The Cognitive Dissonance of the left

[Crafty_Dog]

But can she afford birth control?
Sandra Fluke is trying desperately to carve political career out of being the face of "millennials who want free stuff," so she's running for California's state Senate. It isn't going well. Despite being the most easily recognizable candidate, Fluke floundered in June's open primary, where she carried just 19.4% of the vote in a turnout described as "embarrassingly low."  That was enough to give her a weak second place finish.  Unfortunately for her, it was probably not enough to bring substantial donors to the table.
Ms. Fluke is now the single largest contributor to her own Senate campaign.
From the Washington Examiner:
Fluke donated $12,000 to her campaign and $4,826.27 in non-monetary contributions. While $16,826.27 may not sound like a lot, Fluke also loaned her campaign $100,000.
Where does a 2012 law school grad working as a social justice attorney get a loan that size? Her campaign never responded to a Washington Examiner inquiry, so we’re left to speculate.
Perhaps the loan was in part secured by the family of Fluke’s husband, Adam Mutterperl. In 2012, Fluke married Mutterperl, an amateur stand-up comic and son of big-time Democratic donor William Mutterperl.
This is not a good sign.  It could be an indicator that external support is less than stellar and, combined with Fluke's poor performance in the primaries, could portend trouble in the general election.
Also troubling? It looks like her family is propping up the numbers in order to keep up appearances....
As a family, the Mutterperls have given Fluke $20,500. Fluke’s own family has donated $9,600 to her campaign (her mother gave one donation as Betty and one as Elizabeth).
In total, Fluke has raised $416,185.28, according to disclosure forms. With one-third of that total coming from her family, it appears the campaign is trying to pump up its donation totals to appear stronger than it actually is.
Now, a family donating to a campaign is not surprising or unusual but the percentage of overall funds coming from Fluke's inner circle should raise red flags.
Currently, Fluke's campaign has raised more cash than Ben Allen, but Allen may still still be in a stronger position. First of all, he's considered a potent candidate with deepconnections in the district. He's given his campaign a $50,000 loan, and his parents have each donated $4,100. If you remove his family and his loan from the equation, he's raised $330,141 - slightly more than Fluke, who stands at $278,859.
And according to the Associated Press, the Examiner's numbers represent a "rosy" estimate.  In reality, things are probably a bit worse:
“Allen has raised at least $443,388, including more than $50,000 from his law firm, Richardson & Patel LLP, while Fluke has raised about $500,000, including $175,000 from her own loans and contributions, according to campaign finance reports."
That would mean that Allen has funded just over 10% of his campaign, while Fluke is footing the bill to the tune of about 35%.
That's bad news for a campaign, but it's great news for someone who - just a few years ago - was claiming that $15 a month for birth control was  a bridge too far....

[ccp]

We must teach our children to be the NICEST on the planet.  We are all so nice and thoughtful and understanding.   That is the most important thing.  We all love one another NOW, right NOW....

I never realized how many people are promoting this crap.  It must be the internet juggernaut.   Where did all this liberal crap come from?   That and millions coming here who don't believe in America anymore.

*******Readin’, Writin’, and Social Justice Agitatin’

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 8, 2014 07:57 AM

Readin’, Writin’, and Social Justice Agitatin’
by Michelle Malkin

It’s back-to-school season across the country. But in an increasing number of districts, “back to school” doesn’t mean back to learning. Under the reign of social justice indoctrinators, academics are secondary to political agitation. Activism trumps achievement.

In Massachusetts, the John J. Duggan Middle School will open on August 25 with a new name and mission. It is now a “social justice magnet school.” As a hiring advertisement for teachers explained earlier this year, the emphasis will be on “helping students develop the necessary skills to analyze and synthesize information and to generate empathy by looking at multiple sides of important issues facing the world, be that hunger, water quality, racial barriers, child labor or imbalance of power.”

Concise writing, as you can see, is not on the social justice pedagogues’ agenda.

Oh, and forget about memorizing times tables or mastering the scientific method. The new principal says the school’s primary job is teaching “fairness.” Duggan Middle School’s junior lobbying factory is “serious about creating 21st century global citizens, and it begins with understanding who we are as members of each of those communities.”

The ultimate goal of these social justice prep schools: creating left-wing political advocates.

At the Crescent Heights Social Justice Magnet School in Los Angeles, children will work on “action projects” tied to the “United Nations Millennium Development Goals.” Students will spend the academic year transforming into “agents of change.” Yes, they will learn language arts. But basic reading and writing are only a focus of the magnet school, the founders explain, because “we want our students to recognize injustice in their world or the world at large and be able to fully express their outrage, their plan of attack, their progress in this endeavor.”

In Chicago, Ground Zero for social justice brainwashing, the Social Justice High School (SOJO), follows a similar mission. Activist teachers openly foster identity politics and systematically undermine individualism. Their specialties: “struggle and sacrifice.” SOJO’s mission statement sounds like a pot-addled Oberlin College freshman’s — er, freshperson’s — Sociology 101 term paper:

“Through collective community power, we commit to a conscious effort to overcome the intended historical obstacles that have been designed to disempower and divide our communities.”

At the Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School, also in Massachusetts, students won’t learn math. They’ll be taught “social justice math.” (Freire was a Brazilian leftist who wrote a social justice teacher’s Bible called “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”)

His acolytes explain the push for radicalization of math: “Math is an instrument for detailing social justice issues and developing critical consciousness.” In the hands of progressive teachers, math “becomes an analytic tool to bring awareness to important world issues.”

In other words: One plus one equals “That’s unfair!”

New York City schools have been infested for years with city-funded math teachers who “train students in seeing social problems from a radical anticapitalist perspective,” as City Journal’s Sol Stern reported. As I’ve noted previously, the “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers” guide rejects traditional white male patriarchal methods of teaching computation and statistics in favor of politically correct number-crunching.

Out: Algebraic equations, geometric proofs and advanced calculus.

In: “Racial profiling, unemployment rate calculation, the war in Iraq, environmental racism, globalization, wealth distribution and poverty, wheelchair ramps, urban density, HIV/AIDS, deconstructing Barbie, junk food advertising to children, and lotteries.”

State education codes mandate value neutrality in the classroom. But in schools of “social justice,” every academic subject is a means to a “progressive” (anti-American, pro-collectivist, redistributive) ideological end. The radical transformation of K-12 classrooms into leftist agitation labs is embedded in the mission of countless teachers colleges and universities, which require social justice training or offer special certification in its indoctrination techniques.

