At the request of members, I am restarting those "Tales from the Dark UnderBelly Of the Beast"-- the stories and issues that the press and media either ignore, won't even talk about, or will mention once and forevermore claim "it's old news..."
Naturally, some will be stories which interest me, or things I think we all need to be aware of.
I am experimenting with a minor change in presentation- when I can, I will cut to
with a keyword or two and see what kind of links to "mainstream" stories I can find in contrast to what we see here and on other sites.
Rather than go back and rehash old links, I'll give you links to the original posts here:
FreeSpeechers
~ SHAIDLE– Reminder: Al & Mike Show Tomorrow with Mark Steyn …. (shotgun)
~ DAVID WARREN on what is allowed in Canuckistan: “A fact becomes a lie when it is politically incorrect. A lie becomes a fact when it is politically correct. When these become the prevailing advertising standards, let the buyer beware.” …. (davidwarrenonline)
~ THE SHAIDLE: “Thanks for your good wishes on my upcoming wedding” …. (fivefeetoffury)
~ MITRA KERMANI: Just a little change of pace from all this HRC brouhaha. I trust everyone remembers Ms. Kermani? …. (timeimmortal.net)
~ A BOOK TO PONDER– Christophobia: The Real Reason Behind Hate Crime Legislation by Tristan Emmanuel …. (freedompress.ca)
~ BLAZING CATFUR: “Is Catholicism now a hate crime in Canada?” A Letter to the Justice Minister about the Canadian Religious Authorities …. (blazingcatfur.blog)
~ VIA TIME IMMORTAL– “Why did we have to wait for Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali…?” …. (timeimmortal.net)
~ FRESH STEAMING MITRA droppings over at Blazing Catbox. In said pile, Everything Is Explained For You. Enjoy …. (blazingcatfur.blog)
~ CURT JESTER– When orthodoxy is a crime: “Canon Lawyer Peter Vere covers Fr. Alphonse de Valk, a Basilian priest and pro-life activist known throughout Canada for his orthodoxy who is currently being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission” …. (splendoroftruth.com)
~ NEW REALITIES FROM Aussie Sex Commish: One More For The List …. (downwitheverybody)
~ UNPLEASANT Finnish Blogger Gets Two Years “Insensitivity Against Islam”.. The fascists are taking over …. (atlasshrugs2000, gatesofvienna.blog)
~ COMING SOON: Annual Burlington Conference 2008– The Threat at the Door: Islam, October 17 - 18, 2008 …. (ecpcentre.org)
~ BRIGITTE BARDOT convicted of hate crimes …. (dustmybroom.com)
~ THE RESULT of no longer having editorial space on a weekly basis …. (lowercasem.blog)
~ SKIP THE UTOPIA! — “One of Burke’s insights in Reflections is that the revolution was unnecessary. The situation in France was bad in the 1780s, but it was not so bad as to require the expedients called for by the revolutionaries. Louis XVI was amenable to reform and figures such as Turgot and Necker laid out plans and sparked debate. There were mechanisms at hand that made peaceful change possible, why go to extremes? America in the 1960s was riven by many injustices, yet it was also the freest and richest nation on earth, surely it can’t have been that bad to require its middle class sons and daughters to engage in violence or anarchic forms of paganism - hippiedom. Canada before Trudeau was not a perfect place, yet did we really need Trudeau? Did we really need a Jacobin in hippie clothing?” …. (godscopybook.blog)
~ BIRMINGHAM: What the street preachers really said …. (blogs.telegraph)
Are Muslims more intolerant than Christians?
~ FIXING HORRIBLY RACIST KKKanada, One Municipality At A Time …. (downwitheverybody)
~ NO DHIMMITIDE– Let Us Do Nothing While Yet There Is Time; Welcome to the State of Fear …. (nodhimmitude.blog)
~ SOCON.CA– For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Church of Victimolatry …. (socon.ca)
~ CHRISTIAN FINED for refusing to officiate at imaginary “wedding” …. (fivefeetoffury)
~ LESS SMUG, AMERICANOS– “DNC is the HRC of the United States: Just like Canada’s human rights commissions that make up rules as they go along, the Democratics are making it up as it suits them when deciding how to count votes in that party’s interminable primary. As Robert F. Maxwell notes at NRO” …. (soberingthoughts.blog)
~ BUT IS IT A HUMAN RIGHT? Bestiality ‘OK if animal approves’; Pro-family crusader looks to PETA to take a stand against bestiality promoter …. (freedominion.com)
~ EN FRANCAIS– Liberté d’expression: L’islam menace nos libertés et nos droits. Et nos élites dhimmis collaborent! “Partout en Occident, l’islam s’attaque à nos libertés. Des journalistes et des caricaturistes sont poursuivis, des musées annulent des expositions, des musulmans menacent de détruire des sculptures, des bas-reliefs et des fresques. Des écrivains sont menacés de mort. Et nos élites s’agenouillent. Aux Pays-Bas, un caricaturiste a été arrêté avec un grand déploiement de force (10 policiers), sa maison a été perquisitionnée, son ordinateur, ses téléphones portables, carnets d’adresse et agendas, ses clefs USB et de nombreux dessins ont été saisis.” 2 juin, par Annie Lessard, Marc Lebuis …. (pointdebasculecanada)
~ MAGISTATS– “Third time lucky for Wally Oppal?” …. (magicstatistics.com)
~ THOUGHT-CONTROL– “Nova Scotia School Board disbanded by Education Minister Over Mandated Anti-Christian Program– “Healthy Relationships for Youth” advocates for complete gender “equality” through suggesting gender analysis by way of ‘role-play’ exercises. The second section of the program is designated expressly to expose ‘gender stereotypes’, such as the need for women to be “lady-like” or for men to “act like men”. The students are also subject to exercises to increase awareness and acceptance of homosexual tendencies in themselves and in their peers, and to keep in mind that failure to accept homosexual lifestyles is a type of “violence” against these individuals” …. (lifesitenews)
Jihad, Lawfare, Religious Bullying, &c.
