Most Ethical Congress Evah!-Cholly Rangel Ed.

 

Protecting wayward members of the statist club is haaaaarrrrrrrrd. 

The House ethics committee recommended that Rep. Charlie Rangel be reprimanded, which is the least severe punishment, according to a new report. 

The disclosure was made today by Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas), who is the panel’s chairman. 

A reprimand falls below expulsion and censure on the list of available punishments. 

Just what did ‘Randy’ Rangel do?  Here’s just one charge.  

After reviewing 28,000 pages of documents, the committee found that Rangel hit up foundations run by Verizon, New York Life, AT&T, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch. All of those companies had important matters before the Ways and Means Committee, which Rangel chaired until he gave up the gavel after getting hit with an admonition from the ethics panel over a Caribbean junket. 

What a lovable old kleptocrat. 

But seriously, did anybody expect it to go down differently?  Gene Green is a Democrat.  He’s probably known Chuck Rangel for a long damn time.  Hell, Green might owe Rangel a few favors.  We might just be seeing Rangel calling in his chits.   

Also, it’s gonna be a tough election year for the Donkey Punchers.  Everybody with a ‘D’ behind their name just wants this to go away.  If they can keep Rangel around and sweep his transgressions under the rug with little media or voter notice, that’s a win-win situation. 

The question here is:  If Charlie Rangel gets away with a slap on the wrist, does that weak punishment placate voters or just piss them off?

Robert Stacy McCain posts the Gay 101 movie list…but that doesn’t mean he’s gay or anything

Heheh.

Thursdays this summer at the Atlas Performing Arts Center [in Washington, D.C.] will be Gay 101 – a series of films one must see to be a card-carrying gay man. While most are not gay-themed, all are embraced by the gay and lesbian community. Classics such as All About Eve, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? will share the screen with campier choices including Mommie Dearest and Valley of the Dolls.

The films will be screened in the Sprenger Theatre, the Atlas’ largest black box space. . . . “We want the Atlas to be a fun destination for the Capitol Hill and H Street Northeast community this summer. We like to think of it as an indoor version of an outdoor movie festival.” said Scott Kenison, Chief Operating Officer of the Atlas. “Only our festival will have air conditioning and best of all, no mosquitoes!”

Schedule:

July 1   Breakfast at Tiffany’s
July 8   Auntie Mame
July 9   Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
July 15   La Cage Aux Folles
July 22   Valley of the Dolls
July 29   Where the Boys Are
Aug 5   All About Eve
Aug 12   Suddenly, Last Summer
Aug 19   Cabaret
Aug 26   Mommie Dearest
Sept 2   Steel Magnolias

Psych.  RS McCain isn’t even sorta gay. 

But I hear Glenn Greenwald  is just drooling over the prospect of watching Mommie Dearest in a dark crowded movie theater surrounded by a bunch of anonymous gay dudes.

Faaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbuuuuuuuuuuuuulllllllllooooouuuussssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look, this is all very confusing.  I propose a little test just so we can all get our bearings.

 WHAT FAT GUY?

Check Out The Rad T-Shirt

Best part?  It’s got a message and you can dance to it!

Okay, okay…there’s two things that are really fun of win in this picture.

Joe Sestak-Whoa, Nancy Pelosi is a liberal WHHHHHAAAAAHHHHH???

Joe Sestak is one funny dude.

Joe Sestak continued Monday to distance himself from Nancy Pelosi while at the same time tying his Republican opponent Pat Toomey to George W. Bush.
Sestak, speaking at the Pennsylvania Press Club, was asked whether he believes Speaker of the House Pelosi is a liberal or a pragmatist. Sestak describes himself as the latter.
He said he didn’t know, but also said he never looks at her voting record.

Ummmmm. Wow.

Sestak is full of fail here.

First, Captain Oblivious is a politician. His stock and trade is votes, ideology and partisan positioning. For him to say he never looks at San Fran Nan’s record is a joke. It’s as likely as a baseball player saying he never looks at Alex Rodriguez’s stats. Sure, maybe the dude doesn’t study them intimately or on an every day basis, but you know most guys in the major leagues have at least snuck a peek at the back of A-Rod’s trading card a few times.

Sestak is also pretty douchey for lamely trying to avoid the dreaded L-word. Of all the elections in recent memory, 2010 is not the year to embrace ‘Liberalism’ as an identifying mark. But when confronted with the blindingly obvious…yes buttercup, Nancy Pelosi is a left-winger…Sestak mumbles, “Liberal? Speaker Pelosi? Never heard that.” C’mon, Joe.

On some level, I think this is an instinctive reaction for many Democrat politicians. Even in ideal electoral conditions, ‘liberal’ is a yucky word for Donkey Party people to try to explain. So what do a lot of Democrats try to do? Normalize their ideology. ‘Nah brah…liberalism is really just misunderstood moderation. They’re in the center. Right-wingers are the people who have gone off the deep end.’

I think Joe Sestak, in his clumsy ineffective way, was attempting to do that tired old Democrat drag act. I just don’t believe people are gonna buy the horsecrap he’s selling.

