The Crowbar

Uh boy. If you haven’t already, now is the time to call your Senator and Representatives, folks.

Reid & Pelosi think they have enough votes to arrogantly seize control of your health care and, by default, your life – and, yes, this INCLUDES a public option:

While White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today refrained from telling reporters whether President Obama in his speech Wednesday night will set a deadline for passing health care reform, sources tell ABC News that in his private meeting with Democratic congressional leaders this afternoon the key word was urgency.

The president told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that it is important for them to pass health care reform bills soon, the sources said.

Both leaders told the president that despite the difficult rough and tumble of the legislative process in the last few weeks, they are optimistic that both the House and Senate can pass health care reform legislation.

What will be in the bill remains an open question, though after the meeting, Reid told reporters that “we’re going to do our very best to have a public option or something like a public option before we finish this work.”

Now is the time to resist.

Update: After letting this settle in my mind, I realize this is probably a cynical ploy by Pelosi & Reid to pressure fence-sitting Senators & Congressmen to lean their way – you know the ol’ ‘Joint the Bandwagon Or You’ll Lose Out” routine. They also want to get the hopes of the fringe progressive liberals up – the ones who are tantruming over the prospect of having no public option. Bah.

When will Keynesians learn that deficit spending always costs orders of magnitude more than spending reduction? Never, of course, because they live in an agenda-driven fantasy world where denial is the highest virtue.

As was inevitable with the Bush/Obama Administrations’ harebrained ”stimulus” bills, the US Federal Reserve has begun printing money, adding to the money supply – trying to ease credit. China, the largest holder of US reserves, is flipping out about it because it WILL induce inflation and China’s (and all reserve holders) currency holdings will lose significant value. With enough inflation nobody will want to buy US debt. The US is in real, actual danger of collapsing under the weight of it’s own debt.

Our stimulus and other deficit spending is deeply stupid and foolish, not to mention dangerous to our economy.

I don’t normally cover straight news on my blog, but this instance of bias is so outrageous that I am moved to say something.

Drudge is, at the time of this writing, headlining that ABCNews with Charlie Gibson will be doing a special on June 24 called “Prescription for America,” broadcasting directly from the East Room of the White House.

It’s bad enough that ABC is actually broadcasting from the White House, symbolizing a cooperative relationship with the Obama Administration, but the special also excludes those who are opposed to to Socialist/Universal Health Care.

Also, in case you had any dobuts, ABC also hired long-time Universal Health Care advocate Dr. Tim Johnson, to play a role in the special. Just astounding.

I don’t get how ABCNews can justify such blatant heavy-handed one-sidedness to themselves. They can no longer honestly consider themselves professional journalists. Just sick.

ABC is undermining democracy with their idiotic antics. It’s just stupid and outrageous that American journalists would engage is such an act. I guess Obama really is their Dear Leader. Just damn.

If ever there was a column to read about the idiotic “torture” debate in America, this is it. 

Sowell brilliantly explains the moral confusion amongst liberals who refuse to grow up:

Whatever the verbal fencing over the meaning of the word “torture,” there is a fundamental difference between simply inflicting pain on innocent people for the sheer pleasure of it– which is what our terrorist enemies do– and getting life-saving information out of the terrorists by whatever means are necessary.

The left has long confused physical parallels with moral parallels. But when a criminal shoots at a policeman and the policeman shoots back, physical equivalence is not moral equivalence. And what American intelligence agents have done to captured terrorists is not even physical equivalence.

I recommend that everyone read his column, it brings amazing clarity to “torture” issue that few other commentaries have.

A continuing series covering snarky, condescending and inappropriate liberal response to the Tea Party Movement. Snark I | Snark II

David Neiwert closes his eyes and flails his arms while running at the Tea Party movement, calling it “populist.” Well, duh, of course it’s populist. Neiwert thinks, however, that right-wing populism “in the process of taking the reins of the leaderless conservative movement,” calling it “sucker populism” as though left-wing populism is somehow less impetuous. I would guess that right-wing populism has approximately the same hold over conservatives as left-wing populism has over Obama’s liberal establishment. If you want to really understand populism go here.

Neiwert prattles on until he gets to this juicy part:

It is, in essence, predicated on the psychology of celebrity-worship: convincing working-class schlubs that they too can someday become rich and famous too — because when they do, would they want to be taxed heavily? It’s all about dangling that lottery carrot out there for the poor stiffs who were never any good at math to begin with.

