Cartoonist Ted Rall Calls for Communist Revolution: 'I Would Like to See a Completely Leftist Proletariat Dictatorship'

A violent revolution and the establishment of a proletarian dictartorship in the U.S.?

Right.

But of course, there's no "real commies" around any more. Just "imaginary" ones. Just ask Tintin, the blogging asshat at Sadly No!

"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."

Here's the book: The Anti-American Manifesto.

Rall's interviewed at Washington City Paper:

Washington City Paper: What’s your new book about?

Ted Rall It’s about the desire to replace the two-party system with something better. Understanding the fact that’s not going to happen by marching in the streets, or writing poetic letters to the editor, made it obvious that as it has always been and as it always will be, that if we want to improve our lives we’re going to have to take some radical chances.

WCP: Why do it now, post-Bush/Cheney, or even post-Reagan for that matter?

TR: Obama is why, actually. He’s about the best that the system has to offer. This two-party system, owned by corporations, is not going to give us a president who is less owned by corporations, or who is smarter, or who has more integrity. This is about it, this is as good as it gets. It’s very clear that he’s neither willing nor able to solve the problems that face the country. He’s not willing or able to stimulate the economy, to put people back to work, to stop the widening disparity of wealth, to pass a real health care plan, to get us out of Afghanistan, to get us out of Iraq… if he’s the best that they’ve got, we need better.

WCP: So the situation that we’re in right now—would you blame Bush for it, or would you go back further?

TR: Oh, we’re talking about decades of malfeasance, corruption, and a country that’s intentionally deciding to become a poor one on purpose. It’s really kind of crazy, so it’s not just Bush. Reagan and Clinton bear a lot of the blame for free trade agreements that sent American jobs overseas, for the widening disparity of wealth, for crushing the unions—it goes on and on. You can go back a lot further than that too. In the most recent era I would say that it began with Reagan ....

WCP: I must say that personally I have a little trouble trusting the mob, much like the founding fathers did.

TR: Well, yeah, if the United States proves anything, it’s that democracy doesn’t work. You can look at California’s referendums to prove that. I’m being droll there, but in reality the country is too undereducated to have a functioning democracy. As Toqueville said, you need a well-educated, well-informed electorate in order to make democracy work and we don’t have that. In fact it’s considered geeky or dorky to be an intellectual, and if you are, you’re supposed to pretend that you’re not ...

WCP: In your first chapter, you talk about this being late-stage capitalism, but to me it looks vaguely like a return, at least during the Bush years, to early-stage capitalism with less rules, less taxation, and the like. I would have said something like FDR’s New Deal would have starting moving us to a late-stage capitalism. Can you talk about why you think we’re in a late-stage capitalism now?

TR: It’s the classic Marxist model, where the trend toward monopolization has gone to an extreme, to the point where competition has been stifled, and where new generations of young people find their road to advancement cut off and are unable to find work or start new businesses. Capital has frozen. You know the country’s still rich. In 2008, money didn’t go away. We didn’t become poor. The lifeblood of the economy stopped circulating and rich people stopped investing. It’s really quite crazy if you think about it. The thing about American capitalism is that it does everything exactly backwards. When it should be audacious, like now, it’s timid, and when it should be timid, like during the late 1990s, it’s profligate. It’s really an incredibly stupid system (laughs) . The reason I wrote this book is that it’s become obvious to everyone. You couldn’t call for revolution in 1989—well you could call for it, but no one would have cared. I think more people are open to the message now. Someone asked me the other day, ‘well, how are you going to radicalize people?’ and I said ‘you don’t have to radicalize anyone.’ Once you get a pink slip and an eviction notice from a bank that is paying its CEO $40 million a year, you’re radicalized. You don’t to need read Mao’s Little Red Book ...

WCP: When you call for revolution, what would you see replacing the current system? Parliamentary democracy?

