The Ebola Anti-Hysteria Hysteria

From Holman Jenkins, at the Wall Street Journal:

People are irrational in their assessment of risks, blah, blah. Yes, we can find here and there examples of Americans overreacting to Ebola. But more in evidence has been media’s own anti-hysteria hysteria. This week a Bloomberg Radio host rudely and repeatedly (and uncharacteristically) hushed a Wall Street analyst for suggesting we still have things to learn about how the virus is transmitted. Guess what? This is true. What’s more the virus is subject to forces of natural selection, so even our broadly reliable generalizations about transmissibility are hardly written in stone.

The media, as if citing an iron law, keep telling us that (to use the New York Times formulation) “people infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to display symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air.”

Sorry, each clause of that sentence is subject to caveat, and the whole thought needs to be preceded with the words “government scientists believe . . . .”

Acknowledging these realities is not tantamount to saying an uncontained breakout is likely or possible in the United States. A person deliberately infected and sent among us in an act of bioterrorism wouldn’t be able to infect any sizable number of people given what we know about Ebola. The average American is in far more danger from a ham sandwich or the neighborhood salad bar. Yet much sense was spoken on PBS on Wednesday night by Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, who said: “I would like not to call it irrational. When people are just learning about something, something that they regard as a threat, and they haven’t integrated all of this information still into their thought process, their sense of anxiety obviously increases.”

Oh, so it's not irrational to worry about the spread of Ebola? And that's coming from an infectious disease expert? Well, what do you know? I thought No More Mister had laid down the final word about the Ebola hysteria, which is of course that it's all a Republican plot to make President Obola look bad just before the midterms! See, "YOU'LL HAVE TO DO THE PANICKING FOR US, DOUG."

You know, because it's only the evil Fox News hacks that are making people "panic." Good to know, Steve M. Obviously this Dr. William Schaffner is a tea party shill!

Libya's Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf: Attack On U.S. Embassy Was 'Planned — Definitely, It Was Planned by Foreigners...'

Listen to Libyan President Mohamed Yousef el-Magaria.

This has to be the most devastating interview I've heard all week, at CBS, "'Face the Nation' transcripts, September 16, 2012: Libyan Pres. Magariaf, Amb. Rice and Sen. McCain":

BOB SCHIEFFER: Was this a long-planned attack, as far as you know? Or what-- what do you know about that?

MOHAMED YOUSEF EL-MAGARIAF: The way these perpetrators acted and moved, I think we-- and they're choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, I think we have no-- this leaves us with no doubt that this has preplanned, determined-- predetermined.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And you believe that this was the work of al Qaeda and you believe that it was led by foreigners. Is that-- is that what you are telling us?

MOHAMED YOUSEF EL-MAGARIAF: It was planned-- definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by people who-- who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their-- since their arrival.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister President, is it safe for Americans there now?

MOHAMED YOUSEF EL-MAGARIAF: The security situation is-- is difficult, not only for Americans, even for Libyans themselves. We don't know what-- what are the real intentions of these perpetrators. How they will react? So-- but there is no specific particular concern for danger for Americans or any other foreigners. But situation is not easy ...

This guy's an interesting dude, a heavyweight of Middle East politics. And a relative moderate by regional standards. Check Magariaf's profile at Wikipedia. He's survived three assassination attempts and was once Libya's ambassador to India. Not a political neophyte whatsoever. He defected from the Ghaddafi regime in 1980.

Ambassador Susan Rice also appeared on this morning's "Face the Nation," among other broadcasts. She's offering an entirely different interpretation of events, as reported earlier, "Ambassador Susan Rice: U.S. Not 'Impotent' in Muslim World."

When hard intelligence data is made public the administration is going to be battered, bruised, and groveling before the people.

This is now a foreign policy election as important as any in recent decades. The immediate analogy is to Jimmy Carter and the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, when economic concerns were also of extreme importance. Indeed, Ronald Reagan first asked Americans if they were better off than they were four years earlier at that time. But the turmoil in Iran, the abduction of our diplomats and the Carter administration's inept response to the crises became key flashpoints of the campaign. The timing is different this year. Operation Eagle Claw, the Desert One rescue mission that failed on April 24, 1980, was more than six months before the November election. That time lag gave Americans lots of time to decide which candidate would better secure American interests in a dizzying period of international conflict. But while the timeline is quite different today, the utter degree of humiliation is not. If Americans blamed Jimmy Carter personally for our troubles, throwing him out of office and electing Reagan to the helm, there's really no reason to think that can't happen again. America's foreign policy is literally aflame across the Middle East. We're seeing anti-American protests in more than 30 countries. It's all on Obama's watch, after three years of unprecedented appeasement of the Muslim world.

