Hatred of the Military on the Political Left

Earlier this year, I wrote about Kenneth Thiesen of Oakland, a Stalinist anti-military recruiting activist who declared, during the Berkeley protests, that "we need to expose" the troops in the military "to be part of a 'killing machine.'"

Although the war in Iraq has not dominated the news cycle of late, we're of course still seeing a good amount of extreme left-wing opposition to the U.S. military deployments around the world, as well as example of direct hatred of American service personnel as well.

Steve Almond at the Boston Globe, for example, illustrates the left's fundamental rejection of the troops as part of its anti-military ideology (via Anti-Idotarian Rottweiler):

PERHAPS the most insidious byproduct of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been a reflexive sanctification of the military. To put this in bumper stickerese: Support the Troops.

Well, I have an ugly confession to make: I don't support the troops ... When somebody tells me they serve in the military, my first impulse isn't to say, "Thank you for your service!" like those insufferable chickenhawks on talk radio.

My first impulse is to say, "I'm sorry to hear that." Because I am. I'm sorry to know that the person I'm talking to might someday be maimed or killed on the job, or might someday kill someone else. Or refuel a plane that drops bombs on buildings.

I can't see how anyone who calls himself or herself Christian - or human, for that matter - wouldn't be sorry.

I can't express how despicably nihilist the left's culture of anti-militarism is to me. In a world of ever-present challenges to the safety of the nation, without the military American freedom would not survive. But Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler puts it much more clearly than I can:

Hate to break it to you, twinkletoes, but there really are bad people out there and yes, some of them really do want to hurt you. That’s why we need rough men and women ready to do violence for us, and if you’re not happy about somebody else doing it, then we suggest that you do so yourself. Or, alternatively, you could go see how that Kumbaya blather of yours works in real practice. Go sit around out in the open, all alone and unarmed, right in the middle of a war zone and declare your unconditional refusal to defend yourself against harm. Let us know how that worked out for you. Actually, we’ll probably see it on video. On al-Jazeera.

Not all expressions of military hatred on the left are as explicit as Almond's, but they're no less vehement.

It turns out there were a couple of non-hostile shooting deaths in Iraq last Sunday (fratricide), and Cernig at the anti-American Newshoggers blog is extrapolating from this one case (and apparently two others) that the extended strain on the military from the Bush administration's policies in Afghanistan and Iraq has caused these "fratricide incidents" rather than the episode being a case of aberrent interpersonal aggressiveness.

Keep in mind, of course, that the Newshoggers blog generally applauds the killing of American troops in the field, and has, for example, cheered Downs syndrome suicide bombers in Iraq.

Folks like this, with their rabid hatred our military service personnel on the ground, are the shock troops of the leftist fifth column in America.

Conservative Female Abuse on the Political Left

My good friend Gayle from Dragon Lady's Den left an insightful comment at my earlier essay, "Demon Trolling on the Political Left." It's worthy of a post:

What gets me especially is the women's groups. They believe equality is only for liberal women. The rest of us are supposed to stay in our kitchens barefoot and pregnant. But of course we should have abortions, especially if there is any evidence of a defect! The very fact that Sarah carries around, or has one of her daughters carrying around a baby she actually gave birth to knowing he had Down's Syndrome (GASP!) is just too much for them. It is a reminder that many of them have aborted perfectly healthy babies. HOW COULD SHE??? Well, to the liberal women I say "your chickens are about ready to come home to roost, sweeties. Better get used to it!" LOL!

Michelle Malkin indicates that the left's campaign of political violence against Sarah Palin can be identified as "Conservative Female Abuse":

There’s something about outspoken conservative women that drives the Left mad. It’s a peculiar pathology I’ve reported on for more than 15 years, both as a witness and a target. Thus, the onset of Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, Democrat circles, and the cesspools of the blogosphere came as no surprise. They just can’t help themselves.

Liberals hold a special animus for constituencies they deem traitors. Minorities who identify as social and economic conservatives have left the plantation and sold out their people. Women who put an “R” by their name have abandoned their ovaries and betrayed their gender. As Republican officeholders and conservative public figures who are women have grown in number and visibility, the progression of Conservative Female Abuse has worsened. The astonishing vitriol and virulent hatred directed at GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is the most severe manifestation to date.

Read the whole thing for Malkin's progression of stages, from infantilization to dehumanization.

It doesn't take long to find women leftists attacking Palin, with as much venom as when she first burst on the scene upon selection as vice-presidential running mate.

Here's Kathy at Commments From Left Field:

Can someone put duct tape over this woman’s mouth? Her ill-considered, ahistorical, utterly ignorant public statements are a threat to national security.

Kathy's engraged at Palin's firm comments on standing up to Iran, comments that came in response to the Democratic Party's effort to muzzle Palin from speaking at a protest against Tehran in New York next week.

Meanwhile, yesterday Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, escalated Iran's bellicose stance toward Israel, announcing that the Israeli people themselves "are combatants at the disposal of Zionist operatives" and are enemies of Muslim states of the world.

That's extremely warlike language. Considering Khamenei called out Israel on the same day Palin issued her warning against Iran's push to launch a "second Holocaust," left-wing attacks on Palin's "lack of foreign policy experience" are looking increasingly naïve, if not malevolently ignorant.

Image Credit: Scooter's Report

Demon Trolling on the Political Left

Noemie Emery has done it again with a penetrating essay on the utter pathology in the left's reaction to Sarah Palin's nomination as vice-presidential running mate.