TR: I’m all the way on the far left, as far as you can get, so I would like to see a completely leftist proletariat dictatorship, but what I want is neither here nor there. I don’t think that what I want is important, or relevant, or realistic to even discuss, because once you unleash the forces of revolution, anything could happen. You could end up with a right wing coup. Who knows where you’re going to end up? You could end up with a Christian theocracy. What the revolution does is create the physical and ideological space for the discussion to take place. Right now, we don’t really know what Americans want, but what we do know is that this system is currently broken, and what we need is to come in with a clean slate, start from scratch and undergo the difficult process that the United States has not undergone for 200 years of figuring out how we really want to live in the year 2011.

The full interview's at the link.

Rall is an award-winning leftist political cartoonist. Totally mainstream. His cartoons are syndicated in over 100 newspapers around the country. And here he is advocating the violent overthrow of the United States and the establishment of a communist dictatorship. But there won't be a peep by anyone in the MFM. It's the tea parties who're routinely portrayed as extremist right-wing fringe elements. It's all pretty messed up. Check those links, and then Gates of Vienna's comments:

I’m not going to examine the latest from The Guardian in any detail, since it’s really just more of the same. I’m just posting this article to point out the extent to which the leftist press are using the websites of ICLA and 4Freedoms — not to mention American Counterjihad sites — as sources for their reporting.

As you read through this, see if you come to the same conclusion I did: The Gnudaria doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on. They read our blogs and our forums, and they quote our words, but it’s like a deaf person reading a musical score — they have no real sense of what it all means. This is especially true of their account of what is going on here in the USA, for which they have a thoroughly tin ear.

Epic 'Feminist' Hypocrisy

Democrat Jerry Brown is in the news again this morning. Politico reports that Brown spoke out against mammograms in 1995. Folks can parse the policy-wonkishness of the statement. I'm still just blown away out at how, with the campaign's "whore" slur, for the left there's simply nothing Democrats can do to trigger disgust and outrage. Carol Platt Liebau perfectly sums up the Democrats, NOW and radical feminists:

NOW has nothing to do with women's rights, or the proper treatment of women. They are simply shills for abortion and big government. They ought to admit it and take the word "Women" out of their name, because they no more stand for "women" in general than President Obama stands for small government and low taxes.

The Right to Hate

Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt refused to sign anti-lynching legislation in the 1930s. Typical for leftists. I've been having a go 'round with Reppy's white supremacist blog, where he writes: "I only repudiate hate and such when I think something is hateful." That's what lefties do. Deny the hate and spin long, rambing and insane justifications for it: "That ordinary people did these things is deeply disturbing; that they manufactured a social rationale for their acts is more disturbing still":

More here.

Reppy's Motto:

Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

-- Robert C. Byrd, letter to Sentor Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1944.

Previously: "White Minority."

AND FROM ST. BLOGUSTINE:

"Your unconquerable strength is in your ability to express the truth. They despise you for it. Let them!"

And despise they do.

Peter Weir's 'The Way Back'

In theaters December 29. In general release January 21, 2011 (background here):

Peace

Click the image to enlarge (via Legal Insurrection):

Donald Wood, 17-Year Math Teacher at Tennessee's McGavock High School, Suspended After Violent Classroom Meltdown

At The Blaze, where there's a fascinating comment thread placing the blame for this guy's breakdown on the students:

There's a link to Gawker as well, where even the lefties suggest the students drove this guy over the edge. It's hard out there. You gotta just dismiss the class sometimes. Go get some fresh air and a Coke.

More commentary at Mediaite, "Student Records High School Teacher’s Breakdown On Cell Phone Camera."

Blake Lively Rule 5

She's a beauty:

Linkmaster Smith should be linking this up for Sunday's Rule 5 extravaganza.

Katharine Birbalsingh, Deputy Head Teacher, Suspended After Speaking Out at Britain's Conservative Party Conference - UPDATED!!

