And Robert Stacy McCain, who I think is at the stage taking pics at the video, reports: "PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS HQ UPDATE: O’DONNELL WINS!"
The Tea Party movement scored another victory on Tuesday, helping to propel a dissident Republican, Christine O’Donnell, to a stunning upset win over Representative Michael N. Castle in the race for the United States Senate nomination in Delaware.Also at WaPo, "Christine O'Donnell upsets Mike Castle in Delaware Senate primary":
Mr. Castle, a moderate Republican who served two terms as governor and has been reliably winning elections for the last four decades, became the latest establishment Republican casualty of the primary election season. Republican leaders said the victory by Ms. O’Donnell complicated the party’s chances of winning control of the Senate.
Marketing consultant Christine O'Donnell upset Rep. Mike Castle in the Delaware Republican Senate primary tonight, handing the tea party movement a major victory and giving Democrats an unexpected chance to hold the First State seat.More at the link.
O'Donnell, who is making her third run for the Senate in as many elections, relied heavily on national surrogates -- from the Tea Party Express to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- to fuel a shoestring campaign against the iconic Castle who had held elected office in the state for more than four decades.
"The people of Delaware have spoken," said O'Donnell in her victory speech. "No more politics as usual."
The O'Donnell victory, which was considered a political impossibility as recently as a month ago, is a major boost for Democratic hopes of holding the seat once held by Vice President Joe Biden. New Castle County Executive Chris Coons was unchallenged for the Democratic Senate nomination.
"I'm sad to say the Delaware primary results tonight are straight out of Harry Reid's dream journal," said prominent Republican strategist Mike Murphy of the O'Donnell win.
While the Delaware race was the marquee contest of the night, it was far from the only one on the ledger as seven states and the District of Columbia voted in the final major primaries of the 2010 election.
William's got additional comments: "Unite for November."
This past Sunday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof offered another example of the Left’s nuance-free attacks on Americans who have any moral reservations about the world of Islam today.RTWT.
Kristof began his column with an attack on the “venomous and debased discourse about Islam” in America.
He gave one example: New Republic publisher Martin Peretz, a rather thoughtful lifelong liberal, who actually had the temerity to raise moral concerns about Islam in a recent article. Peretz asked, for example, “Is not western society, imperfect as it may be . . . immensely more liberal than the domains of Islam?”
He added: “This intense epidemic of [Islamic] slaughter has been going on for nearly a decade and a half . . . without protest, without anything. And it has been going for decades and centuries before that.”
Kristof ignored every issue raised by Peretz and quoted one sentence to cite Peretz’s article as an example of the “venomous and debased the discourse about Islam” permeating America. To the New York Times and the rest of the Left, the question here is not whether what Peretz wrote is true — because when it comes to the Right, the Left is concerned with finding bigotry, not truth.
“Nativists are back on the warpath,” Kristof went on to write.
Question: Can Kristof name any opponent of the Cordoba Center — or anyone else — who vocalizes any questions about the moral state of the contemporary Muslim world, whom he does not consider a nativist or bigot?
Kristof: “In America, bigoted comments about Islam often seem to come from people who have never visited a mosque and know few if any Muslims.”
Question: Would Kristof agree that those on the left who declare that “Islam is a religion of peace” and who claim to see no moral differences between the contemporary Muslim world and the contemporary Christian and Jewish and Buddhist worlds, also have “never visited a mosque and know few if any Muslims?”
Kristof: “In their ignorance, they mirror the anti-Semitism that I hear in Muslim countries from people who have never met a Jew.”
That is about as non-nuanced and unsophisticated a statement as one can make on this is or any issue. In many Muslim countries, the media are saturated with Protocols of the Elders of Zion–type Jew hatred, with popular TV shows depicting Jews as killing Muslim children for their blood, and calls for extermination of the Jewish state. Nowhere in America is there anything regarding Muslims remotely analogous to the anti-Semitism in the Muslim world.
Kristof: “One American university professor wrote to me that ‘every Muslim in the world’ believes that the proposed Manhattan Islamic center would symbolize triumph over America. That reminded me of Pakistanis who used to tell me that ‘every Jew’ knew of 9/11 in advance, so that none died in the World Trade Center.”
Here is the (nuanced) truth: Vast numbers of Muslims believe that Jews stayed away from the World Trade Center on 9/11. That is a lie — not one Jew on earth knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. But it is not a lie that there are millions of Muslims who believe that a giant Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero would be a sign of Muslim victory.