My, my, isn’t that interesting? Neiwert looks down his fancy-pants liberal nose at “working-class schlubs” who have no chance whatsoever to “become rich and famous.” Those “poor stiffs” who aren’t “any good at math to begin with.” How… condescending. 

Neiwert inadvertently reveals the crux of modern liberalism: that we poor “schlubs” need the the know-it-all liberals to rescue us from ourselves.

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Thers at Firedoglake snarks directly at Tea Party protesters saying, “Hey, Tea-Baggers — you’re not the majority; hell, you’re not even normal” 

Thers is referring to the “Slient Majority No More,” saying there is NO WAY the Tea Party’s anti tax, anti-spending message could be representative of a majority of Americans:

There are no poll data whatsoever to support the idea that Americans are Fed Up when it comes to taxes.

 Uhhh. Yes there is. Great job on the fact checking, there Thers.  

The Gallup Poll Thers, the Washington Post and rest of the Liberalati are touting shows that:

48% of Americans saying the amount of federal income taxes they pay is “about right,” with 46% saying “too high”

That’s with a ±3% margin of error, of course.

But wait – this survey includes ALL Americans. I wonder, just wonder what the numbers would look like if you asked only those who actually pay income taxes? Hmmmm…

Thers goes on to snark at Tea Party protesters some more:

The Grandma-haired Byron York went to one of these small-town tea-bags, like I did, though, as he says, “organizers posted a note on their website asking that everyone “Please DO NOT personally attack the President or any member of Congress by name” — as it was a classic conservative Republican, limited-government, anti-spending talkfest.” Well, when you’re told top-down what the message is, it cleans up real good, I guess. But everywhere else, Glenn Beck won, it was all very wingnutty sloganeering, and well, good luck building a winning electoral coalition on that, Republicans.

So it’s bad to encourage civility and respect when protesting???? I think Thers is upset at being denied the opportunity to snark at protesters who may have otherwise been disrespectful. 

So, I guess it’s abnormal a) to be upset at wasteful government spending and over-taxation b) to believe that most people don’t like wasteful government spending and over-taxation c) to protest about it  and d) to be respectful while protesting.

Who wudda thunk?

A continuing series covering snarky, condescending and inappropriate liberal response to the Tea Party Movement. Snark I | Snark III

First Greg Gutfeld at BigHollywood brilliantly takes on Anderson Cooper’s tasteless teabagging shtick: 

Now, if you`re too old or too high to get what`s going on, here`s the joke: The liberal-leaning media are goofing on the tea parties by invoking the term teabagging, a phrased used to describe an act of oral sex performed by a man – either on another man, woman, or in Alec Baldwin’s case – a cheeseburger.

And so you have Cooper`s joke – it`s just a shame he ripped off the shtick from David Shuster, who apparently has never met a joke he hasn`t beat to death like a hunter on a harp seal. On MSNBC, Shuster repeats testicle-based puns with a fervent relish not unlike an eight-year old boy who just can’t stop sniffing his fingers. And, this, coming from me. I`m mean – I always thought I was the king of obvious jokes, but I relinquish that crown – because the real obvious joke is Shuster.

4/17 Edit: Commenter BB brings up an excellent point. Gutfeld was being just as rude and crass as Cooper when he snarks at Alec Baldwin and he goes to far when he describes the 8 year old “who just can’t stop sniffing his fingers.” In retrospect, it was poorly chosen on my part – though comparing Cooper’s behavior to that of an 8 year old boy is quite apt.

**********

The callow behavior continues at DailyKos as Kos-hack Greg Dworkin spits up some unseemly Urban Dictionary definitions:

Teabagger n. A conservative activist who is so ignorant that they protest against tax cuts (that benefit them) by throwing tea into a river.

Teabagging: The mornic [sic] act of conservatives/Republicans sending used teabags to lawmakers because they think Obama is a Nazi.

Uhhh. How… unclever. The Chairman of Urban Dictionary’s Bipartisan Committee for the Prevention of Vulgar Behavior could not be reached for comment.

Dworkin continues by cluelessly claiming that the Tea Party had no buzz on Twitter because Twitscoop’s tag cloud didn’t show any tea party related words:

Dworkin's Twitscoop Screenshot

Riiight, because the fact that the #teaparty hashtag stayed at the top of Twitter’s “Trending Topics” nearly all day means NOTHING! It’s still #3 as of 10:35 AM EST 4/16/2009 – that means nothing too.

