Right Wing Nut House

Ross Douthat on why Gingrich can’t win the GOP nomination:

If Gingrich can’t compete in Florida, he can’t compete nationally.

To date, all of the Republican primary contests have been held in smallish states with distinctive demographic profiles. This made it possible to play up the significance of Gingrich’s convincing South Carolina victory, while downplaying Romney’s New Hampshire win as an independent-abetted, only-in-New-England fluke.

But Florida’s primary was closed to independents, Florida’s electorate was as conservative and Tea Party-friendly (though not as evangelical-heavy) as South Carolina’s and Florida’s large senior population once looked like it would give Gingrich an edge. If the former speaker couldn’t even come close to beating Romney in such relatively favorable terrain, it’s hard to see how he can hope to compete with him anywhere outside the Deep South.

The anti-Romney vote isn’t as big as Gingrich likes to think it is.

As the Florida polls turned against them, Gingrich’s campaign began hinting that Rick Santorum should drop out of the race and give Gingrich a clear shot at consolidating conservatives against Romney. If Santorum weren’t in the race, one of Gingrich’s campaign chairmen in Florida told CNN on Monday, “we would clearly be beating Romney right now.”

But as it turned out, Romney received as many votes as his two nearest rivals combined. And more importantly, pre-primary polls showed that without Santorum in the race, Romney would still have led Gingrich by a wide margin – as much as 16 points, according to an NBC/Marist poll. The fact that a majority of Republicans still have reservations about Romney, in other words, doesn’t mean that a majority would ever vote for Gingrich.

Romney’s down-and-dirty Florida campaign eased right-wing doubts about his toughness.

Romney hammered Gingrich in the debates, and then carpet-bombed him with negative advertisements. 68 percent of the ads that ran in Florida were negative spots attacking Gingrich, and Romney’s only positive ad was a Spanish-language spot that aired 15 times in total. While this gloves-off approach may have tarnished Romney’s image with swing voters, it helped reassure the many conservatives who were attracted to Gingrich because they want a no-holds-barred fighter for the fall campaign.

As John Podhoretz wrote on Monday in the New York Post, Florida was a test of Romney’s mettle: “The clean-cut Boy Scout Ken-doll candidate from Massachusetts needed to show his fellow Republicans that he could be mean, tough and merciless on the attack — that he could take it to his rival and best him.” Consider that mission accomplished.

Ross also cited Gingrich’s “lackluster debate performances” and how hard it will be to regain that “aura of invincibility” as a master debater — a key selling point for Gingrich who seeks to convince GOP voters he can destroy Obama in open debate during the fall campaign.

I don’t think Romney did much convincing as far as his ability to be “tough.” Watching Romney on the attack is like watching a Toy Poodle in  a standoff with a Great Dane. He can’t help but look cute rather than ferocious.

That said, Douthat nails the demographics of Newt’s problems. It would be one thing if Gingrich had come within 5 points or so of Romney. Then he’d be crowing about being outspent 13-1 and coming within a yard of paydirt.

But he didn’t. He got slaughtered. And where Gingrich carried every demographic group in South Carolina, he lost most of those same voters in Florida. It’s hard to see where Newt can get his MoJo back anytime soon. Next on the calendar is Nevada (2/4) — where Ron Paul is lying in the weeds waiting to ambush Mitt Romney — and the beginning of the Maine caucus process (2/4-11). The state that sent Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to the senate would seem to be decidedly unfriendly to Newt’s brand of populist conservatism.

It doesn’t get any easier. On February 7, two more Not-Ready-For-Newt states will hold caucuses; Colorado and Minnesota. Missouri will hold a beauty contest primary with no delegates at stake on the same day. Then on February 28, Arizona and Michigan will hold their primaries. Romney’s ties to Michigan are well known, but Arizona might be more receptive to Newt’s bread and butter message. Whether he will have the cash to compete there is another question altogether.

In short, it’s hard to see at this point where Newt can make a stand and stop the bleeding with a victory. Georgia holds its primary on Super Tuesday (3/6), as do Oklahoma and Tennessee — three states where he has a very realistic shot at competing. But he’s not even on the ballot in Virginia and without the money to compete in Ohio and a deficient organization in the three states holding caucuses that day, Super Tuesday is shaping up to be a Romney avalanche.