There are too many juicy passages to quote (and Emery's takedown of NOW's Kate Michelman, who backed John Edwards in the primaries, is pure gold), but this paragraph is lovely:

McCain picked Palin for a number of reasons - youth, pizzazz, energy, appeal to the base and to middle-class women, to the West and to blue-collar voters - but it may turn out that the main contribution she makes to his effort is in goading the Democrats into spasms of self-defeating and entirely lunatic rage. Somehow, every element of her life - the dual offense of being a beauty-queen and hunter; the Down syndrome baby who wasn't aborted; the teenage daughter about to get married, whose baby also wasn't aborted; the non-metrosexual husband working the nightshift; the very fact of five children - touched a nerve on the liberal template, and sent the whole beast into convulsions, opening an intriguing and somewhat frightening window onto the turbulent id of the left.

I keep plugging away on all this stuff in my corner of the blogosphere, of course, paying special attention to the work of the vile contingents of the netroots fever swamps in destroying the Democratic Party's electability this year (and that's not to discount Sandra Bernhard's widely-acclaimed anti-Palin stage performances!).

So, I'm reading D.J. Drummond's essay on the left's trolling demon cult with considerable interest: "How Liberal Trolls Are Working To Get McCain Elected President":

Ahhhhh Brian, you poor deluded troglodyte. I almost chose not to tell you, but it's only fair you should know that you are working, very hard actually, to get John McCain elected President. For those who may have 'troll-screen' featured on their computer, it should be understood that Brian is one of those malicious, venom-fueled malefactors who delight in attacking their betters. To be fair, there are Republican trolls as well as Democrat trolls, and Conservative trolls just as there are Liberal trolls, though it does seem to me that the Liberal variety breed a lot more, and that the Democrats like to encourage the vermin on their side, while Republicans would generally prefer a clean contest. Certainly in the present contest, McCain has tried to shut down the cheap shots from his side, while Obama seems to think his rats are just fine....

What I find so amusing about Brian and those like him, is that he will help get John McCain elected President. Explaining just why that is so will take a little bit, but please bear with me.

Read the rest of the essay here.

Drummond examines an interesting puzzle: If polls show that John McCain picking up the support of moderates and independents, while Obama remains flat in his support from those groups, why would Gallup's recent tracking numbers have Obama leading McCain by a 5-point spread? According to Drummond:

Gallup has significantly increased the proportional weight of Democrat response and reduced the weight of Republican response.

I'll let readers sort through the evidence Drummond offers in making his case.

It is extemely interesting, however, that polls and pundits find an enthusiastic GOP base continuing to boost Republican Party prospects, while the base of the Democratic Party sinks deeper and deeper into subterranean malevolence in seeking to destroy the McCain/Palin ticket.

The Politico, for example, reported yesterday on the comeback of the GOP brand. Meanwhile, Fred Barnes builds on that meme with his new essay, "The GOP Brand: It's Hot Again."

Anyway, it's not over 'till it's over, and we'll continue to see the lefties gleefully working their magic in proving their complete, radical counter-culture oppositionalism.

American Military Success in Iraq

The success of the Bush administration's surge strategy in Iraq is one of the most important military corrections in the history of America's wars.

I noted yesterday that congressional Democrats refused a vote on recognizing the heroic work of U.S. forces in Iraq. A typical response to the surge by war opponents is to deny the efficacy of the troop build-up in securing peace (ethnic cleansing had run its course, so the story goes), and it's common to see nihilist enemy-cheerleaders proclaiming the surge a fraud in its entirety.

But according to Jack Keene, a retired four-star general in the U.S. Army, in an interview at this morning's Wall Street Journal, the success of the new counterinsurgency strategy exceeded even his own expectations:

Gen. Keane wants to make sure people understand why the surge worked. "I have a theory" about the unexpectedly fast turnaround, he says. "Whether they be Sunni, Shia or Kurd, anyone who was being touched by that war after four years was fed up with it. And I think once a solution was being provided, once they saw the Americans were truly willing to take risks and die to protect their women and children and their way of life, they decided one, to protect the Americans, and two, to turn in the enemies that were around them who were intimidating and terrorizing them; that gave them the courage to do it."

He adds that the so-called Sunni Awakening, and the effective surrender of Shia radical Moqtada Sadr and his Mahdi Army, depended upon the surge. "I'm not sure [the Sunni Awakening] would have spread to the other provinces without the U.S. [military] presence. We needed forces that we didn't previously have for the Sunnis to be able to rely on us to protect them." Sadr saw his lieutenants killed in the American push, and didn't want to share their fate.

Looking ahead, Gen. Keane still considers a robust American ground force "the secret to success" in Iraq. "It is a myth for people to assert that by pulling away from the Iraqis, by pulling away from the Iraqi political process, that somehow that becomes a catalyst to do things that they would not do because of our presence. That is fundamentally wrong. It is our presence that is helping Iraqis move forward."

Read the whole interview, here. Also, don't miss Keane, Frederick Kagan, and Kimberly Kagan, "The Endgame in Iraq."

Additionally, while our antiwar terrorist boosters here at home continue to deny victory on the ground, even Barack Obama has come around to the majority consensus:

I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated ... It's succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.

I doubt the antiwar crowd will be calling out Obama for his endorsement of the Bush-Petreaus strategic victory.

Democrats Refuse Vote Recognizing Troops in Iraq

On September 10, Senator Joe Lieberman's office released the a joint statement from Senators Lieberman and Lindsay Graham on the proposal for a vote in Congress acknowledging the success of the U.S. military's surge in Iraq:

"It was exactly one year ago today that General David Petraeus returned to Capitol Hill to testify before Congress about the progress of the surge in Iraq. At the time, many members of the Senate argued that the surge -- despite growing evidence of its success -- was not working and should be abandoned. One left-wing group, Moveon.org, even made the despicable and outrageous accusation that General Petraeus would try to 'cook the books' to justify the surge when he appeared before Congress.

