Radio off

I can't listen to coverage of the shooting in Arizona. I can't read about it. The loonies in the left media are simply jumping sharks on this minute by minute. Here's Nat'l Review's summation. Excerpt:

The irony of criticizing the overheated rhetoric of your opponents at the same time you call them accomplices to murder apparently was lost on these people, most of whom have never been noted for their subtlety (or civility). It is vile to attempt to tar the opposition with the crimes of a lunatic so as to render illegitimate the views of about half of America.

Jared Loughner is clearly deranged, his fevered mind drawn to irrational extremes, whether those of Adolf Hitler or Karl Marx. He was anti-government the way paranoiacs who think the government is controlling their minds are anti-government — think John Nash, not Milton Friedman. Like the Virginia Tech shooter, Loughner had behaved bizarrely around his fellow students, frightening them. One former high-school classmate remembers him as a liberal, yet given what we’ve learned so far about his ravings, it is doubtful Loughner’s disordered mind was capable of a holding a coherent ideology.

When is the irony not lost. I wonder.

Muslim Dances On Altar In Roman Catholic Cathedral

Via Pam G.



I'll probably be busy all day blogging about all the public apologies from Imams around the world who decry this detestable hate crime.

As someone wrote in the comments on Youtube, "Lucky for him, Christianity is truly a religion of peace."

Are you outraged yet?

Great Quote: "Even being a snippy dweeb requires a certain amount of finesse."

From Mark Steyn, naturally. Gotta love the guy. This is from June, but Mark Levin just posted it on his Facebook page. It's basically a sighing take-down of Conor Friedersdorf who thinks the best way out of the hole he's dug defending media reluctance to cover Muslim honor killings is to keep digging. Read the thing; it's short and hilarious.

Feisal Adbul Rauf, Daisy Khan: "beneficiaries of a compliant and un-inquisitive media"

The media compliance with Feisal Adbul Rauf and Daisy Khan is really well demonstrated in this piece. Excerpt:

For who can honestly begrudge Rauf and Kahn their inability to reconcile Rauf’s post-911 assertion that America was an “accessory” to the terrorist slaughter of 3,000 of her own; their refusal to disclose the sources of the $100 Million they are raising; or their malleable condemnation of “terrorism?” And is their apparent condemnation of terrorism conditional, such as it is with many who identify with political Islam? Also, what about Rauf’s refusal to denounce the violent terrorist group Hamas as a terrorist organization?

These would seem the salient questions…and yet, these queries are never made during the “interviews” to which these two submit. If only their “mainstream” inquisitors would dig as deep within the Muslim community as they do looking for any trace or nuance that could be construed as “racism” among the “tea parties.” And to those who argue that the mosque isn’t “at ground zero,” we say, you are right, it’s not actually perched on top of the hole, but if you had been there on Sept. 11, 2001, you would have had a front row seat to the carnage, and debris would have rained down upon you.

Later on the authors bring up 4th Generation Warfare which is a theory I think is a little bit off, but they're larger point is obvious and one with which I agree, viz., that planting Mosques is a strategy to take over, not build cultural bridges.

Crackerlist

Well, hat tip to AB's Big J for this great link on I Own the World which showcases the melanin deficit of the Journolisters. I think the dude is continuing to add to the images as more of the 400 are discovered, judging from the comments. There is one person of color near the bottom. The line at the top puts it best: "THIS LATTE PARTY SURE LOOKS EXCLUSIONARY, IT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE AMERICA. IT LOOKS MORE LIKE THE UPPER WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN."

UPDATE: Here's a text list from American Thinker.

The following 64 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv.