~ DUST MY BROOM: “Please let Said Jaziri come home… “When self-described moderate Imam Said Jaziri (former imam of Montreal’s Al Qods Mosque) was deported back to Tunisia last October after two years of drama and door frame grabbing he described his trip home as torture and was a nightmare that would take him a lifetime to get over with” …. (dustmybroom)
~ UK: CHURCH OF ENGLAND Accused of Censoring Debate on Islam, Decides to Focus on Being Better Dhimmis …. (Wz)
~ SHIRE NETWORK NEWS PODCAST– “Podcast previews New, Improved Durban II - This time with 23.7% More Jew Hatred” …. (shirenetworknews)
~ THE FREEDOM OF ISLAM– “In a step forward, Algeria is fining and jailing Christians for worshipping illegally … at least they aren’t stoning or hanging them. Western leftists must feel relieved” …. (cjunk.blog)
~ ANDREW BOSTOM: Textbook Islamic Antisemitism …. (andrewbostom.org)
~ AIDING THE JIHAD & SHARI’A– “Polygamist leader uses the religious persecution card” …. (dustmybroom)
~ INDONESIA ARRESTS 59 jihadists for attack on rally for religious tolerance …. (jihadwatch.org)
~ FUN WITH TENTACLES: “Mullah Supporter Attacks Iranian-American Human Rights Activists” …. (gatewaypundit.blog)
~ WONDERFUL ALGERIA: Police Publicly Interrogate Ex-Muslim for Converting, “Why did you Forsake Islam?”; Australian Islamists: Death for ex-Muslims …. (Wz)
~ UNSPEAKABLE CRIMES– Brigitte Bardot convicted of provoking hatred: Paris court issues $23,325 fine for writing Muslims destroying France …. (wnd)
~ JEW-HATING HELPERS– Nation of Islam activists on Obama camp payroll; on the other hand, “At Daily Kos, the denizens are discussing whether Barack Obama has fallen under the spell of the “Zionist Lobby” …. (wnd, lgf)
~ LONDONISTAN– UK: Candidate to Head London Police, “Time to Start Thinking the Unthinkable, Negotiate With al-Qaeda” ….
~ CURIOUSER? “It seems that someone from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is taking an interest in a certain internet personality that I periodically mention” …. (timeimmortal)
~ SCARY REPORT: Fighters From Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Enrolled in Elite US Run Training Course …. (Wz)
~ A PROPOSED CHARTER of Muslim Understanding, by Sam Solomon …. (islam-watch)
~ TERRORIST Khadr ‘well-liked’ in Guantanamo: Ottawa officials …. (freedominion.com)
~ ACTIVIST DHIMMI By Paul Sperry: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That appears to be the strategy of GOP powerbroker Grover Norquist in his wicked project to dress Islamists up as patriotic Republicans so they can infiltrate the government” …. (noiri.blog)
~ THE SHAIDLE: “UK opens more Muslim-friendly flats with special toilets” …. (fivefeetoffury)
~ THOSE NO-GO ZONE PREACHERS– Birmingham evangelists: Were they Christian soldiers? …. (blogs.telegraph)
~ SUE PHILLIPS, DHIMMI– “Another state-owned media employee makes sideways move from Al-CBC to Al-Jazeera” …. (p2bc)
~ UBER ALLES! “Salafi Jihadi Groups to Join Forces and Fight Hamas- Seeking Full Implementation of Sharia, Gaza Declared an Islamic Emirate” …. (Wz)
~ JIHADWATCH: “Calling jihadists by their right name” …. (JiWa)
~ BRIT-GOV ANNOUNCES it Favors Issuing Sharia Compliant Bonds…. To fund the future, Islamic Emirate of Great Britain? …. (weaselzippers)
~ ISLAMO-SUPREMACY ALERT– Jordan summons Danish cartoonists to answer blasphemy charges …. (Various)
~ HAMSA: Hundreds Rally for Yemeni Editor Facing Death Penalty …. (mypetjawa)
~ ISLAMIC THINKERS at Israel Day in New York …. (lgf)
~ ONTARIO MPP wants polygamy probe …. (dustmybroom)
~ NORWEGIAN Paper Prints Its Own Mohammed Cartoon to Protest Bombing of Danish Embassy? …. (Wz)
~ GEERT WILDER’S AMAZING SPEECH via Atlas2000 on video, at the Danish Parliament Building …. (Various)
~ LAWSUITS galore …. (eurociao.com)
~ SCARAMOUCHE: “Wake up!: Scholar and historian of Islam, jihad, and dhimmitude, Andrew Bostom, issues a wake up call to a Jewstablisment which harbours delusions of building bridges with people who despise them” …. (scaramouche)
~ PALESTINIAN-LOVING Paleobama: Poser, Imposter or Plant? …. (atlasshrugs2000)
~ ASSOCIATION of Newspapers Blasts UN Human Rights Council …. (downwitheverybody)
~ NOT NEWS: Pakistanis Protest Danish Mohammed Cartoons. News: On the Same Day Their Embassy was Bombed. Denmark: Pakistan’s Ambassador Blames Newspapers for Embassy Bombing “Are Satisfied With What it has Unleashed?” …. (Wz)
~ GATES OF VIENNA: “Fitna” Translated into Arabic …. (gatesofvienna.blog)
~ MAYBE IT’S A BRAIN-THING? Neuroscience of sarcasm …. (boingboing)
~ IT’S A WAH-BOO-HOO THING: The British Royal Marines have apologized to Malaysia for this ad. It hurt their feelings …. (rjjago)
==========================================
We Invite You To Form Your Own Judgement
Special thanks to Richard Evans for putting this together. The original, full length version is here.