"One year later, it is clear: the critics of the surge were wrong.

Read the entire statement, here.

Congressional Democrats refused to support the resolution, and Saturday's lead editorial at the Wall Street Journal explains the political significance of the party's refusal to honor American fighting personnel in Iraq:

Even Barack Obama, who opposed the Iraq troop surge, has finally acknowledged its success. But some of his fellow Democrats in Congress apparently remain unconvinced. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin teamed up to block a vote on a bipartisan resolution "recognizing the strategic success of the troop surge in Iraq" and thanking our men and women in uniform for their efforts.

By late 2006, Iraq was gripped by sectarian chaos. Insurgents and death squads were killing nearly 3,000 civilians per month, and coalition forces were sustaining more than 1,200 attacks per week. On January 10, 2007, President Bush announced the new counterinsurgency strategy that included deploying five additional Army brigades and two Marine battalions to Iraq.

Under General David Petraeus, who relinquished command of U.S. forces in Iraq on Tuesday, sectarian bloodshed has almost entirely abated, daily attacks have fallen to 25 from a high of 180 in June 2007, and overall violence has declined by more than 70%. In July, U.S. combat deaths were lower than in any month since the beginning of the war. All of the troops sent to Iraq as part of the surge have now returned home and are not being replaced.

Citing General Petraeus by name, the resolution, which is sponsored by Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Lindsey Graham, "commends and expresses the gratitude to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces for the service, sacrifices, and heroism that made the success of the troop surge in Iraq possible."

The Senators - allies of John McCain - had hoped to attach the resolution to a defense bill under consideration this week. But Mr. Reid wouldn't allow it. Democrats have often claimed that while they may oppose the war in Iraq, they wholeheartedly support the troops. That's a defensible position, and this resolution honoring our soldiers and Marines for a job well done gave them a chance to back up their rhetoric. Yet they still balked.

Yes, they still balked. It's really no surprise, but the Journal editors have provided a real service in highlighting the actions of top Democrats and their refusal to publicly credit the Bush administration's counterinsurgency build-up for turning around a war that was a near-run thing.

Related: "History Will Vindicate President Bush."

Sandra Bernhard Spews Gang-Rape Taunt on Sarah Palin

********** EXPLICIT LANGUAGE WARNING! **********

If violent profanity upsets you, don't watch this video of Sandra Bernhard attacking Sarah Palin in a Washington, D.C., stage performance:

Althought this clip doesn't show it, in her routine Bernhard is said to declare that Palin would get "gang-raped" in Manhattan by some "big black brothers."

Tim Graham has the text of the available taunts from the clip:

Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the s**t and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b***h! Don’t you f**kin’ reference Old Testament, bitch! You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls**t! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b***h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your f**kin' cheap New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bulls**t moment.

Graham adds this comment:

The average person probably wouldn’t find it the least bit funny. But if you really, really hate Sarah Palin or Christian conservatives, this show is for you.

The D.C. Examiner's theater review basically endorses Bernard's screaming anti-Palin attacks:

Her profanity comes across as a shout to a passive, disengaged world.

Passive?

I'm sure all the the Palin-ogynists on the political left, who have been endlessly and remorseless terrorizing Sarah Palin and her family since she joined the GOP ticket will find Bernhard's conservative female abuse as essentially left-wing kitchen table banter.

I can hear the lefties now: "I do not endorse Sandra Bernard or her actions...", blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile, we won't hear a peep against those who have libeled the Alaska Governor as sleeping with John McCain, that she's the grandmother of Trig Palin, that she's a states' rights separatist and John Birch extremist, that she bills rape victims for their CSI forensics - and the list goes on...

Obama's Class War "So Wrong for America"

Lynn Forester de Rothschild, appearing on Campbell Brown's "Election Center" on CNN, offered one of the most trenchant arguments against Barack Obama's presidential campaign I've heard in months.

Forester de Rothschild grew up in middle class New Jersey, and she says the class war Barack Obama would declare is "so wrong for America," via Newsbusters:

Here's the introduction from her Wall Street Journal essay:

If Barack Obama loses the presidential election, it may well be the result of a public perception that he is detached and elitist -- a politician whose expressions of empathy for hard-working Americans stem more from abstract solidarity than a real connection to the lives of millions of citizens.

Suggestions that Sen. Obama has failed to relate to working- and middle-class voters in swing states have dogged his campaign for months. His choice of Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate only marginally corrects the problem.

While Obama supporters attempt to dismiss the charges about their candidate's perceived hauteur, they confuse privilege and elitism. Elitism is a state of mind, a view of the world that cannot be measured simply by one's net worth, position or number of houses.

GOP Image Improves as Race Tightens to Dead-Heat

The new Pew Research Organization survey finds a significant increase in public perceptions of John McCain and the Republican Party:

The overall image of the Republican Party has improved substantially over the past few months. Half of all registered voters say they have a favorable view of the Republican Party, up from 40% in May. Unfavorable ratings of the Republican Party are down from 55% in May to 46% in the current poll. This is the first time since July 2005 that more voters have rated the Republican Party favorably than unfavorably.

By comparison, ratings of the Democratic Party have remained relatively stable. A majority of voters (55%) offers a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party while 41% have an unfavorable view. In May, 57% had a favorable view and 39% an unfavorable opinion.
As a result, while the Democratic Party's image remains more positive than that of the Republican Party, the gap in favorable ratings has shrunk to only 5 points from a 17-point gap in May.

The turnaround in ratings is particularly significant among independents, and the shift in independent views occurred over the course of the convention period. Independent voters now have equally favorable opinions of both parties (50% for the Republican Party, 49% for the Democratic Party). GOP favorability is up 12 points among independents from 38% in August. In contrast, ratings of the Democratic Party are down seven points among independents from 56%. The 18-point advantage in favorability that Democrats had among independents going into the conventions has now disappeared.

