Stop Calling Me A Nigger

The Tea Party? Defeat them the same way segregation was beaten. “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police. They didn’t care about how they looked. It was just fierce indifference to human life that caused America to say enough is enough. ‘I don’t want to see it and I am not a part of it.’ What the hell! If you have to bomb little kids and send dogs out against human beings, give me a break.”

Charlie Rangel on Immigration, Pope Francis & His Successor, The Daily Beast, 2 Aug. 2013

No, I am not black. I grew up around the military and spent a good part of my adulthood in the most integrated profession in our nation - the U.S. Army Infantry. Racism simply did not exist in the colorblind world where I lived, where blacks were my officers, commanders, NCO's, soldiers and friends. The first I saw of racism and racial politics was when I left the military and happened to have the misfortune to hear an utterly vile speech by Louis Farrakhan. Since then, my eyes have been opened.

While I am neither black nor racist, I am conservative. I fully share the values of the Tea Party groups - to return to Constitutionalism and reign in spending and taxes. Those values are utterly colorblind.

And, with but this exception, I do not use the word "nigger." It is a demeaning word fraught with arrogance and hatred. It has been rightfully driven from acceptability in America. If someone were to call a black man a "nigger" today, I think that a violent response would be justified.

I use the word "nigger" to make a point. I feel every bit as angry and violence prone at being falsely labled a racist as I would believe a black man would feel at being called a "nigger." What Charlie Rangel said in the quote above is every bit as outrageous.

This is not going to go away with rational discussion. These utterly worthless bastards who are making false charges of racism are paying no price, and that has to end. That will only happen when those making the vile and false charges of racism are forced to recant - with public pressure to the extent possible, and violence if that does not work.

Oh, and by the way Charlie, the people you faced in the South in 1955 were Democrats. Bull Connor was on the Democrat National Committee you worthless ass.

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Is Anyone Surprised By The IRS Scandal?

The hard left doesn't debate, they demonize. Their opponents don't have policy differences, they are fundamentally evil people. They don't want to merely win the argument without having to engage, they want to drive their opponents wholly from acceptability in the public square.

If you contest Obama's policies, you're a racist teabagger. Object to abortion on demand, you hate women. To be a Christian in the U.S. today is to be a second class citizen. This is the world of the radical 60's lefties who have come to control power in America today, and their standardbearer is Obama, a man who regularly paints those who disagree with him as having the basest of motives. Any criticism of him is "partisan" and "political." Obama has regularly steamrolled over his opponents and the law. The examples are numerous - the GM bondholders, the war in Libya without Congressional authorization, and most recently the decision to implement the DREAM Act by unilaterally picking and choosing which laws to apply to name but just a few examples. And if Congress wants to investigate wrongdoing, they are fought ever inch of the way by a regime that holds itself above the law.

And now left wingers in the IRS used their power to punish people on the right over a near two year period leading up to the 2012 election. I would be amazed if Obama has any knowing involvement, though I would be less surprised if one of the many political operatives in the White House had dirty hands. But given the mindset of the left, the IRS scandal is no surprise at all - and make no mistake, it is Obama's scandal.

As Peggy Noonan wrote in today's WSJ:

A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.

The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists.

In order to suppress conservative groups—at first those with words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their names, then including those that opposed ObamaCare or advanced the second amendment—the IRS demanded donor rolls, membership lists, data on all contributions, names of volunteers, the contents of all speeches made by members, Facebook FB +1.28% posts, minutes of all meetings, and copies of all materials handed out at gatherings. Among its questions: What are you thinking about? Did you ever think of running for office? Do you ever contact political figures? What are you reading? One group sent what it was reading: the U.S. Constitution.

The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last June, for the first time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife and his business were also soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government's attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare." Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they're afraid of saying they were audited.

All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The purpose, obviously, was to overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, question by question and audit by audit.

This IRS scandal is not the rot inside the Obama administration. It is a symptom of the rot inside the entire left wing of our nation.

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The Wages Of Straying Off The Liberal Plantation

Buzz Bissinger, the lifelong Democrat and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who recently came out for Romney, discovers that the left is surprisingly intolerant. Heh.



The most interesting part of the interview above was when the CNN's Howard Kurtz takes offense at Bissinger's quite accurate claim that left wing ideology pervades mainstream journalism and reporting. Kurtz defended CNN's stable of reporters. That would be the same CNN that gave rise to the "tea-bagger" joke and led the sliming of the Tea Party movement? That would be the same CNN whose last "town hall" debate had more plants than a florist shop. Kurtz is living in a bubble. CNN hasn't yet gone full frontal MSNBC or NYT, but they are not all that far away.

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Is The Florida Republican Party About To Sacrifice Congressman Allen West

Allen West is one of the Republican party's most important national assets. He is deeply conservative, highly articulate, very intelligent, intellectually honest and a darling of the Tea Party movement. That he is also black gives extra weight to his highly critical commentary on the racial politics of the left. He is, by every account, a rising star in the Republican Party with national prominence. For all of these reasons, Rep. West is at the very top of the DNC's hit list of seats to challenge in 2012.

I know the world Allen West grew up in. He was a twenty year soldier - and their is no greater melting pot than the U.S. Army. It is a true meritocracy. It is an environment where the color of one's skin is meaningless. I can well imagine that LTC West was as horrified as I by the reality of the racial politics of the left when he was forced out of the service and into the civilian world. For those who don't know, LTC West's career ended in Iraq when he received intelligence that he and members of his unit were being targeted for assassination by several Iraqis. He captured one of the plotters and fired off his weapon to induce the detainee to discuss the plot. That ended the LTC's career. When asked if he would have done it again if the same scenario presented itself, West was unapologetic, stating, "[i]f it's about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can." That is a soldier.

At any rate, Rep. West is a treasure of a Republican Party desperately in need of men and women like him. And yet, it appears that the Florida Republican Party, led by a Romney supporter, Will Weatherford, is going to sacrifice Rep. West as part of the redistricting process:

One of Governor Mitt Romney’s spokesmen was Florida Representative Will Weatherford, and during the course of his remarks in the “Spin Room”, he shed a very dim light on the ongoing redistricting process in the Florida Legislature. Over the past several weeks, many Republicans have voiced their disappointment towards the Republican legislature after the release of the preliminary redistricting maps. Much of the ire concerns the proposed boundaries of Congressman Allen West’s 22nd Congressional District that would be redrawn to include far more registered Democrats.

West’s congressional district inexplicably sheds the most Republican electoral support, in comparison to all other incumbent Republican and Democrat Congressman. A few weeks back we quoted an unnamed legislator saying that, “Allen West was screwed”, a statement which was originally made about made five months before the proposed maps were made public, leading insiders to believe that the fix was in against Allen West. But in light of Weatherford’s comment, it is increasingly clear that this is a fait accompli. (Read more- Allen West is Screwed)

According to Weatherford, those preliminary maps will not change- at the most, any additional changes would be minimal, and those changes would not make any appreciable difference from the preliminary maps. In addition, Weatherford stated that a deal was struck between him, Senate President Mike Haridopolos, and Senator Don Gaetz to finalize these maps and push them through as soon as possible. Weatherford also said that the proposed maps are in legal compliance with both the Voting Rights Act and Amendment 6.