The same day that Nicholas Kristof’s simplistic view of the mosque issue was published, AOL News reported on a demonstration against the mosque. It quoted a man named Ron Silverados, identified as “a 57-year-old road striper from Long Island”: “I’m tired of saying this but this isn’t a religious issue. . . . It is a moral issue.”
There was more moral nuance in the road striper’s comment than in all the liberal columns and editorials of the New York Times.
If the Left were primarily concerned with bigotry, it would be preoccupied with the most bigoted places on earth — many Islamic nations. But in general, the Left hates the Right more than it hates bigotry. And that leads to a world devoid of moral nuance.
O'Reilly picks it up from there:
Also, great discussion from this morning's Fox & Friends: More at NYT (FWIW), "‘Everything Is on the Table,’ Imam Says of Plans." Turns out the Imam has conceded the possibility of a move, but of course this is in the context of once again attacking critics of the mosque as "radicals." Also at New York Post, "Ground Zero mosque imam 'saddened to the core'."
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, practically every American understood and agreed with a powerful two-word sentiment that summed up the nation’s attitude during those traumatic days: “never forget.” Nine years later, it’s clear that great swathes of the populace have indeed forgotten and the leftist media’s coverage of the anniversary this weekend was symptomatic of the Left’s selective memory when it comes to Islamic terrorism. Oh sure, they remembered the victims of al-Qaeda’s barbarous attacks who fell in New York, Washington and Shanksville, but that’s the easy part. There’s nothing controversial or dangerous about mourning the murdered. It’s quite another thing to point out that the murderous ideology that put thousands of Americans in their graves nine years ago is as potent, as dangerous and as evil a force today as it was on that fateful fall morning in 2001. Yet, from the mainstream media’s coverage through President Obama’s remarks, leftists used the 9th anniversary of the attacks as another excuse to try to conceal Islam’s sharp talons beneath cloaks of respectability and even impotence.More at the link.
Speaking at the Pentagon on Saturday, the president called the Muslim fundamentalists who carried out the attacks nine years ago “a sorry band of men” who had perverted their religion. “We will not give in to their hatred,” Obama said. “As Americans, we will not or ever be at war with Islam.” He called for tolerance of Muslims, seemingly alluding in part to the controversies surrounding the proposed Ground Zero mosque and Florida pastor Terry Jones’ aborted plans to burn copies of the Qur’an. He said that only through tolerance can we keep alive the legacy of the men and women who fell on 9/11.
The speech thus essentially became another other opportunity for Obama to soothe Muslim leaders across the globe, although why any Muslim should need reassurances about this administration’s conciliatory attitude towards the “religion of peace” is anyone’s guess. Citizens of this county, on the other hand, could be forgiven for taking another sort of message away after listening to the president’s remarks. The Obama administration will bend itself into rhetorical knots in order to separate the violent actions of individual Muslims from the political/religious ideology that motivates them. Yet Americans are supposed to assume responsibility for the actions of any fellow citizen that might somehow offend Muslims. In other words, according to the leader of the free world, acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam are mere anomalies that should in no way reflect upon Islam, but it’s our responsibility if hyper-sensitive Muslims are whipped into a frenzy by the mere prospect of an obscure preacher in Florida burning a few books.
Now, since I am here in front of a whole roomful of bloggers, I thought I would talk about some of the things I get asked privately -- questions like, do you have advice for me about building up my traffic? What's it's like being a professional blogger? And are Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin as hot in person as they are on TV? The answer to that last question is "yes" and "yes," my friends.One of those 30 bloggers would be me!
Now, way back when I got started -- and this should encourage you -- I had no contacts in D.C., no contacts in the blogging world, and no special skills that gave me an edge. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a professor. I'm not a reporter. I did technical support for a living. In other words, when your grandma's dog peed on her hard drive, then she put it in the dishwasher to get it clean, took it out and wondered why it didn't work, I was the person she called -- and, yes, that did really happen.
Back then, I would get up, go to work, come home, work until the wee hours of the morning pumping out 4 solid blog posts a day; then I'd get 4-6 hours of sleep and do it again. After doing that for a year, I had 1000 people a day reading me. After two years of that, I was at 3000 a day. After four years, I had 8000 people a day reading me and went full time.
Now, I'm at around 14k people a day on Right Wing News, 14k on Linkiest, and another 5k or so on Viral Footage. On RWN, there are roughly 14-18 posts a day, M-F, another 8-10 per day on the week-ends, and I have something like 30 bloggers writing for me at least semi-regularly.