These teaching institutions are pumping out generations of educators who cast themselves as leaders against “social struggle” — instead of facilitators of intellectual inquiry. Passing the most rigorous student standards in the world won’t amount to squat as long as the overseers of public education exploit government schools as community organizing vehicles for captive tots, tweens and teens.

[DougMacG]

Pres. Obama and the Dems are trying to keep multinational corporations in America by passing laws, issuing executive orders and deeming things to be law retroactively, instead of competing with other countries and economies on a level playing field based on business climate, regulations, taxers etc.  Witness firms like Walgreen and Minnesota's Medtronic dying to leave.

I wrote last year or so that California cannot solve its fiscal problems by raising tax rates - unless it bars the exits.

Minnesota's Governor is fighting the migration-out problem by attempting to levying state tax against the snowbirds even if they are gone for most of the year.

Glenn Beck noted in this context that the Berlin Wall was built and armed to keep people in, not to protect a border from outsiders as we think of it.

Is that what this country has come to - under liberal-fascist rule?  Really?

[Crafty_Dog]

Unless we fight and win, then yes.

[ccp]

Talk like a socialist while living like a capitalist raking in the dough:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113760/meet-amber-mostyn-wendy-daviss-most-powerful-political-patron

[DougMacG]

Dan Rather on war against Islamic murderers, unless you would send your own son or daughter, shut up.

Why doesn't that same logic apply to the 99% always wanting to keep raising taxes on the 1%?

[Crafty_Dog]

The logic of the point is not without merit.

[G M]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/08/25/leftists-hamas-and-nazis/

[G M]

http://www.justfourguys.com/1400-girls-are-raped-in-rotherham-and-feminists-dont-care/

[DougMacG]

This is aimed at Paul Krugman but applies to all of the hypocritical left.  How is it that they believe that hiking the cost of fossil fuels will kill energy use, but deny that an artificially high minimum wage law kills jobs or that high marginal tax rates kill off economic activity and job creating investment?  It seems to me you can have it one way or you can pretend to have it the other, but you can't have it both ways.

[G M]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/387877/democrats-push-criminalize-dissent-kevin-d-williamson

[Crafty_Dog]

Good one Doug.

GM please post that in the First Amendment thread on the SCH forum as well-- that is a keeper.

[ccp]

Now everyone has a "right" to "free" child care and paid leave!!   Did anyone catch John Kerry advising Code Pink that one of the reasons they should support BamBam's going after ISIS is because they don't offer their members free health care?   

********
 
Joe Biden: 'The NFL Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet'Speaking at a conference Friday, the vice president was equal measures somber and feisty.
BY EMMA ROLLER

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz introduces Vice President Joe Biden at the DNC's Women's Leadership Forum on Sept. 19, 2014 in Washington.(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
September 19, 2014 In the bowels of the Marriott Marquis in downtown Washington, Joe Biden was yelling.

The vice president was there to speak at the Democratic National Committee's annual Women's Leadership Conference, and he was fired up. Hillary Clinton and President Obama will address the crowd Friday afternoon.

In the run-up to its leadership conference, the DNC has faced somewhat of a leadership crisis of its own. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has faced flack from members of her party over the past two weeks for two recent PR blunders. On Friday she took the stage to introduce Biden, who has made a couple gaffes of his own recently.


In an otherwise warmly received speech, Biden did make one apparent slip, when he oddly praised a former Republican senator, Bob Packwood, who was accused of sexual harassment and ultimately resigned. Biden called Packwood "the type of Republican I miss," then continued his speech against sexual assault.



There was no apparent love lost for Biden and Wasserman Schultz—at least in the crowd. Wasserman Schultz called Biden a "national treasure" for his work on domestic violence, including his sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act, which President Clinton signed into law 20 years ago. She also admitted to sporting a "Biden for President" button on her backpack when she was in college.

Biden in turn called Wasserman Schultz his "little sister," and praised her for her work as chairwoman. "I've never seen anybody work as hard and as tirelessly as Debbie has," he told the crowd.

Both addressed domestic violence in the scope of Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice, whom the National Football League suspended indefinitely after TMZ uncovered footage of Rice assaulting his then-fiancée in an elevator.

Biden name-dropped Cynthia Hogan, one of his former aides on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was recently hired as the NFL's senior vice president for public policy and government affairs.

"The NFL ain't seen nothin' yet," Biden said. "They have no idea what they just bought onto." Also on Friday morning, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reportedly asked his staff to look into the military's relationship with the NFL.

BIDEN: 'THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY JUST BOUGHT ONTO"

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Biden touted the success of the Violence Against Women Act, saying there has been a 64 percent drop in domestic violence between 1993 and 2010.

"Success will come when the societal attitude changes and not a single woman in America asks herself the question, 'What did I do?' " he said. Then, in a theatrical staccato: "Never. Never. Never is it the woman's fault!"

Biden also used the speech to introduce a new PR campaign by the White House to encourage young men to speak out against sexual assault on college campuses. The new campaign, called It's On Us, will try to shift the burden of combating rape culture from women to men. The Justice Department will also award $6 million in grants to 18 colleges "to develop comprehensive campus sexual-assault prevention and response programs."

"We have to reach out and engage young men, because the vast majority are decent," Biden said.

Then—after finishing a speech about domestic violence to a predominantly female audience—Biden derided the idea of "women's issues." The state of America's middle class, Biden said, is the most important women's issue. His speech echoed similar comments Hillary Clinton made Thursday, in which she pushed for paid leave and universal child care, along with passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

"You can't have a conversation about economic growth if women aren't fully participating in the economy," Biden said. "It's not just about equity, it's about economic growth for everyone."

But no speech would be complete without a bit of campaign puffery, especially now that lawmakers in Congress have mutually decided to skip out on work to campaign for the next two months. Biden ended his speech by mentioning female senators facing tough reelection bids—Jeanne Shaheen, Mary Landrieu, and Kay Hagan—and reassuring the crowd, "They're gonna win, by the way."

He also praised two female gubernatorial candidates who face uphill battles against Republicans—Wisconsin's Mary Burke, and Texas's Wendy Davis, who is polling around 12 points behind her Republican opponent, Greg Abbott.

"If you have an extra dollar, give it to Wendy Davis," Biden said. "She's going to win that race."

The audience's applause drowned out the scoffs coming from the press gallery.

[DougMacG]

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/22/die-at-75-emanuel-obamacare-death-cult

It is a bad sign that Obamacare's architect thinks you have no value past 75.  65 really, he just gives you a 10 year cushion.

