Right Wing Nut House

The game of softball has two incarnations. Most of the country plays the 12″ variety that features a fairly hard ball that the player needs a leather glove in order to catch it.

But around these parts, when one says “Let’s play softball,” we are talking about a great big 16″ “mushball” that you don’t need a mitt to catch it and is easy to hit. Much more conducive to playing spinoff games like “Beer Ball” and other variations, the game is marked by the painlessness involved in catching the ball due to its lumpen shape and forgiving texture.

Hence, the term “softball question” which apparently has its origins in questions asked certain Machine politicians in Chicago in the 1970’s. The exact date and origin of the term are unknown but anecdotally, I recall the great Chicago columnist Mike Royko using the term to describe the witlessness of Chicago beat reporters at City Hall who were a most incurious lot when it came to Machine corruption. This may have been unfair of Royko due to Mayor Richard J. Daley’s notorious hatred of reporters and the vengeance he would take against any who crossed him.

But the reference is to the 16″ variety which, unlike the more popular 12″ game is played with a true “soft ball” and is seen mostly in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs and ex-urbs.

No doubt Barack Obama is very familiar with the 16″ variety of the game. And after last night, he is now intimately familiar with the term “softball question:”

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier today in Indiana, you said something striking. You said that this nation could end up in a crisis without action that we would be unable to reverse.

Can you talk about what you know or what you’re hearing that would lead you to say that our recession might be permanent when others in our history have not? And do you think that you risk losing some credibility or even talking down the economy by using dire language like that?

Batter up! Play ball!

Announcer: Here’s Obama at the plate. So far the president is 0 for 3 with two strikeouts and a weak pop-up to the second baseman. He’s also been credited with a sacrifice when he lifted a medium deep fly ball to left field that advanced catcher Hillary Clinton to third.

Here’s the first pitch … it’s an underhand delivery from Jen Loven of the Associated Press who couldn’t decide whether to rush to the plate and kiss the batter or simply grovel at his feet. Obama takes a mighty swing…and misses!

Obama: That’s why the figure that we initially came up with of approximately $800 billion was put forward. That wasn’t just some random number that I plucked out of — out of a hat. That was Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal economists that I spoke to who indicated that, given the magnitude of the crisis and the fact that it’s happening worldwide, it’s important for us to have a bill of sufficient size and scope that we can save or create 4 million jobs.

I doubt too many conservative economists recommended a bill that contained such a lopsided ratio of spending to tax cuts. He is either being disingenuous or lying. I have seen plenty of conservative economists say we need a stimulus bill but of “sufficient size and scope?” That’s one on me and it would be helpful if the President could give us the names of those economists. Not just to check his story but also to scream at any fools who would have recommended such idiocy.

But back to the game…

Announcer: Obama steps out of the box for a moment. He adjusts his immaculate uniform - evidently his cup is slightly out of place. He daintily spits into his government-funded, Taiwanese built spitoon that he insists on bringing with him to the plate (life must be hell for Barak ever since his wife forced him to quit smoking and switch to chewing tobacco). Time is called as Obama insists that the spitoon be emptied and out comes a stimulus funded worker, the Designated Spit Chucker, to take care of the problem.

Obama steps back in. The rookie looks nervous as his spikes paw at the dirt. He squeezes the bat and awaits the pitch from Karen Boeing of Reuters. Here it comes …oooooh a brushback pitch that narrowly misses Obama’s enormous ear:

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. I’d like to shift gears to foreign policy. What is your strategy for engaging Iran? And when will you start to implement it? Will your timetable be affected at all by the Iranian elections? And are you getting any indications that Iran is interested in a dialogue with the United States?

Obama gives us all a lesson in how to say absolutely nothing in 1000 words or less.

And my expectation is, in the coming months, we will be looking for openings that can be created where we can start sitting across the table, face-to-face diplomatic overtures, that will allow us to move our policy in a new direction.

There’s been a lot of mistrust built up over the years, so it’s not going to happen overnight. And it’s important that, even as we engage in this direct diplomacy, we are very clear about certain deep concerns that we have as a country, that Iran understands that we find the funding of terrorist organizations unacceptable, that we’re clear about the fact that a nuclear Iran could set off a nuclear arms race in the region that would be profoundly destabilizing.

So there are going to be a set of objectives that we have in these conversations, but I think that there’s the possibility at least of a relationship of mutual respect and progress.

As long as Obama is willing to grovel at the feet of the Iranian government by “apologizing” for all the naughty things we’ve done in Iran without them having to apologize for their support of Hezbullah and Hamas, then I have no doubt that a relationship of respect and “progress” (whatever that means) can be achieved.

Just tell our diplomats to be careful what they say. Iran has already committed one act of war in taking and holding our personnel as hostages. No doubt they would probably find it efficacious to have a repeat performance.

Let’s pick up the game where we left off…

Announcer: Obama is getting up slowly and dusting himself off after the high heat put him on his ear. He glares at the pitcher but restrains his inclination to go after her with a bat. Obama appears to be disgusted that his uniform is dirty and may call for his valet to brush him off. I believe - yes - he is asking the ump for permission but Nester is having none of it. He points to the box and orders Obama to resume.

Obama looks determined now. His steely gaze is concentrated on Chip Reid of NBC as he goes into his windup. Here’s the pitch…it’s an eephus pitch that Obama slams deep to left. Back she goes…back…back…IT’S OUTA HERE!

Thank you, Mr. President. You have often said that bipartisanship is extraordinarily important, overall and in this stimulus package, but now, when we ask your advisers about the lack of bipartisanship so far — zero votes in the House, three in the Senate — they say, “Well, it’s not the number of votes that matters; it’s the number of jobs that will be created.”

Is that a sign that you are moving away — your White House is moving away from this emphasis on bipartisanship?

And what went wrong? Did you underestimate how hard it would be to change the way Washington works?

Not only does Reid set the ball on a tee for the president, he actually gets him started toward trashing his opposition while being able to appear “bi-partisan:”

As I said, the one concern I’ve got on the stimulus package, in terms of the debate and listening to some of what’s been said in Congress, is that there seems to be a set of folks who — I don’t doubt their sincerity — who just believe that we should do nothing.

Now, if that’s their opening position or their closing position in negotiations, then we’re probably not going to make much progress, because I don’t think that’s economically sound and I don’t think what — that’s what the American people expect, is for us to stand by and do nothing.

There are others who recognize that we’ve got to do a significant recovery package, but they’re concerned about the mix of what’s in there. And if they’re sincere about it, then I’m happy to have conversations about this tax cut versus that — that tax cut or this infrastructure project versus that infrastructure project.

But what I’ve — what I’ve been concerned about is some of the language that’s been used suggesting that this is full of pork and this is wasteful government spending, so on and so forth.

First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.

There may be some lonely back bencher (Ron Paul) who may want to “sit back and do nothing” about the economic crisis but to try and say that this opinion is even a minority opinion in the GOP is a lie and he knows it. And this is even worse:

Number two is that, although there are some programs in there that I think are good policy, some of them aren’t job-creators. I think it’s perfectly legitimate to say that those programs should be out of this particular recovery package and we can deal with them later.

But when they start characterizing this as pork, without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package — something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years — then you get a feeling that maybe we’re playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.

I’m sorry but $4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities” - much if which would go to ACORN and other partisan Democratic organizations smacks of a Hugo Chavez type of political program where organizing people at the neighborhood level, getting them dependent on those government programs earmarked for the purpose, and then when election day rolls around, actually paying ACORN and their sister organizations to get the grateful citizens to the polls would cement the Democratic majority in many states where big cities make up a sizable segment of the vote.

