Unless the national polls are off by a mile, and I think they may prove to be in the long run (that’s a topic for later), Obammy has been the benefactor of an apparent Teflon coating.

Despite a long, long, long (long) series of hateful, unsavory, embarrassing, un-American, undeniable and inexcusable associations, and a storied history of political debauchery, Obama has somehow avoided the fate a more discerning electorate would deliver him. John Edwards dips his pen in the company ink and he’s not invited to the big show. Obama hangs with terrorists and mobsters and anti-American hatemongers and he’s neck and neck with John McCain.

Another day, another controversy but this time Obama’s posse is pleading with the feds to come to his aid. Dude, chill. What’s the big deal Obammy? What are you afraid of?

Why don’t you want us to see this video?

…and what don’t we know about Obama’s past and more importantly, his true ambitions?

Sen. Barack Obama is warning TV stations and asking the Justice Department to intervene in an attempt to block the airing of an ad by a non-profit group that links him to an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

The spot by the American Issues Project questions Obama’s ties to William Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground organization who boasted of a series of bomb attacks at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

Now everyone is going to go find that ad, and even if Oback Barama is successful in getting stations to pull the (quite relevant) ad off the air, a great many voters will find it on the web any way.

Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer wrote to station managers, the AP said, warning: “Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity.”

Well there you have it. It can’t be true. Obama’s lawyer says so.

Meanwhile:

Documents released Tuesday by the University of Illinois at Chicago shed some light on Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, a founding member of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground.

Obama’s association with Ayers, who now teaches at the university, has become an issue in the Illinois senator’s presidential campaign. The Weather Underground took credit for several nonfatal (does that mean it’s okay?-JR) bombings on targets that included the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and critics accuse Obama of rubbing elbows with an unabashed 1960s radical.

Obama has said that, although he knew Ayers as a professor involved in community outreach efforts in Chicago, he doesn’t share Ayers’ extreme views.

To be fair, putting Obama and Ayers in the same room and on the same agenda doesn’t implicate Obama in a meaningful way in and of itself.  However, when you couple this association with a myriad of related events and associations including the Reverend Wright debacle (I went to the church for twenty years but don’t share his views), the Tony Rezko controversy, Michelle’s early and telling slip ups, and Obama’s questionable (let’s call it heritage), what should be troubling for all Americans is the pattern that is emerging.

How the hell does an operative of this ilk get this far in our electoral process?

Americans have succumbed to such low expectations so as to expect politicians to be slippery; to be beholden to lobbyists; to be evasive, and have affairs. What they aren’t prepared for is a President that harbors extreme radical beliefs coupled with a career is not marked by accomplishment but rather unabashedly for political gain; a would-be Manchurian Candidate.

Join AM1280 The Patriot and its galaxy of stars[1] with expanded local coverage at the Minnesota State Fair!

Tonight - King Banaian and Michael Brodkorb from NARNIII “The Final Word” will be live at the Patriot’s posh new digs, on Dan Patch just inside the main (Snelling Avenue) gate, across from the DFL booth!

This is gonna be fuuuuun!

Catch the show - on the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

Read the rest of this entry »

This one just crossed the wire:

They don’t make radicals like they used to…

Chino Latino is an hYpStR restaurant in Minneapolis.

I’ve never been there, but pretty much everyone I’ve ever known who clamed to be a regular seemed like the kind of person that’d be on Molly Priesmeyer’s speed dialer, if you know what I mean.

But I saw this, and almost wished I could be regular…:

…just so I could stop going in a loud huff.

Michelle Malkin noticed something that I’ve been pointing out for years and years:

And while Democrat Party chair Howard Dean excoriates the Republican Party as the “white” party, I saw only one-non-white agitator among the pro-abortion gaggle. (This goes for the rest of the Recreate ‘68 populace, too. It’s as pale and colorless as a Colorado snowfall.) Across the street from the Planned Parenthood event, however, were many incensed black- and brown-skinned moms. Incensed, that is, that an abortion mill had been built right across from the park where their children practice football and swing on the playground set.

One of the moms, Priscilla said bluntly: “I don’t want a f**king abortion clinic in my neighborhood!” A Hispanic mother added: “It’s against the Catholic Church.” (Are you listening, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi?) When asked about her views on abortion, another black mother of three I spoke to while sitting in her minivan told me simply: “I don’t believe in it.”