So based on Weatherford’s comments, the 22nd Congressional District is now very much in play for the Democrat Party, and West is at an even larger disadvantage than he was previously- it will be a very difficult and expensive seat for Republicans to defend.

The only reasonable explanation for this is that the Florida Republican hierarchy has cut a deal with Democrats as part of the redistricting process. As the Shark Tank opined here:

So why would the “most conservative legislature” in Florida’s history look the other way as West’s congressional district lines are re-drawn? Is the fix really in to knock Allen West out of Congress? About five months ago, a very high ranking member of the Florida legislature gave me a very disturbing prediction regarding redistricting- “Allen West is screwed.” Take note that comment was made five months ago, long before the proposed maps were made public.

So are the poobahs in the Florida legislature really gunning to oust Allen West? Was a backroom deal made with the Democrat members of the legislature to put West’s seat into play in order to protect the other congressional seats that would favor any future runs for Congress by existing members of the Florida Legislature? The deals were struck, and the maps drawn behind closed doors.

It wouldn’t surprise us if this were the case. There is no love lost between the Florida legislature and Congressman Allen West, who has proven to be the anti-Republican establishment congressman. Back in the 2008 election cycle when West unsuccessfully ran for Congress, Republicans in the legislature did not support West. Former indicted Republican Party of Florida Boss Jim Greer and Governor Charlie Crist stayed out of the race until the very end, even after West’s Republican primary race was over.

Crist endorsed West four days prior to the general election, and Greer showed his support by writing West a personal check of $500 several weeks before the general election. This was also the case during the 2010 election cycle as state legislators sat on their hands, much like they did with Senator Marco Rubio. The Rubio saga is well documented, as the backdoor dirty deals and threats weighed heavy on the Rubio for Senate campaign against Crist.

In 2010, Will Weatherford, who is the current State House Redistricting Chairman, also supported Crist over Rubio before Crist left the GOP and ran as an Independent.

You may ask yourself why would the Florida GOP legislature not protect one of the most respected and beloved congressman in Washington D.C.? Could the reasons be as simple as sheer arrogance and self-political preservation by the Tallahassee elites?

There is rot at the heart of the Republican Party that I never knew existed until the start of the 2012 campaign season. What the Republican's are doing in Florida to Allen West is simply unforgivable. Weatherford and the Florida Republican Party needs to be condemned in no uncertain terms for this act.

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Is It Time Yet For The Tea Party To Form A Third Party?

When this election season began, I felt no particular affinity for any specific candidate.  I looked forward to the Republican campaign for the nomination to shake out who was best qualified to be our President.  But that campaign has turned into an intellectually dishonest horror show that leads me to question whether the leaders of the Republican Party represent my interests as a conservative.  

As to the horror show, the story of Newt Gingrich's time in the House is ably recounted by Jeffery Lord at American Spectator. It, and the Byron York piece on the ethics complaints against Gingrich, draw an incredibly stark contrast to the screed coming out of much of the right wing punditry - NRO, Coulter, Hinderaker, etc. - and most of which you will find headlined over Drudge today. If you were to read this utterly dishonest tripe, you would think that Gingrich was a Reagan hating neo-progressive who lacked ethics above and beyond the adultery issue and who resigned from his position as Speaker of the House because of valid ethics charges.

There are many legitimate arguments for preferring Gingrich as the Republican nominee. Indeed, Thomas Sowell makes many of those arguments in his latest column. And there are many legitimate arguments for preferring Romney, particularly for the risk averse and for those comfortable with our nation as it is.  A handful of people, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg and several others have made respectful and fair arguments in this regards.

But in the main, we are not being given honest arguments by the Republican elites. Instead, what we have been fed for months has been dishonest demagoguery and demonization of Gingrich.  And just today, that great conservative Bob Dole came out today to tell us that if we elect Gingrich, it will mean political suicide for the Republican party.  It is all nothing more or less than the same intrinsic dishonesty that we saw mirrored in the left's efforts to destroy Sarah Palin as a viable candidate and that has been aimed at delegitimizing Clarence Thomas since the day he was nominated to the Supreme Court.

And not only have the elites engaged in these disingenuous attacks, but they invariably coupled their screed with complete and utter contempt for Republican voters and the Tea Party movement especially. We are the uninformed rubes, too easily swayed by passion, unable to see reason.  We are calls for fiscal discipline are simply ridiculously unsophisticated.  It is arrogance unbound.  Apparently, it is they, not the voters, who own the Republican Party.

For the past two decades in which I have been politically informed and active, I have always believed that the single starkest difference between the left and the right was intellectual honesty. We on the right had it while those on the left dealt mostly in demagoguery and demonization. We on the right were ever willing to debate the facts, those on the left were ever willing to cherry pick the facts and use the race card or its many variants to end debate. To use the words of Bookworm Room: "Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts."

I see now, I have been fooled for decades. I feel nothing but disgust and utter contempt for much of the Republican Party today, and those who have held themselves out to be its champions. I think Mitt Romney, motivated by unlimited ambition, is willing to do or say anything to be elected President of the United States. Were it just him carrying on these disingenuous attacks against Gingrich and the rest of the Republican Party looking on with an objective eye, than my angst would be far less at the moment. But those who should be the party's neutral arbiters have wholly dispensed with intellectual honesty in an effort to destroy Gingrich.

So what of this?

The days of accepting the Republican Party as it is are over. It is not a party founded on intellectual honesty - and thus it is every bit as fatally flawed and destined to fail the American people as are Obama and the Democratic Party.  It is not a "conservative" party.  The reality is that, since the days of Gingrich, we have not not had a conservative option for government, we have had a choice between big D and small d Democrats.

We are in desperate need of a third party - an actual Conservative Party - founded upon intellectual honesty and dedicated to Constitutionalism, balanced budgets, a strong national defense, and doing away with the onslaught of progressivism in the social sphere. We are in desperate need of a party dedicated to making the systemic changes that would restore the Constitutional balance to our government envisioned by our Founding Fathers. The grass roots Tea Party is precisely the vehicle for such a third party.

The Tea Party was courted by Republicans in 2009 and, in the end, agreed to support them. That trust was badly misplaced. It should now be withdrawn and real consideration given to starting a third party at the grass roots level.  I say that irrespective of how the 2012 election ultimately turns out.

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Krauthammer: "The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?"

Charles Krauthammer, in a former life, Chief Resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, makes a rare Wednesday appearance in the Washington Post to address the insanity at work in Arizona, and the transparent political gambit using the dead and injured coming out of New York and Washington. Given his perspective both as a former psychiatrist and now, as perhaps the most astute political observer of our time, I quote him in full on this issue.

The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.

The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.

As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.

Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.

A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," said the teacher of Loughner's philosophy class at Pima Community College. "He was very disconnected from reality," said classmate Lydian Ali. "You know how it is when you talk to someone who's mentally ill and they're just not there?" said neighbor Jason Johnson. "It was like he was in his own world."