But Gingrich declared he plans to defeat “money power” with “people power” in the coming months, casting his campaign as a counterbalance to the “establishment.” That may be. But the history of insurgencies in major parties would suggest that Newt is fighting for principle now, and not the GOP nomination for president.

Originally appears on PJM’s The Tatler.

I had high hopes for the OWS movement when it started. I thought they would actually try to incorporate other points of view and develop a true grass roots reform movement to address the shrinking middle class - which is really what “inequality” should be about.

Instead, OWS has turned into just another lefty pressure group - albeit, a more dangerous one. While there is no George Soros sitting in his office pulling strings and directing the movement, there appears to be a common thread beginning to run through these demonstrations that is extremely troubling; they have been co-opted by radicals who seek to overthrow the existing order. What began as a left leaning critique of Wall Street and the big banks, has morphed into a systemic attack on American values and our character as a nation.

This, I cannot abide. And I really let them have it in this piece I wrote for FPM this morning on the Oakland riots:

The Oakland riot is proof positive that whatever claim to innocence and idealism the movement purported in the early days of occupations around the country has been lost to the gimlet-eyed revolutionary left, now openly seeking violent confrontation with authorities using the bodies of the naive and foolish who still believe that OWS is a protest against income inequality and corporatism. Cadres of organized leftists came prepared to the Oakland protest with homemade gas masks and shields — a clear indication that they fully expected to provoke a police response. Innocent protesters do not come armed with “bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares.” The transformation of the occupy movement from protest to “direct action” — the preferred tactic of the European Communist Left for generations — is nearly complete. There can be no sniveling denials from OWS apologists any more: The driving force behind the OWS movement — the goal of those who control the streets — is revolution and the overthrow of America’s capitalist system.

The mob action in Oakland occurred after authorities refused to allow the OWS demonstrators to make the Kaiser Convention Center their headquarters. Given the cavalier and negligent attitude toward health, safety, and sanitation at OWS sites around the country, it would seem logical that the authorities felt they had little choice but to deny the OWS use of any public venue that could degenerate into a cesspool of disease and crime.

The protesters refused to heed calls by police to back off and began to tear down barricades, destroy construction equipment and fencing, while refusing to disperse. Several hundred protesters then marched to the Oakland Museum of California where there were more arrests as the police tried to protect the priceless artifacts from potential vandalism.

Given what happened next, they were right to do so.

The mob moved on to City Hall where the protesters say they found a door ajar — which sounds fantastical — and police say the demonstrators broke in. A video purportedly shows an OWS demonstrator using a crowbar to pry the door open.

There is no argument about what happened when the protesters got inside the building.

A more than century-old architectural model of City Hall was damaged in its display case, electrical wires were cut, soda machines thrown to the floor, graffiti was sprayed on the walls, other display cases were smashed, windows were broken — a demonstration of lawlessness and lack of respect for property that even has some OWS leaders around the country saying it probably wasn’t a good idea.

Other OWS sympathizers took to the streets in “solidarity” with those arrested during the Oakland riot. CNN reports:

The mass arrests, described by police as the largest in city history, appear to have injected new life into the Occupy movement as protesters in a number of American and European cities took to the streets Sunday to express their solidarity with the Occupy Oakland group.

Marching in solidarity with rioters who took part in what one Oakland official referred to as “domestic terrorism,” is a curious way to demonstrate one’s peaceful intentions.

Now comes the fun part; the GOP will try to tie Obama and the Democrats to the OWS movement. What makes this so delicious is that there is going to be a probable riot in Chicago during the G-8 Summit in April. Adbusters, the radical consumerists who got the ball rolling with OWS, are calling on 50,000 demonstrators to descend on Chicago in April and, in their words:

And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear [ellipses in original].

A lot of bombast to be sure. But they include a call to imitate the “Chicago 8″ - the radicals charged with inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic convention. Not very subtle, huh? This is a movement now that needs violence in order to get attention. And Obama, who has never really embraced the movement but has made supportive noises,  has adopted the rhetoric of OWS in order to skewer the GOP. The GOP should be all over him and his fellow Democrats when the crap hits the fan in Chicago and the tear gas is as thick as a morning fog over Lake Michigan.