[MikeT]

Found this to be a really good article...

http://www.westernfreepress.com/2014/09/21/the-top-three-reasons-why-liberals-hate-conservatives/

[DougMacG]

Found this to be a really good article...
http://www.westernfreepress.com/2014/09/21/the-top-three-reasons-why-liberals-hate-conservatives/

Yes.  Very insightful!

One quote:
“Conservatives believe what they see; liberals see what they believe.”

The over-riding theme of Utopianism is right on the money.  Who knew that aiming all kinds of new taxes and regulations at the rich would in fact make the rich richer and all the rest of us worse off?  It's like trying to restrict blood flow through the heart to get better circulation in the extremities.  It doesn't work that way.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeffrey-meyer/2014/10/07/piers-morgan-slams-obama-what-hell-he-doing

[ccp]

Piers Morgan Leon Panetta; all these liberal s are the same.  Where were they before?  Only now they are slamming the Delusional One.   They are full of crock.

Panetta is really a self serving scumbag.  This guy belonged to a one world government organization when he was Congressman.  Who does the think he is kidding?

He looks and sounds like a cheap fraud now.   

Nothing to cheer about these damn liberals calling out Obamster now.

Every f'n one of them will be front and center to shove Hillary down our throats.  She is just as liberal as any of them.  To further their God darn causes.

Go back to Britain Morgan.   

[ccp]

will the left criticize him on domestic policy?  The few whispers on that note are criticisms to the tune that he is NOT liberal enough!!!

*****"Morning Joe': Panetta, Elite Dems 'Holding Back' on What They Really Think of Obama

'Morning Joe' on Dems Attitude Toward Obama, 10/9/14




On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough and newly minted Bloomberg TV host Mark Halperin discussed opinion behind the scene of President Barack Obama within the Democratic Party ranks.

According to Scarborough, there are parallels to be drawn between Obama in 2014 and then-President George W. Bush in 2006.

“Listen, there are going to be a lot of Democrats on the campaign trail that are going to be hypocrites, that are going to do what Hillary Clinton did by saying, ‘Well gee, if he only listened to me on Syria, dandelions would be spreading across northern Iraq and eastern Syria,’” Scarborough said. “That said, Mark Halperin, at some point, Barack Obama is going to have to face the fact that he is alone and isolated in Washington, D.C. every bit as much, or I would say more than George W. Bush in 2006. I commented at the time that Republicans in 2006 would come to me in green rooms and talk about how absolutely horrific George W. Bush was in the White House, what a terrible leader he was and then the red light would come on and they wouldn't say anything. Of course, I would so i was hated. I was a disloyal Benedict Arnold Republican for saying on air what they would never say on air. It’s such a carbon copy of that now where Democratic senators, senior Democratic senators trashing Barack Obama up and down when the red light is not on. Red light comes on, they're muted. Only difference between Leon Panetta and 80 percent of Democrats in Washington I’ve talked to is Leon Panetta is actually saying it while the camera light is on. What are your experiences?

Halperin pointed out it wasn’t just Leon Panetta, who reveals some of his dissatisfaction with Obama in his memoir, and other Washington, D.C. Democratic Party elites, but Hollywood Democrats as well.

Partial transcript as follows:

HALPERIN: Well Ron Fournier is exactly right. What Panetta is saying what you hear from Washington Democrats, but Hollywood Democrats. The president is going out to do a fundraiser tonight. I talked to prominent people in Hollywood. Almost all of them, strong supporters of the president, feel disappointed for one reason or another. Either all the elites in the Democratic Party, or the vast majority of them, are right or the president and his team are right and I think we'll learn over the next two years and history will record, you know, Panetta says the president is more like a law professor than a passionate leader. I know that Robert [Gibbs] and others hear these things too but they largely dismiss them as not being relevant or being wrong. I think the judgment will be made if he can lead this coalition, if he can deal with the aftermath of the midterms, he can have a good final two years of his presidency but elite opinion is strongly against him on all these same issues.

THOMAS ROBERTS: Let's not forget Panetta is getting paid and the more that he goes out there to hawk a book –

HALPERIN: He’s not that kind of guy. 

ROBERTS: He doesn't want to sell a book?

HALPERIN: He does.

ROBERTS: And doesn't want to have close ties to Hillary Clinton if she runs for president?

HALPERIN: The fact of the matter is in his book and on his book tour, he’s held back on what he really think.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: That’s holding back?

HALPERIN: He does

[DougMacG]

We may be a little discouraged right now but the left is unraveling.

1. They told us a strong economy was no good because of the inequality in it.  They took the strength, growth and velocity out of the economy and inequality worsened - especially for targeted Democratic constituent groups.

2. They can't win without winning a big margin with the women's vote so they invented the Republican war on women.  Sen. Mark (Uterus) Udall is the poster boy, attacking Cory Gardner on birth control that has been legal in 50 states since Griswald. 1965.  Gardner took the air out of it with his support for making it available over-the-counter.

3.  They can't win without black vote.  So their candidates all beg blacks to vote for them, in support of Obama, but he is so unpopular in their state that they won't say whether they themselves ever voted for him!  (Is there a better example anywhere of cognitive dissonance?)

4.  They can't win without the Hispanic vote and they get it only by promising amnesty based immigration reform.  Small problem:  They had the House, Presidency and 60 votes in the Senate and did NOTHING on this front.  The President clarified on Univision by explaining that there are some things the President can not do alone.  He further clarified that he can do it alone.  At the end of the summer.  No, after the election.  But if he can do it alone, why give him the House or the Senate too?  On those races they could vote their economic interests.

5.  Back to no one respecting women other than the left and the left says most women don't know if they've been raped.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-09-26/news/bs-ed-rape-statistics-20140928_1_22-percent-13-percent-30-percent

6.  And now David Corn of Mother Jones says Minorities "May Not Even Know That They're Not Being Allowed To Vote"!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/10/22/david_corn_minorities_may_not_even_know_that_theyre_not_being_allowed_to_vote.html

Meanwhile Republicans think women are big girls now and treat blacks and minorities as equals, unneeding of special attention.

[DougMacG]

Once people admit Hillary isn't running, maybe Faux-cahontas can get her own thread...

I would like to rip her lack of substance separately, but for now these pieces seem to expose her rotten hypocrisy.

Elizabeth Warren’s silence was Fidelity’s gain

By Joan Vennochi  | GLOBE COLUMNIST   OCTOBER 23, 2014

ACCORDING TO Senator Elizabeth Warren, the political system is rigged to help Wall Street. For that, she blames Republicans, lobbyists, and President Obama.

Yet, Warren is not entirely immune from the urge to help powerful financial interests — at least when they are local.


