Jeremayakovka

Pim Pied

In a follow-up to the gay radical assault on Anita Bryant post of August 28, here's a video of a 21st Century twist on that tactic: a shit-filled cream pie hurled at gay, Dutch politician and patriot Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn, a firm opponent of Muslim immigration and the Islamicization of Europe, would eventually be assassinated by a fanatic leftist in 2002.
(H/T What Would Charles Martel Do?)

(If the video doesn't work properly, try this link on "The Myth of Liberal Tolerance." Am workin' on the vid....)

Love In The Time Of Necrophilia

Even if a husband lives ... two hundred fucking years ... he's never going to be able to discover his wife's real nature.

Welcome to "an Atlas lovers art thread" (Thanks, Pamela):

Better in many ways than his iconic turn in Apocalypse Now, but to many Americans less relevant probably, is Brando's tour de force in The Last Tango in Paris. Here's even more Brando, by quality and quantity, than in The Godfather. "This is one of those performances that goes beyond acting into something more confrontational." It goes without saying that the above scene hits harder if you're watching the whole flick.

The Last Tango in Paris is not about sex per se, no matter how famous (or infamous), no matter how startling, how unprecedented those scenes. It's about the infiltrating onset of decay -- the decay of ideas and possibilities, of desires and affections, all sheltering but festering lustfully still in a mind housed agonizingly in the flesh. It's about the decay of that flesh -- flesh livid and vivid, alluring and onerous, porous and odorous, yielding and unyielding. Whether stumbling, agog with helpless wonder and hesitant trust, upon life's fullest vigor, or contemplating with bracing bewilderment and piercing bitterness its incrementally impending exit, The Last Tango in Paris is decay by degrees. It is decay on the installment plan.... Not coincidentally, the film also sifts the diminishing returns of the barbed shards of shattered historical expectations -- revolutionary, colonial, decolonial. (Note well, apart from this clip, a certain earlier monologue, plus two later dialogues.)

The vigor of The Last Tango in Paris is a vigor mortis, its love a love in the time of necrophilia.

Courts (and Blogs) Expose Islamic Operatives in U.S.

Muslim Brotherhood operative a NASA technician, Iraqi diplomat, from Debbie Schlussel. Al-Haramain Surveillance Hearing, from Zombie.

Overheard in a Public Restroom in Minnesota

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I da ho?... Naw. You da ho!!
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* Updated *

Very bad judgment on Senator Larry Craig's part, bad in so many ways. For one thing, boasting to the officer about being a Senator suggests he's used his prestige and privilege to skate through compromising situations in the past. The Romney campaign did the smart and right thing to distance itself from him.

But should he resign? Predictably, many conservative pundits think so: Hewitt, Malkin, Hawkins, Musclehead, Gay Patriot, and probably more. If GOP talent is waiting in the wings to be appointed or can run next year for the seat, then maybe. But if Craig can get his priorities straight, there are good reasons for him to fight to keep his office: on the one hand, Democratic pols like Gerry Studds, Ted and Patrick Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and dozens more; on the other, next year's razor-tight race for the Senate. Republicans sucking their teeth and shaking their heads doesn't have to be the end of the affair. Regardless of what play the Republican huddle comes up with, they still have to do an end-run around being hung out to dry for some MSM-labeled "conservative crisis."

McGreevey resigned, but his affair had compromised New Jersey and national security. Craig has corrupted many things, breaking (in affairs of the heart) laws more unwritten than written, but so far as we know, not national security. Still, if he has a closet-full of skeletons ready to be thrown open (insinuations of secretive gay relationships or trysts, including with pages, have dogged him for years), he should think long and hard about why and how to fight for his office.

I know! Maybe next year he'll run for re-election as an independent. It worked for Joe Lieberman....
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* Update * Chris Crain weighs in with circumspection (and also a legal opinion):

The gay and leftie blogosphere is, of course, gleeful, as is practically every gay person I've talked to in the early hours after the scandal broke....  I just don't understand why we don't see the contradictions in how we cheer on the politics of personal destruction, however self-inflicted.

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FTR, the arresting officer's report.

A Pie For A Pie Makes Whole World Blind, Deaf, Dumb

* Updated *

Well, at least it's a fruit pie.
-- Anita Bryant

This 1977 clip of two four gay activists hurling a cream pie in Anita Bryant's face is the earliest instance of which I am aware where a cream pie has been used (to attempt) to humiliate and silence a right-wing political personality and to quash free speech as we know it.