I would guess that most of those who march or identify strongly with the OWS movement are peaceful Americans seeking reform. They will be cruelly used by those who are experienced at using the naive and innocent as cannon fodder for their revolutionary goals. This is not a reform movement anymore. It is an attempt to upend and overturn American society to make it something alien and unrecognizable from what we are today.

This is a piece that I took enormous pleasure in writing - first time in a while I actually had fun scribbling away.

It’s up at PJ Media so enjoy!

A sample:

No matter. The point is made. For a large number of conservatives and many liberals who are being taunted with the epithet “RINO” or “DINO,” the fact remains that they have not left their party. Their party has left them. Those who can’t stomach the extremism, the obstructionism, the radicalism of the neo-liberals and Tea Party conservatives who both seek to hammer each other into the ground on a daily basis are largely left on the outside, viewing the slow-motion train wreck that politics has become with a feeling of abject helplessness.

It’s not a question of “moderates” not holding power. One can be liberal or conservative and be pragmatic enough to work with the other side on the big issues of the day. The problem is, pragmatism is dead — killed by the excessively ideological base of both parties who view compromise as treason, and comity as cowardice. Both sides are so besotted with a warped and tangled view of each other that they occasionally — unintentionally — provide comic relief for our political culture.

The debt ceiling deal reached by President Obama and Speaker Boehner is one such example of a mirthful interlude. Both sides screamed bloody murder that their guy had botched it and had been taken by the other. It would do no good to point out that it would have been impossible for both sides to be “taken” on any one deal, so one side has to be in error. Guessing which one means that you will be acknowledged a genius by 50% of the extremists from both parties.

This kind of idiocy aside, the lack of pragmatism in both parties means that even the formerly simple tasks of government become ideological mountains to climb. Back in the good old days when Congress was made up of sane crooks and charlatans, the president’s appointments were mostly pro-forma exercises in governance. Cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries were supported (or at least, unopposed) by the opposition as a matter of course. The president was not begrudged the courtesy of being able to pick his own people. Judges — unless they were closet cases or rabid racists (and even then they were sometimes given a pass) — were confirmed by voice vote or desultory roll calls with few dissenting votes.

Today, both parties go to war over federal judges, undersecretaries, ambassadors, and other appointees as if the fate of the republic hung on whether an appointee was too far left or right. Democrats did it to Bush as much as Republicans have done it to Obama. The process is broken and the consequences are a hobbled government at all levels. Whatever efforts to achieve a pragmatic solution — such as the “Gang of 14? who came to an agreement in 2007 regarding some of President Bush’s judicial appointees — are derided by both sides, undermined, and then destroyed by partisan sniping.

If one defines pragmatism as viewing the world as it is, prioritizing what’s important, and recognizing the validity and good faith of the other side in order to work together to solve problems, then there is a gravestone somewhere on Capitol Hill that might read:

Here lies the remains of pragmatic politics. Killed by excessive ideology and rank partisanship. Survived by the American republic — but for how long, no one can say.

Whether you believe Marianne Gingrich’s story about Newt’s offer of an open marriage or not, the sad fact is, this is a morally flawed candidate who has shown a shocking disregard for his family, and specifically, the women in his life. Two divorces caused directly by his philandering is evidence that Newt cannot be trusted on a personal level. And he has given us no indication that we should trust him on a political level either.

It is beyond hypocrisy for Newt Gingrich to talk about family values when his own personal failings highlight someone who could care less about those values, and more about his personal, hedonistic pleasure. The right didn’t put up with that crap from Bill Clinton - rightly so. So the question is; will conservatives overlook the massive personal failings of Newt Gingrich just to nominate someone for president besides Mitt Romney?

It is incomprehensible that culture warriors and values voters on the right would swallow hard and look the other way when it comes to a candidate’s obvious shortcomings with regard to the very issues they hold dear and proclaim to champion. But judging from the debate last night when Gingrich received a standing ovation for avoiding the issue of his second wife’s charges, it would seem that many values voters have thrown those principles under the bus in the name of a crass political expediency. And if that be the general reaction from the mass of voters on the right in the entire electorate, Gingrich may very well skate through to seriously challenge Mitt Romney from now until the convention.