Being Conservative…The double-edged sword

I believe a lot of people think of the liberal/conservative divide in almost Zoroastrian terms. That is, they think of leftists and righties as occupying opposite and yet equal sides of the same coin. An example of this sort of perception: Liberals are generally for higher taxes and conservatives are almost always for lower taxes.

While there are numerous instances where this type of view is valid, the Manichaean dichotomy paradigm thingadeebobber just as often fails to capture the underlying reasons for why conservatives and liberals behave the way they do.

I was reminded of this because of something I read lately. Let’s hear from Innominatus, who while commenting on JournoList said this:

As individualists, we don’t like taking orders from above. The other side happily herds up and does like they’re told, but we’re more likely to raise a middle finger if somebody tells us what to blog, what to say, and what to think.

In a way, this hinders us and keeps us from presenting a united front. On the flip side, though, it means our grassroots efforts are genuinely grassroots and not manufactured rent-a-mobs.

Innominatus points out a massive structural difference between the way the left and the right view the world. We’re talking about something far more substantive than just,”Their side wants A, so our side must want B”. It’s about how each side organizes itself for partisan political conflicts.

JournoList and the Global Warming rigged data emails are just two examples of the collectivist thinking that goes on within the Left. This penchant for group-think gives the Left a big advantage when it comes to creating messages for the media age. Because a large majority of Americans remain only vaguely political, it takes short, punchy and-above all-coordinated repeated messages to cut through the static of a person’s daily life and reach them.

Liberals not only recognize this basic truth, they are eager to craft united media signals to further their goals. Conservatives, by contrast, are not nearly as willing to engage in that type of political activity.

Look at Democrats in the 70′s and 80′s. They were able to maintain Congressional majorities during times of Republican presidential domination in large part because they were able to stick together and stay on message. “Tax cuts for the rich” was just one mantra that fell from the lips of every Democrat in almost any situation imaginable back in the day. 

During that same era, Republicans running for Congress would often send mixed signals…or worse….no signals to voters. Besides obvious regional and state differences, congressional GOPers would often go their own way when campaigning.  It seemed as if they could almost never get on the same page.  Thus there would be no overarching GOP congressional narrative until the 1994 midterm elections.

The same basic ‘problem’ hamstrings conservatives in general. Messaging is very tough when there is no general consensus as to what the message should be. Should right-wingers focus on social issues or fiscal policy? Should conservatives hone in on Afghanistan, Israel or the woes of the European Union when it comes to foreign policy matters? Fuck, should we even be worrying about the rest of the world that much anyway? Nobody really has an answer, so pretty much everybody strikes out on their own. That’s cool, but it can hurt the cause when the message isn’t intense enough to reach a lot of the apathetic citizenry out there.

On the other hand, not being in lock-step has it’s advantages too. No, we don’t get to have junior high kool kid bullshit sessions on a private listserv. But then again, we don’t get caught trying to secretly shape the narrative through lies, astroturfing nonsense and conspiritorial coordination with national political campaigns. The Borg hive-mind approach might make for a more united front, but the more scattershot methods of the Right has the advantage of having deeper intellectual roots.

Look at how the conservative movement agonizes over Sarah Palin. There are some that are convinced she’s no good at all for advancing the Right’s agenda. There are some who think she’s conservative enough, but also feel her negatives amongst voters make it impossible for her to win in a future presidential run. Still others feel she’d make a strong candidate to further the long-term policy goals of the Right.

No, there is not a single right-wing narrative being followed when it comes to Palin. Further, if Palin gets the nomination in 2012, there will still be fissures in the rightish blogosphere about her effectiveness in delivering policy wins, as well as the nature of her ideology. While many would march under a Palin banner, there would be more than enough dissidents as well.

The Left and the Right operate in two different kinds of intellectual space. While it may look like they’re simply the bifrucated head of partisan rancor, liberals and conservatives come at politics from two very divergent paradigms. Because they think so differently about the nature of government, they bring distinct advantages and disadvantages to the game.

How those factors play out in a changing world is the real question in my mind.

SORTA RELATED: Don’t get me wrong; the Right is certainly capable of self-delusion (Hey, Bob Dole is a great candidate! Yo, Bush’s spending isn’t that ridiculously profligate!). Moving to policy concerns, terms limits were huge in the 90′s, but nowadays they’ve been placed on the waaaaay back burner as other issues have become more pressing. Looking back on it now, screaming for terms limits seems like tilting at windmills, so yeah in hindsight that was pretty delusional.

I know Julian Sanchez likes to pat himself on the balls for his epistemic closure dig on conservatives. He’s not completely wrong either. The problem is that left-of-center types seem to conveniently ignore the raging group-think that resides on their side of the aisle.

Runaway Slave-The Documentary

Ya’all gotta check this out.

Pastor Bryant is like the Anti-Jeremiah Wright.  That’s pretty awesome.

Conservative Blogging-Cooperative, Not Coordinated and Quite Singular

Now that much of the fallout from the priapic junior high zit-squeezing that was JournoList has landed, left-wing noise punks like HuffPo are jumping ugly on anything that even kinda-sorta resembles right-wing media/conservative blog coordination. 

