Right Wing Nut House

Join us for another riveting episode of the RINO Hour of Power hosted by Rick Moran with special co-host Jazz Shaw.

In exactly 7 days, Americans will go to the polls. But will all Americans vote next Tuesday? Damage from Hurricane Sandy may force some states to delay the vote in order to deal with the humanitarian crisis.

We’ll examine this issue as well as other aspects of the presidential campaign with Investors Business Daily columnist Andrew Malcolm.

The show streams live from 8:00 - 9:00 PM eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show.

You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, when the right wing screwballs call me a “RINO” (Republican in Name Only), what they really mean is that I am a “CINO” (Conservative in name only). It’s a minor point since the GOP — as Reagan and Buckley always dreamed it would be — is now the Conservative Party. All vestiges of Rockefeller Republicanism, Midwest Main Street Conservatism, and intellectual conservatism have been rubbed out to be replaced by a hard right hybrid of authoritarian populism, and fervid evangelical mysticism.

So calling me a RINO is a badge I wear with honor. Moreso today following these two articles in the two publications I work for.

I will not comment on them except to say I do not agree with the sentiments expressed.

Roger Simon in the featured article at PJ Media: “Beyond Impeachment: Obama Treasonous over Benghazi”

When you ascribe an action to the protest of a video when it is actuality a planned terror attack by Ansar al-Shariah, an established offshoot of al-Qaeda (if that’s not your “enemy,” then who) — and you knew that all along, you watched it live without doing anything, and then you told those who wanted to help to “stand down”? Meanwhile, our government may have been conspiring to arm another offshoot of al-Qaeda in Syria.

How much more treasonous can you get? Benedict Arnold was a piker.

Indeed, the discussion of Benghazi has just begun. And don’t be surprised if the conversation escalates from impeachment to treason very quickly. In fact, if Obama wins reelection you can bet on it. The cries of treason will be unstoppable. Not even if the mainstream media will be able to deny them.

As Pat Caddell noted, those same media lapdogs have muzzled themselves in an unprecedented manner in this matter, but our Canadian friends at least have some semblance of honor left, writing:

It is undoubtedly worse than Obama simply turned his back on cornered American citizens in a foreign land, knowing undoubtedly they would die. But that Barack did so without any compelling reason—except political—is beyond evil. Only a moral monster would have made that decision when it was within his powers to possibly save them with almost no effort of his own.

Moral monster? Those are extreme words but they fit an extreme situation and are appropriate to the use of the t-word. But it’s worse. Many now are trying to figure out the motivation for this behavior — beyond the obvious electoral whoring mentioned above, the need to be seen in a certain manner at a certain moment to be sure the Ohio vote doesn’t fall the wrong way.

But is there more than that? Is the treason yet greater? Were Obama and others covering up more than their ineptitude? Just what was Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi that day? Why had he left the Libyan capital to meet with the Turkish ambassador on the anniversary of September 11?

Daren Jonescu writing in The American Thinker: “Would Obama Incite Civil Unrest to Win?”

Could Obama really be reduced to attempting to win re-election through mob protests and intimidation — i.e., through a climate of fear?

Let us examine the broad facts. According to the recent polls, most of which have been conducted by organizations sympathetic to Obama, Romney appears to be on his way to victory. Obama’s policy record is insupportable on the basis of its results, and his campaign knows it. His one ace in the hole, his alleged effectiveness in the Middle East, has been exposed once and for all as a disastrous lie. And his opponent’s past seems to be scandal-free, thus eliminating the one major comeback technique his inner circle has shown any past skill in executing.

All appears lost for Obama according to normal campaign channels. It is time for the Hail Mary pass. But do we have any grounds for imagining that he and his team would stoop so low as to seek to incite mass incivility, on or before Election Day?