I am not a values voter. I am a pragmatic conservative who wants to see Obama defeated and the Democrats tossed out of the senate next November. Newt Gingrich is not the man to lead the party to that victory. He will be a millstone around the neck of the GOP, dragging the down ballot candidates with him as the GOP loses its identity as a party of principles and values and is defined as a party of opportunistic and cynical calculation. Already it is apparent that nominating Gingrich would open a gender gap in the general election through which Obama would march to triumph. Add to that those who are simply disgusted with the personal moral turpitude of the candidate and Obama doesn’t have to work very hard to fashion an electoral college majority.

The hatred by many on the right of the “establishment,” and of “moderates” — Romney’s perceived sins — has apparently overcome their reason and logic. Romney is not the best conservative to nominate. He may not even be the best candidate to challenge Obama in November and win. But at least he has a grounded moral center that people can sense and that gives him a strength of character so obvisouly lacking in the former speaker of the House.

Better to swallow hard and nominate and support a “RINO” for president than swallow hard and betray every important principle and value you stand for in order to stick it to the establishment.

This blog originally appeared at The American Thinker

God bless the US Marines.

Every society — even the freest and the most civilized — needs a warrior class to protect it. And the Marines, generally regarded as the best warriors in the world, function in that regard for America.

They are the sharp end of the spear of American policy and their arrival on the battlefield strikes fear in the breast of our enemies. They are trained for one purpose, and one purpose only; to kill our enemies. We don’t send the Marines in to negotiate, and we usually don’t send them in to build schools and hospitals. We send them in to seek out and kill as many of the enemy as can be found.

To accomplish this necessary goal, we train the Marines to see the enemy as not quite human. There are many subtle ways this is done, but the bottom line is that it relieves our warriors of the tremendous psychic burden that being civilized human beings has placed on them; that killing another person is murder.

Dehumanizing the enemy in war, then, is unavoidable if we wish our warriors to survive and achieve success. Thus, the questions raised by the Marines who, at the very least, disrespected the dead by urinating on them, have far more to do with who we are as a nation than what we think of the Taliban.

We should not mourn the death of any Taliban. They are trying to kill Americans and killing them first is the best way to fight and win the war. But every society has customs and rituals associated with the dead and deliberately violating them by desecrating the bodies of our enemy is not in the “warrior ethos” as Corps Commandant Genearl Jim Amos said in a statement responding to the video of the act.

He’s right. We’re better than that. The Marines are better than that. It’s not political correctness that is at the heart of the real criticism of the actions of the Marines. (criticism by domestic critics and America’s enemies is exaggerated and mostly without merit, having more to do with politics than ethics). It is the notion that America is an exceptional country and that by definition, we hold our warriors to a higher standard. The argument that the Taliban does worse, or Muslims have desecrated the bodies of Americans as they did in Somali doesn’t hold water. Are we to ape the worst behaviors of the enemy and justify it as tit for tat? Or, are our standards superior to our enemies and thus, criticism of the Marines is justified?

Sebastion Junger, director of the superior documentary “Restrepo” which follows a company of Marines for a year in the “Valley of Death” - the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan — has an interesting piece in the Washington Post about the Marines and why they may have acted as they did:

The U.S. military should be held to a higher standard, certainly, but it is important to understand the context of the behavior in the video. Clearly, the impulse to desecrate the enemy comes from a very dark and primal place in the human psyche. Once in a while, those impulses are going to break through.

There is another context for that behavior, though - a more contemporary one. As a society, we may be disgusted by seeing U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters, but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same Marines just put high-caliber rounds through the fighters’ chests. American troops are not blind to this irony. They are very clear about the fact that society trains them to kill, orders them to kill and then balks at anything that suggests they have dehumanized the enemy they have killed.

But of course they have dehumanized the enemy - otherwise they would have to face the enormous guilt and anguish of killing other human beings. Rather than demonstrate a callous disregard for the enemy, this awful incident might reveal something else: a desperate attempt by confused young men to convince themselves that they haven’t just committed their first murder - that they have simply shot some coyotes on the back 40.

It doesn’t work, of course, but it gets them through the moment; it gets them through the rest of the patrol.

We sometimes forget the tremedous psychological cost to our warriors of fighting for our country. The epidemic of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome cases of our soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq should remind us of this. Dealing with the stress of combat is an individual war within the war and, as Junger writes, we shouldn’t be shocked when a release of the kind the Marines chose to effect occurs.

