Each week, in a contest for the week's best post, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members. This week's submissions span foreign policy, domestic policy, and have a healthy dose of media criticism. There are also a couple posts on antisemitism and Judaism, an appropriate theme given how the world's favorite aid recipients have taken to destroying certain Arab products for being just too Jewy.

To better help you cope with the onslaught of lefty weasel pseudo-sophistication - from "engagement will work" to "giving terrorists civil liberties will make them like us" - here is a slow loris getting tickled. Watch the video, read the posts, watch the video again to cheer up, and then head over to the Mere Rhetoric Facebook page and sound off about the posts you liked best:

Have at it...

Just a quick jaunt down memory lane, the better to put into context the faux outrage being expressed at the gametime Tebow commercial. First the lighthearted Focus on the Family piece, which shows Tim Tebow tackling his mom and her jumping up and jokingly chiding him:

"Violence against Moms," intoned Amanda Marcotte. "Violence against women," declared Women's Media Center president Jehmu Greene. Which is weird, because it's much more outrage than they expressed at this much worse GOTV spot from the 2008, which had explicit hostility channeled into actual physical violence:

The Tebow commercial oozes affection and shows Pam Tebow as the opposite of injured. The Palin commercial celebrates rage, showing Palin getting physically battered, slammed to the ground, and verbally assaulted - and that because of her political views. You'd think all those images would be much more troubling to feminists, what with the whole "it's actual celebration of actual violence with actual misogynist undertones" thing.

But site searches on Marcotte's home blog don't show any hits for "terry tate" or for tate palin. Though in fairness the first hit for tebow is a post with the phrase "Tebow 'women are nothing but vessels for male offspring' clan." So there's that.

Maybe Marcotte really did upbraid her fellow liberals over the ad, except she did it somewhere that wasn't her blog. Like maybe in the comments section of the Gawker post about the commercial, where commenter Poodle_Heart echoed the author's enthusiasm at Tate "kicking Sarah Palin's ass," gushing "ya, know, golly, normally i'd be, uh, opposed to violence against women, you betcha' but, fucking hell, i can make an exception this time." That would have been a good place for some withering feminist anger.

But no, I don't really see her there either. Maybe her post is elsewhere on the Internet. Although it doesn't look that way. Maybe it's just somewhere Google doesn't index.

References:
* Horror: Gametime Tebow ad features domestic violence! Update: Prediction fulfilled [Hot Air]
* Tebow: Hey Mom! Tried to kill you from the womb and failed. How about a blind side tackle? Violence against Moms FTW! (via @MarcFaletti) [@AmandaMarcotte]
* Long-awaited Tebow ad airs on Super Bowl with soft-sell antiabortion message and light tone [LAT]
* Charming GOTV Videos: Commercial Icon Repeatedly Slams Palin Into The Ground (Plus: Severe PDS In San Fran Preventing Yuppies From Indulging In Effete Wine) [MR]
* Terry Tate is Back! And He's Kicking Sarah Palin's Ass! [Gawker]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* American Politics
* Liberals Unhinged
* Democratic Politics

Original: The problem with writing hagiographic paeans to the indefatigable spirit of anti-Israel resistance is that sometimes you reveal a little too much. Example: this 2,000+ word contribution, from anti-Israel partisan and Palestinian mouthpiece Amira Hass, documenting the repeatedly thwarted attempts of Code Pink and their Gaza Freedom March ilk to enter Gaza from Egypt.

There's all kinds of stuff about how the protesters spontaneously coordinated with each other: "direct democracy in action," "without secrets, without orders from on high, without hierarchies," "a message of militant pacifism and feminism," "popular, non-hierarchical action and its ability to bring about change," and so on. The daughter of Jews murdered at Auschwitz makes an appearance. So does a Nelson Mandella banner. There's a actually a section labeled "Jewish Mother," within which there's a quote about how 80% of the protesters were Jewish (Hass graciously allows that 80% "is probably an exaggeration").

And then there's the part about how Hamas controlled the GFM down to the very last detail, the better to demonize Israel from within the strict confines of their pathological anti-woman bigotry. You have to read into the middle of the article to find the relevant passage - it's buried just above a description of how Gaza children get nightmares because of Israel - but some might call it evidence of active international collaboration:

The American feminist and peace group Codepink signed on, and [the GFM] gradually spread to other countries.... [But] "From the outset, Hamas set conditions: No more than 5,000 marchers, no approaching the wall and the fence, how to make speeches, how long the speeches should be, who will make speeches. In short, Hamas hijacked the initiative from us and we gave in." Hamas, or its Popular Committee, brought 200 or 300 marchers. The march turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators... There were no Palestinian women among the marchers - a slap to the many feminist organizers and participants, both women and men... Their variegation and the transparency of their behavior did not suit the military discipline the official hosts tried to impose.

Of course media outlets still largely treated the GFM as a grassroots pro-Palestinian protest, neglecting the more straightforward "Hamas media stunt" angle. They didn't go as far as lefty outlets - "Gaza Freedom March challenges Israeli siege" or "Collective world consciousness stirring Gaza protest" - but they didn't exactly rush to document Code Pink's de facto terrorist collaboration.

Not that Code Pink is particularly choosy about the fascists and thugs to whom they make themselves available. But there's something particularly unseemly about ostensible feminists shamelessly marching in a gender-apartheid protest. If journalists were wary about mixing it up with the left they could even have pursued an Egypt vs. Hamas vs. Europe geopolitical angle, with protesters' faked visas "providing a window" into the "convoluted dynamics" stymieing "efforts to bring peace to the Middle East." But not so much.

Eh. They probably just ran out of time (h/t: Kerry H)

Update: The original version of this post incorrectly identified anti-Israel partisan and Palestinian mouthpiece Akiva Eldar. That was incorrect. The article was in fact written by anti-Israel partisan and Palestinian mouthpiece Amira Hass. I can't imagine how I came to mix the two up.

References and previously after the jump...

She spent the Gaza War hysterically hyperventilating about how the "the destruction of the jews in Israel has been assured." Then she insisted that Israel was firing missiles on itself so it could have a pretext for massacring Palestinians. Then she dressed up as Hitler, donned a swastika, and had herself photographed baking "Jew cookies" in ovens.

So naturally she's feeling pretty good about the latest Israeli medical ethics controversy turned media-fueled blood libel. Pretty good indeed:

Of course even the HuffPo piece she links to notes (a) that the controvery has nothing to do with what happened in Gaza "last year" but in fact is decades old and (b) that not "by a long shot" did Israelis specifically target Palestinians for organs. But whatever. It feels really good for her to believe that her bigoted anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are true, so true they shall be asserted to be.

References:
* The destruction of the jews in Israel has been assured [MR]
* The Day in Israel: Thurs Mar 5th, 2009 [IsraellyCool]
* Roseanne Barr Dresses Up As Hitler, Bakes "Jew Cookies" In Oven [MR]
* Obligatory Post About New Organ Harvesting Story That Provides "No Evidence" For Organ Harvesting Libel (UPDATED) [MR]
* POLL: What's The Next Anti-Israel Libel That Media Outlets Will "Prove"? [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Liberals Unhinged
* Anti-Israel Journalism
* Global Antisemitism

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. Last week's submissions - helpfully rounded up by Council member Joshuapundit under the title "He's Bowing And Scrapin', We're All Watching Palin..." - set up a week of insane but not entirely unpredictable unhinged leftwing venom.

Just to sum up where the liberal catechism now stands, updated through last week: (1) it is vitally important to be concerned about the "hearts and minds" of Muslims who would have us abandon measures like drone attacks, where we kill terrorists (2) it is "cowardly" to be concerned about the "hearts and minds" of Muslims who welcome bringing KSM to NYC, a move jihadists are gleefully anticipating and (3) what's actually "dangerous" and worthy of non-cowardly fear - per the campaign brownshirts who became Obama's Organizing for America - is Palin's book tour.

Your intellectual and moral superiors at work.

Not coincidentally, the winners from last week's nominations revolved around this theme of deeply revelatory liberal incoherence. Bookworm Room had the top post, unpacking of how our super-keen Vulcan can be having so much trouble. The runner up was The Razor with a post about the ignorance of the Obama administration. Those are where you'll want to start, and all of the posts - listed after the jump - are worth taking a look at.

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. And each week I inexplicably end up waiting till the subsequent Monday to post the nominations and the winners. Not this time: Sunday!

My own post dealt with how influential public diplomacy expert Marc Lynch advised the Obama administration to pick a fight with Israel, saw that strategy backfire as the Palestinians hardened their demands and fractured, and is now accusing Israel of "intransigence" in every other post he writes. He's a little bit bitter and it's getting kind of unseemly, though there's probably room for sympathy - the foreign policy left's recommendations have been exposed as naivete-soaked delusions, and that can't be fun. Right Truth's post on the ongoing Middle East-wide disasters triggered by State Department diplomacy and foreign policy pseudo-sophistication is to the point.

The Glittering Eye's post on health care probes a question that comes up again and again for foreign policy hawks: putting aside that the left can be relied on to appease our enemies and endanger our allies - see Bookworm Room's post - why is it that they're also so consistently useless and ideological even on domestic affairs? The word "meltdown" makes a couple of appearances.

But at least the GOP seems to have approximated something like a spine on health care. The rest of their stunts have put them at war with their own base, a situation that Rhymes With Right unpacks nicely. Not that the conservative grassroots are without their own potential problems, something The Provocateur lays out.

All of which is really a shame, because - per the Colossus Of Rhodey - the left is becoming unhinged to the point of open racism again. Usually they save that for election season. Ditto for the fangs they're showing about double-loyalty towards the Jewish State - complete with witch hunters who totally fail to implicate Israel but imply the opposite. See Joshuapundit on that last bit. Apparently the left is still addicted to the scapegoating rush they discovered during the campaign. It must feel really good.

References and related coverage after the jump...

Consider this the shallow starlet equivalent of the lefty schlock Hollywood filmmakers regularly churn out. Their endless stream of oh-so-complicated anti-American films never exceed "spectacular box office bombs," yet they keep producing and directing them as if there's some sort of extra credit at stake. Ditto for this delightful peach, Victoria Rowell, who wore what appears to be an Obama-emblazoned plastic sheet to the Emmys. Sure it's objectively hideous. But at least she made a statement!

Also, per MR's fashion correspondent, "the shoes look like those things the chick from The Neverending Story wore on her head." I have no idea what that means.

Brought to you by the same culture that brought you Garofalo's rants about conservatives and Jews, albeit with slightly less sophistication. I'd say something sarcastic about how it's going to be a huge loss to the state when Hollywood finally leaves town, except it really will be a huge loss. Ah well - California, the "uniformly under Democratic control" progressive laboratory in policy and sensibility.

No word on whether this fashion apex was subsidized by the NEA agitprop factory that Breitbart's about to detonate. Big Hollywood actually flagged the story in August without it getting the kind of attention it deserves. Not so much this time.

Given this level of unembarrassed Hollywood worship, though, why bother paying artists for their Obama worship? It's almost like this White House has some kind of reflexive need to fund liberal projects, necessary and otherwise.

References:
* Garofalo Goes Off On Conservatives & Jews [Gateway Pundit]
* As the Hollywood machine abandons L.A., its supporting workers struggle [LAT]
* California Dems Increase Salaries Of Personal Staff, Refuse To Release New Payroll Details [MR]
* EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda [Big Hollywood]
* The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion? [Big Hollywood]

Previously:
* Finally! US Counter-Terrorism Ops To Start Torturing Hollywood Leftists
* Mainstreaming Of Anti-Semitism, Hollywood Edition
* Hollywood Helps Out In the Middle East

Gather around class, as we open up one of the central passages from Freud's seminal Interpretation Of Dreams:

The term Kettle Logic or La logique du chaudron refers to Freud's mention of the defensive tactics engaged by a neighbor who had borrowed a kettle and was accused of having returned it with a hole. Freud mentions this tale in his Interpretation of Dreams... "The whole plea -- for this dream is nothing else -- recalls vividly the defence offered by a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition. In the first place, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed it at all. A complicated defence, but so much the better; if only one of these three lines of defence is recognized as valid, the man must be acquitted."

Democrats and their MSM water carriers on Palin's "death panel" accusation:

(1) We'll have death panels in the plan because they're necessary:

Obama came a lot closer to talking about "death panels" back in April than I'd thought... He's talking about a panel of independent experts making end-of-life recommendations in order to save costs that have an effect at an individual level. And he thought it would be in the bill that emerges... It's also pretty clear that something like the "IMAC" panel is what he has in mind. Whether or not the IMAC would actually do this - Harold Pollack says end-of-life issues are well down the curve-bender's list, for example - Obama thought it would do it.

(2) There are no death panels in the plan:

Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says the health care overhaul bill would set up a "death panel." Federal bureaucrats would play God, ruling on whether ailing seniors are worth enough to society to deserve life-sustaining medical care. Palin and other critics are wrong. Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision. The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes.

(3) We're dropping death panels from the plan:

"Independent" guidance to seniors about death with an eye to reducing the lion's share of health-care spending. What could go wrong? Tired of the political migraines it's getting from this, the Finance Committee finally decides to, er, pull the plug:

"On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. "We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly..." Grassley said. The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to "advise patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care."

Do you think nutroots cretins will apologize to Palin for the last few days of "you'd have to be an idiot not to understand that there are no death panels in ObamaCare"? I'm thinking they're such a reality-based community - to say nothing of gracious argumentative disputants - that they'll pretty much have to.

References:
* Kettle Logic [HG]
* Will You/Won't You Be on My "Death Panel"? [Kausfiles]
* FACT CHECK: No 'death panel' in health care bill [AP]
* Breaking: Finance Committee drops "death panel" provisions from Senate bill [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Dems: We'll Finance Health Care With Cigarette Tax That Will Cause People To Stop Buying Cigarettes
* Obama To Lawmakers Concerned About Health Care: Stop Talking
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster

Mere Rhetoric, March 30, 2006:

Heeb Magazine (the starfucking Jewish hipster mag where anti-Semitic stereotypes are OK as long as they're meant ironically) is just so cool. We can't imagine anything better than having people who don't believe in God, go to shul, or identify with Israel being offensive just so they can prove that "it's cool to be Jewish."

NewsBusters, July 30, 2009:

[Roseanne Barr's] most-recent tailspin into the gutter involved a photo shoot with Heeb magazine wherein she is seen wearing an Adolf Hitler moustache and swastika as she takes burnt gingerbread "Jew Cookies" out of an oven. In another, in same costume, she is shown about to take a bite out of one of these burnt cookies. "As the "Domestic Goddess" dons the famous moustache, transforming into "Domestic Goddess Hitler," I notice that she's beginning to have fun. She nails the Fuehrer's facial expressions with twisted glee, and as she takes the burnt gingerbread "Jew Cookies" out of the oven it occurs to me that Barr may be the last celebrity utterly incapable of giving a f**k"

See? It's not that Roseanne turns irrepressibly gleeful when physically embodying a genocidal lunatic. It's that she's a rebel. She does her own thing. She plays by her own rules. Isn't she just so fucking awesome?

Well actually, of course, she's an open, genocidal anti-Semite. She hysterically indulges in feverish conspiracy theories and then blames Jews for an impending massacre that, she fantasizes, will wipe them out. But at least Heeb magazine didn't give her a platform to insist that she's just being really ironic.

It's almost difficult to believe that liberal American Jews have a difficult time articulating their identity, opting instead to pathetically reach out for a Dear Leader.

The pics, via NewsBusters, are after the jump. They're not really worth getting offended about because it's Roseanne Barr so who cares. But they're hard to beat as a textbook example of how the left excuses vulgar anti-Semitism as irony, leaving them free to get the cheap visceral thrill that hatred provides. She really was having fun, wasn't she?

To tell you the truth I was doing a search for a circa 2005 nutroots post that I know exists, where some tool made the case that Bush's "I pray all the time" line was proof that he was trying to bring about the apocolypse. Content gold!

I didn't find that specific post, though I did find a couple of other marginal morons wetting themselves over the comment. And I also rediscovered this gem, an oldie but a goodie:

You know who else has been known to muse in print about the degree to which Bush women are "bitches"? Harry Reid. Classy bunch, those progressives.

I only bring this up because I've gotten a couple of suggestions that nuanced and complicated dynamics are behind the left's increasingly sexualized, increasingly sexist obsession with Palin. Nope. Just shallow and ugly hatred towards classy conservative women.