The "legend" lives on:

* Gay.com calls it "a historic document of political strategy." Riiight.
* "Fringe" theater show Pie Face melodramatizes it ad nauseam.
* "[I]n addition to pie parties throughout the gay neighborhoods of the city that evening, people took a moment of silence and bowed down and prayed to the new holy spot in the East, Des Moines, a new, gay Mecca."
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In the years leading up to the emergence, post-Stonewall, of radical gay activism, "anti-establishment" activists had innovated ways of using props for aggressive, agit-prop street theater. Father Philip Berrigan, apostle of the Catholic Left and convicted felon, protested American commitment to a free Vietnam by trespassing on private and government property and stealing and setting fire to draft records. Frequently he poured blood on his target of choice. (Left, Berrigan pours napalm on draft records, May 1968.) Whether it was human or animal blood, and how exactly the blood was obtained, I don't know.
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One of Abbie Hoffman's most noted stunts was to "nominate" a pig as for president outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. (Right, Abbie mugs your reality for the camera; below, the rather unimaginatively named "Pigasus.")

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In the Anita Bryant case, gay radicals perform street theater sleight of hand when they become ever more aggressive while at the same time seeming ever more harmless, even hilarious.  Their assault with a tasty weapon isn't just pushing on a door marked "open," it's ramming it -- left-wing radicals abusing Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech by breaching all decorum and even commiting a crime. (Unfortunately neither Ms. Bryant nor her fellow spokesman pressed charges.) But there's neither redemption nor pride in the hilarity, only contempt and humiliation. It's yet another way the radical left tries to have its cake (or pie) and eat it too (or have you eat it).
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Left-wing pie-assaults of more recent note:

Coulter Horowitz (text only)

Schnitt Listed

Last weekend JMK's August 16 post advertising Islamo Fascism Awareness Week (Oct. 22-26) was linked by Todd Schnitt. Todd (or "MJ") is Clear Channel radio's popular talk show personality in the morning and afternoon drivetime slots in the Tampa/St. Pete, Miami, Charleston, Biloxi, and Birmingham markets.

Thanks, Todd, for sending readers this way. May it send more college students to Islamo Fascism Awareness week, and may this mention send more listeners your way. (ftr, "Schnitt List" is his phrase, not mine.)

See also: The Schnitt Show's "Global Warming Files"

While Greece Burns

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...................................................Ode on a Grecian Urn
...................................................-- by John Keats (more here)
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Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thou express
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape
    Of deities or mortals, or of both,
        In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
    What men or gods are these?  What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit?  What struggle to escape?
        What pipes and timbrels?  What wild ecstasy?


Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
    Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
    Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
    Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
        Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;
        She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
    For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
    Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
    For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
    For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
        For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
    That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
        A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
    To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
    And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
    Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
        Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
    Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
        Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

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O Attic shape!  Fair attitude! with brede
    Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
    When old age shall this generation waste,
        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
    Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
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Fringe Left Filmmaker Makes Case for War With Iran

Left-wing "guerrilla filmmaker" Roger Greenwald, whom I first heard of when reading Byron York's The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, has compiled a series of clips from Fox News Channel with all manner of talking heads warning of the threat Iran poses to the West and its regional neighbors. Greenwald's purpose is to mobilize the nutroots to pressure other MSM networks to slant their news coverage against any possibility of intervention against Iran. The funny thing is, he ends up of conveying a reasonable case for waking up to the dangers Iran poses.

Talk about a broken clock being right twice a day. Thanks, Roger.
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The Coyote Call And The Howling Winds Wail

You say "potayto," I say "potahto."
They say "Brokeback," I say "The Cowboy Song."

If you don't know Thin Lizzy ... it's time you did.

On Jewish Extremism

Something to think about on the Jewish sabbath, from a long post by Sultan Knish, "The Torah is Extremist: Deal With It!":

The Torah was not written by comfortable people living in the suburbs. It was not a work of moderation. Moderate words are fine if you're writing a book of manners. Books of G-d are not moderate because neither G-d nor the worship of G-d is a moderate act. It is an extremist act to believe in a higher deity and to dedicate your life to serving him. Just ask any secularist.

Being Jewish does not mean being moderate. Being Jewish means carving out a place for G-d and for what he demands of us, by faith, by dedication and sometimes by force of arms. For many American moderate Orthodox Jews being Jewish has become about raffles and auctions, letters to the editor and politely worded complaints. For many of the more moderate Modern Orthodox Jews has become about futile grousing about Haredim which explains why the Haredi way is eating the Modern Orthodox way alive. Because in the end the Haredim are extremists and extremists win. Because they care. It doesn't mean that being extreme is necessarily right but it is the commitment required to win.

The Torah is an extremist work for extremist people. For people who actually care and are willing to fight for their beliefs. It has a lot for moderates to hate. It has a lot for them to distrust. Moderates love compromise and the word of G-d is uncompromising. Some time ago when the moderates turned Hellenist, the extremists slaughtered them. We call that Chanukah.