Here are 49 other “destimulating facts” about the bill (many of which I agree with Obama should be included but many others we can clearly do without).

It’s not that we expected the press to challenge Obama and ask him tough questions. There’s no opportunity for follow-up and the president calls on the reporters like a teacher calling on students in class. The modern presidential press conference has become a drama starring the President of the United States and featuring recognizable talking heads from the various networks, bit players from the dead tree media, and a cast of hundreds of extras. It is a political speech disguised as a press conference and the transparent willingness of the press to play their designated roll was nauseating.

No questions about Gitmo? What about Obama’s keeping some Bush era policies on rendition and the Terrorist Surveillance Program? Poor Glenn Greenwald has his panties in a twist because Obama won’t let the terrorists free in downtown Washington with an apology for inconveniencing their jihad by incarcerating them for a few years.

The fact is, there was not one question that discomfited him, not one challenge to a decision he has made. No questions about his cabinet picks who have backed out or his breaking his pledge not to put lobbyists in positions where they would have jurisdiction over the areas where they lobbied, or any questions on breaking his promise to wait 5 days before signing a bill into law in order to get feedback from his adoring public.

Announcer: Obama is circling the bases in triumph, women are swooning in the stands, men are weeping, and reporters are running next to him trying to get his autograph. Our hero-savior-president has triumphed and his enemies have been temporarily silenced.

Ain’t softball a grand game?

The pages of punditdom are full today of breathless questions about the Obama White House. Is Obama an incompetent empty suit as the right was charging all those months? What happened to the candidate who so confidently talked of hope and change, igniting a grass roots political effort this nation has never seen? Is the Obama Administration already “in trouble” - whatever that means?

Rule Number 1 for success as a serious commentator on politics is never get too far ahead of the pack. In this respect, it appears that many of my fellow bloggers - especially on the right side of the sphere - are sipping some heavy duty koolade. A couple of missteps by the newbies at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and we’re already talking about an “Epic Fail” for the Obama presidency? Let’s hope not. If Obama “fails” it will mean this nation will go into an economic tailspin the likes of which haven’t been seen since Clark Gable was the bees knees and Al Jolsen could wear blackface and sing about his “Mammy.”

Actually, I am exaggerating a bit. But there is no doubt the subtext of many analyses is that Obama is not inspiring much confidence so far and that in some areas - personnel selection, Congressional relations, and foreign policy - he has shown a troubling lack of basic competence. In vetting his cabinet, controlling the debate on his stimulus bill, and moving to assure the rest of the world, Obama has stumbled, froze, and failed to engender confidence in his leadership overseas.

It must be pointed out that there is nothing new in this, that a new president and his people have to get the kinks out of their operation as they power up. Talk of “hitting the ground running” is all well and good but, as Theodore H. White pointed out in his brilliant Making of a President series, all Administrations eventually face a period as Obama and his people have faced the last 72 hours. That is, the “well oiled machine” of the campaign runs smack into the reality of governing a nation. New faces and personalities with new responsibilities take time to mesh. This is made especially obvious in their Congressional outreach operation and the seemingly incomprehensible surrender of the process on the stimulus bill to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The Democrats loaded up what is essentially an infrastructure and jobs bill with so much outrageous pork having nothing whatsoever to do with stimulating anything (except perhaps the saliva glands of Democratic constituencies) that Republicans in the House were able to safely band together and reject it. Support for that monstrosity in its current incarnation is dropping like a stone, a fact not lost on Senate Republicans or Democrats.

The fact that so many items have already been dropped from the measure shows that the White House simply didn’t think this thing through very thoroughly. Allowing liberal Democrats to lard up the bill with goodies for teachers, unions, feminists, and other loyalists and then using the economic crisis to try and ram it down the throats of the country has been exposed and it doesn’t make the Administration look very good. The Senate could pull Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire and radically alter the package, reducing its cost substantially while doing a better job of targeting tax cuts and infrastructure improvements where it will do the most good. If that occurs, the Administration would do well not to fight it but rather embrace the alterations in the Senate and then try and convince Pelosi and House Democrats to go along with the changes.

At least the stimulus bill is salvageable. But what about the rash of personnel problems being experienced by the Obama White House? Two cabinet nominees have already withdrawn with another presidential appointee Nancy Killefer also walking the plank. That doesn’t include a tax dodging Treasury Secretary and an Attorney General who has proven adept at playing politics at the Justice Department when it suits the goals of the man in the Oval Office. (See Marc Rich and Puerto Rican terrorists.) There has also been a rash of appointments where the president has gone back on his promise not to hire lobbyists for his administration. Politico counts 12 former lobbyists so far which gives a whole new meaning to “Hope and Change” - as in, “I hope no one will notice what a hypocrite I am by hiring all these lobbyists who won’t change much of anything.”

Amazingly, the only appointee who has had relatively smooth sailing so far is - Hillary Clinton? But don’t worry. With Bill Clinton on the loose, something is bound to pop up to embarrass everyone. The smart money is on women trouble but I’d lay odds that it will be a money issue that explodes in Obama’s face.

Perhaps even more troubling than the withdrawals and the reasons for them is the fact that the Obama people apparently knew of both Geithner and Daschle’s tax problems before announcing their names. This wasn’t a matter of bad vetting, just a tone deaf approach to the process. How could they possibly think that no one would care that the Treasury and HHS Secretaries are tax scofflaws.

And while we’re on the subject of insensitivity, the Administration’s response to the suffering of people in the Midwest as a result of the winter storm may not have reached the Katrina level of “Heckuva job, Brownie” but has certainly not been Obama’s finest hour. His aide David Axelrod brags about how warm the Oval Office is while people are shivering in unheated homes? The president dines on exotic steak while some can’t get out of their driveways to go to the grocery store? He has chosen to remain virtually silent on the tragedy, quite rightly fearing comparisons with Katrina. Meanwhile, a week after the storm winds stopped, there are still tens of thousands without power in Kentucky alone. The National Guard has just now made it to Western Kentucky and officials are going door to door to hand out welfare checks.

My ironic post on the storm’s aftermath and the failure of FEMA to alleviate suffering in a timely manner scooted over the head of most lefties without even musing their hair. The feds are not to blame for this suffering, Mother Nature is. But I found the schadenfreude irresistable in that it was the left who chose to politicize natural disasters and Obama will almost certainly have his own “Katrina moment” eventually.

And Obama’s initial steps into the foreign policy arena have not been without a slip or two. His interview with Al-Arabiya TV - the first interview he granted following his inauguration - was chock full of moral equivalence and a curious detatchment about Iran’s ambitions, undercutting his own sanctions policy at the UN in the process.

But the reported rift between Obama and the military brass may prove most damaging in the long run. Obama cannot simply say “I won” to Petreaus and the Chiefs - especially since he promised to listen to the commanders before committing to a hard timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Well, he apparently thinks it better that he keep a campaign promise to the anti-war crowd than follow the advice of his generals. This is his prerogative, of course. And it may end up being a tempest in a teapot. But the potential for trouble between Obama and the military when we have a war to win yet in Afghanistan does not bode well for the future.

But given all these pratfalls and miscalculations, Obama is still in good shape with the people who elected him. They are much more willing to stick with him than right wing pundits and mainstream media critics who seek to create a little news by trying to rain on the president’s honeymoon. He still has plenty of time to right the ship. And admitting mistakes is a good first step.