References:
* Is President Bush An Evangelical? [Free Republic]
* Obama: I'm praying to God for guidance "all the time" now [Hot Air]
* Reid: Bush Isn't A "Quality Man" He's "A Bitch" Like His Mom [MR]
* MSNBC anchors wonder: Is hotness the key to Palin's appeal? [Hot Air]
* Progressive Democrats To Palin: Get Back In The Kitchen [MR]

Previously:
* Charming GOTV Videos: Commercial Icon Repeatedly Slams Palin Into The Ground (Plus: Severe PDS In San Fran Preventing Yuppies From Indulging In Effete Wine)
* Moronic Hollywood Nutjob: Palin Too Stupid To Understand The "Complicated Dialogue" In "W"
* CNN Takes Lead In Ultra-Competitive "Who Can Smear Palin Most Viciously" Media Race (Plus: Pro-Obama Comedians Also Competing!)

The results are unseemly even in the aggregate, although a little bit of that has to do with how the poll was worded. No option for for "businesswoman" or "writer" but an option for "homemaker"?

About a third of Americans think the best job for Palin is homemaker (32 percent), while nearly one in five see her as a television talk show host (17 percent). Vice president of the United States comes in third (14 percent), followed closely by college professor (10 percent), with president coming last (6 percent).

But it's the crosstabs that are really damning:

13. What do you think is the best job for Sarah Palin now that she has resigned as governor of Alaska?
SCALE: 1. President of the United States 2. Vice-President of the United States 3. Television Talk Show Host 4. College Professor 5. Homemaker 6. (Other) 7. (Don't know)

	President	VP	Talk show host	College Professor	Homemaker	Other	(DK)
21-22 Jul 09	6%	14	17	10	32	13	8
Democrats	2%	4	21	12	45	10	6
Republicans	12%	27	14	7	18	12	10
Independents	4%	11	15	8	24	21	8

Less than one-fifth of the notoriously "traditional" and "heteronormative" right would like to see Palin as a homemaker. More than double want to see her hold the Presidency or the Vice Presidency. That's obviously the side of the political spectrum that has problems with women.

Tyra Banks publicly applauded the Johnstons for helping to turn the Palin family into a tabloid freak show. Chris Matthews called Palin a "mail order bride" and questioned whether she can read. And that was after an election in which the left launched sexist attack after sexist attack, from obsessing about Palin's wardrobe to sneering at her for being "shrill" to bragging about their literal, clinical pathological hatred.

Now, having attacked Palin's children until she left political office, they want the satisfaction of firmly putting that woman in her place. Apparently the unseemly little thrill they were getting out of alternatively leering at and verbally demeaning Carrie Prejean has worn off. Behold, your moral and intellectual betters.

References and previously after the jump...

Bold words...

No, radical fringe. We're not going to prove anything to you anymore because we can show you our collective drivers licenses and birth certificates and our 17-year judicial records and any other documents or accomplishments and you'd just come up with another freak reason to deny, deny, deny. Though you'll insist the black copters and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion real. So, go on: collect in your basements and bomb shelters and fear chambers.

... coming from an outlet that regularly peddles feverish anti-Jewish conspiracy theories:

The impressive pervasiveness of this mindset throughout the "liberal" political spectrum may be better judged by a column that appeared in Huffington Post by former FBI agent, former Republican, and now Jew sleuth, Coleen Rowley... Ms. Rowley's article is delicately titled "Never Doubt That a Small Group of Thoughtful, Neo-Cons Can Destroy The World." Her thesis is Jew-conspiracy boilerplate: The right wing ruling Likud Party in Israel wanted a war with innocent, fragile and harmless Iraq... Citing a left-wing blog authority, Rowley lists the top 12 neo-cons in America... including Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Perle, Bolton, Podhoretz, Kagan and Ledeen... the "second tier"... includes Joe Lieberman, Charles Krauthammer, John Podhoretz, Jackie Mason, Ron Silver, Ted Koppel and Ken Pollack.

To explain the list, she approvingly quotes from the blogger who provided it: "Neo-cons are conservative Jewish journalists and politicians linked to the right-wing Israeli Likud who support United States corporate, political, cultural, and military imperialism with the use of pre-emptive World War if necessary... to rid themselves of the Muslim Menace."

In fairness to Rowley, Jews really are all-powerful. As you'll learn from another Huffington Post story, the Israel Lobby even writes Saturday Night Live sketches to promote their war mongering neo-conservative agenda. Seriously. And the Lobby is probably also why you never learned that Israel was behind the murder of anti-Syrian Lebanese politician Pierre Gemayel. That brave expose was left to anti-Israel academic Mark Levine to publish, which he did on HuffPo.

It's too bad none of this has ever been asked by one of Obama's planted HuffPo questioners. I wonder if he'd admit that the only reason he's so overtly pro-Israel is because of the Israel Lobby.

References:
* Gates Says What A Lot of Us Are Thinking: You Prove It! [John Ridley / HuffPo]
* Huffington Post's Jew Conspiracy Diatribe [David Horowitz]
* SNL's Neocon Inside Job [Ali Gharib / HuffPo]
* Who Killed Pierre Gemayel? [Mark Levine / HuffPo]
* Obama calls on HuffPost for Iran question UPDATE

Previously:
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears
* Liberal Think Tanks, Majority Of Democratic Voters Condemn Israeli Self-Defense In Gaza
* HuffPo: Neda's Killers Are A Lot Like Israeli Jews, Aren't They?

From the journalistic minds that brought you Palin farewell retard jokes, a week's worth of sneering, vaguely sexist Two Minute Hates:

Long before $150,000-gate, Sarah Palin seemed to love clothes. This week, in honor of her resignation as governor of Alaska, here's a look back at some of her most memorable style moments. What did we forget? Share below in comments and we'll try to add it. Back in October, Palin made waves with a scandal involving $150,000 spent by the RNC on designer duds for her and her family.

This is the same outlet that has an entire section turned over to the sublime beauty and elegance of Michelle Obama: "Michelle Obama Garden Harvesting Outfit!" "Michelle Obama's Paris Outfits: Which Did She Wear Best?" "Michelle Obama Wears Givenchy Belt, Tasseled Bracelet: Beltway Bombshell!"

So it's not that woman aren't allowed to look good. It's just that Sarah Palin has the nerve to be a conservative woman who looks good. So you can see how she kind of deserves the hate.

References:
* Rock bottom: HuffPo poster bids Palin farewell with retard jokes [Hot Air]
* Sarah Palin's Most Memorable Style Moments: A Slideshow Retrospective (PHOTOS) [Huffington Post]

Previously:
* Moronic Hollywood Nutjob: Palin Too Stupid To Understand The "Complicated Dialogue" In "W"
* CNN Spends Evening Searching For Democrat Who Can Explain Why Anti-Palin Smears Don't Reek Of Sexism. Fails. (Plus: Guess When "Shrill" Used To Be Sexist)
* AP Headline: "Palin Adds To Wardrobe Before Reno Campaign Stop"

Those two Iran posts from this morning took a lot more time than I expected. Hello easy content:

Until recently, whenever we went to the farmers' market, we would lug home $50 pork roasts and $14 gallons of milk. We would spend over $100 on food that might not last more than three days.... I shrugged this off as one of those oddities of New York life, like getting a ticket because your neighbor put out his trash on the wrong day. But... buying sustainably raised beef and sustainably squeezed milk and sustainably hatched poultry is a way of life that, these days, I just can't sustain... There were reasons I fell into the habit of spending more money in one morning at the farmers' market than some people spend on an engagement ring. These farmers... were doing good work. They stayed away from pharmaceuticals, so we didn't have to worry that we were feeding Dexter and his baby brother, Elliot, stray hormones or antibiotics.

Low yield organic farming: because why should poor people be able to afford food? This is almost as obnoxious as the time that San Francisco yuppies had to give up on pretentious Chilean wines because they were called "Palin Syrahs."

Unanswered: how this particular idiocy interacts with the left's new discovery that fatties are causing global warming. The "voluntarily obese" will become a particularly acute controversy once national health insurance gets going, setting in motion an endless cycle of scapegoating to distract the public from the program's financial unsustainability. So we might as well start talking about it now.

References:
* The New Chicken Economy [NYT]
* Los Angeles Liberals Expanding Campaign To Make It Harder For Poor People To Get Money And Food (Plus: NYC Jewish Hipsters Expanding Campaign To Be Insufferable)
* Newest cause of global warming: Fatties [Hot Air]
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster

Previously:
* Charming GOTV Videos: Commercial Icon Repeatedly Slams Palin Into The Ground (Plus: Severe PDS In San Fran Preventing Yuppies From Indulging In Effete Wine)
* Aww... Liberals Rediscovering Their Patriotism
* Liberal New York Jews and the Liberal New York Jews Who Can't Stand Them

Maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part - I thought she was McCain's best choice before he picked her, I thought she was a great candidate after he picked her, and I thought she'd make a good President some day - but really? The career of a 45 year old woman who is beloved by an increasingly alienated conservative base is over because she says she's going to take care of her kids? Really?

There are any number of paths that Palin could take back into national politics.

Here's one: she waits two years, gets herself named an Olin/Scaife/Bradley/whatever Energy Policy Fellow at Claremont/Heritage/AEI/whatever, and publishes for a year before and a year after Obama's reelection. Now there's a Republican party that just lost to a post-health care, post-stimulus, post-cap-and-trade Democratic party. There's credible talk about a permanent Democratic majority. Palin spends the next three years fundraising and mounting a credible challenge.

Here's another: she waits four years and reenters national politics in the aftermath of an Obama reelection. The 2012 GOP primaries were a bloodbath between Mitt, who had no appeal to the base, and Huck, who had no appeal to small government conservatives. Palin's speech begins: "Four years ago I left national politics to take care of my family. We're an extremely close-knit and warm bunch. If I had remained governor or run for national office, the only thing I could have given Willow during high school was the ugliness of national politics. But now she's grown up - Todd and I are so proud of her - and she's off to college. In addition to my family, of course, I love and adore my country. I know that the best way I can serve America today is to return to national politics and to help rebuild my party and restore pride to our country."

Listen. This resignation obviously wasn't the most strategic way to set up a 2016 run. But it hardly closes it off. Two elections are a political eternity. Palin will be just over 50 when the runup to 2016 begins.

Why is she resigning? We know at least two things: (1) this makes no sense politically, meaning it's either a scandal or a health issue (2) Palin tweeted that her reason was "good news." If it's good news it can't be a scandal or a health issue, unless that health issue is that she's pregnant. My very first guess was pregnancy, in which case mazel tov except she's going to get slammed as "irresponsible" for getting pregnant after giving birth to Trig.

References:
* 2012 or 2016? [Goldberg / NRO]
* Is Palin's national political career over? [Hot Air]
* WOW: Palin Resigning In a Few Weeks [Geraghty]

Previously:
* Polls Being Manipulated Through Statistical Methods, Death Threats (Plus: Obama Supporters Wallowing In Anti-Palin Murder Fantasies, Shooting At Conservatives)
* Time For Another "Liberals Bragging About Their Pathological Hatred For Palin" Post
* Dick Morris: Of Course Palin Was A Great Pick

From the blog that brought you a breathless "Gazans have no food" story underneath a picture of a fully-stocked Gazan kitchen, this gem:

The antisemites on the Left finally have their "Israel is just like the killer Iranian regime" post. Max Blumenthal at The Huffington Post equates the Iranian regime thugs who killed protester Neda Agha-Soltan to the Israelis: "When the mainstream American press chose to broadcast the graphic video -- as moving as the footage is, it is difficult to watch -- it made a commendable decision that nonetheless highlighted its hypocritical attitude towards Palestinians who resist Israeli occupation on a daily basis, and who often meet the same fate as Neda."

No it's true. If there's one thing missing from national and international press coverage of Israel, it's images of suffering Palestinians.

Also: Gazans aren't resisting occupation because Gaza isn't occupied, Israeli treatment of West Bank Palestinians is such that civilians are begging the IDF to return to areas they turned over to the PA, and comparing an innocent, peaceful girl to murderous, kidnapping Palestinian soldiers is beneath contempt. But otherwise: a very well-reasoned and carefully crafted story that demonstrates exactly why the left disdains Israel.

Tough to understand why some people think that HuffPo is an anti-Semitic cesspool where the moderators have to turn off comments because too many readers cheer after Israeli teenagers are massacred by genocidal terrorists.

References:
* Breathless HuffPo Headline About Gazans Eating Grass Contradicted By Rest Of Headline, Linked Picture, Reality (Plus: Anti-Semitic Comments Ensue Anyway) [MR]
* Leading Dem Blog Huffington Post Equates Iranian Thugs Who Killed Neda to Jews [Gateway Pundit]
* What Keith Dayton hath wrought [Israel Matzav]
* 'Huffington Post spreading anti-Semitic hate' Report finds site being used for propaganda, wild conspiracies [WND]
* Huffington Turns Off Comments on Jerusalem Attack [LGF]

Previously:
* Mona Gable, HuffPo Blogger And LA Times Contributer, Is A Shrill And Hysterical Idiot
* HuffPo Blogger: Replace TSA With Blackwater Ops
* HuffPo Blogger Obsessing About Obama's Voracious Black Sexuality

What is it with these people and their venomous, anti-woman vulgarity? Sexist tropes are so routine in liberal strutting that - as with their anti-Palin hatred and their anti-Prejean puerility - they don't even notice how awful they sound any more:

Of course, Reid doesn't always have nice things to say himself. While no one expects Reid to praise George W. Bush, the degree to which he is judgmental and catty regarding the former president pretty much speaks for itself. Three pages in, after lamely trying to establish his bipartisan bona fides by talking up George H. W. Bush, Reid shares this charming anecdote about his early days in the Senate: "[Former Texas senator and vice-presidential candidate Lloyd] Bentsen went on and on effusively about what a quality man President-elect [H. W.] Bush was. Then he paused and said, 'But watch out for his wife; she's a bitch.' I have never had anything against Mrs. Bush, but guided by Bentsen's crude advice, I've always said that our forty-third president is more his mother than his dad." Wha's the purpose of recording for posterity a bit of hearsay defaming a woman Reid admits he has no cause to dislike? Is Reid really so petty as to insult someone's mother? Why yes, yes he is.

It's not exactly pettiness. It's closer to the costless, affected bravado of the playground - the leftist equivalent of "yeah... I said it!" Snidely describing conservative women as dogs and bitches is apparently a regular punchline for our progressive betters.

References:
* Time For Another "Liberals Bragging About Their Pathological Hatred For Palin" Post [MR]
* Miss California Smear Site: We're Posting Prejean's Teenage Topless Pics Because Of Her Views (UPDATED: Prejean Losing Her Crown Monday?) [MR]
* Speaking Bluntly [Hemingway / NRO]
* Axelrod "jokes": Miss California's a dog or something [Hot Air]

Previously:
* The Ugly Left - Disgusting Anti-Malkin Sexism In Wonkette's Comments Section
* CNN Spends Evening Searching For Democrat Who Can Explain Why Anti-Palin Smears Don't Reek Of Sexism. Fails. (Plus: Guess When "Shrill" Used To Be Sexist)
* The 5 Stages Of Liberal Mourning Over Palin

UPDATE (13:15 PST): Via LAist:

Then came this week when underage semi-nude photos surfaced around around the internet. They were for potential modeling jobs... Now, the Miss California USA pageant will hold a press conference on Monday to announce the fate of Prejean's crown. Tami Farrell, who would take Prejean's title if she is dethroned, will reportedly be there.

ORIGINAL: I'm not sure that the classy, classy folks at thedirty.com understand the difference between civil and criminal liability. Then again, I also don't think they really believe that they're advancing public discourse by pouring gasoline on the left's vulgar and sexist two-minute hates.

Of course I could be wrong. Maybe targeting a conservative woman really does trump criminal kiddie porn and civil defamation statutes:

[TMZ] has obtained a cease and desist letter fired off from Carey's lawyer to thedirty.com, demanding that the site take down two photos, showing a topless Carrie posing for the cam. In the letter, her lawyer says, "One of the displayed images of Ms. Prejean was illegally taken under false pretenses when she was a 17-year-old minor and unable to consent to its creation." The letter goes on: "The other image depicts Ms. Prejean's likeness but is not an actual photograph. It is an electronic manipulation ["photoshopped'] of her image created without her consent." The response from thedirty.com: "Your client's publicity rights are substantially inferior to the right of the public to consider, discuss, agree and/or disagree with Ms. Prejean's actions and views. This is not conduct for which your client's consent is required."