Perhaps voters will filter out world events as they struggle to make ends meet amid the Obama Depression. Indeed, if the president wins a second term it means that they've accepted Democrat arguments for "shared sacrifice," that they want government to build a dominant role as the safety net of last resort. Such a result will mean a substantial shift in the political culture of the United States, away from individualism towards more dependence on the state. Will it last? Perhaps, especially as long as the economy fails to create new jobs and to lift hopes of opportunity. But outside events have a way of placing tremendous constraints on the U.S. domestic realm. If Obama's record is any indication, global hostility to America will continue, while in the meantime U.S. foreign policy will continue to marginalize our key allies such as Israel. It's all a recipe for continued long-term instability with a great likelihood of armed conflict. Moscow will be emboldened to expand its interests in Syria and beyond, continuing to prop up the Assad regime, which will amount to a de facto alliance between the Kremlin and the mullahs in Tehran.

Secretary Rice is wrong: The U.S. is becoming increasingly impotent to shape the course of events in the region and to secure America's traditional interests. The administration has offered a flawed theory of the region, based on literally bowing down to our allies and enemies alike. The reckoning is coming. There's likely to be more Americans killed and increasing tensions among the great powers. Without a change in direction of U.S. policy, the American eagle will be scurrying in fear in the face of the Russian bear and the Iranian lion. And our allies will decide that they have no friend in Washington, and they'll resort to self-help to secure their survival. It's an altogether ugly picture, but now clearly coming into focus in this fateful week after the 11th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

UPDATE: Linked at Blazing Cat Fur and The Lonely Conservative. Thanks!

The Left's Reaction to Afghanistan's New Mineral Riches‎

Okay, NYT's got what's apparently a big deal, "U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan." I'm just now checking Memeorandum, and boy folks are excited. The Times' story is sensational. The mineral find is estimated at $1 trillion, and "Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world..."

The U.S. does not fight wars for treasure, of course (which is actually kinda dumb, when you think about it, considering how China's reaping the strategic-economic gains from America's military sacrifices). But my first thought upon seeing the headline is "Great, now all the netroots neo-communists will be attacking the Afghan deployment as an imperialist boondoggle all along, blah, blah, blah ..."

It's not, but that won't deter a new round of unhinged attacks from folks on the left who just a few short years ago argued that Iraq was distracting the U.S. from our real, more important war in Afghanistan. Michael J.W. Stickings pretty well sums up the left's cravenly antiwar political opportunism:

I will admit that, like many, I was an early supporter of the Afghan War. But I was a supporter specifically of the effort to topple the Taliban government and to remove al Qaeda from its safe haven. Since then, though, it has been a badly mismanaged war, largely because Bush shifted focus to Iraq, but also because the war, with the Taliban overthrown and al Qaeda pushed back into the mountains and the Pakistani border regions, lacks a compelling purpose, let alone any sort of realistic objective.

So, let's take a look around the 'sphere. What do we find?

At:

* AmericaBlog, "Without a strong environmental protection organization, chances are high that the dash for cash will lead to grabbing minerals in the fastest way possible without considering the environmental impact."

* Attackerman, "And now, naturally, someone’s telling [NYT'S James] Risen about the specter of great-power resource competition that just so perfectly implies a new rationale for extended war and post-war foreign influence."

* Balloon Juice, "Maybe it’s just my sour nature and dim view of humanity, but I fail to see why the discovery of trillions of dollars of minerals in Afghanistan is Good News for America®."

* Daily Kos, "We have no need to worry that Afghanistan is suddenly going to transform itself in a stable, China-friendly minerals exporter any time soon. After we leave, it will probably collapse into civil war, which is none of our business. These discoveries are no reason to stay in Afghanistan."

* Democracy Arsenal, "The only thing this story shows is the desperation of the Pentagon in planting pie-in-the-sky news stories about Afghanistan and trying to salvage the lost cause that is our current mission there."

* Digby's Hullabaloo, "As if people and nations never fought to the death to possess humongous mineral resources."

* Kevin Drum, "I have a very bad feeling about this. It could quickly turn into a toxic combination of stupendous wealth, superpower conflict, oligarchs run wild, entire new levels of corruption, and a trillion new reasons for the Taliban to fight even harder."

* Matthew Yglesias, "In general, though, waging war for control of natural resources makes a lot of sense for third world bandits & militias or would-be coup leaders, but doesn’t cost out for citizens of a developed market oriented democracy."

* Marc Ambinder, "The general perception about the war here and overseas is that the counterinsurgency strategy has failed to prop up Hamid Karzai's government in critical areas, and is destined to ultimately fail. This is not how the war was supposed to be going, according to the theorists and policy planners in the Pentagon's policy shop ... What better way to remind people about the country's potential bright future -- and by people I mean the Chinese, the Russians, the Pakistanis, and the Americans -- than by publicizing or re-publicizing valid (but already public) information about the region's potential wealth?"