As reported by the Globe’s Christopher Rowland, Boston-based Fidelity Investments was able to water down new rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission that were aimed at regulating the mutual fund industry in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

The SEC wanted to impose a new liquidity standard on mutual funds, and replace a fixed $1 share price with a more accurate “floating” share price. But by the end of an aggressive Fidelity lobbying campaign, the capital requirements were eliminated and the “floating” share price applied only to funds that serve large, institutional investors.

“The lobbying pressure was relentless,” Sheila Bair, former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and now head of the nonprofit watchdog group Systemic Risk Council, told the Globe. “It is a good example of how the narrow interest of the industry prevails in this debate.”

Given her populist image, it would be more in character for Warren to fight such a narrow industry interest. In this case, she did not. When Fidelity’s top executive, Abigail P. Johnson, personally lobbied the SEC in 2012, Warren stayed out of the fight. At the time, Warren was running for Senate against incumbent Republican Scott Brown, whose biggest source of funding came from Fidelity employees, according to a news report by the Globe’s Beth Healy.

While it made political sense to avoid antagonizing the mutual fund giant, Warren’s silence was Fidelity’s gain.

As the lobbying battle dragged on into 2014, Warren and Ed Markey — now both representing Massachusetts in the Senate — objected, through their staffs, to proposals that Fidelity didn’t like. They didn’t cite industry complaints; they cited concerns of local politicians. A compromise was reached, which, according to Rowland’s reporting, favored the mutual fund industry.

In a statement to the Globe, Warren’s office said the SEC rules were “an important first step” and stressed a need to “balance the risks that money market funds can pose to the economy against the need to maintain money market funds as an important investment alternative.”

Compromise is not a crime. It’s a natural part of politics. But when compromise comes down on the side of powerful financial interests, that’s exactly the kind of politics Warren is said to be fighting. And she’s taking that fight to the national stage.

“The game is rigged and the Republicans rigged it,” she said recently in Minnesota. “Republicans believe this country should work for those who are rich, those who are powerful, those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers,” she said in Colorado.

She doesn’t leave Democrats off the hook either. In an interview with Salon, she said of Obama, when “the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street . . . Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education . . . ”

Pronouncements like that keep Warren’s name in the mix of potential White House candidates, which she insists is of no interest to her. Yet the super-liberal wing of the Democratic Party revels in the Wall Street-rigging gospel according to Warren, and sees her as an alternative to Hillary Clinton.

But as the back story on Fidelity shows, ideological purity is hard to sustain in the real world of politics — especially in the real world of local politics.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/22/elizabeth-warren-fight-when-financial-interests-are-local-warren-doesn-always-fight-them/DkghG96OG60w9IZm1H1dhM/story.html

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2014/10/18/with-aggressive-strategy-fidelity-fought-washington-over-money-market-funds-and-won/3ZbsOGsb9rfMuPpx2wx58H/story.html

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2014/04/23/warren-should-more-candid/xlHHBZNv8Fn5HSEC53OqhN/story.html

[ccp]

And if victims speak up - plan to get arrested and be brought to jail.   Wow!  From George Will.  Sounds like Communist Russia to me....

*****The nastiest political tactic this year
George Will
By George Will
Published Oct. 22, 2014

The early-morning paramilitary-style raids on citizens' homes were conducted by law enforcement officers, sometimes wearing bulletproof vests and lugging battering rams, pounding on doors and issuing threats. Spouses were separated as the police seized computers, including those of children still in pajamas. Clothes drawers, including the children's, were ransacked, cellphones were confiscated and the citizens were told that it would be a crime to tell anyone of the raids.

Some raids were precursors of, others were parts of, the nastiest episode of this unlovely political season, an episode that has occurred in an unlikely place. This attempted criminalization of politics to silence people occupying just one portion of the political spectrum has happened in Wisconsin, which often has conducted robust political arguments with Midwestern civility.

From the progressivism of Robert La Follette to the conservatism of Gov. Scott Walker (R) today, Wisconsin has been fertile soil for conviction politics. Today, the state's senators are the very conservativeRon Johnson (R) and the very liberal Tammy Baldwin (D). Now, however, Wisconsin, which to its chagrin produced Sen. Joe McCarthy (R), has been embarrassed by Milwaukee County's Democratic district attorney, John Chisholm. He has used Wisconsin's uniquely odious "John Doe" process to launch sweeping and virtually unsupervised investigations while imposing gag orders to prevent investigated people from defending themselves or rebutting politically motivated leaks.

According to several published reports, Chisholm told subordinates that his wife, a teachers union shop steward at her school, is anguished by her detestation of Walker's restrictions on government employee unions, so Chisholm considers it his duty to help defeat Walker.

In collaboration with Wisconsin's misbegotten Government Accountability Board, which exists to regulate political speech, Chisholm has misinterpreted Wisconsin campaign law in a way that looks willful. He has done so to justify a "John Doe" process that has searched for evidence of "coordination" between Walker's campaign and conservative issue advocacy groups.

On Oct. 14, much too late in the campaign season to rescue the political-participation rights of conservative groups, a federal judge affirmed what Chisholm surely has known all along: Since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago, the only coordination that is forbidden is between candidates and independent groups that go beyond issue advocacy to "express advocacy" — explicitly advocating the election or defeat of a particular candidate.

But Chisholm's aim — to have a chilling effect on conservative speech — has been achieved by bombarding Walker supporters with raids and subpoenas: Instead of raising money to disseminate their political speech, conservative individuals and groups, harassed and intimidated, have gone into a defensive crouch, raising little money and spending much money on defensive litigation. Liberal groups have not been targeted for their activities that are indistinguishable from those of their conservative counterparts.

Such misbehavior takes a toll on something that already is in short supply: belief in government's legitimacy. The federal government's most intrusive and potentially punitive institution, the IRS, unquestionably worked for Barack Obama's reelection by suppressing activities by conservative groups. Would he have won if the government he heads had not impeded political participation by many opposition groups? We will never know.

Would the race between Walker and Democrat Mary Burke be as close as it is if a process susceptible to abuse had not been so flagrantly abused to silence groups on one side of Wisconsin's debate? Surely not.

Gangster government — Michael Barone's description of using government machinery to punish political opponents or reward supporters — has stained Wisconsin, illustrating this truth: The regulation of campaigns in the name of political hygiene (combating "corruption" or the "appearance" of it) inevitably involves bad laws and bad bureaucracies susceptible to abuse by bad people.