For the record, the Miss USA pageant has no problem with the kind of topless pics that are being used to smear Prejean:

There's another reigning beauty queen who took some very topless photos before she won her pageant -- but unlike Carrie Prejean, Miss Rhode Island USA's crown was never ever in jeopardy. According to Alysha Castonguay, she dropped her top for a Maxim magazine shoot... but there was no controversy over the pics because they were all seen and approved by the Miss USA pageant officials. But Alysha tells TMZ she feels for Miss Cali saying, "I personally believe this situation is stemming from the controversy over her opinion and not a photo."

Castonguay's pictures were legal, public, and innocuous. Of course she gave them to the pageant. Even assuming that Prejean had possession of these illegal and private shots - and we don't know that she did - she shouldn't have been been expected to hand them over. In fact - if she was 17 when they were taken - there's probably a case to be made that she was legally prohibited from distributing them.

Although maybe she should be thankful. If the left wasn't talking about how her implants make her a tawdry piece of garbage, they'd be breaking into her tax records in the interest of transparent partisan witch hunts. Such a charming public community they've built over there.

References and previously after the jump...

When Krauthammer muses that Obama shows disdain both grandiose and petty for the history of the office he inhabits, this is the kind of sensibility that he's talking about. Although I'm not sure that "history" is the right word since apparently the ascent of Dear Leader is Year Zero:

The [Bush] administration handed over twitter.com/thewhitehouse at noon on Inauguration Day, just like it did with the whitehouse.gov website. Google still has the old account... in its cache. Valleywag alum Paul Boutin suggests on Gadgetwise that this is a simple rationalization of accounts, matching the definite-article-free "whitehouse" username the Obama team uses on Flickr and YouTube. But Obama's Twitterers didn't just change the username on the account; they started fresh, wiping out all of the White House's existing Twitter followers, and the entire archive of messages.

Actually the Google cache just points to the now-blank pages where the tweets used to be. The actual content has been permanently erased. So if you're a Communication scholar or historian studying early Presidential uses of social media technologies, you're screwed. Because fuck you that's why.

References:
* It's Your Country Too, Mr. President [Krauthammer / WaPo]
* Why Did the White House Delete Bush's Tweets? [Valleywag]

Previously:
* Finally: The Obama USB Drive
* Video: CNN's Aww Shucks "Top 10 Obama Faux Pas" Roundup Misses A Few Things
* Farrakhan: Obama Is "A Herald Of The Messiah... A Savior" (Plus: Obama's Followers Attacking Conservatives, Fantasizing About Shooting Palin)

From the guy who sneeringly instructed his followers to "have some fun in Michigan" before the left began demanding legal action against Limbaugh for Operation Chaos - brownshirts, after all, will be brownshirts - this elegant exercise in doublethink:

When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparently, prefer to talk "revolution" and kill cops.

Here's a post by Kos from 2006 celebrating "AFSCME's bottom-up revolution," which he takes credit for designing:

In Crashing the Gate, Jerome and I argue for the devolution of centralized power to the states, allowing local leaders who know their own lay of the land best to make important decisions... This list is straight out of Crashing the Gate -- decentralize, empower people at the local level, focus on growing the ranks of the labor movement, take a holistic approach to progressive politics, and fight 24/7/365.

Even if the title "Crashing the Gate" didn't already have an air of thuggish fantasizing, the section titled "Revolution and Reformation" - about how "progressive brothers and sisters" need to make common cause - would still kind of count as "talking revolution." Or do we file those pages away wherever we've filed "dissent is the highest form of patriotism?"

Anyway, here's Kos insisting that "no one gives a damn" about Ayers and here's a second post by him actually entitled "no one gives a crap about Ayers." And just for completion's sake here's a third one where he invites his horde to chortle along with him about same.

Ayers, of course, is a cop killer who not only talks about revolution but lectures about it from the front of taxpayer-subsidized classrooms.

That third link, incidentally, isn't as on point as the other two. But it does have the line "a generation of voters voting against their own interests because of bullshit social issues that affect them little." Such a delightful political movement they've incubated over there. (Photo: Pat Dollard)

References and previously after the jump...

I was sitting at school a few days ago and some graduate student was breathlessly explaining her theory for why conservatives oppose the stimulus. It turns out that it's because they don't realize - and now I'm quoting - that when you build a bridge you don't just build a bridge but you also make uniforms for workers and provide rubber for tires. Yup. This woman had discovered the multiplier effect while poring over her morning HuffPo and instantly concluded that conservatives just don't know about it. Never did it enter her mind that there's a gigantic debate about this. She'd never heard of it before and she's exquisitely sophisticated - so how much less must conservatives be aware?

Ergo: the Council nominations from the middle of February. Bookworm Room's post was exactly about the myopic fascination that Obama's cheerleaders have with the multiplier effect. Even Obama himself won't bank on it - he's very careful to stick to his "create or save" phrasing, something The Razor picked up on. Of course we'll never know the stimulus's actual effect. The Glittering Eye suggests that we would've had a natural recovery some time around 2010. But post the largest transfer of private wealth in the history of the globe - a lengthened recession will be written off as better than some hypothetical alternative that might never have occurred. Lucky break for the administration, huh?

Meanwhile there's a bit of a populist trend against free speech, part of the battle for the soul of America that Right Truth blogged. Rhymes With Right described MSNBC's quasi-fascist demand for Republicans to be thrown out of America. The Colossus of Rhodey tracked the expansion of hate speech legislation. The Provocateur untangled ACORN's freedom-chilling tactics. All of this is so weird: who could've predicted that there's a fascist impulse underneath leftist demagoguery? Except anyone who's read anything about 20th century history, I mean.

Speaking of which my own post was about the return of open Nazism to the streets of Europe:

Decades of excusing the most vile anti-Semitism as mere anti-Zionism - of accepting fantasies about cabalistic lobbies and fabrications about well-poisoning as part of public discourse - have destroyed all limits on venom and violence. Nothing is off-limits any more. Truth doesn't matter: people justify their pathological hate with outrageous fabrications. Ethics certainly don't matter: against the Jewish "modern-day Nazis" - the ones who inhabit Israel and the ones who might support them - anything is justified. This is the stuff of mass pogroms.

Those excuses run the gamut from the anti-Israel 60 Minutes libel that Joshua Pundit wrote about to the pro-terrorist double standards that Cheat Seeking Missiles described and back to the anti-Israel WaPo smear that Soccer Dad took apart. Sure these are examples of cretinous, vulgar apologism. But at least they're not unsophisticated!

References and previously after the jump...

MR, Nov. 06, 2008:

McCain couldn't have made a better choice... the right track/wrong track numbers haven't even been close this year. Given the spread Democrats probably actually underperformed. If the election was hopeless then all of the nonsense about how Palin alienated independents is naive at best but more likely just dishonest... the job of the GOP candidate was to limit losses and prevent a Democratic supermajority. That meant boosting fundraising and whipping up out the base - two tasks at which Palin is just diabolical

Dick Morris, Nov 12, 2008:

Sarah Palin saved GOP from landslide defeat... Sarah Palin made a vast difference in McCain’s favor. Compared to 2004, McCain lost 11 points among white men, according to the Fox News exit poll, but only four points among white women. Obama’s underperformance among white women, evident throughout the fall, may be chalked up, in large part, to the influence of Sarah Palin. She provided a rallying point for women who saw their political agenda in terms larger than abortion. She addressed the question of what it is like to be a working mother in today’s economy and society and resonated with tens of millions of white women who have not responded to the more traditional, and liberal, advocates for their gender.

You might be confused about this straightforward fact if you get your understanding of the GOP from major media outlets. Example: the LA Times political blog put a post up on Nov. 8 titled "A lone Republican leader defends Sarah Palin while McCain is mum." This was, as a matter of brute reality, not true.

Is there a chance that the LAT Times' consistently asinine coverage comes from just not knowing that most Republicans exist? It would be an elegant explanation for their polling results. And it would account for their demonstrably false "it was totally unpredictable" coverage of McCain's not at all unpredictable Palin selection.

But really? Can they be so narcissistic that they're just unaware of the basic existence of Meg Stapleton or Randy Scheunemann or Steve Biegun - all of whom came to Palin's defense before this post went live. Does anyone at the LA Times ever go so far as to even look at the WSJ? Or the National Review? Or is checking what conservatives actually say about conservatives just not how the media approaches the GOP any more? Although admittedly - it's less fun than publishing a headline like "a lone Republican leader defends Sarah Palin" and then opening with a sneering "yes, it's shocking... go figure." And in fairness - if you're a cacooned moron who thinks that the world is as you'd like it to be, I guess it would be kind of shocking to bump into reality.

Bloggers for Palin 2012 anyone?

References and previously after the jump..

Seattle clowns are reveling in their "newfound patriotism" - their phrase, not mine - by printing out flags on their home printers. And shallow Hollywood tools have a found a reason to respect the Executive of the longest-lasting democracy in the history of Western civilization. Adorable!

"I have never been able to put the word 'my' before president before," he added, prompting loud applause from the British-American film industry crowd that also honored actors Tilda Swinton and Don Cheadle and director Stephen Frears. When not working on films — either acting or directing... – the Oscar winner has hopped on planes and ruffled feathers by touring Iraq and meeting with Washington foe Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.

And here I thought that they were being patriotic the whole time. You mean that they didn't believe their own excuses about how "dissent is patriotic"? But they seemed so genuine! Would it be inappropriate to suggest that their newly discovered love of land and country might not be precisely... deep? Or would that be emblematic of the kind of fascism that has so effectively prevented liberals from expressing themselves and gaining political power over the last 8 years?

References:
* Seattle Liberals Rediscover the Flag [LGF]
* Sean Penn talking about “My President” [Reuters]
* ALL HAIL THE PATRIOTIC TERRORIST! [Daily Gut]

Previously:
* Mainstreaming Of Anti-Semitism, Hollywood Edition
* Hollywood Helps Out In the Middle East
* Finally! US Counter-Terrorism Ops To Start Torturing Hollywood Leftists

McCain was running a centrist campaign so there were bound to be a few center-left hacks enamored with the mystique of conservative-hating journalists. In retrospect those absurdly one-sided anti-Palin leaks about her intelligence were probably inevitable. The post-election piling on, though, makes it look like there were multiple people passing slime to eager reporters. Ergo Operation Leper:

RedState is pleased to announce it is engaging in a special project: Operation Leper. We're tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others. Michelle Malkin has the details. We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you'll see us go to war against those candidates. It is our expressed intention to make these few people political lepers.

The ostracism isn't justified just because these people are vicious. If they think Palin was a mistake then they're also bad at their jobs. McCain couldn't have made a better choice. Full stop. Stan and I were texting back and forth the night before McCain announced his choice and the last thing I wrote to him was that I was hoping for Palin. So much for the MSM's "no one had ever heard of her" myth.

I don't think I'm revealing any state secrets when I say that I never thought this election would be close. As a matter of undeniable empirical fact, Americans just don't know stuff. Worse: thanks in no small part to decades of liberal self-esteem movements, what they lack in knowledge they overcompensate for through inordinate reliance on inchoate gut feelings. See here and here for some terrifying examples, and here for K-Lo trying to cope with the aftermath.

When pollsters produce numbers about issues they're basically just making shit up. It's not that they're getting opinions wrong as much as they're pretending that there are opinions at all. People certainly do respond in such and such amounts to such and such questions in such and such ways. But that doesn't mean that there are deep beliefs beneath those answers. Much of the time it's the opposite - just a bunch of people responding firmly to questions they know very little about but suspect they should understand.

In the booth, though, citizens vote on what they do have access to - those inchoate gut checks. Pollsters can't measure "gut checks" directly. But they can get a pretty good sense of how people feel - and feelings are all many citizens have - from really simplistic right track/wrong track polling. And the right track/wrong track numbers haven't even been close this year. Given the spread Democrats probably actually underperformed.

If the election was hopeless then all of the nonsense about how Palin alienated independents is naive at best but more likely just dishonest. Independents were never really in play. The post-hoc excuses they're giving to themselves and exit pollsters are good and fine - but let's not pretend that anybody actually takes them seriously. So the job of the GOP candidate was to limit losses and prevent a Democratic supermajority. That meant boosting fundraising and whipping up out the base - two tasks at which Palin is just diabolical:

On the plus side, at least now the planet will be healed, the waters will recede, and all the Earth will be united in Hope and Change. Yes, even vicious European anti-Semites. Though I do hope that Obama's campaign hasn't been overselling his abilities - paranoid utopian movements get really dangerous when their impossible visions of a perfect world are stymied. At least they don't have a ready scapegoat to blame when their asinine understanding of the world triggers cataclysmic global crises.

Incidentally, I'm still on track to get every single state right. So actually the night's actually going super.

References:
* Obama Wins White House, FOX News Projects [Fox]
* European Anti-Semites Pretty Psyched About Impending Obama Victory [MR]
* The Paranoid Style in The Left's Anti-Palin Viciousness [MR]
* Dennis Ross: "I'm Endorsing Obama Because He'll Make Iran And Iran's Financial Backers Like Us" [MR]
* Leftist Interest Groups Pretty Psyched About Ultra-Liberal Obama Administration (Plus: MR's Electoral Prediction) (UPDATE: MR's Electoral Map Identical To Rove's) [MR]

Previously:
* 70 Percent Of American Jews Ready To Say "We Didn't Know" When Obama Detonates US-Israel Alliance (Plus: They Most Definitely Know)
* MSM Exceeds All Expectations, Closes Election With Repeated And Spectacular Demonstrations Of Bias
* Israeli Newspapers Not Very Hopeful About Impending Change In US-Israel Alliance

I know that it's not the thing you're supposed to do on the eve of an election. But I'm genuinely concerned for the post-election health of Obama activists. I don't think they'll be depressed or in a rush to get therapy or anything like last time. But more basically: what are they going to do with themselves? They've spent so much time preening about their vicious browshirt tactics and honing their legal and physical thuggery that I'm very much afraid they'll rebound from flushed victory to listless aporia.

Think about it. No more vandalism crime waves. No more attacking pro-McCain senior citizens. No more publishing literal hit lists. No more hanging or burning Palin in effigy. What will they do with themselves?

I mean, other than getting government salaries for continuing the Obama campaign's signature intimidation tactics, up to and including open legal violations based on the most stunningly stupid pretexts. But only some of them will be able to score those plush jobs. What will the rest do? Because I don't think that "continuing to brainwash kids into literally worshiping Obama" and "continuing to brainwash kids into obeying their Leader" are things people get paid to do outside of public schools.

Eh. They'll probably just live off the New Deal II programs that the impending Democratic supermajority is so eager to create. So I guess no worries.

References and previously behind the jump...

It was a small thing, but my favorite bit of shameless in-the-tank press bias was in July during Obama's trip to Europe. The media was locked in a feverish competition to see who could sing The One's praises most grandly and the Washington Post produced this as the lede of an actual news article:

Sen. Barack Obama, on his first and likely only overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has remade the campaign's foreign policy playing field, neatly sidestepping Republican charges that he has been naive and wrong on Iraq and moving to a broader, post-Iraq focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. In essence, Obama has declared the war in Iraq all but over.

Of course exactly the opposite was the case. Obama's ham-fisted self-aggrandizement actually soured Americans on his campaign and an NIE was subsequently leaked that showed that the Iraq war is far from over. But who cares? Obama "neatly sidestepped" all that by traipsing around the globe on a cartoonish field trip. Sure none of that is "true" as such. But it's no more false than Obama's claims about Ayers or his legislative record - which the media also helpfully parrots.

It's not so much eye roll inducing Stupid Media Tricks - although an end to DNC-employed "lifelong Republicans" might not be the worst thing. And its not just their supine reactions to the Obama campaign's alternatively angry and petulant treatment of journalists - although it seems like expelling the NY Post and the Washington Times from the plane was a little much. And it's not even the pathetic rationalizations that they've trotted out to justify the vicious anti-Palin campaign waged by even the largest news organizations and by Obama himself.