The GOP also does well on the poll's findings for the vice-presidential candidates: "Six-in-ten independent voters say they have a favorable opinion of Palin compared with 47% who express a positive view of Biden.

Pew's numbers on the presidential horse race find Barack Obama holding a 2 percentage-point lead over McCain (46 to 44 percent). But Republican voters edge the Democrats in support for the party nominee (90 to 87 percent), and McCain holds a substantial edge among independents in the head-to-head matchup (45 to 38 percent).

The major caveat with this poll is that interviews were completed on Sunday, just before this week's intense economic turmoil beginning on Monday.

Nevertheless, while Gallup's daily tracking numbers find Obama leading McCain 49 to 44 percent, the new Rusmussen tracking poll finds the race tied at 48 percent for both candidates.

There's a couple of other important points worth mentioning: While voters are leaning toward Obama on the questions of change and economic crisis management, 50 percent in this week's New York Times poll said that the troop surge in Iraq had "made things better," a finding validating McCain's consistent support for the increased deployment.

The overall picture on the post-Labor Day stage of the election is that the dynamics of the race have settled back to a similar point prior to the Democratic convention. Jay Cost suggests McCain's consolidated the GOP base and Obama is currently benefitting from the market upheavals:

Contrary to what one might think if one's only source for information was the political class - there has not been a lot of movement. The movement we have seen seems to have been pretty orderly - with McCain solidifying his Republican base.

We also see a group of undecided voters who have not yet made a choice. They will probably be decisive. In a race with only two salient candidates - the goal is to hit 50%-plus-one. Both McCain and Obama can still do that via the undecided voters, who are becoming the critical voting block.

Nevertheless, the election's basically a dead heat at this point, and it's going to be increasingly important to look at polling trends in the key battleground states. The numbers on the improved GOP brand, therefore, provide a little more optimism for the Republican side.

Obama Dishonesty Takes Political Attacks to New Depths

There are a lot of allegations of dishonesty currently bubbling up along the campaign trail, and neither side of the political spectrum is without some dirty laundry.

But today's controversy over Barack Obama's Spanish-language attack ad calling John McCain an intolerant bigot represents a new stage in the social construction of postmodern presidential campaigns.

Rush Limbaugh, at today's Wall Street Journal, demonstrates that Obama has distorted his words to attack the GOP nominee:

I understand the rough and tumble of politics. But Barack Obama - the supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change - has gone where few modern candidates have gone before.

Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own making. And in doing so, it is playing with political dynamite. What kind of potential president would let his campaign knowingly extract two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and build a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial tensions? The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s were famous for such vile fear-mongering.

Read the whole thing for Limbaugh's devastating indictment of Obama's hypocritical deceit.

But check out Captain Ed as well:

Barack Obama miscalculated when he took Rush Limbaugh out of context for a Spanish-language ad that attempted to paint John McCain as a racist, for about the sixth time in this campaign. Not only was the ad completely and transparently dishonest — McCain and Limbaugh are far apart on immigration policy — but it used lines from a parody about immigration policy so far out of context as to make Obama a liar.

To top off your reading pleasure, Jeff Goldstein puts Obama's lies in the context of post-structural linguistics:

... what is important here is that the Obama campaign ... by extracting excerpts from Limbaugh’s monologues and applying them to a new context — without reference to the original context — they have pretended that the purported “arguments” being made by Limbaugh speak in opposition to their own claims of postracialism. But in fact, just the opposite is true, as Limbaugh himself recognizes. Because for Limbaugh’s signs [statements] to acquire the meaning the Obama camp wants viewers to take away from their presentation, those signs must be entirely severed from their original intent. And it is only at that point – when the interpretative process is left up to the intentions of a receiver who has naught but the signifiers to go on, thanks to the dishonest and intentional removal of all the indexes to original intent that occur inside the signified context of the utterer ... that one can argue that Limbaugh’s piece “means” what the Obama camp suggests it means.

The bold italics are mine.

I'll be waiting (and waiting...) for the outrage on the left.

John McCain's enemies have made out the McCain/Palin ticket to be the dirtiest presidential campaign in modern history, even worse the "Tricky" Dick Nixon. Yet, honestly, the scale of the left's wicked campaign of deceit and demonization against John McCain and Sarah Palin literally is unprecedented in modern presidential politics.

Leftists Smear Palin in Rape-Kit Controversy

There's a new stage in the left's smear campaign over the Sarah Palin "rape kit controversy."

Shannyn Moore, at Alaska Report, has a breathless post attacking Palin, as mayor of Wasilla, for allegedly charging rape victims for the costs of their forensic rape kits:

Under Palin’s Administration, “Life Begins at Rape” for women unable to pay for their forensic evidence gathering. Justice is served to women who can afford it and denied for those who can’t.

All of this sounds absolutely scandalous, but there's a minor problem: The Palin rape kit controversy is a bunch of baloney.

The press has reported the story inaccurately:

The latest myth touted on liberal blogs that’s bubbled its way into mainstream news headlines is the one where Sarah Palin ordered rape victims to pay for their own rape kits.

“Palin’s Town Used to Bill Victims for Rape Kits” was headline on a Thursday USA Today news story. Reporters Ken Dilanian and Matt Kelley used a 2000 quote from former Wasilla Police Chief to blame Palin for an outdated, now illegal policy she never supported.

“In the past, we’ve charged the cost of exams to victim’s insurance companies when possible,” former chief Charlie Fannon told the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman in 2000 as then-Democratic Governor Tony Knowles was signing legislation to make local police branches cover the costs of the kits.