Because of Chisholm's recklessness, the candidate he is trying to elect, Burke, can only win a tainted victory, and if she wins she will govern with a taint of illegitimacy. No known evidence demonstrates any complicity in Chisholm's scheme, but in a smarmy new ad she exploits his manufactured atmosphere of synthetic scandal in a manner best described as McCarthyite. Indeed, one probable purpose of Chisholm's antics was to generate content for anti-Walker ads.

Wisconsin can repair its reputation by dismantling the "John Doe" process and disciplining those who have abused it. About one of them, this can be said: Having achieved political suppression by threatening criminal liability based on vague theories of "coordination," Chisholm has inadvertently but powerfully made the case for deregulating politics. *****

[G M]

Epic corruption.

[objectivist1]

The Democrat Party must really think blacks are complete idiots - how insulting.  This from the party that brought us segregation in the first place.

Democrats Join The Ferguson Lynch Mob Right As The Case Against Officer Wilson Collapses

Posted By David Horowitz On October 27, 2014

Reprinted from DailyCaller.com.

Everyone who hasn’t drunk the progressive Kool-Aid is aware that during elections Democrats resort to the race card to scare African Americans, for whose intelligence they have limitless contempt, into voting for them. If Republicans are elected, their propaganda claims, “black churches will burn” or the racial clock will be turned back to the era of segregation, an era that Democrats happen to have been directly responsible for.

This year it’s the mythical threat white policeman allegedly pose to black youth, as Democrats and their media enablers encourage a “lynch mob” mentality — as Howard Kurtz put it recently — in a desperate attempt to pocket black votes.

A flyer distributed by the Georgia Democratic Party (Ferguson is in Missouri) warns:

“On August 9, 2014, an unarmed 18-year old African-American named Michael Brown was fatally shot six times and killed by a white police officer, his body left in a pool of blood for four hours. Ferguson Missouri’s population is 67% African-American. But the city’s mayor, 5 of its 6 city council members, and 94% of its police force are white. What are we going to do about it? If we want a better, safer future for our children, it’s up to us to vote for change.”

Note first that this flyer was distributed in Georgia, not Missouri. In other words, according to Democrats: Republicans everywhere are racists. Moreover, if 67 percent of Ferguson citizens are black and they elect a white mayor and city council members shouldn’t that be applauded as a sign that they are committed to America’s inclusive ideal, and are not voting along racial lines? Wouldn’t Democrats be saying that if white majority populations were voting for blacks (as they in fact do)? Once again the claim that this reflects white racism is itself a racist claim, one that is typical of self-hating progressive whites.

The flyer’s timing couldn’t have been worse. The just released autopsy report shows that Michael Brown was only unarmed because he failed to wrestle Officer Darren Wilson’s gun from his holster, when he attacked Officer Wilson in his police car. How many innocent citizens attack a policeman in his police car and attempt to grab his gun from him?

According to the very liberal St. Louis Post Dispatch, “A source familiar with Wilson’s version of events, as told to investigators, said the ‘incredibly strong’ teen punched Wilson and then pressed the barrel of the cop’s gun against the officer’s hip and fought for control of the trigger.” You think the officer might have been in fear for his life after that?

The autopsy report further shows that Michael Brown’s hands were not in the air in a posture of surrender when he was shot – as the Ferguson lynch mob claims — but that the 6’4” 292lb individual was advancing on the much smaller officer, less than twenty feet away. In other words, the autopsy report supports Officer Wilson’s claims that there was a violent struggle and that he shot Wilson first with the intent to warn him to stop and finally – when he failed to do so — to stop him.

[ccp]

shlep:
To drag, traditionally something you don’t really need; to carry unwillingly. When people “shlep around,” they are dragging themselves, perhaps slouchingly. On vacation, when I’m the one who ends up carrying the heavy suitcase I begged my wife to leave at home, I shlep it.
schlemiel:
A clumsy, inept person, similar to a klutz (also a Yiddish word). The kind of person who always spills his soup.
schlock:
Cheap, shoddy, or inferior, as in, “I don’t know why I bought this schlocky souvenir.”
shlimazel:
Someone with constant bad luck. When the shlemiel spills his soup, he probably spills it on the shlimazel. Fans of the TV sitcom “Laverne and Shirley” remember these two words from the Yiddish-American hopscotch chant that opened each show.
shmendrik:
A jerk, a stupid person
schmuck:
Often used as an insulting word for a self-made fool, but you shouldn’t use it in polite company at all, since it refers to male anatomy.
schultz:   A jerk, a liar, spews political nonsense, a political clown,  as in Debbie Wasserman.

Many Democrats are schultz's

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-moms-who-stay-home-raise-kids-thats-not-choice-we-want-americans-make_817807.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

[ccp]

What happened to the woman's "right to choose"?   Another example of Obama's war on freedom.

[ccp]

As always, it is never the policy.  Just the messagenger.   Why in the world would the Dem Party want to keep Schultz as the DNC head after this loss?  But it is good for conservatives to keep her there 

AP      | By By KEN THOMAS 
 
Posted:  11/08/2014 2:45 pm EST    Updated:  11/08/2014 4:59 pm EST   
 
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

 WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are planning an extensive review of what went wrong in the 2014 and 2010 elections, hoping to find ways to translate success in presidential campaigns into future midterm contests.

A party committee will conduct a "top-to-bottom assessment" of the Democrats' performance in recent midterm elections and try to determine why they have struggled to turn out its core voters in nonpresidential elections.

"It's apparent that there are increasingly two separate electorates: a midterm electorate and a presidential electorate. We win one and we don't seem to be able to win the other," said Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who leads the Democratic National Committee, in an interview Saturday. "That is a fundamental dynamic that we have to change."

Democrats suffered heavy losses in last week's elections, ceding Senate control to the Republicans and surrendering more seats in the already GOP-majority House as Republicans ran against an unpopular President Barack Obama.

Republicans picked up governor's offices in a number of Democratic-leaning states like Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois and strengthened their grip on state legislatures.

Democrats have been successful in turning out an Obama-led coalition of minorities, women and young voters in presidential elections, but have struggled in midterm races when turnout is lower and the electorate tends to be older and whiter, favoring Republicans.

Wasserman Schultz said the new committee, whose membership will be announced in the coming weeks, will look at the party's tactics, messaging, get-out-the-vote operations and digital efforts in recent nonpresidential elections. The group plans to report back in February at the DNC's winter meeting.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said last week's elections underscored GOP momentum.

"When Republicans came to the table and played their game, they lost and that's a problem," Kukowski said. "We have said from the beginning that Obama 2012 wasn't the standard for us. The midterms showed that and we are going to keep building on our successes."