Via Ghost of a Flea, at London's Daily Mail, "Deputy head who dared attack the state education system is sent home from school":

A teacher who laid bare the chaos in the state education system has been ordered out of the classroom by her school.

Katharine Birbalsingh is facing disciplinary action for daring to speak out at the Conservative Party conference this week about the shambles in state secondaries.
The Daily Mail understands that Miss Birbalsingh, 37, was made to work from home after other senior staff at her London academy feared her speech on Tuesday created too much negative publicity.

‘I just want this issue to be resolved and to get back to teaching again.’
However, Miss Birbalsingh did not blame the school for over-reacting.

‘It is not the school or the head’s fault,’ she added. ‘They are shackled by the system which bans teachers from having freedom of speech.

‘In my conference speech, I was not attacking my school directly – I have only been there for a few weeks.

‘I was emphasising my ten years plus of experience in classrooms.’ She added: ‘I feel awful. I have been forced to choose between keeping my school happy on the one hand and my principles on the other.

‘I shouldn’t be torn in that kind of way.’

Miss Birbalsingh said she was ‘devastated’ at being kept out of the classroom while she waits to hear if she is formally suspended or sacked.

The former Marxist – who was state-educated before going to Oxford University – voted Tory for the first time in this year’s general election.

A French teacher and deputy head at St Michael and All Angels Church of England Academy in Camberwell, South London, she was the surprise star at the Tory conference.

She revealed how bad behaviour and lack of discipline in schools ‘blinded by Leftist ideology’ stopped staff from teaching children.

Her intervention against a ‘broken’ system which ‘keeps poor children poor’ earned her a standing ovation. She took up her latest job a month ago and said last night that her criticisms were not aimed at her new school.

But staff felt that she had damaged the school’s reputation – an accusation that she denies.

Miss Birbalsingh said yesterday: ‘I’m devastated by this.

‘My whole life is about helping children fulfil their potential, particularly those in less privileged areas, and I love my school.

‘All I wanted to do was to highlight the barriers that stand in the way of improving education in Britain.

She has courage. And a former Marxist too.

Speaking out is a difficult thing with the left's hate-speech ayatollah's having such crushing power. I've experienced it, but obviously British teachers have less free speech protections. Although it's not as though U.S. radical education bureaucracies haven't chilled freedom of expression inside the classroom and out. This last couple of years, amid the Obama interregnum, has been particularly stifling.

And think of all the kids harmed by this sickening hatred and rigid state bureaucracy. It's sad just to think about it.

MORE COMMENTARY at Midnight Blue, "British Teacher Speaks Out on the Shambles of State Education." The link there goes to London's Telegraph, "Teacher who criticised education standards to return to school."

AND THANKS to Glenn Reynolds for the Instalanche.

Alex Knepper, FrumForum Blogger, Fired by Daily Caller Over Pedophile Controversy

I had an exchange at this blog with Alex Knepper some time back, after California's Proposition 8 became a national controversy. I don't dislike Alex. Lately though, on Facebook and Twitter, Alex has come across as extremely combative, for example in response to my essay on Tyler Clementi. I had slammed his arguments as juvenile (and it looks like I'm not the only one).

Well I've been learning a bit about Alex of late. Alex is 20 years-old and homosexual. That I knew. What I didn't know is that Alex has the hots for young boys, and he posts to gay adolescent hookup boards with an animated JPEG image of Justin Bieber. The folks at NewsReal Blog have been reporting on this. See, "David Frum and His Pro-Pedophile Protege Alex Knepper."

It's a fairly detailed post. Alex apparently posted under the alias "Lostpainting." Patterico, who is an ADA in Los Angeles, confirmed that the NewsReal post checked out: "Does a David Frum Protege Have Tendencies Towards Pedophilia?"

