Stephen Spruill has it:

This from the guy who has spent the entire summer rewriting the same blog post: (Brad DeLong/Ezra Klein/David Leonhardt) agree with me that we’re in a liquidity trap, deflation is near, the stimulus wasn’t big enough, and European austerity will plunge us deeper into a global depression. Deficits don’t matter, and even if they did, it is all George Bush’s fault for cutting taxes for the rich and fighting wars. Unfortunately, that coward Ben Bernanke appears to be taking his marching orders from (Kenneth Rogoff/John Taylor/Niall Ferguson), and he refuses to run the printing presses at warp speed. Doesn’t he realize that I have a chart here that proves that I’m right and the rest of you are morons? See you in the breadlines. Well, I won’t be there personally. I’m rich. I’ll be on St. John. But it will suck for you…etc.

I never have bothered with the retrograde putz, and now you don’t have to either. Spruiell has rendered a great service to sane people everywhere with this.

Traitor scum caught:

WASHINGTON—Investigators have found concrete evidence linking Pfc. Bradley Manning with the leak of classified Afghanistan war reports, a U.S. defense official said.

A search of the computers used by Pfc. Manning yielded evidence he had downloaded the Afghanistan war logs, which span 2004-2009, the official said. It isn’t clear precisely what that evidence is.

Pfc. Manning, 22 years old, worked in the intelligence operations of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Brigadein Baghdad. Although he was supposed to be examining intelligence relevant to Iraq, defense officials said Pfc. Manning used his “Top Secret/SCI” clearance to tap into documents around the world.

Defense officials are also combing through Pfc. Manning’s computers in a bid to figure out what other material he may have stolen as they try to anticipate what other material WikiLeaks may have.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a former director of central intelligence, is said by defense officials to have been deeply disturbed by the leak of the documents.

He damned well oughta be.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen said WikiLeaks “might already have on their hands the blood of a young soldier or that of an Afghan family.”

As might such notable suppurating boils as Andrew Sullivan, Gleen Grenwald(s), various propagandists at the Grauniad, and sundry other Lefty reprobates who have hailed this miserable worm and his partner in treason Julian Ass-mange as some sort of twisted “heroes.”

Pfc. Manning was charged by the military earlier this month with illegally taking and disseminating a classified video as well as secret State Department files.

Defense officials have said the video taken by Pfc. Manning was the one released by WikiLeaks showing a U.S. military helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad. Two Reuters journalists and seven others were killed in the July 12, 2007, incident.

Which, if he is in fact guilty, makes this not just some isolated mistake made by a well-meaning but misguided idealist, but a long-standing pattern of treason most foul. Hang the bastard high. Manning is a disgrace to the uniform, his country, and to the very notion of decency and patriotism. Hang him by his pencil neck until he is dead, dead, dead.

(Via Ed)

Says Mike Riggs: “I suppose this means we will have to redefine libel to include PUBLISHING INCOMPLETE VIDEO OF THINGS THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.” Proving yet again that the worst thing you can ever do to the Leftist slimeballs is tell the plain truth about them.

It’s an all-star lineup at Treacher’s joint while he’s out doing his court-mandated hours of community service, including the great Doc Zero:

There were plenty of vendors dispensing Big Gulps of vitriol at the Netroots Nation conference this week. Belligerent language is to be expected at a pep rally, especially for a team cruising into a rough season. I can forgive the Kos Kidz prowling the floor and muttering about “strengthened Democratic majorities” while slapping at the imaginary spiders crawling out of their ears. What else are they supposed to say?

The Netroots were positively obsessed with the Tea Party this year, an obsession which illuminates their hunger for crushing inconvenient fellow citizens. The media fusses endlessly over the “hateful” spirit of the Tea Party movement, but the anger among its members is directed primarily at power-hungry politicians and the bloated government they’ve been nourishing. The Netroots, by contrast, are furious at the citizen resistance to this government. The thought of subduing it, as forcefully as possible, is the only thing that cheers them up.

The plans of leftist dreamboat Barack Obama will require a great deal of submission to carry out. The thousands of new IRS agents Obama hired will be busy processing millions of new tax forms required by ObamaCare. State efforts to resist the unconstitutional mandates of the plan must be crushed. The middle class will be expected to meekly fork over a huge chunk of its income when the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. If the cap-and-trade energy taxes are implemented, Americans will be expected to sit quietly while their standard of living is permanently reduced. Entire industries will be expected to go quietly into the goodnight as Obama’s taxes and mandates delete their business models.

