Bloodthirsty Liberal

NY Times poll

Hah!

President Obama’s claim that the GOP is mounting a war on women has proven to be a failure. A month into his assault on the Republicans and Mitt Romney, the new CBS-New York Times poll shows that the GOP presidential candidate now leads among women–and men.

Since April, women have gone from strongly backing Obama to endorsing Romney. In April, Obama held a 49 percent to 43 percent lead among women. That has now flipped to 46 percent backing Romney with 44 percent for Obama, an 8-point switch.

Ironically, Romney’s support among men has dropped, but he still edges Obama 45 percent to 42 percent.

And here’s a surprise: Despite the media hyping the so-called war on women, no major outlet today noticed Romney’s new lead with women voters.

“This is unbelievable,” said conservative consultant Greg Mueller. “The CBS story manages to not mention the change in women numbers,” he said, adding sarcastically. “No media bias here — Obama is getting fluffy stories about his commencement speech to women at Barnard — so we better bury the reality.”

They are going to go ballistic if Romney wins. Should we stock up on food and bottled water?

- Aggie

Think of NPR—heck, liberalism—as a bizarre cult.

I could just stop there, couldn’t I? But wait, there’s more!

Like all cults, it has its strange beliefs and weird customs. And an overriding suspicion of outsiders. It does not seek to recruit so much as to intimidate into concordance. And woe betide anyone who dissents from the word passed down from on high.

Meet Juan Williams: he’s still not over it.

Fox News political analyst Juan Williams misses working for NPR “big time.”

“Because that’s such an informed and influential audience,” he told me last night at the swanky Industria Studios, a big loft and event space in the far West Village. “And the thing is that audience really liked me and I would often times help raise money for NPR.”

Williams, you may recall, was rather spectacularly (and controversially) fired from NPR in 2010 after telling Fox News host Bill O’Reilly that he sometimes “gets nervous” when he sees people in “Muslim garb” boarding a plane he is traveling on.

An informed audience? They were as informed as NPR permitted them to be. How many times have I lamented and lambasted the smug superiority of the Northeast liberal (and Northwest, and Mountain, and Great Plains, and Atlantic Seaboard, etc., etc.) for his or her boast to listen only to NPR and read only the New York [bleeping) Times, and consider himself or herself informed? A lotta times.

That audience liked you as long as you told them what they wanted to hear, Juan, you know that. You were pretty pi**ed off when you got canned. PO-ed at management, but they were only responding to listener pressure (real or perceived). You were fired for speaking the truth. Everyone notices people in “Muslim garb” getting on an airplane; we’re just tolerant and in control enough to handle our anxiety. Similarly, everyone—including and especially Jesse Jackson—gets nervous when discovering a young black man walking behind them at night (also including most black people). We don’t call the cops, we don’t cry rape; we may just walk a little faster or cross the street. Doesn’t make us bad people, just as being black doesn’t make the trailing pedestrian a bad person.

But that’s reality: the world as it is. Liberalism and the liberal view of the world doesn’t recognize reality; it shuns it as the Amish shun modernity and ornamentation, as the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana shunned Rep. Leo Ryan.

Juan Williams misses the Kool-Aid. I would be more understanding, but as a recovering liberal myself, I have no sympathy, none. The very memory of the taste of liberal orthodoxy induces such nausea as an alcoholic would feel on downing a vodka martini in one gulp after taking a fistful of Antabuse.

As his base and baseless slandering of the Tea Party the other day proves, Williams belongs in the intellectual gutter until he dries out for good.

It’s only on my mind because of the recent anniversary of the event, but I haven’t seen a black man beaten this savagely (intellectually, thank goodness) since Rodney King!

[Fast forward to four minutes for the fireworks.]

If it wasn’t for his baseless attacks on the tea party, I’d almost feel a little sorry for Juan Williams. He was outmatched to begin with and he’s really in a position here of trying to defend the indefensible. To support the Occupy movement in any way is to support anarchy, and orchestrated chaos and violence. This is a movement founded on anarchist principles, and led by anarchists and other radical leftists who openly call for the destruction of capitalism and the political system which supports it.

To compare it to the Tea Party is really an insult to both movements. Tea partiers abhor violence, and the bulk of the energy behind the movement is directed at demanding more fiscally responsible behavior from government, and restoring the freedoms and institutions which have made this country great. The aim of the occupiers is to tear down the system from within, and replace it with mob rule. They encourage the presence of revolutionary communists and black bloc anarchists within their midst, knowing full well that violence will ultimately be required to achieve their aims.