Education, free enterprise and - eventually - social issues like abortion are going to be the ones that drive the Dems up on the rocks, especially with minority and immigrant voters. It won’t scupper them this election; it might take a generation.

But it’ll happen.

So I did the show at the fair last night.  Had a great time talking with Ed Matthews, who’s running for Congress in the Fourth District, as well as Andrew Campanella from the Alliance for School Choice,  and Big John Howell from WIND’s John and Cisco show live from the convention.

Of course, while I always had a blast broadcasting from our old digs on Judson near the southeast corner of the fairgrounds, our new location - just inside the front gate, on Dan Patch Avenue, is a complete hoot.  Largely because we’ve installed tables and chairs and sun-umbrellas, so it’s genuinely a nice place to stop and decompress (when you’re not outraged at the mess the Tics want to make of this country) from the hustle and bustle of the fair, of course…

…but also because the DFL booth is right across the street.

As always, I make a point of interviewing them whenever I can; on the NARN II show, we always take liberal callers first, and that includes the ones that come into our lair on foot.  Most of them aren’t up to talking on the air - most of them seem to be acting more from inchoate rage than considered thought.

Especially one woman last night.

As I was interviewing Matthews, a woman - short, leathery, fiftyish, with a mop of cairefully-coiffed short brown hair, wearing an Obama shirt and a face that bespoke a middle-aged life that had never brooked any disagreement - stood in the far corner of the Patriot’s area, and just grimaced; the look was partly “that wasn’t a Baby Ruth I just ate”, and partly pure, undiluted hatred.

I waved to try to defuse things, and maybe induce her to hang around for a quick chat.  Her faced tightened up, as if someone had brought her a plate of steamed refugee. She scampered away, holding her head, as if the cognitive dissonance was making her immune system reject her brain.

We have to share a country with these people.

Oy.

If a Republican sitting in a rest-room stall mutters under his breath “I think the GOP’s wrong about the transportation bill” he can be sure that Lori Sturdevant will be there with a reporter notebad in her hand, shortly to write a story about the “wave” of disaffected Republicans rejecting Tim Pawlenty and the Taxpayers League.

But this?

[Texas Democrat Rep. Sheila] Jackson Lee [who is leading efforts to bring Hillary supporters into line behind Obama] hasn’t met Connie Kafka of Wyoming. She is the Democrats’ worst nightmare. She’s not a Hillary Clinton supporter who’ll hold her nose and vote for Obama. She’s a Hillary Clinton supporter who’s going to work and vote for John McCain.

And she has no problem telling you why.

She doesn’t believe Obama loves America.

It’s from Bob Collins, at MPR’s News Cut, and you have to listen to the rest.

Bob Cusack at The Hill notes that the Tic Convention has its problems - and they go way deeper than Obama vs. The Clintons:

Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) triggered headlines when he publicly criticized Democratic congressional leaders for the way they handled calls for more drilling amid high gas prices.

Speaking at a Virginia delegation breakfast in Denver on Tuesday, Webb said, “One of the great mistakes that we made in terms of political strategy before we broke for this latest recess was not taking on the Republican Party when they started talking about offshore drilling.”

He added, “I believe that our leadership made a very bad mistake. I don’t think we should run from that issue.”

It’s almost like Webb is listening to - I dunno - constituents or something.

And I loved this part:

Union leaders this week have complained that some of their members have privately said they won’t vote for Obama because he is black. And a Democratic poll released Tuesday stated that Obama “has yet to close the deal with many white, working-class voters who normally vote Democratic.”

Wow. Conventional “wisdom” has held for 35 years that all the racists joined the Republican party. But I have yet to meet a Republican who even mentioned Obama’s race on their long, detailed lists of reasons they’d never vote for him. Perhaps, for argument’s sake, they ran out of breath before they could get there, after listing all the economic, foreign policy, ethical and experience issues that may well make Obama, on his hypothetical inauguration day, the worst president of my lifetime. I don’t know.

Just saying.

(Via Gary Gross)

To: The Hon.  Nancy Pelosi

From: Mitch Berg, schlep blogger

Re:  Thanks!