Let us examine a few more facts. Barack Obama’s primary occupation before electoral politics was as a community organizer in Chicago. He was an adviser to ACORN, the election fraud racket and socialist activism organization founded by former SDS radical Wade Rathke. His mentors in Chicago included Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the Weather Underground leaders who staged the Days of Rage in 1969; Rashid Khalidi, apologist for and promoter of anti-Israeli violence; and Jeremiah Wright, whose most famous words are “God damn America!” In his youth, of course, Obama’s primary male role model was Frank Marshall Davis, a communist and, naturally, a community organizer.

Would any of the people I just named stop short of using intimidation or civil unrest to achieve their political ends, if they believed it would be effective — or that it was their only hope?

Too speculative, you say? What does any of this have to do with Obama himself, you ask?

Join us tonight for another swashbuckling episode of the RINO Hour of Power, hosted by Rick Moran with special co-host Jeff Kropf of KUIK radio.

The campaign is entering its final two weeks with the polls showing a very tight race. What will be the strategies of both candidates as they head for home? What states will they concentrate their resources on? What are some of the likely electoral college scenarios in play?

To answer these and other questions, Bryan Preston of PJ Media will appear as a guest. The panel will also review last night’s debate and talk about the media’s role in deciding the election.

The show streams live from 8:00 - 9:00 PM Eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show.

You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.

Have you ever wondered what your life would be like, what kind of person you would be, if the circumstances in which you were born were radically different?

Suppose you’re a white male who had been born black, or native American, or even a woman? Do you think that you would be a different sort of person? Would your personal morality, political beliefs, or your outlook on life be altered from what it is now?

I find it a stimulating exercise to play this little imaginary game on occasion because it forces you to place yourself outside your regular existence and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Most often, I find myself doing this when reading history or biography. Would I have been a rebel or a tory? A supporter of the union or the south? Who would I have voted for in the election of 1900?

Of course, you are a prisoner of your own environment and life experiences, so it becomes an exercise in futility to truly and deeply understand what it might be like to be a black man in America, or, like Russell Means, a Native American activist who died today at the age of 72.

New York Times :

Russell C. Means, the charismatic Oglala Sioux who helped revive the warrior image of the American Indian in the 1970s with guerrilla-tactic protests that called attention to the nation’s history of injustices against its indigenous peoples, died on Monday at his ranch in Porcupine, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He was 72.

[...]

Strapping, ruggedly handsome in buckskins, with a scarred face, piercing dark eyes and raven braids that dangled to the waist, Mr. Means was, by his own account, a magnet for trouble — addicted to drugs and alcohol in his early years, and later arrested repeatedly in violent clashes with rivals and the law, once tried for abetting a murder, shot several times, stabbed once and imprisoned for a year for rioting.

He styled himself a throwback to ancestors who resisted the westward expansion of the American frontier and, with theatrical protests that brought national attention to poverty and discrimination suffered by his people, became arguably the nation’s best-known Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

But critics, including many Native Americans, called him a tireless self-promoter who capitalized on his angry-rebel notoriety by running quixotic races for the presidency and the governorship of New Mexico, by acting in dozens of movies — notably in the title role of “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992) — and by writing and recording music commercially with Indian warrior and heritage themes.

I sometimes think that if I had been born black, or native American, I would have become a Communist. Or there are times, I imagine I would have resigned myself to my unequal station in life and simply gone about living — resentful and bitter at the hand dealt me by fate. Other times, I think I would have been a simmering, smoldering, in your face kind of activist. No Martin Luther King, I. You hit me, I hit you back twice as hard. There would have been rage — not only for any current slights but for past injustices that I think I would have experienced viscerally and not intellectually — as if the wounds were deep and recent.

My life experiences do not allow me to really imagine what it would have been like to be Russell Means. But I want to believe I understand where he is coming from. He was a very angry man. I doubt whether he hated injustice more than he hated the white man, which some might find understandable and thus excuse his racism as justified under the circumstances. He made no effort to rise above his own anger — something many racial activists are able to do successfully.

