Ed Schulz – who actually is as dumb as the lefty caricature of conservative talk radio – on the importance of fair elections and working together to build a better, more civil society:

“I, uh, I, uh, I, uh, I dunno – if I lived in Massachusetts, I’d trah to vote ten tahms.  I dunno if they’d let me, but I’d chee-yut to keep those bastahds out.  Because that’s exactly what they are”.

No, Ed.  You might have to cheat to win a debate with a lobotomy patient, but I’m afraid it’s possible even Massachusetts Democrats might be more ethical than you.

And Ed?  You are living, breathing proof of Berg’s Seventh Law.

And there’s evidence even you know it:

A stopped clock is right twice a day – and Schultz may see some advantage in looking like the first libtalker to be seen to publicly spit up the koolaid.

A while ago, codified all of the various Berg’s Laws in one place.  These laws – an encyclopedic survey of several small but fairly universal truths – include perhaps one of my most trenchant observations, captured for posterity as Berg’s Seventh Law:

Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection – When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are projecting.

Critics have misguidedly assailed this law; “you’re basically saying you’re rubber and we’re glue”, which may sound satisfying on a superficial level, it ignores the fact that the Seventh Law is entirely true.

For example – liberals constantly tell conservatives they’ve “gotten too extreme” for the American people.  This is at a time when the American people are rejecting Obama’s far-left overreach in droves, even to the point of the once-unthinkable; conservatives organizing and going to demonstrations. 

In the meantime, some Democrats – the ones that have to live in the real world outside the Beltway – are starting to get nervous.

This might be the only time you ever see me call  Chicago mayor Richard Daley a moderate.  He’s got an op-ed in the WaPo:

The announcement by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith that he is switching to the Republican Party is just the latest warning sign that the Democratic Party — my lifelong political home — has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.

Rep. Griffith’s decision makes him the fifth centrist Democrat to either switch parties or announce plans to retire rather than stand for reelection in 2010. These announcements are a sharp reversal from the progress the Democratic Party made starting in 2006 and continuing in 2008, when it reestablished itself as the nation’s majority party for the first time in more than a decade.

That success happened for one major reason: Democrats made inroads in geographies and constituencies that had trended Republican since the 1960s. In these two elections, a majority of independents and a sizable number of moderate Republicans joined the traditional Democratic base to sweep Democrats to commanding majorities in Congress and to bring Barack Obama to the White House.

Daley is leaving out a few things, of course; Obama and the Dems made those “inroads” against the legacy of a deeply unpopular outgoing Administration, with the full complicity of a media that made a rigid agenda point of showing Obama as a moderate, to the point of actively stifling any discussion of his far-left past, associations or record.  I think the left accepts that as a given, by now.

But wait! (I’ve added some emphasis):

This call was answered not just by voters but by a surge of smart, talented candidates who came forward to run and win under the Democratic banner in districts dominated by Republicans for a generation. These centrists swelled the party’s ranks in Congress and contributed to Obama’s victories in states such as Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and other Republican bastions.

But now they face a grim political fate. On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, “true” Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with a party that seems to be advancing an agenda far to the left of most voters.

The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.

Or more fun!

In particular, I love Daley’s probably-offhanded admission – that the left wing smear machine actually is as venal, smug and divisive as they’ve always alleged hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity and the Northern Alliance – whose messages are actually relatively closer to the center of American politics – to be.

Witness the losses in New Jersey and Virginia in this year’s off-year elections. In those gubernatorial contests, the margin of victory was provided to Republicans by independents — many of whom had voted for Obama. Just one year later, they had crossed back to the Republicans by 2-to-1 margins.

Witness the drumbeat of ominous poll results. Obama’s approval rating has fallen below 49 percent overall and is even lower — 41 percent — among independents. On the question of which party is best suited to manage the economy, there has been a 30-point swing toward Republicans since November 2008, according to Ipsos. Gallup’s generic congressional ballot shows Republicans leading Democrats. There is not a hint of silver lining in these numbers. They are the quantitative expression of the swing bloc of American politics slipping away.

The Mayor still knows his audience:

Despite this raft of bad news, Democrats are not doomed to return to the wilderness. The question is whether the party is prepared to listen carefully to what the American public is saying. Voters are not re-embracing conservative ideology, nor are they falling back in love with the Republican brand. If anything, the Democrats’ salvation may lie in the fact that Republicans seem even more hell-bent on allowing their radical wing to drag the party away from the center.

Of course, the biggest second-tier danger facing the Democrats is believing their own talking points about the GOP and conservatism; just because you relentlessly intone that everything to the right of Olympia Snowe is “extreme” doesn’t make it so. 

