“A Gandhi-following, peace-loving, free-spirited vegetarian who was adopted at birth has discovered the worst possible thing a son could find out about his father – his dad is Charles Manson.”
Do we know if Manson digs Ghandi? If so, dad’s got two out of three above attributes covered.
Somebody set up us the decline!
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(Hat tip: Elizabeth Terrell)
Seeing as they each impact key pillars of what today passes for liberalism, there seems to be more than a few connections between the recent ACORN stings by Giles, O’Keefe and Breitbart, and the recent hacking of the emails of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, or “Global WarmingGate”, as Charlie Martin dubs it elsewhere at Pajamas. Not the least is that they each sent the legacy media into full gatekeeper mode, hoping to prevent exciting, important news of current events from ever reaching their readers. Or perhaps, like the scandal last year involving John Edwards, sitting on the stories for so long, while making claims that they have to endlessly research them to verify their authenticity — Keep rockin’! — that when the legacy media decides to go “public” with news that everyone already knows, they can dramatically dilute the ultimate impact of these stories.
In September, we noted the L.A. Times’ hypocrisy when they wrote, “O’Keefe’s hidden-camera methods are distasteful, and the extent to which his videos were edited is unknown” — as opposed to the hidden camera videos run almost every week by their fellow liberal brethren on 60 Minutes since the show debuted on CBS over 40 years ago.
And as a nice sequel of sorts to our previous post on leftwing cognitive dissonance, Orrin Judd spots this staggering moment of hypocrisy from the New York Times’ Andrew C. Revkin of their “Dot Earth” blog on Friday:
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
And they don’t contain any obvious state military secrets as well, unlike say the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War or more recently, the secrets of War on Terror, or any of a number of other leaked documents the Times has cheerfully rushed to print.
Back in 2006, when his paper disclosed the previously confidential details of the SWIFT program, which was designed to trace terrorists’ financial assets, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said on CBS’s Face the Nation, “one man’s breach of security is another man’s public relations.” Of course, much like the rest of the media circling the wagons with ACORN, it’s not at all surprising that the Times circles the wagons when it’s necessary to save the public face of their fellow liberals.
Incidentally, Tom Maguire explains the perfect way to square the circle:
If Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe are done tormenting ACORN maybe they can figure out how to pose as underaged climate researchers…
Heh, indeed.™
Related: “LA Times Changes Its Mind: Science Doesn’t Matter On Climate Bill.”
Update: At the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb adds, “As a journalist, there is no greater glory than publishing materials that were not meant to be published”:
If I could, I would only publish emails and documents that were never meant to see the light of day — though, unlike the New York Times, I draw the line at jeopardizing the lives of American troops rather than jeopardizing the contrived “consensus” on global warming.
And of course, the Times has those priorities exactly reversed. But then, for the Gray Lady, small government Republicans are “Stalinists”, but actual totalitarian governments are worthy of emulation and respect.
Update: On Twitter, “Justkarl” asks, “You don’t suppose the real reason Revkin won’t publish the CRU e-mails is that he’s implicated in them?”, adding, “Revkin CRU e-mail. Likely here too.”
Related: For those who would like to “Wear The Decline”, T-shirts are now available in the lobby!
Update (11/23/09): And speaking of bringing things full circle, the commenters below note that the Times had few ethical concerns when they linked to the hacked emails of Sarah Palin last fall during the presidential election.
Beginning with the first sentence of the great Theodore Dalrymple’s new article at City Journal, “Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform”, you know one of the most influential modern architects and one of the most disasterous city planners of the 20th century has met his match:
Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas.
Writings about Le Corbusier often begin with an encomium to his importance, something like: “He was the most important architect of the twentieth century.” Friend and foe would agree with this judgment, but importance is, of course, morally and aesthetically ambiguous. After all, Lenin was one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century, but it was his influence on history, not his merits, that made him so: likewise Le Corbusier.
Yet just as Lenin was revered long after his monstrosity should have been obvious to all, so Le Corbusier continues to be revered. Indeed, there is something of a revival in the adulation. Nicholas Fox Weber has just published an exhaustive and generally laudatory biography, and Phaidon has put out a huge, expensive book lovingly devoted to Le Corbusier’s work. Further, a hagiographic exhibition devoted to Le Corbusier recently ran in London and Rotterdam. In London, the exhibition fittingly took place in a hideous complex of buildings, built in the 1960s, called the Barbican, whose concrete brutalism seems designed to overawe, humiliate, and confuse any human being unfortunate enough to try to find his way in it. The Barbican was not designed by Le Corbusier, but it was surely inspired by his particular style of soulless architecture.