But if the president continues to stumble over the next few weeks, then he can expect the tenor of the criticism directed against him to change. America doesn’t have time to break in a new president. Fairly, or unfairly, Obama will not have the luxury of a long, leisurely shake down cruise for his Administration. He has already lost a significant amount of goodwill with his faux pas. Given the enormous challenges we face, it would behoove the new Administration to get its act together sooner rather than later.

UPDATE

As usual, Ed Morrissey and I are on something of the same wavelength this morning.

Isn’t this just like a terrorist? It’s not enough that they bomb and strafe orphanages and nurseries while mistaking a Happy-Go-Lucky Hamas fireworks show at a UN built school for a mortar pit. (Couldn’t they see those tubes were for firing off celebratory fireworks and not deadly mortars aimed at Israeli soldiers?)

The outrage of taking out this fireworks display was compounded when explosives meant only for display stored in the school were accidentally set off by the well meaning, but ill-trained Hamas fireworks technicians. Not only were several dozen innocent civilians killed but the annual “Salute to UN Anti-Semitism” festival had to be cancelled.

A pity, that.

Now those sneaky Jews have invented a new terrorist technique; the “Humanitarian Relief Attack” where trucks loaded with food and medicine are actually allowed into Gaza.

Is there no end to their perfidy? Have they no shame? I sense a trap:

Israel briefly paused its military operations in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and said it planned to do so for three hours each day to allow for deliveries of humanitarian aid, as the Israeli cabinet met to consider how to respond to an Egyptian proposal for a more lasting ceasefire.

Military officials said operations would stop for three hours, between 1 pm and 4 pm local time each day, to give besieged Gaza residents an opportunity to emerge from their homes to seek food, fuel and other emergency supplies. Israel has allowed some aid deliveries since it began airstrikes Dec. 27 but relief workers said they have been unable to reach much of the population because of heavy fighting.

The opening of “humanitarian corridors” each day is meant to relieve a situation that international aid agencies say has reached crisis proportions.

We all know that if the shoe was on the other foot, those humanity loving jihadists from Hamas would bow to world opinion and allow relief supplies to their enemies. Allah be praised, the freedom fighters would no doubt show their softer side under such circumstances - such as when they kindly sharpen the blades of their knives before lopping off the heads of infidels.

In fact, Hamas has been dying to show the world their feminine side. Here’s Hamas spokesman Mahmoud Az-Zahar gushing about “victory” and how to show some good lovin’ to the Israelis:

The Hamas leader called to murder Israelis and Jews worldwide, including children. “The Israelis have sentenced their children to death… They have legitimized the killing of their people all over the world,” he said. Hamas’ platform calls for all Jews to convert to Islam or be killed, based on an Islamic saying (Hadith), and the group has not refrained from targeting children in the past.

Hamas will destroy synagogues and Jewish schools as well, Zahar said, just as Israel destroyed mosques in Gaza. Israel bombed several mosques used to store rockets and ammunition.

Zahar suggested Hamas was prepared to seek a ceasefire, saying Hamas would discuss “whatever is good for our people.” He issued a list of demands, saying any ceasefire must include a complete end to IDF counterterrorism activities, Hamas control of the Gaza coast and the opening of Israeli crossings.

There, you see? All Hamas wants is for the Israelis to stop picking on them. No need for “counterterrorism activities” when there’s no terrorism to counter. What’s a few suicide bombers among friends?

And the gentle care Hamas wants to take with Israeli children is touching, isn’t it? Almost makes me want to go hug Glenn Greenwald and tell him how sorry I am for ever having doubted his brilliance.

I think we should start showing a little more understanding and empathy toward these Hamas folks. There’s obviously been a great big misunderstanding. They are actually a very creative people with a hidden talent for putting on dramatic shows:

One more thing, speaking of pornography — we’ve all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It’s a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn’t matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent? I’ll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble — and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I’ve seen in my life. And it’s typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they’d learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.

Perhaps we should urge NBC to hire these guys in their show development department. With that kind of eye for the dramatic, they could bring the network several top ten series I’m sure.

Meanwhile, the terrorist Jews continue their unprovoked, unreasonable, and rather boring attacks on the tunnels that Hamas plays hide and go seek in, the buildings where Hamas leaders hold coffee klatches and knitting bees, and the military installations where the militants play cowboys and indians.

At least that’s the impression we get from the media. And the media wouldn’t supress information or make a lot of sh*t up just to make the evil Jews look bad now, would they?

I used to make great sport of Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and his idiotic rantings against Bush, conservatives, Republicans, and individual bloggers he would attack irrationally. There is no one on the internet who exaggerates more, takes what someone writes or says completely and dishonestly out of context more often, or sets up larger strawmen - knocking them down with the kind of feverish frenzy one might see in a 14 year old drama queen.

His over the top, hysterical warnings about the imminent demise of American democracy, his one dimensional take on everything from the war to same sex marriage, and his insufferable, loutish, smugly self righteous attitude figured to be just too tempting a target for many of us who see in him the epitome of netroots hypocrisy and stupidity.

But it got boring after a while to pillory Greenwald because he was so predictable. This is why he largely goes unchallenged these days; people are just too busy with other, more important matters, than going through one of his 3,000 word rants and calling him out for the lies, the exaggerations, the deliberate twisting of intent, and other grevious sins that is this sock puppet’s stock in trade.

Occasionally, however, the urge comes upon me to try to set the record straight. It may seem vainglorious for me to think that anything I write on my little blog matters a whit in the larger scheme of things - even in so insignificant a matter as Glenn Greenwald and his latest smears against those with which he disagrees. But winding up and throwing a haymaker toward Greenwald’s jaw - in a literary sense - is nevertheless a quite satisfying exercise emotionally and I will therefore indulge myself as I desperately need some spiritual uplift following the decline and fall of My Beloved Bears last week.

Greenwald has written perhaps the most dishonest, ignorant, deliberately deceptive piece on the War against Hamas that has yet been penned. And given the tripe that’s been vomiting forth from sites like The Nation and Firedoglake, that is a truly remarkable achievement.

Greenwald is a liar. Either that or he is so oblivious to facts, reason, and logic that he must experience life on the level of a two year old. How else would you describe his opening to this anti-Israeli screed that drips with venomous hatred against his political enemies:

This Rasmussen Reports poll — the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza — strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day between (a) American public opinion on U.S. policy towards Israel and (b) the consensus views expressed by America’s political leadership.  Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally “are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip” (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive — by a 24-point margin (31-55%).  By stark constrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).

The smear written here - so casually made - that “as one would expect” (as if everyone were as intellectually dishonest as Greenwald), Republicans have a “history” of supporting “any proposed attacks on Arabs or Muslims.” What history might that be? A favorite Greenwaldian subterfuge is to throw as many charges against his enemies just to see if any stick. This one’s a biggie, of course.He is saying that all Republicans are bigots and hate Muslims and Arabs - without one single example or any evidence to support his wild, unsupported lie.

No, very few people “expect” Republicans to act in such a bigoted manner - especially 62% of them - except Greenwald and his ilk whose exaggerated sense of disproportion allows them to posit all kinds of evil without offering a scintilla of proof. Supporting wars against Saddam Hussein and the Taliban for reasons of national security is not the same as hating Muslims so much that Republicans relish the thought of killing them. The fact that I have to point this out would seem silly to most rational people except Greenwald apparently believes it - or is a liar.

It would also be relevant point out that while Democrats and liberals were willing to allow Muslims to be slaughtered in Bosnia and Kosovo, it was Republican support that allowed a Democratic president to go to war against orthodox Christian Serbia and save them. Does that mean that liberals hate Muslims because they didn’t mind seeing them murdered and raped? In Greenwald’s world, yes.