So let’s cut to the chase:  Is there a right-of-center JournoList?

There could be, but it’s highly doubtful.  Listen to Ace as he demolishes the PuffingtonHost charge that he coordinated with members of the so-called right-wing noise machine:

Number of emails to/from Allah, Ed, The Anchoress, Jim Hoft, any representatives at Fox, or Andrew Breitbart to/from Myself: Zero, until today, an hour ago, when The Anchoress emailed me this link about how we “coordinated.”

Last time I emailed anyone on that list was two days ago, when I emailed Ed to tell him his Gallup story was wrong (and he didn’t email back).

Before that? I wrote Andrew Breitbart on Sunday about getting me in touch with someone he might or might not know (it was a total flier) about non-political business (he didn’t email back).

Before that? Some point in the last month I emailed Allah some one-line observation, I think about a person, rather than politics (he didn’t email back).

Before that? I am pretty sure I have not contacted any of these people, nor been contacted by them, it at least three months. I have almost never emailed The Anchoress or Jim Hoft, ever, and nor they me; I used to email Allah every so often, but we sort of stopped doing that (or he stopped, then I did); and I have traded like two or three emails, all short tip-type things, with Ed Morrissey, in, like, my entire life.

So not much there.

You wanna know why else there isn’t a JournoList on the Right?  There’s no time for it, according to the great Little Miss Attila: 

Bloggers do send each other links. We send them one-on-one, and as group emails to our own customized link-pimp mailing lists (almost all of us small-time bloggers act as our own publicists, and send out emails every day, or week, or month — demanding that Glenn Reynolds, Rush Limbaugh and whomever else look at what we’re writing). And Elizabeth Scalia, Jim Hoft, Ed Morrissey, Allahpundit and Ace all get mail from me, to which they occasionally respond when time permits. But these writers are all too big to have to send out “look at me” emails. And although there are sub-groups of Southern Californians, chick-bloggers, warmongers, Jesus freaks, libertarians, and energy bloggers that I consult with and link to from time to time, most of us really are too busy to coordinate actual “media strategies,” because we generally also have day jobs and/or home obligations, along with the writing of at least one essay a day and throwing up as many shorter posts as we can.

I don’t think I have to say this to anybody, but this cheesey little blog thang ain’t my full time job.  I love shooting the shit with bloggers and I always try to hit my homies’ websites out on teh internetz.  But coordinating a political message with them?  That would be rough stuff even if I wanted to.  Between work, co-workers, family, friends and every other obligations, there are very few hours in a week that I can actually devote to writing.  Then, on top of all that, I’m supposed to break out my Reich-Wing Secret Decoder Ring and my 1,000,000 hit point Dick Cheney Amulet of Conservative Evil and figure out what the agreed-upon message is supposed to be for the day?  Nah, that ain’t happening.

Besides the lack of time, think about the various perspectives some of my blogging pals have.  Amusing Bunni’s lead post is a Rule 5 job (and a lovely one at that).  Bunkerville looks at the German fat tax thingy.  MK examines taxpayer funding of comedy clubs.  Fuzzy Logic has a video about the Breitbart/Shirley Sherrod story.  Matt zings CNN for wanting the government to regulate bloggers.  Angel wants a new dog.  Trestin busts out the Reaganey awesomeness.  Karen grooves out to the original Mad Max.

Forget about ideology for a bit.  First, try getting those eight writers to get on the same page about their various interests.  These are people that only have to answer to themselves.  They’re not assigned a story by an editor.  They talk about whatever the hell they wish.  

But okay, lets say you’ve gotten them all on the same page.  That won’t happen, but whatever.  Say you have managed to get those ducks in a row.  Now try to tell them they have to write about the same political event or issue.  That’s pretty nuts. 

Sissy Willis has a neat idea to describe the improbability of a right-wing JournoList.

“Grizzlies are generally loners, but they are still North America’s most social bear. They gather at food sources and often forage in family groups,” according to the Bronx Zoo website. Sarah Palin’s metaphor for common-sense conservative women — “Mama Grizzlies” fiercely defending their young — resonates beyond female political candidates to become a perfect metaphor for everyday fellow Americans and social-networking citizen journalists like the Tea Partiers, both women and men, who are entering the political fray to battle the fear-and-smear machine that would douse the lights of the Shining City Upon a Hill.

Lone grizzly vs. wolf pack. Individualism vs.collectivism. The metaphors fit.

JournoListers were basically all card carrying left-wingers.  Lefties tend to like collectives of all sorts of flavors; the JournoList email jobby was just another snuggly group think security blanket.  When there was a threat to their political views, they angrily pounced on it.  When there was a way to advance their preferred policy ideas or candidates, they swung into action with extreme vigor.

I don’t know about anybody else, but this herd mentality isn’t for me.  I suspect it isn’t for many other right-of-center types either.  So yeah, a conservative JournoList could be out there.  But for a number of reasons, it’s highly doubtful conservatives would create this sort of douchebaggery.

Wanna see some real blogger creativity?

