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!

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.

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."

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.

Will People STFU About How Brett Kimberlin Affair is 'Non-Partisan'? This is an Epic Partisan Battle Over How 'Free Speech' Will Be Defined

Sorry to ruffle feathers here, but I'm going to dissent from some folks who continue exhorting bloggers "to resist the partisan urge" to turn the Kimberlin saga into a left vs. right political war. Patterico, bless him, has repeatedly stressed that right-wing activism against Kimberlin is not "a partisan issue." That's noble sentiment, but naive. Brett Kimberlin and his allies are attacking conservatives. With the exception of Seth Allen (who was one of Kimberlin's first victims) and a few sympathetic progressive voices online, the Kimberlin network has been silencing conservatives who have dared to speak out as a matter of free speech.

I'm not by any means discounting the importance of conservatives promoting the better angels of their nature.  It's simply that I see virtually no evidence, outside of the couple of random left-wing voices I mentioned, of progressives attempting to reciprocally elevate this battle to the preservation of everybody's rights to freedom of speech. More often than not, conservatives are being mocked mercilessly as whining little babies, or even blamed for organizing a lynch mob to terrorize "social justice" activists. Martin Longman made no attempt to hide his utter disdain for conservatives in a post this week, basically arguing that they had it coming. No More Mister Nice Blog has repeatedly argued that it was important to deny conservatives a political win. That's to be expected, right? These idiots are hardcore progressive partisans and to them it's high time for a comeuppance against the right. Okay, fine, but I'm hard pressed to find countervailing voices on the left championing the free speech rights of "everybody." It just ain't happening.

As I reported after Wisconsin, one of the major goals of the Democrat Party is the suppression of conservative speech. Such top figures as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are advocating for a constitutional amendment to limit political speech. I'm surprised it's necessary to say this, but PELOSI IS NOT KIDDING. And believe you me she's got plenty of backers for her bid to crush the voices of the right. The left will not tolerate dissent from its agenda. When it can't win using conventional political means, it resorts to thuggery, intimidation, and government extremism to silence dissent.

Since Aaron Worthing was arrested in Maryland (discussed by Matthew Vadum at the clip above), we've been seeing an outpouring of support for Brett Kimberlin on the left. If there was ever a chance to stand up for free speech, Worthing's case is it. Recall that Worthing's alleged crime was simply providing legal assistance to Kimberlin-target Seth Allen --- and then having the temerity to blog about it. Take a look at this piece from Legal Schnauzer, for example, "Liberal Activist Brett Kimberlin Engages Right Wingers In a Battle of High-Stakes Hard Ball."

One of my ongoing concerns with Democrats is that too many of them are timid, distracted, disorganized, and generally wussy.

Liberal activist Brett Kimberlin is none of those things, and that apparently is why the radical right has launched an extraordinary online jihad against him. In a delicious example of "turnabout is fair play," Kimberlin has used right wingers' tactics against them--causing the recent arrest of one thug, the outing of another as a criminal, and the transmission of a notice to others that they face possible legal action.

According to press reports, Kimberlin has some troubling incidents in his past. But by all accounts that I can find, he has served his punishment for any misdeed. And as a target of right-wing thugs myself, I can't help but admire Kimberlin's spunk--and his effectiveness.

Kimberlin actually has right wingers whining that he is using the court process against them. As a resident of Alabama who has held a front-row seat for the Bush-era political prosecution of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman, I can only marvel at the hypocrisy of conservatives claiming that the justice system is not working in their favor.

Right-wing bloggers have become so exorcised about Kimberlin that about 150 of them recently launched an "Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day." They even got Fox News and ABC News to cover the story and enlisted the help of such conservative luminaries as U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), author Michelle Malkin, and attorney Jay Sekulow in battling Kimberlin.

Anybody who can cause that many conservative panties to get into a bunch must be doing something right. So we decided to take a closer look at Brett Kimberlin and how he managed to rile the far right into a state of mass hysteria.