Berkeley Suffocated

Per Berkeley Breathed's own web site, this Opus comic strip mocking Islamic chic (not sheik) is set to be withheld from print publication, including in the Washington Post.

Writes BB: Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus' host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.
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Cowards.

It's not that it's "a harmless expression of free speech" or some such. It is harmful -- or rather, contentious -- in terms of its content (going after self-hating Americans) and its publication (the possibility of CAIR-generated Islamic lawsuits or Islamic violence).

Cowards.

What other newspapers have thus far decided not to run it?

Send your letter of discontent to the WaPo editor here and in the meantime do your part to make the cartoon viral.

(H/T My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy)

If You're Going to San Francisco ... Don't Bring Bill Clinton

Those feeling frisky about marking the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco would do well also to mark, in the very same city, the 35th anniversary of the dog days of a Summer of Criminal Lust. For the purposes of "Hillary Watch," that was the summer of 1972, during which a dog named William Jefferson Clinton (who answers to the name of "Bubba") sexually assaulted and nearly raped a woman in Golden Gate Park.

Since he lunges after Democratic women only, stories like these almost never come to light. Enter Christopher Hitchens. From No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family (1999):

[I]n the third case I know about [alleging rape or attempted rape by the prospective First Gentleman], which is so far unpublished anywhere, the story came to me without my asking, let alone soliciting. I was in San Francisco, and got a call and later a visit from a very well-known Bay Area journalist and editor. He's a veteran radical and was once quite a Clinton fan; we'd argued about the man before. He wanted, he said, to disburden himself of the following information.

He (I can't give his name without identifying her) had once employed a young female assistant. In the early 1970s, Bill Clinton had come out to the Bay Area to see his fiancé [sic] Hillary, who was then working, for some other friends of mine as it happens, as a legal intern in Oakland [for veteran Communist lawyer Robert Treuhaft]. An introduction occurred between young Bill and my friend's aforementioned assistant. He asked her out for lunch; she accepted. He proposed a walk in Golden Gate Park; she accepted that too. He made a lunge at her; she declined the advance and was rammed, very hard indeed, against a tree-trunk before being rolled in the bushes and badly set-upon. She's a tall and strong woman, and got away without submitting. She told my friend the same day, and he'd kept it secret for almost thirty years....

Years later, the woman was sitting at her desk when she got a telephone call from Brooke Shearer, who is also Mrs. Strobe Talbot and a veteran of the Clinton kitchen-cabinet. "Bill is thinking of running for office," said Mrs. Shearer. "He wanted to know if that was all right with you." My subject was annoyed, but she had retained her old liberal allegiances. She also -- see how this keeps coming up? [cf. the rape allegation of Juanita Broaddrick (then Juanita Hickey)] -- was thinking of getting engaged and becoming a mother. She replied that she wouldn't stand in the way of a Clinton candidacy. But I have since talked to two further very respectable San Francisco citizens, who have neither met nor heard of my original informant (nor he of them). I know the woman's name; I know that she has married well; I know her maiden name at the time of the assault; I know the high-powered Bay Area foundation where she works on good causes; I have communicated with her by Federal Express and by voicemail. I have excellent witnesses who have heard her say that if the story ever breaks she'll deny it under oath. I don't blame her -- though in our present unshockable moral atmosphere it's very unlikely that reporters, let alone prosecutors, would ever turn over in bed before consigning the whole thing to the memory hole. It is time, as we keep hearing, to put the country behind us and move this forward. (At least, I think I've got that right.) [pp. 114-116]
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Some will say no doubt that I am being too hard on this and other Democratic women who are victims of "the man from Hope," women who then are pressed -- by persuasion, intimidation, or (dare I say?) personal preference -- into service as his enablers. I concede that such critics may have a point, no matter how bitterly ironic. To whom, after all, are these women going to turn in their moment of acute embarrassment, shame, and need? The National Sexual Assault Hotline? For the record, that number is 1-800-656-HOPE.

* * *
I can contribute one point only in Bubba's defense (and a shoddy defense, at that): that he was "under the influence" of George McGovern's insurgent presidential campaign. From Robert Novak's column of April 27, 1972 [read by Tim Russert on Meet The Press, July 15, 2007]:  "The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot," [one U.S. Senator] told [Novak]. "Once middle America—Catholic middle America, in particular—once they find out, he’s dead." Sound familiar?

* * *
Keep hope alive: a free concert commemorating the "Summer of Love," anticipated for this September in Golden Gate Park, has been cancelled (H/T Sanfransanity).

