Bloodthirsty Liberal

Normally, Aunt Agatha is the more artistically inclined of the two of us.

But I’m the more pugilistically inclined. And this picture:

reminded me of this picture:

This is from the notorious Ernie Terrell fight in which Muhammad Ali punished Terrell for 15 rounds for the offense of referring to him only as Cassius Clay, his “slave” name.

“What’s my name, Uncle Tom? What’s my name?” Ali taunted, as he tattooed him.

Thug Meehan reportedly said: “I work for me.”

It wasn’t pretty then, and it isn’t pretty today.

CORRECTION: Sonny Liston is the recumbent figure, not Terrell. See comments below.

And he speaks!

Last evening I was a little too aggressive in the confusion of trying to help the Attorney General get to her car and catch a flight.

I clearly did not intend to cause John McCormack to trip and fall over that low fence. As the video shows and he confirms in his blog, I stopped to help him up and make sure he was OK.

I talked with Mr. McCormack this afternoon and apologized for my part.

The video also shows you hip-checking the reporter like a defenseman in a Bruins-Flyers game. It also shows that the Attorney General had plenty of time to take questions from other reporters—just no questions about her criminally ignorant statement about Afghanistan (while a Bolton, Massachusetts victim of the Khost base bombing was being buried back home), or why she had slunk down to DC to party with lobbyists in the first place.

So, media, it wasn’t a “fall” or a “stumble”; neither was it Republican “dirty tricks”. When may we expect apologies for those dishonest characterizations?

Get it?

Anyway, guess what the connection is between the alleged Brown-Shirt Shover and President Obama:

This evening, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Walter Isaacson, Michael Lynton, Susan McCue and Michael P. Meehan to the Broadcasting Board of Governors:

…

Michael P. Meehan currently serves as President of Blue Line Strategic Communications, Inc. and as Senior Vice President at Virilion, a digital media company.

And also an Ultimate Fighting Champion from the looks of things.

But the Boston Globe runs this AP dispatch to tell us this thing has been blown out of proportion:

John McCormack of the Weekly Standard fell Tuesday night as he tried to speak with the Democrat while simultaneously videotaping her and trying to pass a metal grate on a Washington sidewalk.

Photos and video of the incident show Coakley aide Michael Meehan trying to help McCormack up. A scuffle broke out as Meehan tried to block McCormack and determine if he was an operative of a rival campaign.

See? This Keystone Reporter was trying to walk and chew gum, fell over a metal railing (not a grate—how do you fall over a grate?), Mr. Meehan gentlemanly helped him to his feet, and a mere “scuffle” ensued when the ungrateful ink-stained wretch persisted in pestering Attorney General Coakley.

Thus spake Pravda.

Though the Dems take it a bit further:

A spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is describing the video above, which shows a Weekly Standard reporter getting pushed around by a DSCC consultant, Michael Meehan, as a “dirty trick” by “Washington Republicans.”

…

“It is no surprise that Washington Republicans are trying to use every dirty trick they have to throw the Coakley campaign off their stride…”

Like asking questions?

But I just want to correct the DSCC: I heard McCormack say he’s from Wisconsin, not Washington. You guys might want to check that.

So, how you feelin’ about your party, Dems? You got operatives intimidating the press (before they take their places as presidential appointees); you got state and national leaders cynically manipulating elections and legislation; you got your Senate President (and former national president) talking about Negroes getting coffee.

It is to my eternal shame that I ever voted Democrat (let alone uninterruptedly for 25 years), and that I’m still registered as one. Even if I had belonged to Hitler Youth, I could have pleaded immaturity and peer pressure. What’s my excuse for this party of fascists?

But enough about me: how do you feel?

We are all Hondurans now—or at least I would be proud to be one:

MPs in Honduras have voted overwhelmingly against reinstating President Manuel Zelaya, shrugging off international pressure four months after a coup that has isolated one of the poorest countries in the Americas.

As the vote continued, more than two-thirds of members of Congress had voted not to return the deposed president to power for the remainder of his term, which ends on January 27, as Washington and many Latin American governments had urged.

Honduran media put the ongoing vote at 98-12, well in excess of the simple majority needed in the 128-member, single-chamber Congress for the vote against restoring Mr Zelaya to succeed.

…

Politician after politician insisted that they were right the first time when they voted to oust Mr Zelaya for ignoring a Supreme Court order to cancel a referendum on changing the constitution. …

“My vote is [a lesson] for anyone who pretends to perpetuate himself in power. My vote is so that my son can look at me and say ‘Dad, you defended democracy,” said Antonio Rivera of Mr Lobo’s conservative National Party.

You rock, Sr. Rivera.

Of course, not everyone agrees:

“A new form of coup d’etat has emerged,’’ [Hugo] Chávez said during a televised speech yesterday.

I’m sure President Obama agrees, but he’ll just have to live with more rejection. After Iran, China, NATO, etc., I’m sure he’s getting used to it.

