Media

I understand he can be seen flitting around the White House, dodg…, er, avoiding the press whenever possible. Even his extreme leftist lap dogs find it difficult to obtain access to His Benificence. Is it that his handlers have figured out that he doesn’t do well off the cuff? Is it because even the tame press is starting to ask a few real questions… few and far between, but commendable none-the-less as a departure from the usual slavish pandering to the administration, timid though these questions would be coming from the ultra left’s most staid guardians of political correctness.

Seems like the President has been acting a little gun shy since his tangle with Fox’s Bret Baier. Sooner or later, even some of the tame press are going to start asking the right questions. Obama knows that the lie lines on most of his policies are about to run their course and reality begins to stream in. This guy has told lie after lie with the slickness of a snake-oil pitch man. Same story, sooner or later somebody is going to call him on some of his stuff. We’ve already seen how this self-absorbed narcissist reacts to any sort of criticism. In his mind’s eye he can do no wrong, he’s on a mission and he’s a committed radical ideologue.

He plays the buffoon on the international stage to the amusement of his third-world dictator audience, while at home he strangles the life from the nation with his insane fiscal and economic Keynesian gymnastics. We face a world far more dangerous and volatile than at almost any time in our history. We have sworn enemies who are at war with us, while our President prances from one meaningless conference or forum to another with apologies to all and sundry, while playing havoc with our national security interests and appeasing people we shouldn’t be talking to.

Flashpoint? The Syrians are pushing the limits of Israel tolerance by moving batteries of Scud “A” or SS1B missiles up to the Lebanese border and massing them there. Though there has been no attempt to move the missiles into Lebanon, Syria has been training Hizballah militants in their use. Israel has warned Syria that it would consider any transfer of these missiles across the border to be an event that will engender an Israeli response. As Drudge would say… developing.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Senate Republicans, present us with a unified party message prepared to lead… and you’ll have to prove yourselves out here in Patriotville. You’ll have to be ready to fight for every inch of political ground and not give an inch to the opposition. It is time to present a unified party.

Tell the local and national parties that we will not tolerate RINOs any longer… no more Lindsey Graham or John McCain sell outs. Tell the Susan Collins and Olympia Snowes that we won’t tolerate what you did to our party, or what you did to the country in your political arrogance.

The Message: We have to control the message. All too often the conservative point of view has been white noise against the clamor of main stream statist media. That’s changed, the conservative internet is getting the message out quickly and countering the leftist agitprop, so it’s a lot tougher for them to establish control over a subject and own it before we get to the party. The left will lie, fake or invent… we can only answer with truth and principle. Conservative principles always work when they’re followed.

That’s another part of the equation for Republican Senators, they have to be prepared to engage the left at a moment’s notice to ensure that the story doesn’t get buried and to counter the leftist lies. That’s how the left has operated for decades. We Conservatives let them take the message from us. We’ll have to take a page or two from their book. We can leave the stuff on lying, cheating and fraud behind.

The grass roots patriot movement, the ‘tea-partiers’, have made all the difference. They’ve made it possible for you, the Senate, to have impact now, as well as November when an increasing number of prognosticators are calling for a Republican tsunami that will sweep up both Houses. You folks in the Senate have to do everything possible to stop, suspend, detour or s-l-o-w down every single thing you can. You’re running what amounts to gorilla legislation, or maybe non-legislation, buying some time until the cavalry arrives in November.

In the meantime we’ll continue to organize in our neighborhoods and towns. The citizen march is underway. Never before in my lifetime have I seen a more intelligent, engaged and well-informed citizenry. We support our conservative candidates!

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

While the nation seethes and counts the days until November, the Marxi-Socialists of the Democratic party and the statists of their stooley press are attempting the badly used-up tactic of manufacturing incidents calculated to bring shadows down on the Republicans, and most particularly the Conservative Patriot movement, or ‘Tea Party’ movement, as they so disparagingly term us.

Starting with the ’supposed’ incident of two black Representatives being spat upon and called racial epitaphs, it’s really difficult to understand how in this day, with almost every cell phone video-capable and with some thousands of people around, no one obtained a single picture of anything that allegedly transpired. It wouldn’t be the first time the left has tried to gin up sympathy by using the race card to play the race card.

Guess what guys? That one ain’t playing so well again either. Does anyone out there remember Tawana Brawley and that epitome of truth and probity Al (Race Bait) Sharpton?