What's really incredible is the MSM's total and utter failure to do even the most basic work on Obama's campaign and positions. Not his life or his past. His actual electoral campaign and his actual political stances. Obama's been the presumptive Democratic candidate since February. And yet - in an election about energy prices, the economy, and the War on Terror - here is a truncated list of things that have come out only in the last two weeks:

And after Dem leaders already called for slashing the military budget by 25%? Surprise!

A phalanx of liberal think tanks and interest groups - anticipating a Democratic victory on Tuesday - are mobilizing to push Sen. Barack Obama to the left of his campaign positions. In recent weeks, groups have held conferences, drafted policy papers and lobbied campaign advisers in the hope of influencing what they believe would be the most receptive administration to the political left since Jimmy Carter. The Obama campaign declined to comment about pressure from liberal policy groups.Left-leaning activists are trying to replicate the surge of conservative interest groups under the Reagan administration that shaped Republican politics for the next three decades, staking out positions well to the left of how Sen. Obama has tried to define himself near the political center.

I'm not sure that "pulling" Obama to the left is going to be much of a problem. Obama has to be the only candidate in history who has people voting for him because they hope that he's lying to them. Gay rights advocates know quite well that Obama is explicitly against gay marriage but write that he "actually has no problem with gay marriage". Ostensibly pro-Israel American Jews know quite well that Obama surrounds himself with anti-Israel radicals but fall back on a vast array of awful pretexts. Mickey Kaus knows quite well that Obama and McCain are indistinguishable on amnesty and that Obama is an orthodox liberal on schools but he spins imaginative scenarios where Obama won't do what he has the inclination and the power to do. Christopher Hitchens knows quite well that Obama is "vapid and gutless" but holds out hope that Obama/Biden "show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience."

There is no space for democratic deliberation when every argument is answered with "yeah, but he doesn't really mean that." My prediction: Obama landslide, 53-47 nationally. The election is a referendum on Obama so most undecideds break his way, but many of them don't show up to the polls. State-by-state: PUMAs come home in PA, the drip drip drip of ACORN's nonexistent voters, enthusiastic nonstate voters, hungry homeless voters, and exploited mentally handicapped voters swing OH and NV, "disappeared" military ballots fail to save VA, and McCain just gets beat in FL. Final tally: 338-200.

First polls close at 4pm, VA and OH are both called by 5:30pm, FL by 6:00pm, and I'm passed out by 6:10pm. Good times. Maybe by the time I wake up Obama will be ready to answer the few questions reporters are actually willing to ask him. But probably not.

Well, he did promise to bring everyone together. Voters who claim to support Israel and every single person who wants to destroy Israel - unity!

A new poll on Monday showed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama gaining ground among Jewish voters, widening the gap to 40 percent against his rival, Arizona Senator John McCain. The Washington Post reported that its Post-ABC News tracking poll found Obama leading 70%-29% among Jewish voters, a lead similar to the one former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry enjoyed in 2004, when he held a 74-25 percent advantage over George W. Bush.

A party-ID split is exactly what you'd expect given that American Jews vote Democratic mostly out of herd-like habit. The only time they've shown even a smidgeon of doubt was when Obama detonated the anti-Ahmadinejad rally - and even then J-Street and the NJDC raced to see who could most stupidly blame conservatives.

But you have to admire the obstinate creativity behind the moronic arguments and bald-faced lies that Democratic Jews cling to. This is a candidate who is so close to vulgar appeasement that he and his media sycophants take it personally when people talk about Chamberlain - even in contexts that aren't about Obama at all. The hysterical way that Democratic Jews latched on to Bob Wexler's transparent anti-Palin lies was revelatory - they weren't so much fooled as desperately hoping to convince people that they were fooled. This is how it's been through the entire campaign - just one unblinking, incoherent argument after another:

You can tell that it's become chic to hate someone when liberals start bragging about it in sex columns and on hipster blogs. It's not that the hatred is necessarily classy - it's more declasse in exactly that obnoxious "aren't we all such wacky, viciously neurotic Blue Staters" Annie Hall kind of way. So more like this:

A friend’s late-night call cast light on the undecided’s milieu. She was filling out her ballot at home and had made every choice but one. The presidential ticket. "I just can’t quite bring myself to do it. I hate Sarah Palin. Help me out here." I laughed. I refilled my glass. And why not? Life in these United States, as Reader’s Digest used to say, isn’t perfect, but neither is it Somalia.

Good point Kathleen Parker. We're not in Somalia. But even in Somalia, I doubt that people exasperatedly admit that they've been driven beyond rationality by hatred. Nor do they try to impress their neighbors by sneeringly hanging political opponents in effigy as Halloween displays. When they have hangings in Somalia, I presume that they're are for real - which means that not only are lawless Somalia warlords just as vicious as Palin haters, they're actually more politically serious. And what's the difference between the West Hollywood tool who hung a Palin replica and the two Kentucky cretins who just got arrested for hanging Obama in effigy? I mean other than the obvious one about how the legal system was only brought to bear against the anti-Obama offenders. The two Kentucky cretins had to hide what they were doing. In their political community their behavior is unacceptable. But hanging Palin in effigy in a deep blue California city? Hiiiiilarious.

Anyway, Palin came off looking great after meeting the Israeli ambassador. Some liberal journalists are even starting to admit what's been long been obvious to anyone not filled with pathological resentment: Palin is brilliant and determined:

I like to think that my threshold for these kinds of soft conspiracy claims is pretty high. Yes: for low-salience issues pollsters are basically making up public opinion. But do pollsters wake up in the morning looking to mislead voters about the state of the Presidential race? It's just tough to imagine how that would play out on the ground. And yet:

I was having dinner a night ago with a friend of mine who is a statistician for a well-regarded private polling company... her companies [sic] conclusion is that the election will come down to Colorado, New Hampshire and the Republican leaning district in Maine, which in her opinion might very well decide the Presidency (apparently the district in Nebraska that Obama thought he might be able to get is now off the table). She said she has very little doubt that the public polling is part of a "concerted voter suppression effort" by the MSM.

And it's definitely the case that Obama partisans think of polls as weapons in their unending battle against the monsters on the right:

After releasing this morning’s numbers showing McCain ahead in Ohio and Florida, the Strategic Vision polling company received several death threats through the contact e-mail on the company’s web site... The company has contacted the FBI and appropriate authorities, Johnson said. There was, thankfully, nothing in the messages that indicated that the sender had actually sought out the location of the company or its employees... Johnson said he’s not fearful, but taking appropriate measures. "It’s probably just a bunch of nut cases, but this is first time we’ve ever experienced something like this." Johnson said. "It’s highly, highly unusual."

Not that unusual, actually. The homes of Florida McCain supporters are being shot up. Fantasies of anti-conservative violence are so mainstream that reporters talk out loud about how they'd like to shoot GOP candidates. After the jump, a laundry list of some of the newer - and some of the more classic - intimidation tactics that Obama supporters have availed themselves of.

A nice supplement to those three NYT gossip pieces. This is what we're writing about now:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's wardrobe has grown—even after $150,000 worth of designer clothes, hairstyling and accessories the Republican Party provided for her. On Monday, the day before the Alaska governor appeared at a Reno rally, one of her assistants bought her a new suit for the occasion at an Ann Taylor store in an upscale Reno mall. "She bought a short, three-quarter sleeve jacket, a skirt and a couple other items," store manager Suzette Ludden told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

You know what? I actually think this is kind of a good thing. For a while there I was getting worried that media outlets were getting lazy about smearing her. Instead of their usual trivial yet vicious nit-picking insults, they were settling for just egregiously distorting conservative columnists and McCain surrogates. It's nice to see that on the scene reporting is still a staple of anti-Palin news coverage. I mean, as an academic I obviously have a soft spot for nuanced psychoanalytic arguments like Kathleen Parker's "McCain picked Palin with his dick" article. But as a citizen and as a voter - it's good that I'm getting the information that I need about the blouses that Palin's staff is buying today.

And yet, for all of their obsessive coverage, journalists are somehow missing the left's disgusting sexist attacks on Palin:

Luckily Politico says that the picture's just "a classic genre of New York street art." I don't know why they're bothering with photoshops - the Newsweek strategy of just posting inappropriate 2002 stock photos seems much easier. For what it's worth, here's a video of Palin going ballistic about the press's shameless fascination with her wardrobe and her body:

It'd be nice to say that Joe Biden was lying when he recently claimed that Obama's campaign hasn't paid ACORN "a single penny." But most philosophers agree that lying requires some level of intention. And given that Biden routinely seems like a blistering idiot, I'm not sure that this demonstrable falsehood actually counts as a lie. Ditto for "was Biden lying when he was wrong about Iraq SOFA negotiations" or "was Biden lying when he was wrong about the 2006 Hamas election" or "was Biden lying when he was wrong about Hezbollah's position in Lebanon" - tough philosophical questions. This interview, though, is solid gold:

The thing I like about Obama's legal thuggery is that it's never boring. It's not just the same federal agencies attacking the same US citizens over and over again. He changes it up. Sometimes it's the Secret Service that gets sicked on you...

The caller was a female Obama volunteer who asked if Jessica would support Obama for president. Jessica replied, "No, I don't support him. Your guy is a socialist who voted four times in the state Senate to let little babies die in hospital closets; I think you should find something better to do with your time." Then Jessica hung up... The next day, a man and a woman in suits showed up at the door of her home, identifying themselves as members of the Secret Service.... The male agent then displayed a file with Jessica's full name prominently printed on it and asked her how she felt about Obama.

... sometimes it's the Justice Dept...

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's campaign asked the U.S. Justice Department to expand a special prosecutor's investigation to include possible improprieties surrounding reports the FBI is looking into voter fraud in the presidential race. Obama's campaign attorney said the investigation should look into a leak to the news media that the FBI is probing allegations of voter registration fraud by a grassroots organization called ACORN. The group's activities were denounced by Republican nominee John McCain in the Oct. 15 presidential debate.

... and sometimes it's just out and out legal persecution:

The thing that pisses me off is that I had MSNBC in the MR HQ pool. Go figure. Here is Hot Air's coverage of how these tools tsk tsk'd Palin because she gave an oversimplified third grade-level explanation of Separation of Powers to a third grader. And of course there's this recent stunt - which caused Gingrich to go nuclear:

CNN has to be worried about how the NYT beat them to the bottom in the "Palin has a professional wardrobe" leg of the race. Lucky for them they've still got a week to lock in their lead. Dishonest pushbacks against Palin's goofs on Biden are a good start, but they're not going to cut it for the home stretch. Maybe they can do a story about how she calls her kids and then have someone wonder about whether her duties as a mother are distracting her from the race. Or a story about how she doesn't call her kids and then have someone wonder about whether her duties as a candidate are distracting her from being a good mother. It could all be very sophisticated. And if all else fails, they could always just model Jon Stewart:

Speaking to a college audience in Boston, Mass. Friday, "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart used his stand-up routine to respond to Sarah Palin's comments about "pro-America" parts of the country, shedding the profanity restrictions that govern his Comedy Central show. "She said that small towns, that's the part of the country she really likes going to because that's the pro-America part of the country. You know, I just want to say to her, just very quickly: [expletive] you," Stewart said to raucous applause.

A friendly note of warning: while the left seems to love "edgy" anti-Palin comedy no matter how vicious, it's still probably a good idea to stop short of the gang rape jokes.

References:
* Left very upset at Palin’s explanation of VP role to a third-grader [Hot Air]
* CNN's Rank Dishonesty [Lowry / NRO Corner]
* Woah! Newt Gingrich Compares Biased US Media to Pravda [mghoft / YouTube]
* Sarah Palin's Wardrobe Front-Page News at NY Times [News Busters]
* Video: Palin goofs on Obama for calling Biden’s gaffe a “rhetorical flourish” [Hot Air]
* Jon Stewart to Sarah Palin: '[Expletive] You.'
* Pro-Obama Comedian Jokes About Black Men Gang-Raping Palin, Liberal Outrage Fails To Ensue (Plus: Brief Review Of Other Conservatives Whom Progressives Would Like To See Get Raped) (UPDATE: Nuance Invoked, Video Added) [MR]

Previously:
* Pro-Obama Comedian Jokes About Black Men Gang-Raping Palin, Liberal Outrage Fails To Ensue (Plus: Brief Review Of Other Conservatives Whom Progressives Would Like To See Get Raped) (UPDATE: Nuance Invoked, Video Added)
* New Coulter Column: "If Obama Wanted A Historically Delusional Vice President, Why Not Lyndon LaRouche?"
* Charming GOTV Videos: Commercial Icon Repeatedly Slams Palin Into The Ground (Plus: Severe PDS In San Fran Preventing Yuppies From Indulging In Effete Wine)

Israel:

A 33-year-old gay Palestinian man petitioned the High Court of Justice on Sunday, asking it to grant him permanent residency in Israel so that he may live with his partner, who lives in the central Israeli city of Bat Yam. The man, a resident of the northern West Bank village of Tamon, further claimed to fear for his life, since his family refuses to accept his sexual orientation and may try to harm him... The man chose to continue living with his lover in Israel, unbeknown to his family, but unfortunately, relatives residing in Jaffa informed his father that he was "still hanging out with homosexuals."

Egypt:

Homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, but a wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution and debauchery are applied to homosexuals in this conservative country... Egyptian secret police have been quite literally hunting down gay men for at least half a decade. They troll online chatrooms and set up wire taps to entrap homosexuals - who are then summarily arrested and subjected to degradation and torture.

After the jump, other countries that are also not Israel.

Naturally Gawker is pretty psyched. This is Terrible Terry Tate of Reebok Superbowl commercial fame, living the dream of every hysterical anti-Palin nutjob in America. You can click to about 1:20 if you don't want to bother with the interview:

There's a second video - with another lingering camera shot over her barely moving body - posted to the same account. Yeah, I dunno. No one wants to be the person who groans at a joke. But tackling Palin would be funnier if Obama supporters weren't actually attacking her supporters or photoshopping pictures of shooting her in the head or posting shirts to Obama's blog site branding her a cunt or hawking those and other shirts online. Not much funnier. But at least still funnier.

On the other hand - I'm not sure that now is the best time to take away the left's "it's just a joke" excuse. This is a political community in desperate need of a little humor and distance. How pathological is their Palin hatred? This pathological: insufferable San Francisco yuppies are actually giving up on pretentious wines because the names sound too much like "Sarah Palin." Seriously:

What a douchebag:

Stone said he extended invites to the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees yesterday morning [for the premier of W] - but they opted for a fund-raiser instead. That was just fine with the Bush-bashing director, who seems to despise Palin even more. "I don't think Sarah would understand the picture," Stone said on the red carpet outside the famed W. 54th St. theater. "It has a lot of complicated dialogue," he zinged. "George Bush is an intellectual compared to her."

If only we could all be as smart as the tool who said that 9/11 was an impressive "revolt" against corporate power - and who backed up his moral idiocy with drivel like "this attack was pure chaos, and chaos is energy." No wonder he fancies himself an intellectual. Insights like that those aren't available to just anyone. You have to be the kind of guy who embraces terrorists and thinks Chavez is a "great man." In other words: sophisticated! I can't imagine how HBO concluded that his Castro documentary was too stupid to air. Corporate control, would be my guess.

As always with these self-important leftist morons: it's not just that they have little to no understanding of economics, geopolitics, or history. That's not great, of course, but they're not paid to be smart. What's really obnoxious is how they're utterly convinced that they're sophisticated geniuses. Because then they feel free to give voice to thought. And that hurts.

References:
* John McCain, Sarah Palin pass on city premiere of Oliver Stone's 'W.' [NY Daily News]
* Oliver Stone: Crackpot Conspiracist
* Hollywood Douche of the Day.... [Zippers]
* The Real Oliver Stoned Story [FrontPage]
* He Misspoke: Biden's Obnoxiously Smug Assertion About Hezbollah Was Actually An Aggressively Stupid Policy About Syria (Plus: They Just Don't Know Stuff) [MR]

Previously:
* Leftist Sophistication Watch: Shiites And Sunnis Do Work Together, Iran Admits Funneling Money To Hamas
* Obama's Sophistication Is Actually Kind Of Unsophisticated, Incoherent
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran

Don't you just love how guilt by association is back on the menu? The Obama campaign is demagoguing the hell out of McCain for not denouncing Obama-hating racists fast enough, a tactic that the NYT seems enthusiastic to promote. Meanwhile the combination of pro-Obama cult worship from racist cretins...