The public is expected to submit to all this without a word of protest, since all such protest has been classified as racism and treason by the Left. There is simply no acceptable criticism to be leveled at any aspect of the monster State, no matter how alien it might be to the traditions of liberty and independence cherished by millions of Americans. Don’t call it fat, or ugly, or blind. Give it anything it demands, and be prepared to give more.

I’d love to excerpt more, but you really need to go read all of it. It’s brief, and one of his very best.

Because they aren’t, in any meaningful sense.

Despite its name, membership in the liberal online community Journolist wasn’t limited to journalists. Present among the bloggers, reporters and editors were a number of professional political operatives, including top White House economic advisors, key Obama political appointees, and Democratic campaign veterans. Some left government to join Journolist. Others took the opposite route. A few contributed to Journolist from their perches in politics. At times, it became difficult to tell who was supposed to be covering policy and who was trying to make it.

Two of the administration’s chief economic advisors, Jared Bernstein, the vice president’s top economist, and Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, were members of Journolist until they began working officially for Obama.

Ilan Goldenberg, now an advisor on Middle East policy at the Pentagon, was a member until he joined the administration. Moira Whelan left Journolist to work at the Department of Homeland Security. Anne-Marie Slaughter left to work at the State Department. Former Journolist member Ben Brandzel is now a top staffer at Organizing for America, the political arm of the Obama White House.

Josh Orton, a former spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), became Obama’s deputy director of new media during the 2008 presidential campaign. After the election, he joined Journolist.

Journolist founder Ezra Klein, a staffer at the Washington Post, says he “tried to be very strict” in making sure no active political operatives joined Journolist. “It’s possible I missed someone,” he explained in an email.

In fact, he did.

Actually, he didn’t miss anything. He’s trying to cover his ass by lying through his teeth — thereby making the relevant orifices even more indistinguishable than they already were.

The tyrannical Progressivist agenda can advance only by deceit. The liberal media is an instrument of that deceit, and nothing more. If you’re getting all — or any — of your news from these propagandists, you don’t know anything at all.

This sordid little conspiracy is far more serious and damaging than many of us imagined when it was first revealed. It strikes at the very heart of what little remains of the Republic the Founders envisioned. These shady, sleazy, lying reptiles are truly, literally the enemy of anyone and everyone who still cares about restoring Constitutional government.

An open letter to Mayor Bloomberg, which will of course be duly ignored:

I have an additional suggestion: If this project — also called the “Cordoba Initiative”— is really to “symbolize interfaith cooperation,” if it’s really to be an “inter-religious center,” a 13-story home for “multi-faith collaboration,” should it not contain a synagogue and a church as well as a mosque?

I would recommend putting each on a different floor. On the highest floor, let’s put the church — since Christians founded this great nation of ours. One floor down, let’s put a synagogue, since Jews were among the earliest immigrants to find religious freedom in America. And one floor farther down, we’d have the mosque, a place for a newer generation of immigrants to gather and worship freely.

Here’s my guess: If you propose this to Abdul Rauf, emphasizing, as you have in the past, the First Amendment rule that the government “shouldn’t be in the business of picking” one religion over another, he will nonetheless refuse. He will offer all sorts of explanations, but the truth, I suspect, is that he believes that Islam is not “one of the world’s great religions” but rather the only true religion, that others are false and wicked. He will find it blasphemous that you want thiscenter to give equal status to Christianity and Judaism. And he will see putting a church and synagogue on higher floors as symbolizing more than equality.

Read all of it — and this one, too, wherein McCarthy spells out what exactly what this is really all about: a victory dance on the ashes of our dead countrymen. May has already gotten a response from the insidious wretches trying to sneak this abomination through on false pretenses, and it’s exactly what you’d expect.

NOTE: NRO is in the process of implementing their redesign, so you might have trouble with the links. Just keep trying.

And who doesn’t?

You folks probably know by now that I’m way more a bike guy than a car guy, so I don’t feel too entirely igner’nt admitting that I never heard of the Graham brothers, or their car company.

It’s been my loss. Dang, what a beaut. Interesting story, too.

Update! “Drama and malevolence.” Yeah, I just can’t figure out why I like this thing. Ahem.