* Melissa McEwan, "I don't know what the perfect word is to describe the reserved happiness I feel on behalf of the many average people of Afghanistan who just want a functional country with a modern infrastructure bought by a stable economy, shot through with a steely bolt of panic that the very discovery which might allow that very thing will instead bring a whole new fresh hell for them as colonialists and warlords and corrupt members of their own government stake out positions around the vast reserves of minerals which have been discovered in Afghanistan by Pentagon officials and US geologists."

* Naked Capitalism, "This vastly ups the stakes. It now isn’t hard to see that we will continue to pour resources and young men’s lives into Afghanistan to make sure we control these riches, just as we continue to throw money and personnel into Iraq to hold the prize of the second largest oil reserves in the world."

* Newshoggers, "When the NYT published Risen's story to the web last night, I tweeted "What a convenient time to find $1 trillion, eh?" and "Just as McChrystal's in big trouble, liberal thinktanks starting to shift anti-war, Pentagon publicizes $1 trillion Afghan treasure trove," because this is a zombie story, resurrected yet again for political purposes."

* No More Mister Nice Blog, "If anything, this will further alienate Obama's onetime supporters from the anti-war left, just in time for 2010 -- blood-for-treasure is a recognizable narrative -- and it means Ralph Nader will have to do very little rewriting of his old campaign speeches when he runs in 2012. (An Obama defeat in 2012 isn't going to reverse this course, however -- do you really think Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin will reject the opportunity to get sanctimoniously choked up at the noble sacrifice of young men and women dying in Afghanistan for niobium?)"

* Political Carnival, "We’re never leaving now, never..."

* Prairie Weather, "You can forget about socially-awkward burqas and Taliban insurgents as viable reasons for war and occupation. The capitalist market demands Afghanistan's mineral deposits. Who does mining better than the US?"

* Steve Benen, "As a growing number of observers, here and around the world, raise questions anew about whether Afghanistan's future offers any hope at all, along comes a carefully leaked story about nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits, which could fundamentally improve the country's economy, stability, and long-term prospects."

* Talking Points Memo, "Afghanistan's a pretty out of the way place. But it's not like it hasn't gotten a good bit of attention from great powers in the past. First the Brits, then the Russians, now us. So no one else ever looked or they didn't find anything ... And with so much in play right now about the future of the US mission in the country, the timing of the revelation is enough to raise some suspicions in my mind."

* Taylor Marsh, "Instead of pushing for people to help Afghanistan and offer troops, Afghanistan could end up being the poor girl at the prom who just won the lottery. And we all know where most lottery winners end up."

* Unqualified Offerings, "For my part, I would be content to leave Afghanistan alone and say that if somebody there somehow finds himself in control of minerals and manages to dig them out of the ground, we are willing to pay cash on delivery. We are NOT, however, willing to do our own pick-up or provide armed escorts for those who do the pick-up or the mining. The terms are cash on delivery ... Some will say that it is ruthlessly amoral to not do anything to ensure that the extraction is done by “good guys” rather than “bad guys” but I say that going in with force to ensure that the mining is done by (and profits are received by) some particular government, company, warlord, or whoever is by far a greater evil in practice than simply paying cash on delivery to whoever manages to show up with the minerals."

* Wonkette, "If you thought Afghanistan was only profitable for opium wholesalers and the defense industry, think again! According to some convenient new geological study of the mountainous, wild land that has broken the backs of so many empires, the whole place is chock full of precious metals..."

BONUS: Steve Saideman offer a thoughtful political science take on the story, "Resources in Afghanistan!?"

**********

UPDATE: Linked at Andrew Bolt, Instapundit, Shout First, and Where Are My Keys. Plus, at Right Truth, "Problems With Afghan Mineral Deposits."

Thanks!

U.S. Progressives Endorse Anarchist Violence at London Budget Protests

More excellent coverage of the violent demonstrations in London, from the Daily Mail, "200 arrested as anarchists fight police after 500,000-strong anti-cuts march... and cover Trafalgar Sqaure in graffit." It's a pretty pathetic sight all around. Conservatives have alternated between bemusement and outrage, but radicals on the U.S. progressive left are offering throaty endorsements of the mayhem. According Steve Hynd at Newshoggers:

Exactly this kind of protest is what the US needs to [sic] - aimed bi-partisanly at the corporate-serving conservatives and neoliberals who can find endless money for endless warfare, but none for nation building at home.

And No More Mister Nice Blog hesitates to endorse the violence, but ends up doing it any way:

I don't want to see it happen in England or in any other country. But what I do want to see happen -- a real reckoning for the worst abusers in the global financial system, accompanied by "shared sacrifice" that's actually shared, all the way to the top -- apparently will never happen through peaceful means.