Posted by Kate at
2:57 PM |
Comments (31)How can this unbelievable farce be allowed to continue another single day? It's not good enough to fire them all. They must be fully prosecuted, publicly humiliated and incarcerated for a good long time.
To think that these guys get paid OVER $100,000 a year
( Kangaroo Courts pay well . . $183k )
by the taxpayers to rob Canadians of their free speech rights is beyond belief!
May every village on the planet be blessed with an Ezra Levant, The Righteous Man, who won't be cowered. It's breathtaking watching tribunal toady Ian Fine wither under the avalanche of damning facts. He's got a whimpering demeanor.
We are doomed as a free society if we don't shut down as we find it all manner of USSR style state thuggery, and, there is nothing operating in North America as smarmy and totalitarian as the CHRC's. This is not just a Canadian problem. That idiot Bill Richardson set up one of these kanagaroo courts in my old state.
Day Three
"10:55 AM They’re back, and they’ve decided they’re going to hear her evidence. Buffy scholars everywhere breathe a sigh of relief."
Update: Let there be no mistake about the larger goal here:
"We anticipate that success in this case will provide the impetus for prohibiting discriminatory publications in the other provinces.”
Coyne's commentors are scouring the net, of course. A previous quote from the expert witness for the plaintiffs, currently on the stand;
"It has a lot to do with the difference in belief about freedom … the essential difference is how freedom is understood. I believe that my freedom ends where the dignity and respect for all the prophets begins.” (—Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub)
More about Ayoub at tthe MIlitant Islam Monitor. "Temple University has rejected a suspicious offer of $1.5 million by a Saudi tied, Islamist organization called the International Institute of Islamic Thought [IIIT], to endow a chair in Islamic studies headed by current Temple religion professor Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub."
Coyne has noted that Mark Steyn is in the room.
Posted by Kate at
2:56 PM |
Comments (9)
Thoughts from the road - Ezra Levan --
I am deeply grateful to those anti-Semitic bastards for waking up the nation to the threat of radical Islam, and calling upon a somnolent press corps to rediscover and rededicate themselves to our ancient value of free speech.
Liveblogging the BC HRT, Day 3 --I suggest folks get busy forwarding both reports to the offices of every MP and MLA in the nation, along with Ezra's three word solution.
Fire. Them. All.
Update Tarek Fatah writes in Coyne's comments;
Does anyone remember Sheikh Younus Kathrada, the Imam who preached that Jews were “brothers of monkeys and swine”?
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/07/21/cleric-rcmp050721.html
Well, what do you know. The good old “monkeys and swine” imam is part of this convoluted Islamist alliance fighting Mackeans.
THIS SEEMS LIKE OVERREACH, even for Canada's kangaroo-court "Human Rights" Commissions:
The entire blogosphere was put on trial during the second day of a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing into an excerpt of a controversial book published in Maclean's.
Of course, since half the blogs in creation seem to have covert HRC investigators/provocateurs posting racist comments, maybe it's fair . . . . (emphasis added).
=================================================
Yes, folks- er have all the oil and gas and coal we will ever need...
...right here.
So, why are we paying $4.00 a gallon to people who hate us and want us to fall?
Reliance On Foreign Oil! [Dan Collins]
Teh horror!
Meanwhile, via Fausta, comes this:
China, Venezuela and now Brazil soon to be drilling off the coast of Florida while America sits on its own natural resources
And I’m sure they’ll do a bang-up job of it, too, seeing as their so deeply invested in making sure there are no spills or other environmental nastiness.
Read the rest.
Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.
I think that would make an awesome women’s tank-top.
RICK HILLS:
Why I am an anti-intellectual. "Being anti-intellectual is not the same as being anti-intellect. My beef is with a particular social class -- the 'intelligentsia' -- and not with the practice of using one's intellect to reflect on experience. In my experience, intellectuals (as a class) are ideologically intolerant, easily offended by ordinary humor, and pretentious in their prejudices, which they disguise as universal truths." The comments are delightful, especially the two from Stuart Buck. (Via
Volokh).
IF GPS GETS KNOCKED OUT, the government
has a backup plan. "This year, the Department of Homeland Security decided that a 30-year-old navigation system used by mariners will be upgraded to back up GPS. The decision preserves the Long-Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) network, which has been teetering on the verge of forced retirement since the 1980s, according to the Coast Guard’s Navigation Center."