Brawley and Sharpton

It’s not just that such tactics are not beneath the Congressional Democrats and their Marxist radical allies, they are part and parcel of the playbook that statists use on a daily basis. We hear stories of threats made against Representatives’ lives and bricks thrown through windows. So many times in the past we’ve heard claims like this exploded in the light of truth, the instigators found to be either Democrat operatives or fringe nut-cakes from their own side, of which they have many. Like the one who trashed a Democrat campaign office during the last election.

It’s not that we don’t have some bad eggs on our own side, because we do. But they are quickly marginalized and their actions strongly disavowed. We of the Patriot Movement are not taken to encouraging violent or dishonorable behavior. If it ever comes to a fight, God willing it never does, they will wish to hell they’d never started it. That’s not what we want, we believe in the rule of law and the principles of the Constitution and the founders.

What we will not permit this time is the left to control the message as they have so many times in the past, through deceit, lies, deception and prevarication. Thanks to the wonder of the phenomenon known as the new media, which has left the old, lying statist media in the dust, the truth about their lies reaches millions almost instantaneously. They will no longer be permitted to shape arguments to their perverted will.

This country has learned a very hard truth from which it will never turn again. That lesson is that elections have consequences… voting has consequences and can never be taken for granted. We are a much sadder but wiser nation, one which is rapidly returning to its conservative roots and values.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

They don’t like it. They don’t really understand it either or they wouldn’t do and say the things they do. The ‘lamestream’ or ‘fringe’ media as we sometimes call them, are being increasingly marginalized by the nearly instantaneous transfer of information available to the average person at his or her computer keyboard today.

Back in the day when virtually the entire hard news output was controlled by major print media and the three large television networks, NBC, CBS and ABC, there was a virtual lock on opinions voiced outside of these increasingly politicized outlets. With a decidedly left-leaning message, Americans were hammered for decades with decidedly one-sided messages. What conservative voices there were on the right were marginalized and diminished as being eccentrics and somehow outside the norm of American politics.

The increasing preeminence of leftist thought in our journalism schools had really begun to be felt in the late 60’s and 70’s when I had returned from military service and entered college. The anti-war movement was in full bloom and the left’s grip on academia was pronounced. As a journalism student I had numerous clashes with professors or grad students objecting to the the conservative slant of many of my pieces. This didn’t do a heck of a lot for my grades in those classes, but even then I was stubbornly defending my position and pointing out the fallacy of the liberal Utopian redistribution of wealth model. As you can well imagine, I took a lot of heat for speaking my mind and standing up for conservative principles.

With the advent of conservative talk radio and the personal computer came a sea-change in the public’s access to varied points of view. The so-called ‘mainstream’ press, both print and television, had dominated the landscape for so long that they had taken a paternalistic attitude that the American people really didn’t know any better. We had to have our ‘betters’ interpret for us. Along with the information revolution came the ability of America and the world to access information from thousands of sources instantaneously.

America had not been sufficiently dumbed down despite the left’s best efforts. We began to see the fallacy and the inaccuracies in what the left was saying. We saw lies and stories created out of whole cloth to support their socialist aims. Furthermore, we clearly saw the symbiosis between the leftist press and their political allies in the Democrat party and in the entrenched Washington bureaucracies. We began to talk to each other and exchange ideas. Not necessarily the ideas of our own party leadership either, for we had found them wanting. We came together through our new-found information freedom fountain as never before. The Conservative revolution was born. The country awoke and its people felt the resurgence of hope that was birthed with the adoption of the greatest document in history, the United States Constitution, on March 4, 1789.

We now re-dedicate ourselves to the ideals of the Constitution and the principles of truth, freedom and individual responsibility that has made America the greatest country in history.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

I have argued for a while that Repubicans need to pick up the mantle of transparency. It is useful tactically and strategically. On the tactical level, the guys in leadership always play "hide the ball with what they are doing". This gives Republicans a morally secure high-ground to attack whatever the Democrats do. Strategically, it gives us an issue that can both rally our base and makes good sense to independents and many Democrats.

On Friday, House Republican Leader John Boehner issued a statement on transparency. The key passage:

It’s just common sense: Americans should be allowed to read the text of major bills before Congress votes on them.  Previous Congresses, including Republican ones, failed to live up to this standard.  But never before has the failure been as blatant as it has been in the past nine months under Speaker Pelosi.   Things have to change.

There are two key parts to this. First, he grabbed the policy issue and framed it in the adult and serious way "Americans" (not "Members of Congress", which seems like only a populist argument, although some in the media have grabbed the straw man to give the Democrats aircover) should know what Congress is doing so that we can hold them accountable.