If possible, this statement is even more dishonest:

It’s not at all surprising, then, that Republican leaders — from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine, from talk radio and Fox News to right-wing blogs and neoconservative journals — are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they’re expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience.

What “core ideology” is that Mr. Greenwald? The subtext is, we assume, the same as above; that the GOP hates Arabs and Muslims. And where in God’s name did this worthless dreck of a human being come up with the idea that the “overwhelming majority” of Republican voters and audience hates Muslims?

It might be interesting to have Mr. Greenwald link to the poll that shows that the “overwhelming majority” of Republicans buy the “core ideology” of bigotry and hate against Muslims and Arabs. It is this kind of deliberate smear that Greenwald gets away with for the simple reason no one takes the time (or wastes it) in responding.

This calumny is not your run of the mill political mud wrestling where eye gouging and leg twisting is done with relish and opponents end up covering themselves in manure when all is said and done. This is the world according to Glenn Greenwald - a very special place where simply having him say that up is down, black is white, and the “overwhelming majority” of Republicans are bigots makes it so.

Note I have not called Greenwald an “anti-Semite” for opposing Israel’s war of survival against an enemy whose public policy toward their neighbor is total destruction. You can be an idiot without being a hater. But his selective outrage against Israel (and tepid, pro-forma objections to Hamas’s cruel barrage of rockets targeting civilians in Israel) is indicative of someone without moral awareness. Is he deceiving us or himself? A good question that too many on the left - lacking the desire for introspection as they do - fail to ask themselves.

But what really has Greenwald’s panties in a twist is the fact that American political leaders of both parties have, for the most part, taken Israel’s side in the War:

Ultimately, what is most notable about the “debate” in the U.S. over Israel-Gaza is that virtually all of it occurs from the perspective of Israeli interests but almost none of it is conducted from the perspective of American interests. There is endless debate over whether Israel’s security is enhanced or undermined by the attack on Gaza and whether the 40-year-old Israeli occupation, expanding West Bank settlements and recent devastating blockade or Hamas militancy and attacks on Israeli civilians bear more of the blame. American opinion-making elites march forward to opine on the historical rights and wrongs of the endless Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict with such fervor and fixation that it’s often easy to forget that the U.S. is not actually a direct party to this dispute.

As Israel’s biggest and best ally and virtual guarantor of their existence, of course we have an abiding interest in the conflict. The wonder is that Greenwald evidently feels sticking a knife in the back of your ally while she is fighting for her life by condemning this bomb going off in the wrong place or that bullet not hitting its intended target is just fine. Better yet, take the morally reprehensible position of a “pox on both your houses” and condemn everybody. That way, you can do away with the only democracy in the Middle East as an ally and simply treat them as we might look upon Sierra Leone or Gabon.

When one’s moral compass goes in a circle and taking the “out” that the survival of an ally is none of your business might be satisfying from an ideological standpoint but is hardly practical or even desirable. Taking sides in a war is a necessary evil when it comes right down to it. The US is not Sweden or Switzerland, although Greenwald might prefer that kind of “neutrality” to the sort of practical realization that the survival of Israel is important to the US national interest.

Whew! Remind me not to ask Greenwald to be an ally.

The rank deceitfulness of Greenwald is really getting tiresome. The idea that this ignorant hypocrite - as ignorant and hypocritical as any right winger he wants to name - has been given such a big megaphone at Salon would be incomprehensible except when you realize that his followers among the netroots are equally obtuse and perfidious when it comes to attacking their political and ideological enemies.

With that kind of devoted following, he’ll probably grab a Pulitzer someday.

I suppose the real question is will there ever be agreement among everybody on just what is satire and what is racism?

The answer is not as long as liberals see playing the race card as the political advantage it is.

The latest blow up involves a Rush Limbaugh parody that first surfaced on his show during the campaign. “Barack the Magic Negro,” an edgy satire of Obama’s celebrity and popularity with white voters that was written by Paul Shanklin and played numerous times on Rush’s show. (The term ‘Barack the Magic Negro” was first used in an Los Angeles Times column by cultural critic David Ehrenstein - a fact that the parody makes mention of. Ehrenstein is a white liberal.)

The song was sent out as a Christmas greeting by RNC chair candidate Chip Saltsman with the message:

“I look forward to working together in the New Year,” Saltsman wrote. “Please enjoy the enclosed CD by my friend Paul Shanklin of the Rush Limbaugh Show.”

Also on the CD were other examples of Shanklin’s satire including “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”

Shanklin’s stuff is mostly brilliant satire. But like all good political humor, it walks a line of good taste and decorum. In fact, by pushing the boundaries as Shanklin does, he defines for us the essence of political satire. In this respect (not in talent) Shanklin’s material is no more objectionable than Jonathon Swift or George Orwewll for that matter.

That is, unless you’re a liberal seeking to make political hay and stifle free expression. You can criticize “Barack the Magic Negro” as unfunny or not in good taste. But when you use the inflammatory word “racism” to describe it, you go beyond critiquing the work and enter the world of pure politics. This liberals do on a regular basis and they get away with the sliming of political speech and speakers they disagree with because the press refuses to call them out on it.

In fact, the left has lowered the bar on what constitutes “racism” by redefining the term to suit their own political needs. And by refusing to acknowledge any set definition of the word, the left deliberately undermines free speech by cutting off debate with liberals firmly ensconced in a superior moral position while the person being unfairly smeared as a racist is unable to defend themselves. If one tries to stand up and fight the charge, they give automatic legitimacy to the left’s argument. And if they remain silent in the face of such slimeball tactics, the smear works and sticks to the accused like glue.

Having said all this, is it an appropriate Christmas message from a potential RNC chairman? It wouldn’t be my first choice but then I don’t think Saltsman the guy for the job anyway.

What is clear is that this despicable tactic by the left predates Obama and has done more to poison relations between the races in this country than all the cross burnings and hate speech delivererd by the morons in the Klan or the Skinheads. The reason is simple; the left has appropriated the word “racist” in order to define the debate on race - any issue, any time, anywhere - on their terms and their terms alone. Do you oppose Affirmative Action? You’re a racist. Do you oppose set asides for business based on race? You are a racist. Do you oppose racial quotas in college entrance requirements? You are a racist.

No debate. No exchange of ideas. No give and take on any issue that touches race unless you first accept the left’s position on these and other issues. If you don’t, the debate is closed off by simply calling you a racist - end of discussion.

So it’s no surprise they see legitimate satire as “racist.” In fact, the surprise would be if they didn’t.

UPDATE

Thanks to so many commenters - both present and future - who are proving the thesis of my argument so spectacularly. Not only are those calling me a racist proving their aversion to free speech but the dumbing down of the term racism by my detractors and its use to cut off debate (with the obligatory nod to the idea that  defending 1st Amendment rights are what will keep Republicans out of power - which is used in lieu of any kind of intelligent answer to the points I raise) only goes to show that the mind of a liberal is extraordinarily predictable.

Simple minded sophists usually are.

The irony in the left’s total absolution granted the Obama transition team regarding any unethical contacts with Governor Rod Blagojevich or his staff actually makes for some pretty good comedy.

This is the crew that swallowed al-Qaeda propaganda whole with regards to every war “atrocity” ever reported instead of giving their own military or government the benefit of the doubt - including the “Haditha Massacre” where many liberals tried to outdo one another in heaping calumny on innocent soldiers. And now a single report, issued by a politician who presents no other evidence that could clarify or contradict its conclusions, is being trumpeted to the skies as “proof” that no one in the Obama camp did anything wrong.