His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with "unnerving, long stupors of silence" during which he would "stare fixedly at his buddies," reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through "grammar." He was obsessed with "conscious dreaming," a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.

This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder - ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.

These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class "I sit by the door with my purse handy" so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.

Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner's fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it."

Finally, the charge that the metaphors used by Palin and others were inciting violence is ridiculous. Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he was hardly inciting violence.

Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare.

When profiles of Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, noted that he once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him, a characteristically subtle statement carrying more than a whiff of malice and murder, it was considered a charming example of excessive - and creative - political enthusiasm. When Senate candidate Joe Manchin dispensed with metaphor and simply fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill - while intoning, "I'll take dead aim at [it]" - he was hardly assailed with complaints about violations of civil discourse or invitations to murder.

Did Manchin push Loughner over the top? Did Emanuel's little Mafia imitation create a climate for political violence? The very questions are absurd - unless you're the New York Times and you substitute the name Sarah Palin.

The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?

I do not think Krugman or any of the others on the left are delusional. They - Krugman, the NYT, Moulitas, Rep. Clyburn and others on the left - seized on this mass murder while the blood of the innocents was still wet on the ground in a transparent effort to delegitimize their opposition. It is so transparent and so outrageous, so outside the bounds of legitimate political discourse - or as WSJ's John Fund puts it, crossing a moral line - that if there is any cosmic justice in the world, this will rebound against them.

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More On Jared Loughner's Slaughter In Arizona & Leftwing Media Hypocrisy

Two exceptional essays by Byron York and Ed Morissey on the mass murder by Jared Loughner and the media / left's rush to tie this act to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. Byron York compares this rush to the media / left's actions after the Ft. Hood shooting by Nidal Hassan. Morissey builds on that, pointing to CNN's scurrilous reporting, and points to some words used by the left - the very tip of the iceberg - during the last campaign by Obama and the DNC concerning politics and bullseye's on targets for Democratic pickup.

This from Byron York:

On November 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire at a troop readiness center in Ft. Hood, Texas, killing 13 people. Within hours of the killings, the world knew that Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before he began shooting, visited websites associated with Islamist violence, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces his enemy, opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam, and told a neighbor shortly before the shootings that he was going "to do good work for God." There was ample evidence, in other words, that the Ft. Hood attack was an act of Islamist violence.

Nevertheless, public officials, journalists, and commentators were quick to caution that the public should not "jump to conclusions" about Hasan's motive. CNN, in particular, became a forum for repeated warnings that the subject should be discussed with particular care.

"The important thing is for everyone not to jump to conclusions," said retired Gen. Wesley Clark on CNN the night of the shootings.

"We cannot jump to conclusions," said CNN's Jane Velez-Mitchell that same evening. "We have to make sure that we do not jump to any conclusions whatsoever."

"I'm on Pentagon chat room," said former CIA operative Robert Baer on CNN, also the night of the shooting. "Right now, there's messages going back and forth, saying do not jump to the conclusion this had anything to do with Islam."

Actually, that was responsible reporting at the time, at least until it became conclusively shown that Nidal in fact was motivated by Salafi Islam to carry out his mass murder. But as York goes on to discuss, in the very hours after this murder, with no evidence initially and then with the mounting evidence to the contrary, the left wing generally, and the left wing media in particular, have been falling all over themselves to tie this to Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and the rise in "hate speech" that the left wants everyone to believe is a phenomena unique to the past two years.

Ed Morrisey points out the massive hypocrisy of CNN to speculate that Palin and the Tea Party were responsible in any way for this mass murder and adds:

. . . as has been repeatedly pointed out in the hours since, Democrats have also used crosshairs and bulls-eye imagery in their own political communications, including one in Arizona “targeting” J. D Hayworth of Arizona. As far as the “reload” comment, it was less than three years ago that Barack Obama himself talked about responding to political opponents with a gun analogy:

Mobster wisdom tells us never to bring a knife to a gun fight. But what does political wisdom say about bringing a gun to a knife fight?

That’s exactly what Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

The comment drew some laughs and applause. But it also struck a chord with his Republican rival. John McCain’s campaign immediately accused the Democratic candidate of playing the politics of fear. They also mentioned that Obama said he would use a gun that would be illegal under Obama’s plans to cut down on illegal firearms.

Getting hysterical about the use of war terminology in politics is about as hypocritical as one can possibly get, as Howard Kurtz explained yesterday, especially for journalists covering politics . . .

To add a few thoughts, as to the Tea Party at least, the left would like us to believe that a determination to stop deficit spending, to lower taxes, and an inchoate desire to return to the Constitution at the time of the founding somehow is an invitation to violence. To the contrary, it is a call for a return to law.

The same cannot be said of at least a portion of the violent left wing rhetoric that has been with us since the days of Vietnam. Indeed, that was a world that gave us The Weathermen and many others who called for violence and who, in fact, did commit politically motivated violence, murder and mayhem. And to pretend violent rhetoric is an artifact of the right is ridiculous. The left's violent rhetoric was raised to an art form during the Bush years and, indeed, is still with us.





And on a closely related issue, where is the media outrage when we have seen, over the past few years, vile reverse racism, all of it accepted without comment by the left. Seemingly at the drop of a hat, the left calls virtualy anything they don't like "racism," wholly irrespective of racial animus. These people in fact have motivated mass murders, including the sniper murders by John Allen Mohammed and the murders by Omar Thorton, who last year at a distributorship in Connecticut, killed eight of his co-workers.




Silence.

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A Tradgedy In Arizona, Politics On The Hudson

Today, in Arizona, Jared Loughner, 22 years old, walked into the middle of a public meeting being held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Az) and opened fire, killing five, including a 9 year old girl and Arizona's senior Federal District Court Judge, John Roll. He injured many more, including Rep. Giffords whom he shot through the temple at point blank range, the bullet passing through her brain before exiting her skull. Rep. Giffords is currently in critical condition, but apparently able to talk which, according to physicians, is a very positive sign.

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Update: The child murdered was Christina Taylor Greene. See her bio at Weazel Zippers. The total number killed is now six.

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No sane American can do anything other than mourn this act of brutal mass murder. Why Loughner committed this act is as of yet not known, though his internet rants suggest that he was delusional at best. This from Fox News on some of Loughner's internet postings:

"Hello, my name is Jared Lee Loughner," one of the videos says, in words appearing on the screen. "This video is my introduction to you! My favorite activity is conscience dreaming; the greatest inspiration for my political business information. Some of you don't dream - sadly. . . . The majority of citizens in the united states of America have never read the united states of America's constitution. You don't have to accept the federalist laws," the video's titles say. "In conclusion, reading the second United States constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar. No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver! No! I won't trust in god!"

. . . In other videos, Loughner calls the people of District 8, his Ariz. district, illiterate.

In a bizarre equation that Loughner appears to mean as example of deductive reasoning, he concludes that "the police are unconstitutional."

In yet another rant verging on the paranoid, he says:

“I know who’s listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don’t know this accurate information of a new currency, aren’t aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn’t have happen.”

