Andrew Breitbart says Republican is the New Punk rock – by which he presumably means less “Richard Hell passing out in a  puddle of his vomit in the dressing room at CBGB”, and more “anti-establishment”.

And the premise makes sense:

Johnny Cash was punk rock. The birth of rock came when Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Cash toured small towns and set the youth on fire. Parents were outraged. The long dippity-doo hair atop gyrating men “dancing like the negroes”  before frothing young girls set mainstream culture against this rebellious little movement. It was our first smell of anarchy and it scared the establishment.

“God Bless Ronald Reagan and God Bless America” – Johnny Ramone, longtime closet Republican on his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Never before has rock been so central to the inauguration of a president. Bono is an ambassador in sunglasses who still knows how to pull a string and get an audience of thousands to put their fist in the air.

But rock cannot be both establishment and anti-establishment. It can’t be a rebellious underdog while endorsing and distributing the status quo. And yes, President Obama is the status quo of unlimited spending and government expansion he supposedly opposed during the election…This is the mainstreaming of the bad boy, complete with rat-pack suit and cigarette in hand. A snappy skin spread over the boring, failed, liberal Democrats of the sixties. Hope and Change was nothing more than a repackaging of policies that have no right to be associated with hope or change.

I’ll cop to it: I initially thought Breitbart had a stretchy thesis.

But one of the conceits “artists” cling to is that they give people a different approach to perceiving the world around them – both physically and intellectually.  And for much of recent Western history, art in its various media and genres (to say nothing of the culture of the “artist”) was by nature critical of the “establishment”, whatever that was.  This predates rock and roll, by the way; Beethoven thought that societies needed, and needed to exalt, artists precisely because they were uniquely qualified to look beneath the surface of society’s institutions.

Of course, in the past two years America’s “artistic” community has pretty much abandoned that role to serve as shills for Barack Obama. Indeed, American “art” follows three tracks: academic “art” is beholden to a politically-correct academic establishment that is inextricably tied to the left; non-commercial art has turned itself largely into an entitlement-driven industry that is financially beholden to, and uncrically supportive of, the left; commercial art (think music, movies and publishing) have been in the bag for, and uncritical of, Obama all along.  Beethoven may have had a point in 1815 Berlin; what passes for America’s artistic community today is little but cheerleaders for the newest incarnation of the Establishment.
Breitbart:

The arts have failed. They no longer keep mass culture in check with thought-provoking art that challenges the establishment. Now they’re in charge of spreading the mainstream mandate of the Liberal Vatican. There isn’t an original thought among them, just a thousand-mile stare, a blue logo and the drone-like vocabulary of emotive, vaguely inspiring chants.

I was about to write “think Socialist Realism” – but then Obama-based art basically resembles the old official genre of the Soviet Union anyway:

Breitbart:

We’re the new rebellion against the majority juggernaut that doesn’t take kindly to dissent. Make a fist and show them what happens when they tell you what to think, feel and believe.

(Uh oh, Andy – that’ll get you labelled an “extremist”).

If you want me to unite to your cause, then end abortion, give the people back the money they earned, fight terror, keep your hands off free speech on the radio and enable job creators to make more jobs. Until then, screw your hope and screw your change.

I’m totally the Mick Jones of conservatism.

But I digress. Read the whole thing.

MLP at Casual Sundays notes

Note to Perez; Miss California, Carrie Prejean is not a stupid bitch.  You are.
That is all.

Oh, MLP.  When will you learn; people are indistinguishable from their politics!

Perez Hilton says so!

(And, to be fair, so does much lf the rest of the cultural left).

Remember the old book “Black Like Me?”  It’s the story of a white journalist, John Howard Griffin, who pharmacologically dyed his skin black to pass as Afro-American; the book relates his experiences.

I knew it was only a matter of time until someone tried it with Christians.

Peter Roose, an undergrad at Brown University, went “undercover” to “infiltrate” Liberty University.

And he found out that fundie Christians are…

…well, basically human:

Roose had transferred to the Virginia campus from Brown University in Providence, a famously liberal member of the Ivy League. His Liberty classmates knew about the switch, but he kept something more important hidden: He planned to write a book about his experience at the school founded by fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell.

Each conversation about salvation or hand-wringing debate about premarital sex was unwitting fodder for Roose’s recently published book: “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.”