The second part is, perhaps, more important. John Boehner has now explicitly rejected the way that he ran the House, said "we have learned", and established a new line in the sand. Furthermore, one of the reforms that he advocates, in this case, a waiting period before legislation can be acted on, actually may impact many of the wasteful spending concerns that actually helped drive him out of office. 

What is so fascinating is the rejection by Senate Democrats and the silence of lefty advocacy groups other than the Sunlight Foundation. In an effort to get a public copy of the healthcare bill before a vote, John Kerry said:

"This is fundamentally a delay tactic," the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate said. "I mean, let's be honest about it. The legislative language, everybody knows, is relatively arcane, legalistic, and most people don't read the legislative language."

That's right. But people who are interested do. People who are experts or people being impacted do, or they hire people to.

And this gets to the final point. Where is the press? Huffington Post is being sent around by Demcorats, because they are giving cover to Democrats. But they aren't really press. But where is the Fourth Estate demanding that they have the information to tell the American people what the debate is about.

Crickets.

You would think that John Boehner repudiating how Republicans ran the House would be worthy of news.

Crickets.

You would think that John Kerry giving cover to the Senate acting without even having legislation (I'm not talking about reading the bill here ...) would be newsworthy.

Crickets outside of Fox and the Washington Times.

Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and Sean Haniti cannot be pushed aside as just “right wingers” with no voice. It’s their work, and the work of some on the internet, and mainly Fox News (which includes Haniti and Beck), that gave President Obama and the left the run for their money in recent weeks, despite the tireless attempts of the old media outlets to ignore it.

Following are just a few instances where Fox News and others held President Obama accountable, and/or had the power to adjust the state of affairs in this country. More so: it forced the old media to report news that they otherwise ignored.

Here it is:

       The White House had an email address where people from all over the country had the chance of reporting “fishy” activities against the WH agenda of Health Care Reform. After an outcry from the right, the email address was scrapped.

       President Obama was about to give a speech to school kids. From my perspective, I didn’t see any problem with it. However, some on the right did, and had the administration and its apologists in the media sweat about it a few days.

       A self-admitted communist racist served as the so-called Jobs Zar for Obama. After the right pounced on it and the old media ignored it for weeks, Jones resigned in shame.

      ACORN was busted time and again by a crew of two and was reported and debated by the right wingers. The old media had limited to no mention of it, yet before anyone (relying on the old media for information) knew, the House voted overwhelmingly to strip that fraudster group from getting federal funds.

All these instances took place in a matter of weeks. It proves clearly that the old media no more controls the minds of the American people, or the discourse of this nation. Better yet, it is “the right” that creates news these days and the old media need to follow inline, sooner rather than later.

Five to one, baby...one in five....

No one here gets out alive...

The late Jim Morrison wrote and sang this over 40 years ago, and it seems rather poignant now that we have passed the anniversary of the Woodstock Nation and consider the divisive national health care debate.

For one thing, it does point out the limitations of salesmanship. Medicine will never fully solve the fact life is a terminal condition. It may prolong life, and improve life, but mere mortals are not "partners with God"; and only He can grant life beyond the here and now.

And the term Five to One applies clearly to the imbalance in media spending between the unions and industries looking to pass the government health care takeover, and the relatively impoverished opposition.

The lyrics of "Five to One" depict rebellion against a distant establishment :"they got the guns, but we got the numbers" which sure seems like the attitude of angry citizens screaming at smug incumbent officeholders eager to label their own constituents a mob. 

One of the major problems I think that the Obama team and the Hill Democrats have is they fundamentally don't understand the mentality of most of the 1960's protesters, who are now today the 60-somethings opposing Obamacare with fervor reminscent of that era.

Perhaps Bill Ayres wanted a "revolution"; but most Americans agreed with John Lennon that if you were carrying pictures of Chairman Mao you weren;t gonna make it.  The rebelliouness of the 1960's was largely spurred by opposition to a "mandatory government program"--to wit--the Draft. 

Sure ,some people of that era wanted communes and socialism--but a huge number--especially bikers and druggies--wanted the government to "leave them alone".

Don't send then to Vietnam. Don't bust them for pot. Don't tell them how to live their lives.