At the exhibition, I fell to talking with two elegantly coiffed ladies of the kind who spend their afternoons in exhibitions. “Marvelous, don’t you think?” one said to me, to which I replied: “Monstrous.” Both opened their eyes wide, as if I had denied Allah’s existence in Mecca. If most architects revered Le Corbusier, who were we laymen, the mere human backdrop to his buildings, who know nothing of the problems of building construction, to criticize him? Warming to my theme, I spoke of the horrors of Le Corbusier’s favorite material, reinforced concrete, which does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays. A single one of his buildings, or one inspired by him, could ruin the harmony of an entire townscape, I insisted. A Corbusian building is incompatible with anything except itself.
The two ladies mentioned that they lived in a mainly eighteenth-century part of the city whose appearance and social atmosphere had been comprehensively wrecked by two massive concrete towers. The towers confronted them daily with their own impotence to do anything about the situation, making them sad as well as angry. “And who do you suppose was the inspiration for the towers?” I asked. “Yes, I see what you mean,” one of them said, as if the connection were a difficult and even dangerous one to make.
From Karl Marx and the Soviet Union, to the Bauhaus, to National Socialism, to the hippies of the 1960s, the idea of starting from Year Zero, at Dalrymple notes above, has long been one of the central strains of the left in its various forms. And of course, it’s a theme that continues to this day.
Definitely read the whole thing.
Back in September, we referenced the World Wildlife Federation’s botched advertisement associating global warming with 9/11; this ad by the appropriately named “Plane Stupid” attempts to do much the same. What else does one think of when watching bodies fall from the sky in an urban environment filled with high rises? At least until ascertaining that those bodies are the wintry cousins of Yogi, Boo Boo, Smokey, and their Build-A-Bear brethren?
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Even before the scandal that broke on Friday involving the Climate-Anti-industrial Complex’s emails, it appeared that the sheer lunacy of the global warming crowd’s rhetoric had recently been ramping up exponentially — eat your dog, shrink your family, go vegetarian, “Urinate on the compost heap to save the planet”, because global warming causes absolutely everything — including terrorism and prostitution. (No word yet from ACORN on that last item.) And we only have ten years, five years, 50 days to do something about it! Look for the new email scandal to heat the blood pressure of the warmists almost to the temperature of the earth’s core.
Update: Found in the comments of Tim Blair’s blog, scientists, circus performers, and astute urban developers are already teaming up to provide innovative solutions to the nation’s plummeting bear market:
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John Boot and Christian Toto note that the new movie version of The Blind Side, the enjoyable recent football book by Michael Lewis of Liar’s Poker fame, contains a classic Hollywood sucker punch. As Christian writes:
Here’s the scene: Bullock’s character is waiting in line to speak to someone about her new son Michael’s legal status.
Fed up, she cuts to the front of the line to ask a question:
“We have been sitting around here for over an hour and when I look around all I see are people shooting the bull and drinking coffee … who’s in charge here?”
The bemused woman behind the desk points to the wall, where a picture of Bush is hanging.
We’ve all been in long lines before, be it at the DMV or other governmental offices. And it doesn’t matter which party – or person – is occupying the White House at the moment.
So the joke makes no sense. All it does is deflate a feel-good movie for no good reason. Maybe the filmmakers realized with Bush out of office time is running out to throw spitballs at Hollywood’s favorite target.
Christian asks ponders if this is “The last sucker punch at Bush”, but I somehow doubt it. John Nolte, the film director who doubles as blogger/editor of Big Hollywood explains the dynamic at work:
Hollywood is high school and if you want to sit at the cool kids’ table (i.e. work) you better fit in, and if you’ve been involved in the writing, directing or producing of a film sympathetic towards the most hated demographic (yes, even more hated than terrorists — again, watch the product) in the 9-0 zip code, you had better inoculate yourself.
And that’s what the gratuitous, unnecessary, jarring, take-you-out-of-the-movie shot at Bush is: an inoculation. The filmmakers want to work again; they want to be invited to all the right parties. But if you’re remembered as the perso involved in bringing to life a movie only Glenn Beck could love, no matter how big of a hit, that’s not a good thing on the ole’ resume’.
There are notable exceptions, but working in Hollywood — an industry built on social interaction — means getting along with Leftists, and Leftists are religious, regional and ideological bigots of the worst order. The smart people involved in the making of “The Blind Side” knew the Bush shot was bad storytelling — was what what John Boot described as ”a non-sequitur nonpareil” — they just felt, for whatever reason (their own bigotry or career survival), that it was worth it.
Hollywood is not money or profit-driven. This is an industry engaged in an ideological war with traditional conservative America that doesn’t mind making a profit, but never will at the expense of the cause. Everyone involved in the making of “Blind Side” knew an unnecessary partisan shot at Bush would turn people off. They all knew they were insulting the very audience the film was marketed at for no reason other than to insult them. But there was absolutely no way in hell this thing was going to see the light of day without something for the Hollywood bigots to snicker over.
As John writes, “This is their sandbox, and there’s a ring to kiss if you want to play.”
As Jonah Goldberg writes, “Palinophobes Hate First, Ask Questions Later”:
Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus’ Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor’s writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:
“The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.”
Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, “That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate.”
But soon, the original contributor confessed: “I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It’s taken from the first paragraph of ‘Dreams From My Father,’ written by Barack Obama.”
The ruse should have been allowed to fester longer, but the point was made nonetheless: Some people hate Palin first and ask questions later.
Palin’s book was rejected by at least one local book chain in the increasingly reprimitivized Bay Area; PJM’s David Steinberg looks at what titles they carry instead. (Hint: Rosie O’Donnell and Charlie Sheen should be pleased.) Meanwhile, the legacy media, which goes to 11 when it’s time investigate Plain’s autobiography (unlike Obama’s), has taken to picking on her 17-year old fans.
Update: And stay at home fathers:
After introducing [George] Lopez on her CNN Headline News program last night, [Joy] Behar played a clip of Lopez’s HBO special in which he said, “There are a lot of politicians that would be Latinos and a lot now who are Latino. Sarah Palin, Latina. Believe me. She’s got all the signs. She works and her husband don’t.” [sic -- Ed]
Later in the segment, after commenting about Palin’s lack of experience, Lopez stated, “I mean, the concept of Todd Palin being a stay-at-home dad-listen Joy, when I was a kid, those guys were called bums.”
“Uh-huh. They’re still called bums,” agreed Behar.
Update: More CNN classiness here.
As the Gray Lady would say, climate changes*; women, children, minorities, dogs, email, and the earth’s core hardest hit.
(Headline via the cool, objective journalists at AP.)
This post by Clay Waters of Newsbusters dovetails perfectly with my Silicon Graffiti video today:
There’s liberal hypocrisy on the part of New York Times economics columnist and left-wing blog-follower Paul Krugman in his Monday nytimes.com blog post, “Proposed extensions of Godwin’s Law.”
Leading into a discussion of how he thinks people should discuss inflation and interest rates, Krugman said:
Godwin’s Law — which says that in any sufficiently long online discussion, someone will compare his opponent to Hitler — is often interpreted to mean that if you do, in fact, start making Nazi comparisons, you’ve lost the argument and can no longer be taken seriously. I’m all for that. (Does this mean that we should no longer take any significant figure in the Republican Party seriously? Yes, it does.)
Not only is that way overstated (Krugman provides no actual examples), it’s also pretty bold, given that Krugman takes seriously and often utilizes ideas from left-wing blog sites like Daily Kos, where comparing President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler was pretty much the password for entry.
And such concern for civil debate didn’t stop Krugman from comparing conservative host Rush Limbaugh to Communist dictator Joseph Stalin in an April 13 column:
Speaking of Mr. Limbaugh: the most impressive thing about his role right now is the fealty he is able to demand from the rest of the right. The abject apologies he has extracted from Republican politicians who briefly dared to criticize him have been right out of Stalinist show trials.
Since when has the Times had a problem with show trials?
Andrew Sullivan savors the secrets…of the Necronomicon!
This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it – and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided – is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read.
The key phrase there being “objective reality as we know it”; always a moving target with Andrew.
(Via Dan Riehl, who sees a Kurtzian metaphor in all this; for more Lovecraftian fun, just click here.)
Update: Jim Treacher writes, “As we all pray for Andrew Sullivan’s safe return, a look back: Palin Dodges Tough Questions About Existence of ‘Alaska.’”
As always, there’s no way a satirist can improve upon real life for the perfection of its absurdity:
In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.
Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city’s largest municipal union.
Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.
“We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.
Balzano said Saturday he isn’t targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city’s decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said “there’s to be no volunteers.” No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.
What about bike paths? Or is only Howard Dean allowed to clear those?