He lists reading under interests, as well as "conscience dreams," and among his favorite books are "Mein Kampf," the "Communist Manifesto," "Animal Farm" and "Brave New World."

In a comment posted on MySpace three months ago in connection with a video about Pima Community College, Loughner wrote: "Hello, I know you’re illiterate! This is the greatest protest for exposure into a wrongful act. The school is breaking the constitution. If you watch the video then you’ll understand. The teachers are taking advantage of you in the first and Fifth Amendment. The United States Constitution, which is the law, can be broken at this school. Thank you and goodnight! Jared"

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Update: From of Legal Insurrection, ". . . a women who claims to have known the shooter claims that he was fairly left-wing as of a few years ago . . ."

Update 2: This from the Arizona Daily Star on Loughner's apparent mental problems:

A former classmate of Loughner at Pima Community College said he was "obviously very disturbed."

"He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts," said Lynda Sorenson, who took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College's Northwest campus.

Sorenson doesn't recall if he ever made any threats or uttered political statements but he was very disruptive, she said. He was asked to leave the pre-algebra class several times and eventually was barred from class, said Sorenson, a Tucson resident.

Another Pima classmate, Lydian Ali, said Loughner would frequently laugh aloud to himself during the advanced-poetry class they attended. Only about 16 people were in the class, so Loughner's behavior stood out, Ali said.

"It almost seemed like he was on his own planet, because his comments would have nothing to do with what we were talking about," Ali said. . . .

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This was, quite simply, a horrendous act by a person deep in the throws of psychosis. This mass murder was political only in the sense that psychosis can be considered political - which it cannot. Indeed, given the facts above, it would be the height of irresponsibility to attempt to assign any sort of blame to either side of the political spectrum for the actions of Mr. Loughner. But that has not stopped the NYT, with the blood still wet on the street and the bodies not yet cooled in the morgue, from firing the first salvos suggesting Loughner's violence is tied to the Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin:

. . . Last March, after the final approval of the Democrats’ health care law, which Ms. Giffords supported, the windows of her office in Tucson were broken or shot out in an act of vandalism. Similar acts were reported by other members of Congress, and several arrests were made, including that of a man who had threatened to kill Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington.

And in August 2009, when there were demonstrations against the health care measure across the nation, a protester who showed up to meet Ms. Giffords at a supermarket event similar to Saturday’s was removed by the police when the pistol he had holstered under his armpit fell and bounced on the floor.

During the fall campaign, Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, posted a controversial map on her Facebook page depicting spots where Democrats were running for re-election; those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms. Giffords was among those on Ms. Palin’s map, which later removed the crosshairs symbols. . . .

So someone tell me how any of that is germane to Loughner's motivations or obvious psychosis? None of it is, but I am sure the NYT's not so subtle attempt to link Loughner to the Tea Party and Sarah Palin is only the first of many efforts to come. It is intellectual dishonesty on a despicable scale. These people have no shame and will twist / politicize anything for political gain.

All this despite the fact that the vast majority of political violence in Obama's America, to the extent it arises from a discernible ideology, arises from the left. No need to let facts get in the way of the narrative, however. And do recall that it was a left wing strategist who opined in November that "what Obama needs is another Oklahoma City moment."

Update: At Crooks and Liars, "We don't yet know why the shooter -- identified as a 22-year-old man named Jared Laughner -- shot Giffords and a number of other people; we'll learn more as the day progresses. But it's impossible to survey the events so far and not come to the preliminary conclusion that this was yet another awful act inspired by right-wing hate rhetoric."

At Jack & Jill Politics, "Tea Party Sympathizer Shoots Rep. Giffords, Kills/Wounds Others"

Gawker: "Shot Congresswoman Was In Sarah Palin's 'Crosshairs'"

Firedoglake - "Sarah Palin's Hit List"

Politics Daily - "Sarah Palin Blamed By Bloggers For Shooting Of Gabrielle Giffords"

Enron Advisor Paul Krugman - "We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.

Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing."

Andrew Sullivan - "An Assassination?" - highlighting Sarah Palin's likely culpability for this political violence.

And much more from the venomous left-wing twittersphere at Flopping Aces . .

Much more from Instapundit: "Let me be clear, as a great man says: If you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Sarah Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting — which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie — or you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. So which is it?"

Update: Loughner's internet vids, compliments of Legal Insurrection:

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The Liberal Idea Machine

The Agenda Project’s goal is to build a powerful, intelligent, well-connected political movement capable of identifying and advancing rational, effective ideas in the public debate and in so doing ensure our country’s enduring success.

Mission Statement of the liberal Agenda Project

The latest "intelligent, rational and effective idea" from the Agenda Project to advance public debate?

(H/T Another Black Conservative). Isn't that pithy. They must be ivy league grads.

This is part for the course for our modern left. Demonizing and dismissing out of hand the arguments of their opponents is their only strategy. The Tea Party challenges Obama's profligate spending and vast new statist programs - the left plays the race card. State that Obamacare's mandate is a tax, utterly ridiculous says Obama. Raise ethics charges against Maxine Waters, it's racism. Challenge the building of the Ground Zero mosque - religious bigotry, says Mayor Bloomberg. Paul Ryan's ideas to bring us back to fiscal sanity - flim flam says Paul Krugman. Indeed, as to the last example, WSJ recently ran an article on how Krugman is merely one of many on the far left who would like to see Paul Ryan disappear without having to address the substance of his arguments.

We have seen this same meme played out hundreds of thousands of times over the past decades. Indeed, the same Democrats who created the massive housing bubble and who destroyed our credit system in the process did so on the grounds that any challenge thereto was racist.

And now with November fast approaching, it's down to the left's final argument, f*** tea. These people are as intellectualy dishonest as they are intellectualy bankrupt.

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Tea Party Blacks Face A Sceptical Press

Several black conservative members of the Tea Party movement recently held a press conference to introduce themselves and to opine that the Tea Party movement is not animated by race. The press was a bit aggressive, with much attention paid to the Congressional Black Caucus charges of racial animus dating back to the weekend of the healthcare vote. The speakers make several good points, the two most important being that there is no place in the press, including the black press, for demonizing those with whom they disagree, and that our nation will be a far stronger nation when we stop thinking in terms of black and white.



(H/T Vocal Minority)

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Looking Ahead: Obama, 2012 & The Biggest Republican Weakness (Updated)

Charles Krauthammer issues a warning to the right on Obama. Karl Rove admits to the greatest failing of the Bush Administration - failing to respond to the lies of the left. And then there is the question of what this means for Republicans in 2012.

A cautionary note is sounded by Charles Krauthammer in his article this week - don't take Obama for granted. According to Krauthammer, Obama has sacrificed Congressional Democrats in order to transform America into his vision of a socialist utopia. But, as Krauthammer notes, his low point today does not translate into weakness two years from now. This from Mr. Krauthammer:

In the political marketplace, there's now a run on Obama shares. The left is disappointed with the president. Independents are abandoning him in droves. And the right is already dancing on his political grave, salivating about November when, his own press secretary admitted Sunday, Democrats might lose the House.