So when the military draft ended in 1973  much of the fuel of the counterculture was taken away. Free from government coercion, young people were then accused of becoming part of  a "me decade"

True, there was a huge cadre of earnest lefties who entered government as a result of the "Watergate election". But the relentless expansion of government demanded by the likes of Chris Dodd. Henry Waxman, David Obey, and Tom Daschle  was dealt a huge setback by the decisive 1980 election.

Some observers have noted that while voters under 30 in 1972 were slightly inclined towards McGovern (as he lost nationally by 21 points)   the same age cohort of voters (i.e. voters DOB 1942-1954) were inclined towards McCain as he lost to Obama by 7 points.  Clearly in the interim these voters became less entralled with "change" candidates.

I would suspect a substantial part of this has to do with the fact these Americans rebelled against statism and much as they may support "their" entitlement programs, they will never sign on to new forms of big government without profound skepticism.  Remember, they saw with their own eyes the extravagant promises and expensive failure of the Great Society. Those eyes are jaundiced now.  

If the government told you 40 years ago you had to go fight in Vietnam, you might not be too keen on having your kid told by the government what kind of health insurance he is required to have. We are taking people open to the "leave us alone" coalition.

Remember, Dennis Hopper was the prototypical hippie in "Easy Rider". He is a Republican now.

So, it appears the Obama team has started an era of divisive national unrest over a program which it cannot sell, promises to bankrupt the nation, and where there is no definition of victory. Sounds, hmmm like a quagmire.   

Back to "No one here gets out alive". I think this will end in one of only two ways. 

The Obamacare fiasco will collapse in a heap, and then next phase will be investigations into the sleazefest employed to try and sell the debacle, including a "pay to play'"scheme between Billy Drugbucks and David Axelrod.  and Axelrod's improper e-mail spamming. 

Note to Mr. Axelrod. Transactions your firm performed in northern Illinois are within this gentleman's legal jurisdiction.   Perhaps you ought to acquaint yourself with this law   .   or this law.  Some politicians around here  found out it's not good to mix business and politics. Don't worry. These laws run a lot less than a thousand pages to read. You'll have plenty of time to call white collar counsel.

The alternative will be Obama and his allies win an absolutely  Pyyrhic victory  decimating the ranks of Democratic moderates in 2010 elections and creating a huge radicalized political movement even more and more ardent to fight the socialization of American culture. Perhaps the Greater Great Society is enacted; only to rip  to shreds the nation it was meant to heal. Or maybe we become France, except with more debt.. Which might be worse.

I've had my differences with Peggy Noonan, but now she's spot on.  A prudent leader would pull the plug   and stop sinking deeper into the health care quagmire

But our President is insistent on making the worst mistakes of 1960's Democrats, accusing critics of merely being  irresolute . History lesson, folks.  No one there got out alive, either. 

From the moment of her selection as the vice presidential nominee, we non-Alaskans heard a lot about what made Sarah Palin different from your average lower-48 woman, from moose-hunting on down the line - you know the story.   The "maverick" storyline, a variation on the McCain standard, worked very well in around the time of the convention, but her numbers began to sink for some of the vary same reasons that the GOP as a whole is in a ditch.  Here's why:

1. The obsession with media bias.  Palin went on and on about the "gotcha media" and the unfair shake she got in the press.  Yes, she was often treated dismissively and with the same sense of curiosity usually reserved for lost tribes of the Amazon.  Still, the media is what it is and whining about it won't change that.  In addition, she did no favors for herself, completely bombing one open-ended softball after another in the famous Katie Couric interview that, in retrospect, marked the beginning of the end of her political career.  And no, "what news sources do you read," is not a "gotcha" question.

If one theme has unified the right's blogs, magazines and radio shows, it has been an endless stream of media criticism.  Most of it is richly deserved.  But to paraphrase our former SecDef, "you go to war with the media you have, not the media you wish you had."

2. The victim mentality.  Am I the only person around here who thinks Palin milked the Letterman controversy for too long?  When something like that happens, you demand an apology (not two) and try to act like the better person.  Instead, there were several TV interviews over the course of a week.  Does she really think that the problem voters had with her is that she wasn't sufficiently sympathetic?  If liberals have showed us anything over the past half-century, it's that the victim mentality doesn't do much for the victims.  Same goes here, both for Palin and the party.

Every day, I read on this site and others about how the deck is always stacked against the right.  First, there is a horde of brainwashed Obamabots ready to follow Dear Leader's wishes (paranoid much?).  Then, we didn't lose by millions of votes across many formerly-red states, it was ACORN.  When it comes to independents, lean-republicans and the other people who really matter, this comes off as whining and conspiracy-mongering.  A wellspring of leadership, it is not.