See what I mean? You can continue reading at the link, but the main point to note is that Kimberlin is the kinda fighter that progressives are looking for --- someone, not a "wussy," who can get conservatives "into a bunch." Never mind that Kimberlin's targets are not Democrat governors but generally small-time bloggers who must bear enormous costs to defend themselves. If someone like Kimberlin takes out people on the right, hey, let's pump it up as a model to emulate. For example, check out this diary at Daily Kos, "Profiles in Activism: Brett Kimberlin." You've gotta love it:

Brett Kimberlin is the founder of Justice Through Music, a non-profit organization that "uses famous musicians and bands to organize, educate, and activate young people about the importance of civil rights, human rights and voting".  This is a great cause and they're doing wonderful things over there with the young people.  The Justice Through Music website has some really powerful music videos on the subject of Bush torture and bigotry toward gay-marriage.

But more important is his Activist organization, Velvet Revolution. This is Change you can believe in!  Just two days ago, he won another victory, jailing right-wing hate spewer Aaron Walker for his venom. Kimberlin helped create Brietbart Unmasked, a fantastic website about what a piece of shit asshole motherfucker he was.  Velvet Revolution is also geared toward young adults of the Occupy generation, the future of this country.

Kimberlin has been very effective at countering the right-wing hate spewing machine.  Robert Stacey McCain (no relation but just as fascist) decided to attack him for his Activism with children for Justice.  Lets just say Robert Stacey McCain is on the run these days.  Erick Erickson of CNN fame got a nice little knock on the door. Seth Allen get the message as well.  This is what Activists do, shutting down hate speech one individual at a time.  If Brett Kimberlin can make a difference by himself, we all can.

Of course, with success comes more attacks, and of course the racist GOP is attacking Kimberlin for teaching Civil Rights to children.  On June 6, Senator Saxby Chambliss requested that Attorney General Eric Holder investigate Kimberlin and his non-profit education organization.  Activists should expect such attacks from racists when teaching Civil Rights, but you can trust the masters like Kimberlin to handle it.

Like Activists such as Brandon "Skabby" Baxter and Bill Ayers, Brett Kimberlin began his Activist career with explosives.  Being a true master of Alinsky's wise advice of "using your enemies rules against them", Kimberlin actually bought explosives while impersonating a DOD official (wow).  In 1978, he was accused by the fascist corporate police of murdering a co-worker.

Activists act. Kimberlin began a string of six bombings over the next few days, eventually taking a man's legs off.  He was convicted of bombing, attempted murder, perjury, drug trafficking, and impersonation of a federal officer, and sentenced to 51 years in prison.

An Activist's job is constant, and imprisonment was no obstacle for Kimberlin.  In 1988, he made news on NPR, admitting that he had sold marijuana to then Vice President Dan Quayle, a major revelation sending shock waves through the highest levels of the racist GOP.  From prision, ce coordinated with other Activists to continue the bombings to prove his innocence.

He studied how to use the system against his enemies, and used the legal system to his advantage.  By 1992, he had filed over 100 motions and lawsuits against his hate-spewing opponents, including some people he bombed. In 1994, after 13 years of unjust imprisonment, a wise Judge recognized Kimberlin for his Activism and released him on parole.

Continue reading.

For progressives, Brett Kimberlin's entire life of crime and deceit is justified in the name of destroying political opponents. For this Daily Kos diarist, even a campaign of domestic terrorism is justified --- and the "SWAT-ting" of folks like Erick Erickson is described as a "nice knock on the door." Even the innocents Kimberlin bombed are ridiculed as "hate-spewing opponents"

So I'll say it again: Folks need to just STFU about how this is all about "everybody's" free speech. It's not. It's ultimately a war over how "free speech" is defined and who's speech will be protected. Conservatives advocate fidelity to the First Amendment on principled grounds. Free speech is a birthright as an American, for friends and foe alike. For progressives, protected speech is advocacy that advances the leftist agenda, the agenda of state-building and raw power. Anyone who speaks out against that is branded a racist and criminal. This is someone who has to be silenced. The left will wage "lawfare" to do it, and if they have the power they'll change the laws to criminalize dissent and incarcerate opponents.

