gunman killed six people, including federal Judge John Roll and 9-year-old Christina Green, and wounded 14, among them Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Wielding a Glock semiautomatic, the assassin fired 30 rounds in a few seconds outside a Tucson supermarket. His mugshot, with that twisted smile and weirdly sparkling eyes, told you almost everything you needed to know about the coherence of his motives.

And this next passage is forced to the extreme:

It’s often impossible to cite specific, direct causes for individual episodes of mayhem. Most people can hear repeated references to comments like “If not ballots, bullets” (Florida radio talk-show host Joyce Kaufman) or “Tiller is a baby killer” (a reference to Dr. George Tiller, murdered by an anti-abortion activist) or “Second Amendment remedies” (Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle) and do nothing violent. Still, Arizona alone is home to roughly 21,000 schizophrenics, according to the calculations of Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, and about 10 percent of them are potentially dangerous. When they explode, they could be responding to the voices in their heads, or the voices on the radio (or in books and online), or, most likely, some cacophony of voices within and without.

An “Insurrectionism Timeline” posted by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence cites more than 100 examples of incitement (gun sights on congressional maps weren’t threatening enough to make the list) and direct threats of bodily harm in the last two and a half years. Just two days before the Tucson attack, police arrested a man for threatening to shoot members of the staff of Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado. Three days after Giffords and the others were attacked, police took a man into custody after he allegedly made threatening phone calls to the office of Rep. Jim McDermott, suggesting he deserved to die for voting against the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Loughner’s motives were less coherent, but that doesn’t mean his heinous act was nonpolitical. This was not a case of a lunatic going berserk and shooting up a random shopping center. Loughner felt aggrieved by what he considered to be Giffords’s failure to answer a question he asked her at a previous community meeting in 2007. He obsessed over his desire for vengeance (“Die bitch!” read one of the missives recovered from his personal possessions) and apparently plotted the attack in advance. By aiming for a political leader, he moved from the ranks of mass murderer to assassin.

I'm calling bullshit right there.

Actually, it is a case of a lunatic going berserk. The key questions discussed this last week focused on how states had been cutting mental services, including Arizona (and the implications for public health and safety), and on whether Jared Loughner's legal team would be able to use an insanity defense at trial, as the Los Angeles Times points out:

In Loughner's case, defense attorney Judy Clarke would have to show that her client did not know his actions were wrong. Evidence that Loughner was paranoid or delusional would not be enough to shield him from punishment, under either federal or Arizona law.

Such evidence may be good enough to shield him from a death sentence, however, if the Justice Department or the state asks for one.

Last Sunday, New York Times ombudsman Arthur Brisbane published an apology for the paper's erroneous reporting on the Arizona shooting. While strained, the essay at least acknowledged that reporters had jumped the gun (metaphor) in their early coverage and the editors had failed their responsibility to provide professional, untainted journalism. But in the case of Newsweek, it was Jonathan Alter himself who was the very first journalist to recommend that President Obama exploit the massacre for political gain. Never let a crisis go to waste, they say. And while the facts have long been clear regarding what happened on January 8th --- and while the country has made great attempts to increase civil debate --- not wasting the crisis remains the top agenda item for the progressive left.

33 Minutes

From The Heritage Foundation.

My meet-up group has sponsored a showing for February 4th:

Left-Wing Climate of Hate: Deception and Suppression Keep Casey Brezik Off National Radar

Actually, it did make Fox News, "Man Charged in Dean's Stabbing at College Minutes Before Speech." And AP, "Man Who Stabbed Penn Valley Comm. College Dean Targeted Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon."

But the story didn't gain much more traction nationally, as Ed Driscoll notes, "Doesn’t Fit the Narrative, or Drive the Agenda." And at Gateway Pundit, "Far Left Activist Slashes Throat of Man He Mistakes For Governor – Media Silent." And from Jack Cashill, "Left Wing Climate of Hate and Assassination":

Successful propaganda is composed of equal parts deception and suppression, and the apparatchiks in the mainstream media are much better at the latter.

They may have erred in pushing the Arizona assassination attempt beyond its ideological limits last week, but they succeeded brilliantly a few months earlier in suppressing news of a nearly lethal attempt by a genuine leftist.

The Other McCain has video clips: "Democrat Attacked After Vitriolic Rhetoric From Sarah Palin … No? Never Mind."

But I love this one the best, "Victimless Crime File: Pot Smoking Anarchist Casey Brezik Tries to Kill Community College Dean":

Brezik was reported to have been covered in “demonic” tattoos and to have scribbled a strange symbol on one of the schools walls. Some sources claim that the “demonic” symbols and tattoos were anarchist signs.

