Bill Maher Doesn’t (Want To) Get It

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Red Alert Politics:

Bill Maher on Benghazi: “I still don’t know what the scandal is”

Someone needs to sit down and explain the Benghazi attack and subsequent outrage to HBO‘s Bill Maher, because he just doesn’t get it.

The “Real Time with Bill Maher” host asked three panelists on his show Friday night to explain the controversy over the Benghazi attacks.

“I still don’t know what the scandal is,” he said, after discussing the conservative and liberal media portrayals of the 9/11 attack in Libya.

“Tell me what the scandal is,” he added. “I honestly want to know.”

The Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald explained to Maher that before the 2012 election both sides tried to spin the Benghazi attacks to protect their candidates. But he also added that because only six U.S. ambassadors have been killed during the country’s history — and the Obama administration spread information that wasn’t true — the attack deserves an investigation.

“The President went on the air — and other people did too — and they made statements that proved to be untrue about why the attack took place, that it was a reaction to this film,” Greenwald added. “That’s just a reality, whether they were lying or was in error, the statements they made — it was untrue.”

“It was a fluid situation,” Maher responded.

“No, but when the government goes on the air and says things that prove to be untrue, that is something that needs to be investigated,” Greenwald answered back. “And it was a place where President Obama and NATO had gone, and invaded and bombed and changed the regime.”

Like Maher, Miami Herald columnist Joy Reid tried to downplay the Benghazi attacks. Charles Cooke of The National Review argued that the media was simply siding with which party was in power.

“You don’t think that when a U.S. ambassador is killed and there are people within the State Department saying that they were asking for more help and not getting it and that the U.S. government went onto the world stage for a week and made claims about what happened that turned out not to be true that that doesn’t merit any investigation?” Greenwald asked.

“No I don’t,” Maher replied. He then ended the discussion — even though the panelists clearly had more to say — because he was “bored with it.”

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Glenn Greenwald is certainly no GOP stooge. His lefty credentials are impeccable. Joy Reid and Bill Maher try spouting the official White House lies talking points but Greenwald won’t play ball so Maher changes the subject.

Maher’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Maher’s problem is he doesn’t want to get it. That’s not surprising – he’s a Vile Prog and they personify the expression “blissfully ignorant”. That’s why there is no point in arguing with any of them.

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“It’s Different When We Do It”

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CBS Charlotte:

Colbert: Sanford’s Win ‘Scares Me To My Core’

Angry about his sister’s congressional election loss to Mark Sanford, Stephen Colbert did the logical thing – and declared Sanford his new sister.

Supporting his sister following her defeat for one of South Carolina’s congressional seats, Colbert, host of “The Colbert Report,” took jabs at CNN, almost denounced his love for the state of South Carolina, and wondered aloud, comically, whether the lies leveled against his sister were a common part of political campaigns.

“This scares me to my core. I’m shaken. This was the first political campaign where I knew and cared about the candidate before they got into politics. I saw first-hand how her opponents smeared her with outrageous accusations I knew to be untrue,” he said on his show Wednesday night. “And that’s made me wonder if other campaigns have done this as well.”

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Is it just me or do you get the feeling he’s only kinda sorta joking? His schtick got old a long time ago. Once upon a time he used his on-screen persona to “speak truth to power”. But since Obama took office he’s been defending power. He pretends to be a conservative, but it’s all satire. Except satire is funny, and Stephen Colbert isn’t funny anymore.

You can search all you want but you won’t find me taking a position on the SC special election. That’s only partly because of my general policy of staying out of elections that I’m not eligible to vote in. If figure that the people in South Carolina should pick their own representatives.

I was not particularly concerned about the effect the election would have on which party controls the House of Representatives, and I doubt there are any tea leaves to read in that election regarding next year’s mid-term elections.

I am familiar with Mark Sanford’s recent fall from grace. It is a sordid tale of personal failing that as far as I am concerned has nothing to do with his ideology or party membership. In recent years there have been plenty of sex scandals involving members of both parties.

But if the voters of South Carolina want to give a disgraced politician a second chance, that is their choice. It’s not like it was kept secret from them until after the election. That’s why I don’t understand the pearl clutching over Sanford’s win by Meghan McCain and other Vile Progs. It’s just democracy in action.

Vox populi, vox Dei.

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It’s The GOP’s Fault For Being Prematurely Correct

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Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon demonstrates why Vile Progs are vile:

Benghazi returning as big scandal
The GOP may finally get its wish with three new whistle-blowers, but has it already undermined its cred?

There’s been a lot of smoke in the would-be scandal over the Benghazi attacks, but no real fire yet.

But that may change when three “whistle-blowers” give what Republicans expect to be explosive testimony this week before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee. The controversy over the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in the Libyan city has smoldered, mainly on the right, but the testimony will likely push it back into the mainstream and could be an enormous distraction for an already injured second-term Obama.

Unlike the vast majority of the new information brought forward by the conservative media since the attack, the three whistle-blowers seem credible. One, Gregory Hicks, was the No. 2 State Department official in Libya before the attack and has decades of experience in the Foreign Service. Another, Eric Nordstrom, was the regional security officer in country for State. And the third, Mark Thompson, is the deputy coordinator for operations in the department’s counterterrorism bureau and was involved in Washington’s response to the Libya attacks.

[...]

The charges seem potentially damaging and the accusers credible, but those trying to fan flames of scandal have so embarrassed and discredited themselves by pushing bogus story lines on Benghazi that it may be hard for the media and American people to take any new allegations seriously. For instance, the last time we saw a “Benghazi whistle-blower,” it was an anonymous Fox News source, but he seemed to know so little about basic special operations that military analysts called him a clown and an embarrassment.