Does that sound extreme? It's not. Just take a look at Michelle Malkin's report out today, "Bloggers under fire: Arizona conservative lawyer/activist targeted by left-wing Arizona State Bar." (Via Memeorandum.) Folks can read the whole thing, but Michelle nails it at the conclusion:

Make no mistake: This is just another nasty battle in the Left’s long war to marginalize, demonize, and criminalize conservative dissent. The selective protection of free speech is unconscionable. The freedom to blog is under assault on so many fronts. It has to stop.

It is unconscionable. And I think it's equally unconscionable for people to minimize the partisan implications of the fight by holding progressives to a "better angel" standard that is not in their nature. I'll update my views when I see some of the heavyweights on the left standing up for people like Aaron Worthing and Patrick Frey. Maybe we'll see a few Democrats come out next week in favor of a Justice Department investigation of the SWAT-tings. I'll make note of it if they do. In the meantime, I'm not holding my breath.

No Democracy Didn't Die Tonight, Progressivism Did

As I reported earlier, progressivism died tonight.

But for some people, progressivism and democracy are the same thing, or something. Via Dan Riehl:

And I'm going to have more on this, but get a load of No More Mister Nice Blog: "WELCOME TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY." (Hint: It's the money, to the progressives at least. But as much as it helped, it wasn't all about the money. More on that later...)

The Left's Brett Kimberlin Truthers

Okay, the breaking story late today is that Erick Erickson's home was SWATted.

See Patterico, "BREAKING: Bogus Call Sends Police to Home of Kimberlin Critic Erick Erickson."

And lots more from Memeorandum:

* Aaron Worthing, "BREAKING: Another Critic of Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin Has Been Swatted!"

* Bob Owens, "Soros-funded left-wing terrorists target second conservative blogger with potentially deadly SWATting attack"

* Jawa Report, "SWATing a CNN Contributor, Who's Next Beotches??"

* Robert Stacy McCain, "ERICK ERICKSON GETS SWATTED."

Folks are tweeting CNN and other major media outlets in an effort to get some major media coverage on this: "After Brett Kimberlin blogburst, RedState blogger/CNN contributor Erick Erickson and family victims of SWATting; will CNN cover the story?"

Meanwhile, the progressive left is circling the wagons. Markos Moulitsas tried to blow off Everybody Blog Brett Kimberlin Day, and he got called out on it: "Markos Moulitsas gets schooled on ‘nobody’ political terrorist Brett Kimberlin."

And as is generally the case, few progressives have blogged this story, and those who have blogged it are denying Kimberlin's campaign of criminal harassment --- they're in fact blaming the victims. Barbara at Mahablog dismissed the threats from Kimberlin and dissed the conservative response as a "lynch mob." But you get real hardcore Kimberlin trutherism at No More More Mister Nice Blog, "I WANT THE KIMBERLIN TRUTH TO PUT ON ITS BOOTS":

You know the saying ascribed to Mark Twain: "A lie goes halfway around the world before the truth puts on its boots." That's pretty much what happens when the right pushes and distorts a story, while the mainstream press says nothing. That's what happened, for instance, with the "Ground Zero mosque." The right-wing media and blogosphere pushed the story for months before the rest of the media took notice of the right's distortions....

That's what must be prevented in the case of Brett Kimberlin. In addition to convicting him in the media, the right is already trying to tie him to the Obama administration, and, by inference, to every liberal and Democrat in America. That's only going to continue.

Let wingnuts be the mainstream press's assignment editors? I say yes, but just in order to tell the truth. At worst, we learn that Kimberlin really was a nasty guy; the fact appears to be that liberals and Democrats who may have allied with him simply didn't know that. (Yeah, he's an ex-con, but so is Don King, who once killed a guy, which didn't stop the GOP from expressing delight as his endorsement of George W. Bush in 2004.) Or we may find out that behavior is being ascribed to Kimberlin and his friends that's someone else's doing, or that's being exaggerated and distorted, just to score political points. Either way, the right is prevented from owning the story for the next several months and presenting it in a way that exclusively helps the right. If these hissyfits are ignored, they don't go away.

Right.