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.. says when Obama talks "the Messiah is absolutely speaking."... "Brothers and sisters," Farrakhan said, "Barack Obama to me, is a herald of the Messiah. Barack Obama is like the trumpet that alerts you something new, something better is on the way." Farrakhan points out that the man Nation of Islam followers refer to as "the Savior," Fard Muhammad, had a black father and a white mother, just as Obama did. "A black man with a white mother became a savior to us," he said. "A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.

... continues apace with thuggishness from Obama's followers:

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd.. "I want you to argue with them and get in their face."... Attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio.

No surprise. Dystopian populist movements built around charasmatic leaders always end up like this. This is what happens when you slip into declaring that your political opponents are scheming enemies. Followers immerse themselves in thuggish mobs and justify their violence as unfortunate but necessary - how else can they take on the imagined monsters on the other side? surreal worship and thuggish militarism become inevitable, as do - eventually - physical attacks.

Click through for that, plus pictures of exquisite liberal tolerance and a video of Farrakhan singing praises to The One.

Kind of bold coming from a tool who alternates between publishing anti-Palin smears and trumpeting pro-Biden lies. The nuance of Atlantic bloggers becomes more impressive with each passing day:

Dear Jews: Stop the Obama Paranoia - ... Barack Obama has called Israel America's strongest ally in the Middle East; he wants to stop Iran from getting the bomb; he is a stalwart enemy of Hamas and Hezbollah; he is the darling of Chicago Jewry; he is the protege of Sen. Dick Durbin, whose election was aided immeasurably by AIPAC; he himself is close to AIPAC; his advisers include Dennis Ross, Jim Steinberg and Richard Clarke; and on and on and on. So, all you rumor-mongering, fever-headed Jewish conspiracists: Support McCain, if you want, and there are credible reasons for doing so, but stop smearing Obama in the face of overwhelming evidence that the man is a great friend of Jews and of Israel.

With all due respect, bullshit. Here's Goldberg's entire laundry list in reverse order, since its easier to dispense with the patent falsehoods at the bottom than to untangle the misleading confusion at the top:

When I did yesterday's post on this genius’s Hezbollah gaffe, I just assumed that he was making it up out of whole cloth. Too generous!

Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, misspoke when he said "we kicked - along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon." Hezbollah, a radical Shiite Muslim group, is very much alive in Lebanon, part of the government there, and in fact more powerful than it's ever been. Biden may have meant to say Syria, which under intense international pressure withdrew its forces from Lebanon in 2005 after a two-decade-long presence.

Andy McCarthy has five or six reasons why this version is still an egregious abuse of history. My concern is that it's also a train wreck of a policy suggestion - albeit one that an Obama/Biden administration would indeed enthusiastically embrace. Putting European troops in South Lebanon - which of course has already happened under UNIFIL auspices - has been an unmitigated disaster for Israel. When they're not getting overrun by Lebanese children, they're threatening to take potshots at Israeli planes or conveniently losing equipment that ends up being used by Hezbollah to start wars. The rest of the time they're just passive human shields. Hezbollah tolerates them on account of that, on account of how they're utterly ineffectual, and on account of how France and Spain bribed Syria for protection. Which is to say: if Biden actually misspoke then he and Obama are enthusiastically advocating a de facto pro-Syrian and pro-Hezbollah policy. Sophisticated!

Yesterday morning I posted a roundup of various Obama/Biden historical fantasies: Roosevelt gave a speech on TV in 1929, Roosevelt talked to Hitler and Tojo, Hoover didn't try to soak the rich on the eve the Great Depression, Auschwitz was liberated by American troops, etc. I don't think any of those were deliberate lies - in sharp contrast to, say, Biden's nonexistent mom-and-pop diner story from last night's debate.

What the hell?

BIDEN: When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it." Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

No, seriously: what the hell? I have no idea what he's talking about. And even if I did: Obama thinks Syria is the solution to Hezbollah. Which means that Obama has been listening to his anti-Israel advisers a wee bit too much.

UPDATE: I also forgot to mention: (1) NATO has what mandate to go into Lebanon? (2) An international force has been a disaster for Israel. Other than all of this - great answer from the Dem's top foreign policy mind.

References:
* Transcript of Palin, Biden debate [CNN]
* Lebanon - Another Country Where Obama Can Make Things Much Worse [MR]

Previously:
* Biden Now Actively Channeling Rabid Anti-Israel Partisans, Adopting Their Barely-Veiled Anti-Israel Euphemisms
* Guy Who Smeared "Pro-Likud Approach To Israel": "US-Israeli Relationship Transcends Parties"
* New Coulter Column: "If Obama Wanted A Historically Delusional Vice President, Why Not Lyndon LaRouche?"

Fair:

Being interviewed by Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," Biden said: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'" For those of you who aren't hard-core history buffs, Biden not only named the wrong president during the 1929 stock market crash, he also claimed a president who wasn't president during the stock market crash went on TV before Americans had TVs... Biden cast one of only five votes against the [first Alaskan pipeline] that has produced more than 15 billion barrels of oil, supplied nearly 20 percent of this nation's oil, created tens of thousands of jobs, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reduced money transfers to the nation's enemies.

Michelle Obama on Joe Biden: "What you learn about Barack from his choice is that he’s not afraid of smart people."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but: these people just don't know things. And - much worse than the worst that can reasonably be said about Palin's ostensible lack of experience - they're convinced they do. They just proceed as if history is what their political agenda would like it to be. Meeting with dictators is good so Roosevelt talked to Hitler and Tojo. Soaking the rich during a downturn is good so Hoover didn't try that on the eve of the Great Depression. Obama's life story is hagiographic so his uncle liberated a death camp actually liberated by the Russians.

Click through for a video of this tool being a tool.

Atlantic writers are apparently deciding between their earlier Jews are "indoctrinating" Palin line and this new smear. Particularly rich from the side whose guy has Palestinians in Gaza working the phones for him. Which is the same guy who just got done meeting with the same Palestinians who are now mursing about handing over the West Bank to Hamas. Obama's behavior during those meetings is particular instructive, since Abbas had just gone out of his way to celebrate a terrorist child murderer.

And yet:

A representative of the McCain campaign on Monday accused a blogger on the Atlantic website of libel in response to a blog on the website entitled "Palin endorses Hamas." The blog mocked McCain running mate Sarah Palin's difficulty answering a question from Katie Couric, in which she gave a sweeping endorsement of democracy in the Middle East. Michael Goldfarb of the McCain campaign issued a statement to the Atlantic Monthly on Monday saying "Governor Palin did no such thing, and your title is nothing short of slander. Having read your work for some time I doubt that you believe Hamas qualifies as "those who seek democracy." That you would put those words in Governor Palin's mouth is libel." In the post, Jeremy Goldberg mocked Palin's inability to issue a nuanced response when Couric asked "What happens if the goal of democracy doesn't produce the desired outcome? In Gaza, the U.S. pushed hard for elections and Hamas won."

Sarah Palin has problems reconciling democracy promotion with Arab and Muslim radicalism? Wow. That makes her exactly the same as every other honest conservative who wants a solution to the Middle East that stops short of mass Palestinian deportation and/or a Great Powers war in the region. Liberal foreign policy experts don't have that problem because they just unblinkingly assert - against all evidence - that moderation is right around the corner. Convenient for them, but not much help to the rest of us.

No wonder the foreign policy left smears Palin. It's either that or a discussion about how deeply hostile their entire worldview is to the US-Israel alliance. According to their understanding of the Middle East, all problems inevitably come back to Israeli misbehavior - misbehavior to which the US is either implicitly or explicitly linked. So even when Obama claims to be pro-Israel - and even when he's not either incoherent on the subject or about to take it back - his support still comes in spite of how Israel is the root of the problem.

Iranian nuclearization, for instance? It's a problem, but mostly because Israel might overreact. And that's not an isolated example: this way of thinking runs through Obama's entire approach to foreign policy, up to and including linking Israel to the entire breadth and depth of Middle East instability. The breathtakingly clear blockquote on that, plus more on Obama's foreign policy team, is behind the jump.

In January a Ha'aretz panel of political experts ranked the various Presidential candidates based on their support for strong US-Israeli ties and their opposition to Iran. Of the candidates who made it to 2008, Barack Obama was dead last. After Obama, the next worst candidate was Joe Biden. So I'm less than surprised that the Obama/Biden ticket got this speech shut down:

Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator's intentions and to call for action to thwart him. He must be stopped. The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a "Final Solution" - the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a "stinking corpse" that is "on its way to annihilation." Such talk cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman - not when Iran just this summer tested long-range Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, not when the Iranian nuclear program is nearing completion, and not when Iran sponsors terrorists that threaten and kill innocent people around the world.

The awesomeness of the speech might make you forget the sheer mendacity involved in not letting Palin deliver it. I thought that liberal Jewish organizations had pretty much maxed out on insufferable absurdity when they reacted to the RJC's demonstrably accurate polling questions. But the NJDC's role in killing this speech and elevating Ahmadinejad - along with other liberal Jewish organizations like JStreet - set new standards for shameless, unblinking hypocrisy:

Monday’s protest against Ahmadinejad is too important to be tainted by partisanship. Unfortunately, the campaign of Senator John McCain is much more interested in scoring political points than insuring there is bipartisan solidarity around the anti- Ahmadinejad efforts. Therefore, we call upon the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations to withdraw the invitation to Governor Sarah Palin and we applaud Senator Hillary Clinton’s decision to not attend the rally after the attendance of Palin was announced.

The Obama campaign forces Democrats to withdraw from a non-partisan event. Then they attack the McCain campaign - along with the bulk of America's Jewish organizations - for playing partisan politics on Iran. Then they get self-righteous about it. Surreal. Just mind numbingly surreal.

You know what would be much easier than having to suffer through this? Easier than having to listen to these jagoffs make the dumbest arguments imaginable? It would be easier if liberal Jews would just admit that they're not that worried about political Islam and that they're not really concerned about Israel. It's not like this is some huge secret. The polling on this question has been conclusive for years. Both in absolute terms and relative to other groups like Christian evangelicals, liberal Jews just aren't that concerned about Israeli security.

More broadly, their foreign policy inclinations are to minimize the spread of political Islam while emphasizing "root cause" and "cycle of violence" arguments. It's not for nothing that political watchers openly mocked John Edwards for trying to get the NJDC enthusiastic about defending Israel. Yeah there are six million Israeli Jews being targeted for genocide. And yeah they kind of care. But it's just not a priority for them.

But Democrats can't just admit that their foreign policy gets cashed out as "it's all Israel's fault." They'd lose. So instead liberal Jewish groups unblinkingly offer smear after smear and aggressively stupid argument after aggressively stupid argument. After the jump, a catalogue of some of their most blatant fabrications and their most vicious smears - predictably issued about Obama's most obviously anti-Semitic supporters and stridently anti-Israel statements.

Hey, remember that time when McCain made fun of Obama for being a celebrity and was accused of subliminally invoking racist tropes of black men raping white women? And then remember that other time when a pro-Obama comedian explicitly joked about black men gang-raping Sarah Palin and was hailed by the left for her hiii-larious nuance? Unhinged:

The Washington Post isn’t the only daily D.C. newspaper to rave about Sandra Bernhard’s anti-Palin ranting. Wednesday’s Washington Examiner joined in, with the headline "Comedienne delivers enraged optimism." Barbara Mackay claimed "in the end, oddly and subtly, Bernhard’s message is positive."... It has video of Bernhard calling Palin "Uncle Women," a "turncoat b—h" and a "whore."... "In fact, the play wears its politically VERY correct heart on its sleeve with its indictment of America as "A Man’s World, It’s a White Man’s World, It’s a F–ked Up White Man’s Racist World" and can only be suggested to be racist in its content if one is hell-bent on protecting White Folk for Sandra’s blistering indictment. When Sandra warns Sarah Palin not to come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers, she’s being provocative, combative, humorous, and yes, let’s allow, disgusting."

Don't make the mistake of thinking that they're just stumbling into this filth up as they go along. Fantasies of revenge via rape are veritable badges of sophistication if you're a progressive talking about a conservative businessmen. Or a conservative blogger. Or a conservative columnist. Or even the child of a conservative. It shows you're willing to violate decorum to mock conservatives in front of other liberals. That's edgy.. Otherwise you're just Chris Matthews mundanely reminding people that voting for Palin means voting for a woman.

UPDATE: For all their pathetic recourses to "irony", there seems to be something lacking in the register of self-awareness:

[The gang rape comment] is part of a much larger, nuanced and, yes, provocative—that's what I do—piece from my show about racism, freedom, women's rights and the extreme views of Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman who doesn't believe that other women should have the right to choose.

Well that's fair: Gov. Palin doesn't believe in abortions so she should get raped. Video:

Un. Fucking. Hinged.

References:
* McCain blows the dog whistle [Guardian]
* Sandra Bernhard: Palin Would Be Gang-Raped By Blacks in Manhattan [Newsbusters]
* Enron Vengeance [NRO Corner]
* The Sexism Scandal You're Not Hearing About: Democratic Representative Resigns After Being Called A Whore... By Another Democrat [MR]
* The moonbats strike back [Michelle Malkin]
* A New Low [Blackfive]
* Matthews: Palin Running 'Somewhere Between VP and First Lady' [Newsbusters]

Previously:
* Liberals Find a Jew Hater They Feel Safe Criticizing
* Hysterical Liberal Calls To Ban Coulter Somewhat Inconsistent With Their "Free Speech" Celebrations Of Ahmadinejad's Columbia Appearance
* Los Angeles Liberals Expanding Campaign To Make It Harder For Poor People To Get Money And Food (Plus: NYC Jewish Hipsters Expanding Campaign To Be Insufferable)

What happens when the Democrats' digital brownshirts get political power? The same thing that always happens when brownshirts get political power:

Sources say the axes were out for Palin as soon as Sen. Clinton pulled out because she did not want to attend the same event as the Republican vice presidential candidate. "I have never seen such raw emotion -- on both sides," said someone close to the situation. The groups sponsoring the rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at the UN were reportedly told, "it could jeopardize their tax exempt status" if they had Palin and not Clinton or Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden on hand. So all politicians were disinvited, most prominently, Palin.

Don't be surprised - paranoid movements always end up like this. And what's the use of having power if you can't use it to silence your political opponents? You didn't think that the left was going to settle for random acts of physical harassment forever, did you? Creepy fascism has been a constant theme in contemporary liberal activism, from gleeful photoshops of Rove getting frogmarched out of the White House to half a decade of shutting down movies that Democrats didn't want the public seeing - with even the most powerful companies eventually bowing in voluntary self-censorship.

And make no mistake about it: the pressure came directly from Obama. When your task is nothing less than to remake the world nothing can be allowed to stand in your way.

References:
* EDITORIAL: The new 'digital brownshirts' [WashTimes]
* Sources: Intense Pressure Led To Palin UN Snub [WCBSTV]
* The Paranoid Style in The Left's Anti-Palin Viciousness [MR]
* The Loneliness of the Blue-State Conservative [American Thinker]
* Thugs for life: Dems threaten ABC’s broadcast license over “Path to 9/11? Update: Stolen Honor redux? [Hot Air]
* Shareholder to Disney: Sell me the rights to “Path to 9/11? so I can put it on DVD [Hot Air]
* Wonderful: Under pressure from the left, organizers disinvite Palin from anti-Iran rally [Hot Air]
* Obama promises to 'remake the world' [Politico]

Previously:
* UC Irvine Muslims Can't Decide Between Seething Resentment and Fantasies Of Global Conquest [Video]
* The 5 Stages Of Liberal Mourning Over Palin
* Juan Cole Is Enamored With Rank Populist, Borderline Anti-Semite Ron Paul. Of Course He Is.

UPDATE: I've gotten not a few emails this morning pointing out that news agencies and journalists explicitly reported that Obama "referred to Palin's remarks about lipstick" not that he "called Palin a pig." The implication would be that news agencies - and now Factcheck - are fully justified in accusing McCain of flat out lying.

Maybe. Maybe the crowd shot up in laughter and applause because it was filled with really appreciative connoisseurs of clever tropes, droll satire, and improvised ripostes. It's not totally beyond the realm of possibility - undoubtedly part of Obama's appeal is his masterful control over oratory.

Except. This isn't about rhetorical subtext. It was right on the surface: lipsticked pig, old fish. The line didn't work instantly because people thought "wow, that's a really clever allusion to Palin's famous 'pit bull / soccer mom' ad lib." It worked instantly because it evoked "Palin = pig" and linked it to "McCain = old fish." Yes these are old lines that've been used in politics since time immemorial. The question is why it came to the mind of an instinctively brilliant orator to use them now and there.