The DNC's postelection review has parallels to a postmortem that Republicans conducted after Mitt Romney was defeated by Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

The report urged Republicans to shift its focus to year-round, on-the-ground political organizing in the states and recommended that the GOP embrace a comprehensive immigration overhaul. That recommendation quickly hit resistance from congressional Republicans who rely on primary voters who oppose creating a path to citizenship for immigrants living illegally in the U.S.

"Our party has a problem," Wasserman Schultz said in a video announcing the project. "We know we're right on the issues. The American people believe in the causes we're fighting for. But the electoral success we have when our presidential nominee is able to make a case to the country as a whole, doesn't translate in other elections. That's why we lost in 2010, and it's why we lost on Tuesday."

Wasserman Schultz said she discussed the need for a review with Obama on election night and both agreed on the need to move forward. She also spoke about her plans Saturday with Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the party's leaders in Congress.

"We need to understand everything that went wrong so that we can address all the potential problems and prepare for future elections," she said.

Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KThomasDC

[G M]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/392900/universities-are-now-taking-down-their-jonathan-gruber-videos-brendan-bordelon

[G M]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/pets-allowed

This is where we are as a civilization.

[DougMacG]

Perhaps George Will's best column ever, IMHO.

We rightfully worry a lot around here about elected Republicans not governing conservatively and not representing our own best interests.  A much greater failure has been elected Democrats not representing their constituents best interests.  Who else is pointing THAT out?

Government for the strongest

By George F. Will Opinion writer December 5, 2014

Intellectually undemanding progressives, excited by the likes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — advocate of the downtrodden and the Export-Import Bank — have at last noticed something obvious: Big government, which has become gargantuan in response to progressives’ promptings, serves the strong. It is responsive to factions sufficiently sophisticated and moneyed to understand and manipulate its complexity.

Hence Democrats, the principal creators of this complexity, receive more than 70 percent of lawyers’ political contributions. Yet progressives, refusing to see this defect — big government captured by big interests — as systemic, want to make government an ever more muscular engine of regulation and redistribution. Were progressives serious about what used to preoccupy America’s left — entrenched elites, crony capitalism and other impediments to upward mobility — they would study “The New Class Conflict,” by Joel Kotkin, a lifelong Democrat.

The American majority that believes life will be worse for the next few decades — more than double the number who believe things will be better — senses that 95 percent of income gains from 2009-2012 went to the wealthiest 1 percent. This, Kotkin believes, reflects the “growing alliance between the ultra-wealthy and the instruments of state power.” In 2012, Barack Obama carried eight of America’s 10 wealthiest counties.

In the 1880s, Kotkin says, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s railroad revenues were larger than the federal government’s revenues. That was the old economy. This is the new: In 2013, the combined ad revenue of all American newspapers was smaller than Google’s; so was magazine revenue. In 2013, Google’s market capitalization was six times that of GM, but Google had one-fifth as many employees. The fortunes of those Kotkin calls “the new Oligarchs” are based “primarily on the sale of essentially ephemeral goods: media, advertising and entertainment.”

He calls another ascendant group the Clerisy, which is based in academia (where there are many more administrators and staffers than full-time instructors), media, the nonprofit sector and, especially, government: Since 1945, government employment has grown more than twice as fast as America’s population. The Founders worried about government being captured by factions; they did not foresee government becoming society’s most rapacious and overbearing faction.

The Clerisy is, Kotkin says, increasingly uniform in its views, and its power stems from “persuading, instructing and regulating the rest of society.” The Clerisy supplies the administrators of progressivism’s administrative state, the regulators of the majority that needs to be benevolently regulated toward progress.

The Clerisy’s policies include dense urban living as a “sustainable” alternative to suburbia, and serving environmentalism by consuming less. Hence the sluggish growth and job creation since the recession ended in June 2009 — a.k.a. the “new normal” — do not seriously disturb the Clerisy. It preaches what others — including the 43 percent of non-college-educated whites who consider themselves downwardly mobile — are supposed to practice. The result, Kotkin says, is a “more stratified, less permeable social order.” And today’s “plutonomy,” an economy fueled by the spending of the relatively few people who guaranteed that luxury brands did best during the recession.

Michael Bloomberg, an archetypical progressive, enunciated a “ ‘Downton Abbey’ vision of the American future” (Walter Russell Mead’s phrase) for New York. As New York City’s mayor, Bloomberg said: “If we can find a bunch of billionaires around the world to move here, that would be a godsend, because that’s where the revenue comes to take care of everybody else.” Progressive government, not rapid, broad-based economic growth, will “take care of” the dependent majority.

In New York, an incubator of progressivism, Kotkin reports, the “wealthiest 1 percent earn a third of the entire city’s personal income — almost twice the proportion for the rest of the country.” California, a one-party laboratory for progressivism, is home to 111 billionaires and the nation’s highest poverty rate (adjusted for the cost of living). One study shows that young Californians are less likely to become college graduates than their parents were. “The state’s ‘green energy’ initiatives,” Kotkin observes, “supported by most tech and many financial Oligarchs, have raised electricity rates well above the national average, making it difficult for firms in traditional fields like manufacturing, fossil fuels, agriculture or logistics.” California is no longer a destination for what Kotkin calls “aspirational families”: In 2013, he says, Houston had more housing starts than all of California.

In 2010, there were 27 million more Americans than in 2000 — but fewer births, a reflection, surely, of what Kotkin calls “the end of intergenerational optimism.” The political future belongs to those who will displace the progressive Clerisy’s objectives with an agenda of economic growth.

[ccp]

by me in my opinion. 

"the political future belongs to those who will displace the progressive Clerisy's objectives with an agenda of economic growth"

I drive down a major thoroughfare by me each day and it is remarkable the growth in new chain outlets (two new walmarts within a few miles of each other, paneras, chipoltes, flash burgers etc.)  New malls springing up.  Others half dormant.  All very strange.  In most of the chains are people obviously born elsewhere.

There really are two economies.  For the wealthy and connected and cheap labor (those being born here paid beans and those from elsewhere willing to work for beans) the economy is booming.  For the big moneyed players, the big companies.  Health care is a case in point.  The big companies are making huge profits.  Somehow everyone else seems to paying more for it.   The gov subsidizes these big companies who continue to increase rates passing the cost of those who get it free or cheap to the rest of us while they squeeze out every dime.   Even drug stores are getting into managing our health care.   They are now becoming providers.