==============================================
June 4th, 2008
From the wire services:
At least now Mrs. Clinton can stop pretending to be outgoing and likeable.
4 Comments »
Bill’s face in the last photo says it all. (Never underestimate the truthfulness in someones body language.)
June 4, 2008 03:24 PM by Michelle Malkin
I have an entire blog category devoted to assassination chic. It’s a staple of the unhinged Left, whose writers, playwrights, artists, documentarians, and politicians can’t get enough of BDS-infused merchandise, jokes, child brainwashing, and signage. Yes, there’s the occasional gaffe on the Right (hello, Mike Huckabee), but scroll through my assassination chic posts and you’ll see they’re dominated by stories of liberals imagining their ideological opponents gunned down, decapitated, or otherwise snuffed out.
Refresher:
– Sarah Vowell’s best-selling murder travelogue of assassinated Republican presidents, Assassination Vacation;
– Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint, a novella conversation between two people about the advisability of assassinating the president;
– “Art” exhibits like this one:
– Liberal talk radio rants from hate-spewers such as Randi Rhodes;
– European incitement to kill Bush, like Guardian columnist 2004 Charlie Brooker’s pre-election diatribe:
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?
– Assorted left-wing paraphernalia like this:
And, of course, Death of a President:Now comes martyrdom-seeking artist Yazmany Arboledo (here’s his blog) to whine about how his assassination fascination– in the form of “art” exploring the “character assassination” of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama–is being stifled in Manhattan.
Greg at Rhymes with Right sums it up nicely:
Why are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton treated any different, especially when it is clear that the exhibit in question is a critique of the media coverage of the just-concluded race for the Democrat presidential nomination? Could it be that Assassination Chic is only cool if the target is a Republican?
60 Comments
A populsitic, charismatic, self-serving individual has a way of mesmerizing foolish people looking for an idol...then and now.
Barack Hussein Obama is the apex of the hate-America, domestic enemy in this country. His election as president would be the greatest coup any enemy has ever scored against this country and could easily lead to the worsty, horrific disaster in our nation's history.
THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
Kelo -vs- New London was the end of the Republic. Everything else is simple infection.
When the state can steal your home for the singular purpose of reselling it for a profit, then you are no longer a citizen of a republic, you are a subject or more accurately you are chattel.
Right now inertia is keeping the merry-go-round running, but it will stall eventually.
Read it, and think.
And weep...
The Audacity of the Democrats
By Rocco DiPippo
There was a pre-Lewinsky time, before moral relativism blurred America's vision, when associating with people like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers would have automatically excluded someone from attaining the highest office in the land. Back then, anyone with well known connections to such America-averse personalities would have been rejected by a super-majority of the electorate during primary season and almost certainly blocked by the Democratic Party before they could have gotten to within a mile of the White House. But those days -- when patriotic, true liberals like Joe Lieberman were considered typical Democratic Party politicians -- are gone. Now politicians like Lieberman are banished to the Party's periphery and leftists, not liberals, like Denis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Jim McDermott, John Kerry, (who served in Vietnam), Jim McGovern, Patrick Leahy, Richard Durbin, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have replaced them.
Until recently in our history, a President Barack Obama would have been an impossibility. But given the political and ideological climate that exists today in America, the ascension of a leftist like Barack Obama into presidential politics makes perfect sense. Beliefs like domestic terrorist William Ayers's and racist, anti-US preacher Jeremiah Wright's are no longer met with utter scorn or a trip to behind the woodshed, but are embraced, promoted and defended by many Americans. Think MoveOn, International ANSWER, think hordes of young neo-communists and their indoctrinating, puppet-master Marx-spouting professors. Think Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill and his acolytes. Think NYU, Columbia, The New School and Harvard. Most importantly, ponder the makeup and direction of the Democratic Party leadership. Like Barack Obama and his radical friends, it is appallingly far Left.
Ideological descendants of Marx and Rousseau now lead the Democratic Party and they have turned it into a disloyal opposition to an increasingly accommodating GOP. They have molded the Party into a force working stridently and unashamedly against a Commander in Chief during wartime. They have made it a den of treachery devoted to American defeat in Iraq. They preside over an institution advised and influenced by moneyed, non-governmental groups and individuals with unquestionably anti-US agendas who help make the Party a pseudo-intellectual sinkhole filled with perverse, tried-and-failed ideas repulsive to the majority of Americans. Those ideas are shaped into agendas which are then forced on the public by an activist leftwing judiciary and by a major media and arts consortium shot through with utter disrespect, indeed contempt, for traditional American values, religions and institutions.
The Democratic Party has devolved into a club for the illegitimately aggrieved, the self-absorbed, the self-hating and the perpetually pissed-off. It is a sanctuary where solipsistic malcontents and their disjointed causes find refuge and support. It has long ceased being an earnest gathering of broad minds where man's timeless problems are examined against the backdrop of the Constitution and solutions to them proposed based on the actual realities of the human condition. It is now the political province of the intellectually deceased, where frightened, lock-step ideologues and other small men and women concoct and promote divisive, destructive, weird and cowardly policies developed within a not-so-quaint, quasi-Marxist stricture of gender, class and race.