Russian Revolutionary Suicide

Truth ... I love much.
-- final words attributed to a dying Christian pacifist and aristocrat,
Count Leo Tolstoy (1910)
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* Update (8/23) * Comments on and from Fausta's podcast with Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and with "Siggy" of Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred.

* Update (8/24) * We are interested in knowing the thoughts of the suicide murderer just before he detonates the explosive belt.
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The tactic of suicide (homicide) bombing is not exclusively Islamic. Nearly all of us are familiar with Japanese kamikazes from World War II and, some of us, with other contemporary practitioners like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka who in 1999 famously assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by this tactic.

More obscure and, because it grew out of Western values and Western philosophy, more haunting (therefore more familiar) and more tragic (because the character flaws leading to it are our own, are our inheritance), is that suicide bombing, or an impulse to it, made at least one appearance among anti-Tsarist militants in pre-Bolshevik Russia. Whatever the totalitarian theories that arose in modern history -- about underground parties, managerial distinctions between agitation and propaganda, "the art of insurrection," etc. -- there was also in the Western tradition, as product or by-product, an impulse to suicide on behalf of (even intrinsic to the adherence to) a cause.

Fortunately (if that is the proper adjective for it), when the taking of no other life is at issue, suicide as a soul's clarion call to a wayward society enjoys (if that's the proper verb for it) status as one of the most passionate, ultimate statements possible. Consider the examples of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk setting himself ablaze in the 1960s, of Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima committing seppuku in 1970, and of vicar Roland Weisselberg setting himself afire last year to lament loudly Europe's spiritual capitulation to secularism and Islamization.

Scarcely known is that an impulse to suicide bombing revealed itself in Russia in 1907. As Whittaker Chambers relates to William F. Buckley in a letter dated August 30, 1954:

One night, a fashionably dressed young woman called at the Central Prison in Petersburg and asked to speak with the commandant, Maximovsky. This was Ragozinikova, who had come to protest the government's policy [as Chambers mentions elsewhere, "systematically beating its political prisoners" (whatever "systematically" means, exactly)]. Inside the bodice of her dress were sewed thirteen pounds of dynamite and a detonator. When Maximovsky appeared, she shot him with her revolver and killed him. The dynamite was for another purpose. After the murder of Maximovsky, Ragozinikova asked the police to interrogate her at the headquarters of the Okhrana. She meant to blow it up together with herself; she had not known any other way to penetrate it. But she was searched and the dynamite discovered. She was sentenced to be hanged [an appropriate sentence, btw]. Awaiting execution, she wrote her family: Death itself is nothing.... Frightful only is the thought of dying without having achieved what I could have done.... How good it is to love people. How much strength one gains from such love. When she was hanged, Ragozinikovka was twenty years old.
-- from Odyssey of a Friend, published privately by The National Review, 1969, p. 77.

* * *

* Updates *

Fausta's recent podcast with Robert Spencer, author of Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, makes a point to not confuse the values of Judeo-Christianity with those of Islam. More precisely, to not confuse their ability (or inability) to proffer values, and for a civilization, as a consequence of those values, to develop, to innovate, to progress. In terms of that Russian revolutionary lore quoted above, consider that the impulse to sacrifice other's lives and, if necessary, one's life for a cause -- to presume to become, as Camus phrased it, one of "the just" -- has different sources, impulses, motivations than those which compel jihadist shahid ("martyrs") to their deeds and their ends.

Writes "Siggy": Robert Spencer also reiterates another unequivocal truth. It is the evolution of religion and the evolution of a believers relationship (or non relationship) with his or her faith that has powered human development. It is an absolute truth that modern society cannot exist alongside backward religious expressions. That is why nations predicated on a free and democratic Judeo-Christian ethics are producing nations and why virtually all of the Arab world are only capable of consumption. It is also an unequivocal truth that producing nations and societies are very different than consuming nations.

An Ally of Civilization

It's official -- AWOL Civilization, whose blogger Gary Wolf attended last weekend's Blog Fest West, has named me an ally. A modest but distinct honor, and one to which duties attend. People like us have to prove that not only is beauty truth and truth beauty, but that power -- that is, the most mortals can know of it, the most they can exercise it -- derives from both of them.

AWOL Civ's banner calls to mind a lyric from Don MacLean's paean to Van Gogh, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you (below). But frankly, we have to do one better than Don MacLean. I hope this feeds you, Gentle Reader.

Now go feed Gary's beast.
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Welcome, Halliburton Readers!

Hope no one gets in trouble at the office for this one (it's not exactly SFW):

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Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Comes to San Francisco

* Update (8/21) * What does BFW have to do with Glenn Reynolds and with 9/11? Veteran blogger Ed provides context and depth for an event that was years in the making.