“As a responsible American citizen, I couldn’t just ignore the fact that there are a lot of Christian college students out there,” said Roose, 21, now a Brown senior. “If I wanted my education to be well-rounded, I had to branch out and include these people that I just really had no exposure to.”

How little exposure?

Roose’s parents, liberal Quakers who once worked for Ralph Nader, were nervous about their son being exposed to Falwell’s views.

See Berg’s Seventh Law; when libs babble about conservative provincialism, they’re projecting.

He was determined to not mock the school, thinking it would be too easy — and unfair. He aimed to immerse himself in the culture, examine what conservative Christians believe and see if he could find some common ground. He had less weighty questions too: How did they spend Friday nights? Did they use Facebook? Did they go on dates? Did they watch “Gossip Girl?”

It wasn’t an easy transition. Premarital sex is an obvious no-no at Liberty. So are smoking and drinking. Cursing is also banned, so he prepared by reading the Christian self-help book, “30 Days to Taming Your Tongue.”

The “Story” involved a lengthy interview with LU founder Jerry Falwell, I wonder what Roose’s parents think about the his conclusion?

Roose said his Liberty experience transformed him in surprising ways.

When he first returned to Brown, he’d be shocked by the sight of a gay couple holding hands — then be shocked at his own reaction. He remains stridently opposed to Falwell’s worldview, but he also came to understand Falwell’s appeal.

Once ambivalent about faith, Roose now prays to God regularly — for his own well-being and on behalf of others. He said he owns several translations of the Bible and has recently been rereading meditations from the letters of John on using love and compassion to solve cultural conflicts.

Perhaps someday they’ll try having a third-rate comic impersonate a caricatured blowhard conservative talking head…

…er,no.  That’d be too stupid.

Via Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring, GOP State Rep Steve Gottwalt  blows the whistle on some gratuitous DFL overreach:

ST. PAUL – State Rep. Steve Gottwalt, R-St. Cloud, said he is shocked by the number of anti-business bills being pushed by the [DFL] House majority this session. With Minnesota facing a $6.4 billion budget deficit, Gottwalt said the best thing the Legislature could do this session is help more residents find work.

“Besides solving our budget deficit, the most important task lawmakers have this session is to approve policies that help retain and create jobs,” Gottwalt said. “Instead, Minnesota House Democrats are repeatedly proposing job killing tax increases.”

Gross follows up with a question for the DFL – especially DFL rep. Tom Bakk, who’s been leading the “tax ’em til they drop” faction of the DFL: 

I just posted a criticism of the Senate DFL’s job-killing tax increases. At the heart of that post is this question for Tom Bakk: If people are willing to travel across the Minnesota-Wisconsin border to save $20 in liquor taxes, why does Sen. Bakk think that a small business wouldn’t move across the Minnesota-South Dakota border to save $50,000 a year in in come taxes?

Short of building a wall with minefields and dogs to prevent escape, y’mean?

Oops.  I should erase that last bit. I  know DFLers who read this blog…

Gottwalt lists some examples of, er, gross DFL overreach:

Gottwalt listed several House proposals that could significantly hamper the way employers conduct business:

● HF 2031, which prohibits Minnesota from purchasing products from the Willmar-based Jennie-O Turkey Store at the request of unions. Gottwalt said if Democrats succeed in blacklisting this Minnesota business, there would be nothing stopping them from going after any business at the request of unions or other special interests.

While I’m not anti-union by any means – unlike most DFLers, I’ve been in a union – this is the kind of thing that needs to be jumped on with heavy boots.  When unions start using the power of government to get their payback, society is screwed.  This is the sort of thing that dragged the British economy into the toilet in the ’60s and ’70s. 

● HF 644, which sets mandates on companies with city contracts, regulating who they must hire, but exempting union labor contracts.

Ditto.

Gross:

Gottwalt added that the real job killer is the $4.4 billion tax increase proposed by House Democrats. That includes a new income tax bracket. The new 9-percent bracket would place Minnesota among the nation’s highest income taxes.

“Keep in mind 92 percent of small businesses in Minnesota pay taxes through personal income taxes, meaning that any income tax increase will directly hurt our small employers and economic recovery,” Gottwalt said.

So what we have here is the DFL paying back its markers to the unions, serving as a thuggish enforcer for their wishes.