This was also not his first rodeo. He was arrested at the G-20 meetings earlier this year, something he proudly wrote about on his Facebook page:

Brezik’s Facebook page paints a portrait of an angry man. He had 26 friends and bragged in June about being the first person arrested at the G-20 Summit.

“Crossed the security fence. Ran from the cops. Was tackled. Spit on an officer. Was arrested, charged, and deported. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” he wrote.

For that Brezik spent two days in jail and got ten days (?!?) probation for assaulting a police officer. Had Canada taken his assault of a police officer more seriously today’s violence may not have happened.

Brezik’s devolution began much earlier however. His family reported him missing in March 2009 and he was listed as an endangered missing adult, which means he may have had mental health issues. Marijuana use is known to exacerbate existing mental problems.

It’s easy to blame Casey Brezik’s left wing politics for this violence, but the truth is that these traveling “radicals” are a drug culture and Casey Brezik was a user. The May Day riot in Asheville was another example of these “anarchists” getting high and running wild and the truth about anarchism is that troubled souls who self-medicate and drug addicts are 90% of that movement.

One thing I want to point out here is that marijuana played a significant roll in Brezik’s lifestyle and ultimately his crime. He was high when he tried to murder an innocent person and had more weed on him, suggesting that he planned on getting high again. Would he have tried to kill someone without pot? Maybe. But we know that if pot was legal this crime still would have happened and Brezik’s access to pot facilitated his insanity. This is not a victimless crime.

The Socialist Agenda of Revolutionary Transformation

I'm still trying to shake off the cognitive dissonance here, because, you know, there's no real communist revolutionaries citing Marxist doctrines calling for the mass proletarian overthrow of capital:

"Because we do in fact hate commies, at least real commies, not the imaginary commies that community college Assistant Associate Professor Douglas sees lurking behind every potted plant."

Right. Imaginary. That is, if you're idiot butt-freak Tintin from Sadly No!

This Sadly prick remains outside the realm of objective reality, of course, sippin' his commie Kool-aid. And all hate all the time whips up all kinds of paranoid delusions, no doubt. And don't even get me going about the world historical dim bulbs in the comments (Malaclypse especially).

That said, Francis Fox Piven is on a roll. See, "Globalization Destruction: Piven Gleefully ‘Hopes’ and Explains How Countries Like China Can Shut Down USA and Bring Revolutionary Transformation."

BONUS: From the Poor Old Francis Fox Piven School for Advanced Sympathy Studies, "Glenn Beck's Continuing Obsession with Professor Frances Fox Piven and the Roots of Violence in America":

Several months ago I published a post about Glenn Beck's obsession with City University of New York Professor Frances Fox Piven. I talked about having met her briefly in the early '80s in a grad course and about what a wonderful experience that was.

Mostly I wrote about how Beck, and those inclined to buy into his hateful message, can't stand anyone who helps poor people be heard or helps them make a legitimate claim to a decent life in America. I wrote about how Piven's career has been largely dedicated to helping us understand marginalized people and helping them help themselves, and that for this sin Beck was using the full weight of Fox News to vilify her.

Oh my gosh (sniffle, sniffle).

That is horrible! Glenn Beck's a rank brute! A scourge! No, a bully! Poor old Francis Fox Piven hasn't done a thing but help those poor people throw off their chains. She's helped them smash their oppressors and realize their alienation from the fruits of humanity. These people, by Jove, deserve a decent existence --- and you! --- you horrid bourgeois exploiters owe them a damned living! For shame!

EXPROPRIATE THE EXPROPRIATORS!!

Republicans Test the Waters for 2012 Presidential Race

At LAT, "Republican Hopefuls Lay Groundwork for 2012":

By one measure, the 2012 presidential campaign is off to a slow start.

No major candidate has officially jumped in, unlike four years ago, when nine White House hopefuls had declared their bids by the end of January 2007. Mindful that the first nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire might be pushed back a month, and wary of an anti-incumbent mood among voters that could make life difficult for a front-runner, potential Republican candidates are staying on the sidelines for now.

But by another measure — money — the campaign is in high gear.

President Obama's potential challengers are busy cultivating donors, recruiting staff and testing campaign messages — conducting proxy campaigns that illuminate the approach they would take as White House hopefuls.

Some are building sizeable war chests through so-called leadership political action committees, which can collect as much as $5,000 per contributor for use in political activities not directly related to an official presidential candidacy. Others are using private groups to raise money and promote causes that may figure in their future campaigns.

Because the top likely contenders are not federal officeholders, they can raise money through state PACs, including those that have few or no limits on corporate and individual contributions.

By waiting to register with the Federal Election Commission as presidential candidates, they can raise money in large-dollar amounts and also keep lucrative television gigs that they would have to relinquish as candidates.