Ms. Pelosi,

As a conservative Republican who’s been fighting back against the notion that this was going to be a very rough year to be a Republican, I’d like to thank  you  for your remarks yesterday.

House Democratic leaders and protesters waving McCain signs had a war of words Tuesday at a press event outside an old train station. The demonstrators interrupted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with chants of “Drill here! Drill now!”

Pelosi paused and asked the group, “Right here?”

Seeming to enjoy the back and forth, she followed with another question: “Can we drill your brains?

Ok, so a little back-and-forth smack-talk is fun stuff.  I enjoy it myself, when I face the odd schnook in an Obama button baying at the moon at the Patriot booth at the Fair.  It can be fun.

But this next bit…:

She went on to refer to the protesters, who continued to chant sporadically, as “handmaidens of Big Oil.” Arguing that increased offshore drilling would reduce gas prices by only a couple of pennies a decade from now, she referred to the demonstrators as the “2-cents-in-10-years-crowd.”

…merely proves that you are from Planet San Francisco.  But I do hope to make sure readers all over the rest of this country hear that.  Over and over again.
At any rate, thank you very much.  I’m feeling much better these days.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this story, about the Minneapolis Police and a bunch of “journalist” from a “new media collective” in New York…:

Three New York media professionals in town to cover the Republican National Convention were detained by Minneapolis police officers in Northeast Minneapolis early Tuesday morning. Police confiscated their equipment, which the trio calls a deliberate attack on their right to free speech.

Vlad Teichberg, Olivia Katz and Anita Braithwaite are from the New York-based Glass Bead Collective, a new media arts group. Among the equipment taken: video cameras, still cameras, laptops, notebooks, money and other personal belongings.

…because while I am a First Amendment absolutist (like any libertarian-conservative), I also notice that whenever the local lefty “alternative” media covers these people, they sow the word “journalist” like mines along the Korean border.  Almost to the point of caricature.
They are, of course - like the Minnesoros “Independent” and, for that matter, AM1280 and this very blog, flogging agendas.  Which is not the “journalism” I was taught when I did it for a (small, crummy) living.

Do tell:

You’re going to “take” my town, you little prick?

You might have a hard time “taking” anything with that spraycan jammed up your ass.

Just saying.

…about this story - about a couple of typo police who got their just deserts.

Er, dessserts:

Two self-styled vigilantes against typos who defaced a more than 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year.

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson pleaded guilty Aug. 11 for the damage done March 28 at the park’s Desert View Watchtower. The sign was made by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who designed the rustic 1930s watchtower and other Grand Canyon-area landmarks.

The script writers from Monk should really call these guys:

Deck and Herson, both 28, toured the United States this spring, wiping out errors on government and private signs. They were interviewed by NPR and the Chicago Tribune, which called them “a pair of Kerouacs armed with Sharpies and erasers and righteous indignation.”

Hubris, of course, was their problem:

An affidavit by National Park Service agent Christopher A. Smith said investigators learned of the vandalism from an Internet site operated by Deck on behalf of the Typo Eradication Advancement League, or TEAL.

Authorities said a diary written by Deck reported that while visiting the watchtower, he and Herson “discovered a hand-rendered sign inside that, I regret to report, contained a few errors.”

And also was somewhat historic.

Anyway - they were dragged to justice.

I like the occasional happy ending.

 …were [end Streisand]

Join AM1280 The Patriot and its galaxy of stars[1] with expanded local coverage at the Minnesota State Fair! 

Tonight - I will be live at the Patriot’s posh new digs, on Dan Patch just inside the main (Snelling Avenue) gate, across from the DFL booth!  I’ll be on from 5-7PM.

This is gonna be fuuuuun!

Catch the show - on the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, like a couple thousand of our fellow Minnesotans, I’m going to be downtown on September 1, standing along the route of the big “demonstration” by the Republican National Convention.

I’ll be among a group of a few thousand Minnesotans carrying signs that look like this…:

…and if you support the troops and their mission, I’d like you to join us. 