What next, My Race?

The popular social-networking Web site Facebook has removed a page that called for the murder of Jews, after receiving a query on the matter from The Jerusalem Post.

The page, which belonged to a group that called itself “anti-semitism,” listed dozens of members under a tagline that said, “We hate Jews so we must kill them.”

It also contained a photo album labeled “we must kill the Jews” which contained numerous anti-Semitic images.

Contacted by the Post on Monday, Facebook took down the page within hours of receiving the inquiry.

“The page you reference does in fact violate our policies and has been removed,” Elizabeth Linder, a spokesman for Facebook, told the Post via e-mail, adding that, “It would be fair to say that the page was removed after you brought it to our attention.”

And it’s not the first time it’s happened:

A anti-Israeli Facebook group that once had more than 48,000 members is being “destroyed” by a secretive group called the Jewish Internet Defense Force.

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Its old profile photo - a map of Palestine - has been replaced with an image of an Israeli fighter jet, and its front page contains a statement from the JIDF. The group’s location has been chaged to “Jerusalem, Israel”.

“This group was one of the most vile, antisemitic, pro-terrorist sites on the internet,” the statement reads.

“Despite thousands of user complaints over the course of eighteen months, Face book allowed this group and its ubiquitous antisemitic lies to flourish,” it continues.

“Facebook’s own negligence and abdication of responsibility gave us no option but to take matters in our own hands.”

In fact, anti-Semitism on social networks is a growing phenomenon:

Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and Anti-Semitism 2.0

I’ve got to go baste my turkey and walk my dog, but Google Facebook and Anti-Semitism for an education.

Truth may be an ironclad defense in libel law—but if the president comes after you, it won’t be enough:

There’s nothing like a Friday evening news release to hide a Washington embarrassment. In last week’s episode, President Obama’s health appointees lifted their outrageous gag order against health insurers for the sin of informing their customers about how ObamaCare would affect their insurance.

In September, Humana Inc. sent a mailer to some 900,000 enrollees in its Medicare Advantage plans, the program that gives seniors a choice of private insurance options, warning that spending cuts would result in reduced benefits and some people losing their coverage. The Congressional Budget Office has said the same thing, but the Obama apparat went nuclear. At the behest of Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, Medicare’s administrators menaced Humana with fines and regulatory punishments, and even told all insurers participating in Advantage to shut up too—or else.

In its Friday ruling, Medicare slapped Humana on the wrist for disseminating information that it claimed was “misleading to beneficiaries”—even though it was perfectly true—but also lifted the gag order. Insurers will be allowed to communicate with enrollees, provided they get permission. This is basically a concession that the critics are right, especially considering that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius defended the policy as recently as two weeks ago while refusing to answer questions about this raw political coercion from a supposedly impartial federal bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, the Administration is now threatening to strip the insurance industry of its decades-long exemption from antitrust law. This would blow a hole in the industry’s profitability, as would ObamaCare for different reasons. The industry now faces a choice of playing ball with Democrats and getting punished, or trying to defeat the bill and being brutalized as an act of political revenge. This is the industry’s reward for spending millions to promote “reform” in the hopes of not becoming a political target. It’s still a target, and now it’s poised to lose the policy fight too.

Politics ain’t beanbag. But it’s a lot like piñata. Don’t play unless you’re prepared to see your guts spilled all over the floor. To borrow a word Keith Olbermann used to describe a diminutive Filipino-American woman (the bag of mashed-up meat with lipstick), it’s fascistic.

American gay people who are disappointed that President Obama has words, just words, on their behalf can take solace that words, just words, are all his administration has for gays around the world:

Russia’s leading gay activist said yesterday that he was disappointed that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with an outspoken foe of gay rights during her two-day visit and did not decry homophobia.

Clinton attended a statue unveiling of Walt Whitman at Moscow State University with Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov has blocked all attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow, once saying they “can be described in no other way than as satanic.’’

Clinton did not mention of the issue during the ceremony. Some biographers have described Whitman as homosexual and US gay activists have claimed him as a symbol of their movement.

…

Gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev said yesterday that he was disappointed Clinton did not discuss discrimination against gays.

“Russia is supposed to be a democracy and she said nothing,’’ he said.

Alexeyev had called on Clinton to denounce what he called entrenched and degrading homophobic attitudes in Russia.

I’m sure she’ll get right on that.

America is supposed to be a democracy, too, Nikolai, and how’s that working out for us?

While President Obama was hobnobbing with Russian fascists, the fascists themselves carried on, well, fascistically:

Rim Shaigalimov, a leader of the opposition movement “Other Russia,” died after reportedly falling from a prison window. Shaigalimov, one of the leading pro-democracy activists in the central region of Krasnoyarsk, had led or participated in more than 100 protests, including some in which he demonstrated alone. He was taken into custody seven months ago and held by authorities ever since.