Commenting at the post, CUND Gulag, a regular fixture of the demonic progressive fever swamps, offers an endorsement:

Maybe if we had some of this in NYC, Connecticut, Palm Beach, Rodeo Drive, Dallas, Houston, etc., some of the wealthy will realize that all of the security on the planet can't protect them if there are enough of us angry out there. I love Ghandi, and have followed his principles for over 30 years. The same 30 years that have seen our countries steepest decline. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, like beating my head against the wall, I'm willing to try beating someone else's head up against that wall.

And from a commenter at AMERICAblog:

The only way we, the ordinary people, will get a decent chance at a decent life again is by rising up against our oppressors: The powerful, wealthy, neo-feudal authoritarians.

And from Sarah Jones, in a lengthy economic analysis at Politicus USA, "London Protests Echo Wisconsin Anger At Conservative Class Warfare":

I have yet to meet an honest conservative accountant who would not stress revenue as a crucial part of any balanced budget. And so the question really becomes why are conservatives so averse to doing the one thing they know will help the economy? If conservatives were serious about deficit reduction, they would raise revenue by taxing corporations while making careful budgetary cuts. The worldview of the modern day conservative is that everyone should fend for themselves, except for corporations and the uber wealthy, who are entitled to tax breaks and bailouts. This is not an honest ideology; and therefore, the debate is not about conservative financial approaches versus liberal. If we allow ourselves to have a debate over the deficit or over public sector employees “deserving” their pay, we are being manipulated.

And from the comments there:

The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of further enriching the wealthy few at the expense of everyone else is made even clearer by the protests in London. It looks like there are various rebellions going on around the world against that kind of ideology. The uprisings in Middle Eastern countries, while more bloody and violent against dictators who have been in power for decades, are a pushback against tyranny. Although this country and Great Britain are not nearly at that point, we are seeing threats to rights we have enjoyed and taken for granted for a long time. The common enemy is fascism, which is disguised as patriotism here and in Great Britain. As far as I am concerned, the Republican Party in this country has forfeited its credibility with the unabashed power grabbing of both the House of Representatives and these Republican governors. In their pursuit of power at any cost, they seem bent on alienating almost all American constituents. People like Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and others are their foot soldiers in selling the kind of propaganda that induces Americans to vote against their own interests and look at other Americans as the enemy. The potential GOP candidates are a bunch of court jesters who are trying to outdo each other in mouthing the kind of lunacy that will get their base to vote for them, and who will willingly carry out the destructive agenda of the Koch brothers and their ilk. That’s why they are trying to dismantle any institution that stands between them and their efforts to reduce us to serfdom.

The comparison to Wisconsin is telling. So far progressives at home have resorted to thuggery, threats and intimidation, but frustration is building, obviously, and all it takes is one spark to set off a larger conflagration of violent unrest. Dan Riehl sees it coming:

We're not that far away from the freeloaders and Marxists taking to the streets in numbers like this in America.

And John Hinderaker issues a warning:

The first duty of any government is to maintain order. Peaceful demonstrations are fine, but mob rule is incompatible with civilization. Any government that cannot maintain order deserves to fall, and will. Napoleon had his faults--well, to be blunt, he was crazy as a loon--but he had the right prescription for dealing with mobs: a whiff of grapeshot.

RELATED: Telegraph UK has the rogue roster: "TUC march: The militants behind the violence":

A ragtag army of anarchists, squatters, student militants, environmental activists and radical academics planned the spin-off protests that led to violence during Saturday's march against cuts.

Coming to America.

No More Mister Nice Guy: Can Tim Pawlenty Make the Sale to Voters?

From Kim Strassel, at Wall Street Journal, "Beyond Minnesota Nice":

Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty brags that as governor he stared down Democrats on taxes and spending, but can he sell it to conservative voters?

Ask Mitt Romney to opine about his time managing a blue state, and the former Massachusetts governor will mostly take a pass. Ask Tim Pawlenty about his recent tenure governing liberal Minnesota, and you could be listening for hours.

If Mr. Pawlenty sees a path to the Republican presidential nomination, it's increasingly through the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Running in a highly conservative primary as the former head of a proudly liberal state—one perpetually beset by economic woes—certainly holds its downsides. But Mr. Pawlenty isn't shying away from that past. He's intent on turning his own feisty leadership of Minnesota into his main selling point for the nomination.
This has become all the more clear this past week, as the Minnesota government shut down over a budget impasse. The focus instantly turned to Mr. Pawlenty, highlighting the risks his time as governor (which ended earlier this year) holds for his run.

Conservative critics jumped to suggest the shutdown shows Mr. Pawlenty is far from the fiscal hawk he claims to be—that he instead papered over Minnesota's budget woes. Democrats piled on, with Walter Mondale emerging to lay the entire "mess" of a shutdown at Mr. Pawlenty's feet. All this is the last way Mr. Pawlenty wants to be defined to primary voters who are only now becoming familiar with candidates.