I tweeted the link to Alex last night. I found this tweet from Alex this morning:

This is interesting, since I considered Alex a friend previously, and I've never ridiculed him or alleged any kind of moral depravity. I'm just now learning about all this stuff. And what I'm reading is not reassuring, for example, Alex was fired from NewsReal Blog in July: "The Liar Alex Knepper Wasn’t Fired for Criticizing Ann Coulter, He Was Fired for Being An Intemperate, Unmanageable, Perverted, Impulsive, Narcissistic Child."

As for pedophilia, I think my understanding of it is like most people's, and that pedophilia is sexual interest and molestation of children. One of the criticisms of Alex is that he turns deeply moral dilemmas into academic ones, which we can see above at the tweet parsing the definition of "pedophilia." I'd think most folks would think it wrong for a 20 year-old man have a sexual interest in a 16 year-old boy. And while Wikipedia's entry indicates that in clinical medicine pedophilia is defined as sexual advances toward pre-pubescent children. But the page continues:

In common usage, pedophilia means any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse, often termed "pedophilic behavior". For example, The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary states, "Pedophilia is the act or fantasy on the part of an adult of engaging in sexual activity with a child or children." This common use application also extends to the sexual interest and abuse of pubescent or post-pubescent minors.

No one likes to be criticized, but as noted Alex seems to be particularly sensitive, and he's become aggressively combative in response. He's been doubling-down his defense of his behavior by offering explanations or excuses that are simply not appropriate. Just last week, Alex published an analysis of the Tyler Clementi suicide at The Daily Caller (cited at my link above). The page has now been pulled:

And characteristically, Alex blames it on a NewsReal Blog smear campaign against him:

Unfortunately, smear tactics sometimes work, and my relationship with the Daily Caller has ended. It has ended amicably, but it has ended.

Well, in this case, those "smear tactics" provided damning evidence of morally questionable behavior --- and it's that activity that got Alex Knepper fired from Daily Caller. It will be extremely interesting now to see how long it will be until David Frum follows suit. Can't be long, especially as the case of Alex's pedophilia goes viral. Hard to explain all of this, although I know these kinds of extremist rationalizations are common in the fever swamps of the neo-communist left. And it's stange that Alex claims to be a conservative, but I don't think so, unless this is the kind of faux-conservatism David Weigel recently discussed. In other words, it's not. Just more of the same morally relative post-modern radicalism that increasingly informs the mainstream of the Democrat Party left.

Democrat Bastions Besieged by GOP

At WSJ and Memeorandum:

Republican challengers are suddenly threatening once-safe Democrats in New England and the Northwest, expanding the terrain for potential GOP gains and raising the party's hopes for a significant victory in next month's elections.

Republican advances in traditionally Democratic states, including Connecticut, Oregon and Washington, may not translate into a wave of GOP victories. But they have rattled local campaigns and forced the Democrats to shift attention and money to races they didn't expect to be defending.

Rising sentiment against the party in power has washed ashore even in coastal Oregon, where Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio won his 10th re-election two years ago with 82% of the vote.

"I am having the same problem that Democrats are having across the country, which is ennui," he said, noting that his opponent's yard signs "are thick" across much of the district. Mr. DeFazio said he is facing the fight of his political life.

And that's because the electorate is awakening to Democrat-Socialist Party hate and hypocrisy.

RELATED: "TwitterGate Update: Neal Rauhauser Switches Account to ‘Protected’ Status."

National Organization for Women Endorses Jerry Brown for Governor

Yeah, because misogynist hatred is cool, that is, if you're a Democrat.

At LAT, "Jerry Brown announces NOW endorsement one day after Meg Whitman slur" (via Memeorandum). Also, "Jerry Brown Says 'Whore,' And NOW Comes A Runnin'."

Typical leftist.

The Left's Opportunistically Hypocritical Attack on Rich Iott

Joshua Green asks:"Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi?" It's a good question. It's probably not something I would do. But the candidate, Rich Iott, is a past participant in WWII military reenactments. These are quite common among history buffs. But here's the thing: If this were a Democrat candidate you wouldn't hear a peep. (I've yet to see the left's outrage for the Jerry Brown campaign's misogyny, for example.) Racism, sexism and hatred of the other? Leftists offer social justifications for them. But open season if it's a GOP candidate. See, "Left's Pathetic Attack On Republican Iott For German Re-enactment Participation." (Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: "TwitterGate Update: Neal Rauhauser Switches Account to ‘Protected’ Status."