But this can’t excuse the behavior.Despite war being a dehumanizing venture, it nonetheless demands that a baseline of ethical and moral behavior be followed. One of those ethical lines in the sand has to be a simple respect for the dead bodies of our enemies who, after all, can no longer harm anyone and are someone’s husband, father, or brother. Inflicting pain on the innocent by desecrating the body of their loved one is not exceptional. It is fundamentally wrong whether there is a written rule in the Geneva Conventions, or the Marine Corps Code of Conduct, or not. The bottom line is, we wouldn’t want an enemy soldier treating our dead that way — a good rule to follow when fighting for an exceptional country like the United States.

What kind of punishment - if any - should the Marines be subject to I can’t say. Nor should the Commandant determine their fate based on the outcry from those who hate the Marines for what they do without recognizing their existential value to the nation. The idea being advanced by some on the left that this is some sort of “Abu Ghraib” repeat is idiotic. No one was hurt. No one was tortured. No one was killed. The notion that this is some kind of “war crime” is equally nonsensical - a criticism made more for political effect than any reflection of reality.

I hope General Amos places their actions in the proper context and makes his decision on whether to punish the Marines or not by basing it on the high standards set by the Marine Corps and not the rantings of civilian partisans who want to use the incident to further their own political agendas.

But it was Santorum that was the night’s true winner.

My take on the caucus results up today on FPM.

Every four years we hear the same complaints about Iowa being “First in the Nation” to register an opinion on the presidential candidates for both parties. It’s too white, or it’s too rural, or Evangelical Christians are too plentiful. It doesn’t matter. The state jealously guards its status as the initial test for the candidates and the Republican National Committee appears to be in no mood to change its privileged position.

That said, the caucuses can be seen as a rudimentary test of strength and popularity with GOP voters and as such, it begins the winnowing process that usually claims one or two candidates who decide not to move on to New Hampshire. The most likely casualty from Tuesday night’s festivities could be Michele Bachmann who told pre-caucus audiences that she had already “bought our tickets to go to South Carolina” in order to compete in that state’s primary on January 21. But a sixth place finish in Iowa and with little money and not much of an organization in the Palmetto State, it seems a quixotic quest for her to hope that lightening would strike and bring her victory there.

Rick Perry’s weak 5th place finish has dealt a body blow to his campaign. But the candidate swears he will move on to South Carolina, skipping New Hampshire to concentrate on the far friendlier climes of the Palmetto State. But in his speech after the caucuses ended, Perry hinted that he may drop out after all. He is returning to Texas to “reassess” his campaign.

Newt Gingrich finished a distant 4th, but will soldier on, at least through the South Carolina primary and perhaps all the way to Florida which holds its contest on January 31. For the former speaker of the House, it’s gotten personal. The barrage of negative ads from Romney independent groups tore him down and severely damaged his candidacy. Newt has already demonstrated that he is taking off the gloves and will go after Romney hard wherever they are competing. Whether that is a winning strategy for him remains to be seen.

As for Jon Huntsman’s last place finish, he wasn’t competing in Iowa anyway, saving his money and spending all of his time in New Hampshire, hoping for a strong showing in territory that has proven friendly to more moderate Republicans in the past. While Romney seems to be extending his lead in the Granite State, Huntsman figures a strong second will allow him to move on to other primaries later this month.

It’s all about perception, of course. “Exceeding expectations” - or not - is the name of the game. In that contest, Rick Santorum has aced the Iowa test. How he did it is not complicated. The former Pennsylvania senator held a staggering 358 town hall meetings in the last year, visited every one of Iowa’s 99 counties, and counted on a volunteer network of churches, pastors, and Christian activists who worked tirelessly on his behalf. If national pundits believed that retail politics were not as important in Iowa as debate performances and paid advertising, they might want to rethink that formula after Santorum’s effort in 2012.

With the momentum he will get from his Iowa campaign, Santorum is seeing a huge increase in his fundraising. A Santorum staffer told CNN that “the campaign raised more money in the last week than they raised on-line the past six months.” He added that “fundraising is between 300% and 400% higher on a daily basis than it was just ten days ago.” The candidate raised only $700,000 in the third quarter and ended up at the end of the year with just $190,000 in cash.