I have a warning for Republicans: Don't underestimate Barack Obama.

Consider what he has already achieved. Obamacare alone makes his presidency historic. It has irrevocably changed one-sixth of the economy, put the country inexorably on the road to national health care and, as acknowledged by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus but few others, begun one of the most massive wealth redistributions in U.S. history.

Second, there is major financial reform, which passed Congress on Thursday. Economists argue whether it will prevent meltdowns and bailouts as promised. But there is no argument that it will give the government unprecedented power in the financial marketplace. Its 2,300 pages will create at least 243 new regulations that will affect not only, as many assume, the big banks but just about everyone, including, as noted in one summary (the Wall Street Journal), "storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers, home buyers and credit bureaus."

Third is the near $1 trillion stimulus, the largest spending bill in U.S. history. And that's not even counting nationalizing the student loan program, regulating carbon emissions by Environmental Protection Agency fiat, and still-fitful attempts to pass cap-and-trade through Congress.

But Obama's most far-reaching accomplishment is his structural alteration of the U.S. budget. The stimulus, the vast expansion of domestic spending, the creation of ruinous deficits as far as the eye can see are not easily reversed.

These are not mere temporary countercyclical measures. They are structural deficits because, as everyone from Obama on down admits, the real money is in entitlements, most specifically Medicare and Medicaid. But Obamacare freezes these out as a source of debt reduction. Obamacare's $500 billion in Medicare cuts and $600 billion in tax increases are siphoned away for a new entitlement -- and no longer available for deficit reduction.

The result? There just isn't enough to cut elsewhere to prevent national insolvency. That will require massive tax increases -- most likely a European-style value-added tax. Just as President Ronald Reagan cut taxes to starve the federal government and prevent massive growth in spending, Obama's wild spending -- and quarantining health-care costs from providing possible relief -- will necessitate huge tax increases.

. . . The critics don't understand the big picture. Obama's transformational agenda is a play in two acts.

Act One is over. The stimulus, Obamacare, financial reform have exhausted his first-term mandate. It will bear no more heavy lifting. And the Democrats will pay the price for ideological overreaching by losing one or both houses, whether de facto or de jure. . . .

The next burst of ideological energy -- massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education and "comprehensive" immigration reform (i.e., amnesty) -- will require a second mandate, meaning reelection in 2012.

That's why there's so much tension between Obama and congressional Democrats. For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign. . . .

The real prize is 2012. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril.

In the WSJ, Karl Rove admitted that his single greatest mistake was his failure to anticipate the effect of the left's relentless, baseless attacks on Bush and his veracity - all repeated ad infinitum by a left wing MSM dedicated to the end of the Bush presidency. This admission is not exactly earth shattering. Indeed, for years now, I have been screaming that the failure to communicate and respond to these endless attacks was the greatest failing of the Bush Administration - and Republicans generally in all situations. I am convinced that McCain lost the election because of his failure to aggressively attack Obama in the debates and the failure of the entire Republican Party as a whole to respond to the left's outrageous charge that the right was responsible for our financial nightmare. For example, this from September, 2008:

For every ten Democrats I have heard baldly blame the Republicans for the subprime crisis, and for every Democrat I have heard speak against McCain's presence in the negotiations, I have heard maybe one Republican speak to the contrary. Some of the worst was last night, listening to CNN, listening to Paul Begala heap scorn on Republicans for the subprime crisis while the token Republican on the panel remained silent in the face of complete falsehoods. Further, I just listened to Harry Reid and Chris Dodd - two people up to their eyes in direct responsiblity for this subprime crisis - hold a news conference giving their CYF (Cover Your Fannie) story on all of this, including with blame for McCain, with no corresponding attempt by Republicans to respond in kind.

The Republicans are pristine in comparison to Democrats as regards the subprime crisis that has brought our economy to the brink of depression. . . . For Republicans to cede the narrative on this is the height of incompetence. Unless and until they become absolutely vociferous in getting out their message, the left will ever increase their stanglehold on America, much to America's detriment.

And much to America's detriment it has been indeed. Just yesterday, supposedly in order to insure that another meltdown never happens again, the left passed a 2,000 plus page nightmare regulation of our financial industry. The fault for the subprime meltdown lies with the left. The fault for the passage of this financial monstrosity that addresses everything but the actual cause of our financial meltdown lies squarely with Republican leadership for their near total inability to communicate.

Having watched the current crop of Congressional Republicans for years now, I am under no illusion that, come 2012, they will be able to effectively communicate. The backlash we see against Obama's policies and vast overreach today has come from the bottom up, with the Tea Parties and social networking. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Congressional Republicans. That does not bode well for the right come 2012.

That said, as I look out at the field of potential candidates who could possibly communicate effectively - those with the necessary intelligence and aggressiveness to actually call the left on their falsehoods and change the national paradigm - the only one I see today who foots that bill is Newt Gingrich.

Update: Bookworm Room has written a post on these topics, commenting on the issues raised by Krauthammer, a post by Jonah Goldberg, and a comment from a fiery young ideologue on the above topics. As is everything Ms. BWR writes, it is thought provoking on the issue of Republican chances and options looking forward to 2012.

In her post, BWR makes the point that any consideration of Gingrich must take into account his having suffered 20 years of MSM demonization. That said, how much trust lies in the MSM now days? The MSM gave us Obama, and it would seem from the polls today, much of America realizes they have been had - and know where that responsiblity lies. Could this be an example of Goldberg's thesis - that the rules have changed and the MSM hatred of Gingrich is a plus? I don't think that is beyond the realm of possiblity.. At any rate, I think Gingrich quite capable of running against Obama and a corrupt MSM, pointing out the follies and biases of both.

Whomever Republicans run, they must not adhere to the McCain line of treating Obama with the utmost respect. If you recall the "debates," the low point of Obama's performance came when he was getting directly challenged. For example, he was extremely uncomfortable - indeed, near petulant - when having to explain his way around his "bitter clingers" statement and challenges to his honesty. We need a highly aggressive debater who is going to use the word "bullshit" - or one of its synonyms - every time its appropriate and challenge Obama, for Obama is nothing if not petty and clearly he does not like to be challenged. That is one of the reasons I think Gingrich would be the perfect candidate to go against Obama. Every sentence would be a knife. And we need Obama fileted in 2012.

Here is hoping he does decide to run.

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Manufacturing Tea Party Racism

Following the lead of the Congressional Black Caucus, Think Progress and other progressives, unable to find racism amongst the Tea Party crowd, seem quite willing to manufacture it - literally. Confederate Yankee has video.

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Reverse Racism and the Politics of Obama

To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.

Mission Statement, Charter of the National Association For The Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1911

. . . I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." . . .

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. . . .

Martin Luther King, Jr, Speech at the Lincoln Memorial, 28 August 1963

What has happened to so thoroughly corrupt the "civil rights" movement in America. Once it was a noble and laudable struggle for equality. Today, at best, it is nothing more than a naked political tool of the left, to be trotted out as a means of destroying the credibility of the left's opponents. It has nothing to do with achieving equality. It has everything to do with political power and money.