(And wouldn’t a law that singles out a specific company for non-criminal reasons take a big steaming dump on the Fourteenth Amendment?)

Keep it going, DFL.  You’re making this whole “opposition pundit” thing easier and easier. 

I’m a fundamentally charitable person.

I’m personally inclined to give people the benefit of a doubt. Especially someone who’s new at a job; good Lord, I have had teething pains on jobs.  I am not one to cast the first stone, generally.

But as Canada’s National Post notes, our DNS Secretary, Janet “There’s A Conservative Terrorist Under My Bed” Napolitano, is – words fail – really, really stupid:

Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job? She appears to be about as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo.

In an interview broadcast Monday on the CBC, Ms. Napolitano attempted to justify her call for stricter border security on the premise that “suspected or known terrorists” have entered the U. S. across the Canadian border, including the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack.

Well, by all means, let’s clamp down on that border…

…presuming that she’s right:

All the 9/11 terrorists, of course, entered the United States directly from overseas. The notion that some arrived via Canada is a myth that briefly popped up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and was then quickly debunked.

Good Lord.  We have Grace Kelly running DHS.

Informed of her error, Ms. Napolitano blustered: “I can’t talk to that. I can talk about the future. And here’s the future. The future is we have borders.”

Just what does that mean, exactly?

It means “Don’t question me.  I am associated with hope and change!  You wanna end up on a watchlist, bub?”

Just a few weeks ago, Ms. Napolitano equated Canada’s border to Mexico’s, suggesting they deserved the same treatment.

That, of course, is PC – Par for the Course – on the left; suggesting that maybe we should fence off the Mexican border brings a knowing pursing of the lips and a devastating riposte; “so what about the Canadian border?  Or aren’t we worried about white illegal immigrants?”

Right.  Because we have gangs of Quebecois shooting Afro-Americans over drug turf in Los Angeles.

Mexico is engulfed in a drug war that left more than 5,000 dead last year, and which is spawning a spillover kidnapping epidemic in Arizona. So many Mexicans enter the United States illegally that a multi-billion-dollar barrier has been built from Texas to California to keep them out.

In Canada, on the other hand, the main problem is congestion resulting from cross-border trade. Not quite the same thing, is it?

It’s called a “Nuance”, I believe.

The CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed over 250 times.

As former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey pointed out last week, half of the U.S. government’s knowledge of al-Qaida’s structure and activities is the fruit of enhanced interrogation.

…which is to say torture – let’s not mince words

That information let the U.S. and other governments foil numerous 9/11-style operations, saving hundreds if not thousands of innocent lives.

The torture of terrorists, not babies, not harp seals, not your neighbors, not your friends…saved innocent lives.

We understand that people have legitimate concerns about the U.S. being involved in torture. But enhanced interrogation — a reasonable (but now rescinded) response to the deadliest of threats to our homeland — should be seen for what it is: a tough, but effective, way to save lives.

War on Terror Scorecard: Obama 0, Terrorists 1

Pat Buchanan on the discontinuation of DC’s education voucher program; the Obama Administration is basically starving the program to death.

As Buchanan notes, there’s a political reason to starve the program out:

With no living, breathing students profiting from the program to give it a face and stand and defend it the Congress has little political pressure to put new money into the program. The political pressure will be coming exclusively from the teacher’s unions who oppose the vouchers, just as they oppose No Child Left Behind and charter schools and every other effort at reforming public schools that continue to fail the nation’s most vulnerable young people, low income blacks and Hispanics.

The National Education Association and other teachers’ unions have put millions into Democrats’ congressional campaigns because they oppose Republican efforts to challenge unions on their resistance to school reform and specifically their refusal to support ideas such as performance-based pay for teachers who raise students’ test scores.

By going along with Secretary Duncan’s plan to hollow out the D.C. voucher program this president, who has spoken so passionately about the importance of education, is playing rank politics with the education of poor children. It is an outrage.

But you knew Pat Buchanan, enemy of eduation, would say that, didnt you?

UPDATE: Oh, of course it’s not Buchanan.  It’s Juan Williams.

And this is an issue that Republicans should be banging on like a pan lid at a frat party drunken percussion jam.

Of course, timid of being portrayed as “extremists” by people who call every Republican “extremist” for the crime of running against Democrats, most Republicans acquiesce with the current system, believing there’s something to save.