So what does all of that have to do with the propulsion of Barack Obama to within a whisker of the Presidency? Everything. It could not have happened without the existence of a substantial, organized, internal anti-US Left and the approval and guidance of the Democratic leadership I describe. Obama is in step with that radical element and with that leadership. His views reflect their views, and he is now a central figure in the deceptive, destructive strategy to restore the Democrats to power, a strategy that has been in play since the US Supreme Court declared Albert Gore the loser of the 2000 presidential contest. "Don't call me a liberal," says Obama. In a precise, lawyerly sort of way he is being honest - he truly isn't a liberal, but he is a leftist.
At a glance, Obama's quick rise in the world of presidential politics is puzzling. His background, including his personal and political associations, is antithetical to the historical stature of the American presidency. It could also be said that given his non-traditional upbringing, his schooling in radical politics and his seeming preference for friends and mentors who view America disdainfully, he is antithetical to the traditional American Experience itself. Obama is young and he has less than one Senate term under his belt. Neither quality is particularly presidential. Questions of patriotism dog him, as do questions about his religious and ethnic heritage. Many of the people who tutored and supported him through his personal and political journeys from the backwaters of Indonesia to the main stage of US presidential politics are contemptuous of the US. Some of them publicly express outright hatred of the country Obama now seeks to lead.
So why is so controversial a candidate even in the running to be president?
Because he reflects his Party's leftist agenda, has unique, prodigious manipulative talents and equally impressive Hollywood attributes. These are indispensable in closing out the dangerous, deliberate game the Democrats have been playing with America's security and its perceived stature in the world. It is a game that has been going on beneath our noses since the election of 2000. Its object is simple: the acquisition of power regardless of cost to the Nation. It is something the American people must be reminded of, made aware of, before they enter the voting booth in November.
A strategy of contention vs. the risk of irrelevance
The opening event setting the stage for Obama's ascension was the contentious 2000 election. When Bush was declared its winner, Democrats fumed that the election had been stolen by the Republicans. The promotion of that canard within leftwing and media circles and the personal quality of the resentment of Bush it provoked within the Democratic Party is important to mention, since a similar canard that morphed from it and became popularized -- "Bush Stole the Election," -- became the base justification for the future blizzard of untruths used to disparage the President. It also provided justification for the widespread disrespect and abuse President Bush endures to this day, disrespect that would be far more deserved if he had indeed illegally assumed power.
Less than a year after the 2000 election was finalized, September 11, 2001 arrived. In the baleful blink of a jihadist's eye, most of the issues that normally occupy the American polity in peaceful times were swept off the table. Issues that normally help Americans differentiate between the two major political parties and define those party's respective agendas -- health care, taxes, the environment, social programs and civil rights -- took a far-distant back seat to two far more pressing matters: Exacting justice for the 911 atrocities and protecting the homeland from additional attacks.
Since the American electorate historically views Republicans as being more competent and trustworthy than Democrats in matters of war and security, and since all other issues that Democrats could normally use to make political hay with had been blasted off the table by 911, the Party was facing the threat of irrelevance. There was another factor that did not bode well for the future political fortunes of the Democratic Party in the wake of the 911 attacks: George W. Bush had become an extraordinarily popular president.
Whatever patriotism was stoked within the hearts of Democratic Party leaders by that September Day of Infamy was likely tempered by an unsettling reality: If America stayed united behind George W. Bush and the Republicans during the coming military response to 911, the Democratic Party would be out of power for a long time.
As the wreckage of the Towers was being scoured for the remains of the murdered, the Democratic Party faced an extended stay in the political wilderness. It must have been an extraordinarily bitter pill to swallow, especially on the heels of its having lost the presidency by a tattered handful of contested votes. As things stood, Democrat prospects for winning it back anytime soon looked grim. Americans did not switch horses in the middle of a war -- unless they perceived a war to be headed towards defeat. This was especially true after the 911 attacks. The Democratic Party, with its conflict-averse, Vietnam-era mentality would be naturally unattractive to a war-time electorate seeking vengeance for the mass murder of its brothers and sisters. Pragmatically speaking, the only hope the Party had then, in terms of making inroads with post-911 American voters, rested on a single option: overlaying the US military response to 911 with a template -- the rhetoric, look and feel of the Vietnam debacle of years earlier, portraying those directing and supporting the war and those fighting it on the ground, as corrupt, inept and malevolent.
As the Democrats weighed their narrow, post-911 political options and saw a grim future, at least a few of them might have considered Jimmy Carter's triumph on the heels of Vietnam and Watergate, and felt a flicker of hope.
A Vietnam strategy develops
Soon after 911, as America shifted into a wartime footing, leftists in academia and in the
Legal Left began testing the waters of dissent by deconstructing Bush and the Republicans and blaming American foreign policy for the 911 attacks. Several professors at major Universities openly proclaimed their wishes to see America defeated and disgraced. One of them, Professor Nicholas DeGenova of Columbia University, announced to those attending a ‘peace' conference at the school shortly after the 911 attacks that he "wished for a million Mogadishus," a reference to the loss of 18 US serviceman during a mission to capture a warlord in Somalia in 1997. DeGenova also said, "the only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," and referred to patriotism as a form of white supremacism adding that "My rejection of U.S. nationalism is an appeal to liberate our own political imaginations such that we might usher in a radically different world in which we will not remain the prisoners of U.S. global domination." Since DeGenova is an American collecting an excellent salary at a prestigious American university, it is puzzling who he meant by "we."