But Means’ activism served a large and worthy purpose by calling attention to the miserable plight of Native Americans. Recent years have seen tribes running casinos on their reservations (”like the buffalo returning” quipped one Native American leader) and while the gambling houses raise millions, still not enough is being done by tribal councils and the US government to lift the poorest of the poor out of abject poverty. In 2010, the poverty rate on reservations was 28.4 percent, compared with 22 percent among all American Indians (on and off reservations), and 15.3 percent among all Americans. This is an intolerable state of affairs and Means tried his utmost to call attention to it.

More than fighting poverty, Means fought for dignity. It seems trite and vainglorious to say that someone fought for an intangible like dignity, but in the case of Means and Native Americans, it is true. Certainly the helplessness born of the indignity of reservation life is a contributing factor to poverty. Did Means change that dynamic? He definitely inspired younger Native Americans to take up the cause and the pride of heritage he infused in them will pay dividends in years to come. The entire American Indian Movement — violent and racist as it was at times — has been a source of inspiration to the generations born since the 1960’s. When weighed on the scales of history, AIM will probably be considered an overall plus for instilling racial values in the young and attempting to preserve Native American culture.

Means was not one to practice cultural relativity. That wasn’t how he saw himself. He was a rabble rouser, a prick on the conscience of white Americans.

And considering the beastly treatment by the US government toward Native Americans, we needed a prick every now and again to be reminded of our sins, but more importantly, our responsibilities to the “First Americans.”

Join us tonight for another fascinating episode of The RINO Hour of Power., co-hosted by my orignal RHOP partner Jazz Shaw.

Mitt Romney surged in the polls following the first debate with President Obama, but now seems to be leveling off, and even losing some ground to the president. Has he peaked too soon? Or will another strong debate performance tonight give him further momentum?

Rich Baehr, American Thinker Political Correspondent and regular RHOP guest host will join us for a discussion of the polls and a look at the race 3 weeks from election day.

The show streams live from 8:00 - 9:00 PM Eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show.

You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.

There is a Texas woman who won multi-million dollar scratch off lottery tickets in her state 4 times in a little more than a decade.

First, she won $5.4 million, then a decade later, she won $2million, then two years later $3million and in the summer of 2010, she hit a $10million jackpot.

It turns out she was a Stanford University professor specializing in statistics and may have been able to figure out how to game the system, although Texas lottery officials discount that idea.

But the odds of her winning 4 scratch off tickets of those amounts are “one in eighteen septillion and luck like this could only come once every quadrillion years.”

I bring this up because last night, Sue bought a scratch off ticket at our local grocery store and won $5,000.

This is extraordinary in and of itself. The odds of winning $5,000 are one in 30,000.

But 5 grand is chump change to Sue. In 2004, after we had both lost our jobs and I had just started blogging in September, November 12 proved to be a lucky day indeed:

The other day, significant Otherhawk and I went to the store to pick up a few essentials; Oscar Mayer Bologna, Velveeta cheese, Hellman’s REAL mayonnaise, and Rosen’s Jewish Rye…all of which no self-respecting man in western civilization can live without.

On the way out the door, Otherhawk did something she NEVER does; she bought two instant scratch-off lottery tickets. We sat in the car scratching them. Mine was a bust, no winners. But Otherhawk matched one number on the card.

We were expecting no more than a $5 or $10 winner. So, imagine our surprise when she scratched off the space where the prize amount was revealed:

THE PRIZE AMOUNT WAS $100,000!!!

That’s right…$100,000. We. Just. Couldn’t. Believe. It. In fact, it still hasn’t sunk in. The odds of winning the grand prize were 1:672,544. Which just goes to show you…

“THE FORCE WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU” (Obi Wan Kenobi)

We still only buy scratch tickets once a month or so, which makes this serendipitous event last night a truly remarkable occurrence.

For some, it might prove the existence of an all powerful and loving God. To others, it validates chaos theory where random atoms spinning around the universe, colliding willy nilly with other atoms, makes the random seem foreordained.

I was lucky when I found my Zsu-Zsu at age 50. And today, I have another reason to thank my lucky stars we’re together.