In short, the left is apt to unquestioningly take what al-Qaeda and Obama say at face value while dismissing the reports of their own government.

Now I will be the first to point out that there were many reports from our military regarding readiness of the Iraqi Army and other political benchmarks set by Congress that were less than honest. And there have been other instances where our government lied outright about the war, specifically in their overly optimistic assessments about progress in bringing peace and security to the provinces.

I am not saying that we should automatically believe everything the government says and not believe al-Qaeda propagandists. I am saying that the left is being hypocritical by not showing the same skepticism they direct towards the Bush Administration on anything and everything they come out with compared to their superficial, eager embrace of the one sided, sole source Obama report on staff contacts with Blago.

It is a selective form of information processing that proves two things; most on the left are partisan hacks and that we are in for at least four years of insufferable hypocrisy from people who are so clueless that they fail to recognize it.

Apparently, we are to suspend disbelief for the duration of Obama’s presidency. No matter that not one single taped conversation with the principles has been released to either confirm the information in the report or make Obama out a liar. Reports in the press on what Fitzy actually has as far as taped conversations between Blagojevich and the Obama team have been wildly overstated (at least according to the report). And yet, when the press assures us that because of the findings in the president-elect’s own manufactured report we can now put this controversy to rest.

In a front page diary at Kos from JedL, we get this bit of certainty about our new president:

Let me emphasize this point: the reason why the release of the Obama report was delayed was to allow Fitzgerald to complete his interviews with the transition team. In other words, everything that Obama’s team has said has been true.

Such unquestioning devotion based on nothing more than a politician’s word - an oxymoron to be sure - would be laughable if this same attitude wasn’t so prevelant on the left.

Steve Bennen:

And as expected, there was nothing to hide. The entire Craig memo is online (.pdf), and after reading it, everything we’d heard from Obama and his team was completely true. Obama never spoke to Blagojevich or his office about the Senate vacancy; no one on Obama’s staff ever had any inappropriate discussions with the governor or his office; and no one Obama’s staff ever had any indication that Blagojevich was engaged in alleged corruption.

The report is quite thorough - in a self serving kind of way. But what in God’s name does anyone expect? If anyone actually thought Obama would put one iota of information in that report that would have contradicted anything he or his aides have said on the matter they belong in an insane asylum.

So what’s the rush, guys? The exoneration of Obama and his team as a result of findings released in their own report after conducting their own investigation would make most people with a molecule of curiosity say “OK, fine. I’m glad they say they’re innocent of any ethical breach or lawbreaking as a newborn babe. Perhaps we might wait upon Fitzgerald for a release of, like, you know, some actual evidence that what they say is true rather than swallowing their report whole like a good little Obamabot?”

But why let a little reality slip into the “Reality Based Community” when anti-intellectualism is so much easier to embrace?

UPDATE

I note that Steven Benen makes the arguement that because Fitzy has the tapes, this means that the Obama camp was “forced” to tell the truth lest any information that came out a a later date would contradict what’s in the report.

One imagines that Obama detractors might not believe these conclusions — “the transition team can’t clear itself of wrongdoing!” — but the review was done with the knowledge that Blagojevich and his office was the subject of FBI wiretaps. The transition team, in other words, knew in advance that any false claims would be easily exposed, so they had a very strong incentive to be completely honest.

First, there is no certainty that the tapes in question will ever see the light of day and the Obama camp could certainly have been told this. No doubt Fitzy would play some of the tapes at any trial of Blagojevich and Harris but since there almost certainly was nothing illegal offered by Blago to the Obama camp, the chances of any Blago-Emanuel converstations aired at trial would be slim. What kind of horse trading that might have gone on would be irrelevant in a criminal trial but might be damaging politically.

Secondly, as we saw with Bill Clinton, parsing words is an art form and statements made in the report could very well contradict what the actual conversations might say because a good lawyer can twist words and facts until they reveal exactly what he wishes them to reveal. The report could have said the sun rises in the west and Obama could come out with a statement that if you are standing upsidedown and facing sideways, of course the sun rises in the west, dummy.

No doubt Bennen et al would swallow that one without any skepticism too.

There are few human beings on planet earth more annoying than Deepak Chopra, the touchy-feely, New Age Guru whose fetid, gooey, and completely banal nostrums regarding health and healing have reached a new low in the history of civilized thought.

He is, in short, a first class idiot.

To prove my point, Dorothy Rabinowitz writing in the Wall Street Journal caught this fakir blaming America for the attacks in Mumbai:

Soon enough, there was Deepak Chopra, healer, New Age philosopher and digestion guru, advocate of aromatherapy and regular enemas, holding forth on CNN on the meaning of the attacks.

How the ebullient Dr. Chopra had come to be chosen as an authority on terror remains something of a mystery, though the answer may have something to do with his emergence in the recent presidential campaign as a thinker of advanced political views. Also commending him, perhaps, is his well known capacity to cut through all sorts of complexities to make matters simple. No one can fail to grasp the wisdom of a man who has informed us that “If you have happy thoughts, then you make happy molecules.”

In his CNN interview, he was no less clear. What happened in Mumbai, he told the interviewer, was a product of the U.S. war on terrorism, that “our policies, our foreign policies” had alienated the Muslim population, that we had “gone after the wrong people” and inflamed moderates. And “that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay.”

All this was a bit too much, evidently, for CNN interviewer Jonathan Mann, who interrupted to note that there were other things going on — matters like the ongoing bitter Pakistan-India struggle over Kashmir — which had caused so much terror and so much violence. “That’s not Washington’s fault,” he pointed out.

Blogger Betsy Newmark has it about right:

It takes a seriously twisted world view to pivot immediately to finding a way to blame America for terrorists storming hotels and other soft targets to gun down people innocently going about their business. Rabinowitz ties this view to the handwringing over a report that the majority of people in the Middle East think that 9/11 was a put-up job done by the United States and Israel.

Reading Chopra’s writings at Huffington Post is a mind altering experiences; you are forced to alter your perception of how anyone could be so remarkably oblivious to their own idiocy.  It is impossible to reconcile in your mind the idea that anyone could take such a lightweight seriously.

For instance:

On November 7, 2008, at 9:45am , I, Deepak Chopra, took a vow of
non-violence in my thoughts, in my speech and in my actions. I, then,
also had an opportunity to ask the almost 500 people attending the plenary session for the Alliance for a New Humanityin Barcelona if they would join me in this commitment.

I first asked them to close their eyes, put their awareness in their hearts and ask themselves honestly and seriously if they were willing to take a vow.

I told them that a vow is a sacred commitment from which there is no going back. It is like a child that is born, who cannot return to the womb.

I told them if they were ready to take this vow, they should stand up.

People stood up, one by one at first, then in groups of twos and threes, and finally in tidal waves, until more than 450 people had stood up and taken the vow.

Following this, everybody agreed to have at least two people in their lives take the vow. The two in turn, would have two others join them in taking the vow. Our immediate goal now is to get 100 Million people across the world to take this vow. In the meantime, we will be setting up ways to measure and support the dramatic effects this tidal wave of shift in consciousness is going to create.

Ahem…their “immediate goal was to get 100 million people across the world to take this vow?” The “dramatic effects of this tidal wave?”This kind of simple minded, feel good sophistry is what Chopra excels in foisting on his legions of worshippers who mistake his syrupy treacle for serious thought.The idea that such a task is even possible would never cross the mind of anyone except a simple minded dolt.