When the Democratic Party joined the academic Left's undermining of the Administration's military response to 911, a lethargic Republican public relations machine and inarticulate President were no match for the polish and reach of the influential leftwing media assisting the Democrats. Within months of 911 the Party and its media assistants began manufacturing anti-Bush, antiwar propaganda with impunity. Prominent leftwing intellectuals spoke openly of America's culpability in the 911 disaster even as the Towers still smoldered and the Nation wept, sowing seeds of doubt and divisiveness amongst a population that had been traumatized and then unified by the terrorist attacks. The press began chipping, then hammering away at the Administration's war policies and its domestic policies regarding security. When the debate on whether or not to invade Iraq came, there was no doubt which side of the discussion the press -- and most of the Democrats -- would be on.
Predictably, the historically anti-US, European socialist Left closed ranks with the Democrats and the academic Left. It also fell in line with the
neo-communist-organized antiwar movement in America that was taking shape. With the first wave of antiwar street protests, the Democratic Party's mission to reacquire power lurched into high gear. That mission would be accomplished at the risk of weakening America's security and at the expense of her standing in the world.
Shortly after the US invaded Iraq, Party leaders and their friends in the media started kidney-punching America, pounding away at the wartime president, deriding his administrators and his policies, harping on and grossly magnifying each setback in Iraq.
On the home front, every Bush policy designed to protect America from further attacks was framed and presented by Democratic Party leaders and leftwing 527 groups as direct assaults on the US Constitution and as being destructive to the Bill of Rights. The press followed the Party's antagonistic lead, flooding the news with disproportionate coverage of subjects like Abu Ghraib, Haditha, US so-called torture and rendition; so-called domestic spying; the so-called rights of terrorists in Guantanamo; the so-called evils of the Patriot Act; the so-called lies of George W. Bush; the so-called warmongering of Dick Cheney and the so-called greed and evil of defense-related corporations like Halliburton.
The effect was to frame isolated incidents of US atrocities and other malfeasances that occur in any war as emblematic of the entire Iraq enterprise. A narrative of an administration hell-bent on imperialistic conquest, spying on Americans and shredding the Constitution concretized within most American and international newsrooms. And who can forget the endemic, Left-generated conflation of the Bush Administration with the Nazis and the invention and promotion of theories that Bush and Cheney planned and directed the attacks of 911 to advance a secret desire of turning America into a fascist state. Those theories were boosted by prominent leftists, including respected author Gore Vidal, who wrote a book promoting such a theory. The collective message of the anti-Bush noise machine was clear and diabolical: The President of the United States was a bigger threat to world peace than men like Osama Bin Laden were. Bush was more evil than Adolf Hitler.
The withering attacks on the Bush Administration took their toll. Bush was slowly becoming a pariah, even within his own political party. His approval ratings, burdened by the vicious attacks on his character and constant attacks on his war policies, sank like a stone.
By the 2004 election, the Democrats' strategy of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Bush was poised to render results. But a lackluster campaign by a wooden candidate, John Kerry, and serious attacks on Kerry's credibility and patriotism by 250 decorated war veterans caused the Party's presidential effort to fail, but just barely.
In spite of that loss, or perhaps buoyed by the closeness of it, the Democrat assault on America's President and on America's war-time morale intensified as the 2006 congressional elections approached. Efforts to stabilize a post-Saddam Iraq were sputtering and support for Bush and Republican politicians sagged in direct proportion to every real, over-reported and media invented setback there.
It is common knowledge, supported by history, that war is fraught with uncertainties and surprises that cannot always be planned in advance for. It is the side in a conflict that best adapts and adjusts in response to those vagaries that usually wins. The slaughter of 5,000 US soldiers at Omaha beach in a single day during WWII was not trumpeted by the US media to America and to the world as evidence of imminent US defeat against the Nazis, nor did US politicians of that era cry for withdrawal from the larger battle when disasters like Omaha Beach and Corregidor happened. They did not publicize enemy successes during the vicious battles of Guadalcanal nor did they pronounce defeat whenever Americans suffered setbacks while fighting the fanatical Japanese. But throughout every phase of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts nearly every negative event, every disaster or perceived disaster, exploded across the front pages of the major US papers and was broadcast by Democrats from the halls of Congress as evidence of Bush's malevolence, stupidity or incompetence and as evidence of impending American defeat.
Michael Yon, the Iraq conflict's
Ernie Pyle, best sums up the result of that grinding media assault on the Iraq War and its American leaders:
"Enemy dominance of the media battle space translated quite directly into military setbacks. Terrorists from many countries swarmed into Iraq to be part of the victory they saw happening on the TV screens."
Deliberately or not, the Democratic Party and the leftwing media, with their endless criticisms of the Iraq conflict, and their endless public comparisons of that war to Vietnam, sent a direct message to the rag-tag army of ultra-violent terrorists in Iraq who were detonating car bombs in crowded marketplaces, beheading and mutilating civilians and killing American and Coalition soldiers: "Keep the violence up just a bit longer. We'll take care of wearing down America's will to win from within, just like during Vietnam."
Even violent, under-equipped sociopaths facing the most powerful military on earth know a gift horse when they see one, and react accordingly.