Then you’re gonna wanna head over to Innominatus’ site.  The Riddle of the Sphincts awaits you!

Seriously, this is rad.  Innominatus-I salute you, sir.

Peter Orszag-JournoLister

(Only the 2nd dopiest haircut in the Obama Administration)

The great Ed Driscoll has the goods.

Reader “Hydrangea” wonders why “people keep forgetting that Peter Orszag was also a Journolister.” Orszag is President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Director.

In March of 2009, Ezra Klein wrote:

“Journolist is meant to serve a very specific purpose that’s actually related to my experience building this blog. The work of this site has always been to illuminate standard political reporting with expert policy commentary. In that, I’ve been helped by the many experts who have adopted the medium as their own: Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman, Matthew Holt, Peter Orszag, Andrew Gelman, Larry Bartels, Dani Rodrik, John Sides, among others. As a journalist, it’s hard to always know who to call or which questions to ask. The joy of those blogs is that I don’t have to guess what experts think is important: They simply explain what they think is important and I can use, or follow-up on, the information.?”

Along with Jared Bernstein that makes at least two JournoListers with direct ties to the Obama campaign apparatus or the St. Barry Administration.

Who is Peter Orszag?  Well, he was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Teleprompter Jesus.  He’s the guy who basically drew up the fake as fuck totally legitimate fiscal justifications for ObamaCare.

Health care deform will bend the cost curve!  It’ll be deficit neutral!  It’ll create jobs!  It’ll make unicorns shit enough Skittles to feed everyone in the whole Universe for infinity!!!!!!!111111111eleventy!!!!!!1111

Remember all that bullshit?  Yeah, that’s Pea-Shooter Pete Orszag’s handiwork.

Not only can this soooooper-jeeeenyus not do math, he’s part of a big secretive left-wing clusterfuck designed to rig the media and get the statist agenda grafted onto American politics.  Wow.

I tell you what, folks.  This JournoList thing has been awesome.  If it’s this bad now, imagine how much worse it could get when the Daily Caller gets more of this stuff out in the open.

Morgan Freeman Can Do Anything

I knew the guy was a great actor.  I had a feeling he was a cool dude.  I had no idea he was this rad.

Mike ‘old douchebag liberal’ Wallace:  How are we supposed to get rid of racism-

Morgan Freeman:  Stop talking about it.

And that, my friends, is the whole game right there.

Remember when Morgan Freeman was president in “Deep Impact”?  Yeah, I want that guy as my Commander-in-Chief, not the teleprompter-addicted Marxoid college lecturer assclown 52% of us were stupid enough to vote for.

Also, Mike Wallace really is an old douchebag liberal.

Same as it…ever waaaaaaaaaasssssss

Frank over at IMAO brings teh funny.

The best part?  They rhymed ‘golf’ with ‘gulf’.

Okay, not really.  But it’s still awesome.

Hollywood and the Joys of Group-Think

I’m not a huge Captain America fan.  What can I say?  I’m a proud My Little Pony dude. ;-p

But if you’re gonna make a Captain America movie, shouldn’t the character be…you know…pro-American?

According to John Nolte, that simply ain’t gonna be the case.  He’s got a lot of the gory details from the director of the flick, Joe Johnston.  Even better is Nolte’s summation of 21st century La-La Land.

Not to pile on to your wound-licking, but those of you surprised and disappointed by this news are part of the problem. Those of you who haven’t already figured that — with rare exceptions like Jerry Bruckheimer — Hollywood is so opposed and sickened by the idea of portraying America as a uniquely special and exceptional nation that they would assure the world in advance that Captain America really isn’t, need to wake up.

Like the mainstream media, once you figure out Hollywood’s nothing more than a left-wing propaganda machine, all your confusion will lift and every seemingly counter-intuitive move they make when it comes to profits, artistic integrity,and the very basics of right and wrong, will suddenly make perfect sense. Trust me on this. Just try looking at the industry through that prism for one week and see if the clouds of confusion don’t suddenly lift.

He’s exactly right.

Hollywood isn’t interested in being profitable.  Or, more precisely, they’re perfectly willing to put out bunches of unpopular unprofitable left-wing bombs.  As long as a few films are able to turn a profit, it allows the studios to keep pumping out the explicitly liberal flicks, which are actually little more than social signifiers marking the movie-makers as part of the ‘correct’ political group with the ‘proper’ partisan opinions. 

Group-think is warm, cuddly and gently reassuring as long as you’re part of the group in question.

The worst part is that even films that are not explicitly political will often have enough subversive anti-American anti-free market messages buried within them to make a progressive purr with sphincter-spazzing joy.  “Avatar” was marketed as a standard-issue big budget action flick with epic special effects.  It was instead a thinly veiled hit job criticizing  the military, the War on Terror and vast swaths of modern life itself.

I’m not for a boycott.  See movies that you think might be cool.  There are always some films that will not look to offend your politics.  You just have to do some research and figure it out. 

Having said that, I know I’m getting tired of funding a left-wing politburo that hates me.

Holocaust Survivor has the best sense of humor evah!

I know this is sorta crusty and I know many people have gotten a little bent out of shape over it, but I think it’s hilarious.