In the Fast and Furious scandal, analogous in many ways to Benghazi in the way it played out in the media, there was real wrongdoing, but conservatives grasped at straws to make wider, unsubstantiated allegations that let the actual problems largely escape notice.

If the three new witnesses don’t get the attention they deserve, Fox News and its ilk deserve much of the blame.

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Four Americans are dead, an innocent filmmaker is in jail, there is now overwhelming evidence that the Obama administration engaged in a cover-up of their gross negligence, but Salon blames Fox News and the GOP.

Unfuckingbelievable. I can’t believe I once had a paid subscription to Salon.

Pardon me while I scream.

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MOTHERF88KING #@$%%**^&!!!!

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How Can You Love Big Government But Fear Big Brother?

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From Steven Den Beste via Ace of Spades HQ:

Deep down, progressives (i.e. socialists) are not populists. Deep down, progressives despise the majority of their fellow citizens, and don’t trust them at all. They love America but hate most of the Americans. Progressives are entranced with the possibilities presented by a benevolent dictatorship. They ignore the peril, that it can mutate into a malevolent dictatorship because they believe in their own virtue. They’re sure it won’t happen if they’re in charge. As to Democracy? It’s a burden, a barrier; it gives the vote to all the rednecks and knuckle-draggers who have been mislead by the evil capitalists (remember the Doctrine of False Consciousness? Pernicious claptrap, that one, but it has a lot of currency on the left) and will resist the Progressive program even though it’s Obviously the right thing to do.

If only Progressives, as an enlightened elite, had the ability to impose their program on the rest of us, eventually we’d come around to their point of view. But that means they need dictatorial power, and Democracy prevents that.

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That pretty much nails it. Scratch a Vile Prog, find an authoritarian. Seriously, how can you love big government but fear Big Brother? It’s just two names for the same thing.

But Den Beste explains the reason that Vile Progs don’t hesitate to cheat and lie to win elections. It’s for our own good.

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Fake But True Is Still Fake

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Police say liberal student activist threatened herself with rape in Facebook hoax, framed conservatives

A well-known female liberal blogger and radio host at the University of Wyoming (UW) is being accused by police of fabricating a rape threat against herself to appear as if it came from a conservative.

The obscene message directed at activist Meg Lanker-Simons was posted on a college “crush” Facebook page earlier this week and immediately ignited outrage from the college community.

“I want to hate f**k Meg Lanker-Simons so hard. That chick that runs her liberal mouth all the time and doesn’t care who knows it,” it read. “I think its hot and it makes me angry. One night with me and shes gonna be a good Republican bitch,” the post reads, according to a screenshot.

Before the post was removed, Lanker-Simons commented on it and on her own blog, calling it “disgusting, misogynistic, and apparently something the admins of this page think is a perfectly acceptable sentiment.”

She also encouraged the poster to seek help at the UW Counseling service and ends with the advice:

“Instead of focusing on how angry and turned on me ‘running my mouth’ makes you, perhaps you should listen instead. You might learn something.”

But on Monday, The University of Wyoming Police Department issued a citation to Lanker-Simons for “interference” for “false statements she made to the UW Police Department,” according to a UW statement referred to by Laramie Boomerang Online.

“Subject admitted to making a controversial post on UW Crushes webpage and then lied about not doing it,” according to the citation.

The University of Wyoming also confirmed a statement that the police had “”obtained substantial evidence verifying that the offending Facebook post came from Lanker-Simons’ computer, while the computer was in her possession.”

According to a Facebook page that apparently belongs to Lanker-Simons she is a member of the University of Wyoming Gender & Women’s Studies group as well as the school’s chapter of The Nonviolent Communist.

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This could be nothing more than just a disturbed young woman seeking attention. But even if it is I think there is something revealing here.

In the past five years I have spent a lot of time on both conservative and Vile Prog blogs. What I read about conservatives on Vile Prog blogs bears little or no resemblance to the conservatives I see in the blogosphere and in real life. But the Vile Progs really believe these boogeymen exist.

Vile Prog Feminists (a sub-species of proggus vileum) take it as an article of faith that all men are misogynists and rapists. (This is probably because they are used to dealing with Vile Prog males.) So they assume that conservative males are even worse.

In the mind of this poor woman she was just creating something “fake but true”. She knows there are lots of guys like that out there, she just couldn’t find one. So she made one up. Easy peasy.

But wait! There’s more!

Since police cited her, supporters have a constructed a Facebook page entitled “Meg Lanker-Simons is innocent.”

“Meg Lanker-Simons is innocent we believe what she did was justified and deserves not to be held accountable for her accusations we stand behind you sister,” reads that page’s description.

Some people have an endless capacity for denial.

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When All else Fails, Play The Race Card!

Dr. Kermit Gosnell

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I knowed it was gonna happen sooner or later:

Kermit Gosnell Trial: Closing Arguments Set In Abortion Doctor Murder Case

During closing arguments Monday, defense attorney Jack McMahon showed photographs of a relatively neat waiting room and other areas in Gosnell’s clinic, saying that pictures don’t lie.

He said the clinic wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t the criminal enterprise that prosecutors claim. The district attorney has called it a “house of horrors.”

McMahon said he’s not backing down from his opening remarks that the case is an elitist and racist prosecution against Gosnell, who is black.

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Paging Touré Neblett!

BTW – I wonder which doctor aborted Touré’s child? (That’s the abortion he “thanked God” for, remember?) It would not surprise me to find out he sent his girlfriend to Gosnell’s clinic butcher shop.

I bet if you looked up “Vile Prog” in the dictionary on Google Bing you would find a picture of Touré Neblett.