Here’s the current plan:

1. Meet at Triangle Park in Saint Paul.  It’s right by the Cathedral, northeast of the Capitol
   

   It’s got a memorial in it to the First Minnesota Regiment; the park looks like this:

   

2. Pick up a sign.  The current plan is to have a lot of them spotted at Triangle Park, ready to go.
3. After you get a sign, amble down to West Seventh Street, by the X. 

   

   I say “amble” because you don’t need a permit to amble in Saint Paul. 

4. We’ll meet.  And as the cloud of smug rolls by on the street, we’ll wave our signs, and smile, and let them bellow their precious little hearts out.  And we’ll show the media that not everyone in the Twin Cities is a kool-aid sotted loser.
5. We’ll go forth and win the election in November.

So you might be asking yourself - “How do I get to Saint Paul, especially given that traffic is going to be a madhouse even without a bunch of screeching weasel demonstrators trying to blockade traffic”. 

I’ll be posting some shortcuts and easy transit routes to downtown later this week.  It’ll save you a lot of hassle.  Trust me.

So last night Ed and I were hosting the show at the Fair.  Our booth is across from the DFL booth; for the first time, we get a significant number of Democrats standing about. 

Some of them are genuinely nonplussed that not everyone at the fair thinks like them.  The cognitive dissonance is palpable.

It was about 5:225.  Ed’s on stage, I’m out in the seats with the mobile mike working the crowd.

A guy in an Obama shirt starts yelling something at us. 

I walk to him, and ask him to repeat himself. 

Our mobile mike has an effective range, in these chaotic outdoor conditions, of about 30 feet.  The guy’s standing about 35 feet from the stage; as I talk to him, the signal cuts out.  I step back about five feet, and it cuts back in.

“Sir”, I say, “our policy is to let liberals on first - but could I ask you to step over here so our signal can…”

“No!” he yells.  “I’m not stepping over there”.

Wow.  That’ll show all us swiftboating neocons!

I held the mike up higher, and walked over to him.  The signal held.

“So what is it you’re saying?”

“I couldn’t believe you guys are a real station.  I’ve never heard you before.  But everything on here is all lies”. 

Wow.  Amazing conclusion after two minutes’ listening. 

According to Paul Demko, a couple of Obama supporters drove 2,200 miles from Santa Cruz to Denver in a car completely covered in Obama stickers…:

 While picking up my press credentials I came across this Volvo stationwagon parked in front of the Hampton Inn & Suites (doing double duty as the press epicenter for the Democratic Party). Sisters Samantha and Annie Woods drove the vehicle 2,200 miles from Santa Cruz, California. Most impressive: the Obamamobile lacks any air conditioning.

…thereby confirming a number of stereotypes.

1. Democratic women are lousy navigators.  Mapquest shows the route is really more like 1,200 miles.
2. A Volvo wagon.
3. A Volvo wagon gets, what?  15 miles to the gallon?  Way to save energy, Clairol Twins.
4. Obama stickers went for, what, a buck a pop?  Nope - no dissipate patricians here.
5. I repeat:  a Volvo wagon.

Oh, lord, do I wish I were there with a camera.

MPR’s Tom Scheck is in Denver, and he says the trouble started bright and early yesterday:

Several protesters shut down the LRT and bus lines in downtown Denver for about thirty minutes this afternoon. How do I know? Well, I was waiting to get on the LRT and saw several dozen cops marching up the road. So I followed them and found out why my wait at the transit stop was so long.

 Protesters.

The good news?

Dozens of police in full riot gear were ready to roll when the incident started. The police eventually got the protesters, the onlookers and the media to stay on the sidewalks. The only disruption came from this one protester who rode her bike around the police barricades.

Photo of egregiously hideous Code Pinko omitted due to it being breakfast time.

Senator Amy “A-Klo” Klobuchar is all a-twitter about the Biden selection.

Or is she? (emphasi9s added):

What he brings to Barack Obama is the fact that he is not a ‘yes’ man. He’s going to challenge Sen. Obama to be the best president he can be,” the Minnesota Democrat said.

He reminds her of former Vice President Walter Mondale. “Mondale brought candid advice to President Carter. Joe Biden will do the same for Barack Obama,” she said.

So even A-Klo thinks Obama’s the next Carter?

Sweet.