[Crafty_Dog]

The reification of John Edwards "two Americas" 

[G M]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100260720/whenever-you-mention-fascisms-socialist-roots-left-wingers-become-incandescent-why/

[DougMacG]

The reification of John Edwards "two Americas" 

There are two Americas, but not divided by rich and poor as Edwards asserted, IMHO.  There is the America where your household participates or particpated in the productive economy and there is the America living where no one has done that.  To me, that means the school janitor and the successful business owner are in the same, interconnected economy.  They have more in common with each other than with people who don't have to get up in the morning, work and pay taxes.

[Crafty_Dog]

I like that.

[DougMacG]

When people in these lands learn about all the bad Americans have done, it creates a whole new generation of terrorist.  So the liberals say. 
Now they want the whole world to know all they can release of details, methods, locations, partners, etc.
And they exaggerate what was done while playing down its value.

Torture in an al Qaida manual is when you scoop out the eyeballs one by one.  When the enemy says we'll kill your children ... they kill your children.
Why do we want to tell future terrorists that we won't hurt anyone.

Who did we hurt, by the way?  Who got injured by a US interrogator?
No one that I know of.

What did we get with these strong techniques?
Names, places, dates, plans, organizations, arrests, attacks stopped.  That kind of thing.

We would have had that information anyway? 
Yeah, right.  Maybe after the fact.

[DougMacG]

Krugman's theory is that government "stimulus" causes growth, and too much austerity hampers growth. 

However, roughly since the Republicans won the House in 2010, spending as a percentage of GDP has been falling, the super deficits have been falling too, while growth has been steadily (and allegedly) improving.

Dan Mitchell at Townhall makes this point with US and UK numbers.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2014/12/31/another-oops-moment-for-paul-krugman-n1937290/page/full

"But where’s his evidence? Whether you look at OMB data, IMF data, or OECD data, all those sources show that overall government spending has been steadily shrinking as a share of GDP ever since 2009." 

[DougMacG]

More on the same point and same data...

If you wanted to grow government, and all leftists do, then maybe you should adopt Republican, "supply side" policies. 

The greatest growth in government was made possible by the decrease in capital gains tax rates in particular under the Bush administration:



On the other hand, had we successfully grown the private sector WITHOUT the expansion of government spending, the bungled housing policies and the monetary insanity, we could have had the real economic growth without the damage of inflating the bubble, the workforce meltdown and the ensuing collapse.

[ccp]

While I am not against anyone who wants to meditate, between this and having James Taylor go to France to sing love songs to the French does not a rational government policy make:

*****Lawmakers To Meditate With Deepak Chopra

Betsy Rothstein 5:42 PM 01/16/2015

Can new age tactics get members of Congress to relax, get along and actually get something done?

Really. Highly. Unlikely.

 But Deepak Chopra, a legendary meditation guru and bestselling author who has appeared on Oprah, is coming to Capitol Hill for a special briefing and presser and will give it his best shot.

He’s going to talk about how to reduce stress. But keep in mind that Deepak reportedly owns a Jaguar and lives in a 2.5 million home in La Jolla, Calif. — where stress is probably a rare visitor.

According to The Skeptic’s Dictionary, Deepak has some Deeply weird methods. For example, he “claims you can prevent and reverse cataracts by brushing your teeth, scraping your tongue, spitting into a cup of water, and washing your eyes for a few minutes with this mixture.”

He’s a huge Obama fan. In 2011 in HuffPost, he wrote, “I’d suggest that the X factor which sets Barack Obama aside as a unique candidate is his hard-won self-awareness.” He also called him the ”lighthouse and lightning rod” who “called upon Americans to show their better nature.”

The event on Capitol Hill will end with a short meditation session.

The members of Congress who are responsible for what should be a memorable occasion are Reps. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). Ryan is known for practicing meditation.

In the details… Thursday Jan. 22 from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Deepak will be available to answer questions from 2:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.

 

[prentice crawford]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/ruth-bader-ginsburg-tattoo_n_6486594.html

While Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has long been a pop culture icon, her committed fanbase took their game to the next level this week.

A Ginsburg fan rivaling the devotion of Ruth Baby Ginsburg just got a tattoo of the justice, captioned "SUPREME."

The tattoo was drawn by Nikki Lugo, a Tattoo Paradise artist based out of Washington, D.C. and Wheaton, Maryland. She shared the artwork on her Instagram account Thursday.

The tattoo joins the swath of already existing merchandise praising Ginsburg as a badass, most of which was inspired by the Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr that the justice has hailed as "a wonderful thing."

"I had to be told by my law clerks, 'what's this notorious?'" Ginsburg told Katie Couric last July. "And they explained that to me."

Earlier this month, it was announced that Notorious R.B.G. blog creator Shana Knizhnik and MSNBC reporter Irin Carmon will co-author a biography of the justice.
 
                                        P.C.

[ccp]

Just fear mongering, bigotry, and rallying the base.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/21/for-republicans-muslims-will-be-the-gays-of-2016.html

[Crafty_Dog]

Unfortunately FOX's irresponsible over play is going to have some lasting consequences.

[G M]

Unfortunately FOX's irresponsible over play is going to have some lasting consequences.

http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/fox-news-took-the-heat-but-cnn-talked-no-go-zones-too/253271

[objectivist1]

Hollywood’s War Against American Sniper

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On January 22, 2015 @ frontpagemag.com

American Sniper is the movie that should not have existed. Even though the book was a bestseller, nobody in Hollywood wanted the rights.

And why would they?

The Iraq War already had an official narrative in Hollywood. It was bad and wrong. Its veterans were crippled, dysfunctional and dangerous. Before American Sniper, Warner Brothers had gone with anti-war flicks like Body of Lies and In the Valley of Elah. It had lost a fortune on Body of Lies; but losing money had never stopped Hollywood from making anti-war movies that no one wanted to watch.

Even the Hurt Locker had opened with a quote from leftist terrorist supporter Chris Hedges.

An Iraq War movie was supposed to be an anti-war movie. There was no other way to tell the story. Spielberg’s own interest in American Sniper was focused on “humanizing” the other side. When he left and Clint Eastwood, coming off a series of failed films, took the helm, it was assumed that American Sniper would briefly show up in theaters and then go off to die quietly in what was left of the DVD aisle.

And then American Sniper broke box office records that had been set by blockbusters like Avatar, Passion and Hangover Part II by refusing to demonize American soldiers or to spin conspiracy tales about the war. Instead of pandering to coastal progressives, it aimed at the patriotic heartland.

In a sentence you no longer expected to hear from a Hollywood exec, the Warner Brothers distribution chief said, “This is about patriotism and all the things people say the country is lacking these days.”