"The way the system is set up, it permits people to go around and spend some time effectively testing the waters," said E. Mark Braden, an election law attorney who served as general counsel to the Republican National Committee. "On the whole, so long as prospective candidates avoid saying, 'I'm running,' or some synonym of that, the [Federal Election Commission] has pretty much avoided getting involved in that gray area."

More at the link.

The article discusses the progress of the top-tier likely candidates, especially Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. There's also discussion of Pawlenty, Barbour, and Gingrich, none of whom I expect to do well. Mike Huckabee is mentioned only in passing, although I expect he'll be top-tier, and by the end of the primaries will likely be one of the last three standing, along with Romney and Palin.

RELATED: "Romney Wins New Hampshire Republican Party Committee Straw Poll" (via Memeorandum). And at The Other McCain, "Herman Cain Tops Santorum, Christie, Daniels, Pence, Huckabee in N.H."

Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession? Or Just Too Pro-Business?

The main story's at LAT, "Obama Touts U.S. Innovation in State of the Union Preview." And at NYT, "Obama Urges U.S. Competitiveness Ahead of Speech."

What's interesting about this is how progressives are quick out of the gate attacking the agenda. You've got Robert Reich, who was President Clinton's Secretary of Labor, with "American Competitiveness, and the President’s New Relationship with American Business." And by some really bizarre tricks of witchcraft, Emptywheel is able to turn Reich's attack on the agenda as a diatribe against the military industrial complex. Seriously. "“Competitiveness” Is Peace":

If we want to be competitive ... we have to stop wasting so much money on our war machine and instead invest it in our own country.

This, for want of a better phrase, is rank unadulterated bullshit.

That said, you gotta love Paul Krugman's piece, "Competitiveness." Krugman's mostly just agreeing with Robert Reich. That is, the attacks on Obama's agenda are mostly attacks on American business, which is the enemy of the progressive left. The administration is way too cozy with Wall Street and the big corporations like GE, and it drives lefties crazy. What's interesting is that Krugman links to his one-time classic article at Foreign Affairs, "Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession." Published in 1994, the piece was a big deal at the time, since it broke with the orthodoxy on the epic challenges of head-to-head competition with Japan. And the actual analysis is straightforward, that nations are not firms, and the problems of competitiveness arise from a range of factors beyond mere worker productivity, currency values, and high value-added manufacturing sectors. But I'll leave that to the economists (and Krugman was a respected economist on one time). What's so funny about Krugman is what a sexist troglodyte he is (or was back in the day). I'll never forget how he spoke of Laura D'Andrea Tyson as President Clinton's "Chairman" of the Council of Economic Advisors:

Most writers who worry about the issue at all have therefore tried to define competitiveness as the combination of favorable trade performance and something else. In particular, the most popular definition of competitiveness nowadays runs along the lines of the one given in Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Laura D'Andrea Tyson's Who's Bashing Whom?: competitiveness is "our ability to produce goods and services that meet the test of international competition while our citizens enjoy a standard of living that is both rising and sustainable." This sounds reasonable. If you think about it, however, and test your thoughts against the facts, you will find out that there is much less to this definition than meets the eye.

Laura Tyson is, of course, a woman. I guess that didn't occur to Krugman, or the editors at Foreign Affairs, for that matter. More recently, Christina Romer served as "Chair" to President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors. But by 2008 most media commentators spoke appropriately of Romer as the "chairwoman of Pres. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers."

My how times change.

It's good for a laugh, in any case. And big time radical progressives like Paul Krugman and Firedoglake's Marcy Wheeler come off looking like dolts one more time.

New York Times Whitewashes Marxist Revolutionary Frances Fox Piven

"I have considerable respect for non-violence, but I don’t treat it as inevitably a necessary rule ..."

That's the quote from Frances Fox Piven's discussion at the C-SPAN clip above.

Piven is a long-established Marxist revolutionary of the slow-burn academic variety. She's notorious for her longstanding call to break the American system through a revolt of the masses from below, called The Cloward-Piven Strategy.

But lately she's been aggressively promoting a more spontaneous form of violent unrest, massed street revolts to topple the American regime.

As reported a couple of weeks ago at The Blaze, "Frances Fox Piven Rings in The New Year By Calling for Violent Revolution":

She’s considered by many as the grandmother of using the American welfare state to implement revolution. Make people dependent on the government, overload the government rolls, and once government services become unsustainable, the people will rise up, overthrow the oppressive capitalist system, and finally create income equality. Collapse the system and create a new one. That‘s the simplified version of Frances Fox Piven’s philosophy originally put forth in the pages of The Nation in the 60s.

Now, as the new year ball drops, Piven is at it again, ringing in 2011 with renewed calls for revolution.