Juan Williams is no dummy—but his political orthodoxy is. For the last decade, the Left thought it had an argument by shouting “George Bush!” or “Cheney! Halliburton!!” From his echo chamber, Williams thought he could simply reply “Tea Party” to the very real and very disturbing charges against the anarchists, antisemites, criminals, and sufferers of diarrhea in the Occupy movement. When challenged, he had nothing. Nothing. He seemed taken aback that someone would even ask.

Andrew Breitbart went to his grave with that $100,000 he promised for tangible proof of Tea Party racism. The rest of us will have to be content with just being right; there is no reward—save scorn and hate from that selfsame Left.

Why the media is the enemy:

On Tuesday evening, “Piers Morgan Tonight” welcomed legendary journalist Dan Rather, and his remarkable blend of insight and perspective.

Joining Piers Morgan for a live, face to face interview, the longtime “CBS Evening News” anchor and “60 Minutes” correspondent opened up about the much-scrutinized 2004 report on George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service record:

“We reported a true story. That’s the reason I’m no longer at CBS News,” revealed Rather. “Those who found the story uncomfortable for their partisan political purposes attacked us at what they knew to be the weakest point, which was the documents.”

The “60 Minutes Wednesday” segment focused on a series of memos discovered in the files of Bush’s commanding officer. Though their authenticity has long been questioned, Rather noted that the documents, and his report, have stood up:

“I believed it at the time, or I wouldn’t have put them on. I believed it ever since, and believe it to this day. And I remark, the longer we go and nobody comes forward with proof that the documents were not what they report to be, the more I believe it.”

Name, rank, and serial number, Dan, and never let the bastards see you sweat (or blink, apparently). Because CBS is renowned for firing reporters for telling, ahem, truth damaging to George Bush. Okay…

Don’t anyone tell him about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He’ll think he has another scoop.

Dissent is the highest form of—oh, shut the [bleep] up:

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

That’s enough of that. It goes on (and on), but the main point is… the authors have a book to sell:

Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” which will be available Tuesday.

It’s already on my calendar, right after I clip my toenails, clean out the glove compartment, and de-flea the Bloodthirsty Puppy.

Beware of intellectuals arguing over the crisis of the Constitution. That means they want to change it, or do away with it altogether. After all, it’s only a charter of “negative liberties”. The “crisis” is that they don’t get to do what they want, simply because they think it’s a good idea. So, they have to turn the loyal opposition into a “problem”. Happy to oblige.

Let’s turn this around. Let’s just say the Democrats were trying to block a Republican president from carrying out his appointed job. What would conservatives and Republicans say?

Oh wait, they did! It was called the Bush administration. And you know what? They called Republicans the problem then, too! Only then, liberals were less interested in re-writing the Constitution to impose “the will of the majority” (in Tom Friedman’s chilling phrase). The majority had just decisively returned Bush to office, so that’s when dissent became the highest form of patriotism. Now, dissent mere obstuctionism, reactionaryism, and good ol’ fashioned racism.

Evil and dishonest—why be so greedy, when merely one will do?

This is just too rich (NY Times piece, if you’re counting):

DOES America need an Arab Spring? That was the question on my mind when I called Frank Fukuyama, the Stanford professor and author of “The End of History and the Last Man.” Fukuyama has been working on a two-volume opus called “The Origins of Political Order,” and I could detect from his recent writings that his research was leading him to ask a very radical question about America’s political order today, namely: has American gone from a democracy to a “vetocracy” — from a system designed to prevent anyone in government from amassing too much power to a system in which no one can aggregate enough power to make any important decisions at all?

The columnist who gets everything wrong, Tom Friedman, consults with the intellectual who got history wrong, Francis Fukuyama (end of history, my a**)—what could go wrong?

As an intellectual offering, this is completely wrong. What does he mean by an American “Arab Spring”? It’s nonsensical. And what antennae does Friedman use to “detect” such a long-winded concept, when he doesn’t even quote Fukuyama directly? If that’s what Friedman thinks, just say so, ya big dope.

Anyway, what’s wrong with the current system? President Obama had unfettered power for two full years, during which time he could have passed any crap legislation he and the servile Congress wanted. In fact, they did: ObamaCare. The people, in their wisdom, put the brakes on that in November 2010 by overwhelmingly electing Republicans, many of them Tea Party Republicans. The GOP took the House, but Democrats still run the Senate and the White House. Obama has even gotten to appoint two Supreme Court justices in two years, as many as George Bush appointed in eight. How has Obama been without “enough power”? There are so many distortions and lies in this first paragraph alone, it’s exhausting.