Exhibit 1 - on Tuesday, in a nakedly political move, the NAACP's Board of Directors perpetrated an atrocious libel, voting to condemn the Tea Party for "tolerating racism."

The resolution initially said the NAACP would "repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties" and stand against the movement's attempt to "push our country back to the pre-civil rights era," though the wording was amended to downplay criticism of all Tea Partiers while asking them to repudiate bigots in their own ranks.

"We take no issue with the Tea Party movement. We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in a democracy," the NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a written statement announcing the unanimous vote. "What we take issue with is the Tea Party's continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements.

"The time has come for them to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and make clear there is no place for racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement."

NAACP leaders have referenced an incident in March when Tea Party protesters allegedly hurled racial epithets at black lawmakers on Capitol Hill ahead of a health care vote.

The "March incident" refers to when members of the Black Caucus went out into the crowd of Tea Party protesters seeking to solicit any hint of racism. Later that day, several of the members of the Black Caucus claimed to have heard numerous racial slurs hurled at them. They had Jesse Jackson Jr. walking behind them recording their march through the protests. Virtually every broadcast news network and a great many individuals were also recording. Yet not a single bit of evidence has been produced to substantiate their claim. In other words, Rep. Clyburn and every other member of the Black Caucus seem, in fact, to be engaging in slander of grotesque proportions.



None of that has stopped the left from using the "March incident" to tag the Tea Party with racism, and equally outrageous, none of it has stopped the left wing MSM from playing right along. ABC hyped these scurrilous charges, as did the AP, in their reporting of the NAACP's vote to tag the Tea Party with racism.

Elsewhere in just the past week, we were treated to Jesse Jackson twisting Cleavland Cavaliers owner's statement of displeasure at the lack of loyalty of Lebron James into the most vile of racist charges. Most people merely shrugged. It was just Jesse being Jesse.

Then we have one of more odious individuals on the planet, Louis Farakhan, a man who preaches hatred and racism with every move of his tongue, demanding reparations from "the Jews" for the their history of racism and their role in enslaving the blacks. It actually makes a nice circle to this post to point out that the founders of the NAACP were three white people, and one of those three was in fact Jewish - Henry Moscowitz. Historically, Jews were deeply involved in the efforts to achieve racial equality for blacks. It is estimated that "50 percent of the civil rights attorneys in the South during the 1960s were Jews, as were over 50 percent of the Whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge Jim Crow Laws." None of that of course makes a dent in the wall of ignorance and reverse racism that oozes from the pours of Farrakhan. Nor does it matter to Farakhan that the worst of the worst when it came to the slave traders have been Muslims - and that includes the enslavement of blacks. It should also be noted that the high minded NAACP, while asking the Tea Party to denounce anti-Semitism in their ranks (is their any), is wholly ignoring the single most virulent font of anti-semitism in the U.S. today - Louis Farakhan.

Then there is Obama, a President deeply, if not overtly, involved in the politics of race. Instead of trying to "heal the racial divide," Obama has injected racism ever more into the laws and the national dialogue. What does it say when the First Lady, Michelle Obama, speaks at the NAACP Convention the day before they vote to tag the Tea Party as racists. What does it say when Obama chides the police for arresting Henry Louis Gates, himself a race baiter of the first order, when Gates refused to cooperate with police conducting a lawful search.

Then there are Obama's legislative proposals. Obama's proposed new financial regulations do not merely continue the race based social engineering into lending standards that brought us to financial ruin, they actually expand that engineering. Further those same regulations establish de facto hiring quotas for minorities and women throughout the financial industry.

All of that is vast racial overreach by Obama. But then there is racial corruption at DOJ. Crediting the testimony of whistleblower J. Christian Adams, the DOJ is no longer accepting voting rights cases in which the defendant is black, they are refusing to enforce the law requiring states to scrub their voting rolls, thus suborning vote fraud, and they have lied to Congress about the decision to drop the civil prosecution of the New Black Panthers. And as outrageous as all of that is, it is perhaps dwarfed by the decision of the Holder DOJ to refuse to answer lawful subpoenas from the Office of Civil Rights seeking to investigate these charges.

And on a final note, there is the ultimate betrayal - the fact that virtually all of the "black leadership," in pushing their vile reverse racism, are doing precious little to actually improve the plight of that significant minority of blacks still mired in the poverty and violence of inner cities. These race hustlers preach and push everything through the lens of racism to accrete power and wealth. They would keep all blacks focused on America circa 1859 for the same reason. They don't preach advancement, they preach balkanization. Merely juxtapose two relatively recent bits of news to demonstrate this reality.

The first bit - the death of former KKK member Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd was never a believer in equality of man. As the Daily Caller points out, he did not merely vote against both the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he filibustered the latter for three months. "In 1997, he voted against a voucher program for D.C.; when the program passed almost a decade later despite his objections, it ended up helping African-American students in ways that the District’s failed public schools could not." Yet upon his death, this same man was feted by the NAACP.

Juxtapose against that the utter travesty of Obama and the left's handling of the school voucher program in DC. By all accounts, the DC voucher program was a huge success, offering hope to numerous inner city students whose public school system was the worst in the nation. Within months of his coronation, Obama shut the program down. Why he did so is not a mystery. On the one hand were blacks mired in poverty who were benefiting significantly from a program. Weighed against their plight was a teachers union flush with money taken involuntarily from all teachers and who did not want to see the voucher program continue. It was no contest. So where was the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and the Congressional Black Caucus when Obama decided to end the DC Voucher Program?

And to it all, a corrupt media yawns, imposing on America the most outrageous of double standards. Where people should be hounded out of office and the public square for their vile reverse racism, for their gross hypocrisy, they instead given a pass by the media and feted by the left. It is perverse and grossly unfair. Most of America supported the call for equality of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the NAACP, else it would not have happened. There can be no doubt whatsoever that most of America fully supports the notion of equality today. But what the NAACP, the "black leaders," and the far left in Washington are seeking today has absolutely nothing to do with racial equality. And tagging Middle America as racist - not the brightest of moves. I said two years ago that electing Obama would set back race relations in America by decades, because it was clear from his history that his claim that he would "heal the racial divide" was purely false. His entire history pointed in the opposite direction.

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Throw These Clueless Idiots Out

The single most unifying issue among Republicans, Tea Partiers and Independents is that Obamacare must be repealed. According to a recent Rasmussen poll:

Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide favor repeal of the recently passed health care law, including 49% who Strongly Favor repeal.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 36% oppose repeal. That figure includes 24% who are Strongly Opposed....

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans and 65% of voters not affiliated with either major party favor repeal; 56% of Democrats oppose it.

So one would assume that any Republican lawmaker with the smallest iota of sense would fully support efforts to repeal this monstrosity. Think again:

Although they’ve called repeatedly for repeal of the Democrats’ new health reform law, some senior Senate Republicans have not endorsed a bill that would actually do it.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), GOP Conference Chair Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Conference Vice Chair Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) have all argued that the reforms — passed in March without Republican support — will hike costs and erode services, and therefore should be scrapped. Yet they haven’t signed on to their party’s repeal proposal.