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Yesterday evening the few, the proud right-leaning Bay Area bloggers (and those from a little beyond) responded to the call put out by Ed, Nina, and Cinn to meet and greet at Blog Fest West in "the Anbar Province of American politics," Nancy Pelosi's C.D. in San Francisco (CA-8). The last purely social event I'd attended there, a New Year's Eve party last December, had been less than meaningful: shortly before the stroke of midnight I asked fellow revellers for a moment of silence for recently deceased Gerald Ford, but ... strange to say ... everyone ignored it.... So this weekend I looked to Blog Fest West as a way to say goodbye, yet again, to all that liberal mojo.

The affable event afforded a few dozen of California's more linearly critical thinkers an occasion to match a face to a url, to swap stories old and new, and to float ideas and visions. The fleshy forms of over 20 web sites attended, with all told over 40 present. True to form, when bloggers gather in person, despite tasty food and tempting drink the appetite for conversation proves strongest. (Click here for a roll call, including links to other blogposts about BFW.)

It was fortifying personally to meet other survivors of 60s-derived radicalism; a true, NY metropolitan area post-9/11 patriot; a refugee from post-Soviet eastern Europe (who's a legal immigrant); and the LA-based brains behind Pajamas Media.

* * *

In one segment of Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore shows footage of a seemingly harmless little group plopped on couches and munching homemade cookies as they plan their next "antiwar" demonstration. With his snotty tenor voiceover Moore mocks legislation that empowers the feds to gather information on individuals and groups that have determined to try to reverse the American government's anti-terror policies.

To rip a page out of Moore's (or is it Karl Rove's?) playbook, Blog Fest West, by its mere existence, mocks the proposed reimposition of the "Fairness Doctrine" -- which would crush fruitful competition generated by the free marketplace of ideas in American media. Count me in, Mike, with these red meat wingnuts who are obviously (isn't it obvious?) the mainstream enablers of imminent Christian theocracy in America. IT can't happen here -- can it?
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(above, left) PJM CEO Roger Simon joins BFW impresarios Cinn, Nina, and Ed in indoctrinating attendees with blind hatred. Says Nina: If you can't stand the hate, get out of the blogosphere!

(above, right) Diversity of opinion über alles - Bwahahahaha!

(below, left) Grim, fanatic conspiracists swallow right-wing propaganda hook, line, and sinker: Cinnamon's evil clone monitors the scene; the tall guy is ready to rumble; Mickey Kaus breaks ranks to mug for the camera; and lookie there, Karl Rove did show up after all! [pic doctored to protect the guilty]

(below, right) The Fedora Has Landed: Cinnamon delights as Roger picks a raffle winner. Be afraid, be very afraid.
 

UPO Sighting in SF

This unidentified patriotic object was spotted recently hovering luminously in a window in the Aces Bar in San Francisco's Tenderloin District.

Romney on Immigration, Border Security

The GOP front-runner takes 20 minutes to respond to questions from Michelle Malkin on hot-button issues where the general welfare collides with the common defense:

It's very important for Republicans to communicate to the world that we value and welcome legal immigration ... but we do want to end and control illegal immigration, and sanctuary cities are sending the wrong message and are flaunting the policies of our nation.

Islamo Fascism Awareness Week - October 22-26

* Update (8/25) * Welcome, Tampa/St. Pete readers and listeners of the Schnitt Show (93.3FM WFLZ and NewsRadio 970 WFLA)!
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This just in from the David Horowitz Freedom Center:

Islamo Fascism Awareness Week: Is your alma mater on our list?

We are now planning what will be the largest campus demonstrations ever staged by conservative students for October 22-26. We are calling the event Islamo Fascism Awareness Week. We already have student coordinators on 150 campuses and we are hoping that the event will touch close to 200 universities and colleges across the country. We are offering these campuses a full menu of activities including panel discussions on the origins and implications of Islamo Fascism; keynote speakers such as former Sen. Rick Santorum, Christopher Hitchens, Robert Spencer, and Nonie Darwish ; and a showing of the uncut version of ABC's milestone docudrama "The Path to 9/11," and other documentaries about the threat of radical Islam, including Obsession and Suicide Killers.

In addition we are working with our student coordinators to organize protests at women's studies departments which have been shamefully silent about the violent oppression of women in the Muslim world, and to stage a memorial for the international victims of jihad. Among the campuses already committed to major activities during Islamo Fascism Awareness Week are Columbia, UC Berkeley, Penn State, Temple, Penn, Emory, UC Irvine and Ohio State. This week has the potential to be a major news event as well as a transforming political experience for our college students.