But as long as we’re here:

“When Americans think about the problem of government, it is always about constraining the government and limiting its scope.” That dates back to our founding political culture. The rule of law, regular democratic rotations in power and human rights protections were all put in place to create obstacles to overbearing, overly centralized government. “But we forget,” Fukuyama added, “that government was also created to act and make decisions.”

But not easily. Even a President designated commander-in-chief of the armed forces has to seek permission of Congress to declare war.

Unless, of course, you’re Obama, and you can carry on in Libya without any checks or balances whatsoever. (Oh, and Israel says “thanks” for those missiles liberated from Qaddafi’s stock that landed in Hamass’ hands and then on Israeli territory.)

Okay, though, I’ll bite: what actions and decisions are we lacking?

For starters, we’ve added more checks and balances to make decision-making even more difficult — such as senatorial holds now being used to block any appointments by the executive branch or the Senate filibuster rule, effectively requiring a 60-vote majority to pass any major piece of legislation, rather than 51 votes.

Has Obama truly been blocked from making any appointments? That sounds like an overstatement. Doesn’t he just name a czar anytime he needs one? Anyway, he’s used recess appointments to go around the system, so he’s hardly suffering from senatorial sclerosis. Dishonest much, Tom?

And the majority party always squawks over the filibuster rule; yet it never gets taken out of the Senate’s rule book. Why do you think that is? Because they secretly want it. Anyway, I recall back in the day, you incorporated ideas from the opposition to get their votes. The Republicans had their own health care plan, and were eager to incorporate their ideas into ObamaCare. Obama’s answer: I won.

In addition, the Internet, the blogosphere and C-Span’s coverage of the workings of the House and Senate have made every lawmaker more transparent — making back-room deals by lawmakers less possible and public posturing the 24/7 norm. And, finally, the huge expansion of the federal government, and the increasing importance of money in politics, have hugely expanded the number of special-interest lobbies and their ability to influence and clog decision-making.

Oh yeah, we’re all watching C-Span 24/7. I’m addicted. But he’s even more unhinged: back-room deals are harder to accomplish (that’s a bad thing?), yet government has expanded? His whole point is that government is sclerotic—can it be both dynamically expanding and clogged up? Of course not.

And sorry if small pissant blogs like this one make Harry Reid’s life harder. I don’t know how I live with myself. That First Amendment’s a real pain in the a**, huh?

But enough of you, Friedman. I thought this was supposed to be about Fukuyama’s thesis:

To put it another way, says Fukuyama, America’s collection of minority special-interest groups is now bigger, more mobilized and richer than ever, while all the mechanisms to enforce the will of the majority are weaker than ever. The effect of this is either legislative paralysis or suboptimal, Rube Goldberg-esque, patched-together-compromises, often made in response to crises with no due diligence. That is our vetocracy.

…

“If we are to get out of our present paralysis, we need not only strong leadership, but changes in institutional rules,” argues Fukuyama. These would include eliminating senatorial holds and the filibuster for routine legislation and having budgets drawn up by a much smaller supercommittee of legislators — like those that handle military base closings — with “heavy technocratic input from a nonpartisan agency like the Congressional Budget Office,” insulated from interest-group pressures and put before Congress in a single, unamendable, up-or-down vote.

Can you believe this? Less democracy, not more? Less free speech, less openness, less transparency? “Enforce the will of the majority”? And people call conservatives fascists!

I’m used to Friedman being wrong (and Fukuyama), but this wrong? I wonder if he has a brain tumor?

I know what you’re thinking: “That will never happen.”

I hope that will never happen! What Friedman is describing is the system of his beloved Chinese Communist Party. He’s beyond admiration; now he’s lobbying. Thank God he writes for the New York Times, or people might take him seriously.

Boy, some Jews sure are haters!

“If I had a gun I would have blasted the faces of all those sons of bitches.”

Dude, chill!

Who is that angry, angry man? Step forward, Tom Friedman!

On Easter/Passover Eve, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman served up “A Middle East Twofer,” his newest seasonal Mid-East peace plan combining Friedman’s own special home recipe of hypocrisy, lovingly layered with finger-licking idiocy:

“Palestinians need to accompany every boycott, hunger strike or rock they throw at Israel with a map delineating how, for peace, they would accept getting back 95 percent of the West Bank and all Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and would swap the other 5 percent for land inside pre-1967 Israel.”

Friedman knows very well that rocks are not a peaceful means to a peaceful end. He was attacked by Palestinian Arab rock throwers who stoned his car on Jerusalem’s Salahadin Street in 1988, just before leaving his job as the Jerusalem-based bureau chief of the Times. Friedman did not think of rocks then as peaceful protest.