'I Must Be Dreaming'

From Goldfinger, playing right now on Encore:

Bogani Masuku at BDS Quebec Conference

See "BDS Conference Sponsors Turning A Blind Eye To Hate?" (Via Moose and Squirrel.)

Why are organizational sponsors of the BDS Quebec Conference happening in Montreal this month associating themselves with Bongani Masuku, judged by the South African Human Rights Commission as guilty of anti-Semitic hate speech? Perhaps because Masuku’s hateful positions are precisely in line with what the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement are all about. ...

What precisely did Masuku say that got him into so much trouble? Here are a few examples:

"We want to convey a message to the Jews in South Africa that our 1.9-million workers who are affiliated to COSATU are fully behind the people of Palestine … Any business owned by Israel supporters will be a target of workers in South Africa” [Source: Address at COSATU-Palestinian Solidarity Committee rally in Raedene, 6 February 2009].

"COSATU is with you, we will do everything to make sure that whether it’s at Wits University, whether its at Orange Grove, anyone who does not support equality and dignity, who does not support the rights of other people must face the consequences even if it means that we will do something that may necessarily cause what is regarded as harm …" [Source: Address at public meeting on Wits University Campus, 5 March 2009]

Typical. RTWT.

Hat Tip: Blazing Cat Fur.

California's Cash Crop Crackup

Check out Kathy Shaidle's essay at NewsReal Blog, "Move Over, Underpants Gnomes: Latest Newspaper Business Plan Involves … Cheetos!"

And no joke on the "cash crop crackup," especially if Prop 19 passes. A new pro-pot documentary, "Cash Crop," is now playing in theaters. The review at LAT isn't particularly enthusiastic (focusing on growers, the film avoids the second and third stage marijuana markets, where the real complications and casualties of decriminalization will be found). And no doubt the reviews of the state's pot initiative won't be all that enthusiastic either, should the measure pass next month (which is looking less likely, thank goodness: "New poll shows California tilting against legalized marijuana").

Update on Obama's Community College Initiative

Bruce Hall commented on my community college entry:

I do not often agree with President Obama, but in this instance I believe there is significant opportunity for community colleges to "repair" the education process in the U.S. He got a bit sidetracked in his pontification about tax breaks which really was irrelevant. Tax breaks are not the issue. The issue is creating a system in which community colleges become feeder campuses to universities in an orderly and effective way... for both the students and the universities.

Community colleges can become "filters" for students who have marginal credentials, but may have excellent motivation... allowing them to adequately prepare for the university and avoid situations such as this ...

... report on Wayne State University.

Obama's Rap Palate

Not winning hearts and minds in the heartland:

Somehow this strikes me as another Obama pose. But whether the president genuinely enjoys this brutal, hate-filled garbage or is just faking it to manufacture some street cred, it displays poor judgment. And it's not cool. The man has daughters, for heaven's sake.

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama's Gangsta Grillz."

Sexy Marisa Miller Captain Morgan Trailer #2

Version #1 is here:

More great blogging at American Perspective and Washington Rebel.

White Minority

Reppy's theme song:

We're gonna be a white minority
We won't listen to the majority
We're gonna feel inferiority
We're gonna be white minority

White pride
You're an american
I'm gonna hide
Anywhere I can

Gonna be a white minority
We don't believe there's a possibility
Well you just wait and see
We're gonna be white minority

White pride
You're an american
White pride
Anywhere I can?

Gonna be a white minority
There's gonna be large cavity
Within my new territory
We're all gonna die

NewsBusted — Chris Matthews: US 'Basically Conservative'

Via Theo Spark: