Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

This morning, we’ll examine the Israeli attack on the UN outpost in Lebanon and how that story developed over the last 48 hours from an unprovoked aggression by the IDF to Hizbullah’s using the UN as a shield to conduct combat operations. We’ll also look at Hizbullah’s miscalculations that may end up costing the organization dearly.

And we’ll have the radio version of the Carnival of the Clueless! Don’t miss it.

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Ah Chicago! That toddling town!

As in “infantile:”

After months of fevered lobbying and bitter debate, the Chicago City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance yesterday requiring “big box” stores, like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, along with at least $3 an hour worth of benefits.

The ordinance, imposing the requirement on stores that occupy more than 90,000 square feet and are part of companies grossing more than $1 billion annually, would be the first in the country to single out large retailers for wage rules.

What in the wide, wide, world of sports could my hometown City Council be thinking of? When I wrote about this issue a couple of months ago, Wal-Mart was undecided about whether or not it would go through with its plans to open several more stores within the city limits, thus creating thousands of new jobs for Chicagoans – a city with an announced unemployment rate of 6.1% but with tens of thousands more not receiving benefits and thus, not counted.

Well, Wal-Mart has made up its mind:

In an interview at Wal-Mart’s Chicago office last week, Lewis said if the city council approved the bill, Wal-Mart would “put more time and effort in the suburbs,” in particular focusing on those close to the city in order to draw shoppers across city lines.

“It would stand to reason that we would ring Chicago with Supercenters,” Lewis said.

Late Wednesday in a written statement issued after the Chicago vote, Lewis added, “Our preference is to serve the people of Chicago in their communities and we will do what we can to keep up with significant consumer demand from city residents.” The official statement didn’t address whether Wal-Mart would carry through with threats to avoid opening stores within the city limits.

And to that, I’ll add a great big “duh.”

The backers of this measure are made up of the usual suspects; big labor, social activists groups like ACORN, and others who have what amounts to a kindergarteners understanding of economics:

“At the heart of this ordinance is equality and fairness,” Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon said in a statement. “Today’s vote sends a message that our elected officials and community members alike are not interested in the creation of low-paying jobs that fail to provide a living wage or adequate health-care benefits for working families.

“The choice between no job and a low-paying job is a choice between bad and worse,” Gannon said.

Mr. Gannon, sitting in his plush office in the Prudential Building downtown, obviously hasn’t talked to very many poor, unemployed people recently. If he had, he would know that his last statement about the choice between “no job and a low-paying job” is a crock of unadulterated crap. It also reveals a stupidity that is beyond belief. Better, Mr. Gannon supposes, that we just keep the unemployed on the dole rather than give them the hope and dignity that a job – any job – can give.

In addition, most of the jobs available at these “big box” retail stores are entry level jobs offered to those with few if any job skills. In the suburbs, these include teenagers, young dropouts, and college graduates who majored in philosophy or comparative lit.

In the city – especially this city with its dysfunctional public schools and blighted neighborhoods – it includes most of the unemployed as well as those who are unemployable. The measure passed by the Council has undermined the very nature of the “entry level” job opportunity for these people. The profit margin of retail stores is low to begin with. One of the only ways to hold down costs and make the store profitable is to keep entry level wages low since these positions suffer from the most turnover.

And the reason for that turnover is not necessarily low wages and benefits. It has much more to do with the failure of the employee to demonstrate even minimal job skills by being constantly late or not showing up for work at all as well as poor job performance. A retailer like Wal Mart will have a turnover of up to 60% after 90 days for these reasons alone. This doesn’t include things like employee theft, leaving for another job, or illness. There’s also the fact that the entry level employee has to be trained at a cost in productivity and time which adds considerably to the cost of a new hire.

The difference between $7.50 and $10.00 per hour is insignificant. Employees who stay on in entry level positions (and thus become eligible for regular raises in salary as well as benefits) overwhelmingly cite how they are treated by superiors as well as their enjoyment in working with people they get along with as reasons for staying on. Salary has little to do with a new hire sticking it out long enough to start earning a decent wage.

Also not addressed is that the scale has gone up for managers as well. In short, the entire salary structure for the store has been skewed. Does the store then raise the prices of its items to offset the rise in salaries? Not if it wants to stay in business very long. There are plenty of non-big box stores not subject to the whims of a bunch of economic ignoramuses sitting on the City Council who will be able to sell exactly the same products at a lower price.

Just how ignorant are the Council members who voted for this measure?

But some of the aldermen who voted in favor asserted that big retail firms, despite threats otherwise, will continue to locate in Chicago because of the growth that it offers and its fertile market.

“There is a buck to be made, a lot of bucks,” asserted Ald. Joe Moore (49th), the ordinance’s sponsor. “If they are to continue to remain profitable, they must expand.