And see also Matthew Vadum's piece, "Marxist Frances Fox Piven Calls For a Violent Uprising Against the American System."

But you wouldn't know it from the New York Times, which has a piece this morning in the left's classic genre of disinformation and propaganda, "Spotlight From Glenn Beck Brings a CUNY Professor Threats":

On his daily radio and television shows, Glenn Beck has elevated once-obscure conservative thinkers onto best-seller lists. Recently, he has elevated a 78-year-old liberal academic to celebrity of a different sort, in a way that some say is endangering her life.

Frances Fox Piven, a City University of New York professor, has been a primary character in Mr. Beck’s warnings about a progressive take-down of America. Ms. Piven, Mr. Beck says, is responsible for a plan to “intentionally collapse our economic system.”

Her name has become a kind of shorthand for “enemy” on Mr. Beck’s Fox News Channel program, which is watched by more than 2 million people, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze. This week, Mr. Beck suggested on television that she was an enemy of the Constitution.

Never mind that Ms. Piven’s radical plan to help poor people was published 45 years ago, when Mr. Beck was a toddler. Anonymous visitors to his Web site have called for her death, and some, she said, have contacted her directly via e-mail.

In response, a liberal nonprofit group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote to the chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, on Thursday to ask him to put a stop to Mr. Beck’s “false accusations” about Ms. Piven.

“Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response,” the group wrote.

Notice that? The classic propaganda whitewash. The country's unofficial newspaper of record is mounting a disinformation campaign against Glenn Beck. The MFM has been widely rebuked for its libelous reporting on the Arizona shooting, but there's clearly a demand for stories of this sort, since the political payoff has been considerable. While the Times is at pains to indicate that Piven wrote an article "45 years ago" calling for mass uprising, the piece doesn't report that Piven called for revolt once again, just two weeks ago, in the same journal, The Nation, "Mobilizing the Jobless":

Protests among the unemployed will inevitably be local, just because that's where people are and where they construct solidarities. But local and state governments are strapped for funds and are laying off workers. The initiatives that would be responsive to the needs of the unemployed will require federal action. Local protests have to accumulate and spread -- and become more disruptive -- to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

A loose and spontaneous movement of this sort could emerge. It is made more likely because unemployment rates are especially high among younger workers. Protests by the unemployed led by young workers and by students, who face a future of joblessness, just might become large enough and disruptive enough to have an impact in Washington. There is no science that predicts eruption of protest movements. Who expected the angry street mobs in Athens or the protests by British students? Who indeed predicted the strike movement that began in the United States in 1934, or the civil rights demonstrations that spread across the South in the early 1960s? We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom -- and then join it.

These aren't the obscure rants of some raving idiot out in the progressive netroots fever swamps. Piven is establishment. But taking the Times' propaganda one step further is useful idiot Steve Benen:

If you've never heard of Frances Fox Piven, don't feel bad. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't either. Apparently she wrote some radical stuff about poor people and political activism in 1966, and the voices in Beck's head tell him this is important and relevant in 2011, never mind the fact that the vast majority of liberals haven't read her work and have no idea who she is.

That's a lie. Anyone who reads The Nation knows exactly who she is.

Leftists are liars.

They're liars. They're propagandists. And they're evildoers.

Exit videos from London and Toronto, featuring the kind of spontaneous unrest that Francis Fox Piven wants to bring to America:

See also Left Wing Rebel (via Memeorandum).

State Lawmakers Pushing Aggressive Campaigns to Limit Abortions

This is what freaks out the utterly demonic pro-choicers, and I couldn't be more pleased.

At NYT, "Conservative Lawmakers in Dozens of States, Energized by Midterm Electoral Gains, Are Working Aggressively to Limit Abortions."

And don't miss Michelle's essay, "The Philadelphia Horror: How Mass Murder Gets a Pass" (via Memeorandum):

The mainstream news reports about Philadelphia’s serial baby-killer Kermit Gosnell and his abortion clinic death squad only scratch the surface of his barbaric enterprise. You must, must, must read the entire, graphic, 281-page grand jury report (embedded after my column below) to fully fathom the systematic execution of hundreds of (not just seven) healthy, living, breathing, squirming, viable babies — along with an untold number of mothers who may have lost their lives in his sick, grimy chamber of horrors as well. It is explicit. It is enraging. It will haunt you.

Ask yourself why you are not hearing about which root causes and whose rhetoric are to blame for this four-decades-long massacre — just the tip of a blood-soaked iceberg defended by the predators of Planned Parenthood. You know the answer: If it doesn’t help the Left criminalize conservatism, it’s not worth discussing.

Also, The Other McCain has a great post and roundup, "Feminism Is to Honest Debate What Kermit Gosnell Is to Humanitarianism."