Here’s what passes for political analysis from Chopra commenting on Obama’s election:

The most sober comment came from Obama himself, when he pointed out that his win wasn’t the change the country is seeking but only the chance for change. Happily, he’s wrong in several regards. We will see immediate change globally. The rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the neocons’ attempt to create an American military empire.

In the end, the most moving comment came from Sen. John McCain in his concession speech. Like all the candidates who have stood for the Republican cause since the Reagan revolution, McCain couldn’t resist the temptation to employ “junk politics and immorality” in his campaign. But he went out honorably by saying that America “isn’t a country that hides from history.” That hasn’t been true for the past eight years. Let’s hope it’s gloriously true from now on.

So we’ve been “hiding from history” the last 8 years? What planet has this guy been visiting during the Bush Administration? More likely, he hasn’t a clue what history is and therefore believes that sticking ones head in the sand about terrorism and all the evil in the world passes for facing history square in the face.

Chopra delights in trivializing the momentus and obscuring the obvious. One need only read his “political” writings at Huffington Post to become lost in a sea of the most mind boggling shibboleths, inane platitudes, and nauseating screeds against Republicans you can find anywhere on the internet. No one bothers critiquing his thinking anymore because frankly, there is so little in the way of intellectual meat in his scribblings that any such effort isn’t worth the pixels that would be expended in trying to explain the depth of his stupidity.

Read the rest of Rabinowitz’s piece to get a good laugh.

If you’ve been reading a lot about the economic situation here and around the world, you can’t help but be struck by how terrible the future looks to a lot of “experts.”

Is this a function of the media realizing that apocalyptic news sells and less dire forecasts are given short shrift? Or is there really a consensus that we are in for horrible times?

I honestly don’t know enough to say one way or another. Here at home, the massive trouble that CITI is in promises to give us the biggest bailout yet. And there are some “experts” saying that the entire financial industry of the United States will soon be nationalized:

It’s not preferable, but all major U.S. financial companies will eventually be under government control because the alternative is so much worse, Hugh Hendry, chief investment officer at hedge fund Eclectica Asset Management, said Friday.

“All financials will be owned by the U.S. government in a year,” Hendry said. “I bet you.”

Nationalizations take dramatic losses from the private sector and places them on the larger balance sheet of the public sector, he said.

“It’s not good,” but society is vulnerable and society is going to have to intervene, Hendry said.

I don’t know Mr. Hendry from Adam but CNBC thinks enough of him to quote his prediction and include a video of his remarks. Does that make him an expert? Got me.

And its even worse overseas - if you believe the foreign press. Iceland is all but bankrupt, the product of their state bank going belly up. But what about Great Britain?

The scale of our problems has still not been understood. In essence the domestic banks are largely bust. The Government’s £500 billion bailout plan is primarily designed not to keep banks lending to small firms and to homebuyers but to prevent an unimaginable financial calamity.

Banks provide the very foundations and plumbing of the entire economy. A failure of confidence in them could still bring the entire capitalist edifice tumbling down.

It suits ministers, however, to maintain the bogus claim that the bailout is about sustaining bank lending. True, that would be a helpful side-effect, but is not the main purpose. Indeed, a gentle and gradual reduction in the indebtedness of individuals and companies is still needed.

At the risk of hyperbole, we should not be worrying about whether this is going to be a thin Christmas for retailers (it is), but whether Britain and the West are about to plunge into a years-long economic Dark Age - complete with mass unemployment and social unrest.

I don’t think you can get more depressing than that. But how true is it? The Times is a respected publication and all we have to go on if we want to glean the truth out of all this is the reputation of the media outlet from which we are getting this information.

No one denies that there is a crisis. No one is underestimating the potential for catastrophe. My problem - our problem - is that in this, a time when honest appraisals of the situation are needed, we have little or no confidence that our newspapers, radio programs, or the cable newsnets are delivering what they are supposed to be giving us; the facts of the situation and not trying to scare us into buying their product or watching their programs by hyping the bad news.

I think things are as bad as many are saying. But then we get a piece like this from Daniel Gross at Slate.com:

All this historically inaccurate nostalgia can occasionally make you want to clock somebody with one of the three volumes of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s history of the New Deal. The credit debacle of 2008 and the Great Depression may have similar origins: Both got going when financial crisis led to a reduction in consumer demand. But the two phenomena differ substantially. Instead of workers with 5 o’clock shadows asking, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” we have clean-shaven financial-services executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion. More substantively, the economic trauma the nation suffered in the 1930s makes today’s woes look like a flesh wound.

“By the afternoon of March 3, scarcely a bank in the country was open to do business,” FDR said in his March 12, 1933, fireside chat (now available on a very cool podcast at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s Web site). In 1933, some 4,000 commercial banks failed, causing depositors to take huge losses. (There was no FDIC back then.) The recession that started in August 1929 lasted for a grinding 43 months, during which unemployment soared to 25 percent and national income was cut in half. By contrast, through mid-November 2008, only 19 banks had failed. The Federal Reserve last week said it expects unemployment to top out at 7.6 percent in 2009. Economists surveyed by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank believe the recession, which started in April 2008, will be over by next summer. (Of course, back in January the same guys forecast that the economy would grow nicely in 2008 and 2009.) But don’t take it from me. Take it from this year’s Nobel laureate in economics. “The world economy is not in depression,” Paul Krugman writes in his just-reissued book The Return of Depression Economics. “It probably won’t fall into depression, despite the magnitude of the current crisis (although I wish I was completely sure about that).”

Is Gross just more levelheaded than the others? He makes a convincing case but so do some of those predicting Armageddon.

I believe this is a crisis of confidence in our media - a result of many years of being conditioned by their biases, by their laziness to remove those biases, and by the nature of the news business itself and what it has become. The left likes to talk about the “corporate media” but it’s actually worse than that. Over the last 30 years, there has been a consolidation of media outlets into gigantic conglomerates while the actual number of independent media channels has dropped precipitously.

It isn’t that they’re “corporate” that makes them suspect, or more accurately, not trustworthy. It is that there are so few alternatives out there. I have no doubt that most publications and TV networks actually make an effort to deliver the news as accurately as they are able - given constraints about needing to turn a profit and stand out from the crowd. But that doesn’t change some basic facts. An empire like Rupert Murdochs’ was unthinkable 30 years ago. Every town over 50,000 or so used to have 2 or even 3 newspapers published daily. (50 years ago it was 4 or 5 dailies). If you want to listen to the radio today, you have 3 or 4 huge companies that own the overwhelming majority of popular local stations. Television has a handful of owners despite hundreds of stations.

No wonder the news sounds so much the same.

That doesn’t solve our problem of knowing who to believe, who to trust in this crisis. I suppose we have to make an effort to get as much information as we can and use our own best judgment as to what we should take away from each news or opinion article we read. This is probably good advice as it relates to any news we choose to digest be it on the internet or through some other media outlet.

But somehow, I can’t escape the feeling that our media is letting us down in this crisis and that I am probably not the only one disappointed in their performance so far.

This blog post originally appears at The American Thinker 

Barack Obama was booed at a McCain Town Hall in Waukesha, Wisconsin yesterday.

That’s right. I’m not joking. A crowd of Republicans actually had the audacity, the temerity, the gumption to show their displeasure when the name of The Messiah was uttered.

And according to this breathless, fearful account published in the Washington Post this morning, that’s not all they did:

There were shouts of “Nobama” and “Socialist” at the mention of the Democratic presidential nominee. There were boos, middle fingers turned up and thumbs turned down as a media caravan moved through the crowd Thursday for a midday town hall gathering featuring John McCain and Sarah Palin.