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“Free Mumia”, or Why Marc Lamont Hill is an Idiot

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No, seriously:

Happy Birthday to my Brother @MumiaAbuJamal. So grateful to know him, write with him,and struggle for his release from unjust incarceration.—
Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) April 24, 2013

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I stand with Mumia and fight for his freedom because I believe in his innocence. I have no doubt that he is a political prisoner.—
Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) April 24, 2013

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Mumia represents a cadre of prison intellectuals, who have articulate dangerous ideas from the dungeons of American prisons. @MumiaAbuJamal—
Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) April 24, 2013

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Those were tweets from Marc Lamont Hill, self styled “Hip-Hop Intellectual”. IOW – a better educated version of Touré Neblett.

So who is Mumia Abu Jamal? Here’s what Wiki has to say:

Born in Philadelphia, Abu-Jamal became involved in black nationalism in his youth, and was a member of the Black Panther Party until October 1970. Alongside his political activism, he became a radio journalist, eventually becoming president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. On December 9, 1981, Officer Faulkner was shot dead while conducting a traffic stop on Abu-Jamal’s brother, William Cook. Abu-Jamal was injured by a shot from Faulkner and when further police arrived on the scene, he was arrested and charged with first degree murder.

Going on trial in 1982, he initially decided to represent himself, but was repeatedly reprimanded for disruptive behavior and given a court-appointed lawyer. Three witnesses testified that they had witnessed Abu-Jamal commit the murder, and he was unanimously convicted by jury and sentenced to death, spending the next 30 years on death row.

[...]

On December 9, 1981, in Philadelphia, close to the intersection at 13th and Locust Streets, Philadelphia Police Department officer Daniel Faulkner conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle belonging to William Cook, Abu-Jamal’s younger brother. During the traffic stop, Abu-Jamal’s taxi was parked across the street, and Abu-Jamal ran across the street towards the traffic stop. At the traffic stop, there was an exchange of fire. Both Officer Faulkner and Abu-Jamal were wounded, and Faulkner died. Police arrived on the scene and arrested Abu-Jamal, who was found wearing a shoulder holster. A revolver, which had five spent cartridges, was beside him. He was taken directly from the scene of the shooting to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital where he received treatment for his wound, the result of a shot from Faulkner.

[...]

The prosecution presented four witnesses to the court. Robert Chobert, a cab driver who testified he was parked behind Faulkner, identified Abu-Jamal as the shooter.[32] Cynthia White, a prostitute, testified that Abu-Jamal emerged from a nearby parking lot and shot Faulkner.[33] Michael Scanlan, a motorist, testified that from two car lengths away, he saw a man, matching Abu-Jamal’s description, run across the street from a parking lot and shoot Faulkner.[34] Albert Magilton, a pedestrian who did not see the actual murder, testified to witnessing Faulkner pull over Cook’s car. At the point of seeing Abu-Jamal start to cross the street toward them from the parking lot, Magilton turned away and lost sight of what happened next.[35]

The prosecution also presented two witnesses who were at the hospital after the altercation. Hospital security guard Priscilla Durham and Police Officer Garry Bell testified that Abu-Jamal confessed in the hospital by saying, “I shot the motherfucker, and I hope the motherfucker dies.”[36]

A .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver, belonging to Abu-Jamal, with five spent cartridges was retrieved beside him at the scene. He was wearing a shoulder holster, and Anthony Paul, the Supervisor of the Philadelphia Police Department’s firearms identification unit, testified at trial that the cartridge cases and rifling characteristics of the weapon were consistent with bullet fragments taken from Faulkner’s body.[37] Tests to confirm that Abu-Jamal had handled and fired the weapon were not performed, as contact with arresting police and other surfaces at the scene could have compromised the forensic value of such tests.

[...]

The defense maintained that Abu-Jamal was innocent of the charges and that the testimony of the prosecution’s witnesses was unreliable. The defense presented nine character witnesses, including poet Sonia Sanchez, who testified that Abu-Jamal was “viewed by the black community as a creative, articulate, peaceful, genial man”.[40] Another defense witness, Dessie Hightower, testified that he saw a man running along the street shortly after the shooting although he did not see the actual shooting itself.[41] His testimony contributed to the development of a “running man theory”, based on the possibility that a “running man” may have been the actual shooter. Veronica Jones also testified for the defense, but she did not see anyone running.[42] Other potential defense witnesses refused to appear in court.[43] Abu-Jamal did not testify in his own defense. Nor did his brother, who said at the crime scene, “I ain’t got nothing to do with this.”

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But wait! There’s more!

Abu-Jamal did not make any public statements about Faulkner’s murder until May 2001. In his version of events, he claimed that he was sitting in his cab across the street when he heard shouting, then saw a police vehicle, then heard the sound of gunshots. Upon seeing his brother appearing disoriented across the street, Abu-Jamal ran to him from the parking lot and was shot by a police officer.

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So Mumia was just minding his own business and trying to help his brother when a cop shot him for no reason. Then some total stranger ran up, grabbed Mumia’s gun, killed the cop, dropped the gun next to Mumia and fled the scene. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar and probably a racist.

This “political prisoner” status is what Dzhokar “Jahar” Tsarnaev can look forward to. He’s a cop-killer too.

BTW – In 2012 an appeals court vacated the death sentence and now Mumia is serving life without parole.

Note: Daniel Faulkner was not available for comment.

No Shit, Sherlock?

Dr. Kermit Gosnell

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Captain Obvious Award Winner:

Gosnell case: HuffPost host says left ‘made a decision’ to not cover trial

Since late last week, a consensus has emerged: The national media has in large part ignored the trial of 72-year-old abortion provider Kermit Gosnell. Much less agreement, however, hovers over the question of why. Cameras aren’t allowed in the Gosnell courtroom, goes one theory. The details of the proceedings are too grisly for family-oriented media outlets, goes another prominent theory. Lefty media bias, goes yet another.