That bill — just nine words long — has been endorsed by other party leaders, including Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the minority whip, and John Cornyn (Texas), who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).

That McConnell, Alexander and Murkowski haven’t done the same, some experts say, could erode the Republicans’ election-year message that the Democrats’ health reforms will do more harm than good. . . .

I am racking my brain in an attempt to think of any logical reason the Republican Party leadership would fail to support the single most popular cause in America since canned beer. The only thing that I can come up with is that perhaps they want a bill that does not merely repeal Obamacare, but that offers a sensible and cost effective alternative. If that is in fact their desire - and I am really, really praying it is - then maintaining a cone of silence and refusing to explain their reticence only makes the Republican Party look uncoordinated, ineffective and as far removed from the type of leadership America wants and needs as the Democrats now in control of Washington. These Republicans are deeply in need of an invitation to the next Tea Party rally.

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Racism, Tea Parties & A Mystery At The Washington Post

The Washington Post,having fully played their role in amplyfing the left's attempt to smear the Tea Parties as racist, comment today on the degree to which the Tea Party movement is perceived as racist and the attempts of the Tea Party movement to fight the smear. They do so without ever mentioning how this perception of racism came about. It is something like a criminal in a novel commenting on the effect his work for public consumption, playing the role of a neutral observer. It is shameless. This from the Washington Post:

As several states with active "tea party" groups prepare to hold important primary elections this month, the movement is struggling to overcome accusations of racism that are tinting perceptions of this loose network of conservatives. . . .

The challenge is made tougher by one of the defining elements of the tea party movement: No one person controls it. There is no national communications strategy. And incidents of racist slogans (when and where? I haven't seen any such or heard of any such racist slogans - unless they are talking about the now thoroughly discredited incidents involving the Congressional Black Caucus) and derisive depictions of President Obama continue to crop up, providing fuel for critics who say the president's skin color is a powerful reason behind the movement's existence.

In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, most Americans see the movement as motivated by distrust of government, opposition to the policies of Obama and the Democratic Party, and broad concern about the economy. But nearly three in 10 see racial prejudice as underlying the tea party (how that occurred is apparently a mystery to the Washington Post).

Supporters and opponents alike say the movement draws its strength from opposition to Obama's policies, but they split deeply on the race question, according to the poll: About 61 percent of tea party opponents say racism has a lot to do with the movement, a view held by just 7 percent of tea party supporters.

That indicates that the issue of race and the tea party is largely about differing perceptions, reflected in how people view the well-known illustration of Obama made up like the Joker from the Batman movie "The Dark Knight." Some see the image, with its exaggerated lips, as an offensive reference to minstrelsy. (Given that the "Joker" has nothing at all to do with racism in the context of the movies - and indeed, it is a white actor playing the joker, how is it possible, with any intellectual honesty whatsoever, to claim that portraying Obama as the joker is in any way racist) Obama's critics, however, say President George W. Bush was also portrayed as the Joker, as well as Dracula.

Economic anxiety and a general distrust of government are the motivations most often mentioned by tea party supporters. Opponents, who are largely Democratic and a more diverse group, see resistance to the policies of Obama and the Democrats as the movement's leading motivation, followed by racial bias.

"I think there is an element of fear that 'our white country' is now being run by a black man. There is a sense that 1950s America is gone," said Herb Neumann, a white Democrat from Tulsa. "There's a sense of loss. I grew up in the 1950s, and I don't think that moving on is a bad thing." (Note how WaPo offers up this utterly scurrilous charge without having any sort of direct response. This is par for the course in today's MSM)

The question of racism and the tea party flared on the eve of Congress's divisive vote on the health-care overhaul in March, when black congressmen accused protesters of using racial epithets and spitting on them. Tea party supporters have denied the allegations. . . .

"As long as people who oppose us can frame the debate that way, then they can get people to stop listening to us," Coleman said. "The charge of racism is one that can be thrown out there, and it really doesn't have to be proven. But it has such a negative connotations that it can pretty much halt the debate." (This should have been at the start of the article if WaPo was actually interested in giving a balanced look at this issue. The left is throwing out the race cards with wild abandon in an attempt to end debate. That WaPo puts this at the end of its article and does absolutely nothing to analyze or pursue this line of thought just adds the final element of the surreal to this article.)

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Uncle Tom versus Sambo

Charles Blow has referred to black tea party members as part of a "minstrel show" for the white racists. That usage of 1920's imagery is at least a bit more tactful than what others have called them - though not by much.

The hate heaped upon black Americans who have joined the Tea Party movement is deep indeed. That said, the black tea party goers are anything but shrinking violets, they all seem to be well aware of the history of Democrats in the civil rights movement, and indeed, it seems a few are proud to be called Uncle Tom - the hero who stood up to the evil Democrat in Harriet Beecher Stowe's iconic book. As to their detractors, at least one tea party goer felt the proper moniker for them was Sambo - still dancing to the white liberal democrat tune.



And then there is this observation from James Taranto at the WSJ:

The political left claims to love racial diversity, but it bitterly opposes such diversity on the political right. This is an obvious matter of political self-interest: Since 1964, blacks have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. If Republicans were able to attract black votes, the result would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party. Even in 2008, the Democrats' best presidential year since '64, if the black vote had been evenly split between the parties (and holding the nonblack vote constant), Barack Obama would have gotten about 48% of the vote and John McCain would be president.

To keep blacks voting Democratic, it is necessary for the party and its supporters to keep alive the idea that racism is prevalent in America and to portray the Republican Party (as well as independent challengers to the Democrats, such as the tea-party movement) as racist. The election of Barack Obama made nonsense of the idea that America remains a racist country and thereby necessitated an intensifying of attacks on the opposition as racist.

(H/T Instapundit)

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"These Are My People . . . Americans"

The gap between the MSM and race baiting industry and reality is a wide one indeed. Kathy Kelly interviews a tea party protester in the video below.



(H/T Hot Air)

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A Sign To Carry At The Next Tea Party Protest

Heh. An apropriate sign.



From Robert Gomez

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Pam Stout & The Tea Party Given Voice

According to Entertainment Weekly, David Letterman's interview with grandmother and local tea party leader Pam Stout gave the "Tea Party The Best Showcase Its Ever Had." And I have to agree. Ms. Stout is a matronly 66 yr. old former business woman and naturalized American. She currently presides over the local Tea Party in her area in Idaho. She is as articulate, simple and sincere a woman as you'll ever see.

Letterman kept a light touch throughout the interview, though he did bring his own biases into the interview - Obama's birth certificate, anti-Iraq war, anti-Glen Beck, the claim of Republican fiscal mismanagement - and to each, Ms. Stout's answers were quite good, never backing down and explaining her positions with grace and clarity. Do enjoy this one. Also note the tepid applause at her introduction and the louder applause at the interviews conclusion.