“I just don’t want to see any more burden on the taxpayer,” Fannon said at the time, which was reprinted in the USA Today.

Fannon went on to say that he believed the criminal should be held responsible for the costs, which run from $5,000-$14,000 per year for all assault cases. USA Today did not reprint those quotes from the interview, though. “The forensic exam is just one part of the equation,” Fannon said at the time “I’d like to see the courts make these people pay restitution for these things.”

According to Maria Cornella, Palin's campaign spokeswoman:

Palin "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test," [Cornella] said. "Gov. Palin's position could not be more clear. To suggest otherwise is a deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice."

Despite this, the latest attacks on Palin continue.

Bonnie Erbe, for example, is positively outraged:

Palin supporters ought to be taking a much closer look at her record on these types of issues (charging rape victims for evidentiary examinations so their attackers can be brought to trial) than whether she can juggle five children and the vice presidency. This, more than anything, should push women, pro-life and pro-choice, away from the McCain-Palin ticket.

Not quite, actually.

As we know, Barack Obama, aka "Senator Infanticide," is the most extreme Democrat in America on abortion rights. If anything's likely to "push women" to a fit of rage, it'll be the left's new depths of sleaze in attacking Gianna Jessen, an abortion survivor who's called out Obama's steadfast opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act as a member of Illinios State Senate.

Here's Obama's new ad buy viciously attacking Jessen:

Here's the repsonse from Jill Stanek:

It is despicable, repulsive and beneath contempt that Barack Obama would attack Gianna Jessen. She is a courageous abortion survivor and living miracle who would not be with us today if Obama's policies had been in place when she was born. Mr. Obama continues to mislead the American people on this issue, he voted four times against medical care and protection for babies who survive abortions in the Illinois State Senate, while the U.S. Senate was voting 98-0 to pass an identical bill. Mr. Obama needs to come forward and tell the American people that he understands people like Gianna Jessen, and that he will support and enforce Born Alive Infant protections - that these are living, breathing human beings who have come into our world and deserve protection in the law and should receive medical care at health care facilities. These babies have the same rights as the rest of us.

So, while the left is intent to smear Sarah Palin with outrageous allegations of sticking rape victims with the costs of their investigations, Barack Obama has the depravity to remorselessly attack a women who not have been allowed to live under his own policies in the state of Illinois.

This latest round of attacks illustrates, yet again, the total collapse of decency among the Democratic left-wing of the political spectrum.

Sarah Palin and the John Birch Society?

In 1995, Sarah Palin, as a member of the Wasilla City Council, was photographed reading a publication of the John Birch Society, as Ben Smith reports in, "What's on the Desk?":

In a picture supplied by Sarah Palin's family to the Associated Press, Palin appears with some rather odd reading matter: The magazine of the ultraconservative John Birch Society.

The picture, dating to 1995, when Palin was a member of the Wasilla City Council, ran beside a profile of Palin in Saturday's New York Times. The magazine, The New American, is sitting on top of her calendar on her desk, unopened.

The current, and then-, president of the group, John McManus, confirmed that the cover fit the description of a 1995 issue of the magazine. The headline, "Con-Con Call," refers to discussion at the time of a constitutional convention. The headline appears above a picture of then-Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, who had floated the notion as a way of returning the balance of power back toward the states. But the author warned that the convention could actually be a devious ploy aimed at increasing government power.

McManus said Palin wouldn't have had to have any connection to the society, or the journal, to have wound up with that issue on her desk."Any attempt to link her to the John Birch Society would be ridiculous," he said of speculation on the liberal blogs that first noticed the magazine.

Let's think about this.

Palin, as a member of the city council, with mayoral aspirations - and perhaps ambitions for higher state office - may have been intrigued by cutting-edge issues in federalism and local government, such as "devolution" and "reinventing government" (which were the rage in public policy the 1990s). Or, perhaps a municipal colleague gave her a copy of the New American to look over. Maybe Palin admired Utah's Governor Leavitt (on the cover), who made his mark in state government leadership issues during Palin's tenure, and was president of the Council of State Governments in 1996...

In other words, Palin might have no more interest in an extreme right ideological 'zine than she might in a copy of Vogue featuring the latest in haute couture.

Or, as the Smith article notes:

"This photo from the early to mid 90s shows the Governor having her photo taken in front of a three ring binder of information from local citizens presented regularly to Wasilla council members by the town clerk," said Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb. "These binders featured material given by members of the public to all council members."

In other words, the magazine's just a routine piece of city government literature made available to all council officers.

But don't try and tell that to Dave Neiwart, of course, who's at it again with more of his "pseudo-fascist" smear jobs, "Is Sarah Palin A Closet John Bircher?":

The Birchers are best known for their ardent McCarthyism and their long career in promoting cockamamie conspiracy theories about supposed Communist infiltration of government -- not just in the '50s and '60s, but well into the late '80s, until the fall of the Soviet Union. At that point, they simply picked up the same act and transferred it to promoting similar theories about the "New World Order" under Bill Clinton in the 1990s. (Chip Berlet has one of the best disquisitions on the Birch Society's long career.)

These same theories were the raison d'etre of the militia movement -- and indeed, the Birch Society ardently promoted the militias and related "Patriot" activity. I used to see their material on sale at militia gatherings regularly.

One can see where this is going...

Apparently, Sarah Palin, in 1995, was a proto-fascist, white supremacist, separatist extremist, no doubt with supposed ties to anti-government fundamentalist organizations such as "The Order" or the "Silent Brotherhood."

The problem, of course, is that the closest anyone can get to substantiating such claims is by noting that Governor Palin attended meetings of the Alaska Independence Party, and her husband, Todd, was briefly a member of the group around the same time, 1995.