In a HuffPost Live segment today on the issue, host Marc Lamont Hill made clear where his theoretical thinking lay:

“For what it’s worth, I do think that those of us on the left have made a decision not to cover this trial because we worry that it’ll compromise abortion rights. Whether you agree with abortion or not, I do think there’s a direct connection between the media’s failure to cover this and our own political commitments on the left. I think it’s a bad idea, I think it’s dangerous, but I think that’s the way it is.”

Strong words from a host on a left-leaning outlet.

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Now that the media has been shamed into covering the trial they are trying hard to spin it in their favor. “The conservative media didn’t cover it either!” goes one irrelevant argument. “Some feminist bloggers covered it!” goes another weak defense.

But the one that takes the cake is the argument that the pro-life movement is to blame for Gosnell’s atrocities.

I wonder how relieved the media is now that the Boston Marathon bombings gave them a chance to change the subject? (And another chance to bash the right.)

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Tuesday Puzzler

Yesterday I ran across a curious item at RealClearPolitics, wherein a reporter questioned Jay Carney about the Gosnell case, specifically President Obama’s stance on abortion survivors. Here’s part of the exchange:

ED HENRY: The president, as a state senator in 2003, voted against a bill that would provide medical care, as I understand, to babies who would be born after a botched abortion like this. The president at the time said he couldn’t support it as a state senator because he felt like any doctor in that situation would take care of a child. When you hear this kind of evidence, it suggests there’s at least one doctor who apparently did not. I understand you can’t deal with the deliberation of the case. But is there some legislative solution, or at least a conversation that needs to happen in Washington because on guns you were just saying we need common-sense reform. We need to save lives. In this case, do we need to be saving lives as well?

JAY CARNEY: Well, again, you’re relating it to a case that I can’t comment on and the president can’t comment on. I would simply say that the president’s position on choice is very clear. His position on the basic principle that, as President Clinton said, abortions ought to be safe, legal and rare is very clear. I just don’t have comment that could shed light on this specific case.

Bolding mine. My mind, which has been trained to critically think by one of America’s finest academic institutions (Indiana University), immediately wondered: why? Why can’t Carney or Obama comment on this case? It’s not like this president has never commented on cases involving law enforcement before, or on pending criminal cases in general. Here’s a short list of such instances when he could and did comment:

1. Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy
2. Trayvon Martin Case
3. Aurora Shooting
4. Sandy Hook Shooting
5. Hadiya Pendleton Murder

That’s five I can recall right off the top of my head. You may remember others, and if you do, post ‘em in comments. What makes this case so special that he can’t comment? It’s certainly a puzzler.

Remember the blog rules. #1 is: It would be irresponsible not to speculate. This is an open thread.

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Piled Higher And Deeper

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Ian Welsh:

Why Hackers Get More Jail Time Than Rapists

Rapists uphold the social status quo. Hackers, especially the idealistic ones, subvert it. They are far, far more dangerous to important people (who have staff and bodyguards) than rapists are.

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Such a short post, and yet so much bovine excrement. I don’t recall when I last saw it piled higher and deeper.

First of all, computer hackers do not usually get more jail time than rapists. I’m not saying that it has never happened, I’m just saying it’s not typical. Hacking is usually treated as a minor offense, while rape is treated as a serious felony.

When you see hackers getting hit with more than a wrist slap and probation it has to do with the harm they caused. The guy who hacked Sarah Palin’s email account was facing up to 50 years, but he was only sentenced to a year in jail. He only got that much because it was a high profile case and the judge decided to make an example of him.

Where longer sentences for hacking would be appropriate are cases that involve fraud, theft, economic harm or some other injury. If someone steals hundreds of thousands of dollars by hacking the real offense is not the hacking, it’s the stealing. Stealing government secrets is a serious offense even if you do it the old fashioned way. Bradley Manning is not charged with hacking, he’s charged with disclosing classified information.

But that is not the worst pile of bovine excrement in Welsh’s post.

Progworld is a really strange place, kinda like Looking-Glass Land as seen by George Orwell on bad acid. They hold some truths to be self-evident that are completely loony here in the real world. Only in Progworld can you assert that “Rapists uphold the social status quo” and not get treated with scorn and derision.

I don’t know where the idea originated but in prog/feminist circles there is a widely held belief that men like rape. That is bullshit. Yes, some men are rapists, but the vast majority of men despise the small minority that are rapists. Even in prisons, where murderers enjoy high status, rapists are only slightly less reviled than child molesters. They have to be kept segregated from the other inmates for their safety.

While upper-class women and girls may enjoy generally safer lives than their lower-class sisters, rich girls get raped too. A rich boy who commits rape may have a better chance of getting away with it, but that’s only because rich kids have a better chance of getting away with all crimes.

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If You Can’t Cover It Up, Blame It On The Other Side!

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This is not an Onion parody, it’s from Media Matters:

The Anti-Choice Monster

Kermit Gosnell, currently on trial for murder, appears to be a monster. There are no adjectives strong enough to describe the horrors that a grand jury says took place at the Women’s Medical Society.

In recent weeks, anti-choice media figures have been agitating for more coverage of the Gosnell trial in the mainstream press, hoping to inject into public discourse the idea that all clinics performing abortions are the monstrous dens depicted in stark detail in the grand jury report.

I agree – the Gosnell trial does deserve more coverage. Not as a stain on abortion providers but as an indictment of the outcome if the anti-choice movement achieves its goals. Far from the practices of well-established medical facilities, the Women’s Medical Society was the modern-day back alley, like those in the pre-Roe era where desperate women were butchered.

