You have no idea how it pains me to say it, but FUCK Marvel Comics. In the liver. ‘Nuff said.

(Via Ace)

One of McCardle’s readers notices something absolutely priceless: an old NYT op-ed that ran back when…well, see for yourself:

June 23, 2005
Social Security Follies
Congressional Republicans have begun talking with top White House aides about an exit strategy — not from Iraq, but from the winless quagmire of President Bush’s campaign to privatize Social Security. Mr. Bush has responded to this new political reality by, first, insisting that the American people do not yet understand the virtues of privatization, and second, blaming the failure of his deservedly unpopular plan on Congressional Democrats.

That’s absurd.

After listening to Mr. Bush talk of little else during his second term, the American people understand quite well what he is proposing for Social Security, and by wide margins reject it. In fact, the polls show that the more they learn about privatization, the less they like it. And with good reason. The very real risks of privatization — in terms of retirement security and the enormous budgetary cost to the country — far outweigh the potential rewards.

So when Congressional Republican leaders tell the president that Social Security private accounts are a nonstarter, they are conveying the informed views of their constituents.

Mr. Bush has reacted by railing against Democrats for obstruction — as if Democrats are duty-bound to breathe life into his agenda and, even sillier, as if opposing a plan that the people do not want is an illegitimate tactic for an opposition party.

Rather than accept defeat and consider alternatives, Mr. Bush is becoming even more feckless as public and political opposition mounts. On Tuesday, in a lame ploy to draw the Democrats to the table, he gave tepid approval to a proposal by Robert Bennett, the stalwart conservative senator from Utah, to restore the system’s solvency in a way that would not include private accounts — all the while saying that he was not prepared to give up private accounts.

Now just guess what they had to say recently about King Obama’s obstinacy in continuing to try to ram government health care down his subjects’ throats, in mulish defiance of their clearly-expressed wishes. Go on, guess.

Hey, stop laughing, you guys; this is diff’runt.

(Via Insty)

In the comments to my original O’Keefe post, Dan suggested that …”maybe the media might dig into this one.” I responded, to wit:

It presents a real interesting dilemma for ‘em — because how do you report on this without exhuming the stinking-rotten ACORN sting they pretty successfully buried up until now? But I wouldn’t for a moment put it past ‘em to do just that and try to brazen it out.

Well, guess what:

Then there were those famous Acorn videos, the ones that showed a “pimp” and his “ho” seeking — and getting — advice from Acorn employees in several cities on how best to open a brothel and staff it with underage girls from Central America — and launder their profits while evading taxes. The Times didn’t find that story newsworthy either. Even its public editor, Clark Hoyt, slapped the paper around for that one.

And now we have another tidbit from the New York Times, more than a tidbit, actually  – a story that appeared on page one of its Sunday paper (Jan. 31) – and continued for almost an entire inside page. And like most stories that appear on page one of an important newspaper, this one tells us a lot about what the editors of the New York Times think is important – and a lot about their biases, too. The story ran under the headline, “From High Jinks to Handcuffs” and was about the very same young man, James O’Keefe, who pretended to be a pimp in order to expose Acorn — and who, along with three pals, was arrested and charged with a federal felony of trying to tamper with the phones of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana.

I am not writing to defend James O’Keefe. If he did what he’s charged with, he crossed a line from prank to crime. I’m not even writing about whether this is a legitimate page one story. Reasonable people disagree all the time about such things. But if the Times didn’t think the Acorn story was worth covering, why does it now find Mr. O’Keefe – and other campus conservatives — worthy of so much ink?

Acorn, after all, receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and has been repeatedly accused of trying to subvert our electoral process. That, the noble New York Times, didn’t find all that interesting when the videos came out. O’Keefe at worst is a young guy who did something really dumb. But his tactics – and those of other young conservatives like him  – the Times finds worthy of a very long story in its Sunday edition.  Hmmm!

So, the question one more time:  Why does it find Mr. O’Keefe worthy of so much ink? Could it be because he’s a conservative who got into trouble?

Never underestimate the balls-out chutzpah of State-Run Media propaganda outlets. Their bias, unreliability, duplicity, and appalling lack of integrity are obvious to anyone with eyes to see. Add it all up, and you always know exactly what they’re going to do…even if it seems at first blush too outrageous and excessive to even seriously contemplate, much less attempt. Kind of appropriate, I guess, for people who long ago lost the ability to blush.

(Via Treacher)

ALL SIX AND A HALF MILLION OF YOU

…but I’m not payin’ this room service tab!

Protein Wisdom:

But the award for sheer Whoa! creepiness has to go to Boston Globe Brian McGrory’s date rape via soft gay pr0n:

“Seriously, I was so drunk on power, so caught up in the moment, so free of any of my usual inhibitions, I can’t remember what’s gone on these last two weeks. Think, Electorate, think. What did I do? [...]

Suddenly, that tall, handsome man was standing at my side doing something that Martha rarely did – offering to pay for drinks, chatting me up, curious what was on my mind. [...]

Scott! That was his name. Lived near the outlet stores. Talked a lot about being smarter with money. [...]

We were on the dance floor, Scott and I, moving to the music, his hands all over my body politic. Everyone was watching, and I mean everyone – fellow partygoers, bartenders, passersby staring in the windows. Look at me, the Massachusetts Electorate, the bellwether of America!

I think I took my shirt off. I think I didn’t care. I remember something about Scott in a pair of Calvin Klein jockey shorts, but it may have been a picture he showed me from his wallet.”

The odd thing is, this McGrory column isn’t just his metaphor for the election; it’s also a straightforward, factual account of his Tuesday nights.

UPDATE: No wonder liberals look to government as the Source of Life; they think they’re having sex when they’re doing politics and think they’re practicing politics when they’re making whoopee. They think “caucusing” is a sex act. Ya’ know, if you can’t tell the difference between your precincts and your instincts, maybe you shouldn’t be doing either one. For example, your sweetheart will get angry if you leave a “campaign contribution” behind on the nightstand–and the politicians will be jealous.

No wonder you can’t get them off the public tit; they think it’s a real one!

It’s more like a tinkle, and despite what this braying jackass would have you think, it ain’t rain:

Chris Matthews: Every single “teabagger” in America is white

So what, then, are we to make of this?