And Mr. Pawlenty's response? Far from going on defense, this week he aired a spot on Iowa television feting . . . the Minnesota shutdown. To be precise, the ad is highlighting a 2005 Minnesota shutdown, bragging that it happened because Mr. Pawlenty refused "to accept Democrats' massive tax and spending plans." The ad also references a 2004 transit strike (caused by a fight over pension cuts), in which Mr. Pawlenty "refused to cave in to government unions." The ad's moderator notes that both situations ended with one result: "Pawlenty won."

And:

Still, Mr. Pawlenty has been playing off variations of the tough-guy-from-a-purple-state theme since he first started contemplating a run, and he has yet to get traction. The RealClearPolitics average of polls has him pulling 4.5% of voters—significantly less than Republicans who haven't even declared. This helps explain why the Pawlenty team is embracing, not running from, the Minnesota shutdown. They are happy for the headlines.

More at the link.

I like Pawlenty. He seems like a nice guy. I just don't see him getting traction, and I expect a loss in Iowa could be the end of the line for the former governor --- at least for now.

RELATED: At New York Times, "Will Republican Race’s First In Be the First Out?" (via Memeorandum).

Crazy Injun Elizabeth Warren Stonewalls Questions About Supposed Cherokee Ancestry

I personally think she's lost her marbles, so forget political correctness. I'm mocking her for all it's worth.

See the report at Breitbart, "Elizabeth Warren Stonewalls Reporter on Why She Claimed Minority Status":

Appearing in Brookline, Massachusetts for a Senate campaign event, Elizabeth Warren stonewalled questions about her supposed Cherokee ancestry. She has maintained that she does have Cherokee ancestry despite all evidence to the contrary.

This was her first public appearance in a week. She was accosted by a reporter, and consistently attempted to redirect the questioner to another topic.

Plus, a new poll out from Suffolk University finds that voters don't care so much about Warren's claims to Native American ancestry --- and who can blame them, get f-ked over in this Obama depression. See Politico, "Poll: Elizabeth Warren unscathed by Cherokee flap."

But frankly, I'm just really getting a kick out of the progressives who're blowing this off as some made up conspiracy. Nothing to see here, move along. For example, from the comments at No More Mister Nice Blog:

It's not a controversy - the claim, as yet unverified to both as to whither or no she actually made the claim and the claim itself, dates back five generations. Statistically anyone whose family has lived here that long has a splash of "Indian" blood. No doubt Scott Brown, blue-blood "American Royalty" that he is, has a splash of "Indian" blood.'

And I'm having a debate with the proprietor there, Steve M., who's attempting to ridicule me as a "birther" for calling out the left on Barack Obama's Kenyan birth. As I've said repeatedly, it's not so much that Obama was born in Kenya. It's that the Obamas enthusiastically campaigned on Barack's "Kenyan birth" in the 2007 Democrat primaries. If Barack wasn't born in Kenya, and he and Michelle campaigned on the claim that he was, that makes them liars. Conservatives have been all over this, but the Democrat-Media-Complex won't touch it. See: "Obama Gets Pass on Kenya from Democrat-Media-Complex."

On Ebola, 'I don't think it's below the belt to have a feeling that the establishment or the ruling class in this country is not particularly competent...'

Oops!

New York Times columnist David Brooks goes off script!

At RCP, "David Brooks on Ebola: A Lot Of People Have No Contact With People Like Us Giving Them Expert Opinions":

I think it’s a respectable position to say we should not allow flights from West Africa. I don’t think it’s probably very effective, because don’t just fly here from direct to Africa. They fly around the world and then come here. So, I just don’t think it’s effective, but it’s a respectable position.

But I don’t think it’s below the belt to have a feeling that the establishment or the ruling class in this country is not particularly competent. And you wouldn’t look at the way Ebola has been handled, at least so far, and say it’s been a testimony to the competence of the establishment.

And there are a lot of people who are just — we have a great social segmentation going on. And so there are a lot of people just with no contact with the people like us they see on TV giving them expert opinion about Ebola or anything else, and they just want to wave it away and they just want to pull in and trust the people they trust and that’s local.

And when the national borders seem porous and uncontrolled, they are going to react. And I think that’s a completely legitimate reaction.

OMG!! Brooks is just a Fox News fearmonger! Oh, well, not exactly, since he's on the far-left PBS network, but don't tell No More Mister! He might get his "we won't panic" panties in a bunch, lol!!

Condescending Leftists

I don't use the old-fashioned term "liberal" to describe today's political left, and while my view on this has been firmly grounded in abstract ideological thinking (which some, in futility, have challenged), it's interesting we have some confirmation of such leftist identification in David Paul Kuhn, discussing Gallup's new poll, "Majority of Dems View Socialism Positively."

And that socialist ideological foundation -- found in places like the vapid rogue's gallery of Larisa Alexandrovna, Lawyers, Guns and Money, and No More Mister Nice Blog (and not to mention the T-Bogg demon seed) -- provides the background for Gerard Alexander's essay, "Why Are Liberals So Condescending?" (via Memeorandum):

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

It's an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. "We were so busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or deliberately misinformed (by conservatives).