1. Ezra Klein
2. Dave Weigel
3. Matthew Yglesias
4. David Dayen
5. Spencer Ackerman
6. Jeffrey Toobin
7. Eric Alterman
8. Paul Krugman
9. John Judis
10. Eve Fairbanks
11. Mike Allen
12. Ben Smith
13. Lisa Lerer
14. Joe Klein
15. Brad DeLong
16. Chris Hayes
17. Matt Duss
18. Jonathan Chait
19. Jesse Singal
20. Michael Cohen
21. Isaac Chotiner
22. Katha Pollitt
23. Alyssa Rosenberg
24. Rick Perlstein
25. Alex Rossmiller
26. Ed Kilgore
27. Walter Shapiro
28. Noam Scheiber
29. Michael Tomasky
30. Rich Yesels
31. Tim Fernholz
32. Dana Goldstein
33. Jonathan Cohn
34. Scott Winship
35. David Roberts
36. Luke Mitchell
37. John Blevins
38. Moira Whelan
39. Henry Farrell
40. Josh Bearman
41. Alec McGillis
42. Greg Anrig
43. Adele Stan
44. Steven Teles
45. Harold Pollack
46. Adam Serwer
47. Ryan Donmoyer
48. Seth Michaels
49. Kate Steadman
50. Laura Rozen
51. Jesse Taylor
52. Michael Hirsh
53. Daniel Davies
54. Jonathan Zasloff
55. Richard Kim
56. Thomas Schaller
57. Jared Bernstein
58. Holly Yeager
59. Joe Conason
60. David Greenberg
61. Todd Gitlin
62. Mark Schmitt
63. Kevin Drum
64. Sarah Spitz

Perspective: A Cure for Overreaction

Reading Steven Hayward's piece might give us some perspective and help us to take a breath on the oil spill fixation.

Even if the Deepwater Horizon spill lasts into the fall, it will still not even be the largest offshore spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That dubious achievement belongs to the Ixtoc 1, a Mexican platform near Yucatán that blew out in 1979 in circumstances similar to the Deepwater Horizon (the blowout preventer failed after a gas surge from the well). It took Mexico’s famously inept Pemex almost 10 months to stop the leak, by which time 460,000 tons of oil had leaked—still the largest accidental spill in world history (Saddam Hussein deliberately fouled the Persian Gulf at the end of the first Gulf War with 1.2 million tons).

The Ixtoc 1 spill started in June 1979. Oil began washing up on 125 miles of Texas coastline by early August. It is estimated that only 4,000 tons of oil made it to U.S. shores, which was about 1 percent of the total amount of oil spilled. About 30,000 tons was estimated to have reached Mexican shorelines. Pemex, by the way, refused to pay damages to the United States, citing sovereign immunity—an important contrast to the stance taken in the Deepwater spill by BP, which is assuming full responsibility (as it should).

The ecological effects of the Ixtoc 1 disaster should be borne in mind when we hear claims that the Deepwater spill will inflict large and long-lasting effects. According to a 1981 study by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, about half of the Ixtoc 1 oil evaporated, and another 25 percent sank to the bottom of the ocean, much of it broken up by wave action and chemical dispersants. The Swedish Academy study estimated that oil from the Ixtoc 1 poisoned a 5,800 square mile area, devastating crab, shrimp, and fish stocks, and leading to large oxygen-killing plankton blooms. Overall fish landings fell by up to 70 percent in Mexican and Texan coastal waters. On the other hand, the 5,800 square mile area represented about 2.5 percent of Mexican Gulf Coast waters. Finally and most ironically, Hurricane Frederick struck the Texas coast in September 1979, and washed away 95 percent of the oil that had reached shoreline beaches and marshes. The current fears of the effects of tropical storms and hurricanes in the midst of the Deepwater spill might be misplaced.

I know many people would accuse me of whistling past the graveyard when I should be watching a live feed of brown crap gushing out of a vacuous hole. But I was too busy to watch the President's speech last night.

Mona Charen setting the record straight on the Jihad Flotilla

Yesterday Mona Charen gave us some pieces of the "rest of the story" regarding the so-called "peace flotilla". Here are some facts she lists which should cause discomfort for anyone buying the stupid line that this was some type of humanitarian cause:

Fact: Israel imposed a blockade of Gaza to prevent weapons from reaching the radical Islamic regime there that continues to make war on Israeli civilians. Egypt too has blockaded the strip, hoping to choke off weapons to Hamas, which it views as a threat.

Fact: Humanitarian relief is delivered to Gaza from Israel on a daily basis. During the first three months of this year, 94,500 tons of supplies were transferred to Gaza from Israel, including 48,000 tons of food products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear; and 553 tons of milk powder and baby food for the strip’s 1.5 million inhabitants. Representatives of international aid groups and the United Nations move freely to and from the Gaza Strip.