MSDNC: the place for white politics. That rogue’s gallery looks awfully Aryan-pure to me — one hell of a lot more so than the Tea Parties do. You’d have a hard time figuring out which kind of diversity we’re less likely ever to see from this posse of condescending, lily-white pudheads: the racial kind, or the intellectual one.

But hey, as always with liberal idiots, it’s do as we say, not as we do.

“We Don’t Hide Our Decline!”

BREAKING!: REPORTS COMING OUT OF THE CARIBBEAN INDICATE THAT OSAMA BIN LADEN HAS SEIZED CONTROL OF GITMO, ORGANIZED A JAILBREAK AFTER OVERPOWERING THE HELPLESS GUARDS, AND IS FREEING DOZENS OF DANGEROUS DETAINEES!

UPDATE: “Obama”, not “Osama”. Nevermind.

(Washington, DC) Secretary Janet Napolitano is conducting a good, old-fashioned Soviet Self-Denunciation Tour:

“When I said “the system worked”, I of course meant Nutri-System. That Dan Marino is looking good! And when I said it went like “clockwork”, I meant the color-coded Threat Level should be raised to ‘Clockwork Orange’.”

Insiders say Napolitano is favored for a Supreme Court slot, where she won’t be able to do as much damage.

(Tehran, Iran) If a revolution occurs, Ayatollah Khameni is prepared to flee on his jet to Russia, even though he deplores the carbon footprint involved.

However, Iran Air announced that due to concerns that the ayatollah might bomb himself, he will not be allowed to use the lavatory or cover himself with a blanket during the last hour of the flight.

(Lahiney, Hawaii) Pres. Barack Obama, known affectionately as “The Sand Bunker-Führer” to his top aides/caddies, held another press conference between his tennis match and his regularly-scheduled evening luau.

“The students of Iran are facing a strong headwind of opposition, and I know how they feel; when I hit my fairway shot off the 5th tee, the headwinds coming off the Pacific really slowed it down, so I can relate.”

Obama went on to claim that he shot a 10 under-par. Like the Health Care bill, that claim will be scored by CBO based on phony assumptions provided by Democrats.

Highly skewed ones, to be sure: after assigning eleven — count ‘em, 11 — “fact-checkers” to do their level damnedest to smear and discredit Sarah Palin and her blockbuster book, they can only spare five to cover (up, as Jeff D so aptly puts it) the biggest, most outrageous science-related scandal — one that again redefines the relationship between religion and science — since Galileo’s appearance before the Roman Inquisition.

But of course, stopping the monster Palin is waaay more important than that silly Climategate stuff, right?

Meanwhile, the good folks at Watts Up With That (belatedly blogrolled, BTW) continue doing the work American pseudo-journalists just won’t do:

When the AP allows reporters to report on stories they are involved in, and for them to be able to dance around their own involvement in the same story, it clearly becomes a conflict of interest.

It is, in my opinion, time for AP to remove Seth Borenstein as “science reporter”. I believe he can no longer be trusted to report climate science without bias, due to this clear conflict of interest.

In my opinion, it’s time to abandon all hope that the liberal media can effectively police itself, or that it even cares to. The bias towards any and all liberal causes at AP can no more be excised than ignored. This fish is rotting from the head down, and it takes some serious effort at denial by now to ignore the smell. AP is a progressivist propaganda outfit, and nothing whatsoever more.

The more things change…

A Correction. On Jan. 13, 1920, “Topics of the Times,” an editorial-page feature of the The New York Times, dismissed the notion that a rocket could function in vacuum and commented on the ideas of Robert H. Goddard, the rocket pioneer, as follows:

“That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”

Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.

Leave it to the media “experts” to make damned sure they get it right — after all, they know more than you do, and if you don’t believe it, just ask ‘em.

But hey, at least they corrected their bumptious error, right? Why, sure — in 1969, as Apollo 11 was on its way to the friggin’ moon.

So at that rate, we can expect a Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) scam correction along about, oh, 2060 or so — long after American independence, freedom, and prosperity are nothing more than distant memories, plowed under and buried for good by the Big Green Scheme Machine. Via Purple Avenger, who says:

Remember folks – the media elites know more about science than you do. TRUST. THEM. IMPLICITLY. Your economy is wrecked? Its getting colder? Your crib just got flattened by an advancing glacier? Your wallet is empty and you can’t buy an ordinary lightbulb anymore? Not a problem!

The Times regrets the error.

As will we all. It’s just that we’re going to regret it a lot sooner than they will.

READ ALL ABOUT IT…WHILE YOU STILL CAN

P.J. O’Rourke went on C-SPAN this summer to sell his new book “Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending, Celebrating America the Way It’s Supposed to Be — With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn”

An excerpt from his talk:

“I don’t like our money being used for these things. Not that I don’t want to see these car companies survive. But that’s a big part of freedom, is failure. Everybody thinks that freedom is all about success, that capitalism is all about success. It’s not; it’s about failure.

When a company quits making products that people want at a price people want to pay for them, it’s time for that company to go away. If you keep that company around with government infusions, what you get is everything they had east of the Berlin Wall before the Berlin Wall fell over.

I spent a lot of time as a foreign correspondent and spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and people ask me sometimes “What do you think caused the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall?” Was it Star Wars? Was it Reagan’s foreign policy? Was it the [Russian] war in Afghanistan? Was it this, was it that?

It was Bulgarian blue jeans. They couldn’t get anything but Bulgarian blue jeans over there. Big, old, baggy…they weren’t even blue. They were whatever color they felt like making that day ’cause they were Government Blue Jeans. One Size Fits All Bulgarian blue jeans.

And finally, people east of the Berlin Wall, east of the Iron Curtain, said “We ain’t wearin’ Bulgarian blue jeans anymore!” Finally, they came out in the streets and said “You can SHOOT us and we won’t wear Bulgarian blue jeans anymore! We don’t care. We’ve had it. We ain’t wearin’ that stuff anymore. We want a pair of Levis 501s…open up that Wall!” And it happened. The pressure was too great.

So you just don’t want government running industry, even if it seems like…I hate to see those jobs lost out in Detroit. I hate to see the, especially the secondary companies who made the parts and the fasteners and stuff. It’s not their fault, they didn’t do anything wrong. I hate to see them go under, but I hate to see the government involved even more than I hate to see that.