As the Entertainment Weekly author notes

Except nobody else is doing interviews with people like this on TV. Why is it that the most interesting questioning of political issues is still being done not on network news shows, but rather by people like Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Craig Ferguson?

I think that answer is self-evident. The left wants the face of the Tea Party to be Bull Connor. Under no circumstances do they want the general public associating the Tea Party movement with a Pam Stout.

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Race Cards Flying While The DNC Plays Theatre

It is clear that the left thinks that conservatives are winning the national argument on Obamacare. Exhibit One is how the left is throwing race cards with wild abandon in an attempt to stop further debate and delegitimize those protesting Obamacare. On a related note, there is the DNC's incredibly hypocritical bit of political theatre - an offer to Michael Steele to sign a joint statement of "civility" - designed both to highlight a supposed lack of civility on the right and to set the right up for a beating on this issue in the future.

The picture at the top of the page is Jesse Jackson, Jr holding a flip-open cam-corder. Rep. Clyburn and others of the Congressional Black Caucus marched through the protests in an effort to solicit any sort of racial remarks. Jackson was one of two members of their little group recording every second of their march. And yet not a single one of the fifteen claimed racial epitaphs were recorded, nor was anything resembling an intentional spitting. Indeed, not a shred of evidence has been produced from any source supporting the claims.

That has not stopped veteran race card tosser Colbert King of the Washington Post, whose editorial, In the faces of Tea Party shouters, images of hate and history, is as scurrilous a piece as I've ever read. King tells us that "[t]he angry faces at Tea Party rallies are eerily familiar," then draws direct parallels between the racist yahoos protesting against civil rights in the 50's and 60's to those protesting Obamacare today. His logic is impeccable, at least by progressive standards:

People attacking civil rights protestors in the 50's had angry white faces = racism.

People attacking civil rights protestors in the 60's had angry white faces = racism.

People protesting Obamacare at the Capitol had angry white faces = racism.

Besides his fatuous logic, King also demonstrates intermittent memory loss. King, fails to mention that the incidents in the 50's and 60's involved angry white DEMOCRATS. His memory returns when he mentions David Duke prominently as a Republican, but it fails him again when he speaks of association with the KKK. Sure, he remembers that Duke was a former member of the KKK, but he completely forgets that the only former member of the KKK in office today is a Democrat. He also forgets that George Wallace was a Democrat.

Eventually, Mr. King gives his assessment as to why there were all of the "angry white faces" at the Capitol Hill. Not surprisingly, Mr. King tells us that it had nothing to do with concern over the massive growth of government and spending our nation into penury:

Tea Party members, as with their forerunners who showed up at the University of Alabama and Central High School, behave as they do because they have been culturally conditioned to believe they are entitled to do whatever they want, and to whomever they want, because they are the "real Americans," while all who don't think or look like them are not.

And they are consequential. Without folks like them, there would be no Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or Pat Buchanan. There would never have been a George Corley Wallace, the Alabama governor dubbed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Diane McWhorter in a 2008 Slate article as "the godfather, avatar of a national uprising against the three G's of government, Godlessness, and gun control."

Hence, an explanation for the familiarity of faces: today's Tea Party adherents are George Wallace legacies.

They, like Wallace's followers, smolder with anger. They fear they are being driven from their rightful place in America.

Rightful place in America? Is King too blinded by his vile reverse racism to see that what the Tea Partiers fear is that America itself is being driven from its rightful place? That has nothing to do with racism - and indeed, it is hardly just whites who feel that way. But that is a debate that Mr. King clearly has no desire in which to engage. Indeed, it is one he wants to prevent from occurring. I look forward to the day when scurrilous race baiters like King are scourged and driven from the public square by public outcry. There is no reason King should not be treated precisely like Don Imus was for his racially charged remarks a few years ago. King should be out on his ass looking for a job more appropriate to his level of intellectual honesty and sophistication, perhaps as an unpaid diarist for Kos.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., another race baiter, has written similarly at Freep. You can read his piece here - and an exceptional reply from BlogProf here.

On a related note, the DNC made a highly publicized offer to the RNC chairman, Michael Steele, to sign a joint statement of "civility." Steele refused to do so - which was the right response. But he did so without comment, which was absolutely the wrong thing to do. Steele's should have responded with something akin to:

I can't sign your joint statement of civility because everything I have seen over the past several years leads me to believe that you are making your offer in bad faith. Now I could be wrong about that and, thus, let me make a proposal. In order for me to believe that you are making your offer in good faith, I need to see you first demonstrate it by denouncing the many acts of uncivil behavior you have ignored in the past few years, including specifically:

- The mob who vandalized GOP headquarters in North Carolina in 2004 and who left behind numerous obscenities scrawled across the walls.

- The drive by shooting of Bush Cheney headquarters in Knoxville, TN in 2004

- The seemingly omnipresent calls for the death of President Bush and comparisons of him to Hitler at virtually every left wing rally from 2004 to 2008.

- The matter of voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers. Even if the Obama Justice Dept. refuses to prosecute the case, you can and should denounce it.

- The beating of Kenneth Gladney by union goons who also called him a "nigger."

And on that topic, there is of course no place for racism or sexism in America today on either the right - nor the left. In order to restore civility, it is equally as important that you, in good faith, first denounce:

- Rev. Jerimiah Wright for his vile reverse racism.

- All of those on the left who have slimed Clarence Thomas because of his skin color, including most recently the authors and editors of The Root, who nominated Justice Thomas as one of the twenty "Black Folks We'd Like To Remove From Black History," along with a rogues gallery of cannibals and criminals. And, surprise, the editor in Chief of the Root is Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who also needs to be denounced for creating a racial incident out of a police response to reports of a burglary at his house.

- All who make scurrilous attempts to delegitimize policy arguments by playing the race card, including Colbert King for his attempt to smear the entire Tea Party movement as racists in the Washington Post today.

- All attempts by the left to label speech they disagree with as "hate speech," despite the lack of any identifiable "hatred" in such speech. Indeed, I think you need to accompany this acknowledgment with an apology to Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

- All efforts by the left to silence opposing speech, particularly on campuses across America.

- The horrendous sexism aimed at Sarah Palin that has been on-going since she appeared on the national scene two years ago.

- The ridiculous claims, repeated by the DNC, that the RNC was soliciting violence with their "fire Pelosi" campaign and a chart that showed Pelosi against a background of fire. Or likewise, Sarah Palin's chart showing gun targets over those jurisdictions that she thinks the right should target in the upcoming elections. This is incredibly disingenuous twisting.

To sum up, DNC, I will be more than happy to sign your joint statement of civility, if you will merely first play catch-up and prove your good faith by denouncing, individually, each of the uncivil acts above. My concern is, based on all of your prior acts, that you would apply an extreme double standard as to what constitutes civility on our relative parts - making your current request to sign a joint statement on "civility" not but the most hypocritical of ploys. But I look forward to be proven wrong. Indeed, can we set up a joint press conference for you to make your denunciations, after which we can hold a signing ceremony?

That is what Mr. Steele should have said. It is time to put these low rent, intellectually dishonest bastards on the defensive and keep them there.

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