This condescension is part of a long liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, social issues and the functions of government -- and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.

Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." During the 1950s and '60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement. Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival. In 1962, Richard Hofstadter referred to "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

This sense of liberal intellectual superiority dropped off during the economic woes of the 1970s and the Reagan boom of the 1980s. (Jimmy Carter's presidency, buffeted by economic and national security challenges, generated perhaps the clearest episode of liberal self-doubt.) But these days, liberal confidence and its companion disdain for conservative thinking are back with a vengeance, finding energetic expression in politicians' speeches, top-selling books, historical works and the blogosphere. This attitude comes in the form of four major narratives about who conservatives are and how they think and function.

RTWT at the link.

Barack's Pogrom: The Rising Tide of Hatred Against the 'Evil' One Percent

You gotta read this letter at WSJ, from Tom Perkins, "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?" (at Memeorandum):

From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these "techno geeks" can pay....

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?

Actually, Kristallnacht is a pretty good analogy. I wrote about the emerging evil in the Bay Area day before yesterday, "Unhinged Leftists Escalate 'Google Bus' Protests to Home of Driverless Car Designer Anthony Levandowski." You're likely to get hurt with people like this, if not killed. They went to the guy's house and knocked on his door! And this Levandowski guy's probably Jewish!

And here's yesterday's front-page story at the Los Angeles Times, "Tech industry in San Francisco addresses backlash":

With the cost of living here at levels that almost no one but the most affluent can afford, protesters have taken to the streets to block luxury shuttles ferrying tech workers to Silicon Valley companies.

In an incident signaling growing tensions, a protester hurled a rock through the window of a Google bus in Oakland in December. On Wednesday, demonstrators stood outside the Berkeley home of a Google engineer, protesting the company's work on military robots and the tech industry's role in driving up rents and evictions in San Francisco.

See all the responses at Memeorandum.

Here's idiot Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, "Look, I'm not sure about tactics like slashing Google buses' tires, but if Perkins is going to have the bad taste to equate his fellow richies with the victims of the Holocaust, tell me: Who's the Hitler in all this? Where's the state power?"

Actually, look no farther than the White House for your state leader. Herr Barack has been exhorting his progressive Brownshirts to violence since taking office. [Before taking office, actually.]

Everything is proceeding as conservatives warned back in 2008. See, "It's the 1930s, and You Are There."

And it's all coming to a head this year, "Obama to make inequality the defining issue of 2014."

Bring it you leftist scum. Just f-king bring it.

Michelle Malkin on Obama's Bain Attacks: Romney-Types Sign the Front of the Paycheck, Obama-Types the Back

Mediate has a report: "Malkin Slams Obama’s Supporters: Romney Supporters Sign Front Of Paychecks, Obama’s Sign The Back" (via Memeorandum). You gotta love it:

And check the shocking dishonesty at No More Mister Nice Blog, "IF YOU'RE AN EMPLOYEE, RIGHT-WINGERS HATE YOU."

Only in Greater Commieland would anyone take Michelle's comments as an attack on those pulling down a paycheck. The fact is that Obama harms those who employ those trying to pull down a paycheck, which has led inexorably to more and more people signing the back of the government's welfare state paychecks. See, "A Stealth Expansion of the Welfare State," and "The Rise of Food-Stamp Nation."

Dropbox, Unfazed by 'Drop-Dropbox' Campaign, Not Dropping Condi Rice

At Instapundit, "STANDING UP TO THE RACIST BULLIES OF THE LEFT: Dropbox Unswayed By Anti-Condi #DropDropbox Campaign."

Speaking of racist bullies, leftist idiot Tom Hilton is co-blogging at No More Mister Nice Blog, the asshole. He's all down with the thugish campaign against Mozilla, and comes up with the one of the dumbest arguments I've heard on why Eich was an epic homophobic hater in '08 but Obama not so much. (Pay no mind to the crown of sunshine floating above the Lightworker's head, of course.)

Yep, racist bullies and totalitarian thugs. Never cave to these losers, lol.

Political Correctness Out of Control

A great O'Reilly talking points memo.

He's got some leftist Buckwheat dude on there who's a freakin' laugh riot.



Yeah, and no doubt No More Mister's got a response to O'Reilly. Because leftist PC intolerance is always justified, or something.

Progressives Cry 'Witch Hunt' After House Committee Holds Eric Holder in Contempt

See the roundup at Twitchy, "#DarrellIssainThreeWords: Unhinges vicious liberals."

And more, at Huffington Post, "Nancy Pelosi Slams Contempt Vote: 'I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove ... But We Didn't'." (Via Memeorandum.)