You can come back. That’s the thing about money and freedom; when your freedom’s taken and your money…when you lose your money, you can make more money. When your freedom’s taken away, you can’t make more freedom.

Money’s not Zero Sum. Your getting rich does not make me poor. Just because you have too many slices of pizza doesn’t mean I have to eat the Domino’s box. Money’s not Zero Sum, but freedom is Zero Sum. The freedom you take from me is freedom I don’t have; you can’t go out and make more freedom.”

GM and Chrysler “quit making products that people want at a price people want to pay for them”. Government regulations didn’t help–but car companies down South are able to make cars at a profit. The only way GM and Chrysler can survive is because the government is forcing tax-payers to pay for those cars…without ever receiving one!

It’s bad enough in the auto industry. But they also want another bailout for newspapers and other media, too.

Newspapers also “quit making products that people want at a price people want to pay for them”. People want to get their news in different ways today. Government interference will only prolong the crisis and stop the needed changes. But worse, it will eventually turn newspapers into organs of state propaganda, no matter how much some people protest that it will never happen.

Media is different from other products. We hope they will be a check on government, and help keep a citizenry informed so they can make good decisions. Alright, alright–I’m speaking hypothetically here. But, still, we don’t want to give that megaphone to government. Not to mention the fact that government can’t even pay for the things it has already stuck its nose in.

No More Socialized Industries!

And especially No More Socialized Journalism.

OR “THE POST-INTELLIGENT” FOR SHORT

Ace investagative investigatave envestegative pushy reporter Noel Woodstein Burnward here.

On behalf of myself, our reporters and our esteemed Publisher and Editor Emeritus Mike “Pinch Me” Hendrix, I would like to say that Cold Fury is an established newspaper of record, a valuable source of information and a nutritious breakfast product that stays crunchy even in milk.

Why do I say this? For the noblest of motives; to promote the diffusion of vital knowledge to all mankind.

And to secure our cut of the $50 billlion-dollar booty when these Pulitzer-Prize Pirates of the Potomac enact their “Welfare for Walter Cronkite”-Socialized Journalism program.

As if it weren’t socialist enough already:

Robert W. McChesney, the socialist professor whose Free Press organization is leading the charge for the $50 billion transformation of the media, hosts a one-sided, tax-supported radio program sponsored by the University of Illinois that could serve as a model for the “New Public Media” the group has envisioned for America. …

McChesney’s well-financed Free Press is not alone in the effort to transform the media along Marxist lines. Supporting the project is the so-called Center for American Progress (CAP), the Soros-funded group that employed Mark Lloyd before he went to work at the FCC as Associate General Counsel and chief diversity officer. CAP released a proposal for “an independent and stable funding stream for public media” in its Change for America book project that was designed to influence the Obama Administration. …

This same proposal was recently adopted by discredited former CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather, who called for a “White House Commission on Public Media” during an appearance before the Aspen Institute. Rather was a featured speaker at the 2008 conference of McChesney’s Free Press and has become a hero of the progressive “media reform” movement.

…The assumption of the exercise was that the federal government, under the cover of a national broadband plan, should not only regulate the Internet but provide new media for the public. …

The idea of the federal government telling people how to “differentiate between authentic and inauthentic information” is frightening. But this is part of Benton’s “Action Plan for America.”

Once Mark Lloyd left the Benton Foundation for the Center for American Progress, the two organizations collaborated on a letter demanding that the FCC require that broadcasters meet “public interest” obligations, provide access to the media by various groups, and “enhance political discourse.” All of these measures are designed to give left-wing “progressives” more access to the media.

Now Lloyd is in a position to bring this about through federal regulation.

Rep. Henry “Ear” Waxman:

“Government’s going to have to be involved, in one way or the other… “We have to figure out together how to preserve that kind of [independent] reporting.”

The same way we preserved “independent” car companies–by having the Government take them over.

The town of Bureaucracyville doesn’t need a Bailout Beacon to get the news. Hear ye, hear ye; if the Feds had done this a century ago, the Town Crier’s Union would still be running the media.

Vivian Schiller, the president and CEO of National Public Radio, cited her own organization’s history of criticizing the government even though it is federally subsidized.

“No news organization worth its salt is going to accept money with conditions attached,” she said. “… If anything the opposite problem is true: ‘Oh, they’re funding us. Let’s look more deeply into them.’”

Baloney. I’ve often said that if Government could do the Fairness Doctrine, then NPR should be the fairest of all. Instead, it is a reliably liberal house organ. Yes, it criticizes the government…from the Left. It’s always advocating for more liberalism, more government, more funding, etc.

We should be finding ways to get NPR off the public payroll, not putting all the other news organizations on it. “Lucy Ramirez” is Dan Rather’s secret source for news–let her buy him lunch at Spago’s.

Josh Silver, the executive director of Free Press, acknowledged that there are liabilities to government-subsidized journalism but said the country has no choice but to move in that direction in order to halt “significant erosion of the Fourth Estate.”

This “Free Press” isn’t a Free Press newspaper–it is an advocacy group that wants to “reform” media by having it paid for by taxpayers and run by big government liberals. They even have a video clip of Obama explaining what good journalism consists of.

Maybe that’s your idea of a free press, but it’s not mine. Here’s mine:

“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”

Our Press Corps is already three quarters in the tank for Big Government anyway. Once Washington starts signing their paychecks, too, well, that’s Abridged Too Far.

UPDATE: To make the point, Steven F. Hayward:

As in the furor over Dan Rather’s fabricated documents about George W. Bush’s National Guard service back in 2004, bloggers have been swarming over the material and highlighting the bad faith, bad science, and possibly even criminal behavior (deleting material requested under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act and perhaps tax evasion) of a small group of highly influential climate scientists. As with Rathergate, diehard climate campaigners are repairing to the “fake but accurate” defense–what these scientists did may be unethical or deeply biased, they say, but the science is settled, don’t you know, so move along, nothing to see here. There are a few notable exceptions, such as Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who in the past has trafficked in the most extreme climate mongering: “It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow,” Monbiot wrote in a November 23 column. “The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. .  .  . I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them. .  .  . I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.”