But the rocket-powered boost in fundraising has already fueled some ad buys in New Hampshire, and next week, Santorum will begin to run ads in South Carolina. It is likely that he will preserve most of his cash for that primary, and make little more than a token effort in New Hampshire. South Carolina has picked the eventual Republican nominee for the last 30 years and Santorum is expected to run strongly in one of the most conservative states in the union.

The entrance polls revealed that Santorum cleaned up with conservative Christians, winning 30% of those voters who made up nearly 60% of caucus attendees. He also did very well with those who identified themselves as “very conservative” - a good omen for his efforts to come in South Carolina.

Interesting speculation today that perhaps it’s Jon Huntsman’s turn to be the “not Romney” candidate. Santorum will almost certainly all but bypass New Hampshire and save his limited resources for South Carolina. Are we going to see another back of the pack candidate surge to the front in New Hampshire?

Stay tuned.

The reaction of Ron Paul to a question by Jake Tapper on ABC’s This Week about whether he believes that President Bush knew ahead of time about the 9/11 attacks was indignant:

Ron Paul strongly rebuffed ABC News’s Jake Tapper on Sunday’s This Week, when he had brought up a quote by former senior campaign aide Eric Dondero, that claimed the Republican presidential candidate had engaged in 9/11 conspiracy theories. “Now, wait, wait, wait! Don’t go any further on that. That’s complete nonsense!” Paul exclaimed.

“It’s nonsense? It’s not true?” Tapper asked.

“No, I never bought into that stuff, never talked about it. About the conspiracy of Bush — of Bush knowing about this?” Paul responded incredulously. “No, no, come on! Come on! Let’s be reasonable! That’s just off-the-wall!

Did Paul buy in to 9/11 conspiracy theories? His supporters will no doubt look at the following evidence and, just as Paul intends, spin the information using the most favorable interpretation possible.

But any fair minded person would have to conclude, based on the following, that Paul is a full blown 9/11 truther and despite his denials, is one of the heroes of the Truther movement.

This video from 2007 was taken at a reception for Paul at a private residence where the congressman became engaged in conversation with a man from the organization Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth:

Michelle Malkin got a hold of the transcript. Here are the relevant portions:

Student: …we’ve heard that you have questioned the government’s official account.

Paul: Well, I never automatically trust anything the government does when they do an investigation because too often I think there’s an area that the government covered up, whether it’s the Kennedy assassination or whatever.

Sure. He just wants answers to some “questions.”

Student: So I just wanted to say, you know, we’ve talked to Dennis Kucinich and he says that he’s willing to, you know, investigate it. He would advocate for a new investigation.

Paul: Into 9/11?

Student: Yeah, into 9/11. I mean, if it was Dennis Kucinich and you, there’d be congressional support. You know what I mean? So you wouldn’t be the only one.

Paul: It’d be bipartisan, too. And I’ve worked with Dennis a lot on a lot of these issues

Student: So I mean, would you advocate for a new investigation into 9/11?

Paul: Yes, I think we have to look at the details of it.

There appears to be some differing opinions on just what Paul said next.

Malkin:

At this point in the video, Student Scholars for Truth transcribes Paul’s next sentence this way:

“…the investigation was an investigation in which there were government cover-ups?”

Did Paul really say that? Listen to the video closely. It’s hard to tell. If this isn’t what Paul says, he should clarify publicly what exactly it is he said. If the Student Scholars for Truth group is lying about what Paul said, it should own up.

Paul has already made it clear that he thinks the government covers up “[w]hether it’s the Kennedy assassination or whatever.” It is not beyond reason to think that the Truther group accurately transcribed Paul’s words and that he believes that there was a government cover-up about 9/11.

This is 9/11 Trutherism writ large. Rejecting the official 9/11 Commission Report in order to conduct another investigation is what the Truther movement is all about. This time, they’d want to know about the super thermite that was placed in the WTC supporting columns without anyone knowing about it; they’d want to know how the military got the passengers off the planes before the empty aircraft were remotely piloted into the towers; they’d want to know how those fake phone calls from the doomed aircraft were so cleverly crafted that the voices fooled wives, husbands, fathers, and mothers into thinking it was actually their loved one calling them to say goodbye.