Plus:

* Angry Black Lady, "Fast and Furious Hurts Both Sides

* Balloon Juice, "We’re Playing Different Games."

* Charles Pierce, "What the Gobshites Are Saying: Fast & Spurious Edition."

* Firedoglake, "Regardless of Fast and Furious Witch Hunt, Executive Privilege Claims Deserve Scrutiny."

* The Impolitic, "Contemptible Congress."

* Little Green Footballs, "Breaking: Republican ‘Fast and Furious’ Inquisition Finds Eric Holder in Contempt."

* Mahablog, "Impeachment by Proxy."

* Moderate Voice, "Pure Politics."

* No More Mister Nice Blog, "EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE: IT'S BEEN CLAIMED FOR NON-PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS AND ON BEHALF OF PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS."

* RADAMISTO, "THE F&F 'SCANDAL'."

* Think Progress, "FACT CHECK: Executive Privilege Does Not Apply Exclusively To Presidential Communications."

* Washington Monthly, "FastnFuror."

Actually, I think some of the progressives are actually digging this. It's all a joke. Nothing to see here, move along. And Obama's president --- so the laws don't apply anyway.

#NBA to Investigate Clippers Owner Donald Sterling's Racist Comments

At the New York Times, "N.B.A. Is Investigating Comments Attributed to Clippers’ Owner Donald Sterling."

Interesting is the quote from the Clippers' management essentially conceding the TMZ audiotape as authentic:

Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Under Investigation By The NBA After Allegedly Racist Comments http://t.co/KzgroGIWWG pic.twitter.com/9elQUx76TT
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) April 26, 2014

In the audio recording, a person identified by TMZ as Sterling can be heard chiding a former girlfriend, identified by the website as V. Stiviano, saying he was angry that she had posted a picture on her Instagram account of herself and Johnson.

“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people,” Sterling is alleged to have said. He added later in the recording, referring to her Instagram postings, that “you don’t have to have yourself with, walking with black people.”

“Don’t put him on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games,” the person identified as Sterling also said. “Yeah, it bothers me a lot that you want to promo, broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?”

Sterling’s wife sued Stiviano last month, asking for the return of cash, property, cars and other items that Sterling gave Stiviano.

The Clippers’ president, Andy Roeser, said in a statement Saturday that he was not certain whether the recording was authentic and that the club was investigating.

“Mr. Sterling is emphatic that what is reflected on that recording is not consistent with, nor does it reflect, his views, beliefs or feelings,” Roeser said in the statement. “It is the antithesis of who he is, what he believes and how he has lived his life. He feels terrible that such sentiments are being attributed to him and apologizes to anyone who might have been hurt by them.”

PREVIOUSLY: "Liberal #Democrat Donald Sterling Caught on Tape Screaming Ugly Racist Epithets," and "Hey, 'No More Mister', It's 'Donald T. Sterling' Who Owns the #Clippers, LOL!"

Leftists Unhinged at Our Country Deserves Better PAC Advertisement

From Our Country Deserves Better PAC, it turns out that the radical lefties went berzerk over this ad buy:

Here's Daily Kos, "New Rightwing Ad Campaign To Suggest Obama is Like Hitler":

Also, check out:

* AlterNet, "Right-Wing Group Goes off the Deep End, Plans to Air Obama/ Hitler Ads."

*RightWingWatch, "Obama Worse Than Hitler And Ahmadinejad."

* Salon, "Conservative Group: Obama Equals Ahmadinejad."

* Raw Story, "Group Plans to Launch Ads Comparing Obama to Hitler."

* Village Voice, "Rightwing PAC: Obama = Hitler."

Not sure if No More Mister Nice Blog hopped on the bandwagon.

Meanwhile, President Obama continues his global apology tour, grinning, bowing and fistbumping murdering dictators from Caracas to Tripoli to the West Bank.

See also, Neocon Express, "American Jewish 'Leaders' to Meet with the Israel-Hater in the White House That They Voted For," and Gateway Pundit, "Once Again ... Obama Batters US Allies & Uplifts Foes In Latest World Tour."

Elliot Rodger Stepmom Soumaya Akaaboune Appeared in Antiwar 'Green Zone' Opposite Far-Left Matt Damon

She also appeared in "Playing for Keeps" and "Lovelace." Typical leftist filmography.

Here's NewsBusters, "CBS's Smith Touts Anti-War Film 'Green Zone' as 'Bourne Meets Hurt Locker'."

Also at Fox News, "Critics Decry Matt Damon Movie 'The Green Zone,' Calling It 'Anti-American'," and Hot Air, "Surprise: Matt Damon anti-war movie an atomic bomb at the box office":

I admit that I haven’t seen it — and neither has anyone else, apparently — but the reviews from righty film critics were simply gruesome, with Kyle Smith moved by its smearmongering to call it “one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio.”