No one walks the streets of Manhattan fearing a Methodist may blow up his office, hijack his flight, or kill his son fighting in Afghanistan. Unless you are Angelina Jolie or the dean of Yale Law School, this is not only true but obvious.RTWT.
"Any educated individual understands that the Park 51 Islamic Interfaith Center is not a Mosque, nor is it an exclusively Muslim space..."And:
"This perverse narrative and it's uneducated sloganeering needs to be countered with equally simplistic and strong speech, stating that we, as New Yorkers & Americans, embrace the religious freedoms of all groups; no matter how large or small their constituency is. We support their freedom to assemble and worship when they choose and wherever they choose to do so."And:
We won't back down when a handful of fear mongering bigots try to tell us that Park 51 should not be built. We will not turn our backs on our Muslim neighbors. The Park 51 Center is about unity, reconciliation and peaceful coexistence ... the cornerstone of the spirit of New York.Right.
Mr. Wilders was surrounded by Dutch government security men due to Islamist and leftist threats against his life. The agent in the foreground holds a bullet proof shield with both hands, ready to open it quickly to defend against an assassin's attack. The stage area was completely surrounded by security agents.
Mr. Wilders is outspoken in opposing the islamization of the Netherlands and the West. He produced a short film called Fitna which features violent Koranic quotes juxtaposed with images of terrorist attacks. Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death in Amsterdam for making a similar film called Submission. Van Gogh’s partner in making the film, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, M.P., was advised by the Dutch government, that she would be safer living elsewhere. She moved to the relative safety of America, where she lives under 24 hour tight security. Pamela Geller is also under constant death threat, as is Robert Spencer, both of whom can be seen in the photo ...
The conditions under which these human rights activists live show clearly that islam is a violent totalitarian ideology which is destroying free speech in Europe. It takes left-wing political correctness (speech control) one step further by threatening the lives of those who speak out.
The text of the entire speech is at the link. Another brilliant passage:
A tolerant society is not a suicidal society. It must defend itself against the powers of darkness, the force of hatred and the blight of ignorance. It cannot tolerate the intolerant – and survive. This means that we must not give a free hand to those who want to subjugate us. An overwhelming majority of Americans is opposed to building this mosque.
The Internet was all "atwitter" last night with word that a new survey by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm, finds conservative Christine O'Donnell surging into a lead over moderate Mike Castle in tomorrow's GOP primary for Senate in Delaware.Fund also notes that Public Policy Polling is not very reliable (so perhaps discount the O'Donnell surge in the polls), and that the absentee ballots and election-day turnout will determine the winner (and those are largely unknown circumstances at the moment).
The PPI poll shows Ms. O'Donnell with 47% of the vote compared to 44% for Mr. Castle, who has been the state's lone U.S. House member since 1992. Mr. Castle has been particularly hurt by Ms. O'Donnell's attacks on his pro-choice views on abortion and his House vote for cap-and-trade ....
A PPP analysis find that Mr. Castle's approval rating "has taken a sharp turn" from a month ago when he had 60% support in the GOP primary. His decline is "largely a product of 55% of voters in his party saying they think he's too liberal," says pollster Tom Jensen. Currently, Ms. O'Donnell gets 62% of likely conservative voters, who are expected to make up two-thirds of tomorrow's electorate. Ms. O'Donnell is being aided by a last-minute robocall to voters from Sarah Palin.
O'Donnell supporters were quick to claim their candidate has the momentum to win tomorrow. But some skepticism is in order. Ms. O'Donnell has lacked the money for an effective absentee ballot program to lock in votes from her supporters. And Mr. Castle has avoided the mistake of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who narrowly lost a GOP primary last month in part because she didn't pursue absentee voters. Ms. O'Donnell also won't be helped by news yesterday that she once sued a conservative non-profit for nearly $7 million claiming "mental anguish" and gender discrimination after a demotion ....
Conservatives are clearly motivated in Delaware tomorrow and it's likely a majority will back Ms. O'Donnell. But polls like PPP's also signal to Mr. Castle's many supporters that their man is in trouble and they may have to take the unusual step of voting in a GOP primary to save his candidacy. I believe enough will turn out to give Mr. Castle a narrow victory. In the fall election, Mr. Castle has a clear lead over Democrat Chris Coons, while Ms. O'Donnell trails him in head-to-head matchups.