Now imagine politicians, bankers, bureaucrats, regulators, scientists, greedy executives from AlGore, Inc. AND journalists were all feeding at the taxpayer’s trough…where does a taxpayer go to find someone looking out for him? To our moneylenders in China?

NOTE: This was an update to an earlier post, but I decided it needed to be split off into a new one. It truly does have to be seen to be believed.

Jonah has done a mighty work and produced a staggering list of all the spurious excuses used so far to foist the abominable Warmal-Coldening scam off on a slumbering world of soon-to-be serfs. It truly is quite, uhh…well, it really has to be seen to be believed. And in answer to the obvious question it raises: yes, they really do think we’re that stupid.

“ALL THE NEWS THAT TIES US IN FITS”

In the Old Days(tm), newspapers existed to keep readers informed of the latest events.

But today, newspapers exist so readers can keep journalists informed.

Read all about it!

WHEN IT COMES TO GLOBAL WARMING FRAUDS, ANYWAY

After reading the Great Warmal Fraud e-mails, the New York Times Enviro-blog sniffs:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

Say–weren’t the highly-classified secrets published on the front page of the Times also “acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye”? But that didn’t stop them from aiding and abetting the enemy, did it?

Those e-mails aren’t just someone’s love letters; they’re the very basis of a massive new scheme of national and international taxes, regulation and governance–and they’re fraudulent to the core. But the Times says you don’t need to know.

The New York Times warns terrorists, but it won’t warn you. Here’s what the Times said when it warned terrorists that Dick Cheney was listening to their phone calls:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

“Some”.

By the way, Obama has also been listening to terrorists’ phone calls just like Cheney did; the difference is, Obama’s people think Maj. Hasan had a Constitutional Right to call al Qaeda and chitty-chat about women, baseball, the weather, jihad–whatever pops up.

Michael Goldfarb:

As a journalist, there is no greater glory than publishing materials that were not meant to be published. If I could, I would only publish emails and documents that were never meant to see the light of day — though, unlike the New York Times, I draw the line at jeopardizing the lives of American troops rather than jeopardizing the contrived “consensus” on global warming.

Once again, it’s Anti-News, designed to subtract from the sum of human knowledge, leaving you knowing less about a subject than when you began:

“Women, Minorities and Liberal Sacred Cows Hardest Hit.”

UPDATE: It seems like a good time to re-post this from September:

Blinded by Science-ish-Type-Stuff

THE OPPOSITE OF SCIENCE:

“Take my word for it.”

It’s been a long time, but I still remember being taught about the Scientific Method: you observe a phenomenon, you posit a hypothesis to explain it, and prove or disprove it by conducting experiments that other scientists can duplicate, thus confirming your conclusion.

Ace:

Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist …politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’ response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Now since then, FOIA requests for the data have been filed, and an increasing number of scientists have been curious to see precisely what exactly the evidence is of the much-heralded 0.6 degree Centigrade rise in temperature this century we’ve heard so very much about.

The new answer?

We lost all the old data so we can’t provide it to you.

“The dog ate my Global homework…but she’ll vouch for me! Lassie, come here, girl; if the Hockey Stick is accurate, bark once!”
“Arf!”
“See–that proves it!”

The reason “why” you should “make the data available” is because BY DEFINITION, THAT’S WHAT SCIENCE IS!

Even making it available to skeptics. Especially to skeptics. If they get the same results, BAM–you win!

Here’s the good news, though; because you say it’s rock-solid science…you should be able to duplicate the result again!

And not to rub it in, but if you had shared your research, you would still have a copy today. Or you can always sift through Lassie’s stools. We’ll take your word for what it says.

Again.

But never again again.

MORE LIKE “PAR-CHEESY”

The War on Terror may be half over (our half)…but the War on Sarah Palin’s Endlessly Fertile Uterus is just warming up!

Sister Toldjah: AP assigns 11 “factcheckers” to Sarah Palin’s book – and they still get it wrong–with good links to Steyn and Powerline. Check it yourself.

11 fact-checkers for Palin’s “Going Rogue”…but zero for “Dreams of His Father” and “The Audacity of Pretending to be Barack Obama” by Bill Ayers.

By contrast, James Taranto says AP was able to spare two whole fact-checkers for the Health Control bills. Priorities!

Jules Crittenden wades through Bedlam to read Greenwald and Sullivan–but he’s braver than me.

UPDATE: I believe that children are our future–at least this teen-age gal, who bears up well under Norah O’Donnell’s attempt to sandbag her… by “fact-checking” her T-shirt!

That’s the kind of hard-hitting journalism we need today, Norah. I’m just glad she can’t see my Spiderman T-shirt; even Norah knows radioactive spiders don’t cause superpowers.

Spinach does. And Democrats cause them to go away.

MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?

Our Miss Brooks gets one right between the bloomers:

A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. Hasan was portrayed as a victim of society, a poor soul who was pushed over the edge by prejudice and unhappiness.

There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.

This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion. But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.

Worse, it absolved Hasan — before the real evidence was in — of his responsibility. He didn’t have the choice to be lonely or unhappy. But he did have a choice over what story to build out of those circumstances. And evidence is now mounting to suggest he chose the extremist War on Islam narrative that so often leads to murderous results.

The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.

It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.

And right on cue, Dr. Sigmund Hussein Fraud gives us His diagnosis:

“In a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable. Even within the extraordinary military that we have — and I think everybody understands how outstanding the young men and women in uniform are under the most severe stress — there are going to be instances in which an individual cracks.”

If Hasan is “cracked”, then so is every other jihadist.

That means Khalid Sheik Mohammed should be confined at the State Mental Hospital until psychiatrists say he can safely integrate into American society; a process that usually takes, two, maybe three weeks.

Hey, Hasan’s a shrink–maybe he could evaluate KSM for us!

The point is, if this is mental illness, then we aren’t fighting terrorism–we’re in the War on Craziness. ALL of them are “cracked” by this standard.

Hasan isn’t “cracked”. He’s just as sane as all the other terrorists.

We let the Obama Administration order both the FBI and the Dept. of Defense to stand down on Hasan’s contacts with al Qaeda, and the final results are in: the First Terrorist Attack on America Since 9/11.