Fact: Upon learning of the intentions of the Gaza flotilla, the Israeli government asked the organizers to deliver their humanitarian aid first to an Israeli port where it would be inspected (for weapons) before being forwarded to Gaza. The organizers refused. “There are two possible happy endings,” a Muslim activist on board explained, “either we will reach Gaza or we will achieve martyrdom.”

So as usual, the jihadis want to agitate and perpetuate the struggle. They don't want a peaceful resolution. The shouts of "Remember Khaybar, O Jews, Muhammad’s army will return!" should put that myth to rest—it's not the first time we've heard that, nor will it likely be the last.

The whole attack on Israel's actions from the usual suspects (mainstream media, United Nations, etc.) has the flavor of Obama's "police acted stupidly" meme from last summer. It's the knee-jerk attack on law enforcement to which the left seems to be addicted.

Barone on the Leftward March

Michael Barone documents the move toward the far left by the regimes in America and the UK, the resulting loss of popularity and the subsequent blaming of the voters. Short excerpt:

Both parties have moved well to the left. Barack Obama and Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, head governments that are running budget deficits of 10 percent of gross domestic product. Both are promoting higher taxes and expansion of government programs.

The financial crisis is one reason for the large deficits. But it is undeniable that to varying extents both Obama and Brown have pursued more statist policies than their predecessors did a dozen years ago.

And it is undeniable, too, that both are in trouble with the voters.

In these circumstances, it is surprising that the pundit class is not chiding Obama and Brown for abandoning the politically successful policies of Clinton and Blair. The same pundit class is always ready to chide American Republicans and British Conservatives for not pursuing the courses that Rockefeller Republicans and pre-Thatcher "wet" Conservatives pursued with some political success a much longer time ago.

I don't know if Barack Obama et al will lose journalists over their progressive agenda and government expansionism since this sutff all represents moving toward where the mainstream media has been at for decades. They are on the same page.

Conclusion:

Blaming the voters is the last resort of a party in trouble. Old Labor and the Obama Democrats may not yet be finished. But they're not doing as well as their "third way" predecessors.

Hugh Hewitt on the Inadvertant Colbertiness of the MSM

Great piece. Hewitt--who is about as center-right as they come--has been an ardent supporter of the Tea Party Patriots, and that fact should put the lie to the smear that the Tea Partiers are a frothing mob of inbred Birchers. I loved the line "They are all Dan Rathers now, except that Dan Rather may, just possibly, get it."

The attention being paid to the cranks and the nuts serves a political purpose of the mere far left, however, so it will continue. This is part of the effort to delegitimize and marginalize the exploding anti-growth-of-government movement. This deeply-felt concern over the viral expansion of the public sector is what has driven the Tea Party Movement, and it is also what will power the pummeling Democrats will receive at the polls in the fall.

In the blink of an eye, just as the federal government was swallowing whole the American health care system, it burped and then tossed down the student loan business. This follows the digestion of most of the American car business and the $800 billion "stimulus" that wasn't. Jabba-the-Fed is feeding.

Americans are stunned by the rapacity of the Democrats. The vast, vast majority of the objectors are mainstream and often previously apolitical Americans. Many are long time conservative activists. A handful of nuts have infiltrated their numbers, and the usual media suspects choose to focus on the crazies and not the millions. Many of these MSMers fretting over the rise of the fanatics use the term "Tea Baggers," which is itself an assault on civil discourse. Or they sneer at rallies which require actual commitment of time and resources, or at hand-made signs that suggest a familiarity with the Federalist Papers. They find red-white-and-blue clothing amusing. Then they turn to cluck at how standards of debate have declined in the House. Very amusing.

And just fine. This is the age in which extraordinary levels of media sophistication on the part of media consumers have stripped the MSM of influence. Old media trees are falling in old media forests, and no one hears a sound. The highly paid anchors are being mocked by those viewers who even bother to tune in. The big names seem wholly unaware of the joke. They are all Dan Rathers now, except that Dan Rather may, just possibly, get it.