“If I had a gun I would have blasted the faces of all those sons of bitches,” Friedman reportedly yelled, returning from the Arab side of town to the Times office, then at Rivlin Street in the mostly Jewish downtown center. Apparently, he never mentioned the incident—or his strong reaction to it—in his many books or columns.

After Friedman’s rocky ride, Yoram Ettinger, then-head of Israel’s government press office, told Friedman his experience ought to make him a bit more sympathetic to Israelis who Friedman called “trigger-happy” and who often get stoned (and killed) by Arab rocks, but generally do not kill all the Arabs in the area at the time.

Let’s see if we can jog Tom Friedman’s memory:

At least she got out okay. Not so much for Asher and Yonatan Palmer:

So Friedman was right to be upset. He was hypocritical not to report it then and is hypocritical to treat Arab rocks as a natural part of “bargaining,” where Arab attacks in 1967 are repaid by the Arabs getting all the land back they used to attack Israel.

Friedman’s piece on rocks and peace also lauded Palestinian mass murderer Marwan Barghouti, head of the Tanzim organization within Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. Barghouti is serving five life sentences for several murders, but Friedman and some left-wing Israelis, want to forget this too.

Forgetting and forgiving the rocks and mass murder was hypocrisy then and now. Friedman likely felt it was not wise to recall his stoning and antagonize Arab readers. He and other Times reporters often “forgot” or ignored Arab violence or threats against reporters when covering Arafat’s PLO in Beirut in the 1970?s and 1980?s. Friedman and his colleague John Kifner wrote about how the PLO “protected” journalists, rather than the real picture of how it and its Syrian ally harassed and threatened them.

…

When Friedman rarely and gingerly alludes to Saudi faults or to Arab terrorists, he only does so by first equating them with Israelis, usually Israeli settlers, comparing “the Muslim Wahhabi extremists who are choking Saudi Arabia’s future and the Jewish Wahhabi settlers who are doing the same to Israel.”

Comparing all “settlers”—mostly law-abiding people in the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—to Wahhabi fanatics or terrorists is a mockery of analysis. It is like calling rocks a path to peace or treating a mass murderer as a peacemaker.

Tom Friedman is a partisan and a propagandist on a global and historic scale, with few peers and fewer betters. Yet he is accepted as a wise and thoughtful man on the affiars of the day. The only Tom Friedman I would trust is the one that would have “blasted the faces of all those sons of bitches”, but he’s been disappeared. The one that’s left dances a minstrel step for his liberal and Saudi masters.

Is Bill Maher Janeane Garofalo in drag?

Bill Maher is facing bipartisan criticism — most recently from one of President Obama’s former top advisers — for controversial comments he made last week about Mitt Romney’s wife.

Maher, while a comedian, has endured a surge of political scrutiny since donating $1 million to the super PAC supporting President Obama.

He got himself into trouble Friday when, on his HBO show “Real Time,” he ratcheted up a comment made earlier in the week by Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen. Rosen had said Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life,” and later apologized under pressure from top Democrats.

Maher, though, took Rosen’s comments a step further.

“What she meant to say, I think, was that Ann Romney has never gotten her ass out of the house to work,” Maher said.

Republicans have used the incident to once again pressure the super PAC Priorities USA to return the Maher donation — or at least condemn the comments.

Maybe he doesn’t call men names because he’s afraid of getting beaten up. Though Sarah Palin could kick his a** with one of her shapely hands tied behind her back. (Oh, don’t get me started!)

Seriously, how does he call independent conservative women names (the worst names!) and keep his job? Oh wait, as Keith Olbermann is further evidence of, that’s why they keep (or kept) their jobs. MSNMC and Current fired Olbermann for bring rude to limo drivers, not for referring to a a Filipina-American commenter as a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick”.

Usually not, but sometimes I love a good pissing match. Especially when one of the micturaters is so humorless and, well, pissy.

If you read James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today column on the Wall Street Journal Online (as I do), you know that his last item is a lighter piece, often humorous.

Two days ago:

One Brent Budowsky has a piece in the Hill on ObamaCare and the Supreme Court that is so staggeringly dumb, the only explanation we can come up with for it is that he’s trying to make President Obama look smart by comparison. Here’s the lead paragraph:

President Obama is absolutely right about this: If the Supreme Court rules the healthcare bill unconstitutional, it would be an overreach that would be an extreme example of judicial activism that violates the most core principles of what is called conservatism and, I would argue, would lead to a destructive historical break point in the history of the United States Supreme Court that would tarnish forever the reputation of the chief justice and the conservative majority of justices for centuries to come.