[...]

As the anti-choice movement seeks to close the last remaining clinics in North Dakota, Mississippi, Kansas, and Arkansas, the ultimate result of its action will be to drive women into the hands of more Kermit Gosnells.

The fact the right refuses to face is that, as the grand jury explicitly stated, “the real key to the business model, though, was this: Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere.”

Those who will be taken advantage of are not the wealthy who can afford to travel to an alternative state where they can receive care, but the low-income who feel trapped by their circumstance. Remove legal and safe options, and women like the victims the right purports to be speaking for will turn to the Kermit Gosnells of the world. And it’s the policies of the anti-choice movement that will drive them there.

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They can’t defend Gosnell (there is no defense) and they failed in their attempts to sweep his horrific crimes under the rug, so now they are blaming everything on the people who oppose abortion! The problem is that Gosnell’s clinic was not a “back-alley” operation. It was licensed and listed in the Yellow Pages.

The pro-choice groups missed their chance to get out in front of this. They should have been the loudest voices demanding tighter regulation of abortion clinics and accountability for all the government officials who dropped the ball over the years.

I am pro-choice, but I believe that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The abortions performed by Dr. Gosnell were not safe, many of them were not legal and they were not rare. Let’s fix the problem, not the blame.

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The Vile Prog Aristocrats

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Victor Davis Hanson:

There is a liberal coastal aristocrat, but he is really not very liberal, at least in the sense of his regressive life not matching his progressive rhetoric. His views are mostly conditioned on his education, salary, and material circumstances. Put the coastal aristocrat in charge of a 7-Eleven in Stockton, and his therapeutic view would turn tragic quite quickly. And that fear is why he rarely goes to either a 7-Eleven or Stockton.

Let me give a few examples.

Fracking is seen as mostly bad, not because of any firsthand knowledge, any in-depth reading of the literature, any quid pro quo, or any cost/benefit analysis of the effect of more oil and gas production on the lives of the poor, but largely because the coastal aristocrat senses that he 1) has quite enough money and job security to ignore the price of gas, 2) does not drive all that much in comparison to the red-state interior Neanderthal, and 3) receives enormous psychological comfort and social acceptance from the fact that he is opposed to carbon emissions. Why, he wonders, do the poor on the way to work drive those gas-guzzling used Yukons, when a second-hand Prius would work just as well?

Illegal immigration? The Palo Alto aristocrat’s position is predicated on two realities: his hardworking nanny, yardman, and cook are often rather recent arrivals from Mexico, and he most certainly does not wish his children to attend school anywhere near Redwood City. Thus he is for “comprehensive immigration reform,” with the understanding that the benefits are his, and for others the downside.

Taxes? They are the cost of a utopian worldview, a mordida necessary to live in Cambridge or Santa Monica. For the aristocrat making over $500,000 a year, a few extra thousand dollars a year is a price worth paying, at least for the psychological guarantee that the distant food-stamp recipients, who mostly go to Safeway rather than Ralphs or Whole Foods, are content to live their happy lives as they do. Pay up the penance and be done with the guilt is the creed.

Guns? For the coastal elite, who do not hunt, who do not live in a dangerous neighborhood, and who believe the Bill of Rights are sacrosanct to the degree they support progressive change and fluid when they do not, guns more or less should just go away. Of course, the celebrity, the CEO, and the politician may need “security,” but no one much asks what hides inside the coats of the husky men at their sides.

Education? Public unions are saintly. Charter schools and vouchers are satanic. But the aristocrat, who knows best what is good for the masses, prefers and can afford the private school, and feels no guilt in his choice because his version is liberal while the more low-brow alternative is often crappy and not that much better than the public offering. (E.g., if you wish to duck out of the public school system, at least have the class to do it with style rather than on the cheap: a Castilleja or Andover rather than First Christian Academy.)

In lieu of the traditional aristocrat estate, peerage, or title, the outward manifestation of aristocracy is an Ivy League brand or a West Coast Stanford version. The proper campus is one’s lifelong entrée. The right quad is where your kids meet the right mate and receive a bumper sticker that opens the right doors. Such university snobbery is inconsistent with classical liberalism, but not with liberal aristocratic values, which are based on exclusionary criteria. For the NBC anchor, or the Massachusetts senator, or the Google executive, the key is to get your kid into the right prep school, as requisite for the even more correct Ivy League, where the perfect spouse and Facebook founders-like coterie are found. It is not just that junior will emerge with correct ideas about gay marriage, abortion, green power, the U.S. role abroad, and the poor, but that he will be seen, by virtue of his degree, as having the right ideas.

Apartheid is the unifying theme of coastal aristocracy. Without it, reality would disabuse the grandee of his worldview. Take any tenured Berkeley professor of environmental studies and make his existence hinge on squeezing a daily profit out of a Selma Stop-N-Go, and this gentle brontosaurus would turn into a Tyrannosaurus rex in a nanosecond. Therefore exclusion of all sorts from the underbelly of America is an essential.

One associates with mostly fellow one percenters. One picks and chooses friends on the basis of where they work and where they were educated and the views they hold. A Chevron field job, a University of Idaho degree in sports journalism, a strong aversion to abortion — all this is impermissible. In some Frankenstein-like laboratory, an evil genius cooked up Sarah Palin, whose looks, accent, background, views, and style were designed to enrage the coastal aristocracy.

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The people Hanson is talking about would deny that they are aristocrats. They would tell you (and themselves) that they are the elite members of a meritocracy. Maybe not in those actual words, but that is essentially what they believe.