There’s really not a lot!

Last week, I noted that some scolds on the left were tut-tutting about the “historical accuracy” of calling tax protests “Tea Parties”.

Being me, the English major, I noted that “language changes”.

Mark Steyn being Mark Steyn, he noted that they’re wrong; it is perfectly historically accurate (emphasis added):

OK, to be less absolutist about it, my interests include finding a road at the end of my drive every morning, and modern equipment for the (volunteer) fire department and a functioning military to deter the many predators out there, and maybe one or two other things. But 95 percent of the rest is not just “special interests” but social engineering – a $400 tax credit for falling into line with Barack Obama and Susan Roesgen. That’s why these are Tea Parties – because the heart of the matter is the same question posed two-and-a-third centuries ago: Are Americans subjects or citizens? If the latter, then a benign sovereign should not be determining “your interests” and then announcing that he’s giving you a “tax credit” as your pocket money.

He who forgets history probably votes Democrat anyway.

I don’t care for Glenn Beck. Never have.

I’ve never quite put my finger on it, really; the fact that while there’s a lot to be upset and motivated about these days, his ire and militancy seems at times to be almost as manufactured as lefties claim the whole medium is?  His voice?  The fact that he has a seven-figure gig while I’m plugging away on weekends at WWTC?

I don’t know – or didn’t until Allahpundit at Hot Air broke it down in discussing one of Beck’s “Tom Paine” segments:

I don’t like is this guy’s habit of lapsing into rhetoric about a second revolution, legislators ignoring the people “at your peril,” and, per the letter from a Marine that he reads near the end here, the idea that “our country is under attack from an enemy within” — which isn’t the first time he’s used language about enemies and attacks to describe policy disagreements. I get that the character he’s playing obliges him to use a certain amount of revolutionary parlance, just like I get that I’ll take plenty of heat in the comments for being a squish who’s afraid to fight nutroots fire with fire, etc, but what can I tell you. That sort of rhetoric leaves me cold, and I can’t be the only one.

Theatrics are fine and dandy – every pundit uses ’em to some degree or another. But it seems like it’s the only trick Beck has.

ApplePieMom is the mother of a recently-deployed serviceman, and the proprietor of a new, eponymous, blog that is probably already on Janet Napolitano’s watch list.

And she wants to see red on Friday:

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing red every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called red-blooded Americans, and are also acknowledged as the “silent” majority. While we receive precious little media coverage that gives voice to this position, we are showing our
 love for our troops, our country and our homeland in record breaking numbers. When asking a soldier, “What can we do to make things better for you?” the first answer is, “We need your support and your prayers.” Americans, like you, me, and many of our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of us want to offer this support. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops, starts this Friday by wearing something red and continues each and every Friday, sending a visual message that they may see or hear about overseas.

I suppose it’s more tactful than a “kill ’em all and let G-d sort ’em out” T-shirt.

Please help me get the word out: if every one of us will share this message with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family, I have no doubt it will not be long before the USA is covered in red on Fridays. It will let our troops know the “silent” majority is on their side more than they realize. Let’s lead this visual effort, silently, respectfully, and with dignity, just by wearing something RED FRIDAY.

Count me in.

That is the percentage Obama is proposing to cut from the budget to reduce the deficit.

A senior administration officials says President Barack Obama is ready to ask federal department and agency chiefs to find $100 million to cut from the budget when he holds his first formal Cabinet meeting.

Now before you jump to the conclusion that this is some sort of PR stunt on the part of Jimmy Carter II, consider this:

If you were applying the same reduction to the purchase of a $50,000 car, it would amount to $1.41. If you were applying the same reduction to a family’s monthly budget of $4000 per month, it would amount to 11 cents per month. (!!!)

OK – go ahead and jump to the aforementioned conclusions now.

As for me, I can’t wait to get home tonight and tell my kids that our government is mortgaging their future a wee bit less than we thought!

Government (or pseudogovernmental) actions have unintended consequences; these consequences are often worse than the original problem.

History is full of such examples. Peter Huber in City Journal Bdemonstrates how Obama’s “Green Economy” is going to screw up the ecology even faster than whatever’s happening now.