And now we’re letting him get away with it by calling it a mental episode. What Obama is really saying is that he’s going to continue giving a pass to jihadists. He’s going to do it again. He’s not gonna stop with the PC insanity. He’s doubling down on Dhimmitude.

Hasan isn’t crazy–we are.

Liberal PC insanity has now come full circle, with the yapping poodles ferociously chewing off their own tails in a desperate attempt to avoid acknowledging reality:

The tide of pronouncements and ruminations pointing to every cause for this event other than the one obvious to everyone in the rational world continues apace. Commentators, reporters, psychologists and, indeed, army spokesmen continue to warn portentously, “We don’t yet know the motive for the shootings.”

What a puzzle this piece of vacuity must be to audiences hearing it, some, no doubt, with outrage. To those not terrorized by fear of offending Muslim sensitivities, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s motive was instantly clear: It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments. All were conspicuous signs of danger his Army superiors chose to ignore.

What is hard to ignore, now, is the growing derangement on all matters involving terrorism and Muslim sensitivities. Its chief symptoms: a palpitating fear of discomfiting facts and a willingness to discard those facts and embrace the richest possible variety of ludicrous theories as to the motives behind an act of Islamic terrorism. All this we have seen before but never in such naked form. The days following the Fort Hood rampage have told us more than we want to know, perhaps, about the depth and reach of this epidemic.

A shocked Dr. Phil, appalled that the guest had publicly mentioned Maj. Hasan’s Islamic identity, went on to present what was, in essence, the case for Maj. Hasan as victim. Victim of deployment, of the Army, of the stresses of a new kind of terrible war unlike any other we have known. Unlike, can he have meant, the kind endured by those lucky Americans who fought and died at Iwo Jima, say, or the Ardennes?

To kill your fellow Americans—as many as possible, unarmed and in the most helpless of circumstances, while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), requires, of course, only murderous hatred—the sort of mindset that regularly eludes the Dr. Phils of our world as the motive for mass murder of this kind.

Still, with a bit of stretching, adherents of Maj. Hasan-as-war-victim theme found a substitute of sorts—namely the fears allegedly provoked in him by his exposure, as an army psychiatrist, to the stories of men who had been deployed. The thesis then: Maj. Hasan’s mental stress, provoked by the suffering of Americans who had been in combat, caused him to go out and butcher as many of these soldiers as he could. Let’s try putting that one before a jury.

A better idea: let’s try putting this gibbering 9/10 liberal dementia out to pasture at last, before it gets even more good people killed.

Weaz has the shorter, pithier version of all this, in the form of another of her brilliant P-shops. Funny how us common rubes knew exactly what was up from the beginning and weren’t afraid to say so, while the liberal “intelligentsia” (sneer quotes necessary as never before there) remain BAFFLED by the fucking indisputably obvious. How many more of us must die before these flailing super-geniuses finally let go of Teh Narrative?

Teh Narrative über alles update! Leave it to CNN to lie, misrepresent, and creatively edit in order to obscure the truth:

Pvt Joseph Foster is yet another soldier reporting that Nidal Hasan shouted “Allah Akbar” when he began firing last week – but Foster made the mistake of saying it on CNN:

Roberts: So the first moments of Thursday afternoon, can you tell our viewers, you know, where you were, what happened, how it all unfolded?

Foster: I was sitting in what they call station 13, it’s where we get, basically, our final outs of our RSP (ph) system and I was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up, screamed and yelled Allah Akbar (ph) in Arabic and he opened fire.

Foster was not only there, not only sitting in the second row – he was one of those wounded in the attack. But two minutes later in the interview, Foster would try to downplay Roberts’ implication that he was a hero:

ROBERTS: So you were acting like a soldier. You were acting heroically. We should point out that you’re with the 20th Engineer Battalion and despite your best efforts and I guess the efforts of your comrades, as well, four members of the battalion were killed, 10 others were injured. And you were shot in the hip and you didn’t realize it at the time?

Foster: I had realized it at first, but with that much adrenaline, you tend to forget things.

Now note how the propagandists at CNN decided to report this:

Among the wounded in the shooting was Pvt. Joseph Foster, 21, who was hit in the hip as he sat at the base’s military processing center, preparing paperwork for his January deployment to Afghanistan.

He said he “was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up and yelled ‘Allahu akbar’ in Arabic and he opened fire,” Foster said Monday on CNN’s “American Morning.”

Foster, 21, said he wasn’t clear about whether the gunman said those exact words, noting that “with that much adrenaline, you tend to forget things.”

Gawdalmightydamn. Lying sons of bitches. And Fox News — “Faux News” to America-hating, terrorist-sympathizing liberal idiots — is the one that’s supposedly “unfair” and “unbalanced.”

The difference, as always, is that conservatives, on Fox and elsewhere, don’t have to resort to raw deception to get their point across. As Greyhawk says, “that’s what you get for telling CNN something they don’t want to hear.” Whenever anyone does, CNN will see to it that what others hear is not what was actually said.

And it follows that if you rely on CNN for news, you don’t know a damned thing worth knowing.

Propaganda, plain and simple. There is no other word for it; certainly, whatever it is CNN is doing has nothing whatever to do with anything an honest person would recognize as journalism.

YOUR DOGMA ATE MY HOMEWORK

As I have consistently said,

Already we’ve see news reporters throw out more red herrings than a Cuban shark-fisherman, tripping all over themselves to avoid telling the truth and to censor themselves.

Are our chummy chums really “reporters”, though, if they are actively working to subtract from our knowledge about an event?

I recently quoted a Natan Sharansky interview about what real presidential leadership can mean to political prisoners and oppressed peoples. But another interesting thing he mentioned was the role of the press:

Our first indication that Ronald Reagan might well be the key figure in our struggle, the struggle of all people fighting against tyranny, came from the ferocious denunciations of him that appeared more frequently in the official Soviet press. Now, all Soviets were experts in the art of “reading between the lines,” and of course us dissidents, we were the professors of this high art form. In fact, we were so good at reading between the lines, we almost could piece together events as they really happened by what the authorities were not telling us. What they did not tell us was as important as what they did tell us, if not even more important. [...] There was a long list of all the Western leaders who had lined up to condemn the evil Reagan for daring to call the great Soviet Union an evil empire right next to the front-page story about this dangerous, terrible man who wanted to take the world back to the dark days of the Cold War. This was the moment. It was the brightest, most glorious day. Finally a spade had been called a spade. Finally, Orwell’s Newspeak was dead.