In support of this belief they would point out that membership in their club is not exclusive – anyone can potentially join. All you need is enough money or the right diploma (preferably both). They ignore the fact that the vast majority of them were born into their elite status. In the words of Ann Richards, they were born on third and think they hit a triple.

The world is what it is but it’s not fair. In a true meritocracy our station in life would be determined solely by a combination of our talent and effort. But if that were the case our children would have to compete on equal terms with all the other kids – identical school and career opportunities. We wouldn’t be allowed to give them an extra boost via better schools or job connections.

The redeeming characteristic in our nation is liberty. We are free to seek our dreams, we’re just not guaranteed we will ever realize them. Our aristocrats can lose their status due to things like laziness or dissolution. Our proletarians can aspire to higher station and reach it through talent, effort and/or luck.

It’s not a perfect system. It’s just better than any other system ever devised.

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You Have The Right To STFU!

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Daily Caller:

Environmentalists to news networks: cover climate change more, skeptics less

Invoking news coverage of recent extreme weather events, environmentalists are urging the public to sign a petition to pressure major television networks to do more coverage of climate change.

The petition, by the League of Conservation Voters, is aimed at executive producers of nightly news programs for major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — who the groups say don’t focus enough news coverage on climate change issues and, when they do cover the issue, portray the issue as a “two-sided debate” by featuring climate skeptics.

“What’s almost worse is that when these networks have covered global warming, they have often treated climate change as a ‘two-sided debate’ rather than what it really is: an issue in which there is overwhelming scientific consensus,” writes Vanessa Kritzer, online campaigns manager for the League of Conservation Voters.

“By bringing on climate-denying politicians and pundits, and giving them as much ‘expert’ status as actual climate scientists, the networks perpetuate the false debate that polluter-funded think tanks have instigated to cast doubt on whether we should take action to address the climate crisis at all.”

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This is classic Vile Proggery. “I have the right of free speech. You have the right to STFU!”

That certainly makes it a lot easier to win arguments. Besides, it’s different when we do it.

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STFU Is Why!

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Juan Williams: Liberal media will ‘shut you down, stab you, kill you, fire you’ if you disagree

Fox News political analyst and “Special Report” panelist Juan Williams said in an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas that mainstream media outlets “stab” and “kill” dissenting voices.

Williams was fired from National Public Radio in 2010 after saying he sometimes gets “nervous” when seated on an airplane with Muslims, while making a broader point about the importance of religious tolerance.

“I always thought it was the Archie Bunkers of the world, the right-wingers of world, who were more resistant and more closed-minded about hearing the other side,” he said. “In fact, what I have learned is, in a very painful way — and I can open this shirt and show you the scars and the knife wounds — is that it is big media institutions who are identifiably more liberal to left-leaning who will shut you down, stab you and kill you, fire you, if they perceive that you are not telling the story in the way that they want it told.”

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It’s not just the big media institutions. Intolerance for diversity is a modern progressive trait. Look at the way the boys at DailyKos reacted to Hillary supporters back in 2007-08. Look at the way the Vile Progs treated the Clintons and everyone else associated with the DLC. Look at how they treat even mild criticism of Obama.

That’s how they treat people who are mostly on their side. Like the Rush song says, “Conform or be cast out”.

Wingnuts will argue with you all day long and twice on Sunday, but they generally don’t try to shut you down and keep you from speaking. When is the last time a bunch of Tea Partiers tried to interrupt a Democratic speaker and keep him/her from speechifying?

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I Can’t Believe I Voted For This Guy

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Al Gore: Al Jazeera “Tell It Like It Is,” They’re “Respected” — Fox News Is “Propaganda”

Gore appeared on the Charlie Rose show last night, unfortunately the editors left the part where Gore rips Fox News as “propaganda” on the cutting room floor. I’ve watched Gore’s appearance on the Charlie Rose show on my DVR and also on Charlie Rose’s web site and the “propaganda” part is not there. The editors did leave in the part where Gore praises the Al Jazeera network–so I grabbed that. Having said that, someone who attended the live taping of the show recorded the “propaganda” part on their cell phone. The video is not stellar but the content is worth watching–especially when it is juxtaposed with Gore’s praising Al Jazeera.

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I am angry at myself because I can’t believe I voted for this guy. Not only did I vote for him in 2000 but I spent most of 2007 hoping he would decide to run again.

I guess Ralph Nader was right after all.

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Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee!

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This is NOT an Onion parody:

Canadian student who tore down ‘free speech wall’ defends his actions, views

The Canadian student who wrecked a “Free Speech Wall” at Carleton University less than a day after it was installed continues to create headlines.

Before Arun Smith destroyed the wall — really a very large board wrapped in white paper — students had written messages on it such as “QUEERS ARE AWESOME,” “Obama Murders with Drones” and “traditional marriage is awesome.”

That last statement seems to be the one that aroused the violent ire of the gay rights activist.

On Wednesday, Smith appeared on Sun News, a Canadian news and opinion cable channel, to defend his previously expressed view that “not every opinion is valid, nor deserving of expression.”

[...]

“We have to operate on affect and harm to marginalized communities,” the human rights and sexuality major added.

Smith went on to describe his anti-free speech views at some length, frequently harping on his concern about “the context of the words.”

“Inclusive, safe spaces are not places where you can have unregulated free speech. Unregulated free speech is something that leads to hate speech every single time,” the human rights and sexuality major said.

“There’s a difference between sort of what we say colloquially — ‘I hate this,’ ‘I hate that’ — and what is fundamental hate speech, which is a form of oppression,” Smith carefully contrasted. “If I were to say ‘I hate bigots,’ that’s not hate speech and, you know, everyone in the world is willing to agree with me on that, and anyone who doesn’t probably should reexamine their personal convictions.”