I weep for America. In God’s name, what are we coming to? To actually show disdain and unhappiness at the mention of The One? And what’s this about giving the finger to our friends in the press? Don’t they know that a free press is vital to our democracy? How dare they make such a vulgar display in the direction of those who toil so unselfishly in service to the republic.

Gee - you’d think the crowd believed the press was the enemy or something.

I regret to inform my readers that, in fact, there is more disturbing news to report from recent rallies featuring John McCain. Apparently, according to unnamed sources, the people attending these rallies are angry.

In recent days, a campaign that embraced the mantra of “Country First” but is flagging in the polls and scrambling for a way to close the gap as the nation’s economy slides into shambles has found itself at the center of an outpouring of raw emotion rare in a presidential race.

“There’s 26 days and people are looking at the very serious possibility that there’s a chance that Obama might get in, and they don’t like that,” said Ian Eltrich, 28, as he filed out of the crowded sports complex.

“I’m mad! I’m really mad!” another man said, taking the microphone and refusing to surrender it easily, even when McCain tried to agree with him.

I fear for this country. An ordinary citizen - a McCain supporter - is “really mad.” And what makes this even more outrageous, more frightening (if that’s possible) is that John McCain and Sarah Palin just stood there like statues and did nothing when the crowd booed Barack Obama’s name. They showed no remorse whatsoever.

I would like to digress here and thank the Washington Post for bringing this to our attention. Clearly, this is unheard of in American politics and deserves scrutiny. I mean really now, would partisans at a Democratic rally boo the very mention of George Bush’s name?

sarcasm off/ (finally)

I can’t tell you how much contempt I have for the Post and other media outlets who have been pushing this meme - that it is somehow dangerous, or racist, or indicative of something horribly ugly in the mindset of GOP supporters to show strong emotion at the mention of Obama. Not when similiar outbursts happen at Democratic rallies. Not when Democratic party partisans on the internet and elsewhere have whipped up a frenzy of hate against John McCain.

Has there ever been someone who screamed out about McCain “Kill him!” at an Obama rally? We don’t know because the idea that the press would report what one, lone, idiot shouts out at a rally of thousands is ludicrous - except if it is a McCain rally and then it becomes front page news.

And evidently, it has become verboten to even take the name of Obama in vain - his middle name, that is:

Seems like almost every day now there’s a McCain-Palin rally where the campaign has the candidates introduced by someone who hits on “Barack Hussein Obama”. Just happened again in Bethlehem, PA. After the fifth or sixth time you pretty much know on the orders of the campaign. It is obviously with tacit approval (to believe anything else is to be a dupe at this point); and quite probably on the campaign’s specific instructions.

Given the regularity of the cries of “treason” and “terrorist” and the like, and the frequency with which the screamers seem in oddly convenient proximity to the mics, we should probably be considering the possibly that these folks are campaign plants. It happens all the time. It’s just that usually they don’t scream out accusations of capital crimes.

Late Update: A thought. At what point do they start burning Obama in effigy at the Palin rallies?

“A thought” by Josh Marshall? Well, at least that’s an improvement over what we’ve seen recently from the former web journalist turned lying, hyper partisan hack. I thought that Marshall’s last electroencephalogram revealed no brain activity at all. At least this is progress.

But not much judging by his cockamamie notion that Republicans would do to Obama what Democrats and liberals have been doing to Bush for the last 8 years.

(Courtesy of Zombietime)

Perhaps Republicans could get a few tips from Democrats on the proper way to burn someone in effigy. Maybe Marshall could publish them on his website.

As for taking the middle name of our Lord in vain, I would simply say that those who are inclined to believe the idiocy that Obama is a Muslim will not be swayed by anything John McCain would say. Or Sarah Palin for that matter. The idea that speaking Obama’s middle name is in and of itself racist or bigoted presupposes that making the charge gives the accuser insight into another’s soul - nice job if you can get it but something that liberals do on a regular basis so they have a lot of practice. All liberals are mind readers and psychics.

The question is it done deliberately in order to inspire feelings of fear and revulsion against Obama I would have to answer almost certainly yes. But this is a political campaign not a society ball. Raising the specter of fear if McCain is elected is part and parcel of the Obama campaign as well. It’s how elections have been conducted since Jeffersonians warned the re-election of Adams would lead to the establishment of a monarchy.

Denying this singular fact of life in political campaigns only shows liberals to be naive and ignorant. For 4 years, the left has been screaming at their own candidates to get tough on Republicans. Well congratulations, you’ve found your man in Obama. Schooled as he was in the rough and tumble, corrupt Machine politics of Chicago where you don’t defeat your opponent, you bury them, Obama needs little urging to hint at McCain’s advanced years, mock his war injuries, bring up past questionable associations, level charges of personal malfeasance - all the while piously insisting that he is staying above the fray. That kind of hypocrisy is enabled by his partisans and syncophants in the party and the press who never seem to find the time, the space, or the guts to call Obama out for his descent into the politics of personal destruction.

So get over it and get on with it.

Speaking of getting on with it, many of us were wondering when the race card, heretofore used only sparingly would become more prominently used by the Obama campaign.

We needn’t have wondered:

As the McCain campaign ratchets up the intensity of its attacks on Barack Obama, some black elected officials are calling the tactics desperate, unseemly and racist.

“They are trying to throw out these codes,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York.

“He’s ‘not one of us?’” Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Florida. “That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.”

“Racism is alive and well in this country, and McCain and Palin are trying to appeal to that and it’s unfortunate,” said Representative Ed Towns, also from New York.

In recent days, as polls have shown a steady lead for the Democratic ticket, Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin have used reports of Mr. Obama’s loose association with Bill Ayers, a former member of the ’60s radical group the Weather Underground, as evidence that he is different from them.

“Our opponent,” Ms. Palin told donors in Englewood, Colo., “is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

She added, “This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said. “We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”

An Associated Press analysis characterized those remarks as “unsubstantiated” and carrying “a racially tinged subtext.”

Actually, if we are to believe Obama, he too sees America as a “force for good” in the world. The question asked is can we take him at his word? Given his numerous, unbelievable prevarications involving people who don’t see America as a force for good in the world - Ayers, Wright, Meeks to a name a few - it is eminently practical and logical to ask if he is telling the truth when he says it. This goes to the heart of the reason his associations with radicals is so problematic. We all have friends and associates we disagree with on politics. But the level of hatred of America espoused by people like Wright and Ayers begs the question of why Obama has had such long term associations with these nutcases.

I have answered that question to my own satisfaction - Obama does indeed love America and he is not a radical in the sense that he shares most of the views of Ayers-Wright. But is it legitimate to ask if Obama’s idea of America is the same as mine and most Americans? This is a perfectly reasonable question to be answered by each of us individually based on what we see and hear from each candidate.

It is not racist to ask this question nor is it a personal attack. We are about to elect a president who is going to take charge amidst economic carnage the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Great Depression. It would be immensely helpful if voters had a good sense of what kind of America each man would like to see emerge from the wreckage. We will be a different country, of that I have no doubt. My own concerns center on whether the next president will seek to save the free market or throw it out with the rest of the bad paper that must have its way with us economically before an upturn in our fortunes can begin.

So how each candidate sees America is vitally important. And by playing the race card, the Obama campaign only causes us to ask more questions along those lines. I can’t believe people will be shamed into voting for our next president - not with what’s at stake. I can’t imagine voters being fearful of being called racist for failing to vote for Obama - a fear deliberately fostered by Obama playing the race card. In our current situation, it is understandable why Obama would do so, the race card being an extremely potent weapon. But will it play with the voter? I would hope that the voter has other criteria by which to judge the candidates.