Snip:

Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet’s oil reserves—about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion. If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they’ve got.Poor countries all around the planet are sitting on a second, even bigger source of carbon—almost a trillion tons of cheap, easily accessible coal. They also control most of the planet’s third great carbon reservoir—the rain forests and soil. They will keep squeezing the carbon out of cheap coal, and cheap forest, and cheap soil, because that’s all they’ve got. Unless they can find something even cheaper. But they won’t—not any time in the foreseeable future.

Read the whole thing; it’s Economics 300, which to be fair seems to be about 200 farther than the Administration ever got.

in unrelated-yet-germane news, Charles Gasparino at the NYPost looks into the role Elliot Spitzer’s “investigation” (which, according to the story, was mostly a repackaging of AIG’s own internal probe) played in turning a former pillar of good, sober management into financial chum and a not-so-funny punchline of the current economic crisis.

Conclusion:

THE former AIG executives I’ve been interviewing lately say many people deserve blame for the tragedy that is AIG: Sullivan, for taking his eye off the growing exposure; Greenberg, for hanging onto power as CEO even in his 80s and for creating the financial-products group without grooming a competent successor — and, of course, the guys who directly ran the credit-default-swap business.

But they save their harshest criticism and contempt for Eliot Spitzer for how his investigation, as trivial as it was, so consumed AIG’s management at possibly the most important time in its history — and for nothing more than a few cheap headlines.

The whole thing is worth a read.

What?  You’re trying to tell me that “The Daily Show” and Jon Stewart lies via misleading editing, especially in re the Tea Parties?

Pfft.  Next you’ll be saying that Colbert isn’t a real smug clueless blowhard conservative pundit.

…on politics with one of this blog’s regular comment meats, one “Angryclown”, it’s nice to know that his heart is in the right place (play the embedded video at the link).

Kudos, Angryclown.  The free world salutes you.

The editors of the National Review break the ice and reach the decision that for three generations dared not speak its name; the “War on Drugs is Lost”:

We have found Dr. Gazzaniga and others who have written on the subject persuasive in arguing that the weight of the evidence is against the current attempt to prohibit drugs. But NATIONAL REVIEW has not, until now, opined formally on the subject. We do so at this point. To put off a declarative judgment would be morally and intellectually weak-kneed.

Things being as they are, and people as they are, there is no way to prevent somebody, somewhere, from concluding that “NATIONAL REVIEW favors drugs.” We don’t; we deplore their use; we urge the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a drug to a minor. But that said, it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far.

The NR’s current editors- Buckley Jr, Szosz et al – weigh in on the subject.

The big point: the War costs us more in terms of lives, civil liberties and diversion of effort from dealing with addiction than it could ever be worth. In the past forty years, more people have died in the War on Drugs – 90-odd deaths from turf wars and habit-feeding robberies for every one to overdose – than died in Vietnam and Korea, and we’re farther from “victory” now than ever.  The “war” has taken much of Central America down with it; the turf wars for those feeding America’s jones kill many more people in Mexico than are dying in Iraq or Afghanistan right now.  And the worst part is, allof that sacrifice – every neighborhood destroyed, everyone killed in every botched drug-mugging, every cop caught in every gang-war crossfire, every broke dealer murdered for falling behind on his payments or tripping his capo’s suspicions – is in vain.  Every one.  None of them will lead to anything better.

It’s time to look into ending this particular “war”.

Let’s make sure we’re clear on one thing; while I emphatically do not support President Obama’s policies, administration, or style of leadership, when America and its people are in jeopardy I very much do want him to succeed.  Politics is supposed to end at the shoreline; to those who’d do us harm singularly or as a nation, we should be behind the President.  I even wanted Jimmy Carter to succeed in dealing with the Iranians – I was as Democrat as a 16-18 year old kid could be back then, and even I didn’t much like him, but I wanted to know that we had a capable, responsible person at the helm.
The corollary, of course, is that the President needs to do the job.

A friend forwarded this email, from the son of a friend of his, a US Navy sailor based in Virginia Beach VA (the Navy SEALs’ east-coast home) over the weekend. I present it without edits, redacting only the parties to the email by request, adding a few clarifications in square brackets.