Jonah G swings at another Lefty meat(head)ball, misses by a mile:

But rather than debate all that again, let me instead just go on record coming to the man’s defense more generally. The rush to discredit Andrew has been shot through with so much bad faith and BS it’s hard to know where to start. I particularly like the effort by the Huffington Post to discredit . . . the creator of the Huffington Post.*

It seems like countless people on the left, starting with Shirley Sherrod herself, think either that it’s true that Andrew’s a racist or that it’s just fine to call him one. Neither is the case. Andrew is no racist, not even close.

But one of his prime motivations is to fight back against false charges of racism. That makes him terribly inconvenient to the racial Left, particularly those who’ve made a cottage industry out of unfairly accusing conservatives of racism (by the way, where are all the MSM retractions for the N-word fraud, so widely accepted by the media establishment?).

Nor is Andrew dishonest. He didn’t edit that Sherrod video.

What Andrew did do (in my opinion) is rush the Sherrod video out too quickly. That’s not dishonesty; that’s just another cautionary tale about the perils of the too-fast news cycle, the Internet, and the pitfalls of  political enthusiasm. Andrew’s mistakes are so much less exciting than his critics want them to be. In fact, they are no different than the sorts of errors made by liberal journalists and activists every day.

Andrew’s “mistakes”? WHAT “mistakes”? Sherrod’s “vindication,” meager though it actually was, was included in both the “edited” original video and in Breitbart’s post. He was more fair and cautious with her than she deserves. He actually went out of his way to point out that she had seen the light, however dim a light it turns out to have been. She still makes gross assumptions about people who aren’t dyed-in-the-wool Leftists, assumptions that ought to be repellent to any truly open-minded, tolerant person. Her epiphany turned out to be a pretty damned piddling one in the end.

Which isn’t the point anyway. The NAA(L)CP audience’s sniggering endorsement of Sherrod’s tale of initially stiffing the white farmer, while working as a supposedly impartial public servant, was. Even if she had repented entirely — and it’s clear from her subsequent highly offensive, bigoted remarks (Breitbart wants to see slavery reinstated? Really? Can anyone seriously believe such a patently absurd thing?) that she hasn’t — the original offense still stands, and still offends, on its own (lack of) merit.

And none of it matters in the least. As Jonah himself indirectly acknowledges, the Left will never, ever decline an opportunity to take the race-baiting low road. They will never give even the least of us the benefit of the doubt; they’re in a war whose object is to hijack the future of the nation, and it’s a war they intend to win by any means at hand. The racist smear, annoying as it is, isn’t even the most unscrupulous or damaging stratagem in their bag of tricks — not by a long stretch. So why is it so many Righties break out into flop-sweats every time it’s hurled at them, over and over again?

Ironically, after so many years of railing at liberals for their purblind, Pollyanna-ish folly when it comes to Muslim terrorists, many on the Right still seem to be in the same kind of denial that America itself was in for so many years after the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran and the myriad outrages that followed, leading inexorably to 9/11 — we were in a war, all right, but we didn’t know it, and refused to contemplate even the possibility of it.

Breitbart stole a march on the race-baiting Lefty droogs, and did so in a far more upright and honorable way than they would have ever employed against him; now too many prissy, squeamish conservatives* want to walk it back, so as to maintain a stance on some sort of meaningless and self-defeating high ground. Any good infantryman could tell them that that can only result in silhouetting them against the sky, making them an even easier target.

*I must say, I don’t consider Jonah to be one, although I do think he’s on the wrong track in this particular instance; anyone who could produce as clear-eyed a call to arms as Liberal Fascism is couldn’t be, really.

Dee Snider — a pretty cool guy all around, or so I always heard from mutual friends — nails Al Gore’s bloated, stupid ass to the cross, right alongside his self-righteous-fascist wife. Beee-yoot-y-ful.

Welcome to the desert of the real.

And how you don’t:

Kennedy’s business tax cuts were adopted in 1962, and the personal rate cuts in 1964. The top income tax rate was slashed from 91% to 70%, with the lower rates reduced by similar proportions across the board. The next year, economic growth soared by 50%, and income tax revenues increased by 41%! By 1966, unemployment had fallen to its lowest peacetime level in almost 40 years. U.S. News and World Report exclaimed, “The unusual budget spectacle of sharply rising revenues following the biggest tax cut in history is beginning to astonish even those who pushed hardest for tax cuts in the first place.” Arthur Okun, the administration’s chief economic advisor, estimated that the tax cuts expanded the economy in just two years by 10% above where it would have been.