Join us tonight for another stellar episode of The RINO Hour of Power, hosted by Rick Moran and guest host tonight Fausta Wertz of Fausta’s Blog.

New polls out this week show that Romney has erased whatever lead President Obama held and has caught him and even surged in front in some polls. Can he maintain his position? Or is he destined to fall back?

To answer those questions, Bridget Johnson, Washington, D.C. editor of PJ Media, will join the show to discuss this surge by Mitt Romney as well as preview the vice presidential debate scheduled for Thursday night.

The show streams live from 8:00 - 9:00 Eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show. You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.

I’ve got a piece up at PJ Media I would like to share.

A sample:

The world is slowly returning to its proper axis after being out of kilter for a while. San Francisco is once again the best team in the NFL. The Chicago Cubs lost 100 games. Hockey players are locked out, causing the fourth work stoppage in 20 years. NBC is the number one TV network again. Nucky Thompson is back and is as slimy as ever. And Nicholas Brody has also returned, teasing us with the prospect that he really isn’t an American terrorist, just some poor, misunderstood Muslim convert who may be the next vice president of the United States.

Oh…and did I mention Republicans have given us permission to believe the polls again?

That’s right. Mitt Romney’s stellar debate performance has revived his moribund campaign, energized his supporters, and put the magic back in opinion polls. Somehow, the same random sampling that pollsters were using when Mr. Romney was in deep trouble has produced favorable results for the GOP candidate. The latest Pew survey interviewed 567 Romney supporters and 552 Obama partisans. The sample shows the race dead even among registered voters and gives Romney a 4 point lead among likely voters.

The Pew poll on 9/19 interviewed 1,188 Obama supporters and 1,062 of Romney’s. That survey gave the president an 8 point lead over the Republican and had GOP partisans howling about “rigged” polls.

Whether one “believes” the polls or not, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the race is close. It was close when Romney was supposedly in trouble and it’s close now. It is likely that a few hundred thousand votes — maybe less — in two or three states will determine who will be sitting in the Oval Office on January 20, 2013. This has been foreordained for months, and the dynamics that have prevented either candidate from pulling away remain the same. That fact is that people are looking for a reason to vote for Romney and kick Obama out, but the Republican candidate has been unable to give them one.

This is partly his fault, but it is mostly due to a vicious campaign of lies and half-truths that have painted the GOP candidate as a cross between Gordon Gekko and Babbitt — an evil, uncaring plutocrat who would ship his grandmother’s job to China if given the chance. Romney was able to break through the clutter during the debate where 68 million Americans began to wonder who this smiling, confident, moderate guy was and what did the GOP do with the “real” Romney. The change in voter attitudes toward Romney is remarkable. The aforementioned Pew poll shows that voters now think he’s not such an ogre after all. His favorable rating is over 50% for the first time, placing him in a tie with Obama. And he is slaughtering the president in voter perceptions on how well he can handle the deficit (+15) and create jobs (+8).

I was not joking about being given permission to believe the polls again. The logic used to justify this rediscovery of the efficacy of polling is so precious, that you just want to wrap your arms around the right winger and give them a great big hug.

From the comments:

Rick, you miss the point, again. It isn’t that we believe the polls, it’s that even with their easily proven left-slant, Romney is ahead!

The reason many of us are calling for a Romney landslide is that he is ahead even in biased polls. I suspect the real margin is more like 10+ percent.

Right. You will find that pony if you keep digging in that manure pile, I promise!

If anything, the follow-up comment is even more bizarre:

That was exactly my reaction after reading that. I still believe the polls are understating Romney’s actual position. They’re still rigged but no amount of rigging can hide the apparent reality.

I agree. The reality on the Planet Mongol sure beats the reality on Planet Earth.