From: XXXXX XXXXX
To: XXXXX XXXXX
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 7:25:25 AM
Subject: A SEAL friend of the mine sent the real Somali pirate story…

…and it frankly sounds about right.  BHO is “Barack Hussein Obama”, ROE is “Rules of Engagement”, RIB is “rigid inflatable boat”, “Raggies” is ragheads (a pejorative term for Muslim terrorists)…

The account is one from a Rear Admiral Lou Sarosdy, and it’s been making the rounds on the Internet. I took the time to confirm that Sarosdy exists (he does, and ran in some pretty serious company in his day):

Having spoken to some SEAL pals here in Virginia Beach yesterday and asking why this thing dragged out for 4 days, I got the following:

1. BHO wouldn’t authorize the DEVGRU/NSWC SEAL teams [The Navy equivalent of the Army’s “Delta” counterterrorism/hostage rescue group] to the scene for 36 hours going against OSC (on scene commander) recommendation.

2. Once they arrived, BHO imposed restrictions on their ROE that they couldn’t do anything unless the hostage’s life was in “imminent” danger

3. The first time the hostage jumped, the SEALS had the raggies all sighted in, but could not fire due to ROE restriction
4. When the navy RIB came under fire as it approached with supplies, no fire was returned due to ROE restrictions. As the raggies were shooting at the RIB, they were exposed and the SEALS had them all dialed in.
5. BHO specifically denied two rescue plans developed by the Bainbridge CPN [Captain] and SEAL teams
6. Bainbridge CPN and SEAL team CDR [commander] finally decide they have the OpArea and OSC authority to solely determine risk to hostage. 4 hours later, 3 dead raggies
7. BHO immediately claims credit for his “daring and decisive” behavior. As usual with him, it’s BS [Bainbridge Ship].

So per my last email thread, I’m downgrading Oohbaby’s performance to D-. Only reason it’s not an F is that the hostage survived.

Read the following accurate account.

Philips’ first leap into the warm, dark water of the Indian Ocean hadn’t worked out as well. With the Bainbridge in range and a rescue by his country’s Navy possible, Philips threw himself off of his lifeboat prison, enabling Navy shooters onboard the destroyer a clear shot at his captors, and none was taken.

The guidance from National Command Authority, the president of the United States, Barack Obama, had been clear: a peaceful solution was the only acceptable outcome to this standoff unless the hostage’s life was in clear, extreme danger.

The next day, a small Navy boat approaching the floating craft was fired on by the Somali pirates, and again no fire was returned and no pirates killed. This was again due to the cautious stance assumed by Navy personnel thanks to the combination of a lack of clear guidance from Washington and a mandate from the commander in chief’s staff not to act until Obama, a man with no background of dealing with such issues and no track record of decisiveness, decided that any outcome other than a peaceful solution would be acceptable.

After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the on scene commander decided he’d had enough.

Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage’s life and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation had been denied the day before, the Navy officer, unnamed in all media reports to date, decided the AK47 one captor had leveled at Philips’ back was a threat to the hostage’s life and ordered the NSWC team to take their shots.

Three rounds downrange later, all three brigands became enemy KIA and Philips was safe.

There is upside, downside, and spinside to the series of events over the last week that culminated in yesterday’s dramatic rescue of an American hostage.

Almost immediately following word of the rescue, the Obama administration and its supporters claimed victory against pirates in the Indian Ocean and [1] declared that the dramatic end to the standoff put paid to questions of the inexperienced president’s toughness and decisiveness.

Despite the Obama administration’s (and its sycophants’) attempt to spin yesterday’s success as a result of bold, decisive leadership by the inexperienced president, the reality is nothing of the sort. What should have been a standoff lasting only hours, as long as it took the USS Bainbridge and its team of NSWC operators to steam to the location, became an embarrassing four day and counting standoff between a ragtag handful of criminals with rifles and a U.S. Navy warship.

Biased?  Sure – military people often are when it comes to the right and wrong way of doing their jobs.  Filter accordingly (and, given the nature of the subject, at your own peril).

The President  – a guy with a paper-thin resume at everything but “community organizing”, with virtually no record even in the Senate – is new at the job…

…and that’s fine, and something “we” warned “you” about, and – let’s be fair – not really the issue here.

The Somali pirate story, which the Administration spun as a major victory and vindication of our naif President, would seem to have been more a lucky bobble that broke the right way, thanks to some commanders that knew when to creatively ignore, or at least circumvent, the President’s orders.

On how many issues will we – and He – get that lucky?