The real conservative case – limited government, individual and economic liberty, security, family – is the American mainstream.  And when Republicans act like conservatives rather than beltway lobbyists-in-training, it shows at the polls. 

Read Daley’s entire op-ed.

I”m not sure what’s got me more jazzed; that Obamacare is such a shambles, even the far left is bailing on the President…:

In a stunning reversal of fortune for President Barack Obama top progressives are attacking the health-reform plan moving through the Senate as “hollow,” “unsupportable” and a sellout to corporate interests.

Republicans, after plotting for months to sink the signature legislation of Obama’s first year, suddenly think that Democrats might wind up doing it for them.

Most dangerously for White House chances of assembling 60 Senate votes, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean launched a third day of attacks on the emerging bill, arguing in a Washington Post op-ed that it meets none of his benchmarks for “real reform.”

“[A]s it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America,” Dean wrote, then took to the airwaves to amplify his case.

…or that Fast Eddie Schultz, a man who actually is as stupid and hateful as the left alleges conservative talk radio to be (see Berg’s Seventh Law), is now considered a “top progressive”:

Ed Schultz, an influential liberal radio host [he’s “influence” a few million listeners to switch back to Limbaugh – Ed.], declared on his “Ed Show” on MSNBC: “The base is restless. They are wandering in the wilderness, Mr. President. … They want to know, where are you? … Right now, Mr. President, your base thinks you’re nothing but a sellout — a corporate sellout, out that. … The only people who like this current bill right now, Mr. President, is the insurance industry — they get a bunch of new customers.”

Don’t you love it when the left takes a break from demanding that conservative leaders run to the center, to demand that liberal leaders move to the left?

Fox News got busted altering photos of Rep. Bachmann’s rally to make it look bigger than it was.  (As if getting 10,000 people from around the country to turn out on almost no notice was any mean feat).

Bad Hannity.  Bad boy.  Give your radio show to someone else in penance.  Like me.

But isn’t the left just a tad disingenuous in baying “foul” at the moon over using pictures to lie?  Laura, writing at the Greenroom, has been keeping a list and checking it twice:

• The use of carefully cropped photos to make Republicans and conservatives look sinister.
• Using photos with inconvenient truths like stage management and Communist symbols cropped out.
• The denigrating, sexist focus on Sarah Palin’s shoes, especially shots angled to have someone appear to be looking up her skirt.
• Years of tightly cropped photos of anti-war and pro-illegal immigration protests to make crowds seem larger or to hide the Mexican flags.
• The Obama halo photos.
• The media’s habit of passing by hundreds or thousands of sane people and zeroing in on Truthers and other whack jobs at tea party protests.
• Shamelessly edited video. To say nothing of Keith Olbermann.
• And the most damning indictment of all: the open secret of Pallywood.  Instead of exposing this travesty of journalism, our media routinely uses blatantly dishonest anti-Israel imagery.

There is no excuse for what Fox News did, and I’m glad they were caught at it.  I’m not aware of anyone on the right defending it.  But spare me the outrageously outrageous outrage, lefties.  You don’t have a leg to stand on.

Always remember Berg’s Seventh Law – when they accuse conservatives of hatred or perfidy, they’re projecting.

In all things political, I urge you to remember Berg’s Seventh Law: whenever liberals attack or mock anything about Republicans or (especially) conservatives, they are projecting or distracting.

Two key Dem memes since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 elections have been…:

• Conservative “tea-baggers” are purging “moderates” from the party, and…
• …this “purge” is causing the GOP to melt down.

What does Berg’s Seventh Law tell us?

Yep.  Projecting and distracting:

A few days ago, the left-wing activist group MoveOn.org began sending out emails seeking contributions to fund primary challenges against any Democratic senator who does not fully support “health care reform with a public option.” Now there’s an update: MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben says the group has raised $3,578,117 for the project and is thinking of new ways to punish errant Democratic lawmakers.

“It’s a huge sum, and the clearest signal yet that any Democrat who helps Republicans filibuster health care reform will face an enormous backlash from the grassroots,” writes Ruben. And now, working in conjunction with Howard Dean’s old organization Democracy for America, MoveOn is starting a drive to take away the committee chairmanships of any Democrat who fails to live up to MoveOn’s progressive standards. “Many of these senators hold coveted committee chairmanships that give them significant power within the Senate,” Ruben writes. “Our friends at Democracy for America have launched an open letter urging Senate Democrats to strip committee chairmanships from any Democrat who filibusters health care.” Ruben says that more than 66,000 MoveOn and Democracy for America members have pledged to contribute.