That's it ... So why the fuss among the nihilists at Daily Kos and Firedoglake?

Cinnamon Stillwell provides the clues (via GSGF):

There's a new affliction sweeping the nation, and it's known as Palin Derangement Syndrome. The phenomenon is similar to Bush Derangement Syndrome, a term coined by political columnist Charles Krauthammer to describe the personal animosity and irrational hatred directed at President Bush by his leftist opponents. But this time, Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, is the object of wrath.

The feeding frenzy began with the news of Palin's selection, but it was her electrifying speech at the Republic National Convention last month that really set it off. In one fell swoop, Palin managed to energize the Republican base, breathe life into the McCain campaign, launch some very effective jabs at Barack Obama, and quite possibly, attract the support of the 18 million Hillary Clinton voters.

The attacks on Palin have ranged from patronizing to vicious to fantastical. She has been caricatured as an inexperienced rube, a baby-making automaton, an uneducated underachiever, a bad mother, trailer-park trash, a rightwing religious fanatic, a sexual fantasy, and of course, a fascist. No subject has been deemed taboo in the effort to take Palin down.

It's true: Absolutely nothing has been considered too low, or too vile, in the weeks-long and completely psychotic campaign of defamation and destruction against Sarah Palin and her family.

As Dr. Rusty Shackleford notes:

I just happened to have been forwarded an e-mail to the DU post earlier by a rabid Obama supporter trying to convince me that Sarah Palin is a right-wing lunatic. The original "gotcha" find was posted here and quickly went viral in lefty circles - including several Kos diaries linking it and tying the accusation to false rumors circulating that Sarah Palin belonged to the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party.

Yep, a "right wing lunatic." I guess if the left can conjure up a few more of those, they'll be able to seal a Barack Obama electoral fraud on the American people in November.

That is, if they don't completely alienate "small town" Americans across the country first (the more likely scenario, amazingly).

Economic Fundamentals

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece today, entitled "Worst Crisis Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight":

The financial crisis that began 13 months ago has entered a new, far more serious phase.

Lingering hopes that the damage could be contained to a handful of financial institutions that made bad bets on mortgages have evaporated. New fault lines are emerging beyond the original problem -- troubled subprime mortgages -- in areas like credit-default swaps, the credit insurance contracts sold by American International Group Inc. and others. There's also a growing sense of wariness about the health of trading partners.

The article continues with the explanation for the economic turmoil, found in the deceleration of consumer credit and financial markets through "deleveraging, or the unwinding of debt."

While things are not likely to improve soon, the piece ends with a surprisingly upbeat assessment of the market's economic fundamentals:

One pleasant mystery is why the crisis hasn't hit the economy harder -- at least so far. "This financial crisis hasn't yet translated into fewer...companies starting up, less research and development, less marketing," Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, said Wednesday. "We haven't seen that yet. I'm sure every company is keeping their eyes on it."

At 6.1%, the unemployment rate remains well below the peak of 7.8% in 1992, amid the S&L crisis.

In part, that's because government has reacted aggressively. The Fed's classic mistake that led to the Great Depression was that it tightened monetary policy when it should have eased. Mr. Bernanke didn't repeat that error. And Congress moved more swiftly to approve fiscal stimulus than most Washington veterans thought possible.

In part, the broader economy has held mostly steady because exports have been so strong at just the right moment, a reminder of the global economy's importance to the U.S. And in part, it's because the U.S. economy is demonstrating impressive resilience, as information technology allows executives to react more quickly to emerging problems and - to the discomfort of workers - companies are quicker to adjust wages, hiring and work hours when the economy softens.

This is exactly the relatively solid economic foundation John McCain referred to in his recent statement suggesting that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

So, we're having a tremendous financial shakeout on Wall Street, but Main Street's still doing reasonable well due to the American economy's size, diversity, and resilience.

Things may indeed get worse, although financial markets closed today on a euphoric note, as the Dow Jones industrials surged to a 410-point gain as buyers raced back into securities, almost wiping out yesterday's 449-point loss.

Meanwhile, members of the radical left are not only cheering Wall Street's crisis, but they're endorsing the collapse of American financial institutions for poliltical gain. Harold Meyerson boasts, for example:

Wall Street is vanishing before our eyes. And by the measure of their contribution to America's economic strength and well being, both Reagan-age government and Wall Street's investment banks plainly deserve to die.

Cernig at Crooks and Liars has gone absolutely mad in ejaculatory glee at the current crisis:

I believe that the U.S. and other governments must do what they must to save us all from the excesses of “laissez fair” financial markets that were self-rigged in favor of a few insiders out to asset-strip and make hay while the sun shone. The alternative is too horrid to contemplate.

Well, what's too horrid?

It probably would have been better for AIG to have been sold to a private concern than taken over by taxpayers. But, of course, both Meyerson and Cernig WANT a total financial collapse of the U.S. economy so they can better justify a neo-Stalinist nationalization under a Barack Obama adiministration, one that would make the last few days look like a PTA bakesale.

The hope, for left partisans, is to create a "new, new deal" should they be given the reins of power come January:

Obama offers hope for a “new new Deal” for America’s working families in the midst of a crisis much different from, but in many ways just as serious, as Americans faced in the ’30s.

Of course, the economic difficulties are not "as serious" as the 1930s, when Americans saw 25 percent unemployment, thousands of banks collapsed, and the nation experienced nearly a decade of hard-times before economic demand surged with the productive mobilization of World War II.

Note, as well, that Zachary argued today that the distinction between pure laissez-faire and state-regulatory centralism is simplistic in a modern economy based on legal a framework of contracts and property rights, and that regulatory structures that worked well in earlier downturns may not be suited for the needs of a high-tech and highly diversified economy like today's. Thus, a heavily state-centric regulatory solution to the current crisis may be problematic, as we are no longer in an economic environment analogous to the New Deal era, notwithstanding the hope of left-wing partisans to recreate one..