This old guy is tougher than I’ll ever have to be.  He has more spirit than a lot of people half his age. Now, he just wants to have a little fun with his family.  God bless this dude, I say.

I think this is an affirmation video.  He’s saying that he has survived.  He beat the Nazis.  He won out against Hitler’s hatred and had a loving family.  Yeah, the video is sorta silly.  But it’s sorta awesome too.

The Daily Caller just proved it’s usefulness

For anybody who doubted that Tucker Carlson could make some newsy magic happen, here is the stuff that proves you wrong.

The worst part isn’t that Sarah Spitz would laugh in his face if Rush Limbaugh was dying of a heart attack in front of her.  That’s pretty much the standard issue ideological throat-clearing that goes on all the time in the Left’s salons.  It’s been happening right out in the open for a long damn time.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a bunch of progtards are tolerating it amongst themselves in a private e-mail circle jerk.

No, the most disgusting thing we find here is the glee many of these JournoList types took in the idea of censoring a news organization, specifically Fox News Channel.  FNC’s crime?  Reporting news unfavorable to Obama.  Again, bear in mind that these are scholars and reporters ostensibly working in the field of journalism.  These should be the last people on earth to want that to happen.  But sadly, they’re not.   

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

 

…But [Jonathan] Zasloff stuck to his position. “I think that they are doing that anyway; they leak to whom they want to for political purposes,” he wrote. “If this means that some White House reporters don’t get a press pass for the press secretary’s daily briefing and that this means that they actually have to, you know, do some reporting and analysis instead of repeating press releases, then I’ll take that risk.”

It’s talk like Zasloff’s that makes me think these people are deranged.  I mean, these are allegedly smart folk, with important college degrees from the best universities and carrying a lot of influence in the left-of-center crowd.  If they’re down with censorship, they’re not just liberals, they’re insane.

Oh and just for shits and giggles, here’s some words of wisdom from our old friend David Weigel.

Yes of course Davey.  Being too generous and granting too much equal time to various points of view is exactly what is what’s wrong with the MSM.

Look, Fox News is not perfect and no news organization is.  However, the great thing about Fox is that-in a sea of left wing pap-it is a place where right-of-center views can be heard from time to time.  That might be one reason why it gets the highest ratings of any cable news source.

In Weigel’s mind, the Foxies are just a group of fucking morons who shouldn’t be granted equal time to express their opinions.  What he is implying here is astounding if you think about it.  For Weigel, Fox represents idiots in America that shouldn’t be listened to by the MSM or the political class.

Weigel is telling us in no uncertain terms just how vile and stupid he thinks the rest of us are.  To think Weigel could give fair reports about conservatives is laughable in light of this e-mail.  The dude hated the Right with a burning passion usually reserved for cystic acne or rat-fuckers. 

This story also tells us about journalism in America.  The media simply cannot be trusted-ever.  They are contemptuous of the First Amendment when it doesn’t protect their left-wing views.  They are ideologically driven far more than probably any other segment of society.  They also despise those of us who resist the march to a soft-socialism state.  They don’t simply view the Right as an ideological foe.   They look at conservatives as evil untermenschen that must be destroyed via any means necessary.

In short, the media in the United States is Stalinist to it’s core.  It is nothing more than a propoganda wing of the statist party in this country.  The MSM are not to be believed about anything.  They are corrupted liars with an agenda that is absolutely alien to the founding principles of this country and to the people that defend it.  Anybody who thinks otherwise…and I’m looking especially at the RINOs here…courts the media at their own peril.  

So bravo to Tucker Carlson.  I am pretty sure there is many more revelations about JournoList to come.

UPDATE:  Whattaya know?  Tucker did have more dirt.  Here the JournoListers are creaming their jeans on Election Night 2008.  Check out our old pal, the gleeful Pravda Reporter-In-Training Spencer Ackerman’s reaction to the Obamessiah’s Ascension.

 SPENCER ACKERMAN, WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT: YES WE DID!

Jeeeeeebus tittie-fucking Keeeeeristmas.  What a nauseating little Obama campaign shill.  Not an iota of objectivity or even irony to be had there.  Just a full-on double rainbow orgasm of true-believer love spunk all over the computer screen.

Pathetic.  These are the people who dare to lecture the rest of us about our politics, our tastes and our morality.  Go fuck yourself with a rusty claw-hammer sideways with no lube Spencer, you unquestioning Democrat Party hack dong-huffer.

Via the great Robert Stacy McCain.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire soon?

Oy vey.

Senate staffers Thursday were hearing rumors (ultimate source unknown) that the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is less than two months away.
The plan reportedly is this: If Elena Kagan’s nomination to the court can be confirmed early this summer, Ginsburg would then announce her retirement, so that confirmation for Ginsburg’s replacement could be finished before the end of the year. . .

Robert Stacy McCain had the scoop on this months ago.  Gotta tip your cap to him there.

So what happens if Judge Ruthie decides she’s had enough of porking the Constitution with a rusty crowbar and a law book from Kyrgyzstan?  President Obamster has an interesting history when it comes to nominating Supreme Court justices.  From the Wise Latina Sonya Sotomayor to the ultimate blank slate Elena Kagan, Barry seems to love underqualified overconfident doofuses.