Huh? You bet they’ll expand. They’ll expand right out of the city limits and into the near suburbs where they’re not treated like some factory manager in the old Soviet Union forced to run his plant according to what a bunch of idiots in the Politburo thought was proper.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the perplexed and bewildered President of the local retail association:

As union leaders and other proponents claimed victory, the Illinois Retail Merchants Association was poised to go to court, if necessary, to seek to have the measure declared unconstitutional.

“I’m not as disappointed as the thousands of job seekers who would have had an opportunity for employment,” said David Vite, the association’s president. “There are, as it stands, thousands of jobs that are going to be lost.”

And the Chamber of Commerce weighs in:

Gerald Roper, president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, put it in more dire terms.

“I think that the aldermen who voted in support of this helped put the sign up, really big, that development in Chicago is dead,” he said. “There is no sense of coming to this city because there is no predictability … And it is a sad day.”

Indeed. And the Chamber is ready to play a little hardball:

We are going to take a look at those aldermen who have decided they don’t want development in their particular wards, and we will make sure when we bring in retailers and other companies we go to the wards that have supported development,” Roper said. Two of the council members in good standing with the chamber because of their opposition to the measure are Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th) and Ald. Emma Mitts (37th), who represent impoverished wards on the West Side.

Is it just me or do the celebrations of the proponents of this measure ring hollow when Aldermen representing two of the poorest neighborhoods in the city begged their fellows not to pass this measure?

So much for “equality and fairness.”

UPDATE

I’m starting to feel picked on by the state. Every move I make is watched. Every conversation I have is taped. Every time I go to the bathroom, I feel the omnipresent and watchful eyes of the government making sure I flush and wash my hands.

Or…I’m a nut!

See Howie? See Howie smile. See Howie grin. See Howie be nice.

HOWARD DEAN CALLS FOR AN END TO DIVISIVENESS

Down with divisiveness was the message Wednesday delivered by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean as he told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing American apart

GOOD BOY, HOWIE! GOOD BOY

Now see Howie. Howie is mad. Howie is mean. Howie is a two faced lying weasel. Can you say “two faced lying weasel?”

I knew that you could.

HOWARD DEAN COMPARES KATHERINE HARRIS TO STALIN

Democrat leader Howard Dean called the Iraqi prime minister an “anti-Semite” during an address before party loyalists on Wednesday, drawing a swift rebuke from Republicans. The Democratic National Committee chairman also called Republican Senate candidate Katherine Harris a “crook” and compared her to Stalin.

Dean also used the Florida appearance to criticize President Bush, calling him “the most divisive president probably in our history” as he complained that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing the country apart.

“He’s always talking about those people. It’s always somebody else’s fault. It’s the gays’ fault. It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s the liberals’ fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault. It’s Hollywood people,” Dean said. “Americans are sick of that. Even if you win elections doing that, you drag down our country.”

BAD BOY, HOWIE! BAD BOY!

Howie says our President blames gays for our troubles. Howie is a two-faced lying weasel. Howie knows our President never blamed gays for our troubles. Not once. Not ever. Howie is fibbing.

BAD BOY, HOWIE! BAD BOY!

Howie says our President blames immigrants for our troubles. Howie is a two-faced lying weasel. Howie knows our President never blamed immigrants for our troubles. Not once. Not ever. Howie is fibbing. Our President loves immigrants. Can you say “Bush is in the pocket of the Chamber of Commerce when it comes to immigration reform?”

That’s okay. That was a hard one. Can you say “Bush is carrying water for big business interests who need the cheap labor illegals provide?”

Never mind children.

BAD BOY, HOWIE. BAD BOY! BAD BOY, GEORGE, BAD BOY!

Howie is unhinged. Howie is losing it. Howie can talk out of both sides of his mouth and get away with it. Why is that, children? That’s right. Because the reporters working for the big big newspapers and big big TV networks let him get away with it. Can you say “bias” and “double standard?”

I knew that you could.

BAD REPORTERS! BAD, BAD, BAD!

Okay children. That’s all for today. Tomorrow we’ll learn all about the war in Iraq. Can you say “Retreat and defeat?”

I knew that you could.

BAD DEMOCRATS! BAD, BAD, BAD!

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

This morning, we’ll look at the fierce battle for Bint Jubayl fought between the IDF and Hizbullah. We’ll also look at Iraq and the security situation facing our troops. In the second hour, we’ll take a peek at the 2006 congressional elections and what the prospects for each party will be.

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I almost feel like starting with the old saw “Once upon a time” except there’s nothing remotely amusing about what I’m going to write about. The facts in this matter are so outrageous, so bizarre that if they weren’t true, the story would almost certainly be considered for inclusion in Aesop or Kipling’s Just So Stories.

What is happening in the blogosphere today is the ugliest, most frightening display of political hardball I can ever remember. And the target is not some big time politician, bureaucrat, or reporter. The target doesn’t even reside in this country.

The target is a blogger who runs a small, well-written site. He goes by the nom de blog Seixon. He lives in Norway. And he is under attack from some of the left’s most hateful and spiteful mouthbreathers over his defense of one of his commenters who himself got into trouble for (to use one of the left’s favorite phrases) “speaking truth to power.”

The story is a convoluted one best told by Sexion himself. Here’s the short version, condensed quite nicely. You need to read that post in order to understand what else has been happening in the 24 hours since Seixon began to tell his story.

Ace has the super short version:

Long story short: AnonymousArmy is a poster on DailyKos. He objected to Leopold’s claim of proof of the “Rove indictment,” and pointed out stuff like, oh, the docket number he kept citing as being on the indictment wasn’t even assigned until several days after Leopold claims to have seen it.

Or have been told it existed by someone who’d seen it. Whatever the hell his claim was.

AnonymousArmy, as I understand it, believed the left was putting too much faith in the claims of Joe Wilson and his pimp Larry Johnson.

Leopold began harrassing AnonymousArmy, and escalating that harrassment, and, of course, escalating that harrassment via sock-puppets.

Some of these sock-puppets were exposed, and the story was picked up by Seixon, who also began getting abused by sock-puppets.

The players on the left are both familiar and unfamiliar. Jason Leopold, the left-wing fantasist that every decent liberal in the blogosphere no longer holds in any regard whatsoever. And Larry Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter-Terrorism official, frequent guest on cable talk shows, defender of Valerie Plame, and an internet bully.

A bully? Well, the thinly veiled threats against Sexion’s well being are among the sleaziest things I’ve ever seen posted on a blog:

Perhaps most haunting was the email I received from Larry Johnson last night. He claimed I defamed him and called him a liar. I did not defame him and he did lie to me when he said that he had answered my questions when he had in fact not done so. This was not part of the story I wrote yesterday, calling him a liar for that, I simply stated the fact that he declined to answer a set of yes/no questions I posed to him, as he responded that he had already answered them, which was false.

Johnson laced the email, to a personal account of mine which I do not usually give out and which is not available through Google, with personal details about my family and me. Just like Leopold had done, Johnson repeated my mother’s name, my parents’ address, and even my birth month and year. Obviously Johnson thought this would freak me out and scare me into retracting everything. He concluded the email with:

I am willing to accept a written apology and move on. If you refuse to retract your statements about me I am prepared to ratchet this up several levels. I have not spent the last twenty years working with the U.S. military and the intelligence community to accept this kind of nonsense from a wet-nosed 24 year old coward, who is an armchair warrior but does not have the courage to enlist in the military when his country is at war.

Is that a threat, Mr. Johnson? After I responded, he fired back with this:

I know where you are living. You forget that I do work for the European Union and friends in Interpol. I’ve offered you a mature way to deal with this situation. You’re obviously too immature and inexperienced to recognize the offer for what it is. Too bad.

Seixon asks “Is Larry Johnson using his law enforcement contacts to dig up information on me to intimidate me into retracting uncomfortable facts about his involvement with peddling false allegations against a commenter at my blog?”

In addition, some commenter named John Dean who had been defending Leopold actually called Seixon’s parents at their home:

Mr. Dean called my parents home in the United States (I live in Norway). He passed himself off as someone doing research for an article, got my father to confirm some things, and also divulged that he had researched my mother and father’s activities to do with a “liberal” cause.

On June 26th and June 27th, personal details about me were disclosed at Think Progress where I had been commenting frequently for the past few weeks. Think Progress management declined to remove the comments, citing the fact that the details could be found on the Internet, although this still violated their Terms of Use.

The story gets nuttier and even more bizarre with the addition of several sock puppets who have been making the rounds of the blogosphere posting on anyone’s site who comes to Seixon’s defense. I personally do not have the information to ascertain exactly who these sock puppets really are. But Sexion does.

In addition to sock puppets, there are falsified portions of emails used to “prove” Seixon’s “threats” and, most disturbing of all, there was this:

At approximately 7:00 AM Central European Time I received a phone call from a blocked number. The person on the phone told me I had written naughty things on my blog, and then laughed when I asked them who they were.

“You’re a dead man.”

This is what the person on the line told me right before hanging up.

The sock puppets have also made an appearance on Ace’s site, using both Seixon and Leopold/Johnson target Anonymousarmy’s names to post outrageous comments smearing the two out of control leftists:

Whoever is sock-puppeting for Leopold just happens to share Leopold’s obsessiveness in searching for references to his name on Technorati. (Have you heard this story before?)

As readers of this site know, someone calling himself “Seixon” posted all of the real Seixon’s personal information in a post. And then, tonight, someone attempting to discredit AnonymousArmy posted as “AnonymousArmy” and posted this hateful screed about “Jason Jew Leopold,” outing his personal information (supposedly) with a big helping of extremely crude, KKK-level Jew-hatred.

A nasty post. But one cannot help but suspect the post was designed to aid Jason Leopold, not hurt him, by discrediting an enemy, and drawing sympathy for Leopold’s supposedly thuggish treatment by his critics.

Death threats, sock puppets, falsifying emails, more subtle threats, publishing personal information, calling one’s family – I’ve never heard or seen anything like it.

These are tactics honed during the Clinton years and were used to terrify potential witnesses in the Paula Jones case. Journalists knew about these women who were receiving phone calls in the middle of the night, whose families were being contacted, and who many reported were being followed. Jennifer Flowers had her place broken into several times. Kathleen Willey reported all kinds of harassment and veiled threats.

Journalists knew – and never reported it. They didn’t want to receive the same “treatment” from the minions of the most powerful man on earth.

In the case of Seixon, he has aroused the fury of people whose house of cards in the Plame Affair is in danger of crashing down around them. It is now clear to any fair minded observer who has been following the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that while there was definitely White House pushback against Wilson for his lies about his trip to Niger, there was never any intent for “revenge” against his campaign to discredit the President of the United States nor was their a deliberate effort to out Valerie Plame who, after all, was not a covert agent in any way, shape, or form.

In Seixon’s case, he has come up against practitioners of a special kind of sleaze – the kind that is common inside the beltway but never before seen in the blogosphere. It is a campaign of whispering, of innuendo, of threats, of casual utterances made to chill the bones. It is hardball politics of the worst sort and the cockroaches who are practicing it should have as much light shone upon them as is possible. Hence the reason for this post.

I urge you to drop by Seixons blog and show him your support by leaving him a comment. I think if I were him right about now, I’d feel awfully alone. I’m sure he’d appreciate a word from everyone.

And to the trolls, the sock puppets, the leftist lickspittles who grub around in the muck and the filth, bottom feeding with the rest of the scavengers and eaters of carrion …

Get stuffed.

UPDATE

Patterico is also disturbed:

Christ on a popsicle stick.

a troubled young reporter with a history of drug addiction whose aggressive disregard for the rules ended up embroiling me in a bizarre escapade and raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.

The Anchoress is also troubled, seeing it as I do; unprecedented:

That, along with a few other cases of blog sock-puppetry and other things has more than made the case for me that certain parties within the blogosphere are beginning to whirrrr out of control. And that’s cause for concern, for several reasons, but mostly because when blogs become discredited, the whole “blogging community” suffers for it, and because, frankly – if this stuff doesn’t stop, someone is going to get hurt.

Too many people are beginning to fall into an “I have a blog and I’m not afraid to use it,” mentality, and that thought is morphing into an “I know where you live and where your children sleep” mentality.

She assures us that there are probably right wingers doing this kind of “off-blog” stuff but frankly, what makes the Seixon case so disturbing is the prominence of the leftists carrying it out. And I can’t see any righties of comparable standing doing the same thing.

UPDATE II 7/27

Goodnight, Larry. It was nice but I’m very happy you have to leave now. Your 6 year run as “terrorism expert” (after writing in the NYT two months before 9/11 of the “declining terrorist threat”) is over. Any news outlet that touches you with a 10 foot pole now should be called out as a facilitator of bullies.

Maybe you could join Dan Rather on Mark Cubans HDTV network?

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today we’ll have a look at war news plus an update on the security situation in Iraq. Then, in the 8:00 AM central time hour we’ll have our Blog of the Week blogger Romeocat to discuss her post on young Jay Cherrix, who is fighting the state of Virginia to treat his cancer according to his own lights. It’s a compelling story and I’m sure you won’t want to miss it.

Then during the 8:30 AM hour, I’ll be joined by Clarice Feldman, a Washington D.C. attorney and fellow contributor at The American Thinker. We’ll discuss the media, intelligence leaks, and a little of the Plame Game.

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New York Times best selling author and famous sock puppet Glenn Greenwald has done us all another favor. In the past, The Great Waldo has given us the benefit of his wit and wisdom regarding all manner of conservative sinfulness, most notably that the right has transgressed by failing to recognize the god-like thunderbolts of truth and logic that sputter and spark from his tireless (and tiresome) pen on a daily basis.

Forgive us, your Puppetress! We are not worthy. And may I suggest that the brown sock matches your eyes and skin tones quite nicely while the blue one makes your hand look rather limp and unattractive?

What has Waldo in a hysterics today is that someone dared try to debunk one of the left’s made up terms that insults, smears, and savages conservatives. Like redefining “racism” to include ethnic groups that are not of another race and are in fact, scientifically speaking, as white as the driven snow (Hispanics, Arabs, and anyone else who wants to piggyback on top of the grievance culture of the left), Waldo is in a snit because Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe wrote an article revealing the “chickenhawk” charge made by the left against people who disagree with their anti-war worldview has nothing whatsoever to do with debating the issues. Rather, by using the term, liberals have every intent of shutting off discussion while at the same time, gleefully savaging their political opponents by creating a narrative that places them in an ascendant moral position.

Goldstein has called out the left on this tactic many times, most recently here:

And controlling the narrative—first by bending it to fit your will, then by repeating it until it becomes provisional “truth”—is at the heart of a progressive “activism” that, let’s face it, has failed to win people over using an unrigged marketplace of ideas.

Indeed, it is now impossible to have a discussion about racism in America without including Hispanics as a separate “race” and a victim of white oppression despite the fact that there is not now nor has there ever been such a unique racial anthropological designation for Hispanics. It is simply part and parcel of the left’s desire to stand truth on its head whenever they feel it necessary to gain an advantage in dialogue and has nothing to do with reality, science, the ordering of an individual’s genes, or the correct usage of the English language. It is bogus. It is disgusting. And it must stop.

Similarly, Waldo attempts to redefine the word “chickenhawk” in order to dismiss Jacoby’s argument without even addressing its major point; that the use of the term is a slur and is used to shut people up. Here’s Jacoby:

``Chicken hawk” isn’t an argument. It is a slur—a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don’t really mean what they imply—that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force. After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer. On the question of Iraq—stay-the-course or bring-the-troops-home?—I would be willing to trust their judgment. Would Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean?

The cry of ``chicken hawk” is dishonest for another reason: It is never aimed at those who oppose military action. But there is no difference, in terms of the background and judgment required, between deciding to go to war and deciding not to. If only those who served in uniform during wartime have the moral standing and experience to back a war, then only they have the moral standing and experience to oppose a war. Those who mock the views of ``chicken hawks” ought to be just as dismissive of ``chicken doves.”

In any case, the whole premise of the ``chicken hawk” attack—that military experience is a prerequisite for making sound pronouncements on foreign policy—is illogical and ahistorical.

It should be noted that not all agree with Jacoby’s contention that military service makes one more hawkish. In fact, McQ at Q & O makes a good case that military service actually makes one more dovish. But putting that aside, instead of addressing the meat of Jacoby’s argument, Greenwald once again raises the bar by redefining the term and restructuring the chickenhawk narrative so that it can be applied in as broad a manner as is possible:

That is simply not what “chicken hawk” means, and it is less than forthright of Jacoby to mis-define the concept in order to argue against it. Although there is no formal definition for it, the “chicken hawk” criticism is not typically made against someone who merely (a) advocates a war but (b) will not fight in that war and/or has never fought in any war (although, admittedly, there are those who mis-use the term that way). After all, the vast majority of Americans in both political parties meet that definition. The war in Afghanistan was supported by roughly 90% of Americans, as was the first Persian Gulf War, even though only a tiny fraction of war supporters would actually fight in those wars which they advocated.

Something more than mere support for a war without fighting in it is required to earn the “chicken hawk” label. Chicken-hawkism is the belief that advocating a war from afar is a sign of personal courage and strength, and that opposing a war from afar is a sign of personal cowardice and weakness. A “chicken hawk” is someone who not merely advocates a war, but believes that their advocacy is proof of the courage which those who will actually fight the war in combat require.

That last part of Waldo’s “definition” – “Chicken-hawkism is the belief that advocating a war from afar is a sign of personal courage and strength, and that opposing a war from afar is a sign of personal cowardice and weakness” – is a brand spanking new addition to the word’s meaning. And it was appended to the original meaning by none other than the Great Waldo Sock Puppet himself (or one of his many admirers).

How do we know? This is a cached version of the Wikpedia page defining the term “chickenhawk” from just two days ago (7/23):

Chickenhawk (also chicken hawk and chicken-hawk) is a political epithet used in United States to criticize a politician, bureaucrat, or commentator who strongly supports a war or other military action, but has never personally been in a war, especially (but not always) if that person is perceived to have actively avoided military service when of draft age. The term is a deliberate insult, meant to indicate that the person in question is cowardly or hypocritical for personally avoiding combat in the past while advocating that others go to war in the present. Often, the implication is that the person in question lacks the experience, judgment, or moral standing to make decisions about going to war.

Here is the Wikpedia definition as seen today – after more than 50 revisions to the entry in the last 24 hours:

Chickenhawk (also chicken hawk and chicken-hawk) is a political epithet used in United States to criticize a politician, bureaucrat, or commentator who strongly supports a war or other military action, but has never personally been in a war, especially (but not always) if that person is perceived to have actively avoided military service when of draft age. Many proponents of the term insist on an additional requirement: Chickenhawks believe that their support for a war (or other military action) is an indication of their personal courage and that those who disagree are appeasers and/or cowards. This important point is rarely acknowledged by the term’s opponents when its use is criticized.

(Emphasis mine)

Could the reason the point is “rarely acknowledged by the term’s opponents when its use is criticized” have to do with the fact that Mr. Sock Puppet redefined the term only just today for his own purposes of argument? Give us some time, Waldo! Another day at least before we acknowledge your blindingly brilliant addition to the nomenclature of the word.

Even if Waldo or one of his minions did not rush to alter the Wikpedia definition to reflect his revised, made up definition, the point still stands; when losing an argument, the left invariably tries to change the parameters of the narrative rather than attempt to win on the merits or on logic. They view language with a fluidity that lacks the proper respect for and understanding of the importance of commonality of usage – that we all must use the same reference points when talking with each other. Otherwise, we talk past each other rather than with one another.

One of my commenters “GawainsGhost” – a much smarter and more credentialed man than I – puts the abuse of language by the left in perspective:

But the larger point is that deconstruction best serves the purposes of leftist academics, which are to teach that a poem or text says what they want it to say. This is why other academic fads, like Marxist theory, feminist theory and new historicism, are so prevalent in today’s academy. Deconstruction allows a Marxist or a feminist or a new historicist to take any poem or text and claim that it supports whatever ideology they advocate, even and especially if that ideology did not exist anywhere at the time the text was composed and has absolutely nothing to do with the intention of the author. (Incidentally, the best book on this subject, if you’re interested in pursuing it, is John M. Ellis’s Against Deconstruction, Princeton UP 1989.)

When there is no truth and words have no meaning, any text, or any event for that matter, can be turned around and made to say or mean the exact opposite of what it actually says or means.

Turning truth and reality upside down. Travelling to a place where black is white, up is down, and intent doesn’t matter as much as forcing it to fit into a new, interpretive paradigm that bears no resemblance to any sense or significance allowed by the author.

Welcome to Waldo’s World.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today we’ll be discussing the practice of Hizbullah of using civilians as human shields and the problems that poses for the IDF and the rest of the civilized world. We’ll also look at the fallout from the war and some of the political ramifications in the Middle East.

You can access the stream by clicking on the “Listen Live” button in the left sidebar.

When I first read about Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams saying that she “would love to kill George Bush” I wasn’t particularly shocked. It’s not like we haven’t heard similar sentiments expressed everyday on liberal websites. In books, plays, and probably their wet dreams, liberals write and fantasize about bathing in the blood of George W. Bush, celebrating as the life oozes out of the President of the United States, dancing on his mangled corpse and the corpses of their political enemies.

I’d say that they were engaging in “eliminationist” fantasies but as I’ve pointed out before, there’s no such word.

But what made the statement shocking was the reaction of her audience – made up of children:

“I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence’, because I don’t believe that I am non-violent,” said Ms Williams, 64.

“Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.” Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

There’s something profoundly disturbing seeing children cheering on the murder of another human being, even if he is President of the United States and even if the left has made it perfectly acceptable to contemplate murdering him. It reminds me of stories that circulated in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. According to William Manchester’s searing chronicle of the assassination Death of a President, there were several instances in Dallas schools where, upon hearing that the President was shot, children spontaneously applauded.

The reason can be found in the Warren Report. When the Commission was discussing how much blame to place on the city of Dallas itself for the assassination, there were several members who believed they couldn’t be too harsh in their criticism. In the end, the Report downplayed the white hot atmosphere of hate and loathing against Kennedy that had been ginned up by Ted Dealy, owner of the Dallas News as well as the local John Birch Society that was made up of several prominent Dallas civic leaders. In fact, on the day of the assassination, Dealy’s paper ran a full page ad with a picture of Kennedy, front and side view as if looking at a mugshot, with the banner “Wanted For Treason” in bold, black letters across the top.

The Commission found that there were dozens of instances of people in Dallas talking openly of assassinating Kennedy when he came to town or wishing that someone would. Texas Governor John Connally had heard the talk as well and begged the President not to go to Dallas. But some of the President’s aides saw Connally’s warnings as self serving. The reason for the Texas trip was to repair the schism in the Democratic party between Connally’s boys and the liberal wing of the Texas Democratic party headed up by Congressman Henry Gonzalez. Connally’s warnings were seen as an effort to stop the President from coming to Texas and foiling the Governor’s plans to kick the liberals into the corner, freezing them out of party leadership positions and influence.

But Kennedy Derangement Syndrome was pretty much confined to Dallas and a few other cities in the south. What is clear from the reaction to Mrs. Williams ranting in Australia is that its successor, Bush hatred, has gone global. We shouldn’t be surprised by this given the planet-wide reach of mass media, the internet, satellite TV, and pop music (especially Hip-Hop) whose graphic images and language routinely threatens violence against the President and authority figures in general.

It makes one wonder – how many similar demonstrations would there be by children the world over? In the United States?

A proud day for the left. And God help liberals if something happens to our President before his term in office ends.

UPDATE

Goldstein has another example of superior, reasoned thought from the left. This post from Booman Tribune is a sterling example (one that we conservatives should take to heart) about how to engage in debate with your ideological foes:

Forgive me for this but Alan Dershowitz’s children should be hit by a 5000 lb. bomb made by an American military-industrial corporation, sold to Israel, and misfired into his home. Then he can talk to me. I will offer my sincere condolences. Then we will get drunk and talk about relative culpability. I’m sorry Alan. You’re scum. Among the people in history that would gladly bitch-slap you are Jesus, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Nelson Mendala, Bishop Tutu, Pope John Paul II, and me. We’d all like to smack you for being a prick.

Actually, as Jeff points out, this threatening violence against children is getting to be something of a habit with the left recently, Perhaps like Magua in the Last of the Mohicans (nice turn by Wes Studi, btw) he “wishes to wipe his seed from the face of the earth.” More likely, he’s just a moronic twit who enjoys playing with himself thinking about naked dead children.

AND WHERE IS GLENN GREENWALD? WHY HASN’T GLENN GREENWALD CONDEMNED THIS OUTRAGEOUS RHETORIC?

To my mind, it is one of the most amazing transformations in recent political history. After working tirelessly in the post World War II environment to assist in the establishment of the state of Israel, many on the left have forgotten the original noble impulses that spurred their advocacy for a Jewish homeland and, in some cases, replaced it with a virulent, nauseating anti-semitism.

The dichotomy has its roots in the transformation of the old left to the new. While it is true the old left embraced Soviet Stalinism, it nevertheless rejected the Soviet state’s overt anti-Semitism the same way it ignored other human rights obscenities under Uncle Joe’s regime – such things just didn’t happen in the “worker’s paradise.” But it was the refugee crisis in post war Europe that galvanized the left and spurred their support for United Nations action on establishing the State of Israel.

The war ended with millions of displaced persons including 1.5 million Jews who refused repatriation or were denied re-entry to the countries of their birth. This was due in large part to a vicious anti-Semitism, especially in Eastern Europe. It was especially true in Poland where there were several pogroms carried out against returning Jews including a massacre of 42 Holocaust survivors in Kielce. The US and Britain also failed these unfortunate refugees in American restrictions on immigration and the British refusal to allow unrestricted immigration to Palestine. The UN had put the British in charge in Palestine and the local Arab population was not keen on having hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into what they claimed were their ancestral lands.

By 1947, the situation in the camps was getting desperate. This led to the formation of several Jewish quasi-military units who began spiriting the more than 250,000 displaced persons out of camps and onto ships bound for the Holy Land. Intercepting most of these ships filled with Holocaust survivors, the British set up detention camps on the island of Cyprus to deal with this crush of humanity. These camps were administered by the British Army, not the United Nations and the conditions – little shelter, horrible food, inadequate medical care – were a disgrace.

Led by socialist groups in Europe and America (a large and vocal segment of which were Jews), the resulting international outcry spurred the United Nations into action. The British pawned the problem off to the UN at the urging of President Truman and a special session of the UN General Assembly voted on November 29, 1947, to partition Palestine into two new states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The solution was embraced by the Jews but rejected by the Arabs. On May 14, 1947, the State of Israel was born.

On May 15, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq invaded.

Fighting for their lives, outnumbered 10-1, the Israelis nevertheless prevailed. Over a nine month period, they pushed the Arab armies out of Israel while forcibly displacing some 750,000 Palestinian Arabs. This was a solution backed by the western left at the time because the armistice agreement between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria allowed for the formation of an Arab state in Judea, Samaria, and the West Bank of the Jordan River. The problem was that it was not the Palestinians who would be administering that state. The UN-brokered accord called for Jordan and Egypt to share in governing the Palestinian territory.

For the first 25 years of its existence, the State of Israel’s greatest champions in the west were on the left. Through the wars in 1967 and 1973, liberals in America lobbied for strong American support for Israel against its enemies who were seeking to destroy it.

But something happened that transitioned the left’s strong support for Israel into opposition to Israeli policies and even tipping over into anti-Semitism. And the answer can be found in the transition from the tolerance, coherence, and nobility of thought of the old left into the intolerant, riot of conceits and unabashed hatred spouted by the new left.

It wasn’t just the radicalization of politics during the 1960’s that gave the new left traction. More than anything, it was their bold forays into political advocacy that gave them real power and caused a sea change in American liberalism that booted the old left to the sidelines. Immersing themselves in Democratic party politics, the new left’s anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, statist (later anti-globalist) message that became ascendant saw the state of Israel as just one more rich state oppressing poorer ones. Forgotten was the reason for the formation of the State of Israel. Instead, the grievance culture of the new left identified with the Palestinian cause (as they identified with the bloodthirsty North Vietnamese during the war) and saw Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine a travesty of justice.

This is how the new left can look at Hizbullah and rather than seeing a terrorist group wishing to kill every living Jew in Israel they see instead a “resistance” to Zionist neo-colonialism. The Ward Churchills and Cindy Sheehans of the new left are only the most incoherent examples of a kind of virulent anti-Semitism disguised as opposition to capitalism and “racism” (as if Arabs and Jews are of a different race) that is now accepted on the new left as gospel. In fact, it is now perfectly acceptable to daydream about ridding the world of the Jewish state while making the jaw-dropping denial that this is in any way anti-Semitic.

This diary at Daily Kos sums it up perfectly: Does Israel Have a “Right to Exist?:

Might doesn’t make right, but it does determine who acts as they please.

The problem is the nations that get no respect and get anti-social as a result. It won’t help Israel to become a giant of bombers and tanks, because they cannot use their nukes.

We hope. What happens if Goliath strikes first, before David winds up his slingshot?

My answer? Evacuate Israel. Take everything that ain’t screwed down. Buy Baja, or some other available property. If it can’t be done anywhere in the world, change the culture to one of assimilation.

He is not alone. As this excellent article in The Weekly Standard by Dean Barnett points out, Daily Kos (which is the largest meeting place for the new left on the web) reveals much more of a casual, obscene anti-Semitism in its numerous diarists and commenters:

Perhaps sensing that this issue could highlight just how far removed the Kos community is from the American mainstream, Moulitsas and his other front-page bloggers have opted to ignore Israel’s war. Combined, the half dozen front-pagers have written exactly one post on the subject. And that post, authored by Moulitsas, simply declared that he wouldn’t write anything further on the subject. So while the most important story of the year develops, the nation’s leading progressive blog has chosen to focus on the Indiana second district House race between Chris Chocola and Joe Donnelly. Nothing wrong with that; it’s their prerogative to blog about whatever they like.

But inside the Kos diaries, it’s been a different story. The conversation in the diaries has been overwhelmingly anti-Israel—and potentially disastrous for the Democratic party.

One diarist labeled Israel “a destabilizing force in the region” and saw “no difference between Iran’s support of Hezbollah and Hamas in the form of finances and even arms and The United States’ financial support of Israel.” Before modifying this diary into a more moderate form, the author opened his essay with the declaration, “Israel is showing the entire world why the Iranian President was absolutely right to suggest that Israel cease being a sovereign state as is.”

Echoing the themes of moral equivalence and hostility towards the Jewish state, another diarist observed that, “War is nothing but terrorist attacks. Call it what you will, whatever rhetoric you want to use . . . when it comes down to it, that’s all it is. Israel committed terrorism today. And we helped to fund that terrorism.” [Ellipsis in original.]

It must be stressed that there is a difference between opposing the policies of the American and Israeli governments and anti-Semitism. But try as one might, it becomes virtually impossible to take such critiques as simple political disagreements when the very same rhetoric used by the anti-Semitic, Holocaust denying Arabs to call for the destruction of the State of Israel is used by the new left in their hateful rants against the Jewish state.

Clearly this metamorphosis by the left from strong support to hateful opposition towards the State of Israel can have a disastrous political effect if exploited by Republicans. However, since no prominent Democratic politician has actually come out and condemned Israels actions in the latest conflict (even though 8 House Democrats including ranking members Conyers, Dingell, Rahall, Stark and Abercrombie – all in line for Committee chairmanships if the Democrats take control – voted no on the House Resolution supporting Israel) it seems unlikely that the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic mouthings of the Democratic base will play any role at all in the November elections.

As Sir Thomas More said in Robert Bolton’s play A Man for All Seasons regarding the switching between Protestantism and Romanism by Will Roper, “Let us pray that when your head stops spinning, it ends up facing the right way.”

One can only hope that the left in America once again will face the “right way” and come home to its original lofty and noble support for one of its truly decent impulses of the 20th century – giving a battered and oppressed people a place that they could call home and where the words “Never Again” would have real as well as symbolic meaning.