His wife, Lyudmila Shaigalimova, told RFE/RL that his death “must have been an order from above.”

Meanwhile, Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, the editor in chief of an independent newspaper in southern Russia, died on June 30 from injuries he sustained in an attack in April.

He was brutally beaten outside his apartment after he ran a series of articles challenging the authorities. He suffered severe head wounds and brain trauma and had been hospitalized ever since.

Yaroshenko’s deputy, Sergei Sleptsov, told the opposition news website kasparov.ru that he didn’t have “even the smallest doubt” that officials associated with Medvedev’s and Putin’s United Russia party were behind the attack. This follows several other deadly attacks on Russian journalists.

The Kremlin is still defenestrating its political opponents? You’d think a murderer would change his MO to throw off the investigation.

Gorbachev thinks our economy is Soviet-styled, and in need of perestroika. Is our foreign policy to follow?

Iran’s top electoral body said Tuesday it found “no major fraud” and will not annul the results of the June 12 election, closing the door to a do-over sought by angry opposition supporters alleging systematic vote-rigging.

Since the vote, Iranian government officials have repeatedly suggested that a revote is extremely unlikely. However, Tuesday’s announcement by Iran’s top electoral body, the Guardian Council, was the clearest yet in ruling out a do-over.

The announcement on Iran’s state-run English language Press TV is another sign the regime is determined to crush post-election unrest, the worst since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, rather than seek compromise with the protesters.

Government warnings to the protesters have intensified in recent days, with Iran’s supreme leader ordering them off the streets and the feared Revolutionary Guards threatening a tough crackdown. At least 17 people have been killed in near-daily demonstrations, including at least one that drew hundreds of thousands of people.

In a boost for the embattled regime, Russia said Tuesday that it respects the declared election result, which the Iranian government described as a landslide victory for hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The U.S. and many European countries have refrained from challenging the election outcome directly, but have issued increasingly stern warnings against continuing violence meted out to demonstrators.

A question for our non neo-con readers out there: what’s your model? What approach do you suggest when the Axis of Evil and the Evil Empire join forces to hock a loogie in the face of international moral outrage?

The UN? That joke was old when Henny Youngman first told it. What else you got?

No, seriously. THIS IS LITERAL ISLAMO-FASCISM IN THE (TORN AND BLOODY) FLESH—which is why Putin’s Russia sees no problem with it. But what about you? I’d like to know, because I’m stuck in the Bush cowboy mindset: if I had a saber, I’d rattle it.

North Korea threatens to shell Hawaii. Iran declares a military takeover. And President Obama spends his days redesigning the Geo Metro.

Don’t touch a thing, B-Ho! You can’t improve perfection.

The Obama Doctrine, on the other hand—whatever it may be—could use a real tune up.

We learned of the triumph of democracy in Gaza the other day, when Hamass announced it had won an election held in secret, and even the winners of which were kept secret.

With such “democracy” running amok in Gaza, can it be a surprise to learn that “civil liberties” are following suit?

Several NGOs, including radio stations, are facing closure after the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip decided to impose high fees and new conditions for renewing their licenses.

Human rights organizations in the Gaza Strip on Sunday sent a letter of protest to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urging him to cancel the new measures.

Last week the Hamas-controlled Communications Ministry sent letters to the owners of radio stations in the Gaza Strip asking them to pay nearly 10,000 Jordanian dinars (about $14,000) as an annual fee for licenses.

In addition, the Hamas government has asked dozens of non-profit institutions to make public statements about the sources of their funding and the financial status of their employees. These institutions have also been asked to pay new taxes to the Hamas government.

The measures are seen by human rights activists in Gaza as an attempt to take control over the international organizations and maintain a tight grip over the local media.

I am really ticked off by this. I mean, major-league outraged. They’re giving President Obama more ideas!

Let Europe or left-wing crackpots have Hamass if they love them so much. If it weren’t for Israel, the left would recognize Hamass for the neo-fascist organization that it is. If you allow that premise, then it is only the existence of Israel that entices people to engage with Hamass.

I was thumbing through my worn copy of Bernard Lewis’s Crisis of Islam, and I was struck—again—by this passage from the afterward (found online in an likely place):

The kind of dictatorship that exists in the Middle East today has to no small extent been the result of modernization, more specifically of European influence and example. This included the only European political model that really worked in the Middle East — that of the one- party state, either in the Nazi or the communist version, which did not differ greatly from one another. In these systems, the party is not, as in the West, an organization for attracting votes and winning elections. It is part of the apparatus of government, particularly concerned with indoctrination and enforcement. The Baath Party has a double ancestry, both fascist and communist, and still represents both trends very well.

So, the Europeans are intrigued with Hamass not only because it is anti-Israel, but because it reminds them of their own fascist/communist pasts (”which did not differ greatly from one another”).

I stand corrected.