Elliot Rodger was marinated in über Hollywood leftism. See London's Daily Mail, "'He was a very disturbed boy': British grandmother of Santa Barbara mass killer on boy who grew up with Hollywood royalty but posted chilling blogs vowing 'revenge' against the women who rejected him."

Disgusting leftists are desperately trying to slough off this evil prog on the right. It ain't working.

PREVIOUSLY: "Spoiled Hollywood Leftist Elliot Rodger Mass Murder in Isla Vista at #UCSB."

Also, "Elliot Rodger Facebook Photos Show Life of Hollywood Luxury"; "The So-Called 'Men's Rights Movement' is a Far-Left Progressive Project"; and "No More Mister Nice Blargh! — Prepping for 'Right Wing Reaction' to Leftist Elliot Rodger!"

#Democrat Crony Paul Begala Warns Conservatives on Donald Sterling, Gets Schooled — #LOL

Heh, this is luscious!

At Twitchy, "‘Check your donor lists’: Paul Begala advises conservatives not to defend Donald Sterling; Instapundit leads schooling."

Friendly tip to @seanhannity, @SenRandPaul, @SenTedCruz: don't endorse or defend Donald Sterling. DO NOT do it. http://t.co/fVHKNZVYg2

— Paul Begala (@PaulBegala) April 26, 2014

@PaulBegala <~~ obviously doesn't know that Donald Sterling's a Lib! @seanhannity @SenRandPaul @SenTedCruz @instapundit #ignoranceisbliss

— ConservativeBlackMan (@Thomasismyuncle) April 27, 2014

@PaulBegala Check your donor lists, idiot. He's on them. @seanhannity @SenRandPaul @SenTedCruz

— Will Collier (@willcollier) April 27, 2014

@instapundit @seanhannity @SenRandPaul @SenTedCruz I don't care if he's a Dem or Repub, I've denounced him. Where were you on Bundy?

— Paul Begala (@PaulBegala) April 27, 2014

Heh, guess who didn't the memo? ... "Professor Scott Lemieux, College of Saint Rose, Claims #Democrat Donald Sterling Will Be Next 'Conservative Martyr'."

And that bogus Bundy line is so lame. I guess Begala's reading No More Mister, lol!

Via NewsBusters, "Begala's Blunder: Warns Republicans Not to Defend Democrat and NAACP Benefactor Donald Sterling."

Gutless Pussies

I want to extend a big thank you to Bill Quick at Daily Pundit. He's posted on the death threat from No More Mister Nice Blog in exquisite fashion.

See: "Gutless Pussies of the Left":

I doubt that this loser killed anybody in Vietnam, either. In fact, I doubt he was even born while Vietnam was in progress.

Young lefties are raised on a spurious history that teaches that America was entirely in the wrong in Vietnam, and that those who went were all drug-addled, psychopathic murderers. So it makes a warped sort of sense that, in their abysmal ignorance of American history, they would assume that claiming to be Vietnam vets would be a useful subterfuge for presenting the notion that they were dangerous killers.

That's awesome.

 Thanks Bill!

Obama Campaign's Outrage Over Romney 'Birther' Joke is 'Most Absurd Example of Fake Umbrage in the History of Fake Umbrage'

Charles Krauthammer nails the left's hypocrisy as only Charles Krauthammer can:

RELATED: As promised, here's Adam Serwer tossing out the race card:

Romney is not himself a birther. He was engaging in ironic post-birtherism—showing solidarity with birthers by making a humorous remark that can be plausibly denied as a joke later. This is a necessary device for a Republican politician who wants to rile up the base without seeming like a lunatic, because the belief that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States is still held by nearly half of self-identified Republicans even after the very public release of the president's birth certificate. Birtherism remains the most frank and widespread evidence of racial animus among some of the president's critics. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in The Atlantic this month, the birthers, strapped in their waxen wings, aim for nothing less than the sun: "If Obama is not truly American, then America has still never had a black president."

And interestingly, it's the smell of fear at No More Mister Nice Blog.

Romney took a knife to the progressives with that birther joke. As I said earlier, it was f-king brilliant. Way to shift the outrage immediately. CNN was playing the clip all  day yesterday afternoon. That took up hella lot of airtime. And remember, what's especially good is how Romney's closing the gap on likability, and if he's able to get a zinger in there to rile up the base at the same time, what a bonus. It's a dead heat election at this point. The Dems will try mercilessly to destroy the GOP bounce coming out of Tampa. I mentioned earlier that Tropical Storm Isaac might be an act of God, and maybe so --- it's sucking the wind out of MSM attacks on Republicans on the eve of the convention. Interesting how things work like that. Progressives are such hypocrite hacks. They've been playing "tax return birtherism" for months, but when the shoe's on the other foot it's RAAAAACISM!!

We have a party of idiots to defeat. God, these people are so bad it's unmentionable. Man. At this point it really is about saving the country, sad to say.