Last year, when Obama and his backers were on the campaign trail portraying America as some sort of impoverished Dickensian nightmare (when not advising the huddled, starving masses to share the wealth, and cut back on how much they eat, and drive their big eeevil SUVs), Michelle Obama famously said:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones.
You first, Nick.
Huh — I must have missed him on the National Review Cruise last November. But as Allie Duzett of Accuracy In Media writes, America’s fourth-ranked cable news channel “is now claiming that Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, is a conservative”:
On November 10, 2009, CNN Special Investigations Correspondent Drew Griffin called Hasan “conservative,” and now that talking point is being spewed again on today’s front page online story. The story, about Hasan’s search for a wife, discusses how two imams told CNN “about [Hasan’s] conservatism.” The story also mentions Hasan’s “conservative” clothing choices.
However—what exactly about Hasan is conservative?
Fact: Islamofascism is not conservative, in any way. Hating America is not conservative—conservatives tend to love their country. Wanting to blow up America is not conservative—again, conservatives tend to love their country. Hating people for their religion (or lack thereof) is not conservative—conservatives are not the ones trying to remove other people’s religions from the public sphere.
What Hasan did was not conservative. Murdering men and women in the armed forces is not conservative—conservatives are traditionally the ones most supportive of our men and women in the armed forces. Murdering fetuses is absolutely not conservative—conservatives tend to oppose abortion, and Hasan murdered a pregnant woman and her unborn child. And of course, wearing traditional clothing—even Islamic clothing—does not make you a conservative. While I don’t believe the story meant to imply that Hasan’s clothing linked him to a conservative ideology, I believe the writer could have picked a better word for it. Hasan may have been religious, but religiosity never makes one conservative, even if that person is a traditionalist within the religion.
This is just another case of CNN’s reporters creating a link to conservatism where there really is none.
Meanwhile, as Kathy Shaidle notes, for a “conservative”, Hasan sure knew his leftwing psychobabble.
Update: Karol Sheinin of the Alaming News blog notes that Wolf Blitzer has also taken to calling Hasan “conservative”:
Wolf Blitzer just described Ft. Hood shooter as “Conservative Muslim Major”. Was he for low taxes? Smaller govt? Tell me more, Wolf.
And of course, CNN is the go-to source for expert opinion regarding conservatism in general. Just ask Anderson Cooper and Rick Sanchez.
Update: Meanwhile, over at MSNBC, it’s “Maddow at Most Orwellian: Murder of Abortion Doctor ‘Terrorism’ — But Not Ft. Hood Massacre by Jihadist.”
I’ll say one thing about the Hollywood studio system of the 1940s and ’50s: every actor and actress had the occasional bomb, but you rarely heard Cary Grant, John Wayne, Bogie or Bacall blaming the customers when their picture tanked:
Another day, another nugget of awesomeness from Megan Fox.
The actress tells The New York Times that her movie “Jennifer’s Body” tanked because “the movie is about a man-eating, cannibalistic lesbian cheerleader, and that pretty much eliminates middle America.”
Which sounds like a repeat of the blame-the-booboisie quote uttered by the screenwriter of the craptacular sequel to Basic Instinct when it bombed, as City Journal’s Stefan Kanfer wrote in 2006:
Paul Verhoeven, director of the first Basic Instinct, made in 1992, avers that politics in the U.S. of A. have taken the fun out of eros. Indeed, insists the Dutch native, “anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States. Look at the people at the top. We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values.” Scenarist Nicholas Meyer (Fatal Attraction; The Human Stain) agrees. “We’re in a big puritanical mode. Now it’s like the McCarthy era, except it’s not ‘Are you a communist?’ but have you ever put sex in a movie?”
On which planet do these gentlemen live? It is difficult to determine from their remarks. In an epoch when XXX rated videos are available at the local DVD store, when the Internet contains countless pornographic sites, when surveys show that more Americans hear suggestive language than ever before, when celebrities promote oral sex for teenagers, when nudity and semi-nudity are a part of prime time programming, it is impossible to reconcile the opinions of Messrs. Verhoeven and Meyer with the facts of life.
Still, we must congratulate them for their originality. It used to be fashionable to hold the Jews responsible for everything that went wrong. Blaming Christianity is a new one.
Heh. So why didn’t you take your low expectations for what Americans will accept at the box office into account before you made the movie?