If you want further information or would like to see your alma mater or a school of special interest added to our list of targets, please email Jeffrey Wienir at jeffrey@horowitzfreedomcenter.org. This is our chance to bring the truth about the war on terrorism to campuses dominated by an unholy alliance between pro jihadists and the hardcore left.

* * *
Q: Is this crowd going to teach you anything useful about Islamo Fascism? 
A: Yes. But useful to whom?

The eyes have it. From right to left: the one-worlder bugging out on making the rounds in her global village;  a one-worlder, global villager in training; the shifty-eyed, terrorist mafioso (who would pass his poisoned blood off to 9/11 survivors); and, as history is proving, the narcissistic rapist who was along for the ride.

Can't you picture "ACT-UP Ramallah"? Say it! Millionaire terrorists get AIDS, too!

Nukes No Spook

"The Two Things To Know Before Your City Is Nuked By Terrorists"

1. Tragically, horrifyingly, but quite predictably, it’s going to happen. The only question being which American city or cities?

2. When said attack comes, you and your family are on your own. Period. My friend stressed that “our government won’t be there to help us. It is broken beyond repair and incapable of assisting those most affected by the blast.

* * *

GOP Presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo drives the discussion of how, possibly, to deter, and likely to retaliate against a nuclear attack on American soil. Said Tancredo in the lead-up to the recent Iowa straw poll: When I am president, I will never, ever, ever send anyone into harm’s way with a CYA memo drafted by a Pentagon lawyer. The only rule of engagement I’m going to have in a Tancredo administration is this: We win, you lose!

* * *

Hillaryspeak: Leftwinger Robert Scheer calls Hillary on her doublespeak about the nuclear option.

6 Fire Trucks Quell Mosque Fire In Under 30 Minutes, CAIR Fans Flames By Claiming "Terror"

* Update below: Politics is history in the present tense *

* Update (8/21) * Remember the Bob Marley lyric?
'Cause I feel like bombing a church
Now that I know that the preacher is lying.
-- "Talkin' Blues"
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In a late-breaking story yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle, despite itself, reported that a fire set in an Antioch, CA mosque was extinguished rapidly and effectively by 6 great American fire trucks who responded promptly to the one-alarm incident. True to form, the Chron led with the following CAIR-centric headline: "Muslim leaders call Antioch mosque fire 'act of terror.'" (Click here for more about the implacable, pro-Islamic propagandists of CAIR.)

A local Islamic spokeswoman, speaking in predictable Islamic victimese, claimed the fire was "an act of terror." Cliche-stuffed article & video, told with a feminist angle, about the full-time Islamic activist here. This site captures (alongside irrelevant, postmodern Jewish blather about understanding the Other) her not inaccurate statements that Islamic terror kills Muslims, too. Unfortunately, because of taqiyya and jihad, we can never, never ever trust Muslims to speak truthfully about Islam. [Scroll halfway through "Islam 101" for summary of taqiyya (religious deception) --Thanks for the link, Carpe.]

Was the mosque fire vandalism? Harassment? Intimidation? Yes, it could be. Also possible is that Muslims set the fire in order to test first responders and garner media attention and sympathy. (You never know, that's why you have to ask -- a duty which the Chron abdicated.) But terror? No way, Hussein! Americans and Israelis and the occasional Brit, Dane, Pole, and Spaniard die every day to stop terror and the local CAIR rep cries "Victim!". How much are they paying her, anyway?

Fortunately, the Chron online version allows readers' comments to its articles. Here's the best one I saw out of the lot. If his take proves correct, then the fire definitely was not "terror" -- more like "sloppy counterjihad.":

I wouldn't do anything like this but a lot of people have had enough of the Muslim shakedown. In countries around the world ( Holland 50 % of births are Muslim - scarves in France - drivers licenses with veils - 5 time praying in schools that never had it before) alls we hear is how you hate us and want to destroy us. I use to go by the mosque in San Diego every day. If I'd of known what was going on in there - terror training for 9/11 ).....I would of burnt it down myself. People are very very mad. Muslims have come to our culture and tried to change us. You bring violence hate, destruction and despair. We gave you Iraq...only Muslims ( but you despise each other and slaughter ). The real truth is most of us thinks your nuts. Control your own or this is just going to escalate...Sorry those is the facts....

As the mosque's president said quite aptly, regarding previous incidents of harassment, Our praying has become a symbol of terrorism. No kidding.

What are you going to do about it!? Until Muslim terrorism is stopped, no amount of prayer -- Muslim, Jewish, or Christian -- will, by itself, do anybody any good.

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* Update: Politics is history in the present tense *

1. The Syrian ambassador recently described Dearborn, Michigan as a Lebanese city. (Syria, which has occupied swaths of Lebanon for decades, which is widely believed to have engineered the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister....) 