This may be the worst-written opinion piece in history, including college papers.

An opening sentence of 82 words—that wouldn’t pass muster in seventh grade. Nothing about content, so far, it just sucks as writing. It’s not like every sentence I’ve typed is E. B. White, but, holy mackerel, I couldn’t have written that badly with a gun to my head and some sweaty villain commanding me to write like Tom Friedman.

He also tries an appeal to the ladies:

I find it ironic, outrageous and profoundly troubling that a Supreme Court majority of five men would join and at times lead an ideological attack on laws and programs that benefit women. This is unbecoming and unwise for a partisan party in the legislative and executive branches. It is radical, unprecedented and outside of American judicial tradition when a Supreme Court majority of five men wage an ideological crusade that places laws and programs benefiting women, by result if not design, under attack by the judicial branch while under attack by Republican partisans in Congress.

He adds: “My warning to the Supreme Court majority is this: Be careful.” We’re sure the justices are losing sleep over that one.

That’s it. That’s all Taranto wrote. But Budowsky will not be mocked:

Taranto’s angry comments about my column ran in The Wall Street Journal’s online edition and were limited to calling my column staggeringly dumb, an attempt by me to make President Obama (whom Taranto presumably thinks is dumb as well) look smart by comparison, and so forth. Taranto does not answer any of the points I made, so I must infer, and note that his invective without reasoning illustrates why armies of women and Hispanics are supporting President Obama and Democrats.

Republicans, rightists and some who make the Journal opinion page their home have an attitude of contempt, derision and anger toward those with differing views. Stay tuned for an upcoming column that elaborates about this “Republican disease” that leads them to demonize, and at times hate, a succession of Democratic presidents and leaders whom in their contempt for democratic values they do not accept as legitimate.

Oy. But believe it or not, it gets worse:

I stand with the women, Hispanics and others who want to be treated with equality and respect. I welcome the debate, with or without Taranto’s intellectual participation. I can only say to those of his persuasion that there are reasons that so many women and Hispanics turn against the GOP.

The fault, dear Republicans, lies not in your stars but in yourselves, for these voters consider you underlings. You treat them as though they are stupid at your great peril, not mine.

If you’re going to stand with them, Budowsky, you might at least take a shower.

Oh, but that’s just another ad hominem attack from an anonymous blogger. Let me stick with the facts. Women don’t vote for Republicans? That would surprise Rick Santorum. It would also surprise the 50 million women (outnumbering the 45 million men) who voted in the November 2010 election who delivered a Republican (even a Tea Party) majority in the House and put the Senate in GOP reach for 2012.

But let me stick with the most basic fact, as first stated by Taranto:

One Brent Budowsky has a piece in the Hill on ObamaCare and the Supreme Court that is so staggeringly dumb, the only explanation we can come up with for it is that he’s trying to make President Obama look smart by comparison.

That’s where we came in, so sorry to waste your time.

PS: Taranto’s response?

World Ends, Etc.
“Mr. Taranto Goes to Washington; Women, Hispanics Reject Party, Partisanship, Personal Attacks”–headline, TheHill.com, April 10

Which is how I first heard about it. Game, set, match Taranto.

Tom Friedman has been wrong about everything else, so… bring it:

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC, New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman interpreted that data to mean that the Republican Party has become radicalized, and that Romney isn’t doing much for to make a case for his authenticity.

“I think it’s two things,” Friedman said. “I think it is the fact that in my view the Republican Party is no longer a conservative party. It’s become a radical party on a lot of these key issues. That’s number one. And number two, I just came back from New Zealand…

Why? New Zealand is just about the right distance for him.

Look at the locution: “I think it is the fact that in my view”. Is he saying his view is fact? (That would be novel.) Or is he saying merely that it is a fact that he has a view? (Big whoop.) Or is he saying he thinks it’s a fact that he has a view? What a moron.

And if he can look at a political scene where Democrats have taken the first great leap toward socialized medicine, where the president and his energy secretary lobby for higher gas prices, where his “green” “energy” “czar” was a communist, where his attorney general ran guns to Mexico in pursuit of the repeal of the Second Amendment, where the president bows to the Saudis and man-hugs Hugo Chavez, where government policy is to work with and sit on the most antisemitic commission since Wannsee (the UN’s Human Rights Council) and say the Republicans are radical… that can only be Tom Friedman, the Helen Thomas of NY Times columnists.