3. It's not always an issue of motives.  I don't think I'm the only person who has grown tired of Palin defenders claiming anyone who criticizes her of being part of an elite, Ivy League, cocktail-sipping fraternity that simply will not accept an out-of-towner who went to sub-par schools.  Is it that hard to imagine that reasonable people who seek common goals can say that a particular politician is not well-suited for national office?  The knee-jerk appeals to class resentment are akin to sticking your fingers in your ears and singing.  Palin has a very different campaign style and some serious gaps in her policy knowledge.  Acknowledge that or dispute that, but don't cast aspersions.

The main reason that the Bill Ayers material towards the end of the campaign didn't stick is because people looked at Obama and didn't believe what the critics were saying - namely, that he's really some sort of secret radical closer in alignment to 60s hippie terrorists than to middle class America.  A better strategy would have been to take the man at his words, showing good faith, and then going after his policies based on the ample problems they had on their face.  It comes off as conspiratorial and paranoid to assign unseen motives to a political candidate.

What will we learn from the Palin story?  If we continue to blame the media, Letterman, Frum and the Harvard Alumni Association, perhaps nothing.

Drawing on the concept of the "Four Estates" of Republican France, it has been popular to call the press the "Fourth Estate," a non-governmental entity whose independence made it one of the pillars which supported liberty, and an important check on the power of government. In a free press the people had a way to express their concerns about government and a relatively unbiased advocate for truth independent of the self-serving assertions of political parties and leaders. In America that great tradition of a free press which truly stood out as a Fourth Estate began with the publication of Publick Occurances in 1690 and lasted for over 300 years before dying with a whimper this Wednesday at the hands of ABC News.

On Wednesday the 24th of June ABC will give over most of its programming schedule to custom programming, much of it direct from the White House, dedicated to promoting and publicizing the Obama administration's multi-trillion dollar healthcare plan. This programming will begin first thing in the morning with a Good Morning America interview with the president and continue throughout the day's newscasts, culminating in a primetime special touting the benefits of government run healthcare. The network has been given unprecedented access to the White House, where it has even been encouraged to set up an office in the East Wing. ABC and the White House are collaborating on the content of the special, few opposing voices or alternative plans will be heard, and they are refusing any advertising from groups advocating patients rights or opposing socialized medicine.

Just a few years ago Democrats were crying foul and demanding investigations when the Department of Education sent out a few Video News Releases to promote the No Child Left Behind Program, yet now they are willing to do the same thing on a much larger scale when it is their program which is being promoted. At a time when Democrats are talking about reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine and demanding a balance to right wing talk radio, turning over an entire network to government propaganda seems particularly hypocritical.

The left has long derided the right for complaining about media bias, insisting that the corporate nature of the media automatically biases it to the right, but here we see a corporate media giant deliberately whoring itself to become the propaganda outlet for a left-wing administration, and there is no question where ABC's loyalties lie. ABC News employees overwhelmingly supported Obama in the last election, donating 80 times as much to his campaign as they did to John McCain. In addition, a study by the Media Research Center shows ABC giving a disproportionate amount of coverage to the Obama healthcare plan compared to other health care options by a 3 to 1 margin.

The Obama administration has made state-corporatism a cornerstone of its economic plans, taking over businesses, forcing them into bankruptcy and handing out the spoils to their cronies and allies. But at least in the financial and auto industries there was some effort to resist, and many of those companies are still trying to buy back their freedom. What ABC is doing is many times worse, because they are volunteering willingly for a government takeover, offering themselves up as propagandists without considering the consequences. Perhaps they see a future where the state controls all media and they want to get in on the ground floor and have a favored status, but that just makes them like the slave who turns in the runaways hiding in the barn to the slave-catchers. He may get more scraps from the master's table but he's still a slave and he's also a traitor.

Journalists used to believe that they had a responsibility to keep politicians honest and hold their feet to the fire. Woodward and Bernstein didn't go to Nixon looking for ways they could help him promote his pet projects. When the press becomes nothing more than another arm of government, promoting the party line and dishing out propaganda, the people have lost one more essential safeguard of their liberty. ABC has decided to leave integrity and objectivity behind and become nothing more than shills for an ideology and a style of government which they believe in. Whether you support socialized medicine or not, this trend in the media should scare you. It's the death of the independent press and the beginning of state-run media. I halfway expect to hear the strains of "Moscow Nights" over the credits on ABC as I did on every radio or television newscast when I lived in the Soviet Union formally confirming that the media has gone from watchdog to lapdog.