Epic Fail? Hackers Sought Damaging Evidence on Palin

The father of the e-mail hacker who breached Sarah Palin's personal files refused to discuss the case when contacted by Threat Level. It turns out that the suspect's father is a Democratic assemblyman in Tennessee:

A person who identified himself as the student's father, when reached at home, said he could not talk about the matter and would have no comment. The father is a Democratic state representative in Tennessee.

Threat Level kept the identity of the suspect confidential pending further investigation, but Gateway Pundit indentified the suspect as David Kernell, and the father is Democratic Representative Mike Kernell. David Kernell has been contacted by the FBI, and Representative Kernell's personal home page has been taken down.

According to the Knoxville Tennessean:

The son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking of personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Kernell told The Tennessean.

Note too, that despite the widespread rejection of political or ideological motives behind the Anonymous group's attack on Governor Palin, reports on the initial security breach among 4Chan hackers show disappointment that no incriminating evidence against Palin was found - a fact which supports the contention of an extreme left-wing ideological agenda to destroy the Palin family:

The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust.

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small. A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now?

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult. "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another. "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders. The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

As I noted previously, Anonymous is claimed to have no political agenda, although the group has staged nationwide protests against the Church of Scientology, and is characterized ideologically as an anarchist organization:

From what I can gather, they likely think of themselves more as TRUTHTELLERS with an anarchist strain, and so may be of the left-libertarian anarchist bent.

While the hackers under suspicion may have been politically confused, the broader 4Chan membership fits the anarchist ideological specification of utopian revolutionaries who can be placed at the extreme left-wing of the political spectrum. As part of their ideology, anarchists are opposed to religion (coercive religious institutionalism, in particular). Hence, Anonymous' current hate campaign against Scientology - an organization identified as either a controversial religion or an opportunistic financial pyramid - reflects an anti-authoritian, anti-capitalist ideological agenda

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Added: See, "Palin E-mail Hacker Targeted Family and Staff, Investigators Say":

... there is widespread speculation about who was behind the attack and what the motivation was.

Jose Nazario, a senior security engineer with Arbor Networks Inc., said he knows “through personal contacts” that members of the group Anonymous were involved in the Palin e-mail attack.

He said Anonymous is a loose network of a few dozen people who live in the United States and abroad and range from teenagers to 30-year-olds who share what he said is a “sociopathic sense of humor.”

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One of the more fascinating aspects of the Anonymous is the group's "plausible deniability." Plausible deniability is the notion that members of an organization can evade blame for their actions in the haze of an amorphous or non-existent chain of command. Members or supporters of Anonymous can act in any way illegally, and leave no evidence of wrongdoing or abuse. Thus, in theory, there's no one to be held responsible.

What better way for the Democrats to destroy Sarah Palin than to infilitrate the 4Chan network with Democratic Party insiders, who can then claim that Anonymous in fact has no political agenda, and no formal organization structure?

Too bad for them, the hackers weren't the brightest kids on the block. The radical left has completely endorsed the Palin security breach, and the episode provides one more example in a long chain of depravities this year that has totally discredited any claims to moral decency among those on the hardcore Democratic-left.

Unmasking the "Anonymous" Protest Group

UPDATE, 4:00pm, 9/18/08: Please see the my updated post on the Palin e-mail hacking case, "Epic Fail? Hackers Sought Damaging Evidence on Palin."

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The organization originally alleged as hacking into Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, known as "Anonymous," has been identified as a "left wing group" by Caleb Howe (the group was videotaped staging some unusual protests at this year's Republican National Convention).

There's some question, however, as to the ideological identification of "Anonymous" as a leftist protest organization.

As one commenter at my previous post indicated:

I think calling Anonymous a group of "liberals" is a stretch. More like bored 14 year olds.

Further, according to information provided by Michelle Malkin:

Anonymous is not exactly a group. It is people using the umbrella of a web discussion board for cover to be as offensive, funny, strange, or whatever as they want.

The Anonymous hackers are associated with the /b/ message board groups of 4chan.org, an image-posting site modeled after a similar webpage in Japan. The New York Times recently published a feature story on Anonymous-style hackers, with this description:

Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand.

But the original agenda of Anonymous hackers in the Palin case has been to protest the tax-exempt status of the Church of Scientology, and they've recently gone public with a series wider protests against organized religion:

Hackers who launched a massive online attack against the Church of Scientology are now turning to real-world protests to draw attention to what they call a "vast moneymaking scheme under the guise of 'religion."'

The loosely organized group of hackers, who meet up and coordinate attacks through Internet Relay Chat channels, have set Feb. 10 for a wave of protests at Scientology locations worldwide.

In anonymous postings on the group's Web site, organizers said they are trying to raise awareness about the threats to free speech posed by the church's lawyers, who, the group claims, aggressively try to silence critics by threatening lawsuits. The church said its lawyers follow standard procedures for protecting copyrighted materials.

As noted, in February, the group staged protests in Boston:

A group of more than 50 masked protesters gathered yesterday outside of the Church of Scientology of Boston headquarters on Beacon Street to demonstrate against the policies of the church. Protesters said the event was part of a worldwide demonstration against the church by Anonymous, an informal Internet-based group.

Donning Guy Fawkes masks modeled after those worn in the 2005 film "V for Vendetta," or face coverings improvised with T-shirts or scarves, participants began to assemble in front of the building at the corner of Beacon and Hereford streets around 11 a.m.