The postwar boom ended as the liberal Johnson Administration abandoned the hugely successful supply-side policy mix. Federal spending started to soar in 1965, and President Johnson demanded and got a loose monetary policy focused on supposedly maintaining growth rather than stable prices. The tax increases started in 1968 with the 10% income tax surcharge, the alternative minimum tax, and increased capital gains levies, followed by bracket creep once inflation kicked in.

By 1969, 6.2% inflation resulted, along with the 1969-70 recession, and the economic miracle of stagflation had arrived, supposedly impossible under the doctrine of Keynesian economics. For the rest of the decade, Keynesian monetary policy kept trying to boost the economy out of decline, only to have to reverse course when inflation soared, causing the economy to fall into recession again. This resulted in further recessions in 1973-75, 1980, and 1981-82.

It finally came to an end when President Reagan explicitly abandoned Keynesian economics, and openly embraced the supply-side. He adopted 25% across the board income tax rate cuts, and then tax reform in 1986 that reduced the top rate from 70% in 1981 to 28%, with only one other rate of 15%. He bravely endorsed tight money through the teeth of the recession to stop inflation, which worked spectacularly. While prices rose 25% in just two years from 1979-80, annual inflation collapsed by half to 6.2% by 1982, and half again to 3.2% by 1983.

The results were so spectacular they astonished and surprised everyone, from opponents who wouldn’t admit it, to the architects of Reaganomics themselves. Besides slaying inflation which most thought by then couldn’t be done without destroying the economy, by the end of 1982 the economy took off on the above mentioned, 25-year economic boom, what Reaganomics gurus Art Laffer and Steve Moore have rightly called “the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet.” These results have been recounted in this column several times in the past, and the complete story is too long to do it further justice here.

What needs to be recounted at this point is that the Great Reagan Boom ended when, again, the supply-side policy mix was abandoned…

Barack Obama had personally supported every one of these steps leading to the financial crisis, going back to the Clinton era. Once elected President, he simply reupped every one of these disastrous policies multiple times. He led enactment in February 2009 of basically the same Bush/Keynesian stimulus of a year prior, only 6 times as large. He exploded government spending and deficits to record shattering levels. He embraced re-regulation with a vengeance. And starting next year he has scheduled sharp increases in every significant federal tax rate.

Following with such devotion the opposite of every plank of Reaganomics, we can only expect exactly the opposite results, as Art Laffer has so rightly predicted.

Nah, that can’t be true. THIS TIME, we’ll do socialism RIGHT, by God!

Read it all. And weep.

From DrewM:

It’s almost as if the Earth and it’s various ecosystems are large and complex things we don’t fully understand. One might think that would lead scientists and policy makers to exercise a degree of humility when it comes to sweeping pronouncements and economy killing edicts of various kinds.

Exactly what I thought myself when I saw this. It’s a vain hope, of course; the hubris and arrogance of liberal idiots is the only thing more insuperable than the various “crises” they routinely manufacture, it seems.

Will, as always, be death:

Hundreds of Afghan civilians who worked as informants for the U.S. military have been put at risk by WikiLeaks’ publication of more than 90,000 classified intelligence reports which name and in many cases locate the individuals, The Times newspaper reported Wednesday.

The article says, in spite of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s claim that sensitive information had been removed from the leaked documents, that reporters scanning the reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.

One specific example cited by the paper is a report on an interview conducted by military officers of a potential Taliban defector. The militant is named, along with his father and the village in which they live.

“The leaks certainly have put in real risk and danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans,” a senior official at the Afghan foreign ministry told The Times on condition of anonymity. “The U.S. is both morally and legally responsible for any harm that the leaks might cause to the individuals, particularly those who have been named.”

No, not quite. The scum-sucking cockroach who runs Wikileaks — hiding, as Ed says, behind the skirts of the Swedish government like the miserable coward he is — and his sources within our own military are the ones responsible. They ought to be made to pay for it in full. They ought to be hung from the nearest available gibbet and left to swing until the carrion-birds are done reducing their stinking corpses to the appropriate vile mess. Ed again:

Assange himself travels constantly to avoid arrest. Let’s hope that strategy fails soon. He will have blood on his hands, thanks to this despicable act. It’s a publicity stunt for Assange, and a death sentence to people who helped us, and most likely their families as well. And for what? Just to learn what anyone reading Long War Journal already knew.