A final thought from a real space cadet:

Moran’s snark about the polls is as silly as most of the stuff he writes. Apparently, he thinks that people now accept the polls as gospel. Of course, he neglects to mention that the polls could hardly NOT show a Romney surge, after even democrat pundits awarded him an overwhelming victory. And he disingenuously fails to point out the the voting model in many of the key polls has now been changed, dramatically in some instances. Who knows why. Perhaps because the have to switch over to registered and likely voters at some point, why not when Romney is clearly surging so they can make the case for an obama comeback when the surge phenomenon subsides.

Other than Rasmussen, all of the polls are as dishonest now as they were two weeks ago. Maybe they better reflect the current state of the election, but if they do, it certainly isn’t due to the integrity of the pollsters. And even Rasmussen, btw, should be viewed sceptically.

The only poll I put any faith in was the one the media couldn’t hide or distort…the poll of horror in the eyes of the liberal media when they realized the horse they had protected for five years was finally exposed as an absolute failure.

The “voting model” has changed? Oh, really? From what bodily orifice did the gentleman pull that one from? That’s just bat guano crazy and a perfect example of making sh*t up as you go along.

Pew, Rasmussen, Gallup, Reuters, etc. don’t change their “voting model” (whatever the hell that is) without everyone who knows how to read knowing about it. I would chalk this up to typical internet commenting bullsh*t except there is nothing typical about it; it’s extraordinary internet commenting bullsh*t and the gentleman should be congratulated for being so inventive.

Be that as it may, I have no idea what Romney will do about Iran, Syria, al-Qaeda, or the rest of the mess in the Middle East. All I’m sure of is that he won’t think the Muslim Brotherhood are “moderates” and that he won’t treat Vladmir Putin as if he’s a partner in anything. He probably won’t be any tougher on China than Obama, but it’s good to make them think he will be. And if you listen to some subtle hints by Romney, you will hear him talk about the most significant change in US foreign policy since the end of World War II — the pivot toward Asia. President Obama has begun this shift, much to his credit, but if the wealth of the world is shifting to the east, it makes good sense to elevate Asia to a more prominent place in our thinking.

Europe isn’t dying - yet. Nor is it irrelevant. But the axis of the planet is tilting toward China and the emerging economies in the far east and getting in front of the curve by recognizing the importance of India, Indonesia, and the dynamic economies in southeast Asia is vital to our future security and economic well being.

It must be a sad life living as a right wing nutcase. The entire world is against you — the media, the government, liberals, the New York Yankees (I have it on good authority that the Yankees manipulate coverage of ESPN so that they are always the lead story.)

Now, we can add to that enemies list the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS vomited forth the latest jobs numbers today and despite the fact that the number of unemployed and underemployed Americans remained the same from August, the “official” unemployment rate dropped from 8.1% to 7.8%.

Let us be absolutely clear. There is very little encouraging about these numbers. About the best you can say is that 114,000 jobs created in August and a revision upward of 86,000 jobs from the previous two months saves this report from being a total downer.

Meanwhile, net monthly job growth is still below the number needed to employ those entering the job market for the first time. An astonishing 183,000 Americans took a second job last month because there aren’t any full time jobs available. Labor participation rate is near the all time low since records have been kept — it dropped one tenth of one percent from last month’s record. The growth in jobs was due in large part to an incredible increase of 600,000 part time jobs created over one month — bringing the total of part time workers to 8.6 million Americans. These are people who want to work full time, but because of the stinky economy, can’t find a job.

In short, the right has nothing to be concerned about. This jobs report stinks - a political disaster if Republicans can articulate the underlying weakness. If the Obama campaign was going to manipulate the numbers, don’t you think they’d forget to include all of these indicators of a pathetically weak, stagnant job market? Or maybe they were counting on nobody noticing?

The confusing and arcane way in which the BLS figures the “unemployment rate,” or U-3, is beyond the understanding of most of us. But that hasn’t stopped a slew of right wingers from giving us a knowing wink and opining that the large drop in the widely quoted official rate is “convenient” and that the number has “obviously” been cooked.

Here are a few of the more prominent “jobs truthers”:

The leader of the “job truther” movement: former GE CEO Jack Welch.

“Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers,” he said on Twitter.