If that’s the pResident’s criteria, it would be awesome if Bammy at least picks somebody interesting?

Here’s some free advice, Mr. President.  I say you replace old and busted Ginsburg with the new hotness Ginzburg.

I give you our new Supreme Court jurist:  Esti Ginzburg.

Hey, if this post seemed like a cheap way of posting Esti Ginzburg pics…it’s because it was!

Reverend Wright, JournoList and the Government-Media Complex

If you ever spend any time in the Left-O-Sphere (Daily Kos, Huffington Post, The Nation, Democrat Underground, et. al.), a common theme about the media appears over and over again. In the Left’s view, the American press is not a bastion of liberalism. Instead, progressives take the view that because the mainstream media is controlled by corporations, the media must actually be a right-wing tool allied to big business interests.

Forget that major corporations like British Petroleum and General Electric have allied themselves with President Obama’s big government environmental agenda. Disregard the fact that supposedly free-market companies often ally with government to squash smaller competitors. Shunt those things to the side for a little while.

Let’s look at the journalists themselves. Who do they support? What agendas do they follow? What stories do they report and how do they report them?

To figure that out, you’ve got to check out Jonathan Strong’s bombshell Daily Caller piece on JournoList’s handling of the Jeremiah Wright fiasco.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged.

First of all, if the media is not in fact left-wing, why did these journalists go into spittle-spraying rage at George Stephanopoulos’ questions? If the press is a right-wing mouthpiece, why all the anger over Candidate Obambi getting a few tough questions?

Anyway, JournoList wasn’t just going to sit there and let their champion/dreamy man-crush take a potentially fatal hit without a fight.

…Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

…Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

…Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”

Look at the language Tomasky chooses. “…Throw chairs now…”? These are not the measured words of a calm man. These are the sentiments of a dude who is scared shitless that a scandal will effectively kill his preferred liberal candidate’s electoral chances.

Better still: Questions directed to Barack Obama about Jeremiah Wright were ‘a disease’. Huh. Well, JournoListers-what’s the cure for St. Barry’s ailment?

[Spencer Ackerman]I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

A couple things here. Spencer Ackerman is not just a weasely Stalinist cockface. He also very strongly identifies himself as a member in good standing of the American Left. He is definitely against what he sees as the conservative movement. Ackerman is an educated man, so surely he understands the difference between Left and Right. He has at least some idea what it means to be liberal and conservative. Why don’t we take him at his word when he self-identifies as a progressive?

Furthermore, here we see the groundwork laid for the last two years of MSM criticism of the GOP, the Right and the Tea Parties in particular. Ackerman lays it all out there in glorious detail: Pick a right-of-center target, then charge them with racism until they and the rest of the conservatives shut the fuck up about Obama.

It’s ideological intimidation in it’s most blunt application. Moreover, Ackerman is hoping that the Right rises to the racism bait so that conservatives lose focus and become ineffective. This in turn will make it easier for Obama to turn around the argument and throw it back at his critics. As Matt over at the great Conservative Hideout reminds us, conservatives that constantly respond to these specious charges are playing right into the Left’s plans.

Why should we ignore the racism accusations? Because Ackerman has given the game away. The charge of bigotry against conservatives is not meant to clarify but obfuscate. Ackerman admits that they simply need to pick out a Rightie target and slime him or her with the racial hate smear. That means that there was never any racism there to begin with.

Furthermore, when the JournoListers weren’t trying to kill the critics with false charges, they were talking about pretending the Jeremiah Wright story simply didn’t exist.

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media” who were members of the list.

…Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. “All this hand wringing about just
how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going.”

Ignore the ‘problem/story’ and hope it all goes away in the wash. I don’t think I need to remind anybody that these are reporters we’re talking about here. The job description of a journalist is to report about current events. Jeremiah Wright…whether anybody on the Left wanted to admit…was a man and a story the American people were interested in hearing about. Instead of reporting on it, here we have a journalist advocating that his fellow reporter colleagues bury it.

Funny. The media wonders why they are hemorrhaging viewers and readers. Then they turn around and discuss actively ignoring current stories. The MSM is in need of many things, but first and foremost might be some new self-awareness software.

Ideologically speaking, the JournoList reaction to Jeremiah Wright should (but probably won’t) finally explode left-wing meme that the mainstream media is a conservative bastion. JournoList sprang to the defense of Barack Obama as soon as it looked like he was in trouble. Now Obama has not been a perfect liberal; he’s had to backtrack on some terrorism issues and foreign policy campaign promises. But on the big domestic policy issues…industrial policy, cap and trade and health care reform…Obama has advocated for and often succeeded in moving the US government far to the left of where it was just two years ago. More importantly, the President has laid the foundations for a potentially permanent social-welfare state that controls vast swaths of the once-private economy.