The Cardinal Bar, on 38th Street just west of Hiawatha, has attained just a tad of hYpStR chic in recent years; half a block from the 38th Street Light Rail station, it’s become a stop on one of the recent traditions among dissipate twentysomethings with strong livers, the Light Rail Bar Crawl (where people start at the Mall of America, the light rail’s southern terminus, and ride up the line, hitting bars near the stops along the way, at Fort Snelling, the Cardinal, Lake, Franklin, Cedar-Riverside, and finally downtown).

But back in the day, when the Card was the closest cheap bar to my first apartment at 38th and Hiawatha, it was a place to go to get $.50 tappers and dollar burger baskets on Tuesday nights, to sit on a well-worn bar stool with a bunch of alcoholics and yap about the Vikings”.

Anyway, while many of us have fond (also hazy) memories of the place, apparently not everyone’s awash in nostalgia:

The third arson to hit a Minneapolis bar and grill this summer has prompted authorities to again search the south side neighborhood for culprits.

The most recent fire struck the Cardinal Bar and Restaurant, 2920 E. 38th St., just before 6 a.m. Saturday, when firefighters arrived to find flames outside an unused doorway to the bar along 38th Street. The fire was limited to the outside of the building and was put out in about five minutes, said Sgt. Sean McKenna of the Minneapolis Police Department’s arson squad.

If we assume his motive is anger at the hYpStR faddism that’s put the place on the map, then please, please Minneapolis PD; find them.

Before the arsonist turns his attention to the Turf Club.

And now, back to the issues.

“It’s the economy, stupid”

(silence)

“Hello, is this thing on?”

A continued and unpopular (but successful) war, high gas prices, increasing unemployment levels, weakness in wages and an economy on the brink of recession, Obama should be doing better than what was characterized on CNN last night as a “dead heat”.

Election history tells us however that Obama should be in the lead.

…and President George Bush’s popularity at near historic lows, even many Republicans thought this year would be a virtual cakewalk for the Democratic nominee.

A fall in real incomes in the months leading up to the election almost always leads to a loss for the party in power, pointed out Nigel Gault, head of North American macroeconomics for Global Insight, in a recent conference call with investors. “The incumbents tend to take the blame,” he said. “This should be an uphill battle for McCain.”

But on the eve of what Obama and the Democrats hope will be their own Rocky Mountain high, that’s not proving to be the case.

Obama has not been able to capitalize on the economic woes to build an electoral lead. “It’s an absolute mystery that Obama has not been able to exploit this issue more aggressively,”

It’s no mystery. The American people are beginning to see that Obama is a wee bit light on experience and accomplishment in any area let alone the economy, and what he does actually spell out is clearly going to be bad news for the economy

“If he is going to win, Obama will have to win on the economy,” says Thomas Riehle, a Democratic strategist and pollster

His lofty rhetoric—and focus on criticizing McCain and the Bush legacy—have yet to demonstrate convincingly to many of these struggling folks just exactly what he would do to turn the economy around.

Even some Democrats may not stomach the huge expense and vast complexity of Obama’s proposals.
This year that gap between promise and reality may be even larger than usual. “Whoever wins will face a big wake-up call as soon as the election is over,” says Daniel Clifton, head of Washington policy research for investment group Strategas Research Partners. “Many campaign promises will need to be scuttled.”

The 2009 economy will offer tough conditions for a President set on bold new policies. The next Administration will face anemic growth, sluggish employment, a housing downturn expected to continue at least through much of next year, and continued tight credit markets as the shakeout works its way through the financial sector.

The American people, also knowing this, may already be answering the question “Under these circumstances, who do you want in the White House?”

“McCain.”

Pelosi: Newest GOP ad “insults our intelligence”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came out swinging at the first official convention event on Sunday, calling John McCain “bankrupt” of ideas after Republicans unveiled a new ad questioning why Hillary Rodham Clinton is not on the Democratic ticket.

Actually that, the Biden (in his own words) video and the Converted Clinton Delegate video are pretty good stuff, and Obama’s handlers should have anticipated all of the above if in fact there is intelligence enough to be insulted.

But is it working?

(Two separate polls) show a substantial number of Hillary Clinton’s supporters are considering voting for a Republican president, rather than Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in November.