BLAH: If it looks too good to be true, it most likely is.  While “CPT Sarosdy’s” email recaps points that have appeared in other media sources, it’d appear that the email itself was a hoax.  I tried to verify this before running the post yesterday – but several rounds of Google searches on the article (looking for references to Sarosdy and searching for various parts of the email’s lede and key parts) produced no hits.

In other words; I did make an effort to verify the email before posting it. It obviously missed.

What was the term Dan Rather used?  Fake but accurate?

I apologize.

Over the years, I’ve given the Minnesoros…er, Minnesota Independent a lot of crap.

Of course, they’ve deserved much of it; from their early, fingers-crossed insistence that nosirreebob there was no link between their parent groups (The Center for “Independent” Media) and the various tentacles of George Soros’ propaganda machine (it turned out, by golly, there were) to plagiarism, comical reporting and, finally, the shocking revelation that the whole enterprise was a propaganda tool (“Shut up!“), the publication has been at times a carnival of errors.

Which doesn’t mean they haven’t had good writers on board; Andy Birkey, Paul Demko and Paul Schmelzer are all perfectly capable journalists on their respective beats.

Chris Steller,on the other hand, needs some work:

Here’s evidence that Minnesota’s post-election battle for U.S. Senate has permeated pop culture. Al Franken and Norm Coleman were cited this week by contestants in another competition that attracted millions of partisans: the race between movie actor Ashton Kutcher and news juggernaut CNN to be first to gain one million followers on Twitter, the social-media phenomenon.

Ah.  Well, now we know we’re into vital news territory.  It’s good to kinow we have seasoned (citizen) journalists covering that crucial King/Kutcher beat.

Two leading players in the new-media stunt known as the ”Twitter War“ compared themselves to Minnesota’s Senate rivals. Kutcher tweeted “now I know how Al Franken must have felt” when the race looked tight on Thursday. After the actor bested the network today, CNN host Larry King said, “I’m not a sore loser. I’m not gonna pull a Norm Coleman and take this to the courts.”

Well, by all means, Minnesota, let’s let Larry King serve as our rudder in difficult times. Let the bland, mushy-left, softball-tossing star-hugging King, the emptiest of all the talking heads, steer the ship of state!

It’ll make things so much easier.

Time has been standing still as the world wonders – will Michele Tafoya take the noon-3PM slot at WCCO-AM?  Or will she not?

David Brauer captures the breathless anticipation:

Thursday, I wrote that Michele Tafoya was “likely” to be named WCCO-AM’s noon-3 p.m. host next week. Today, C.J. casts some doubt on the hiring, noting the Good Neighbor’s announcement had been delayed amid “insider” speculation that money and Tafoya’s Monday Night Football committment are the snags.

That might be right — I’m relying on insiders, too, which is not definitive. However, I have a couple of additional data points that could explain the hold-up.

OK – I lied.  The only people who care are local media wonks.

Among the rest of us, the only real question is this: given that Michele Tafoya is a TV personality (and that TV personalities make almost universally terrible talk radio hosts) who is doing yet another mushy general interest show on a mushy general interest station that has in a generation fallen from market dominance to weak also-ran status, is Tafoya’s show going to:

1. Smell, and get tubed at the end of Tafoya’s contract.
2. Reek to high heaven, and get blitzed for trumped-up cause within a year.
3. Suck chunks through a straw and cause the once-great Good Neighbor to “go dark” (which is, for the benefit of all of you leftybloggers, a broadcasting term for “shut off its transmitter for good”, not a racist jape).

Discuss.

…like the corners of my mind.  Faded bits of  wishful thinking, of the way…Harry was.

It’s been exactly two years since Harry Reid’s Baghdad-Bob-In-Reverse moment.
How’s that foreign-policy mojo working for you, Harry?

Don’t we call that “defeatbagging”, these days?

…because:

Even after the recount and panel-findings, the 312-vote margin separating the two men equals about .01% of the 2.9 million votes cast. Even without any irregularities, this is as close to a “tie” as it gets. And there have been plenty of irregularities. By the end of the recount, the state was awash with evidence of duplicate ballot counting, newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, illegal voting, and wildly diverse standards as to which votes were counted. Any one of these issues was enough to throw the outcome into doubt. Combined, they created a taint more worthy of New Jersey than Minnesota.

New Jersey? Them’s fightin’ words.

Minnesota has had enough national embarrassment in the form of…

Mark Dayton

Jesse Ventura

Paul Wellstone

and now…

Al Franken?