Former Paul staffer Eric Dondero, writing at Jeff Dunetz’s site The Lid:

What Tapper should have followed up with, was simply asking Paul if he ever posited the theory that Bush “may” have known about the attacks ahead of time. Notice how Paul adds the caveat “About the conspiracy - of Bush [definitively] knowing about this.” That’s not how it went down in Ron’s offices in the 9/11 immediate aftermath. It was Ron often couching his terms with “might have known,” or playing devil’s advocate as in the case of “what if.” This of course, gave him just enough wiggle room to claim that he never said that’s exactly what happened back then, or as he is doing presently.

I maintain, as I have from the beginning of this, that it was Ron Paul’s immediate reaction after 9/11 that is the largest of the scandals. The media has yet to press him on this.

Responding narrowly to Tapper’s question about whether Bush had prior knowledge of the attacks, Paul rightly called such a notion “nonsense.”

But his previous comments on the attacks and the investigation make it clear that Ron Paul is indeed a conspiracy minded 9/11 truther and unfit to hold the office of president.

This post originally appeared at the PJ Tatler.

An “echo chamber nation” is what Politifact, the fact checking organization of journalists, said about the state of politics in the US.

They’re right, of course. On both left and right, there is a tendency by many - not all - to stay in one’s comfort zone and be exposed to only one, narrow point of view. Criticism from the other side is dismissed - not based on the validity of the critique but rather its source.

Needless to say, liberals went absolutely gaga when they thought that one of their own media outlets - Politifact - “turned” on them and named the Democratic charge that the GOP wanted to get rid of Medicare as the “Lie of the Year.”

PolitiFact had its latest brush with the Echo Chamber Nation this week. We gave our Lie of the Year to the Democrats’ claim that the Republicans “voted to end Medicare.” That set off a firestorm in the liberal blogosphere, with many saying that claim was not actually wrong. We’ve received about 1,500 e-mails about our choice and only a few agreed with us.

Some of the response has been substantive and thoughtful. The critics said we ignored the long-term effects of Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan and that we were wrong to consider his privatized approach to be Medicare. In their view, that is an end to Medicare.

We’ve read the critiques and see nothing that changes our findings. We stand by our story and our conclusion that the claim was the most significant falsehood of 2011. We made no judgments on the merits of the Ryan plan; we just said that the characterization by the Democrats was false.

Our competitors FactCheck.org and the Washington Post’s FactChecker had also said the Medicare claim was false - and this week both picked it for their biggest-falsehoods-of-the-year lists.

Some of our critics wrongly attributed our choice to our readers’ poll and said we were swayed by a lobbying campaign by Ryan. But our editors made the choice and the poll was not a factor.

Others portrayed it as a case of false balance where we put our thumb on the scale for a Democratic falsehood. This, too, is a sad byproduct of our polarized discourse, from people who are sure their side is always right.

“Fact checking” as an exercise in journalistic integrity and public accountability is in its infancy. Most fact checkers who work for major publications and networks are a lot more flexible in taking the word of politicians at face value than the independent outfits like Politifact.

We are witnessing this with the debate over the payroll tax holiday. Nancy Pelosi gave a figure of 160 million American workers who would have their taxes raised without the House vote. Nearly 3,000 media outlets went with that number despite the fact there are only 140 million Americans working at the moment.

Despite numerous blog posts (and we assume letters to editors) pointing out the fallacy, CNN and others continue to use the figure of 160 million workers. That there is a need for an independent organization that fact checks statements by politicians and others is not in dispute. But we can’t say for sure whether the Politifact model is the best solution.

As long as we live in an echo chamber America, one side or the other is going to cry “foul” when a fact checking organization cites them for lying or misstating the facts. It’s time to grow up and start holding all politicians regardless of party to a standard of truth telling that would elevate our politics, rather than besmirch them.

The poor, confused, addle-brained numbskull:

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. “special rapporteur” for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

“I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order,” he said Thursday. “But on the other hand I also believe that the state — in this case the federal state — has an obligation to protect and promote human rights.”

“If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights,” he continued.

La Rue, a longtime Guatemalan human rights activist who has held his U.N. post for three years, said it’s clear to him that the protesters have a right to occupy public spaces “as long as that doesn’t severely affect the rights of others.”