RELATED: "Kermit Gosnell, Phila. Abortion Doctor, Seems Confused by Murder Charges, Shocked by No Bail."

Glenn Beck – Jan 21, 2011

A follow-up to "Full Transcript for Glenn Beck's 'Shoot Them in the Head' Comments."

I was watching Beck's broadcast while working on the post. He's been on Fox two years, and the introduction reminded me of the program in early 2009, just after Obama took power. I nice flashback and update:

Ace of Spades — Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister Still Touring at 65

The guy is legend.

I remember seeing Lemmy hanging out at gigs in London in 1985. I thought it was amazing seeing him out and about, partying like a regular guy. And I guess he is, actually. At LAT, "Lemmy: Rock 'n' Roll's Ace of Spades":

From the beginning, Motörhead played fast and loud, drawing inspiration from the MC5 and Deep Purple, while setting a pace for the coming generation of thrash metal bands: Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, etc. The newest Motörhead album, "The Wörld Is Yours," is set for release Feb. 8, and delivers on the same driving, back-to-basics grind.

Motorhead, with guitarist Phil Campbell and drummer Mikkey Dee, is set to perform at the House of Blues in Anaheim on Jan. 25, and return to Los Angeles on March 11 at Club Nokia.

"The music is damaging. It bruises you," says Henry Rollins, the former Black Flag shouter and spoken-word artist. "He still has this force in the universe, and that is not mellow music. He is not going gently into the good night."

Kilmister has managed to survive decades of hard living, the booze and recreational drugs, including a taste for speed, but never heroin. "It was dumb luck. We all could have gone anytime. Especially in the '60s, when it was, 'If it fits in my hand and my mouth, I'll take it,'" he says.

He's still able to rage easily through 90 minutes of hard rock onstage night after night, but diabetes means his legs aren't always up to the two-block stroll from his apartment to the Rainbow and back. He was treated for a heart murmur in 2003 and now takes blood pressure medication, but retirement is no option. And the age limit to rock edges ever higher.

Guitarist Scott Ian of Anthrax calls Kilmister "a true pirate" in the tradition of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, "People who live life exactly on their own terms."

More at the link.

And there's a new biopic, "Lemmy: 49% Motherfucker, 51% Son of a Bitch."

Keith Olbermann Quits Countdown — The Left's Chickens Coming Home to Roost? ... UPDATE! — NBC Fired Olby

I rarely watch Countdown.

I happened to click on The Daily Caller and saw this: "Keith Olbermann’s ‘personal responsibility’ for Tucson: We watch, because we’re paid to." I thought nothing of it at the moment. Working on something else, I kept surfing and landed on New York Times. Olby's picture was at the top with the headline: "Olbermann Leaves ‘Countdown’ on MSNBC." Cruising around further, I checked Twitter, and the link to Howard Kurtz, "MSNBC's liberal crusader abruptly resigned on air tonight, ending a provocative eight-year run."

Keith Olbermann, the liberal crusader whose combative style put him increasingly at odds with his network bosses, resigned abruptly from MSNBC tonight.

The cable channel confirmed his unexpected departure as Olbermann was rather calmly announcing the demise of Countdown after an eight-year run that included a bitter feud with Bill O'Reilly, fiery denunciations of Republicans and occasional acknowledgements that he had gone too far.

Olbermann thanked his audience—"my gratitude to you is boundless"—and a list of people who have worked with him, notably excluding MSNBC President Phil Griffin, whom he has known for three decades.

A knowledgeable official said the move had nothing to do with Comcast taking control of NBC next week, although the cable giant was informed when it received final federal approval for the purchase that Olbermann would be leaving the cable channel. This official described the dramatic divorce as mutual.

Olbermann, who quit MSNBC once before—in 1998—as well as ESPN, almost single-handedly revived the network by leading it on a leftward march and aggressively attacking the rival operation he called Fox Noise. But his relations with top NBC and MSNBC executives sharply deteriorated when he was suspended for making donations to Democratic candidates, and they began to talk about how the channel was now on solid enough footing to survive without him.

More at the link.

Kurtz notes that Olbermann was taking a lot of heat for the heat of his show.

I'll update after I pin down for sure that he was fired. But check Gateway Pundit, "Sanity Wins! … Crazy Keith Olbermann Is Out at MSNBC – Effective Immediately." And Allah sorts through the speculation, "Breaking: Olbermann announces the end of “Countdown”." Also at Memeorandum.

*********

UPDATE: From Richard Adams' Guardian headline at Memeorandum, "Keith Olbermann abruptly fired by NBC." But there's a change on the homepage, "Keith Olbermann dropped by NBC ... the controversial MSNBC cable news host, has his contract abruptly terminated by parent company NBC."