All one has to do is read Aaron Worthing 28,000 word report and you'd be a long way toward "the truth." But progressives don't want the truth. They want to destroy conservatives. So by denying Kimberin's evil and by attempting to turn it all around so it's really the right who's harassing Kimberlin, the left ends up enabling and empowering the left's criminal intimidation network. But read more of the comments from No More Mister Nice Blog. These people have got it bad. Here's this one, for example, from Jymn:

I just wish there was some equivalence between media coverage of the left and the right. Judging by Memeorandum in the aftermath of Breitbart's death, the right has gone around the bend. With Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch on CNN with no lefty blogger counterpoint, the right is monopolizing the media. Sure, let the right shoot itself in the foot. But it doesn't work that way. Righties advance the more they screw up. Not so for the left. With this latest kerfuffle, probably the wildest and most obscure I've ever encountered in the blogospher, how will we ever know the truth? The media is no longer diligent enough to wade through the bull. I have a feeling McCain is only telling a purple prose version of the events. He may not be the victim here but if the right keeps trumpeting his victim status, the lazy media is sure to do the same, despite the underlying facts.

And here's this from my old hate-blogging stalker Walter James Casper III:

Exactly right, Steve... I want the truth of the thing to come out, whatever it is... The ones involved/telling the story are politically biased, and--because they're involved--not objective or trustworthy on that front, either.

It just bothers me that a deputy district attorney for LA county (Patterico), a lawyer (Worthing), and a former news reporter (McCain) can't get much help or traction from law enforcement, the court system, or the media. (Both Frey and Worthing have specifically said the law isn't following their leads or taking their plights seriously.) Meanwhile, the rightwing blogs are hanging on their every utterances as though they're Gospel. If professional law enforcement is skeptical of their stories, I fail to see why I should believe them, either.

When I start to see movement from unbiased legal and media sources, I'll take their stories more seriously.

And that is from a guy who is the publisher of a criminal harassment blog. He only stopped his harassment after I went to the police: "Intent to Annoy and the Fascist Hate-Blogging Campaign of Walter James Casper III."

I'll have more on the Kimberlin trutherism later, and of course more on all of the attacks. This is personal: "Carl Salonen Libelous Workplace Allegations of Child Pornography and Sexual Harassment at Long Beach City College."

Added: Again, putting aside the truthers for a moment, where there have been a few folks on the left who've blogged this story, it's frankly been either among those who've also been targeted by the Kimberlin network or simply a few sympathetic progressives. Amazingly, TBogg, the guy who've I've called out as a racist anti-Christian bigot, actually writes something decent, but only so much:

Whoever “swatted” Patterico is an asshole and deserves to be in prison. I’ve had my own issues with Patterico, as well as Aaron Worthing, over the years, but nobody deserves the shitstorm they’ve been through. Having said that, if rightwing bloggers put as much time and coordinated effort into ‘vetting’ Barack Obama that they have in rehashing the same odd Kimberlin stories, we’d probably know if Obama was truly the murderous socialist Kenyan muslim Breitbart-killing Tonton Macoute terrorist that they keep telling us he is. Also, too: Robert Stacy McCain’s story reeks of grift. McCain has spent the last few months moaning about how he’s not making any money and how he’s going to quit blogging and nobody likes him – everybody hates him, he’s gonna eat some worms and now: mysteriously vague threats … GIMME MONEY! I call bullshit.

Well, no, TBogg, you pea-brained progressive creep. Had he not gone into hiding, Stacy would have been SWATted faster than you can say Carl DeLong. If you're going to have a good word to say, say it and be done.

So, as folks can see, I'm skeptical that this is just a "free speech issue" and not a Soros-backed criminal harassment network issue. Patterico argues that this isn't partisan, and that people should be judged by their actions not their ideology. And I know that Patterico's serious (I'm listening to him on Blog Talk Radio as this update goes live). But whatever left-wing sympathy we see on this will be thin as thawing ice on a lake and as shortlived as a TNT fuse. I don't trust these people. Mike at Cold Fury nailed it best, and I won't change my mind on this leftist or that leftist until I see some sustained advocacy on behalf of those who've been targeted. See: "This Means War."

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!

Progressives at 'No More Mister Nice Blog' Issue Death Threat: 'I Haven't Killed Anyone Since 'Nam...'