At Power Line, John Hinderaker writes, “We are beginning to see way too many echoes of the 1930s, as national socialist and Marxian socialist thugs try to drive competing political views off the streets”:
The worst offenders so far have been the Service Employees’ International Union, which has repeatedly sent its members out into the streets to beat up anyone who isn’t toeing the Obama line on issues like socialized medicine.
Most recently it’s International ANSWER, a hard-core Communist group supported by shadowy funding sources that have never been made public, but appear to consist of a handful of rich people. ANSWER, notwithstanding its unabashedly Communist ideology, now feels comfortable enough to assault non-communist demonstrators who show up in the streets. In this case, the non-communists were protesting illegal immigration, seeking to uphold the nation’s laws, when they were set upon by ANSWER’s thugs:
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Related thoughts on the above incident from Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit. And as for the other half of John’s equation, “Neo-Nazi’s Hitler Flag Triggers Scuffle at Arizona Tea Party Protest”:
I spoke too soon. What could wrong in Manhattan? Well, guess who’s stopping by Fun City for a trial: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:
U.S. prosecutors plan criminal trials for five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and military tribunals for five others held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, self-described mastermind of the attacks, and four others will be tried in New York federal court. Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday he expects to order prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the five cases.
Five other detainees held at the prison, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to have planned the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried in revamped military commissions, the Justice Department announced.
The prisoners won’t be transferred for weeks because of a law requiring at least 45 days notice to Congress before prisoner transfer from Guantanamo. Once brought to the U.S., the detainees will be held at the federal prison in New York.
Yet another reason why, as we begin to look back at the incredible clusterfarg that’s been 2009, the first year of the real life version of The West Wing has been even more improbable than its Hollywood counterpart, the Baseball Crank writes:
It’s impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn’t run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don’t buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland. Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another – Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Colombia, you name it – and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it – nothing to show for anything he’s done in foreign affairs. All but ignore democratic protests in Iran while supporting an illegal effort by Honduras’ president to stay on beyond the end of his term. Suddenly complain about corruption and electoral fraud in Afghanistan, while seeking the favor of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Vladimir Putin – heck, Obama endorsed half a dozen people in Chicago more corrupt than Hamid Karzai. On and on and on we go, with President Apology constantly straining to run down his country’s record and talk up the propagandized view of history of its enemies. He’s taken more time to “evaluate” General McChrystal’s recommendations about Afghan policy than it took George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and capture Kabul after September 11. It would be funny if it wasn’t tragically stupid and bound to get people killed. There is no mistake of our past that Obama is unwilling to remake.
If there’s an upside to all this, after months of watching KSM up close, even liberal New Yorkers may be ready to give Dick Cheney a medal.
Ed Morrissey rhetorically asks, “What do we get from having the 9/11 plotters tried in criminal court in New York City?”
Well, we get to have the city painted as a big, bright target for terrorist action during the entirety of the trial. Thanks to press coverage, which should be an order of magnitude more obsessive than the OJ Simpson trial in LA fourteen years ago, jihadists will come out of the woodwork to make a big international splash, or more likely a boom. We also give KSM and his cohorts a big, juicy media platform for their bile. That was one of their motivations for conducting the attack in the first place, and we finally get to deliver it to them.
Read the whole thing.
Update: “Ask yourself this question: suppose that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial results in an acquittal or a hung jury. Would the Obama administration really let him go? If so, they are crazy. If not, why are they holding the trial?”
Loop the Obamöbius loop!
In 2007, Bernadine Dohrn, Obama associate and former member of the Weather Underground terrorist group described living in America as being trapped in “the belly of the beast”:
We who are, as we used to say, in the belly of the beast … It again means not that we are the only purveyor of violence in the world, but that we have an extraordinary, special responsibility, not necessarily the most enviable one, of how to act here, inside the heart of the monster.
Which, while ordinarily disgusting language to describe America, seems oddly appropriate for this Obama-related story:
Despite all the evidence we have published that exposes ACORN as both corrupt and criminal, no other mainstream media organization has shown any signs of investigating ACORN despite countless angles and document trails. So I knew I had to go down to the protest on Bundy Drive to ask ACORN protesters a few questions.
With very little time I got in the car with Big Government Associate Editor Alex Marlow to meet Gary H. down at the protest. When we arrived, the protesters were fifty or so strong, monitored by a few police units standing to the side. Given that the police made me feel safe, I walked straight toward the chanting protesters while accepting an ACORN full-color single page handout entitled, “ACORN MEMBERS — MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THEIR COMMUNITIES,” which sung the praises of the organization.