Plus, a roundup at Instapundit, "MSNBC SAYS SAYONARA TO KEITH OLBERMANN."

And at TMZ, "Keith Olbermann -- Fired By MSNBC."

Gabrielle Giffords Smiled Inside Ambulance as She Heard Applause During Dramatic Send-Off

Here's the video from the presss conference:

PREVIOUSLY: "Doctors in Houston Report Gabrielle Giffords Aware of Surroundings."

Full Transcript for Glenn Beck's 'Shoot Them in the Head' Comments

Part of the initial explanation for the left's jumping the gun (metaphor) on the news of the Tucson shooting is that the Democrat-Socialists have been so thoroughly repudiated at the polls. Daniel Henninger argued at the Wall Street Journal that last November "was no ordinary election. What voters did has the potential to change the content and direction of the U.S. political system, possibly for a generation."

This reality will be the driving fact of life in politics over the next couple of years, and as William Jacobson pointed out --- and Rush Limbaugh reiterated on the air --- we now have a foretaste of the kinds of progressive delegitimation campaigns that will be deployed for Obama's reelection efforts. And recall, a majority of Democrats continue to believe that Sarah Palin was at least partially responsible for the shooting. So it pays to remember that the left is working on a program of lies, disinformation, and propaganda.

The latest example is the next iteration of the left's campaign to destroy Glenn Beck. Patterico decimated Charles Johnson's anti-Beck smears yesterday, "No, Charles Johnson, Glenn Beck Did Not Tell His Viewers to Shoot Anyone in the Head." But the story's still trending at Memeorandum. And even though the full transcript proves that Beck's segment was pure commentary on the left's neo-communism --- and the buyer's remorse of the Democrats' progressive base --- dishonest leftist bloggers continue to allege that right-wing rhetoric is causing outbreaks of violence. But a simple perusal of the transcript reveals perfectly that Beck was warning elected Democrats that the violent progressive proletariat had them in the crosshairs:

I want to warn you now, Democrats, your party is over. And I don't mean — all tea parties and Republicans are going to beat you in November. I mean the Democrats, as we used to know them, the Democrats that were in my family growing up, are over.

I'm going to show you the civil war, the video evidence in the civil war in the Democratic Party that's happening right now. And no one in the media is exposing it. And it is dangerous, what is happening.

The radicals have infected the party. They have been brought in by politicians who don't really care about anything. They just want to win. They've been tolerating the revolutionaries — the Democrats have.

But more importantly, the revolutionaries have been tolerating those politicians. For the moment, the radical fringe of the party is now. Just today, Van Jones was speaking at America's Future Now conference.

He is speaking to a group of progressives. I find this extraordinarily disturbing, because I believe this man is sending a message. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VAN JONES, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER FOR GREEN JOBS: I think that when we look back to the history of the Obama administration and look back at the history of our progressive movement, that this week will mark a historic inflection point when progressives decided to be progressive again in this country. I think something shifted this week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: Yes, it has. It has. This is an ominous statement coming from a revolutionary. Please go to GlennBeck.com and look up "STORM: Reclaiming Revolution." This is his organization. He is in this. From a revolutionary.

I'm sorry but when did the Obama administration not be progressive? Excuse me? They were normal? We have seen progressives. We haven't seen the actual spooky progressives yet. I think you are about to. Something has changed this week. He's right.

But what the politicians don't understand, the ones who have co-opted these revolutionaries and brought them in the process, is they are dangerous. Why? Why? Well, because a lot of them have called for violent revolution in the past and they never distanced themselves from it.

You cannot co-opt and lie to people who believe in something. Why is Ahmadinejad dangerous? Well, because he says he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, OK? The press and the politicians — "Oh, he's just saying that."

Why do they say that? Because nobody in the press and nobody in Washington actually believes a damn thing, except their own image. That's it. This man is a twelver. Look it up. Do you know what it is? It's a revolutionary so dangerous that the Ayatollah Khomeini banned twelvers.

OK. Here's the Ayatollah Khomeini, who is a revolutionary — he says stay away from these guys. They're spooky. He didn't co-opt them because he understood they believed in the 12th Imam coming back, and the way to bring the 12th Imam back is wash the world in blood.

There are politicians like the Ayatollah Khomeini who will do revolution for power. And then there are people like this who are mad men. I never thought I'd say we better learn something from the Ayatollah Khomeini, but here it is.

The media and the politician have all of this wrong. In every single walk of life — you want to know why TV doesn't reflect you? You want to know why Washington doesn't reflect you? Because they don't understand, from the radical revolutionaries to the Islamic extremists — and yes, DOJ, they do exist — to the Tea Party movements.