This took place last night. I've been commenting periodically over at Steve M.'s "No More Mister Nice Blog," and here's the post from yesterday: "Warren Surges Like a Republican."

I called out commenter "Ten Bears" for his genuinely asinine defense of Elizabeth Warren's alleged Cherokee ancestry. After a couple of iterations with Steve M. --- and after I linked the video of Michelle Obama boasting of Barack's "Kenyan birth" in 2007 --- I get threatened with death. Here's the key comments at the thread.

This is pretty interesting considering the massive conservative blogburst on the Brett Kimberlin story.

While these dwids are epic clusterf-ck losers, the episode is yet another example of the left's inclination to violence against those who stand up against progressive lies and propaganda.

It's no surprise, then, that my old hate-blogging stalker Walter James Casper III shows up in the comments there.

These people will stop at nothing. But the tide is turning and conservative sunshine is disinfecting the menace.

See: "Kimberlin Funders Stunned to Discover they Fund Kimberlin." (Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Paul Lemmen links: "Death Threat: ‘I Haven’t Killed Anyone Since ‘Nam…’."

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."

Barebackers for Barack!

Blazing Cat Fur reminds me of Larry Sinclair: "Obama on the Down Low."

And here's this, from Andrew "Milky Loads" Sullivan, "Obama Lets Go of Fear":

I do not know how orchestrated this was; and I do not know how calculated it is. What I know is that, absorbing the news, I was uncharacteristically at a loss for words for a while, didn't know what to write, and, like many Dish readers, there are tears in my eyes.

So let me simply say: I think of all the gay kids out there who now know they have their president on their side. I think of Maurice Sendak, who just died, whose decades-long relationship was never given the respect it deserved. I think of the centuries and decades in which gay people found it  impossible to believe that marriage and inclusion in their own families was possible for them, so crushed were they by the weight of social and religious pressure. I think of all those in the plague years shut out of hospital rooms, thrown out of apartments, written out of wills, treated like human garbage because they loved another human being. I think of Frank Kameny. I think of the gay parents who now feel their president is behind their sacrifices and their love for their children.

The interview changes no laws; it has no tangible effect. But it reaffirms for me the integrity of this man we are immensely lucky to have in the White House. Obama's journey on this has been like that of many other Americans, when faced with the actual reality of gay lives and gay relationships. Yes, there was politics in a lot of it. But not all of it. I was in the room long before the 2008 primaries when Obama spoke to the mother of a gay son about marriage equality. He said he was for equality, but not marriage. Five years later, he sees - as we all see - that you cannot have one without the other. But even then, you knew he saw that woman's son as his equal as a citizen. It was a moment - way off the record at the time - that clinched my support for him.

Oh brother.

No wonder they call him "Excitable Andy."

It was calculated, Andrew. Coldly calculated. See Lonely Con, "Obama’s Gay Marriage Distraction Paid Off."

More from No More Mister Nice Blog, "WILL 'SECRETLY GAY' BECOME THE NEW 'SECRETLY KENYAN'?" And following the links takes us to American Digest:

Gee whiz. I wonder if Obama will come out or not. He could of course avoid taking a "position" simply giving Andrew Sullivan one hot evening in the Lincoln Bedroom and leaking the photographs to Blueboy.com, but some things are just too revolting to evolve into.

Also at Astute Bloggers, "PREDICTION: AFTER OBAMA LOSES THE ELECTION HE WILL THEN DIVORCE MICHELLE...AND MARRY A MAN!"

BONUS: GOProud has this: "GOProud Statement on President Obama’s Remarks Regarding Marriage Equality" (via Memeorandum). (GOProud is a dirtbag organization and it's shameful that these pricks get as much traction on the right as they do. See, "Guess Who's Coming to CPAC?")

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama's Gay Nightmare: Still Waiting for Barry's Backside Boogie Pics!"

Have We Lost Faith In the Free-Market System of Entrepreneurial Capitalism?

Asks Jeb Bush, at Wall Street Journal, "Capitalism and the Right to Rise" (via Memeorandum).