Smith also assured viewers that there is “a difference between hate and oppression” and called himself a simultaneously powerful and powerless person.

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Carleton College is a small liberal arts college in Minnesota best known for setting a Guinness world record for the largest number of people spooning.

Tomorrow’s leaders today.

(Fucking idiots)

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. – Andrew Shepard

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Why Vile Progs Are Vile

Obamacare doesn’t include dental

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“Vile Prog” is not just a name, it’s a description. Not all progs are vile. I consider myself to be a liberal, which is basically a non-vile prog. The main difference between a Vile Prog and liberal is principles. Liberals have them while Vile Progs only pretend they do.

Here is an example:

Blessyourheart, on January 15, 2013 at 4:02 am said:

Mark Levin is a WATB bitch who writes like a butthurt 13 year old. As for his rant, I’ve just one thing to say: George W Bush. You created the imperial presidency, now you own it assholes. Now shut the fuck up and take your medicine.

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A few years ago the imperial presidency was a bad thing. Now that an alleged Democrat is in the White House it’s a good thing. That’s how Vile Progs think.

Vile Progs cannot claim ignorance. In 2007-2008 they demonstrated the ability to articulate extremely high moral standards for political candidates. They scrutinized every vote Hillary Clinton ever cast, as well as her statements and the statements of everyone involved in her campaign. Then they explained to us how she was found wanting.

They supported Obama because he was pure and untainted and took all the right positions on the issues. But they didn’t even wait for him to win the election to reverse course on critical issues like campaign finance and FISA. Now they support all the things they hated when George Bush was doing them.

The rightness or wrongness of an act is not determined by the identity or party affiliation of the actor. (The actor’s intent goes to his/her culpability but it does not change the nature of the act.) Whether a policy is good or bad should be an objective assessment independent of partisanship.

Once upon a time the political left in this country had a legitimate claim to the moral high ground. Not anymore. They lost all credibility to their claims of moral superiority in 2008. Maybe it was always bullshit. But I believed it once.

That’s what really pisses me off.

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Marriage of Memes

Never ones to let a crisis go by these days, the left is still busy capitalizing on the Newton, CT shooting with a multi-layered collection of just the right memes.

Guns out of control: check.

When Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, December 14, inexplicably bent on ending as many lives as possible, he was carrying a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle and several high-capacity magazines. Sadly, this isn’t the first time the country has had to deal with the aftermath of a horrific shooting spree, nor is it the first time we’ve encountered an AR-15 in this context: only days earlier, it was the weapon of choice for a shooting at an Oregon mall that killed two people. Five months earlier, it was used by James Holmes in an attack that wounded fifty-eight people and killed twelve in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. And several years before that, a man and his teenage accomplice used a Bushmaster AR-15 to terrorize the Washington, DC, area with a series of random shootings.

The big, bad boogie-store, Walmart: check.

Although it is not yet clear where the Bushmaster AR-15 used by Lanza (and registered to his mother) was purchased, the model is familiar to many Walmart shoppers. It’s on sale at about 1,700 Walmart stores nationwide, though the retail chain pulled the weapon from its website early this afternoon.

[...]

The big-box chain at one point sold guns in only about a third of its stores, mainly in remote rural areas where hunting is popular. But in 2011, without much fanfare, Walmart expanded gun sales to half of its 3,982 stores nationwide, including those in more urban areas like Albuquerque and Spokane.

The expansion of gun sales at Walmart came after a five-year slowdown. In 2006, the chain announced that it was rolling gun sales back, citing declining profit margins on the relatively expensive weapons, which even at Walmart can retail for hundreds of dollars. But in 2011, company executives were looking at eight straight quarters of declining sales at stores open for a year or more—the worst slump in Walmart’s history.

Conservatives (which all gun-lovers are) have an irrational fear of our black president, Obama: check.

They must also have noticed that Barack Obama’s inauguration had sparked a rally in gun sales, which have steadily increased every year since 2008. The government isn’t allowed to track firearm sales, but the FBI does release figures on how many retailers ask it to run background checks—a relatively reliable indicator of total gun sales, although likely a lowball estimate, since a person can buy multiple guns on a single background check, and many gun shows aren’t required to perform such checks. In 2007, retailers asked the FBI for just over 11 million background checks; by the end of 2009, 
14 million checks were requested—a 27 per-
cent increase.

Gratuitously hyperbolic activist quote + Union promotion: check.

“This gun thing, it’s really just a nightmare,” says Bertha Lewis, president of the Black Institute, which has been organizing Walmart workers this year to protest wages and working conditions. Given its aggressive gun sales, Walmart’s logo “shouldn’t be a smiley face; it should be an automatic weapon,” she adds.

And the inevitable conclusion-by-clusterfuck-of-memes/bad-argument: check

Other anti-violence activists are disturbed by Walmart’s much-ballyhooed expansion into urban markets like Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, Reno, Detroit and other cities. That, combined with the increased gun sales, could be a recipe for disaster.

The chain says it won’t sell guns at those stores—a condition of approval for a new Walmart in Washington, DC—but Bertha Lewis is wary. Even if that turns out to be true, the guns are likely to be sold at a Walmart somewhere else in the area. “Guns are a scourge in black and brown and low- and moderate-income communities,” Lewis says. “And here comes Walmart with Mr. Smiley Face: ‘Here, here’s a $5 sweater—and, oh, by the way, you can get this gun.’”

Lewis thinks the gun sales will soon be a new front in the activist campaign against Walmart. “You’re going to see it more and more and more as folks organize against Walmart,” she says. “One of their vulnerabilities is their stance on guns. Don’t try to sell me an apple and a gun at the same 
time. Don’t tell me that you’re trying to give fresh fruit and vegetables to people so that they can have a healthy life, and then you turn around and on the next counter you have instruments of death.”