If JournoList and the MSM in general wasn’t leftist, why would they have gone to the lengths they did to protect St. Bamster from the fallout from Jeremiah Wright? If JournoList and the MSM behaved like the Left insists they should’ve, reporters and opinion writers should’ve been devising ways to have Jeremiah Wright blow up in uber-liberal Obama’s face. They would’ve been discussing ways to push the story to forefront, not burying it. They would’ve been defending conservatives against charges of bigotry, not inventing them out of thin air.

Liberals need to get out of dream land. The MSM is as left-wing as anybody else within the progressive movement. Instead of denying, they should own up to it. They should be embracing their favored status at the media’s kool kid lunch table. The JournoList scandal proves the lamestream media is nothing more than a propoganda arm of the statist project beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt. Unfortunately, the Left will more than likely continue to ignore what is staring at them directly in the face.

UPDATE:  Greg Gutfeld has the best take so far.

But here’s the real moral: the same libs who said Obama was going to lead us into a new post racial world, are pretty much the same creeps fanning a racial division. Ackerman, a faux tough guy typing from his hidey hole, realizes that without the accusation of race, he’s got nothing to shield an incontinent ideology.

Nice.

King Samir Shabazz-Just A Symptom

You know King Samir Shabazz, right?  If not, Let Morgen at Verum Serum hook you up with some real street knowledge.  Really, get some popcorn and get comfortable.  This is gonna be fun.

Morgen also digs up Shabazz’s photobucket page.  We could take a pass on it, but then we’d miss out on the deep insights into this sure-fire genius.  I say we take a peak into Sammie’s picture book.

NSFW.  No,really:  Some of this is graphic.  Go no further if drugs or violent images offend you.  Ya’all have been warned.

I think a good place to start is Shabazz’s political views.  I wonder:  Is Da King Panther an Obama man or a Hill-Dawg supporter?

The caption for this one:  “2 of satans finest” .  Well that settles it.  Mrs. Clinton and the President don’t meet Shabazz’s high standards for political candidates.  Whatever shall they do?

But who is cool in the mind of our cracka-hatin’ new best friend?  Why lookie here:  It’s racist Muslim preacher and sometime numerologist Louis Farrakhan!

Who else gets mad props from Sam? 

Oh snap!  There’s cop killer and fugitive Assatta Shakur!

Of course, serial sexual hypocrite Elijah Muhammad makes an appearance on Shabazz’s guest list.

But enough about Shabazz’s heroes.  What about his hobbies?  His likes and dislikes?

How about some kind bud?

I’m pretty sure this isn’t a daffodil.

Awwwwwwwwwwww, Shabazz <3′s THC.’

Say what you will about our man’s near-Snoop Dogg level of attraction to cannabis.  King Samir Shabazz sure has an interesting take on race relations.

His caption?  “The best kind of cracka a dead 1″.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooof.

As I was making this post, it seems Da King made his photobucket page private.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the real juicy stuff.  I’m not talking about even more pictures detailing his intense hatred of people with the Caucasian persuasion.  We already knew all about that joyous little personal tic of his.  No, it turns out the dude is a chubby chaser. 

Don’t get it twisted, ya’all.  I can appreciate a lady with a little junk in the trunk.  But Shabazz likes the gals with a lot…and I mean A FREAKIN’ LOT…of meat on their bones.  He’s only got about a zillion pics of massively big women.  Oh, we’re not just talking photos of actual chicks.  I’m talking about cartoon characters, hand-painted drawings, 18th century woodcuts, airbrushed works on the hoods of cars, wrought-iron sculptures, Cubist masterpieces, stick figures, shadow-puppets, murals, hieroglyphics, Lego creations, holograms, dioramas, computer-generated animations, hook-and-loop textile rugs.  Fuck…in the intense blur of real and imaginary cellulite, I think Sam the Man who Likes Girls With Quintuple G Cans had a shot of the Venus of Willendorf rolling around in there too.

So what can we say about King Samir Shabazz?  He despises Obama, thinks communist cop killers are teh awesome, gives mad shout-outs to religious hucksters, loves to partake in the sticky icky, wants crackas dead and has an intense fetish for fat broads.  Wow, that’s some curriculum vitae you got there Sammie.

Here’s whats even better:  This is the guy Eric Holder thought should get a free pass for voter intimidation.  This is the dude that Obama’s Justice Department feels should skate for a video-documented case of polling place thuggery.  Huh.

I’ll be honest.  I’m not that shocked at King Samir Shabazz.  There are always going to be idiots. Racists of all colors will forever populate our nation.  That shit will never change.  We should try to curtail it as much as possible, even though we have to realize that it will never be completely eradicated.  Shabazz is just another loudmouth retarded assclown who has managed to get a bunch of other nit-wits to follow him.

The real objects of disgust here should be Eric Holder and Barack Obama.  The President and the Attorney General were confronted with a crime.  It was a crime against our democracy.  Worst of all, it was a documented crime.  Anybody with an internet connection could see it.  Vast numbers of people have seen the video, so it is in the public consciousness.  Presented with this overwhelming evidence, what did  the Justice Department-directed by the President-choose to do?

They ignored it. 