The story of Fawkes, an Englishman sentenced to death for attempting to blow up the House of Lords with kegs of gunpowder in 1605, was revived in the fictional "V for Vendetta," in which a crowd of people wear identical masks to challenge the government.

The Guy Fawkes paraphernalia is important in identifying the ideological orientation of Anonymous.

As fans of the movie know, "V" is a revolutionary anarchist who dresses with a Guy Fawkes mask. The film is explicitly anti-fascist and anti-totalitarian, featuring allusions to the "warmongering" policies of the United States government (read the Bush administration).

Anarchism itself is a radical ideology favoring the total elimination of the state and the eradication of private property (a tenet anarchists share with communists). The wearing of Guy Fawkes masks by Anonymous protesters signifies a complete identification of the state as the ultimate threat to human freedom, which is combined with a revolutionary agenda toward the destruction of state institutions and the establishment of a utopian society of universal liberty and human equality.

Further, Anonymous, in its anti-Scientology program - expanded this year to include all church organizations accused of forming a "vast moneymaking scheme" - can be identified ideologically as representing radical left-wing anti-clericalism.

Anti-clericalism is an extreme left revolutionary ideology that seeks to overthrow the iron alliance of church and state in all aspects of the political and public in state-society relations. Revolutionary anti-clericalism emerged particulary during the European Enlightenment of the 16th century, and it saw the full actualization of its violent ideological program against the Catholic Church during the Jacobin stage of the French Revolution of 1792.

According to the latest Malkin report, a lone hacker is claimed to have breached Sarah Palin's personal e-mail accounts. However, at present, the identification of the attacker is unsubstantiated. As Wizbang notes:

Everyday I am learning that there doesn't seem to be a rock bottom for the scum who support Obama. Today we learned that a left wing nut hacked into Sarah Palin's private - PRIVATE - email account and splashed the contents all over the internet. Gawker is a website without any scruples and is promoting Palin's private information even though it was illegally obtained.

Even even if it turns out that the Anonymous hacker (who ILLEGALLY breached Governor Palin's proviate e-mail files) is a solo, non-ideological operator, the response on the establishment political left and the netroots blogosphere has been absolutely disgusting, and is in essence a total endorsement of the violation of the Palin family's dignity and privacy.

See, for example, Lindsay Beyerstein, at the nihilist Firedoglake:

The contents of the inbox confirm that Palin was using her private account for government business. We already knew that Palin's advisers urged her to use private accounts, a la RNC email accounts, in order to circumvent FOIA requests and skirt subpoenas.

Beyerstein apparently has no problem with the hacker's reprehensible actions, which are subject to five years in federal penetentiary upon trial and conviction.

But, of course, that's typical of those on the political left. As Victor Davis Hanson noted yesterday, the current attacks on Sarah Palin and the GOP ticket have "no parallel in modern election history."

The hacking of Sarah Palin's personal e-mail files is so far the most diabolical attack on the GOP vice-presidential nominee to date. Even if we find that a lone, totally unhinged Internet "lulz" geek got lucky in breaching Governor Palin's personal data, the failure of the left-wing political establishment to completely and unequivocally repudiate this most vile "dirty trick" of campaign 2008 reveals the total, unremitting project of ideological demonization among political actors of the contemporary left-wing Democratic establishment.

In sum, there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that's beneath the radical left-Democrat Party alliance in its sickening, immorally grotesque grab for power this year.

Left-Wing Group Hacks Sarah Palin Private E-Mail!

UPDATE, 10:10pm: Please see the my updated post on the Palin e-mail hacking case, "Unmasking the "Anonymous" Protest Group."

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If the Democrats were looking to rekindle the public's outpouring for Sarah Palin's historic vice-presidential run - or to turn attention away from the turmoil on financial markets - they couldn't have found a better way than to hack into Palin's personal e-mail accounts AND distribute her confidential information online for the world to see.

It turns out that a left-wing subterranean protest group is claiming responsibility for the security breach, and Gawker, the liberal New York gossip blog, has already posted the Palin family's photographs and e-mail addresses online.

Michelle Malkin offers a concise analysis of this new depth of political sleaze:

Hacking e-mail is a federal crime....

The law will catch up to the hackers, but what about the lowlifes who are now gleefully splashing the alleged contents of Palin’s private e-mail account all over the Internet?

The Gawker smear machine — see here for all the background you need — has posted private family photos of Palin’s children that were apparently stolen from the e-mail account.

They have used Bristol Palin’s illegally obtained private cell phone number from her mom’s private account, recorded her voicemail message, and posted it on their website.

They have reprinted her husband Todd’s private e-mail address and son Track’s private e-mail address.

You think this is just a harmless prank? Those of you who have had to deal with break-ins and identity theft know exactly what a burdensome process it is to recover from crimes like this.

Gawker knowingly and deliberately published illegally obtained photos of the Palin children.

Where are the privacy absolutists now?

You think Palin Derangement Syndrome is bad now? These by-any-means-necessary lunatics are just warming up.

As readers will recall, I've already noted numerous moral outrages perpetrated by Palin's enemies - for example, "I Miss My Mommy" and Trig Palin's auction listing on eBay.

So yes, these folks are just getting started.

Caleb Howe says the hackers are "Obama Supporters 101":

The number of lines willing to be crossed in the Palin witch-hunt the last few weeks continues to grow. From spreading rumors about her children to questioning her as a mother ... hacking her private email account and posting her private family photos online fits in perfectly. I have no doubt we'll soon hear a defense of the importance of this illegal activity to the political process...

Yep, the leftists are already blaming Palin for conducting state business on personal web-based e-mail, and suggesting the case is a GOP ruse for Palin to dodge the Alaska state-troooper investigation.

In other words, it's more GOP incompetence and lies.

The radical left will sink this election for Obama, without a doubt.