The backlash to that patriotism and the things the country is lacking these days didn’t take very long to form and it goes a lot deeper than snide tweets from Michael Moore and Seth Rogen. Academy members were reportedly passing around an article from the New Republic, whose author had not actually seen the movie, but still denounced it for not showing Chris Kyle as a bigoted murderer.

Hollywood progressives are both threatened and angered by American Sniper. And with good reason.

The most basic reason is the bottom line. Between Lone Survivor, Unbroken and American Sniper, the patriotic war movie is back. Hollywood could only keep making anti-war movies no one would watch as long as that seemed to be the only way to tackle the subject. Now there’s a clear model for making successful and respectful war movies based around the biographies and accounts of actual veterans.

Hollywood studios had been pressured by left-wing stars into wasting fortunes on failed anti-war conspiracy movies. Matt Damon had managed to get $150 million sunk into his Green Zone failed anti-war movie before stomping away from Universal in a huff. Body of Lies with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe had a real budget estimated at around $120 million, but had opened third after Beverly Hills Chihuahua whose titular tiny dog audiences preferred to either star and their political critiques.

 But why spend over a hundred million on anti-war movies no one wants when American Sniper has already made over $120 million on a budget only half that much?

Hollywood progressives don’t look forward to having to write, direct and star in patriotic pictures and if they can’t destroy American Sniper at the box office, they can taint it enough that no major star or director will want to be associated with anything like it.

Adding to their undercurrent of anger is the way that American Sniper upstaged Selma at the box office and at the Academy Award nominations. Selma is a mediocre movie, but it was meant to be a platform for the usual conversation that progressives want to have about how terrible Americans are. Instead audiences chose to see a movie about how great Americans can be even in difficult times.

There’s nothing that threatens the left as much as that.

In a Best Picture lineup that includes the obligatory paeans to gay rights and the evils of racism, American Sniper distinctly stands out as something different.  It displaces Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, the previous sure winner which had its obligatory drunken Iraq War veteran claiming that the war was fought for oil, with an authentic veteran instead of Hollywood’s twisted caricature of one.

American Sniper and Lone Survivor signal a shifting wind in which the focus of movies about the War on Terror moves from the organizational conspiracy theories that Hollywood liked to make to the personal narratives of the men who fought in them. Many of the smarter progressive reviews of American Sniper grapple with the fact that the time when they could even have their favorite argument is going away.

Progressives would like Dick Cheney to be the face of the war, but are forced to deal with a world in which Chris Kyle and Marcus Luttrell will be how America sees the conflict. The lens through which the left liked to view the war, its obsessions with WMD, Bush and the path to war, have been eclipsed by the rise of ISIS and the return of American veterans. Their worldview has become outdated and irrelevant.

It’s easier for the left to vent its anger on American Sniper than to deal with its own irrelevance. The most shocking thing about the movie is not any political statement, but its presumption in dealing with the Iraq War and the men in it as if it were WW2. It doesn’t confront the left; instead it acts as if the left isn’t there. It fails to acknowledge the entire worldview through which Hollywood dealt with the war.

The left spends most of its time living in its own bubble and is shocked when events remind it that the rest of the country does not really share its opinions and tastes. American Sniper’s success is one of those explosive wake-up calls and the left has responded to it with all the expected vicious pettiness.

A billboard for the movie was vandalized and attacks from lefty outlets like New Republic and Vox not only target the movie, but the dead man at the center of it. The smear campaign against Kyle has reached new lows, because in death he has become an even more powerful symbol of everything that the left hates.

Hollywood tried to “Vietnamize” Iraq in the popular imagination. American Sniper shows they failed.

Whether or not American Sniper wins the requisite number of Oscars, its impact on Hollywood and on ordinary Americans will not go away. The anti-war movie is in eclipse. The movies that tell the stories of the sacrifices that American veterans have made in the war against Islamic terrorists are rising.

[G M]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/354576.php

[ccp]

Ok today on Drudge is DeBlasio thanking Sharpton for his "work" on "climate change"

Recently we saw the director of Health and Human Services praising him

Now I get it.   It all comes to full circle in my mind now.  Now I see in general where Sharpton gets his power.

He must be funded from wealthy progressive leftist elite.   The deal is he can have is MSLSD platform to do his racial rants, promote himself and make fortunes in return for preaching all this leftist stuff.

He only needs a few powerful media moguls and agenda driven journilisters to keep him up front and center.  As long he mouths their propaganda he is in the circle of the elites of the Obama army and Democrat machine and mainstream media and even the university types who are the central planners.   the intelligentsia has gone power hungry in our country.

Perhaps this is why in history some have fought these university types - the intelligentsia ( I digress though).

[G M]

Racial hatred has always been a powerful weapon wielded by the dems. Nothing has changed, except the appearance of their racist demagogues.

Ok today on Drudge is DeBlasio thanking Sharpton for his "work" on "climate change"

Recently we saw the director of Health and Human Services praising him

Now I get it.   It all comes to full circle in my mind now.  Now I see in general where Sharpton gets his power.

He must be funded from wealthy progressive leftist elite.   The deal is he can have is MSLSD platform to do his racial rants, promote himself and make fortunes in return for preaching all this leftist stuff.

He only needs a few powerful media moguls and agenda driven journilisters to keep up front and center.  As long he mouths their propaganda he is in the circle of the elites of the Obama army and Democrat machine and mainstream media and even the university types who are the central planners.   the intelligentsia has gone power hungry in our country.

Perhaps this is why in history some have fought these university types - the intelligentsia ( I digress though).

[G M]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01/27/two-weeks-after-zuckerberg-said-je-suis-charlie-facebook-begins-censoring-images-of-prophet-muhammad/?tid=sm_tw

[G M]

What is the carbon footprint from a burning clothing store?

Ok today on Drudge is DeBlasio thanking Sharpton for his "work" on "climate change"

Recently we saw the director of Health and Human Services praising him

Now I get it.   It all comes to full circle in my mind now.  Now I see in general where Sharpton gets his power.

He must be funded from wealthy progressive leftist elite.   The deal is he can have is MSLSD platform to do his racial rants, promote himself and make fortunes in return for preaching all this leftist stuff.

He only needs a few powerful media moguls and agenda driven journilisters to keep him up front and center.  As long he mouths their propaganda he is in the circle of the elites of the Obama army and Democrat machine and mainstream media and even the university types who are the central planners.   the intelligentsia has gone power hungry in our country.

Perhaps this is why in history some have fought these university types - the intelligentsia ( I digress though).