Just because you in Washington and you who are so out of touch with life in the media, just because you don't believe in anything doesn't mean nobody else does. We do. You know why you're confused by this show? It's because I believe in something. You don't.

Tea parties believe in small government. We believe in returning to the principles of our Founding Fathers. We respect them. We revere them. Shoot me in the head before I stop talking about the Founders. Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government.

I will stand against you and so will millions of others. We believe in something. You in the media and most in Washington don't. The radicals that you and Washington have co-opted and brought in wearing sheep's clothing — change the pose. You will get the ends.

You've been using them? They believe in communism. They believe and have called for a revolution. You're going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning, they may shoot you.

They are dangerous because they believe. Karl Marx is their George Washington. You will never change their mind. And if they feel you have lied to them — they're revolutionaries. Nancy Pelosi, those are the people you should be worried about.

Here is my advice when you're dealing with people who believe in something that strongly — you take them seriously. You listen to their words and you believe that they will follow up with what they say.

Didn't we learn that lesson from Usama bin Laden? I heard his warning in 1998. I said on the air at the time, listen to him. We didn't listen. We didn't listen to the revolutionaries in Germany, the revolutionaries in Russia or Venezuela or Cuba — no, no, no. They all have one thing in common. They have all called for revolution.

They want to overthrow our entire system of government, and their words say it. Why won't you believe it?

The passage at the video is highlighted in bold italics at the fifth paragraph from the end of the blockquote.

Glenn Beck isn't inciting violence. He's warning, quite powerfully, of the growing and potentially violent unrest that's brewing at among the announced revolutionaries of the progressive base.

Doctors in Houston Report Gabrielle Giffords Aware of Surroundings

At CBS News:

(CBS/ AP) Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords knows what's going on based on squeezing his hand the first day and going through streets of Tucson, said Dr. Randall Friese, Giffords' trauma surgeon at UMC in Tucson.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords smiled inside an ambulance as she heard applause during a dramatic send-off from her hometown Friday, and doctors say her transfer by jet and helicopter to a hospital in Houston went flawlessly.

"She responded very well to that - smiling and even tearing a little bit," said Dr. Randall Friese, a surgeon at the University Medical Center trauma center in Tucson. "It was very emotional and very special."

Friese and Giffords' doctors in Houston spoke Friday afternoon at a news conference at Texas Medical Center. Doctors say Giffords has a drain in her brain because of a fluid buildup, so she will stay for now in the ICU. She will be moved later to the center's TIRR Memorial Hermann rehabilitation hospital.

Giffords still has a craniectomy, and it might be a month before her skull is shaped. Until then the Congresswoman will wear a specially measured helmet with the Arizona flag on it to protect her cranium.

"Whether she will form words, we will have to wait and see," said Dr. Dr. Dong Kim, a neurosurgeon at the hospital.

Dr. Kim also said Giffords is in the top 5 percent of what they would expect from a gunshot injury to the brain.

Also, at LAT, "Gabrielle Giffords Leaves Tucson."

The Founding Fathers Would Have Hated Liberals Progressives

I reported on this earlier: "The Lies of Bill Maher — And the Epic Struggle Between Good and Evil in the Aftermath of Tucson, 1/8/11."

Now here's John Hawkins, "The Founding Fathers Would Have Hated Liberals":

You gotta love it. I've been harping to John about how he calls these folks "liberals." They're not. The founders were liberals, actually, "classical liberals," to be precise. And what best way to illustrate how un-liberal the progressives are is to take a look at Sadly No!'s recent attack on none other than John Hawkins, "There Will Be No Apologies Here Either":

The irony to which Hawkins is referring is that CNN apologized for the use of the word “crosshairs.” “Ha, wussies,” Hawkins harumphs:

Just for the record, we here at Right Wing News don’t apologize for using the word “crosshairs.” Other words we don’t apologize for include job killing, kneecapping, firepower, shotgun, cut, campaign, brass knuckles, slaughter, eviscerate, obliterate, fire, snipe, carve, kill, reload, targeting, gut, bombed, terminate, axe, attack, and of course, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious murder-go-round. We also don’t apologize for calling CNN an embarrassing bunch of weenies who should man up, try to develop some testicular fortitude, and stop acting like such a bunch of little girls.

And, just for the record, we here at Sadly, No! don’t apologize for using the word whale, leviathan, behemoth, hippo, big fat candyass and, of course, mother-fricking ginormous. We also don’t apologize for calling Hawkins an embarrassing mound of man-boobed lard who should back away from the fried food buffet, lace up some tennis shoes, and take a run around the block, particularly so that he could become aware that almost any “bunch of little girls” could outrun him in heels and without breaking a sweat .