Eric Holder called America a nation of cowards because we don’t talk about race enough.  Since we’re just spouting off insults here: Hey Eric, I think you’re a dickless chickenshit turd of an Attorney General for not dealing with this crime.  I think that you were so frightened about pissing off small elements of the black population by prosecuting King Samir Shabazz that you just dropped it in the hopes that it would just go away.  Better still-unlike you, I have concrete evidence to support the fact that you’re a useless coward on race.

As for Barack Obama, we’ve known he was a coward on race for a long time.  When given real evidence that his pastor for twenty years Jeremiah Wright was a screaming racist lunatic, St. Barry chose to lecture the rest of us about being intolerant.  For two decades, Obama sat in those pews and listened to that guy holler out his race-based hate at him, his wife and his kids.  It would’ve taken some courage to walk away from the Trinity Church and break from Pastor Wright.  Instead, Obama voted ‘present’ for a long time, then got snippy with his critics when confronted by his cowardice.  What. The. Fuck?

So I don’t want to hear shit about American racism from these two scared shitless politicians ever again.  If they can’t figure out how to prosecute a braindead asshair like King Samir Shabazz, then they’re worse than useless.  Sadly, we’ve got another two years of their self-righteous idiocy to deal with. 

Even worse:  There’s a big election coming up in November.  Thugs like King Samir Shabazz have seen that the Obama regime is happy to turn a blind eye to voter intimidation.  That which is tolerated will be repeated.  Expect more of these kind of incidents in the future.  Election 2010 could get very ugly.

Iowahawk on two latter-day liberal saints

Saints?  Maybe not.

It happened that in Washingtown-on-Beltway there once ministered to the shire folk two vicars of remarkable and resolute piety. Polite history shall record their names and peerages as the Reverend John St. Edwards, Lord Plaintiff of Durham, and the Reverend Albert des Gores II, Earl Carbonet of Greenhouse. It shall likewise note well that each man, in his fashion, was a virtuoso upon his respective pulpit. What it shan’t record, however, is each man’s slavish indenture to the base desires of the flesh. As every schoolboy knows, as well he does his Latin infinitives, few are those men whose breeches are immune to the Devil’s disturbances. In the case of our two ill-fortuned subjects, Lucifer himself seemed to take particular delight in presenting ribald temptations and the debasing consequences that follow. Herein lies their tale.

Of our first subject, the Vicar John, let us note that he overcame a birth of low station through vigorous enterprise, fine grooming, and a tongue deft in weaving tragic tales of indigence; first as a simple shire barrister and then as an ordained minister at the Abbey of Washingtown. “Brethren, in my travels I have observed that we live in two shires,” he was wont to tell his rapt parishioners. “One with which you are familiar; whose roofs are handsomely thatched and in whose plump bellies rest a gluttonous supper of lamb’s-pudding. Yet, and alas, there is another shire; one in which dwell the miserable wretches laid low by our sinful and unrepentant avarice. Wretches like this unfortunate filthy lad, who has not a morsel eaten in the last fortnight.”

Upon which he would dispatch some soiled and peckish urchin into the congregation with the offering-basket, to fetch indulgences from the weeping flock of penitents. These sermons and indulgences proved quite lucrative to Vicar John, and he soon lavished upon himself great indulgences of his own; a baronial rectory in the country-side, satin waistcoats and breeches, silver buckle pumps, the finest Italianate wigs, and a staff of haberdashers and barbers for their tending. From Huffingtown to Pandagon to Firedog Lake he was proclaimed the most compassionate and prettiest vicar in all the shire, and a worthy ascendant to the Bishopric of Washingtown.

Vicar Albert, by contrast, possessed neither the clever silver’d oratory nor the Greek visage of Vicar John, but a keepsake thrice still as dear: a birth into an estate of vast heraldry. Though considered by his tutors a thick and insubstantial scholar, his sire, the addled prelate Albert I, obtained for the lad hereditary sinecures in the seminaries of Cambridge and Washingtown. Soon and anon he found appointment as confessor to the sodomite bishop William of Clinton, who in gratitude for his service and merciful penances named him Bishop-in-Waiting. Yet, just as he was to assume the Bishop’s manse, he found himself deposed by the apostate hordes of Chad the Usurper.

Much more satirical goodness at the link.  Click it and thou shalt be entertained.

Oh, okay-Now ObamaCare really is a tax

The Song Doesn’t Remain The Same.

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

Wait a minute.  I thought Pwezident HopeyChangeDude said his health care plan wasn’t a tax? 

You gotta love Obamster’s chuckling pedantic reaction when Stephanopolous whips out the dictionary.  “Oh George, you silly man.  Referring to standard English definitions to describe shit is just sooooooo out of style.”

If you’re given a choice between buying a load of Obama’s health care reform propoganda or believing what Barry’s Admenstruation says in the courts, the latter is almost always closer to the truth.

So now teh pResident is saying that ObamaCare is a tax.  What do the lefties, who swore up and down that ObamaCare was not a tax, have to say now that their boss has torn away their fig leaves?

My guess is that the postmortem revisionism will look something like this:

Obama Bumper Sticker Removal Kit

Okay, one more video.

It even works on a Prius!