The day justice is truly done and vengeance exacted on one and all of these loathsome vermin will be a happy one indeed.

Bruce at GayPatriot:

I hereby withdraw the apology to Mrs. Sherrod.

As I noted at the time, this was a very complex story and I had a pretty good hunch that Mrs. Sherrod was not the angel she appeared to be. I am correct. She is a picture perfect product of the liberal policies that make African-Americans dependent on the Federal Government and foster a victimization mentality. Mrs. Sherrod claimed she learned something when she helped that white farmer, but what she learned may be worse than the presumed racism from the clip of her at the NAACP meeting in March.

So I’m through with this story. The edited video was unfortunate, but the true racist stripes of the NAACP, the Sherrods, and the Obama Administration have certainly come out over a week’s time. So bravo, Mr. Breitbart. You hit the target.

Amen. I was dismayed (but not surprised, alas) when I saw so many conservatives out there reflexively assuming the position yet again, rather than failing to defend a perfectly defensible, reasonable position. The tape wasn’t “edited”; it was condensed. The almighty “context” was still there — Breitbart’s correspondent left out nothing of any real importance, and Sherrod’s supposed “epiphany” was not only a lot less admirable than the folks recommending her for canonization would have you believe; it wasn’t even relevant to the point Breitbart ably made. Breitbart went out of his way in his original post to point out that she had eventually helped the white farmer out to some degree or another, which open acknowledgment you’d never know about if you only read the predictable, outrageously outraged liberal hyperventilation that ensued once the story broke big.

Righties need to take a lesson from Obama’s pathetic bowing and scraping to Iran, and the results he’s gotten from it. The more we truckle to and try to win the approval of Progressivists, the more we’ll be kicked in the teeth in return. Their core assumption is that we’re all racists, and there’s only one way to change that blockheaded assumption: as Paul said the other day, the only way to erase the artificial stain of the phony “racist” smear is to embrace socialism. The word itself doesn’t mean what it used to mean; “racism” has been redefined by the Left to mean “opposition to Leftist policies.” It is no longer a condition or state of mind; it’s a convenient and effective cudgel used by despicable Leftist liars to strike down opposition.

Conservatives need to learn how to stop being embarrassed about being right. Sherrod and the NAA(L)CP are bigoted to their very marrow; they’re Leftists who despise everything this country is supposed to stand for. Breitbart provided evidence of it, fairly and incontrovertibly. Kudos to Bruce for stepping up and embracing the truth, fully, openly, and without shame.

If I wanted to taste the barrel the wine came in, I’d chew on an oak branch.  The French are the worst wine makers on the planet!

What a guy, what a guy:

BOSTON — Sen. John Kerry moved to end a controversy over his decision to base his new $7 million yacht in tax-free Rhode Island, informing the Massachusetts Department of Revenue on Tuesday that he would “promptly” pay taxes as if the vessel were docked in his home state.

In a statement to The Associated Press, the Democrat said, “As we’ve said from the beginning, we have always complied with tax laws and we always will…The payment is being made promptly.”

In his statement, Kerry said, “Whether owed or not, we intend to pay the equivalent taxes as if the boat’s home-port were currently in Massachusetts. I got caught trying to dodge the vampire-government I fully support, and hide some of that sweet gelt from the jackbooted thugs I help send around to squeeze the rest of you chumps dry. So yeah, I’m gonna have Teresa cut a check to get the prole rabble off my back. Maybe that’ll shut ‘em up and get ‘em off my lawn. You have any idea how much Teresa has to pay that army of Mexicans to keep it looking nice? And here you plebeians come in tramping all over it with your cheap Wal-Mart sneakers. Egad.”

I may have doctored that last quote a wee mite. This paragon of integrity is truly an inspiration and example for us all.