But then again, maybe not. This was a close thing. Way too close, for instance, for a news agency to accuse a Presidential candidate of flat out lying. Which is kind of the point.

ORIGINAL: So Ben Smith - who was in the room who was not in the room - says that people in the room understood it to be a reference to Palin. And Jake Tapper - who was in the room - originally said that people in the room understood it to be a reference to Palin - until he updated the post to say that people in the room out and out told him that they understood it to be a reference to Palin. But never mind that - ABC News wants you to know that McCain "falsely accused Obama of calling Palin a pig"

Which - and I say this as an academic who studies these things - is an awfully sophisticated interpretation for how meaning works. A crowd enthusiastically cheers because they thought their politician was calling the Republican female VP candidate a pig. This is dutifully reported as what happened by multiple journalists who were present for the context and tone of the speech. Maybe there's an argument to be had that Obama - despite being a masterful political orator - had no control over how the crowd was taking his words. Whatever. But at a minimum - isn't it awfully bold for an ostensibly an objective news organization to accuse a Presidential candidate of flat out lying. It almost seems like members of the media are getting one back after having been raked over the coals for their egregious anti-Palin sexism.

You should watch the video and then come back. Now: which bias-soaked part of this bias-soaked clip was your favorite? Was it when ABC:

1. Used the just barely plausibly deniable line "what Obama called phony outrage could be seen and heard all over the airwaves"?
2. Cut out Obama's "old stinky fish" line, which is what makes a lot of people think that he was individually slurring each of the Republican candidates?
3. Asserted that the McCain campaign attacked Obama because they "sensed an opportunity"?
4. Reported as objective news that the McCain campaign "flatly and falsely" accused Obama of doing what everybody in the crowd thought that he was doing?

I'm thinking it's #4, but I can also see arguments for #2. That said, it's the last 10 seconds where things really get surreal. The beginning of the clip flirted with being an in-kind contribution by dropping an unnecessary 15 seconds of Obama riffing on his McCain = Bush talking point. So unnecessary and awkward was this de facto campaign commercial that ABC had to visibly cut to the actual clip to get his quote. But it's the end of the clip - where they do the sinister cut-up of McCain quotes - that really feels like a campaign commercial.

The central point is that McCain used to say "you can't put lipstick on a pig" in reference to Hillary. You may think that Obama's getting a bad rap on this, but that particular argument is asinine. The difference between Hillary and Palin is that Hillary isn't rhetorically associated with lipstick. It's unbelievable that people think this is a good argument. Many conservatives have openly mocked utopian liberal naivete for decades. But now publicly mocking "Hope and Change" means you're mocking Obama. Many politicians have used "lipstick on a pig" for decades. But now publicly mocking "lipstick" means you're mocking Palin. Duh.

Of course Obama was referring to Palin. Which doesn't mean that the McCain campaign should've taken the bait (probably the opposite). But of course he was referring to Palin.

References:
* Obama: 'Lipstick on a pig' [Politco]
* Obama Says McCain Is Offering Fake Change: 'You Can Put Lipstick on a Pig, But It's Still a Pig' [ABC News]

Previously:
* Obama Campaign: "Community Organizer" Is Racist But Rhetorically Linking Women With Pigs Is Just An "Old Expression"
* Tolerant Progressives Sound Weirdly Anti-Semitic When Raging Against Lieberman
* MR's Laundry List Of Debunked Palin Smears, Part I Of An Ongoing Series

You'd think - in a post-FactCheck world - that D-list blogs like MR wouldn't have to do posts like this. But the number of emails and Facebook messages and IMs and tweets that I get from liberal friends is becoming obnoxious. So, earmarks:

Mrs. Palin used her veto pen to slash more local projects than any other governor in the state's history. She cut nearly 10% of Alaska's budget this year, saving state residents $268 million. This included vetoing a $30,000 van for Campfire USA and $200,000 for a tennis court irrigation system... Mr. Obama voted for numerous wasteful earmarks last year, including: $12 million for bicycle paths, $450,000 for the International Peace Museum, $500,000 for a baseball stadium and $392,000 for a visitor's center in Louisiana. Mrs. Palin cut Alaska's federal earmark requests in half last year... Mr. Obama delivered over $100 million in earmarks to Illinois last year and has requested nearly a billion dollars in pet projects since 2005. His running mate, Joe Biden, is still indulging in earmarks, securing over $90 million worth this year. Mrs. Palin also killed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in her own state. Yes, she once supported the project: But... he changed her position and saved taxpayers millions. Even the Alaska Democratic Party credits her with killing the bridge. When the Senate had its chance to stop the Bridge to Nowhere and transfer the money to Katrina rebuilding, Messrs. Obama and Biden voted for the $223 million earmark, siding with the old boys' club in the Senate. And to date, they still have not publicly renounced their support for the infamous earmark.

And while I'm at it, I've been looking for a place to dump this thing:

They claimed that the Palin announcement was some desperate pick that came out of nowhere. Had they been doing their jobs, or even perusing The Weekly Standard or right-wing blogs, they'd have known that she was on the list. Since they didn't know anything about her, they started making things up. Anything that fit the caricature of a right-wing hypocrite was thrown up with, seemingly, no fact-checking. They said she opposes contraception, when she said in a campaign debate that she is pro-contraception. They said she cut funding for pregnant teens, when she provided a massive funding hike. They accused her of cutting funding for mentally disabled children, when she raised it 175 percent over the former administration. She was said to have been a member of the wacky Alaska Independence Party; The New York Times had to run a retraction.

As always, the tone of hopeful and change-oriented post-partisan unity is really palpable.

References:
* Sliming Palin [FactCheck.org]
* Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge [WSJ]
* HOW OBAMA BLEW IT [NY Post]

Previously:
* Progressives Spreading Around Fake Palin Bikini Pic, Gloating About Inexperience And "Patriotic Valley Trash"
* Obama Campaign: "Community Organizer" Is Racist But Rhetorically Linking Women With Pigs Is Just An "Old Expression"
* The 5 Stages Of Liberal Mourning Over Palin

I gotta think that at this point they're just making shit up and counting on the press not to call them on it. Within 12 hours they're running this argument...

At the Crain's Business Forum this morning, Paterson drew attention to a phrase used numerous times by speakers at the Republican National Convention to describe Barack Obama's leadership experience: community organizer. "I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama 'black' in a sense that it would be a negative. But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican Convention - a 'community organizer.' They kept saying it, they kept laughing," he said.

... along with this argument:

"You know, you can put lipstick on a pig," Obama said, "but it's still a pig." The crowd rose and applauded, some of them no doubt thinking he may have been alluding to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's ad lib during her vice presidential nomination acceptance speech last week, "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."... Obama senior adviser Robert Gibbs insists the senator was not referring to Palin. "That's an old expression," Gibbs says.

And that, in turn, was their second condescending Palin/lipstick reference today. I don't mind so much that they're wallowing in the most shameless kind of identity politics. What bothers me is that they're so bad at it. Post-partisan, post-identity hope and change - feel it.

References:
* McCain Campaign Fumes Over Paterson's Racism Claim [CBS]
* Obama Says McCain Is Offering Fake Change: 'You Can Put Lipstick on a Pig, But It's Still a Pig' [Political Punch]
* Carnahan: 'There's no way you can dress up that record even with a lot of lipstick' [Politico]

Previously:
* CNN Spends Evening Searching For Democrat Who Can Explain Why Anti-Palin Smears Don't Reek Of Sexism. Fails. (Plus: Guess When "Shrill" Used To Be Sexist)
* Progressives Spreading Around Fake Palin Bikini Pic, Gloating About Inexperience And "Patriotic Valley Trash"
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Medical Gender Apartheid Being Enforced In Muslim Countries By Divorce, Murder

Conspiracy theories have been part of American life since well before the Republic was founded. But it wasn't until 1964 - when historian Richard Hofstadter published his essay and on the Paranoid Style - that anyone really sat down and methodically unpacked how they work. Hofstadter's central point was that conspiracy theorizing is not a mistake of facts but an error in judgment - that the hysteria and irrationality of conspiracy theories comes from a more basic paranoid style of thinking. It's that they approach the world differently - everything is laden with significance, everywhere are hidden enemies, etc.

Hofstadter's concern was that this paranoia isn't an innocent way of approaching the world. It's not just that conspiracy theories are wrong - although they almost are. Even when conspiracies do exist, conspiracy theorists approach them while wallowing in this swamp of paranoia. The paranoid style, according to Hofstadter, almost always ends with the conspiracy theorist grimly vowing to "use the enemy's tools" to wage an unending battle. Conspiracy mongers end up justify the most repulsive tactics in the name of defeating their imagined repulsive enemies. If this is beginning to sound familiar after two weeks of watching the left breathlessly justify their vicious anti-Palin smears as responses to some imagined Republican smear machine - it should.

Which is not to say that the left would like to launch anti-Republican pogroms (although between "frog-march" blog histrionics and "put the conservatives in Gitmo" fantasies, it's not like that argument can't be stitched together). But these attacks on Palin aren't coming from nowhere. Factcheck isn't rushing to knock down one smear for every two that emerge because these things just happen. Underneath the indecent viciousness they've been directing at Palin, there's something fundamentally troubling about the contemporary left's approach to politics.

There's a section of Hofstadter's essay where he talks about how conspiracy theorists come up with their fantastical enemies - the ones they have to defeat and decimate. It's where in some ways the heart of the essay - he goes into what goes wrong with the paranoid style and how unhinged activists get there. Just to make sure that there's no cherry-picking, I'm just going to blockquote the passage straight down. Paragraph by paragraph. And in between each of Hofstadter's descriptions: exquisitely perfect examples from some of the left's brightest intellectual, political, and activist lights. Bonus: the standard leftist excuse - "these aren't mainstream examples" - doesn't really work when the really money quotes are coming from literally the highest echelons of the Democratic leadership.

This entire post could've been done just with links to the MSNBC rumor machine. But I'm kind of choked up after last night's bittersweet news - think of all the great times that now we'll never have. Plus, focusing exclusively on one source would underplay the breadth and depth of these people's pathetic melodramatics:

1. Denial - This was probably the most surreal stage, with Obama campaign eventually elevating unblinking denial into a campaign smear. The Atlantic ran an article entitled "the Eagleton Scenario" and the NYT published an op-ed gently and kingly suggesting that Palin "should withdraw" to avoid humiliation. InTrade shares on Palin being replaced spiked to almost 15. When that didn't work, the left seamlessly transitioned to a different wishful denial.

2. Anger - Jeffrey Bell has suggested that the left's hateful anger toward Palin has to do with the ideological grip that social issues have on the movement. That's not entirely false. But there's certainly a more sympathetic reading: they're just trying to cope. Still - DU threads like this one are insanely venomous even by the left's usual standards.

3. Bargaining - The Obama campaign is quickly learning that "our Presidential pick is slightly more experienced than your Vice Presidential pick" is an unhappy argumentative place to be. So - how about Palin/McCain? What about Palin vs. Clinton? Anything but a veteran Senator for President with an energetic and galvanizing - but still inexperienced - governor as his running mate.

4. Depression - Last night's 54-44 Gallup poll has forced liberals to move into this next stage. Under the headline "shattered", TNR is declaring that "the Palin pick is disheartening on so many levels." Josh Marshall, having posted the Gallup poll, has become noticeably despondent. Again - it's sad, but it's all part of the natural coping process.

5. Acceptance - From this political community? Yeah, not so much.

References:
* MS-NBC dropping Olbermann, Matthews? Update: NYT confirms they’re out as election-coverage anchors [Hot Air]
* Report: Obama Surrogates Urged To Mention Eagleton On Palin [Ambinder]
* The "Eagleton Scenario" [Joshua Green]
* McCain’s McGovern Moment [NYT]
* Intrade market sees 14.6 percent chance Palin withdrawn [Reuters]
* Why They Hate Her [Weely Standard]
* McCain-Palin becoming Palin-McCain? [AP]
* Clash of the Titans [Dowd]
* Charlie Gibson agreed to have his nuts cut out -- according to Josh Marshall. [Althouse]
* Poll: Convention lifts McCain over Obama [USA Today / Gallup]

Previously:
* CNN Spends Evening Searching For Democrat Who Can Explain Why Anti-Palin Smears Don't Reek Of Sexism. Fails. (Plus: Guess When "Shrill" Used To Be Sexist)
* New Leftist Meme: Palin "Solved Jewish Problem" That Obama Never Really Had (Plus: Anti-Palin "Buchanan Endorsement" Meme Also A Lie)
* Turns Out, The Devout Republican Evangelical Governor Of Alaska Has A Soft Spot For Israel

Michelle Malkin has a post-speech roundup of very respectable progressives who - having branded Palin a gender traitor - wallow in some pretty maniacal sexism. Exhibit A: Harry Reid's snarling reaction to Palin's speech:

Sarah Palin took a pointed shot at Reid in her high-stakes VP nomination speech. Palin noted that if Reid "can't stand John McCain" — a recent Reid quote in a Las Vegas newspaper — then McCain must be doing something right in Washington... Here's Reid spokesman Jim Manley's response, sent to Politico a few minutes ago: "Anyone who knows Sen. Reid knows he never backs down when he's fighting for what's right and that he always stands up to John McCain when he is wrong," Manley said. "Shrill and sarcastic political attacks may fire up the Republican base, but they don't change the fact that a McCain-Palin administration would mean four more years of failed Bush-Cheney policies."

Two of CNN's liberal commentators thought that "shrill" was just on this side of "hysterical" as a way to demean powerful women. Democratic lifers Paul Begala and Donna Brazile thought that this charge was just a way for right wingers to shut down legitimate criticism. Now I'm not sure if shrill is inherently sexist. I've used it across the board to describe the over-exuberance of everyone from American academics to global jihadists to Palestinian diplomats to - yes - feminists.

But if "hypocrisy" is the nadir of public argument - if it ostensibly justifies shameless attacks on 17 year old girls - then it would appear that the political left is being less than honest. The Washington Post ran a political blog that openly mocked a reader who tried to defend the mere suggestion that "shrill" isn't a sexist label when applied to Hillary. The far-left professor Stanley Fish said that it's positively hateful to trap Hillary in the catch-22 of either being "faking" or "shrill." The Boston Globe editorial staff echoed Fish and described the catch-22 as being between "a sniveling female" and "shrill." And the Columbia Journalism Review -all but openly stated that pundits who brand Hillary as "shrill" are playing on sexist stereotypes even if they're making legitimate points.

And wouldn't it be it be just too perfect if a certain much-aggrieved pro-Obama blogger specifically named a fake award after conservative women whom he considered too "shrill"?

After the jump, some particularly asinine denials from Larry King's two Democratic panels.

I got the photo this morning from one of the progressive listservs that I subscribe to, complete with the snarky subject line "ready to lead from day one." Because obviously any woman who wears a bikini is unqualified for leadership. A little searching confirmed that it's just what it looks like - an amateurish fake based on someone's pool party Flickr photo. Which isn't stopping pro-Obama bloggers from displaying some absolutely exquisite hypocrisy:

If you look very closely you can see a link to a post titled "McCain's ugly jokes AGAINST women." This screencap is from "The Bruce Blog," where the lead blogger is a self-described "yogi, a satirist, and militant." I don't think he's affiliated with the Obama campaign as much as he just really, really hearts it. He's got "Republicans for Obama", "Muslims for Obama", "Jews for Obama", and "Christians for Obama" widgets posted - so you can tell that he's also really, really into unity. Unless you're a woman who shamelessly wears bikinis and bitterly clings to guns. Then you're excluded on the basis of your gender, your social position, and your economic circumstances. Bummer.

Other leftist sites with nudge-wink debates over whether this is legitimate proof that Palin is just too female to be VP or whether it's merely fake but accurate proof: here and here and - surprise - here. Plus of course the flurry of emails humming their way through all the progressive corners of the internet. Begging the immediate question: how long...?

References:
* Sarah Palin in a Bikini! [Babble.com ]
* Malkin Derangement Syndrome [Malkin]

Previously:
* New Leftist Meme: Palin "Solved Jewish Problem" That Obama Never Really Had (Plus: Anti-Palin "Buchanan Endorsement" Meme Also A Lie)
* Turns Out, The Devout Republican Evangelical Governor Of Alaska Has A Soft Spot For Israel
* Obama Isn't Anti-Israel Because... Umm... Err... Because He Just Isn't OK?