Americans still favor capitalism, obviously, but the increasing affinity to socialism is startling --- and I'm not just talking about the Occupy asshats. Both Gallup and Pew recently found strong support for socialism, especially among young people.

And the reactions to the Jeb Bush piece are strong among the idiots of the neo-communist blogosphere, for example, here's epic airhead Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog:

Jeb’s got an op ed in today’s Washington Post about how American capitalism is being strangled by taxes and regulations. This is total bullshit, of course, but the wingnuts eat this stuff up. I’m thinking Jeb’s taking steps to shine up his “conservative” credentials and get his name in circulation.

That would be "Wall Street Journal," you stupid piece of scum. And your ignorance is what's "bullshit." Take my state, please. We're drowning in regulations and taxes and people have almost completely lost confidence in government --- and that would be Democrat government, from top to bottom.

But wait! There's more of teh stupid, from Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog:

"The right to rise"? In a sane America, if we wanted to use the phrase "the right to rise" at this moment in history, we'd use it to talk about people who can't rise because they can't sell a house and move to where jobs are because the fat cats won't allow serious levels of mortgage modification to stabilize the housing market; we'd talk about people who can't rise and find work because we refuse to make a serious effort to engage in the sort of Keynesian public-works stimulus that would put money in people's pockets that they would later give to struggling merchants in exchange for food, clothing, and consumer goods; we'd talk about people who can't rise because they've been laid off as teachers or cops as we refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for needed services; we'd talk about students who will struggle to rise for decades because they bear a crushing burden of student loans and no job prospects.

It's all stupid but I've highlighted the most stupid passage of all. We haven't passed a "serious" Keynesian stimulus? Steve, you're on crack, mofo!

The 2009 stimulus authorized $787 billion in government spending, i.e., over 3/4 of a $1 trillion --- and according the president's own White House Council of Economic Advisers, the failed stimulus programs has cost taxpayers a whopping $278,000 per job! Shoot, might as well have turned the stimulus into a big fat freakin' welfare program!

Moreover, being a classically gargantuan bureaucratic program, the money was wasted on pork barrel and already-existing government contracts --- not the new projects the stimulus was ostensibly designed to promote. And not only that: Frankly, whatever jobs have been created would have likely come about without the stimulus and the resultant residual net drag to growth through the additional debt burden placed on the economy. Way to go Steve M.!

 And more! The deeper problem is that Keynesianism's simply discredited, and has long been so. See Allen Metlzer, "Four Reasons Keynesians Keep Getting It Wrong":

Those who heaped high praise on Keynesian policies have grown silent as government spending has failed to bring an economic recovery. Except for a few diehards who want still more government spending, and those who make the unverifiable claim that the economy would have collapsed without it, most now recognize that more than a trillion dollars of spending by the Bush and Obama administrations has left the economy in a slump and unemployment hovering above 9%.

Read it  all --- and weep, you ASFL progressive d-bags!

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).

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.

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!

The Present-Day Haters

No More Mister Nice Blog does a big, long-winded tangential (and uselessly self-important) excursion into blathering nothingness, to end up here:

The present-day haters have distilled the old hatreds, the ones based on race and sex, and can apply them just as well outside the old categories as within those categories. Bigotry, in other words, evolves in order to adapt.

The guy's prefacing that he disagrees with Frank Rich. Except that he doesn't. So here's a clue: It's not race, or bigotry, or whatever kind of "hate" you're grasping for. I'm a tea partier. I've been deeply active with tea partiers for over a year. Tea partiers aren't talking about race-hatred, etc. Democrat-leftists are. But I'm also a teacher and political scientist. And the phenomena of ceaseless searching for the ghosts of hatred-past reflects a crisis of the current order. And this is a Democratic Party crisis. Think about it, with reference to Doug Powers' unrelenting fisking of Frank Rich, especially here:

Frank Rich and Friends have more in common with what they accuse tea partiers of being than with the civil rights pioneers whose principles they claim to be standing up for—people who endured similar baseless blanket statements, idiotic and ignorant stereotypes, generalizations, false accusations and yes, even sophomoric homophobic slurs.