Join me and many others in boycotting ABC, starting on Thursday and continuing through their summer line-up of very little but tawdry reality shows. You won't be missing much and you might be striking a blow for freedom. Though it's entirely possible that if we manage to dry up their advertising revenue they'll just get bailed out and taken over completely by the government.

The agonizingly close relations between the GOP establishment and the loonier elements in the right wing media who have been on an increasingly mainstream basis feeding the hatred of the far right extremists who have been committing violence has been receiving increased attention. This has been discussed recently by Judith Warner, Paul Krugman, and Frank Rich. Krugman recently wrote, “Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.” Frank Rich discussed this topic at length in his latest column:

Conservatives have legitimate ideological beefs with Obama, rightly expressed in sharp language. But the invective in some quarters has unmistakably amped up. The writer Camille Paglia, a political independent and confessed talk-radio fan, detected a shift toward paranoia in the air waves by mid-May. When “the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation,” she observed in Salon, “there is reason for alarm.” She cited a “joke” repeated by a Rush Limbaugh fill-in host, a talk-radio jock from Dallas of all places, about how “any U.S. soldier” who found himself with only two bullets in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden would use both shots to assassinate Pelosi and then strangle Reid and bin Laden.

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O’Reilly’s Holocaust analogies to liken Obama’s policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to “the final solution” and the quest for “a master race.” After James von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a “lone gunman nutjob.” Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that “the pot in America is boiling,” as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on.

But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What’s startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party’s national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because “it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.” Anuzis pushed “fascism” instead, because “everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.” He didn’t seem to grasp that “fascism” is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there might be a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find “bad” because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.

The Anuzis “fascism” solution to the Obama problem has caught fire. The president’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and his speech in Cairo have only exacerbated the ugliness. The venomous personal attacks on Sotomayor have little to do with the 3,000-plus cases she’s adjudicated in nearly 17 years on the bench or her thoughts about the judgment of “a wise Latina woman.” She has been tarred as a member of “the Latino KKK” (by the former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo), as well as a racist and a David Duke (by Limbaugh), and portrayed, in a bizarre two-for-one ethnic caricature, as a slant-eyed Asian on the cover of National Review. Uniting all these insults is an aggrieved note of white victimization only a shade less explicit than that in von Brunn’s white supremacist screeds.

Obama’s Cairo address, meanwhile, prompted over-the-top accusations reminiscent of those campaign rally cries of “Treason!” It was a prominent former Reagan defense official, Frank Gaffney, not some fringe crackpot, who accused Obama in The Washington Times of engaging “in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain.” He claimed that the president — a lifelong Christian — “may still be” a Muslim and is aligned with “the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood.” Gaffney linked Obama by innuendo with Islamic “charities” that “have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism.”

If this isn’t a handy rationalization for another lone nutjob to take the law into his own hands against a supposed terrorism supporter, what is? Any such nutjob can easily grab a weapon. Gun enthusiasts have been on a shopping spree since the election, with some areas of our country reporting percentage sales increases in the mid-to-high double digits, recession be damned.

Violence committed by right wing (or left wing) extremists is the more serious problem. But a similar, even if less violent, mindset can be seen in the recent outrage against David Letterman: despite agreement from Letterman that he should not have told a joke which was clearly about Bristol Palin, and despite the fact that Bristol Palin has been the target of jokes from multiple comedians largely because of the manner in which Sarah Palin has intentionally placed her children in the public spotlight for political gain, many of them continue to attack with outright lies as to what Letterman actually said.

There was no point in attacks on David Letterman once he conceded that he should not have told the joke, with many of these conservatives proceeding to over play their hand and ultimately discrediting themselves. The controversy is about the desire of the authoritarian base of the Republican Party, which has hijacked the right, to prevent any criticism of their extremist agenda and has little to do with any real concern about sexist jokes. They tend to wage their war with little regard for fact, with such distortions being common place. This has included a similar distortion of a joke told by John Kerry in 2006, the fabrications of the Swift Boat Liars, all the lies about Obama which were spread during the presidential campaign, and the recent lies about Sotomayor such as that sixty percent of her decisions have been overturned (& not surprisingly though, even a Next Right editor repeated it.) While less extreme and violent than those who have been committing violence, the conservative movement has increasingly become dominated by those who show hostility towards reason, freedom of expression, and the contemporary culture.