Look for a Kos vs. DLC (or whatever they call themselves today, if they even exist anymore) brouhaha sooner than later.  Accompanied by lots of stories from Keith Olberman and Fast Eddie Schultz (the real hearts, souls and leaders of the Democratic Party) about how intolerant of dissent the GOP is.

…who, among the wave of Democrat/Media “revulsion” about right-wing “anger” and “violence” at Town Hall meetings, express shock, shock at this story…:

An act of vandalism at Colorado Democratic headquarters that shattered windows next to signs about health care reform took a strange turn Wednesday when it was revealed that one of the suspects was a Democratic activist.

Democratic leaders initially said that the window shattering was an act of political vandalism, possibly by opponents of health care reform.

[Not to mention racists, white supremacists and militiamen!]

But the political leanings of suspect Maurice Schwenkler raised the prospect that one of the party’s own might have vandalized its building to make a statement.

…but they’re just people who don’t know Berg’s Seventh Law.

…when the “convential wisdom” among the not-conventionally-wise was that “Dick Cheney ran the Bush administration?”

As in all things – remember Berg’s Seventh Law. 

Because Rahm Emanuel would seem to be the real thing:

The caricature of Mr. Emanuel as a profanity-spewing operative has given way to a more nuanced view: as a profanity-spewing operative with a keen understanding of how to employ power on behalf of a new president with relatively little experience in Washington.

Although relentlessly deferential to the president, Mr. Emanuel is clearly more chief than staff. While some predecessors husbanded their authority, lest it be diluted, friends said he believed the more someone used power, the more power that person had.

He knows how to pull all the levers of influence in Washington — raising money, mobilizing interest groups and harvesting the latest policy ideas from research groups. At the same time, his relentless campaign-style approach sometimes leaves some colleagues worried they spend too much time reacting to events.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Do you remember when lefties insisted President Bush, at the head of a “theocon” conspiracy, wanted to take dictatorial control of the whole nation, assume the power of life and death, and impose its awful agenda by force?

As always with this sort of thing, I refer you to Berg’s Seventh Law.

And then this piece in the Hot Air Green Room by Jim Treacher:

It turns out that John Holdren, Obama’s new “science czar,” has expressed some unusually radical ideas about stemming population growth. Or to put it more simply, he’s a totalitarian eugenicist:

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Please read the whole thing for the details, along with photographic proof that Holdren’s book, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, exists. Holdren really did say all that stuff, and he even lists the book in his cirriculum vitae. If he’s changed his mind about these things in the last 30 years, now might be a good time to say so.

If this is true – and it’s the kind of thing that passes as normal among a certain strain of scientists, like Robert Ehrlich (who advocated international triage to deal with the population and famine bomb that was going to kill billions by 1990) or some of the radical environmental crowd (who believe the worldwide human population should drop down into the tens of millions, living as hunter-gatherers) – then Holdren is going to need to do something radical.

Like take the media out for cheeseburgers and talk about John and Kate’s divorce.

I’ve never been a huge Adam Platt fan, but he certainly has his moments:

The Minnesota Supreme Court is days away from hearing arguments in Coleman’s election challenge. It comes down to this: absentee ballots were rejected in different counties and municipalities with varying levels of rigor and adherence to the law. I don’t think either side denies this. The election challenge judges concluded that because Coleman could not prove this variance caused him to lose the election, it was not germane.

Because that court refused to reexamine every absentee ballot, we don’t know what they would tell us. (I suspect Franken would still win.) But if the shoe was on the other foot, and Al trailed by 300, wouldn’t Franken supporters be crying for justice? Would Al have bowed out? Let’s be intellectually honest here—no way.

And it’s nice to see at least one of “them” being intellectually honest.

Look – that’s the biggest scandal of this botched Senate election; I doubt one voter out of 10,000, including the various judges involved, could correctly explain how a 200-odd vote Coleman lead turned into a 200-odd vote Franken one.  I doubt even that many of them could come up with a rationale for having different counting stanards in every jurisdiction, for a US Senate race.  And I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who can justify the rate at which absentee ballots have gone miscounted in this race (which is, by the way, further proof of Berg’s Seventh Law; “When a Democrat defames a conservative’s regard for ethics or the law, they are projecting“; remember how the DFL accused Mary Kiffmeyer of “disenfranchising voters”, without ever showing a single, er, disenfranchised voter?).

Hopefully, Minnesota will learn its lessons from this campaign.  Why, if we have a conscientious Secretary of State who can put his partisan urges aside to work on fixing the voting sytem…

…oh.  Yeah.  We’re screwed.