OMG! URGENT! Walmart is opening their gun-selling stores in inner cities! Where black and brown people reside! We can’t allow that because of that, you know, “recipe for disaster.” Note: This reasoning cannot be construed as racist because of the profile of the speaker.

Geez, it’s all so formulaic in politics anymore. No wonder I’m bored. This is an open thread.

Same as it ever was

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Four years ago Obama was working on his transition team, but his followers were still to obsessed with Sarah Palin to notice.

Lambert:

Career “progressives” then and now

Career “progressive” post-election investment of time and energy putting the boot into Romney in 2012 is exactly like their investment putting the boot into Palin in 2008.

And with the same effects: In 2008, by the time the wankery and triumphalism ended, and the time to “hold his feet to the fire” arrived, the shape of the administration was already set: Geithner in at Treasury, bailouts normalized; health insurance companies in control of the health care bill. In 2012, gutting social insurance before the “fiscal cliff” and the “grand bargain.”

One difference between 2008 and 2012:

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The difference? This time the Vile Progs can’t claim ignorance. Obama was an unknown quantity in 2008.

Now they have no excuse.

Not that it would have made any difference – Obama never really cared what they thought anyway. He was openly disdainful of them. He just wanted their votes.

But now he doesn’t care about their votes either. He’s never running again. They have no leverage on him, no way to hold him accountable. The fat cats he really works for will donate to his library and when he leaves office they will pay him huge speaking fees as a reward for his services.

Hold his feet to the fire? Nowadays Obama is fire proof.

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Karma is a bitch

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Netroots Bloggers Mark 10th Birthday in Decline and Struggling for Survival

Susie Madrak started blogging in 2001, just after Sept. 11, back when the country was hurtling head-first into war and the blogosphere was a mysterious frontier on the far edges of the Internet.

“It was infuriating,” Madrak recalled of the political moment that spurred her to start throwing her own commentary online. “I could see that they were fabricating the reasons for war. Blogging was what I did instead of throwing a brick through the window.”

She started her own site, called Suburban Guerilla, and it soon became one of the boldface blogs of the “Netroots,” a new network of engaged political progressives giving a voice they thought was missing in the mainstream press. In time, millions like her took to their own keyboards, and thousands of similar sites bloomed. The Netroots became the world’s first online grassroots political organizing effort, and the goal was nothing less than to remake the American political system by pushing Democrats leftward.

“We didn’t trust the traditional progressive movement—labor, the issue orgs, the party—because of a record of failure and futility,” writes Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, in an email. “In turn, they didn’t like us petulant upstarts. A popular sentiment was, ‘What are those bloggers going to do, hit George Bush in the head with a laptop?’”

Now, however, the Netroots, which were once thought to do to the political left what evangelical Christianity was supposed to do to the professional right, are 10 years old. In that time they vaulted Howard Dean to within a scream of the presidency, helped Democrats take both houses of Congress and several statehouses across the country, and gave the party what many in the movement believed to be some much-needed spine.

But with another critical election two weeks away, politicians, political operatives, and even the bloggers themselves say the Netroots are a whisper of what they were only four years ago, a dial-up modem in a high-speed world, and that the brigade of laptop-wielding revolutionaries who stormed the convention castle four years ago have all but disappeared as a force within the Democratic Party.

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Excuse me for a moment.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you.

But wait! There’s more.

The not-quite on the money quote:

The beginning of the end, many of the current and former bloggers say, came during the great Democratic primary Civil War of 2007–08. Until then, the Netroots had been remarkably cohesive, lining up behind promising congressional and Senate candidates en masse to raise money and boost name recognition. Since Democrats had been rendered to minor-party status, disagreements were papered over.

But then came the wave election of 2006, and suddenly the presidency was in sight. But the Netroots, like most Democrats, were divided among Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. During that campaign, the political blogosphere on the left became less known for sparking offline activism and more known for epic fights among those with divided loyalties.

“I supported John Edwards,” Madrak said. “And the Obama people were very vehement about what they thought about it. And they up and left the site if they thought you were being irrational about Obama. I still don’t know where they went. They just up and disappeared.”

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Susie is too kind. I blame Obama and his supporters. The “Obama people” didn’t just leave a few sites. The Obots bullied and abused Hillary supporters. They attacked anyone who disagreed with them and literally drove people away from the online communities they had called home for years. They used various tricks to manipulate ratings at DailyKos and other blogs, and got people banned from blogs for the sin of not supporting Obama. They waged a scorched-earth campaign and now they are wondering where their dreams went and where all the ashes came from.

The big “A-list” bloggers either participated in this jihad against Hillary supporters or turned a blind eye to it. Many of the A-listers sacrificed their alleged principles for money. Many hoped to be power players in the new administration. Some were rewarded with paying jobs in the media they claimed to despise. Most of them got the cold shoulder after the election was over.

Was this unavoidable?

Consider the right-wing blogosphere. In 2008 they were defeated and demoralized. Many of them began to unite behind the Tea Party, but many did not. They participated in a big mid-term victory. Then came the 2012 GOP primaries.

The right-wing bloggers never united behind a single candidate. Sarah Palin had a large and vocal group of supporters, but as things unfolded she chose not to run. Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul all had sizeable groups of supporters. In the end, Mitt Romney won the nomination and the GOP is united behind him.

Things got a little heated at times, but at no time was there an online bloodbath between the various groups comparable to the left in 2007-2008.

Barack Obama is without a doubt the most divisive politician in my lifetime.

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