(and being compared to New Jersey – which by the way is actually closer to Franken’s “true” residence than Minnesota)

It has not ceased to amaze how far Minnesotan’s will go in the interest of having a non-Coleman candidate and that Al Franken is the best the opposition could muster.

An empty seat is a viable alternative.

…that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began.

The story is well-known to people who know their history – which means most Americans know nothing about it.

Before there were concentration and extermination camps, the Nazis used the traditional Jewish “Ghettos” of Eastern Europe as natural “camps” in which to confine the Jews, Gypsies and the rest of their targets. They systematically deported Jews from all over Poland, Ukraine and Russia – and then all over Europe – to these small enclaves in Polish, Baltic and Ukrainian cities, using them as holding tanks until the camps – the last link in the Final Solution – were ready.

And in early 1942, they were ready.  The Germans started shipping Jews off to Treblinka, the first of the Vernichtungslagern, or Extermination camps.

And in the overcrowded, starving, disease-ridden Warsaw Ghetto – the realization that the end was near provoked a response from some of the inmates; it’d be better to die fighting.

And so a resistance movement,armed with a few stolen handguns and rifles, had formed.  In the previous months, it had managed to disrupt some of the roundups to the camps, throwing the Germans’ plans – as precise as any industrial supply chain management system – into disarray. And on April 19, the Germans’ military response was met with armed resistance.

The story is long, and gruesome; it’s been told better elsewhere.

The Jews – hopelessly outnumbered and virtually unarmed by military standards – somehow dished out a military setback to the Germans, holding the Germans out of the Ghetto for nearly a month.

It couldn’t last, of course.  The Germans advanced building-to-building, killing nearly everyone as they went, burning the entire Ghetto to the ground.

The Germans trashed the Ghetto as thoroughly as Ground Zero; they shipped the very few they didn’t kill or burn or bury out of hand off to Treblinka (itself to end in another doomed uprising in the near future).

There are still some survivors; Marek Edelman, at 87, the last surviving leader, and a handful of others continue to tell their stories.  But like our own World War Two generation, the Holocaust’s few survivors – and the fewer still who survived the Ghetto – are dying off.
And as they do, we should worry – justifiably – that society is going to forget about what happened; that society might forget the consequences of racism (the real kind), hatred, dminishing the humanity of ones’ enemies (or scapegoats) to try to justify all manner of inhumanities and horrors upon them. And of course, worry that some will take away the wrong lesson, as another loathsome person did fourteen years ago today.

I read the story of the Ghetto and the Uprising when I was in junior high; I probably absorbed it much later.  And lessons were these; never let this happen here.  Call out the prejudice that leads to this sort of eliminationist hatred when you see it, and do it without stint or mercy.  Never let society be left at the mercy of the thugs and the autocrats; it’s why we have a Second Amendment.

Above all, uphold humanity.

(more…)

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM.  And while I look forward to doing every episode of the NARN, I’ve been looking forward to this episode in particular.  You’ll see why.

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I are up next, from 1-3. We’ll have Eva Ng, candidate for mayor of Saint Paul endorsed by the GOP. And then – Michael Yon, today’s premiere war correspondent.  This promises to be a great one; I hope you can make it.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – Guest host Tony Garcia will be in for King today, dishing his own personal brand of conservative hurt.  Check it out.
• And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM!

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream)
• Podcast at Townhall (usually uploaded by Monday morning).
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!

Join us!

(Title: The Libertines)

Greg Gutfeld catalogues the racism, hatred and rage [links to video] at the Tea Parties.

Garafolo, Napolitano and Coopero are onto something here.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is going to be on “Weeds” this season.

Showtime says the 47-year-old actress will appear on the fifth season of the hit dramedy, which premieres June 8 on Showtime. Leigh will appear in “at least two episodes” as the older sister of Mary-Louise Parker’s character.

Now, I don’t even have Showtime. So why do I note this?

Because for the past twenty-odd years, I have never been able to tell Parker or Leigh apart, or at least have always mixed the two of them up. I couldn’t tell you (without looking at IMDB) which one was in Rush and which was in Fast Times.

In fact, all of that generation of actors that adopted three part names – Sarah Jessica Parker, C. Thomas Howell, Doogie Houser Harris – kinda blend into one big blur for me.