(Via JWF)

I really couldn’t improve on the title, so I swiped it:

A personal incident has given me a particular perspective on recent news about the media. Last Tuesday, I received word that the French release of my thriller novel Empire of Lies had been canceled by publisher Seuil Policiers. The editor who originally bought the book had left the French company, and the new editor, my agent says, feels that “she can not publish…because of the political and religious aspects of the story.” This, even though it’s in breach of a contract for which I’ve been paid in full. Empire of Lies features a politically conservative Christian protagonist, Jason Harrow, who believes he has uncovered an Islamist terrorist plot being obscured by the leftist mainstream media. “Lies, lies, lies,” the emotionally troubled Harrow murmurs at his television set. “It’s all about what they don’t say.” It will come as no surprise that my friend Andrew Breitbart praised the book as the only thriller he’d ever read in which the mainstream media were the villains.

The book’s French cancellation is, I realize, a rather small cultural event. Yet it gives specific color to the recent revelations on the Daily Caller website that left-wing journalists conspired to suppress scandals that might harm Barack Obama and to the brouhaha over Breitbart’s online release of a video that resulted in a government worker’s momentarily losing her job. In both stories, one thing leaps out at me: everywhere, the Left favors fewer voices and less information, and conservatives favor more. Everywhere, the Left seeks to disappear its opposition, whereas the Right is willing to meet them head-on.

Take the e-mails that the Daily Caller obtained from the now-defunct lefty Web service Journolist. Never mind the personal or psychological implications of a radio producer who lovingly imagines Rush Limbaugh’s death or a law professor who doesn’t know that the FCC has no power to deprive Fox News of a license or a reporter who wants to smear Fred Barnes and other right-wing commentators as racist in order to distract the public from the hateful radicalism of Jeremiah Wright, then Obama’s pastor. The point is not these people’s animus or ignorance or wickedness. The point is that what they desired was not victory in open debate but silence—the silence of censorship, intimidation, or the grave.

When has Rush Limbaugh ever wished a liberal’s mouth closed forever? Really, who can deny that Rush would happily argue a point with absolutely anyone anywhere? When has Fox News ever done anything to its rival cable stations but trounce them in a free competition for ratings? When has Fred Barnes ever tried to bully or intimidate someone into shutting up?

They hate competition because they know they can’t win in any honest, open one. Indulge me for a moment, as I quote myself from last week:

Progressivism offers — rather, promises: less freedom; less mobility; less prosperity; less comfort; less autonomy and sovereignty for individuals; less integrity and straightforwardness; less transparency among the ruling class, oversight of their capricious usurpations, and recourse to address the wrongs they encourage; less satisfaction in life; less self-respect and dignity; less of everything that makes life living, in sum.

But there are in fact some things they offer us more of: more government; more taxation; more overweening bureaucracy to exercise more control over our lives; more intolerance for differing ideas; more restriction; more strangulation.

Now, who could imagine for a moment that free, fully-informed men and women would rally to such a cause? It’s a perfectly laughable idea. So the Smart Set has to go about it underhandedly: suppressing the truth, stifling debate, and crushing dissent. It’s what they’ve done everywhere they’ve seized power, from Stalin’s Russia to Castro’s Cuba to Chavez’s Venezuela. It’s what they hope to do here — and in fact have done, for years now, via their Long March through the institutions. As Klavan says later on:

Old-media pooh-bahs like former ABC anchor Ted Koppel lament the “good old days,” when three government-licensed networks served as gatekeepers to what the public could and couldn’t know. Breitbart, meanwhile, exhorts crowds of citizens to shoot videos and gather information, telling them, “You are the media now!” Breitbart only wants more information, while the left-wing media too often operate through obscurantism and suppression. They bury the word “Islam” when describing terrorists who murder in the name of Allah. They depict police as racist while hiding the racial crime statistics that explain police actions. They actively ignore and spike both political and sex scandals involving prominent liberals, liberal causes, or media bias. They attempt to label speech offensive or racist if it undermines their positions.

Precisely. They can’t argue honestly; they can’t even admit who they are, and must hide their agenda behind a smokescreen of Leftyspeak about “reform” and “efficiency” and “good government” and “fairness.” But what they truly want is the same thing tyrants have always sought: power and control.

Which wasn’t necessarily negative, by the way. I was never a huge fan, I admit — didn’t really dislike him either, just never cared much one way or another — but damned if he ain’t proving to be very much worthy of respect:

Elton John didn’t mince words in slamming his fellow musicians for boycotting Arizona over the controversial SB 1070 immigration law. From the stage at his sold-out Tucson Arena concert Thursday night, John savored a few choice, not-so-family-friendly words:

“We are all very pleased to be playing in Arizona. I have read that some of the artists won’t come here. They are (expletive)wits! Let’s face it: I still play in California, and as a gay man I have no legal rights whatsoever. So what’s the (expletive) with these people?”