As I walked toward the group I noticed a news camera was filming them, so I stood next to the camera, not only to memorialize what I was saying, but also as a further attempt to grant myself security, given that I was greatly outnumbered.
I told the group that my website, BigGovernment.com, was the website that had launched the ACORN story and that I was here to answer any questions they had about our investigation. Instead of engaging me, they backed away, pointed at their ACORN buttons, screamed and chanted. One ACORN leader, a towering African American gentleman, told the group: “‘We don’t want to hear what he has to say.” And began leading them in a group chant:
“Everywhere we go, people want to know, who we are, so we tell them: We are ACORN, mighty, might ACORN!
They also chanted, multiple times, words from the old Unidad Popular Marxist song that accompanied Salvador Allende’s successful 1970 presidential campaign in Chile: “The people united, will never be defeated” – a rallying cry for radical leftists all over the world.
I tried to draw their attention and talk as loud as I could, and asked a series of questions, “What do you think about Dale Rathke embezzling millions from your organization?” “How much are you getting paid?” “Are you aware that ACORN has been caught paying less than the minimum wage for protesters fighting for a minimum wage increase?”
And I also told them many times, “You are being used.”
As Andrew writes, “One thing was certain from this confrontation. They were not prepared for it.”
Huh. There seems to be a lot of that going on amongst the left this year. Or as Sue Esty, the assistant director of American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Maryland was quoted as saying in September, in reference to the right having learned Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals playbook, “It’s kind of scary! They have learned all of the tricks.”
Update: Earlier today we linked to Moe Lane’s post about Missouri’s Democrat Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and her incredible ability to say absolutely nothing about her desire for PelosiCare in a three minute soundbite. Found via Glenn Reynolds, Dana Loesch notes what else she isn’t saying much about: “More on Carnahans’ Ties to ACORN”, adding, “This also makes sense as to why so many ACORN workers were present at Russ Carnahan’s summer rally for fauxcare.”
Meanwhile, Patterico tweets, “Breitbart to hit ACORN in L.A. L.A. Times columnist James Rainey to get egg on his face.”
Jennifer Rubin links to a Washington Post item on the curious lettering found on Major Nidal Hasan’s business cards. You can see one in detail in this photo from yesterday’s Dallas Morning News photo spread on the contents of Hasan’s apartment:
Click photo to enlarge; Jennifer writes:
The Washington Post reports that Major Nadal Hasan’s apartment contained some business cards imprinted as follows:
Behavioral Health — Mental Health — Life Skills
Nidal Hasan, MD, MPH
SoA(SWT)
Psychiatrist
The Post explains: “SoA refers to ’soldier of Allah’ or ’slave of Allah,’ and ‘SWT’ to an Arabic phrase meaning ‘glory to him, the exalted.’” Sometimes there is simply no way to explain away reality.
Indeed; related thoughts on Hasan’s business card from Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, who has another photo of one of the cards.
Oh, and by the way, the Dallas Morning News also photographed a now-empty blister pack they also found in Hasan’s apartment that previously contained a LaserMax gun-sight:
“Why did they do all this, daddy?” “To stop global warming, honey”:
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(H/T: Theo Spark; related thoughts here.)
For those who are wondering why an army base of all places is, effectively, a gun-free zone, the Washington Times notes its origins:
Among President Clinton’s first acts upon taking office in 1993 was to disarm U.S. soldiers on military bases. In March 1993, the Army imposed regulations forbidding military personnel from carrying their personal firearms and making it almost impossible for commanders to issue firearms to soldiers in the U.S. for personal protection. For the most part, only military police regularly carry firearms on base, and their presence is stretched thin by high demand for MPs in war zones.
Because of Mr. Clinton, terrorists would face more return fire if they attacked a Texas Wal-Mart than the gunman faced at Fort Hood, home of the heavily armed and feared 1st Cavalry Division. That’s why a civilian policewoman from off base was the one whose marksmanship ended Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage.
Everyone wants to keep people safe – and no one denies Mr. Clinton’s good intentions. The problem is that law-abiding good citizens, not criminals, are the ones who obey those laws. Bans end up disarming potential victims and not criminals. Rather than making places safe for victims, we unintentionally make them safe for the criminal – or in this case, the terrorist.
The wife of one of the soldiers shot at Fort Hood understands all too well. In an interview on CNN Monday night, Anchor John Roberts asked Mandy Foster how she felt about her husband’s upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. Ms. Foster responded: “At least he’s safe there and he can fire back, right?”
Mayor Daley could not be reached for comment.