On the other hand, nearly every bit of positive war news was whispered in quiet sentences or totally ignored. Today, with the Iraq venture steadily closing in on success, the amount of news about Iraq has slowed to barely a drip. That is quite telling.
Under the deliberate, massive media barrage of negative news about the war and hampered by a lack of coherent strategy with which to counter it, Republican prospects for the retention of Congressional majorities in 2006 looked shaky at best. Then the Congressman Larry Craig sex scandal broke and the Republican majorities in the House and Senate were lost.
In less than five years, the Democratic Party had gone from being an increasingly irrelevant political minority to controlling both houses of Congress.
A Strategy Emboldened
Buoyed by the 2006 election success of their Vietnam-era strategy, Democrat leaders and other leftists began openly calling Iraq an ‘unjust' war, an "unwinnable" war and relying on the short memories of most Americans to hide the fact that many prominent Democrats had actually voted to authorize it. Jesse Macbeth, Jimmy Massey, Scott Beauchamp and other antiwar frauds who admitted faking tales of atrocities committed by US soldiers were praised by the press and the Democrats as heroic dissenters against the evil Bush war machine, their false tales of butchery and bloodlust spread far and wide. Widespread, positive coverage was given to antiwar, anti-American, pro-terrorist activists like Cindy Sheehan, who was sanctimoniously christened America's "Peace Mom" by leading Democrats and the leftwing media, while true American heroes, patriots like Paul R. Smith and Jason L. Dunham, both Medal of Honor winners, both killed in the act of protecting America from her enemies, received virtual media silence for their heroism and sacrifice and little public acknowledgment from Democrat politicians.
The press and the Democrats did however publicly acknowledge American soldiers when they were killed, when they spun tales of atrocities, when they groused or when they returned home and fell through the cracks. They wanted Americans to be ashamed of their soldiers, to be ashamed of the Commander-in-Chief, to be ashamed of America itself. They needed America on its knees -- disillusioned, angry at its leaders and their policies -- hopeless, sick of hearing about the war and demoralized because then, out of desperation, they would naturally look to Democratic politicians for relief.
The technique of creating discontent and "talking all things Bush down" paid big dividends for the Democrats in 2006. Devoid of credible ideas and solutions, they had nevertheless worked a strategy leading to the re-acquisition of at least some of the political power they had lost during their wilderness years after the Reagan Revolution. The 2006 election confirmed the effectiveness of their "destroy Bush" election strategy. And so the Democratic Party's attacks on Bush and the Republicans increased to a ferocious level, even as Iraq turned a corner towards security and political stability.
When to the Party's dismay the Bush troop surge took hold and the situation in Iraq began improving, the Democrats' defeatist rhetoric reached a desperate, farcical crescendo: "The war is lost," (even though objective measurements indicated that it was being won) crowed many Democrats, including prominent ones like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry and Barack Obama. Prominent Democrat John Murtha publicly tried and convicted US Marines involved in the Haditha incident before those Marines even went to trial. "Bush lied us into war" became the catch-phrase of almost the entire Democratic Party leadership, even though before the war had commenced many of those same Democrats had access to the same information that the Bush Administration used to justify it.
Power at any cost indeed, even at the defeat and humiliation of one's own country.
***
Now the 2008 election is upon us. Whether it is Iraq or Afghanistan, the economy or the overblown dangers of anthropogenic global warming, the Democratic Party and its media shills continue crafting and pounding home messages telling us that our national problems, real and imagined, are caused by Bush and the Republicans, They tell us that due to Bush and his policies, our nation is an evil one, our nation is hated by the world, our nation is fractured into pieces, our nation is murdering innocents, our nation is the world's biggest polluter, our nation is a den of racism, our nation is stingy, our citizens are impoverished, our economy has been destroyed. Collectively, this endless stream of buckshot propaganda adds up to a single, powerful and demoralizing statement: America has come apart at the seams - and George W. Bush and the Republicans are to blame for it.
Though the Democrats and their media shills are responsible for creating that illusion, Bush and the Republicans are to blame for generally ignoring or responding weakly to the Left's relentless assault on America's war-time morale. Instead of using the power of the White House pulpit to broadcast a steady, convincing message on the importance of presenting a unified national front in the face of totalitarian Islam, America is instead often treated to incongruous platitudes like, "Islam is a religion of peace." Instead of a forceful, direct calling-out of the Democratic Party, the State Department and CIA on their numerous subversions of Bush policies, those subversions are usually referred to by the White House as "disagreements."
Because of the Administration's seeming refusal to conduct investigations leading to the indictment of those leaking classified security information to the press, and thereby to the enemy, the Democrat-leftwing press consortium has been given implied consent to inundate America with torrents of articles and highly publicized tell-all books from former government officials, some revealing sensitive war-time information, most of them highly critical of America's Commander-in-Chief -- all published while American soldiers and civilians were, (and are), on the ground in combat areas, directly in harm's way.
With the exception of the Vietnam War, never before in America's history have such things happened while hostilities were ongoing. And what happened during Vietnam was tame in comparison. Worst of all, due to the subversive Democrat-media barrage, and crippled by its public relations ineptness, Bush and the Republicans could never quite convince the American people of a simple reality: that they are all in the fight of their lives against an implacable, dedicated, totalitarian death cult, one seeking nothing less than America's utter destruction, and that the fight demands focus and sacrifice from all Americans. Instead of rousing, convincing, patriotic speeches, the public was usually treated to lame utterances from Bush like, "Its hard work . . . we're working hard . . . we're making progress."