“Angry” GOP crowds notwithstanding, all Americans are upset and fearful of the future. It is a fact of life that politicians would seek to capitalize on this fear. Both sides are trying to do it and both have done it in the past. Many voters no doubt will give in to this fear. Perhaps many more will not and it is among those voters that the election will be decided.

UPDATE

My boss, Tom Lifson,  at American Thinker writes about proof that there are Democratic plants at McCain rallies holding signs and shouting stuff about Obama.

And I just watched the video of the guy getting up and saying he was “mad - really mad” and let me tell you something friends. Any rational, objective observer watching the crowd in that video would violently disagree that they were an “angry mob.”

This is really pathetic. Transparent and stupid. And we have got to make sure that the American people don’t fall for it.

If John McCain’s “Lipstick on a Pig” attack was criticized for being petty and irrelevant to the “real issues” of the campaign, what should we make of this stellar piece of investigative reporting?

Sarah Palin brought one unusual accessory to the Alaska Governor’s mansion after moving in last year: A tanning bed.

Al Giordano’s NarcoNews first reported that Palin had the apparatus installed in the mansion in Juneau, and a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Roger Wetherell, confirmed the account to Politico.

“She paid for it with her own money,” Wetherell said in an email.

It does get awful dark up there in Alaska, but health authorities like the American Cancer Society generally frown on tanning beds as cancer risks.

The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t have an immediate comment on the purchase.

Matthew Yglesias, true to form, puts the tanning bed caper in “proper context” by pointing out that only those weird, hillbilly Alaskans who eat stuff like “Moose Stew” would think it middle class to have a tanning bed:

But that’s all pretty weird. Normal Americans don’t live in Alaska, don’t experience 22 straight hours of darkness ever, and don’t own personal tanning beds. Long story short, tanning beds are about as all-American as moose stew, which is not to say not all-American at all but rather idiosyncratic elements of the culture of an odd state located northwest of Canada.

I thought that kind of venomous, class conscious, dripping condescension went out of style for the left when Gus Hall moved on to that great proletariat gig in the sky. Jesus Lord God and they wonder why those of us in flyover country believe people like Yglesias to be effete, elitist snobs? Substitute “moose” for “rabbit” or “squirrel” or even “possum” and you have a delicacy enjoyed by millions of hunters and just plain folk all over the south and mountain west - two regions where Democrats, not surprisingly, are as scarce as hen’s teeth.

But the point isn’t that Yglesias and other lefties are out of touch. It’s hysterically funny that they threw a tantrum over McCain’s “Lipstick” attack for being irrelevant to the campaign and now they are attacking Palin for having a tanning bed that she paid for herself?

What is Obama’s position on tanning beds? A vital issue like this and Obama hasn’t formulated a position? How many tanning bed advisors does he have? I would say that’s just one more piece of evidence showing that he is unfit to be president.

Then there’s the latest Obama ad that comes right out and says McCain is “lying” about Obama’s record. The press, rousing itself temporarily from its peripatetic slumber, has suddenly realized that John McCain is indeed making a mockery of the campaign by attacking Obama mercilessly, exaggerating his record beyond recognition. To their mind, it is unfair - especially since it seems to be working. The pushback on the editorial pages and even by friendly columnists has probably hurt McCain or at the very least, blunted his momentum.

But the question is: Are they going to referee this contest and call both candidates out when they exaggerate or lie about their opponents record?

They didn’t do very well when Obama was using McCain’s “100 years” quote to falsely claim his opponent wanted to fight a war in Iraq for 100 years. In fact, most of these same columnists who are tsk-tsking and wagging an accusing finger in McCain’s direction never lifted a pen to take Obama to task for that hugely unfair portrayal of what McCain was saying.

But now that the press is awake and have presumably had their morning coffee, perhaps they’d like to do something about the lying being done by both Biden and Obama regarding McCain’s common sense statement yesterday that the fundamentals of the economy are sound:

“You know that there’s been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall St. And it is — people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still — the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times.”

What does McCain mean by “fundamentals?” Old Wall Street hand Mayor Bloomberg of New York, agreeing with McCain, helps the clueless Democrats and liberals out:

“I do agree that fundamentally America has an economy that is strong,” he said. “America’s great strength is its diversity, its hard work, its good financial statements, its broad capital markets,its enormous natural resources” and its work ethic, he said at an afternoon press conference devoted to reassuring New Yorkers that the city’s finances and its economy are intact.

“I’d rather play America’s hand than any other country,” he said. “Without problems? No.”

Obama and Biden both twisted McCain’s words and made it sound like he was saying all was well, that the economy was doing great. First Biden yesterday:

I believe that’s why Senator McCain could say with a straight face, as recently as this morning, and I quote “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” That, “We’ve made great progress economically” during the Bush years. But friends, I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn’t run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain.

John McCain just doesn’t seem to understand what middle class people are going through today. I don’t doubt that he cares. He just doesn’t think that we have any responsibility to help people who are hurting.

That statement is a vicious, false lie. First, McCain did not say “as recently as this morning” that “We’ve made great progress economically…” That is an out and out lie since McCain said it months ago. Secondly, McCain did not say the “economy was doing well.” In fact, he took great pains to say the opposite. What he said was that the underpinnings of the economy - imports, exports (McCain was wrong in saying we’re the #1 exporting country - Germany is), capital markets, and the most productive work force in the history of human civilization - are still strong. There is nothing myopic about this statement. It is a fact despite Obama and Biden’s attempt to lie about what McCain actually said.

Obama’s lies were even worse:

Why else would he say that the economy isn’t something he understands as well as he should? Why else would he say, today, of all days - just a few hours ago - that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong?

Senator - what economy are you talking about?

What’s more fundamental than the ability to find a job that pays the bills and can raise a family? What’s more fundamental than knowing that your life savings is secure, and that you can retire with dignity? What’s more fundamental than knowing that you’ll have a roof over your head at the end of the day? What’s more fundamental than that?

The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great - that promise that America is the place where you can make it if you try - a promise that is the only reason that we are standing here today.

Obama is not describing the “fundamentals” of the economy and he knows it. He is, in fact, talking about the micro of all micro parts of the economy - the individual citizen’s pocketbook. Obama knows damn well McCain’s statement was about the macro economy. It was not only common sense to say what McCain said. It was the sign of a responsible leader that on a day when hyperbole and lies were coming from Democrats about a serious but manageable crisis on Wall Street, John McCain stood up and sought to remind people that despite the turmoil, we were not going into a depression. He didn’t seek to minimize what was going on. He didn’t try and sugar coat what was happening. But his common sense words sought to keep people calm and try to reassure them that there was nothing to panic about, that the Federal Reserve and the government were on the job.

He never said the economy was doing well. He never said individual Americans weren’t suffering. He said that the economy was not going to collapse - something the statesman Obama did not do and instead, the messiah tried to use scare tactics by totally misrepresenting what McCain said.

So where’s the press? How about a little fairness here? Obama and Biden have shamelessly lied about what John McCain said and not a peep from our guardians of truth in the media. They have reported what Obama and Biden said yesterday without any mention of the fact that they lied through their teeth.

That’s the problem, of course. They never will - especially now that they’ve called McCain out for lying, they are going to allow Obama to get away with even more exaggeration and hyperbole. This is “fairness” as far as the press is concerned.