Some of us, regardless of our color or sexual orientation, aren’t going to watch our country turned into yet another failed socialist utopia on the ash heap of history without saying a word about it — regardless of the color or sexual orientation of those who are trying to do so. If the only “logical” rebuttal Frank Rich has to people concerned for the future of their children is “racism,” then I’m more positive than ever that I’ve chosen the correct side.

As an added bonus, someone's attached one of my links to this message board entry, which includes the most saddening images of racial violence from the early- and mid-20th century ...

But what's also sad is the complete ahistorical frame of the author, who is apparently only willing to engage those who want to extrapolate Klan hatred as an explanation for the mindlessness of contemporary commercial culture. When the discussion went south, the guy lost it:

Unfortunately, this post was not able to exist for much more than 24 hours without exploding into derailing, misogyny, Obama as secret socialist and finally the Illuminati.

If you can look at graphic photographs of human beings who were brutally murdered surrounded by their murders who are gleeful about the murder they committed and were never punished for, and still derail, I think a lot less of you as a person.

If you can look at people who were horribly murdered and your primacy concern is third hand accounts about someone's niceness, I think your priorities are fucked up. The women who encouraged the lynching of young Emmet Till, and whole heartedly stood by their husbands, were nice community involved women, and their community supported lynching a black child for putting money in a white lady's hand, not on the counter.

If you can look at these photos of murdered people and still think it's all ironic, hilarious, and not worth taking seriously, I'm having a hard time seeing how different you are from the people who thought lynchings were the kind events to be commemorated with post cards and souvenirs hacked off the murdered person's body. Postcards and souvenirs aren't serious business after all.

If you want to learn, go the library. I'm not having a god damn teachable moment. Also, if you are a local or someone who chats with me via the internet let me give you a pro tip: All that bullshit right here, is the exact opposite of what I would like to chat about right now. If you want to have an epiphany on this issue, hug it out or talk it out, do it in your own space that is not at all part of my space. Also, don't tell me about it. Seriously.

All this mostly because of a bizarre tweet that's apparently an attack on Lady Gaga's explicit corporate product placement in "Telephone."

It's kind of a stretch, but I guess just mentioning "The Klan" sends progressive race hustlers into a deathly spiral. And, unfortunately, that's the exact opposite of an "effort to adapt." That's entropy.

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.

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."

New Yorker's Referendum on Obama

Eleanor Clift argues that the New Yorker was woefully dull in believing that the Obama fist-bump cover would go over well as high-brow satire. Clift offers this reader's e-mail to the New Yorker as an example:

Your embarrassing attempt at satire is disgraceful in this climate of fear and ignorance. There is no journalistic freedom to justify this cartoon that could have easily been generated by the merchants of hate and fear and will certainly be used by them to justify their own moronic diatribes against this most American family. Shame on you New Yorker for this blatant attention grabbing exercise!

It's seems, however, that the cartoon hits so close to home that the left's not content to let this satire play out. A good case in point is No More Mister Nice Blog's post, "One More Word About That Magazine Cover":

I wonder what the reaction would have been if, one September or other in the past couple of years, the cover of The New Yorker featured a cartoon in which Dick Cheney in a hard hat oversaw the wiring of the Twin Towers with explosives, while out on the WTC plaza Ariel Sharon handed out flyers to yarmulke-wearing office workers that said STAY HOME FROM WORK ON TUESDAY! and, in a cutaway, George W. Bush sat down in the Situation Room with Osama bin Laden over artist's simulations of planes flying into buildings, as a calendar on the wall read SEPT. 10, 2001.

I'm sure the reaction would be that anyone who didn't think it was funny was just a snotty elitist who contemptuously assumed other people wouldn't recognize a joke as a joke. Don't you agree?

No, I dont, but since there's apparently a prohibition against analyzing satire, so I'll just note that satire seeks to hold up authentic human vices to ridicule, and Barack Obama's genuine vices include a still murky sympathy to the very images the New Yorker hoped to lampoon.

If, as Clift notes, this election's going to be a "referendum on Obama," with luck we'll see more New Yorker-style satirical "CliffsNotes" to inform the electorate's decision-making.

See also, "We Are All Racist For Not Hating that 'New Yorker' Cover."