The end result of the inability of Bush and his PR team to own and promote the Big Ideas necessary to have focused America on the prize of victory in Iraq and on a greater victory over the worldwide forces of totalitarian Islam, is best summed up by three, short sentences written on a whiteboard in a US Marines barracks:
America is not at war.
The Marine Corp is at war.
America is at the mall.
***
It is no wonder the American electorate has slipped into a foul mood -- little wonder why it seems that its heart is not in the fight against the totalitarian theocrats who threaten it. For seven years Americans have been pounded with messages that their country and its leaders are unjust, warmongering, and evil and hated by all -- it deserves whatever evil it gets.
America now has serious doubts about itself. Its citizens have been pummeled with those terrible messages for so long now, that many of them believe them to be true. They are vulnerable to the Democratic Party's sudden mantra of Hope and Change and Progress. In a nutshell, here are the mechanics of the crude, hate-based initiative the Democratic Party and its media wing have forced on America since 2001:
1) Invent, inflate, and over-report bad war news. Tie all bad news to Bush and/or Republicans. At the same time, ignore or downplay good news as it relates to Bush, the Republicans or the war(s).
2) Create the illusion of widespread, honest dissent to Bush policies by giving plenty of airtime to leftwing groups and individuals historically antagonistic toward the projection of US, and only US, power. Fail to report the true agendas of those groups -- when covering antiwar, anti-Bush protests and events, make sure to meticulously portray antiwar marches as spontaneous gatherings of mainstream, mom and pop Americans.
3) Downplay, ignore and disparage American success wherever you find it.
4) Exalt in, sympathize with and mythologize America's enemies, vilify and deconstruct its protectors.
5) Downplay America's generosity and righteousness. Recast a mission that includes saving a nation from a murdering brute and his rapist, sociopath sons as a brutal occupation in the pursuit of American Empire.
6) Fill the Nation's airwaves, from sea to shining sea, with questionable and sometimes outright false tales of Bush-related misery, butchery, fraud and waste.
7) Foment as much national anxiety and hatred of the Republican leader as money and can buy. George Soros and other moneyed leftists will fund you. Give airtime and print coverage to leftist radicals and Democrats who call Bush a war criminal. Present those radicals and their crazy plans to try President Bush and Vice President Cheney for "war crimes" as worthy of consideration.
8) Provide coverage to leftwing intellectuals and scientists making anti-Bush statements. Present them as legitimate, non-partisan experts in their fields. Publicize their specious, politicized findings, present those findings as non-partisan, accurate and objective.
9) Present major news coverage of every antiwar protest you can find, whether it draws 100 people or 10,000 people, ignore all pro-US, pro-Iraq War, pro-troop rallies completely or portray their attendees as violence-prone, fringe-lunatic jingoists.
10) Blame a hurricane's aftermath on Bush. Give news coverage to racists and Democrat crackpots who say Bush and Cheney actually caused the hurricane and blew up levees to kill African Americans. Keep that Bush-hate buzz alive at all costs.
11) Give airtime and print coverage to groups and individuals accusing George W. Bush of having engineered and directed the 911 attacks. Remember, it is not the credibility of accusations that count in shaping public opinion now, but the seriousness and sheer volume of accusations that do.
12) To sow further strife, anxiety and confusion, continue stoking the fires of racial tension and class warfare.
13) Once the onslaught of lies, moral relativisms and crazy notions have created a self-sustaining, luciferous, widespread unhappiness and confusion, dangle a fat bait of silence and tranquility -- of Hope, Change and Progress -- crowning your deceptive achievement by hooking the same fish you made hungry.
That is the immoral, destructive strategy used by the Democratic Party, even as our soldier sons and daughters have been fighting and sometimes dying to protect us, in the years since 911 to recapture power it unjustly covets as its Divine right.
Now, a master psychological fisherman, Barack Obama, dangles a bait of salvation. As a highly experienced practitioner of Saul Alinsky's
radical arts, he is perfect for the job. Those who know Obama well, like Mike Kruglik, who helped train him in Alinsky's methods would agree:
"He [Obama] was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation. . . As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."
It is truly audacious of the Democrats to entice us with their slick-tongued messiah, one who appears out of nowhere and graciously offers to scrape clean and sanitize the same plate of defeat he, his party and their assistants in the media served to America for nearly eight years in the middle of a war. Soon we will see if a majority of the American electorate accepts that offer, or if it rejects it, sending the Democratic Party back to confront the same irrelevance it risked the safety and security of our nation to avoid.
Rocco DiPippo, an American Thinker contributor, spent time in Iraq as a civilian contractor. He currently lives throughout the Middle East. Email him here.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/the_audacity_of_the_democrats.html
Well, I have come to the conclusion that 
Key testimony from the 
"Quick! Barry's campaign manager! We are tracking inordinate hits from Little Green Footballs and FREE REPUBLIC at pages here, and here and here! True, they are all postings by our biggest financial contributors and supporters, but pull 'em fast, and block the Google spiders! I think they are on to us!"
Vancouverites are now starting to pay attention. Here's a link to an excellent segment on the #1 Talk Radio Station in Vancouver, with well deserved praise for both Mark Steyn and Andrew Coyne.