In moments of crisis, governments often default to a forceful response instead of a dialogue, he said — but that’s a mistake.

“Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there’s no need to use public force to silence that dissension,” he said.

How does this jamoke define “severely affect the rights of others?” Rapes, assaults, unsanitary conditions that could lead to an outbreak of contagious disease, cities being forced to use precious police resources to patrol lawless encampments while allowing other neighborhoods to suffer with increased crime –

I’d say that’s a great, big “yes.”

“I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order…” Perhaps he should also believe in the US Constitution which prohibits federal authorities from intruding in what by any stretch of the imagination is a wholly local matter. Talk about jackboots in the streets - just think what this brainless twit would be saying if the National Guard were “protecting” the rights of the protesters? He’s probably be trying to get the Securty Council to enforce our “Responsibility to Protect.”

And how about this for a false analogy from another mindless observer, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of a National Lawyers Guild committee, who echoes the beliefs of many OWS supporters:

Using the same lens placed on the Occupy movement to look at, say, the protest in Egypt, Verheyden-Hilliard said, observers would have focused on such issues as “Did the people in Tahrir Square have a permit?”

To compare the undemocratic, dictatorial, oppressive Mubarak regime with American democracy is beyond belief. The Tahrir Square protestors- tens of thousands of them compared to the paltry few hundred who turned out for the OWS occuping - had no democratic alternative to permits. The OWS protestors have gone to court - a separate but equal branch of government - to plead their case. The fact that the courts sided with the reasonable requests of city officials that their central cities not be turned into crime and rat infested fetid swamps of human waste, garbage, filthy and lice ridden protestors should be a sign to any objective observer that “human rights” of the demonstrators were infringing on the rights of other residents in the city - to the severe detriment of public health and public order.

Besides, what exactly are these cities - the overwhelming majority of them run by politicians who openly sympathize with the protestors and their stated goals - doing to accomodate the demonstrators? They are saying they can come back during the day and protest to their heart’s content, fully exercising their constitutional right of free speech. The only restriction is that they can’t camp out and create chaotic and unsanitary conditions under which the city must expend enormous and scarce resources to accomodate them.

Did the protestors in Tahrir Square get that kind of welcoming alternative? Did the Tahrir Square protestors have dozens of police patrolling the periphery of their encampment to guard against attacks on women, on property, and prevent other crimes? Did Cairo city officials praise the protestors and give city employees time off to attend their rallies? Did the Tahrir Square protestors get free porto-johns, free hook ups to the electrical grid, free gourmet food, free wifi, and other amenities that other groups who might wish to protest - the Tea Party for instance - would have to pay for? It is certainly a novel idea that cities should be required to spend millions of dollars on protestors to ensure their comfort and facilitiate their agenda.

The notion that there is any commonality between the OWS protestors and demonstrators in Tahrir Square is not only counterintuitive, but an insult to rational thought.

But really, La Rue doesn’t even try to hide his political agenda:

La Rue said the protesters are raising and addressing a fundamental issue. “There is legitimate reason to be indignant and angry about a crisis that was originated by greed and the personal interests of certain sectors,” he said. That’s especially the case when the bankers “still earn very hefty salaries and common folks are losing their homes.”

“In this case, the demonstrations are going to the center of the issue,” he said. “These demonstrations are exactly challenging the basis of the debate.”

So because he agrees with them, the OWS crew should be allowed to thumb their nose at the law? This is another novel construct with regard to “human rights.” Objective truth does not recognize ideological arguments, but rather the reasonable weighing of public and private interests to arrive at a logical conclusion. Logic escapes most OWS supporters. It certainly has nothing to do with La Rue’s efforts to condemn the national government for not interceding in local efforts to maintain order and protect the lives and property of all citizens - not just those granted privileged status for their noble ideas.

UPDATE”

This just in - another telling comparison between OWS and Tahrir Square…NOT:

A Suffolk Superior Court judge says Occupy Boston protesters can stay in an encampment on Dewey Square until Dec. 15.

After a four-hour hearing, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Frances McIntyre took both sides’ arguments under advisement and said she would issue a ruling in two weeks time. Until then, she said, an injunction that bars the city from booting the protesters remains in place.

The protesters called the decision a “victory.”

What Egyptian court did the Tahrir Square protestors file their injunction? Oh, wait…

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