Nope–just resting. But it feels a lot better after its nap.

Do we really need a press where we have to read between the lines and struggle to deduce the truth for ourselves by what wasn’t said? Not to mention the many misdirections thrown in our faces;

“He must have been suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.”
He never went to combat.
“Well, then he must have caught it by proxy.”
No, he said Muslims should oppose the ‘aggressors’.
“But he was teased.”
So he claimed, but the Army says he just wanted out.
“That’s because he was anti-war!”
Then why did he just declare war?

I’m not saying jump to conclusions. But the press already jumps to conclusions… if the target is politically incorrect, such as tea-partiers, gun-owners or businessmen.

And it avoids conclusions when the subject is in a politically-correct protected class.

Here’s a thought; let the chips fall where they may. Reading between the lines is like coloring between the lines; it’s safe, but it’s boring.

And sometimes it bores to death.

John Stossel’s, to be specific:

I was one of America’s first TV consumer reporters. I approached the job with an attitude. If companies ripped people off, I would embarrass them on TV — and demand that government do something. (I now regret the latter — the former was a good thing.)

I clearly had a point of view: I was a crusader out to punish corporate bullies. My colleagues liked it. I got job offers. I won 19 Emmys. I was invited to speak at journalism conferences.

Then, gradually, I figured out that business, for the most part, treats consumers pretty well. The way to get rich in business is to create something good, sell it for a reasonable price, acquire a reputation for honesty and keep pleasing customers so they come back for more.

As a local TV reporter, I could find plenty of crooks. But once I got to the national stage — “20/20″ and “Good Morning America” — it was hard to find comparable national scams. There were some: Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc. But they are rare. In a $14 trillion economy, you’d think there’d be more. But there aren’t.

I figured out why: Market forces, even when hampered by government, keep scammers in check. Reputation matters. Word gets out. Good companies thrive, and bad ones atrophy. Regulation barely deters the cheaters, but competition does.

It made me want to learn more about free markets. I subscribed to Reason magazine and read Cato Institute research papers. Then Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Aaron Wildavsky.

My reporting changed. I started taking skeptical looks at government — especially regulation. I did an ABC TV special, “Are We Scaring You to Death?” that said we TV reporters often make hysterical claims about chemicals, pollution and other relatively minor risks. Its good ratings — 16 million viewers — surprised my colleagues.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so popular with them.

I stopped winning Emmys.

I was invited on CNN’s media program, “Reliable Sources,” to be interviewed by The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz and an indignant Bernard Kalb. They titled the segment, “Objectivity and Journalism: Does John Stossel Practice Either?” It was in big letters over my head.

Apparently, I had broken the rules.

On the air they told me that I was no longer objective. I was too stunned to defend myself effectively. I said something like: “I’ve always had a point of view. How come you had no trouble with that when I criticized business?”

Because they’re anti-business and pro-big government, John. Your bias is open and honest, arrived at through careful reflection and observation of reality; theirs is dishonest and clandestine, used to prop up an ahistorical lie, in defiance of observable reality.

But hey, you knew that already. And so do most of the rest of us — which is why the number of people bothering with them anymore keeps dropping like a rock with an anchor tied to it. This line is absolutely priceless:

I like what “Americans for Prosperity” defends. I’m an American, and I’m for prosperity.

And they don’t — not if it means acknowledging the undeniable actuality that free markets work, and socialism doesn’t. And that right there’s the whole damned problem.

“You have done a good job in your reporting the U.S.S.R.”–Josef Stalin, to New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, Christmas Day 1933

“Thus far no famine has been found…” just “milk from contented collectivized cows and honey fresh from the hives of Bolshevik bees.”–New York Times reporter Harold Denny as millions were being starved by Stalin

“At that time the presence of a foreign journalist [New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews]… was more important to us than a military victory.”–Che Guevara

…[A]ny writer or journalist who is fully sympathetic to the USSR – sympathetic, that is, in the way the Russians themselves would want him to be – does have to acquiesce in deliberate falsification on important issues.”–George Orwell

YOU’RE THE EXPERTS

Usually I defer to the New York Times when it comes to detecting Communists. They can suss them out, hire them and support them for office better than any other news organization out there. But they’re losing their touch:

The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York

First we were fascists. And then we were Taliban. This summer we were Nazis. And now we’re Stalinists.

Like Joe McCarthy, Frank Rich holds in his hand a list of Stalinists who have infiltrated America, and it turns out it’s every Republican except Dede ScozzaRosenberg and Colin Powell, aka “Republicans who vote for Democrats”.

I don’t have the need to fisk this drivel–it’s Frank Rich, after all. But it was interesting that he cited Richard Hofstadter, famous for his 1964 book “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Hofstadter was deeply concerned about John Birchers, even though Wm. F. Buckley purged them from respectable conservatism.

But liberals then and now were still deeply concerned about those crazy right-wing nuts; you know, like the ones who killed JFK. Oops–that was a Castro-ite Communist. But still.

In fact, Hofstadter himself was a Communist in the ’30’s. In other words: a Stalinist! When you’re calling people “Stalinists”, Frank, you may not want to quote one approvingly.

And then there are those Stalinists on the Times staff:

“These delicacies were served at the end of a meal of a tasty salad of tomatoes, pickles and onions, roast duck and fluffy potato souffle, much better prepared than in Moscow hotels, washed down with the Ukrainian national drink, slivyanka, a liquor made from plums, tasting non-alcoholic though with a mule’s kick in every swallow.”

“The hunt for famine in Russia,” Denny concluded borrowing a line from Duranty, “was like chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. It was always somewhere further on.”

The New American:

New York Times reporter Walter Duranty served as the primary American press cover for a holocaust in the Ukraine that cost some 7-10 million lives. Called “holodomor” in Ukrainian (“death by hunger”), the 1932-33 famine was caused when Joseph Stalin ordered all the grain in the nation of Ukraine confiscated for the Soviet Union to export. [...] For his lies on behalf of Stalin, Duranty was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and remained a New York Times correspondent until 1940.