2. Remember the liberation of Antioch (Syria). Among the earliest seats of Christianity, it was one of the earliest objectives of Crusades. Here's a passage from the account left by Peter Tudebode, describing events in 1097 Anno Domini. :

In the meantime the Antiochian Turks, those enemies of God and holy Christianity, after learning of the absence of Lord Bohemond and the Count of Flanders, swarmed out of the town and contemptuously moved to attack us. With their knowledge of the absence of some of our most experienced knights, they probed the weakest spots in our siege forces and discovered on Tuesday that they could strike and resist us. The accursed barbarians stealthily approached and, striking viciously the unwary and foolish Christians, killed many knights and footmen.  On this bitter day, the Bishop of the Cathedral of the Holy Mary of Le Puy lost his seneschal, the carrier and protector of his banner.  In fact, if the river had not flowed between us, the Turks would have struck our men more often and would have inflicted greater damage upon us, for to the camp our men fled in wild flight.

Dick Comes Clean About Hillary's Stains

There is no question [Hillary Rodham Clinton] had her eye on public office, as opposed to service, long ago.
-- Dick Morris, campaign manager of Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election

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Some of the most reliable "Hillary watchers" are ex-Clintonistas, perhaps none more than Dick Morris. Read Dick fisk a five-minute Hillary campaign video -- of husband Bill Clinton going to bat for "Madame Macbeth":

Bill says: Hillary could have written her own job ticket, but she turned down all the lucrative job offers.

The true facts are:  She flunked the DC bar exam and only passed the Arkansas bar. She had no job offers in Arkansas and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She only joined the prestigious Rose Law Firm after Bill became Attorney General and made partner only after he was elected Governor.

Read it all.

SWM seeks IMWW in FL, OH, PA for GOP

For all the analysis, talk, and debate, and for all the palm pressing, hand wringing, and hair pulling, next year's presidential election may boil down to one demographic: ideologically moderate white women.

According to poll data analyzed here:

The argument that Clinton could win the Democratic nomination but remain a long shot for winning the White House has rested heavily on two pillars: that Clinton is too polarizing and that Americans are not ready to elect a woman as president. Both those pillars may be crumbling. [emphasis added] While Clinton has long enjoyed an advantage among Democratic women, the latest surveys suggest she is drawing support from other women -- including those who in the past have tilted Republican and earlier in this election cycle were showing no particular enthusiasm for Clinton.

Every presidential victor since 1960 has carried at least two of the following states: Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. If '08 proves another tight election, look to "ideologically moderate white women" in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to hold the cards. (For what it's worth: On Election Day 2004 I took a non-partisan stance by holding a sign in rush-hour traffic that read Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania: The Axis of Democracy.) 

Note: As reader Mara emails, it boils down to "security moms" vs. "soccer moms."

Newt on Gwot

Must see video of Gingrich's remarks at the National Press Club. H/T Mick.

Ask John Hawkins

Prolific Right Wing News blogger John Hawkins is fielding questions today in the Comments section of "Q&A Friday #71." Want an opinion on where things are heading or should be heading? Ask away.

Hillary Generates Buzz

I gotchya "spirited debate" -- right here. H/T Kesher Talk

Blog Fest West Only Ten Days Away

The 18th. Mark it and make it. More info here.

As Congress's Approval Ratings Tank ... Ask GOPublius, Ask Lew, Ask Jackie

GOPublius sees in it a boon for Republicans, while Lew at Right in a Left World urges popular political reinvigoration to thwart Democrats' machinations -- now that they supposedly have Karl Rove's playbook.

* * *

And now ... a few words ... from Jackie Mason:

Excuse Me? "God Has Summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton"?

We're all evangelicals. The question is what we're preaching.
-- Alan Dershowitz, on CNN in June to promote his book
Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence
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Up at Hillary's campaign site is a new video, "African American Men for Hillary." Watch it before her people pull it from YouTube (or scroll down here).

It's exactly what it says it is -- a series of outtakes from a gathering of African American leaders who endorse her for president. It's the usual stuff, chock full of familiar phrases like "leadership," "compassion," "the most important election in our lifetime," etc., etc. It's exactly what it says it is -- almost.

The five-and-a-half minute video begins Let's thank God for our senator and the next president of the United States, Senator Hillary Clinton. A presidential campaign video that leads with "God" makes me a little squeamish and more than a little suspicious. It's not called, after all, "Christian African American Men for Hillary." Don't get me wrong, I believe in religion in the public sphere. But there's a bit of bait-and-switch going on here.