Oh please:

Based on anecdotal evidence in a community I've covered for years, Sarah Palin's nomination has generated a bit of backlash among Jewish voters. Where John McCain was making inroads for his place in the secular, hawkish wing of the GOP, and where there were doubts about Obama, there's now concern and viral e-mails about Palin... And the fact that this tiny image is the best the official voice of Republican Jewry has to defend Palin is a mark that McCain may have just helped solve Obama's Jewish problem.

Obama already had a ton of Jewish voters behind him during the primaries, with each one giving a dumber reason than the next for their worshipful histrionics. By May he was already beating McCain 2-to-1 among Jewish voters - and that was before Clinton personally appealed to that last 15 percent of Jews who inevitably and always vote Democratic. There are a lot of reasons that about 80 percent of American Jews will vote for Obama/Biden this Fall, but Palin won't actually be one of them.

Which isn't to say that she won't be used as a post-hoc pretext by pro-Hillary Jewish Democrats. False anti-Palin smears can provide as good an excuse as any for "disillusioned" partisans to publicly discover a new-found appreciation for Obama. Helpfully for them, Wexler went on the record and said that Palin "endorsed Pat Buchanan for president in 2000." That smear is, how you say, false:

Wexler's comments appear based on a 1999 report that Palin wore a Buchanan button during Buchanan's visit to Wasilla, the town she then led as mayor. At that time, however, Palin had written a letter to the local paper explaining that she wore campaign buttons as a matter of courtesy when candidates came to visit the town. Palin was an official of the campaign of Steve Forbes, who like Buchanan was contending for the Republican presidential nomination. Buchanan said he recalls meeting Palin at a 1996 fund-raiser in Alaska, but no record of her donating or supporting Buchanan at that time has surfaced.

But apparently Wexler's less than honest pushback is making significant rounds via whisper campaigns and viral emails. Personally, I'm awash in a new-found post-partisan glow.

References:
* Jewish Republicans try to read Palin tea leaves [Politico]
* Ohio Jewish Democrats: "Hey, How About We Make The Most Anti-Israel Candidate Evuh The Next US President?" [MR]
* Terrorist Apologist James Zogby: It's Totally Awesome How Democratic Jews Boost Arab-American Political Platforms [MR]
* JStreet Tools Proudly Declare Their Inability To Distinguish Between Reality And What They'd Like Reality To Be [MR]
* Obama Beats McCain Among Jewish Voters [Gallup]
* Clinton rallies support for Obama, but many Jewish voters aren't convinced [JPost]
* McCain camp rebukes Buchanan claims [JTA]

Previously:
* More Democrats Repeat Anti-Semitic Canards, Embrace Particularly Anti-Semitic Sounding Parts Of Walt And Mearsheimer
* Why Don't Jewish Democrats Care That Their Party Hired A Radical Anti-Semitic Imam?
* Democratic Recommendations For Israeli and American Jews

Who knew, right? Still, nice catch by the RJC, who just sent this out over email. Hey - what's that over Governor Palin's shoulder?

Because that question was otherwise a total nail biter. There are nice zoom shots starting at about 6:50, and thus does MR get its first Palin banner. Meanwhile, leftists ostensibly concerned with Jewish issues came out swinging against Gov. Palin:

Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida lashed out Saturday at John McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, accusing her of supporting "Nazi sympathizer" Pat Buchanan, and branding the move an "affront to all Jewish Americans." "John McCain's decision to select a vice presidential running mate that endorsed Pat Buchanan for president in 2000 is a direct affront to all Jewish Americans," said a statement by Wexler.

Actually that's asinine, but at least guilt by association is in the ballpark of what might someday become almost an argument. Compared to the rest of the NJDC's incoherent anti-Republican smears it's a veritable mathematical proof. And I kind of like this new standard: giving money to Nazi sympathizers is a direct affront to Jewish Americans. Hmmm.

References:
* Evangelical Support of Israel - Now With Even More Good Will! [MR]
* OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Pastor John Hagee, Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church [FAQ: Debunking Liberal Myths About Evangelical Support For Israel] [MR]
* Democratic Rep.: Palin pick is 'direct affront to all Jewish Americans' [Ha'aretz]
* Heart-ache: Palin wants creationism taught in public schools? Update: Oh noes, Pat Buchanan!
* NJDC: Biden Is Pro-Israel Because... Ummm... Err... Because He Just Is OK? [MR]
* Biden and Iran [Corner]

Previously:
* Obama Isn't Anti-Israel Because... Umm... Err... Because He Just Isn't OK?
* Obama's Foreign Policy Advisers Not Exactly Fans Of The Jewish State (Plus: Brzezinski Snubs Israel After Tete-A-Tete With Assad)
* Top Obama Foreign Policy Adviser: No Seriously, We Are Totally Going To Screw Israel When We Get Into Power

Hey, maybe Obama really is the post-racial candidate:

The Black press is just as enthusiastic as African Americans in general at the prospect of a Black man becoming the next occupant of the White House. But Black newspaper owners also expected that they would be beneficiaries of what is already the most lavish campaign advertising budget in history: Barack Obama's bulging war chest. Instead, Black publishers say they have been locked out of Obama's advertising game plan - and even shunned in their attempts to cover the Obama operation. The Illinois Senator's handlers - and maybe the man himself - "think that we as black people are so anxious to get a black president that we'll support him no matter what," said one editor. "So why waste money on us?"... Publishers and editors of African-American newspapers - the beacons who live and breathe the blackness of their communities and who regulate the pulse of black America - are fighting mad at what has now become blatantly clear to them: The Democratic Party doesn't give a damn about them. The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign doesn't give a damn about them and, alack and alas, neither does the Barack Obama campaign.

If we were inclined toward generosity we'd suggest that this is another campaign tactic meant to insulate Obama against unfair attempts at ghettoization. But since we're not, we feel comfortable suggesting that Obama - for all that he's a relative political novice - has apparently been around long enough to pick up the Democratic Party's habit of taking black support for granted.

References:
* Does the Democratic party take blacks for granted? [Black Agenda Report]
* Key anti-identity-politics, anti-ghettoization passage in Obama's victory speech [Kausfiles]
* Does the Democratic party take blacks for granted? [Larry Elder]

Previously:
* Obama's Sophistication Is Actually Kind Of Unsophisticated, Incoherent
* CNN: Obama, Clinton "Clearly Uncomfortable" Criticizing Carter's Hamas Visit
* Obama Draws Line In The Sand: Invading Israel OK But Calling Hillary A Mean Name Is A Firing Offense

Before you ask - of course he's an Obama backer:

In the Charleston Gazette Sunday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, who has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said that Sen. John McCain "has a temper" and, according to the story, "believes McCain has become insensitive to many human issues. "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

First: fighter pilots don't drop bombs. They fight in the air against other fighter pilots. Ergo the name.

More importantly: McCain was tortured by North Vietnamese goons for five and a half years because he refused to sign multiple "confessions" alleging trumped up war crimes against civilians. So, without exageration - an Obama surrogate just adopted and repeated the identical smears that McCain's captors screamed at him while they broke his limbs and snapped off his teeth for half a decade. Hope and change.

UPDATE: Proving the old adage that glib sarcasm on things we know little about is a recipe for disaster (is that actually an adage?), reader David writes in with this gentle reproach:

Not so accurate, I think, was your specific criticism of his remark about fighter pilots. I think that McCain was shot down in a Skyhawk, which is a fighter-bomber and was on that occasion being used as a bomber. Whether, on other occasions, he engaged in man-to-man dogfights against MiGs, I don't know. Not that it would substantiate Rockefeller's charge in any case -- it's just that I suspect your statement is factually misleading.

And sigh.

References:
* Obama-Backing Senator Attacks McCain's War Experience [Political Punch]

Previously:
* Top Obama Adviser Explains Iraq War: Turns Out, It's The Jews' Fault. Again. (Plus: Ha'aretz Political Correspondent's Pro-Obama Apologism Getting Increasingly Desperate)
* Obama Draws Line In The Sand: Invading Israel OK But Calling Hillary A Mean Name Is A Firing Offense
* Top Obama Foreign Policy Adviser: No Seriously, We Are Totally Going To Screw Israel When We Get Into Power

Ladies and gentlemen, the Democratic base:

As the news of Barack Obama's pastor and his racist, America-hating comments slowly spreads (despite media's best effort to ignore it), you just knew the Kos Kidz would be spinning like Iranian centrifuges, didn't you?... Please let an old black man have his anger in the privacy of his church... Are you honestly going to tell me that this is the first time white America has seen and heard from black folks? Have we not heard what Rabbis routinely say about Palestinians across the US? Even our military is told to call Iraqis and Afghanis "ragheads" and "Ali Baba" as a part of their training.

The true mark of an anti-Semite is not, of course, that he harbors animosity towards specific Jews or towards Judaism in general. That's an opinion. An unseemly and maybe suspicious opinion, but an opinion. Anti-Semitism is more than that. It's a pathology. A pattern of thinking. A tic. What makes an anti-Semite an anti-Semite is his obsession with Jews. Bring up a topic and the anti-Semite's mind can't help but leap to a Jewish angle. It doesn't have to be an anti-Semitic angle although of course it often is. It's not necessarily about blaming Jews. But it is always about Jews. No matter what the question - no matter how far removed it is from Judaism or Israel, no matter how untenable the connection - the anti-Semite's answer will somehow tie in Jews and Judaism.

Global warming? Jews.
Darfur? Jews.
Iraq? Jews.

And now: Obama's conspiratorial and hysterical minister? Jews.

UPDATE: Hawaii? Jews.

References:
* Anti-Semitism As Obsession (The "What Would Make You Care About That" Question) [MR]
* Jimmy Carter: The Only Reason It Seems Like I Ignore Darfur And Obsess About Israel Is Because Darfur Isn't A Genocide [MR]
* John Mearsheimer - Not Anti-Semitic. Just Anti-Semiticish [MR]

Previously:
* Isn't It About Time For Democratic Jews To Stop Electorally Empowering The Ahmadinejad-Supporting Left?
* Memo To Democratic Jews: "US Engagement In The Peace Process" Is Bad For Israel, Barack Obama Edition
* The Democratic Party and American Jews: The Divorce Is Going To Be Ugly

Allah doesn't appreciate the use of the kids as political props, but seems to think that Jeri was smooth on Islam and Fred was nearly pitch-perfect on Dobson:

The WaPo campaign blog is talking about a broad Romney collapse. That would be awesome. The problem with that frame, though, is reality. Still plenty of time till the primaries.

References:
* Video: Jeri speaks — and Fred smacks Dobson [HA]
* Fred and Jeri Thompson talk to Sean Hannity [pundital / YouTube]
* Romney's September Slide [WaPo]

Previously:
* Mere Rhetoric: Evangelicals To Dobson, Media: Actually, We Really Like This Fred Thompson Guy
* Fred Thompson For President
* Wednesday Fred Update - Fred Thompson Closing In Florida, Jeri Thompson Still A "Trophy Wife"

Believe:

Rudy Giuliani leads the Republican Presidential Primary in Florida with 29% support in the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey. Fred Thompson is in second place earning 23% of the vote. A month ago, Giuliani had a thirteen-point advantage over Thompson, 30% to 17%. Two months ago, Giuliani and Thompson were virtually tied for the lead in Florida. Mitt Romney has lost ground in the Sunshine State over the past month. He currently attracts support from 11% of Likely Primary Voters, down from 15% in August. John McCain has moved in the opposite direction and is now supported by 12%, a gain of five points since our last survey.

Here's a question that no one thought we'd be asking in September: is there a chance that Mitt Romney will drop out before John McCain? Or is Florida different because it has a large Hispanic immigrant community? That shouldn't make a difference though, because the Cuban community very explicitly differs from other left-leaning Hispanic communities.

In other news, Spartanburg County GOP Chairman Rick Beltram seems like a nice enough guy. A very, very stupid nice enough guy:

Last week, bloggers had a field day when Beltram referred to Jeri Thompson, wife of former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, as a "trophy wife" three times during a speech to Spartanburg Republicans. Beltram, who sat next to Thompson when her husband came to Greenville the week before, later said he was trying to compliment her, but it came out wrong.

Maybe a public speaking class or two is in order before he ever says words in public again?

References:
* Election 2008: Florida Republican Primary [Rasmussen]
* Beltram Wants No More Would-Be Republicans [Campaigns and Elections]

Previously:
* Evangelicals To Dobson, Media: Actually, We Really Like This Fred Thompson Guy
* Fred Thompson For President
* Fred Thompson Oppo Research Strongly Correlated With Fred Thompson Winning Polls. Which He's Doing.

Allah reports that there are to be house parties held throughout the land in celebration. MR will even be holding our own house party in support of the campaign. Except by "house" we mean "bar" and by "party" we mean "tab". But it will be in support of the campaign - upon that you can rely.

Hey, what do you think the odds are that the AP writeup included a drive-by slam at Jeri Thompson? Answer: Yes:

"Consternation about the active role of Thompson's wife, Jeri."
"Consternation about the active role of Thompson's wife, Jeri."
Where have we seen that line before?

Oh yeah, earlier this week when the AP used the exact same line to trash Jeri. This isn't scandalous or anything, but it does show a certain degree of total mind boggling laziness on the part of AP hacks. If you're going to try to get a meme to congeal, the least you can do is not use the exact. same. line. We're not asking for objectivity here. Just a little effort.

Seriously - this line was so obviously a poorly written awkward smear that we bolded it the last time that the AP dropped it into their "news reporting". And now they did it again - because apparently no anti-Republican smear is too ham fisted to use just once.

References:
* Report: Fred plans to announce plans to announce — on September 6th; Update: Confirmed [Hot Air]
* Thompson to Announce Bid Sept. 6 [AP via Forbers]
* Fake Fred! Campaign Launch Video Hits YouTube - Complete With Charming "He's A Nazi" Clip [MR]

Previously:
* Stupid Journalism Tricks: The NYT's Atttack On Jeri Thompson Is Sexist Even Though They Quoted Other People
* NPR In Denial About Sexism On the Left, Gets MR Exactly Wrong On Jeri Thompson
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

You have to hand it to them - the extra cleverness of the registered 'imwithfredblog' username adds a touch that would otherwise be lacking from this political smear job. Inquiring minds want to know:

(1) who in the Thompson campaign needs to get fired for not having the basic common sense to snap up relevant domains and usernames?
(2) Is this evidence that the Thompson campaign isn't ready to launch?
(3) Are they ever going to be ready to launch?

In other Fred-related news, it seems like the press has finally settled on an anti-Jeri meme they're ready to go with:

So that settles that. This lovely little editorializing brought to you by the good folks at the Associated Press. And it's brought to you despite the fact that - as Allah pointed out yesterday - the recent news out of the campaign implies that her power is not really all that. Eh. They don't really worry about accuracy when they report the news - why should it be a concern when they're commenting while they're pretending to report the news?

References:
* Fred Thompson Campaign Launch Video [imwithfredblog / YouTube]
* Thompson Loses Another Staffer From Would-Be Campaign
* Journalists Confused - Is Jeri Thompson A Dumb Bimbo Or An Evil Genius? [MR]
* Fred thinking about October now?

Previously:
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo
* Stupid Journalism Tricks: The NYT's Atttack On Jeri Thompson Is Sexist Even Though They Quoted Other People
* NPR In Denial About Sexism On the Left, Gets MR Exactly Wrong On Jeri Thompson

The slow transition from "Jeri Thompson is a bimbo" through "isn't it totally weird how lots of people may or may not think Jeri Thompson is a bimbo" to "Jeri Thompson is an evil genius" is almost complete:

You can see the tension - is she an interfering wench or the next leftist Darth Vader photoshop? It depends on how well the Thompson campaign does. If the left can't explain Thompson's popularity (because why would anyone support Republicans?), the meme will slide to "evil genius". If the Thompson campaign flounders, the ostensible progressives on the left will be more than happy to settle for "see, we told you she was a sorority girl gender traitor bimbo".

Seething and resentful hypocrisy - always in fashion.