New York Times Reporter Herbert Matthews helped cover for the communist side of the Spanish Civil War in Spain during the 1930s. Matthews ignored massacres of thousands of Catholic priests and nuns by the so-called “Republican” forces that were backed by Stalin.

After the Second World War, the New York Times stationed Matthews in Cuba, where Matthews assisted Fidel Castro’s rise to power by glorifying the future dictator. Matthews told New York Times readers on February 24, 1957 that Castro “has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice.” The following day he reported that “there is no communism to speak of in Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement.”

The New York Times actively aided and abetted Stalin. Also Mao. And Castro. Ho. Mugabe. And many other communists, lo, even unto this very day. For instance, they wouldn’t report on Van Jones’ Communism until they were absolutely forced to do so.

And now they’ve helped Obama into office, a guy whose Czars can’t make a speech without quoting Mao. His pastor of twenty years came out as a full-fledged communist just today. And his partner and pal Bill Ayers is still an unrepentant Communist. And a cop-killer to boot. That photo of Ayers standing on an American flag? Published along with a glowing profile on Sept. 11, 2001. By the New York Times.

But according to Mr. Frank Rich of the New York Times, you and I are the “Stalinist” extremists because we believe in limited government or traditional marriage or defending America, not in defending terrorists.

There’s a deep philosophical lesson here for conservatives:

Frank Rich is a half-flatulent pantload with delusions of mediocrity.

And also this:

…[T]he Frank Rich hissy fit is a perfect example of the real story of the election. The story is not that the GOP is self-destructing, it is that the conventional wisdom is being shown to be ludicrous. For some time now Frank Rich, Sam Tanenhaus, and countless others (including David Frum) have been arguing that the GOP is a rump party and the only way for it to survive is for it to embrace me-too Republicanism of one flavor or another. The story of all three major races (Va., N.J., and NY-23) is that this conventional wisdom was incandescently wrong and ill-advised. Hoffman and McDonnell owe their success to the support of independents (the independents all of these people said wanted moderate, Democrat-lite policies) and to Republicans determined to stay true to conservative principles. Not only was the conventional wisdom wrong, the idea that there’s a “civil war” within the GOP revolving around this argument is nonsense. The GOP is an unapologetically conservative party, providing a choice not an echo, and — horror of horrors — it’s working.

I know I’m not a Stalinist, Frank; otherwise, I’d have a Pulitzer Prize, a column at the Times and the office next door.

“RUBBERBAND MAN”

Just kidding; it was “One of a Kind (Love Affair)”. But that’s not important now.

And neither is this, the latest piffle from Senior White House Whiffle-izer Valerie “Executive Vice President of Grove Parc’s management firm Habitat Company when federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex a bottom-of-the-barrel 11 on a 100-point scale” Jarrett:

“It’s rather telling when the Republican Party forces out a moderate Republican and it says, I think, a great deal about where the Republican Party leadership is right now. I think it’s becoming more and more extreme, and more and more marginalized.”

Exactly backwards.

The Party supported Dede Scozzaflewoverthecuckoo’snest. They didn’t “force her out”. The voters did that with low poll numbers.

Listening to voters is “marginalizing” and “extremist” according to Jarrett.

But this is worse:

“What the president has said consistently is, he is going through a very rigorous process. George, before he puts our men and women in harm’s way, he wants to make absolutely sure that he has a strategy. This isn’t just a matter of how many troops are sent over, although that is a very important component.”

“before he puts our men and women in harm’s way”?

He already did, lady. Wake up:

March 27, 2009

Good morning. Today, I am announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This marks the conclusion of a careful policy review that I ordered as soon as I took office. My Administration has heard from our military commanders and diplomats. We have consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments; with our partners and NATO allies; and with other donors and international organizations. And we have also worked closely with members of Congress here at home.

The situation is increasingly perilous…Many people…So let me be clear…a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country…women and girls…blah blah blah…So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That is the goal that must be achieved.

I have already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that had been requested by General McKiernan for many months.

He told us he already had a “comprehensive, new strategy”. That was over six months ago. Was he “unsure” when he sent those 17,000 troops “into harm’s way” previously?

He said he had all the answers when he was campaigning in the primaries. He said he had all the answers when he was campaigning in general election. He said he had all the answers six months ago when he “concluded a careful policy review”.

And now you say he needs more time just to figure out what the questions are? What’s next? A pr campaign of “new and improved” strategies cobbled together from Billy Mays outtakes? “But wait…there’s more!”

As Steyn said, the Drifter-in-Chief is not denouncing the “long years of drift”, but his own long months of drift. He’s essentially calling for “do-overs”, a concept for children’s games, not adult geopolitics. I’m not talking about the reconsideration, but his failure to accept responsibility.

And his top advisor still thinks she’s a rebel, an outsider, transgressively “Speaking Truth to Power”. It’s nutty. It’s flaky. It’s juvenile. And mostly, it’s dangerous.

Stop it. Stop campaigning. You won, just like you said, and just like you wanted. Grow up. In a hurry would be nice.

And please stop the Brutal Spinning. America comes first.

“Then Came You”.

JESUS SAVES AND GOD CREATES

Obama only shuffles.

Ace:

At no point in all of American history has the metric ever been what jobs a president has “saved or created.” The metric has always been the concrete, easier-to-determine number of how many jobs were lost and how many were gained. There has never before been a “saved” category, ever, and yes, all other presidents in an ailing economy would of course like to shift focus from the jobs lost to those they can claim were “saved.”

It is only Obama — special rules for special people! — who has ever been so shameless as to attempt to shift the terms of debate to something so favorable to him (and so hard to determine), and it is only in Obama’s case has the media been so compliant they went along with the charade.

They think “saved or created” sounds better than “Please grade us on a curve.”

But I think “Please grade us on a curve” sounds better.

Manuel Zelaya gives them an A+; Obama saved and created his job.

Update: Just for, you know, the record: As well as being destructive and stupid, this is all entirely unnecessary:

Cato Institute:

When Reagan took office in 1981, the unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. In the recession of 1981-82, that rate peaked at 9.7 percent, but [once his policies took effect] it fell continuously for the next seven years. When Reagan left office, the unemployment rate was 5.5 percent. This reduction in joblessness was a clear triumph of the Reagan program.