Do other (especially Republican) politicians actually lead off with "God"? Not Mitt Romney, the Mormon candidate, and not George W. Bush, the born again Christian. [Update: Romney "acquits himself fairly well" on the subject.] If a Republican presidential campaign instructed an audience to thank God for their candidate, critics in the MSM and elsewhere would be up in arms, crying "Christian fascism!". We know that Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison enjoys hearing his faithful chant "Allahu Akbar!". Ann Coulter's latest book accuses liberals of belonging to a cult of godlessness; what we see in today's Democratic Party is, more precisely, a cult of selective godfulness.

This insertion of "God" into "African American Men for Hillary" is carefully crafted to make good with churchgoing black people. It happens also to be bad as a matter of intellect, bad as a matter of principle, and bad as a matter of faith. To wit, the video rises to a crescendo with a pseudo-sermon not from a man of the cloth, but from multimillionaire trial lawyer Willie Gary (as featured on Oprah and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous):

As I always do I have to just include God in the mix. God has a hand in all of this. No doubt about it. In her running for president, he has a hand in it. In her becoming president, he will have a hand in it. No doubt about it. As I was saying, and I thought about it, God is too wise to make mistakes. And I know that. So we have -- we've made the right choice. There's no question in my mind about that, because he has a hand in it. Oh! But now that the United States of America need a leader that's a mover and a shaker, God has summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton!
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God has summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton?

That's almost enough to make me an atheist.

 (Click here for all "Hillary Watch" posts.)

He Don't Fight For The Little Man, He Fights For Himself

My IBM Selectric

25 years ago today I found one of these wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag and propped up against a lamppost in midtown Manhattan. A neighbor had taken me to visit the newly-opened Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and afterwards we were hoofing it over to the east side when we scored the clunker. Some office somewhere in the 40s between 6th and 7th (or 7th and 8th) Avenues must have just upgraded and6 not so neatly disposed of their old equipment. Did the thing work? Well, there was only one way to find out. Instead of heading for a bus, we hailed a cab and hauled it home. The rest is history.

My particular Selectric was an older version, a pre-"golf ball" version. It came with a maintenance card inside which documented servicing going back to the 60s. It ran on the simplest plastic ribbon (not cloth) that spooled concentrically, like reel-to-reel film. An archaic item in the world of office machine accessories, I could only find those ribbon reels in dusty stationery stores that had already been carrying them for years.

When being used the machine hummed, rattled, snapped, and popped. When it ran for long periods it got hot under the hood, like a car. Also like a car, on cold winter mornings I had to turn it on and let it warm up for several minutes before it would "turn over" (i.e., for the key hammers to respond to keystrokes). Before I ever owned a computer (or a car) I put everything could into, and got everything out of, this clunker. And just like a car I ran the thing into the ground till, five years later, it just wouldn't go no more.

Bye-bye, my trusty, my rusty IBM Selectric.

Another Gem From the MSM

Breaking headline:

Minn. bridge toll far less than feared

By HENRY C. JACKSON, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago

MINNEAPOLIS - Authorities searching the rubble of an interstate bridge collapse lowered the number of people believed missing Friday to eight....

Intellectual Punk Speaks Up For Subject of Hillary Rodham's Thesis

* Update (08/21) * Michelle Malkin plugs Diana West's The Death of the Grown-Up

Regarding Hillary's thesis Nick Masesso, who wrote the deservedly obscure Walking the Midway In Purgatory (an incoherent, intellectually violent reminiscence of growing up in the 1960s), emails:

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We all started with Saul Alinsky. He and men like Studs Terkle [sic] taught us how to organize. Without them we'd have had no labor movement, no Teamsters and thus no middle class, ergo no america [sic]. Groking Saul doesent [sic] mean anything. There is only what we do.

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There is only what we do is a line Nick borrows from Aristotle on the formation of character, on excellence as habit. Yes, there is only what we do. Here There is only what we do is the amorality of those who have never given up on letting "the 60s" be their excuse for mediocrity perpetrated in the name of "protest" or "art" or "radicalism." For mediocrity can be a habit, moral equivalency can be a habit, evil can be a habit. In Nick's grubby hands the phrase becomes Nothing works so anything goes. It's what he had in mind last September when he equated me waving an American flag with shouting "Allahu akbar." That's neither a reasoning nor a reckoning with history or one's own life. It's a failure to reason and a failure to reckon (which may be my main complaint with the Clintons.)

Does Nick include Hillary Rodham in his pronoun We? Was she, is she, a "sister in struggle"? A struggle against what? and for what? Hillary Rodham was clearly fascinated American radicalism. The story of the rest of her career is the story of how, exactly, she has reasoned and reckoned with her fascination -- in her case, to what extent her manipulation of American radicalism has been her means to political power.

There is always more than There is only what we do.