He had some friends in Congress too. Rep. Allen West (R-FL) tweeted “I agree with former GE CEO Jack Welch, Chicago style politics is at work here.” He added on Facebook that the jobs report was “Orwellian to say the least and representative of Saul Alinsky tactics from the book ‘Rules for Radicals.’”

FOX News’ Stuart Varney apparently sensed where his audience was going. Within minutes of their release he told viewers that “there is widespread mistrust of this report and these numbers.”

“How convenient the rate drops below 8% [for the] first time in 43 months, five weeks before the election,” he added later.

CNBC host Jim Carmer said he was pilloried by viewers for defending the BLS report’s integrity.

“This is very hot. You believe the number, you must be a card-carrying Communist,” he joked on the air.

All of these paranoids have made a classic error in logic; they have put the cart before the horse by adopting an assumption — cooked books — without any evidence that would buttress and undergird that assumption. Instead, they have substituted an outcome — large decrease in unemployment rate — to “prove” the assumption is correct.

Yes, but they “know in their gut” that the numbers are cooked. “I wouldn’t put it past Obama” is another bit of fancy that passes for “evidence.” I am perfectly willing to believe that the numbers are cooked — just as soon as someone shows me how it was done. Or even how it could be done. The BLS publishes reams and reams of data along with the numbers. Show me where the data is falsified. Show me where their computations are goofy. Show me where there is the slightest whiff of collusion between the BLS and the Obama White House. Show me one tiny piece of evidence that your paranoia is justified.

In short, show me or shut up.

Is there no Diogenes out there who will carry the lantern through the streets, seeking the truth to save us from this folly? Well, Ezra Klein is definitely not Diogenes but he’ll do in a pinch:

Let’s get one thing out of the way: The data was not, as Jack Welch suggested in a now-infamous tweet, manipulated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is set up to ensure the White House has no ability to influence it. As labor economist Betsey Stevenson wrote, “anyone who thinks that political folks can manipulate the unemployment data are completely ignorant of how the BLS works and how the data are compiled.” Plus, if the White House somehow was manipulating the data, don’t you think they would have made the payroll number look a bit better than 114,000? No one would have batted an eye at 160,000.

The fact is that there’s not much that needs to be explained here. We’ve seen drops like this — and even drops bigger than this — before. Between July and August the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent — two-tenths of one percent. November-December of 2011 also saw a .2 percent drop. November-December of 2010 saw a .4 percent drop. This isn’t some incredible aberration. The fact that the unemployment rate broke under the psychologically important 8 percent line is making this number feel bigger to people than it really is.

The number could, of course, be wrong. The household survey is, well, a survey, which means it’s open to error. But the internals back it up. The number saying they had jobs increased by about 800,000. That seems high, but it’s counting 582,000 who say they got part-time jobs.

There’s precedent for this. As Daniel Indiviglio notes, part-time jobs increased by 579,000 in September 2010 and by 483,000 in September 2011. It might simply be seasonal hiring. You don’t need to resort to ridiculous theories like Democrats across the country suddenly deciding to lie to surveytakers in order to help Obama.

The idea that supposedly intelligent conservatives have eaten fruit from the tree of conspiracy isn’t surprising at all. When reason and logic are rejected and objective reality eschewed in favor of emotionalism and paranoia, the end result is always ugly and misshapen thinking.

UPDATE

My old friend John Cole at Balloon Juice has rediscovered my blog. Thanks for the link to this post, John — I need the hits.

As for his commentary…

Rick Moran, blogging at the most poorly named website on the planet, the American Thinker, letting the “paranoids” update his post:

I posted my AT blog about 15 minutes after the BLS numbers were released. As is usual with big stories like this, I added this to the post:

As usual with this number, the real unemployment data is hidden away inside the BLS report. We’ll update this blog as deeper analysis becomes available.

And indeed, as I mention above, those numbers “hidden away” in the BLS report are a disaster for Cole and his partisans.