Heritage Foundation:

President Ronald Reagan’s record includes sweeping economic reforms and deep across-the-board tax cuts, market deregulation, and sound monetary policies to contain inflation. His policies resulted in the largest peacetime economic boom in American history and nearly 35 million more jobs.

That’s what real Hope and Change looks like. Just in case it ever comes up again.

AND THEN MIX ME ONE

but I preferred the good old days of journalistic integrity, when CBS news anchors would limit their cross-dressing to weekends, and not let it bleed over into the work-week like Harry/Julia does here.

Mr. Smith waits all year to pretend this is just about Halloween. Sure. Whatever you need to believe, Harry. But could you put down the allegedly rubber chicken long enough to file a story about the 30 congressmen on the take?

Speaking of real journalistic integrity, however, here’s a two-fer: David Pryce-Jones quoting Malcolm Muggeridge:

“There were earnest advocates of the humane killing of cattle who looked up at the massive headquarters of the OGPU [the secret police at the time] with tears of gratitude in their eyes, earnest advocates of proportional representation who eagerly assented when the necessity for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat was explained to them, earnest clergymen who walked reverently through anti-God museums and reverently turned over the pages of atheistic literature, earnest pacifists who watched delightedly tanks rattle across Red Square and bombing planes darken the sky, earnest town-planning specialists who stood outside over-crowded, ramshackle tenements and muttered: ‘If only we had something like this in England!’”

The credulity of these fellow-travellers, Muggeridge recorded, astonished even hardened Soviet officials.

This anthology passage has come to mind several times recently in connection with present-day fellow-travellers visiting Iran in just that same spirit of willing self-deception. Here are advocates of human rights enthusing over the general happiness of Iranians even while disgusting crimes of murder and rape are routine in the prisons. Here are ecologists promoting windmills everywhere at home, obsessed with their carbon footprint while oblivious to the Iranian nuclear program. Socialists and Leftists in a permanent fury about American foreign policy have nothing to say about Iranian sponsorship of terror far and wide. Pacifists and aesthetes are so eager to see the splendours of Qom and Mashhad that they are oblivious to the Islamist Republic’s testing of long-range missiles and repeated threats to exterminate its enemies. Feminists eager to uncover gender discrimination in their own sphere respond to the plight of Iranian women by praising the attractive colours of their clothing.

That’s a lovely pink blouse you’re wearing, Harry–but here’s what real journalism looks like:

Overweight, he waddles. His face seems designed to be incapable of smiling, and he has no humour, no powers of persuasion, no gift for repartee. This glum figure is undoubtedly a racist, an anti-Semite, an ignoramus, and a liar about the unsavory things he has done and said on his way towards the top of the BNP. [...]

Griffin has only one point to make, namely that immigration is out of control and British people no longer feel that this is their country. He hasn’t the intelligence to make this point very well, but it resonates with the people who find themselves living amidst the immigrants. Nobody seems to have worked out that mass immigration and the welfare state are incompatible. British people see immigrants receiving benefits, housing, and the rest of it on a scale that is neither deserved nor available to them. Post-war governments, whether Conservative or Labour, have created this confusion and taken every measure to pretend either that it is not happening or that it doesn’t matter. In short, these politicians have been effective fascist-spawning agents. The BNP and Griffin are monuments to their incompetence and cowardly dissembling.

As though on cue, a speechwriter for Tony Blair now reveals that the Blair government had a deliberate policy of encouraging mass immigration while ensuring that the electorate was told nothing about it. As the well-known columnist Melanie Phillips has put it, here was “a deliberate and secret policy of national cultural sabotage.”

The English people used to dissolve governments and elect new ones. Now, their governments dissolve them, to elect a new people. I’m sure it will all work out fine.

Their multi-cultural cross-dressing has bled over into their national life and is threatening the very idea of a British nation. As they say on CBS, “What a drag.”

‘Radio Free America’

By Cal Thomas

Tribune Media Services

During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the “captive nations” that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers. Those dictators did everything they could to “jam” the signals so that their people would only hear what their unelected overseers wanted them to hear. Contemporary versions of jamming and other forms of censorship occur today in Venezuela, Cuba and many other places where dictators believe public ignorance is essential to their unchallenged rule.

While the Obama administration is the product of an election, its approach to Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio and possibly the Internet appears similar to dictators who desire control over the flow of information in order to enhance their power.

The administration’s primary beef appears to be that Fox is doing the job the broadcast networks and big newspapers should be doing were they not still deeply in the tank for this president and his policies. [...]

If the administration is seeking approval for its policies, it should go on the only channel that will confront, examine and question those policies. If the policies are valid, they will stand; if not, they won’t and they shouldn’t. But perhaps, like those dictators, the administration would rather jam Fox’s “signal” because they don’t want the public to know the truth about what they are doing.

LIKE I SAID, “BABY STEPS”

Rich Lowry:

White House officials said they noticed a column by Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The Times, in which Jill Abramson, one of the paper’s two managing editors, described her newsroom’s “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” The Washington Post’s executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, had already expressed similar concerns about his newsroom.

White House officials said comments like those had focused them on a need to make their case that Fox had an ideological bent undercutting its legitimacy as a news organization.

UPDATE: E-mail: “In other words, their problem is not that Fox isn’t a real news organization, their problem is that it is.”

Charles Krauthammer:

I think what happened today was extremely important, because in trying to ostracize and demonize Fox, the administration needs complicity from other news organizations. Otherwise it won’t work.

And what happened today was other news organizations — admirably and on principle — standing up and saying no. If you are not going to include Fox, we’re not going to go.

And that solidarity I think is important. We are all in the business together. We have different perspectives. Nobody enjoys a …holy objectivity. And what happened, I thought, was a confrontation between an overreaching executive and a free press — and the executive backed down.

AT BOOK STORES NOW!

Ed Morrissey says Leftism is a below-board book you can’t judge by it’s cover.

But if you do, we suggest you take Abbie Hoffman’s advice and Steal This Book! Think of it as liberating it for the Peoples’ Glorious Revolution. Tell ‘em Mao sent you!

The New Republic thinks Governor Palin is some proto-powder puff Pasha, but I think the whole Rouge Dictator-thing has been done to death. 70 million times.

ps: Do not. Do not click this link.