References:
* NPR In Denial About Sexism On the Left, Gets MR Exactly Wrong On Jeri Thompson
* Stupid Journalism Tricks: The NYT's Attack On Jeri Thompson Is Sexist Even Though They Quoted Other People [MR]
* Who Will Be the Karl Rove Of the 2008 Campaign? [WaPo]
* Estrich: Lonely older women might take revenge on Jeri by voting against Fred [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo
* Yet Another Democratic Leader Meets With Yet Another Totalitarian Thug Dedicated To Wiping Out Israel

We love this trick. If you're a politically-motivated journalist who wants to publish something unjustifiable and unseemly - anything from hysterical claims about Israeli atrocities to how Jeri Thompson is a bimbo - you have several options. You could do the right thing and, you know, not print it. But it's election season, and there's an agenda to be pushed. So that's a no-go. Next option: make the story about how other people are saying it. If it's good enough for trashing Israel it's certainly good enough for America's next First Lady:

For the record, yes the question is both crass and sexist. But they're not saying she's a trophy wife. They're just saying that lots of other people are saying she's a trophy wife. Clever!
It's the equivalent of really unsophisticated push polling - "if rumors that Hillary Clinton has a gay black son who kicks puppies turn out to be true, would that make you: more likely to vote for her, less likely to vote for her, or have no effect?"

It's also, by the by, in deep tension with the left's other attacks on Thompson - to say nothing of being based on par for the reality-based-community course shoddy facts. The other "Fred can't get the values voters" meme is that he was a roving bachelor during his stint in DC. And indeed, he did seem to have some of Washington's fitter birds hanging off his arm at various times. But if that's the case - and here's where we get a little pedantic - then his relationship with Jeri Kehn can't be about her looks. Despite dating all sorts of stunners, Thompson seemed perfectly content to remain a bachelor - until he met Jeri. Certainly he gave no indication that he was ready to settle down and start a second family - not a path that bachelors are particularly well-known to take. How did Mrs. Thompson make an honest man of him? We're thinking it might have had something to do with her impressive professional success, her considerable charm, and the deep mutual affection that the two of them share.

Incidentally: never question us in front of the children again.

References:
* Beit Hanoun Meme Watch - (3) Stupid Headline Tricks - Hey Listen, Calling It A "Massacre" Is Still Bias, Even If You Think You're Being Clever By Quoting Someone [MR]
* Will Her Face Determine His Fortune? [NYT]
* NYT on Fred: “Is America ready for a president with a trophy wife?” Update: Nixon called Fred “dumb as hell” [Hot Air]
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo [MR]

Previously:
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Fred Thompson Oppo Research Strongly Correlated With Fred Thompson Winning Polls. Which He's Doing.

Fred Thompson leads in a new South Carolina straw poll, and Allah has game on why it's not just a Southern thing. You can also work it from the other direction, and gauge Fred's potential run by looking at what his opponents are doing. According to Melanie Morgan, they're taking him quite seriously:

Just to give you a very crude measure of potential interest, we're getting insane hits from people Googling Jeri Thompson nee Kehn. You'll remember her from when we predicted she'd become a target of sexism from ostensible anti-sexists. Then when she did become a target of sexism from ostensible anti-sexists, NPR went into rock-back-and-forth-in-the-corner denial.

There are a lot of people searching for information about Mrs. Thompson, and some of them are searching pretty deep. There arehundreds of hits for "kehn", which if you're using Google doesn't appear anywhere near the first three pages as a MR post.

You imagine some of that is just plain old curiosity. Some more is coming from conservatives looking for whatever they can find about a Republican candidate that they can get excited about. But not a little is oppo research - from other GOP people, from a very few Dem campaigns, and from whatever passes as "flexing their muscles" for the netroots. Really - this is how they talk.

References:
* SC poll has Obama, Thompson as frontrunners [Real Cities]
* South Carolina poll: Fred! 25, Rudy 21, Mitt 11; Update McCain's, Kyl's favorable ratings down [Hot Air]
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo [MR]
* NPR In Denial About Sexism On the Left, Gets MR Exactly Wrong On Jeri Thompson [MR]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson For President... Now
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Friday Thompson Fix, LA Times Buzz Edition

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Last April we predicted that Republican uber-consultant Jeri Thompson would face a wave of sexism from anti-sexists on the left, in the same way that Republican blacks face racism from leftist anti-racists and Republican gays face heterosexism from leftist anti-heterosexists. The post was relatively short, almost the entire thing being about how this is a pervasive leftist tactic aimed at conservative women across the board:

Here's NPR about the post:

Yeah, that's exactly what we said. If Fred Thompson was 20 years younger then the left wouldn't be denigrating his wife's sexuality. That's obviously the implication of our post.

Tools.

References:
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo [MR]
* Remark about Thompson's Wife Sparks Outcry [NPR]

Previously:
* The Leftist Posts on London You Haven't Seen Yet - But You Will
* The Essential Stupidity of Leftist Displays of "Solidarity"
* The Sexism Scandal You're Not Hearing About: Democratic Representative Resigns After Being Called A Whore... By Another Democrat

It's interesting to see what happens when the mask of "anti-Zionism" falls off and Jew-haters start being honest in their hatred of Jews:

If "the Jews" are being raised to become suicide bombers, they've got the worst teachers on the planet. As to the holy sites thing, oh come on. Do click through and take in the rest of the openly anti-Semitic crazy. She even drops a little bit of old school "the true Jews are Christians". That's how just plain crazy she is.

But she's not coming out of nowhere. And she's not speaking just for herself.

References:
* Islam and other Peoples' holy sites

Previously:
* Do They Just Get To Make Things Up Now?
* The LA Times: "Islam gets concessions; infidels get conquered." Ummm... Wow
* Bastards

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers
* Israpundit

They're unhinged:

Let's imagine that the members of Rage Against The Machine are anarchists. They're actually socialists, but whatever, it doesn't mater.

Their listeners are coffee-shop slumming white trust fund kids who wear Che t-shirts to comp lit classes that their parents pay 30K+ a year to send them to. Of course the Kos Kidz see their own pathetic, thuggish armchair activism in Rage's lyrics. Of course they do. It's like talking about how Ward Churchill is being persecuted for speaking out against tyranny, except with better bass. Hannity is right: the environment of contemporary liberal (activism) has grown positively toxic. Righteous indignation has become a proud justification for physical brutality.

For the record: we believe that they meant it. In their mind, they're as brave as the oh-so-silenced academics who risk their academic career every time they criticize Israel on college campuses. They want to be martyrs? Let's have the Secret Service investigate them for threatening to assassinate the President of the United States. Then they can be martyrs. Everybody wins.

References:
* Coulter Complains About Hate Speech [newshoundsblog / YouTube]

Previously:
* Video: Rush and Ms. Coulter On the THHNH
* Coulter vs. Clark, Coulter Funny, Clark Not
* Early Morning Chuckle - Coulter On the Dem Debate Edition

There's something very special about contemporary feminists on the political left. Specifically, the way they seem to feel that giving lip service to abortion rights absolves them from having to not be total sexists. Take the comments section of Wonkette's recent post on a Michelle Malkin video:

We're not cherry-picking - those are 4 of the first 5 comments. At least when pro-sex feminists talk about porn, they're pretending to actually care about women.

Incidentally, we would go after Wonkette for the post itself - which is not what one would describe as progressive - but it passes the laugh test. Also, we had the exact same thought when we first saw the video on Hot Air. It was a strange choice to convey that particular view on the Democrats' defeatist legislation (via: Gateway Pundit).

Full disclosure: I blog for Gridskipper, which is owned by Gawker Media. Gawker Media also owns Wonkette

References:
* Malkin's Site Now Requires Adult ID Check [Wonkette]

Previously:
* The Ugly Left - Sarcastically Praying For the Vice President's Health Edition
* The American Left Gets Preachy And Hypocritical. Yes, We Understand This Is Not News.
* Dialogue On the Left

Zombietime just posted no less than four videos of pro-impeachment moonbats engaging in pro-impeachment moonbattery. You should click through and watch every entertaining second of every video, but this one should be of special interest to our readers. Two things: (1) terrorist chic is stupid when you're a 20-something trust fund hipster - after you grow up, it just becomes sad and pathetic (2) this woman is a total idiot. Enjoy:

They're not anti-war. There's just on the other side.

References:
* zombietimedotcom [YouTube]

Previously:
* Kucinich Announces Impeachment Charges Against Cheney
* Blogish Anti-Semitic Stereotypes, Now With More Funny
* Matthew Yglesias: Anti-Semitic Genocidal Maniacs Are Hip, Terrorists Are Fashionable (UPDATED AND BUMPED: Yglesias Article From Today Predictably Anti-Semitish)

Empty airhead is one of the nicest things that the Kos Kidz will be saying about the smart, successful - and yes, beautiful - Jeri Thompson. David Brody of CBN has more:

You can go here to see a more glamorous picture. And to understand why there's going to be cognitive dissonance among the far and academic left. If you think that the disgusting comments about Malkin's body and Coulter's sexuality are bad - wait until you have to listen to ostensibly progressive grassroots activists reducing this successful career woman to her chest size. (photo via Virginia Virtucon)

References:
* Fred Thompson's Secret Weapon
* Search Results Display (042906Thompson)

Previously:
* The Ugly Left All Over
* The Ugly Left - Sarcastically Praying For the Vice President's Health Edition
* Democrats are Vulgar, Republicans are Funny

On any other day, we wouldn't dare to pester you with this totally meaningless story - the result of what happens when you let inconsequential moonbats off the reservation. But it's Friday, so the humor value trumps the total lack of anything compelling or newsworthy:

It's nice that he found himself a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Now if we could only get Democrats to actually read the Constitution, we'd be halfway toward creating a utopia of harmonious bipartisanship.

What an idiot.

Oh hey, before we forget - let's get some more Democrats into office. Maybe we can all work together to make Kucinich into a nationally prominent and powerful figure. That'll be days and days of blogging material. Then our eyes and ears will start bleeding, and we'll be sad.

References:
* Kucinich announces impeachment charges against Vice President Cheney

Previously:
* Initial, Visceral Bitterness - (1) Progressives Had A Great Night. Really Fantastic.
* [Video] What You Get When You Vote For Democrats - Empowering Conspiracy Theory Wackos
* More Americans Blame Bush than Clinton for What?

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

A little while ago we penned a not very respectful post about a group of idiot academic musicologists trying to prevent the US from playing loud music at terrorists (because it hurts their ears... aww). Now the actual musicians are getting into the act of trying to prevent the US from winning being patriotic dissenters:

Do you get the feeling that, far from being anti-war, some musicians are actually on the other side? Shouldn't they be spending their time punishing grandmothers and toddlers for downloading copies of Coldplay?

References:
* Liberal Academics: Making Terrorists Listen To Bad Music Is Off-Limits [MR]
* Fighting torture with copyright [The Register]

Previously:
* Petition To Support Ambassador Mazel
* What's Good For the Goose...
* Equal Opportunity Terrorists

Of all the excuses to put on the blood libel known as I Am Rachel Corrie, pretending that you're educating somebody has to be the very dumbest:

Rachel Corrie was in no way extraordinary, nor was she particularly ethical. She was a soppy-eyed, droopy-faced terrorist enabler with a weak will and an identity crises temporarily solved by substituting her incoherent passion about the "plight of the Palestinians" for genuine thought. She was prone to outbursts of the worst kind of empty thuggish boasting, going half way across the world to burn American and Israeli flags because it made her fantasy of being a "resistance fighter" more "authentic". If she hadn't been accidentally killed, she would sitting in her parents' house fabricating tales of glorious anti-Israel battles on MySpace to impress other soppy-eyed, droopy-faced teenage girls who want to drop out of the system, stop shaving their legs because of the patriarchy, and march arm-in-arm with the disempowered in glorious revolution. So yeah, we suppose that her point of view has a right to be expressed - but with a billion blogs of pathetic activists writing poetry about how desperately awful the world is and how their parents just don't understand them, do we really need one more?

Who cares if it was an accident or not? She was guarding a terrorist tunnel. She had the opportunity to move. She counted on the Israeli army that she spit on to protect her in a way that no Palestinian terrorist would ever spare an Israeli. But having never really been told that the universe won't go out of its way to protect her from the consequences of her stupidity, she didn't bother to check whether the soldier could even see her. He couldn't. She died trying to help the Palestinians develop a terrorist infrastructure to blow up Israeli children. No pity. Sic semper ill-raised burnout hippies living out their half-formed, latently anti-Semitic fantasies of violence and martyrdom.

Anyway, this article is about how Seattle Jewish organizations are rising to the challenge of answering the artistic left's anti-Israel propaganda. Click through if you're interested...

References:
* Rachel Corrie, spotlighted yet again [JPost]

Previously:
* OK, Sure She's A Terrorist Enabler - But The Kids Love Her
* What You Get When You Vote For Democrats - Why Would John Edwards Say Something As Stupid As "Israel Is the Greatest Threat To World Peace"?
* American Liberal Activists Are So Cute, With Their Smugness And Their Superiorly And Their Not Being Very Smart

You really have to ask yourself just how far off the reservation you've wandered when you're blasting MoveOn for being a tool of the war machine:

That's because the progressive ideas were totally batshit crazy. Like really insane batshit crazy stuff. Not even your normal batshit crazy. We kept expecting them to attach an amendment demanding full disclosure of Bush's complicity in 9/11. Alas, as in so many other things liberal, we were disappointed. But not disappointed enough to stop us from pointing you to this more extensive critique of Democratic populism.

References:
* Tell MoveOn & Progressive Caucus It's Time To Show Spine Send Pelosi Back to the Drawing Board... (and have Representatives Lee, Woolsey, and Waters help her.)
* Initial, Visceral Bitterness - (1) Progressives Had A Great Night. Really Fantastic. [MR]

Previously:
* WaPo Discovers Egyptian Anti-Israel Movements, Gets Story Wrong Anyway
* Bad Logic and Bad Ideology
* Some De-Facto Republican Acceptance of Gays: Not Ideal, But We'll Take It

One of the problems with following the Los Angeles blogosphere is that many fine critics of music, food, and entertainment are also pedantic, liberal ideological backpatters. No sooner do we get done citing LAVoice.org in the last post than we find this:

Yeah, that's exactly why we live in an atmosphere of heightened paranoia and terrorist threats. Because of all the terrorism that's happened in the US since Bush went into Iraq. Exactly.

Previously: How Stupid Does Liberal Make-Believe Have to Get Before the Jewish Journal Won't Publish It?, Liberal Think Tanks, What Liberal Academic Bias?

From an interview in Sytle.com:

Strong words for the Vice President of an administration that is still settling on the best excuse for letting the greatest threat to modern civilization grow under their watch. Some days it's "the Republicans were mean about Clinton's perjury" and other days it's "we didn't retaliate for the Cole bombing because we were sucking up to Arafat".All while allowing North Korea to get the bomb in order to prove their "nuanced diplomacy is better than conservative warmongering" sophistication. So maybe it's a little too early to be giving lectures about incompetence and moral cowardice, given that the Bush administration's (admittedly many) missteps have come while trying to cope with the results of the Clinton/Gore 1990s vacation from history.

Previously: World Lectures Israel on How To Achieve Israeli Security, Treating Genocidal Fanatics Like Statesmen Is A Bad Idea (When Did This Become Controversial?), OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Dick Morris - (1) Introduction

Yeah, but if you think about it, Vice President Cheney probably had it coming:

It goes on for several more smirking and insufferable paragraphs. Don't try to figure out if more disrespect is being shown to the Vice President or to religious people in general. And you know what the real frustration is? These people actually think they're funny - and it's the pathetic and parochial echo chamber of DKos and the HuffPost that makes them think that.

On this Thanksgiving Eve, we're thankful for the blogosphere - which has replaced academia as a place where the petty ugliness of people like Tony Hendra can be bloviated more or less harmlessly.

Previously: The Ugly Left On Steele, Fetishistic Defenses of Artistic Freedom and Racism, Some JBloggers Call For Other JBloggers To Be Less Mean. Isn't That Just So Spunky Of Them?

Not to get all political on a day like today, but we can't recall a time - at least not in recent memory - when there has been such an incredible gap between a significant subgroup's self-image and what one might call "reality".

PSA: parents take note. We know that your child doesn't do very well in school. It must be tough on you to watch them try so hard just to pass. But you can't keep telling them that it's "the school's fault" or that "they're smart in other ways" or how "it doesn't matter how well they do as long as they try". We don't care what the books say. There are more important things in life than "self-esteem".