But if John had bothered to read the masthead at American Thinker, he would know that the concept of me “letting” Tom Lifson update the blog is absurd. Tom is editor in chief and one of the founders of American Thinker. He also signs my paychecks. In what wacky world that Cole inhabits would you not “let” your boss do what he darn well pleases with your post?

(As an aside, when I disagree with Tom, he encourages me to add an update to that particular blog post registering my objections. I may do so this morning with the BLS story — time spent at my other job having been a factor yesterday in me not responding.)

Cole is as nutty as the right wing crazies. But I do appreciate the link, and welcome back, John.

It’s been a few days without race being shoved into the campaign as an issue, so we were overdue for something like this.

Daily Caller:

In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism.

“The people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!” Obama shouts in the video, which was shot in June of 2007 at Hampton University in Virginia. By contrast, survivors of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Andrew received generous amounts of aid, Obama explains. The reason? Unlike residents of majority-black New Orleans, the federal government considers those victims “part of the American family.”

The racially charged and at times angry speech undermines Obama’s carefully-crafted image as a leader eager to build bridges between ethnic groups. For nearly 40 minutes, using an accent he almost never adopts in public, Obama describes a racist, zero-sum society, in which the white majority profits by exploiting black America. The mostly black audience shouts in agreement. The effect is closer to an Al Sharpton rally than a conventional campaign event.

You can watch the video at the link above. It’s nothing we haven’t heard before from other black spokesmen of one vintage or another about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. A nine minute version of the video itself had been circulating since the 2008 campaign and was widely reported on at the time.

But this expanded version features the kind of rhetoric that is definitely unpost-racial. The kind of conspiracy mongering suggested by candidate Obama is de rigueur among race hustlers seeking to whip up anger at the government or white America — usually interchangeable villains.

But I don’t understand the significance. A black political candidate pandering to the fears and emotions of a black audience? OMIGOD stop the world I want to get off! Listening to Obama and the cheers and shouts of the crowd when he scored whitey reminded me a lot of Sarah Palin and her politics of resentment.

Palin panders too. She panders to a specific group of white, middle aged, middle class voter who resents modern America and would like the country to return to the good old days when blacks knew their place, women stayed home, gays belonged in the closet, and all these annoying regulations that protect worker safety and health, as well as consumers didn’t exist. She, better than anyone on the right, articulates the incoherent rage against affirmative action, abortion on demand, gay marriage, and all the cultural issues that have divided America for going on 40 years. The growth of government is a catch all for the real issues that move this subset of righties. Theirs is a revolt against modernity — as significant as the clerical revolution in Iran (without the beheadings and dressing women in burlap sacks.).

A skewed reality is substituted for objective truth as the glorious past is framed in sweetness and light — a time before the New Deal and Great Society when America was nearly perfect and people lived in almost total freedom. As I’ve said many times, this supposed yearning for a “return” to the Constitution is no such thing. It is advocacy for an Articles of Confederation on steroids with a dose of nullification for good measure.

Palin is very good at it. Her spiel is almost liturgical in its incantations, with her admirers knowing by rote the litany of crimes by liberals and the government. In this way, her audience’s anger and resentment is purified and the listener is consecrated to a sacred task; bring back the treasured past.

Obama pandering to blacks isn’t quite as dramatic but he touches all the right buttons to get the response he wants. His anger in this video is no doubt genuine (I’ve often thought that if I was a black man in America I’d probably be a radical communist). And he is very clever in raising the conspiracy advanced by many black commentators in the aftermath of Katrina that George Bush and his government didn’t care as much about New Orleans as they did about other natural disasters because Bush is white and New Orleans is majority black. Blacks don’t want to believe that anymore than anyone else, but it is a relief to hear a presidential candidate vocalize their deepest fears. In other words, Obama descended to their level and embraced them.

Politicians who pander (Obama also panders excellently to Hispanics) are despicable but hardly a surprise. Trying to make a big deal out of this video was stupid and shows just how immune to objective reality some on the right truly are.