Three weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans, driven by a campaign that started on Twitter, drew endless defamation from the mainstream and lefty (pardon the redundancy) media; some, when not taking part in juvenile giggling, insinuated that the Tea Parties had roots and followers with various violent groups (indeed, the DHS report was released just in time for the run-up to the media’s suspiciously synchronous campaign of defamation).

Nationwide, the arrest figures were extremely low – about half a dozen, mostly for the kind of petty-drunkenness and public urination sorts of things that’ll happen anytime 600,000 people get together around a nation like this; the typical evening at “Drinking Liberally” draws more drunk and disorderly and public urination arrests.

Compare with The One, threatening a group of legal investors, with all sorts of extralegal sanctions, including siccing his mobs of drooling fanboys and fangirls on them:

A group of lenders to troubled automaker Chrysler asked a bankruptcy court judge Tuesday to keep their identities secret, saying they could face “public attack” and “threats to their safety.”The petition was filed by the group that objected to a government plan to reduce the ailing company’s debt to help create a partnership with Italy’s Fiat…Represented by lawyer Gerard Uzzi of the firm White & Case, the group said its members may be subjected to threats and intimidation in part because of comments made by President Barack Obama, who chastised the opponents of an attempted deal to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy.

“Never before has the president of the United States announced a chapter 11 filing in a national address,” the petition said.

“The president publicly chastised these secured creditors for having the temerity to enforce their constitutional rights in this court of law…”

Hinderaker:

It is important to understand what is happening here. Many think that Obama is merely engaging in crony capitalism, favoring his political supporters (most notably the Auto Workers Union) at the expense of others. That’s true, of course, but it is much worse than that: Obama has tried to bully those who have not bought his favor–Chrysler’s non-TARP secured creditors–into giving up their legal rights by threatening to use the powers of the White House to damage their businesses. This sort of lawlessness is common in some of the more corrupt Third World countries, but it is brand new to the United States.

We just spent eight years with the left claiming conspiracies against the Constitution under every rock – and now we have an Administration that’s actually giving them to us; the DHS blacklisting Americans; the government running roughshod over the law and, let us not forget, looking for loopholes to carry out the very same policies (tribunals, “aggressive interrogation”) that the left spent the last eight years howling about.
Just remember Berg’s Seventh Law; “Whenever lefties defame conservatives’ ethics or commitment to liberty, they are projecting”.

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.

It’s been almost four years since I codified the various “Berg’s Laws” in one convenient place.

It’s high time I updated things.

Berg’s First Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary – “No liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the President’s justifications for the War in Iraq at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive”

Berg’s Corollary to Bissonnette’s Law – (Whenever someone introduces an “Old West” analogy into a discussion on civilian firearms ownership, the person can be presumed to be covering for absolute ignorance on the subject). Corollary: Whenever anyone says “people who favor guns are compensating for something, ifyaknowwhatImean”, know what they mean only in the most academic possible sense.

Berg’s Third Law of Human Resilience – After any disaster, whenever government and the media declare “there can not be any more survivors, and this is now a recovery operation”, they will be wrong.

Berg’s Fourth Law of Media/Sports Inversion – The Vikings will be contenders until the moment the local media actually believes they will be contenders. At that moment – be it pre-season or Week 12 – the season will fall irredeemably apart.

Berg’s Fifth Law of Historical Illteracy – 99% of the invocations of Godwin’s Law are done by 1% of the online population. Corollary: That 1% understands .000001% of the history required for a literate invocation of Godwin’s Law.

Berg’s Sixth Law of writing a Blog in a city full of people with dubious senses of Humor – To every joke, there is an equal and opposite inappropriately petulant reaction.

Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Blogging – When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are projecting.

For six years, I’ve had to listen to lefties barbering about the supposed butchery of civil liberties under Bush.  They are never, of course, able to actually specify any civil liberties being denied American citizens, but no matter; they’re on a roll!

Among the few who do attempt to answer the question, the common thread seems to be something along the lines of “Bush wants to do away with Habeas Corpus”.

Now, I think it’s become nearly axiomatic; when a liberal issues a group defamation of conservatives, there will either be some such behavior in the recent past, or there will be that exact behavior – beknownst or otherwise to the speaker – in the near future.  So axiomatic is it that I am going to coin “Berg’s Seventh Law of Leftyblog Behavior” to taxonomize it.[*]
…well, take a read:

The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Judge Bates ruled last week that the three — each of whom says he was seized outside of Afghanistan — could challenge their detention in court.

So the new law is: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are projecting”.
(more…)