Indeed, irony does seem to be made out of ice cream.

Check the Sadly No! freaks for the full post.

And to repeat, they're not "liberals."

RELATED: "Progressives Are Communists (If You Didn't Know)."

Woman Sues After Falling in Fountain While Texting

At Fox News, "Woman Falls In Fountain While Texting, Sues." Also, "Mall Worker Who Fell in Fountain Threatens Legal Action, Has Criminal Record."

And, surprisingly, an interview yesterday with the "fountain woman," at ABC News, "Fountain-Falling Texter in Court for Alleged Theft: Woman Considers Suing After Mall Fall Becomes a Viral Video Sensation" (at Memeorandum):

Here Come Chinese 'Trophy Acquisitions' in the U.S.

In 1989, the editorial board of the New York Times asked, "Is the transfer of American assets to Japanese ownership something to worry about?"

The answer was no, "of course." But the Times board when on to suggest that this was "a sharp reminder of Japan's growing economic strength." So true, but within just a few years, by the mid-1990s, those fears of "Japan as Number One" quickly dissipated as that nation floundered in the fallout from its overheated bubble economy.

I'm reminded of this by the news this morning that China's Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC) has made a bid for ownership entry into the U.S. financial market. See WSJ, "China's ICBC Bids for U.S. Entry":

CHICAGO—Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. on Friday signed an agreement here to acquire a majority stake in Bank of East Asia Ltd.'s U.S. subsidiary, becoming the first state-owned Chinese bank to make an acquisition of a U.S. deposit-taking institution.

The deal, signed on the last day of Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S., represents what could be the start of big expansions by Chinese financial institutions in the world's largest economy.

The deal comes as both Beijing and Washington are calling for greater commercial ties between the two countries. China is prodding the U.S. to ease its export controls, especially those involving high-technology products, while the U.S. is asking for more Chinese purchases of made-in-America goods and services.

Still, the Bank of East Asia transaction promises to be carefully scrutinized by U.S. regulators, including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as Cfius, because of the state-controlled nature of ICBC, China's largest lender. Bank of East Asia is a publicly traded bank based in Hong Kong.

RTWT.

And also at WSJ, "Why China’s ICBC Bank Deal is Important."

The Chinese are coming to America. And we'll soon see, no doubt, some "trophy acquisitions" that raise hollers far and wide. But as we've learned from previous experience, this hardly means the end of American world preeminence.

In any case, Daniel Drezner has a roundup on those "writers who vastly exaggerate China's rise!" See, "The most absurd edge of the 'China as behemoth' meme."

Related: Paul Krugman on China (via Memeorandum).

I'll have more later ...

Civil Discourse at Barbara O'Brien's Mahablog

How's that civility thingy going?

Not too well at The Mahablog, it turns out. As we can see at the screencap, Barbara O'Brien viciously attacks WSJ's James Taranto, who called out the progressive left for its continuing derangement campaign against Sarah Palin. That's just a "small exaggeration," of course.

Taranto's piece is here: "Palinoia, the Destroyer: What's Behind the Left's Deranged Hatred."

Taranto's a national treasure. You gotta love this, from the essay:

For many liberal women, Palin threatens their sexual identity, which is bound up with their politics in a way that it is not for any other group (possibly excepting gays, though that is unrelated to today's topic).

An important strand of contemporary liberalism is feminism. As a label, "feminist" is passé; outside the academic fever swamps, you will find few women below Social Security age who embrace it.

That is because what used to be called feminism--the proposition that women deserve equality before the law and protection from discrimination--is almost universally accepted today ....

To the extent that "feminism" remains controversial, it is because of the position it takes on abortion: not just that a woman should have the "right to choose," but that this is a matter over which reasonable people cannot disagree--that to favor any limitations on the right to abortion, or even to acknowledge that abortion is morally problematic, is to deny the basic dignity of women.

To a woman who has internalized this point of view, Sarah Palin's opposition to abortion rights is a personal affront, and a deep one. It doesn't help that Palin lives by her beliefs. To the contrary, it intensifies the offense.

He hits the bullseye so directly (if I may use that metaphor) that Barbara O'Brien just can't continue:

Anyway, I didn’t get past the sentence about sexual identity ...

That's gold.

Barbara obviously can't handle the truth. Her progressive sensibilities immediately erect a cognitive road block preventing comprehension that, oh noes!, Taranto's got her number!

Majority of Americans Would Reject Obama 'If the 2012 Presidential Election Were Held Today'

At Fox News, "Obama Falling Below Expectations at Two-Year Mark."

At at the raw survey form, 51 percent would vote for someone else, 36 percent definitely and 15 percent probably (via Gateway Pundit):

And the kicker is that the survey oversampled Democrats.

Ouch.