Speaking of insulting our intelligence (emphasis mine):

Pelosi warned that the ad is “a sign of things to come,” arguing that since Democrats have the upper hand on “kitchen table” issues like health care and the economy, the McCain campaign will be forced to resort to “diversionary tactics.”

McCain started this campaign rather deliberately but his team is reacting to opportunities rapidly now and with some success. So take a pill Nancy. You’re gonna’ need it.

Join AM1280 The Patriot and its galaxy of stars[1] with expanded local coverage at the Minnesota State Fair! 

Tonight - Ed Morrissey and I will be live at the Patriot’s posh new digs, on Dan Patch just inside the main (Snelling Avenue) gate, across from the DFL booth!  We’ll be on from 5-7PM.

This is gonna be fuuuuun!

Catch the show - on the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I wrote about the left’s rather unimaginative reliance on “Gitmo” metaphors; it’s only gotten worse.  Last week, I was in the Dunn Brothers on Grand Avenue, across from Macalester College (a local far-lefty hotbed).  A rather aromatic twentysomething white boy with dreadlocks and a Che Guevara t-shirt tried to order free-range vegan Guatemalan coffee, but was told that they were out.  The barrista asked the lad if he could wait two minutes while another pot brewed.

“What is this - Guantanamo?” the be-che’d fellow fumed [1]

At any rate, in a comment to that post, someone said:

With the frequency of the Gitmo moniker thrown about to mis-label every perceived wrong against liberal causes, someone should coin a “Godwin’s law”-style statement.

While I do appreciate the idea and take the point, adding another law to the books is, as with most things in the civil arena, not really the answer.  “Godwin’s Law“, [”As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”] - is a bad one to mimic, since it (like the Nazi comparisons themselves) are most often invoked by people with feeble understanding at best of the history or issues involved, and tends to be used to squelch even the (rare) literate, appropriate comparisons.  The lower 80% of Godwin users tend to employ the law as a rhetorical Daisy Cutter, indiscrimimately mowing lines of conversation good and bad.  Inappropriate reference to Godwin can cause problems in some serious cases.  At one point, I even codified a corollary to Godwin: 

Berg’s Fifth Law of Historical Illiteracy - 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.

I minored in both History and German; hence, I invoke Nazi references both very sparingly and, when I do, with surgical aptness.  And I get a little peeved when, after coming up  with a thorougly impeccable comparison, some commenter bleats “Godwin’s Law!  Godwin’s Law!” in a perfect duckspeak accent, not really knowing what they’d doing, but fatally hobbling the conversation anyway.

What we have, in summation, is two conflicting problems:

1. Ill-informed, hamfisted use of inflammatory metaphors (Naziism, Guantanamo)
2. Misuse of memes intended to nullify #1.

Being a conservative and free-marketeer (unlike too many Republicans), I believe I have a comprehensive, free-speech-enabled, market-based answer; a certification program that allows internet users to use these memes, while assuring the reader/consumer that the user is qualified and competent to use them. 

I propose the following certifications:

• Certified Godwin’s Lawyer (CGL): Bearer of this certification will have exhibited an ability to discern between apt and inapt Nazi analogies in the application of Godwin’s Law to online dialog.  Hopefully, as technology advances, blog posts, comments, podcasts and even Youtube videos written by non-CGL-credentialled users can be automatically filtered out.
• Registered Totalitarian Analogist (RTA): Registered Totalitarian Analogists have the necessary background in history, ethics and logic to appropriately and aptly employ Nazi, Communist, Maoist, Khmer Rouge, Klan and Fascism-related metaphors.  (NOTE:  Having used unironically, even once, the term “Bushitler” is a lifetime disqualification from this credential).
• Authorized Guantanamo Referrent (AGR): These Authorized Referrants will have sufficient background in current events, the law (especially the actual text of the Geneva Convention as re: combatants who are not members of a military or indigenous partisan group) to competently use “Guantamo” similes and metaphors.  Additionally, AGRs will at least be aware of the irony behind the term “International Law” when referring to it.

I did note that this was a market solution.  I am the market.  To get your CGL, RTA or AGR, send $10 to my PayPal account.  (Limited time offer: all three for $25!).

Thank you.  That is all.

[1] The quote, like the story, is “fake but accurate.”