John has never been one to cave into political pressure from his musical colleagues. He ignored an artist boycott of Israel in June over the flotilla fiasco and played a show in Tel Aviv. He also played Rush Limbaugh’s latest wedding reception in early June, which drew the ire of gays and lesbians. Limbaugh is vehemently anti-gay marriage; John is married to his longtime partner David Furnish.

Good on ya, Elton. Even someone who wouldn’t otherwise have anything good to say about him at all would have to admit he’s got guts, and real integrity.

Treacher has it. I dunno, though, I still like Juicebox Mafia, myself.

Not So Smart Power gets RESULTS! Unfortunately, the same one it always did:

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on Monday strongly criticized US President Barack Obama for his unmet pledges, and described the US administration as “an administration of lies”.

The Iranian parliament speaker reminded current developments in the occupied Palestinian territories, further expansion of Jewish settlements, Israelis’ mistreatment of the Palestinians and Zionists’ attacks on mosques, and asked, “Mr. Obama, how much effort did you make to restore the rights of the Palestinian people?” 

”Obama’s administration is an administration of lie,” he continued.

I just don’t understand it. We’ve tried appeasement, conciliation, sucking up, obsequiousness, subservience, servility, and outright ass-kissing, and nothing seems to work with these guys. I just don’t know what more we can do to convince them that we’re harmless as kittens, meek as lambs, and willing to endure any self-inflicted debasement imaginable to be worthy of their contempt and disdain, I really don’t.

But I’m sure King Ogabe will find a way soon enough.

(Via Hoft)

I’ve mentioned before that I get a Calvin and Hobbes re-run delivered to my e-mail inbox every morning, which is always a delight, and a fine way to start the day. But this one was just sorta chilling, somehow; it reminded me of something, I can’t really say what. See if it rings any bells for you guys:

Hey, remember back when Afghanistan was the Good War, the one we HAD to win, the one Bush screwed up with his Iraq “distraction?” The one liberals were always, always, always fully on board with, for the sole reason that they knew opposing it after the 9/11 atrocity would be political suicide? Remember when Democrat Socialists agreed that wars were about destroying the enemy utterly — when victory was the only goal, and killing people and breaking things were the regrettable but necessary means by which our nation was defended?

Nah. Me neither.

Wholly corrupt Democrat Socialist Harry Reid: “Social Security is the most successful social program in the history of the world.” Well, that might even be true, although that’s never an assumption you want to make when that useless vampire is flapping his saggy jaws. But that doesn’t mean it’s successful, by any but the most warped definition of the word.

Oh, but don’t ever call them that; wouldn’t be polite, or “civil.”

LAS VEGAS, NV — While the federal government sinks deeper into debt than any time since World War II, former White House “green jobs” adviser Anthony Van Jones said it was time to stop worrying about budget deficits and pressure Washington to take more money from American businesses to fund larger social and infrastructure projects.

“This is a rich country. We have plenty of money, and if you don’t believe me, ask Haliburton,” Jones told a group of progressive bloggers and activists at the Netroots Nation convention Friday. “There’s plenty of money out there; don’t fall into the trap of this whole deficit argument.”

“The only question is how to spend it,” he added.

American corporations currently face the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world, according to the Tax Foundation.

Proving once and for all that these assholes have absolutely no clue where all that money and success came from. Hey, it was just magicked into existence, and all we have to do is distribute it evenly, then the Almighty State can magically create more! Incentives, ambition, and free will have nothing whatever to do with it. The genius of the Founders had nothing to do with it. Free-market capitalism — even the atrophied version they’ve saddled us with, still a better and stronger system than any yet devised — most certainly didn’t. It all just sort of happened, and taking it all for granted — enacting more programs that will surely strangle that golden goose and put it down for good — is not only desirable, it’s an absolute moral imperative.

We are now ruled by people who govern according to the lofty principles, bedrock practicality, real-world experience, and applied wisdom of a junior-college dorm room debate. Yeah, that’s gonna end up well; now shut up, fascist, and pass the bong, will ya?