Perhaps Dworkin should have read Twitscoop’s explanation of their tag cloud:

Through an automated algorithm, twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentioned more often than usual. The result is displayed in a Tag Cloud, using the following rule: the hotter, the bigger(no joke here). 

Someone please tell Dworkin that words are not necessarily hashtags. Gee – ya think Twitscoop might be filtering out the hashtags??? Could it be that Twitscoop isn’t the best indicator of overall buzz? “Bullshit” is also listed as a trend in Dworkin’s TwitScoop screenshot – how appropriate.

The Left Blogsphere  joined hands today to commit mass abuse of conservative Tea Party protesters. The left’s putrid hate rained down upon the Internet like sewage dumped from 1000 Hollywood-owned airplanes. Unable to contain the sludge within their minds, the left uniformly referred to the Tea Party Movement with the crude sexual reference “Tea Bagging,” showing just how immature and unprofessional they really are. More > Snark II | Snark III

*****

Steve Benen attempted to discredit the Washington DC/White House Tea Party protest with the “if it’s not well planned it’s not legitimate” bit. Protesters threw a box of tea into the White House lawn and got in trouble with authorities. If this were a liberal protest and Bush was in the White House, you better believe Benen wouldn’t have this snark to offer:

So, these guys didn’t think it was important to come up with a rationale for the protests or to get permits for the protests … It’s hard not to get the impression that very little thought went into these far-right festivities.

We also know that not a lot of thought went into the civil rights movement at first, it started as slowly building emotion. 

*****

We hear only muffled sounds from Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo as he attempts to remove his foot from his mouth for calling this picture and the 28 subsequent pics of protests “Anti-Tax Porn:”

John Marshall Calls This "Porn"

*****

Everyone’s favorite fake conservative Andrew Sullivan featured a post from hard left Pandagon blogger Jesse Taylor. From “Unicorn Nuts…On Your Face,” a shrill upchuck of liberal malevolence:

This gets to the basic issue with the whole Tea Party movement.  It’s a group of fucknuts joining other groups of marginally related fucknuts to protest something or other, in a hugely fucknutty way.  The point of the Tea Party movement, besides the largest thrusting of testicles to America’s collective face since the Soviets launched Sputnik, is to protest…well, basically the entire functioning of the government with no alternative plan or goal whatsoever. 

LOL, what great prose and impeccable logic! Good to know what Sullivan considers to be “curt.” He thinks “the goal of the Tea Parties” is to “DOMINATE THE AGENDA,” whatever that means. 

Stay tuned for more, folks…

I was not able to post yesterday, so I made up for it with the following roundup of the top 10 blogs.

Huffington Post > It’s obvious liberals are starting to feel threatened by the Tea Party Movement, they are devoting more webspace trying to kill it. Huffpo blogger Karl Frisch (also a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America), tries desperately to discredit all of Fox News for allegedly cheer-leading the movement. Fox News isn’t, but their opinion show hosts are. You know, kinda like MSNBC and CNN opinion show hosts drooled over Obama, which Media Matters strangely didn’t cover. It’s a truly lame attempt, but I’m sure lots of hard left HuffPo readers will take it as fact.

Democratic Underground > Trouble for Obama from the suicidal dove faction. DU Poster AmyCamus reposted a story on Alternet by hard left Iraq Marine veteran Benjamin Lewis, who is likely to be court marshaled “for his intention to refuse reactivation.” Lewis is Against Obama’s Afghanistan, and after the usual peacenik screed he expresses his disappointment quite tellingly:

If it was not evident before, it should be apparent by now that Obama is not our savior.

You heard it here at The Crowbar nearly first, folks!

Daily Kos > Kossack Susan Gardner gives us all a preview of what’s to coming this Sunday 4/13 on Kos…

• A lame attack by Michael Lazzaro on the Tea Party Movement pretending that the left/ACORN is DEFINITELY NOT attempting to infiltrate the Movement, really.
• Dana Houle will attempt to discredit Glenn Beck by tying him to “manifestos of the violent radical right”  and saying he “traffics in violent conspiratorial rhetoric of the kind that inspired Timothy McVeigh”
• Gardner will pass on hard left propaganda by David Neiwert bashing talk radio and insulting talk radio listeners.

The Daily Dish | Andrew Sullivan > Sullivan spent the entire day dismissively bashing the Tea Party movement, calling it the “Tea Tantrum movement.” Sullivan puts on his “fiscal conservative” hat (conical with a red puffy ball on top) to give himself false authority to declare the movement “adolescent, unserious hysteria” and proof of the Republican “party’s fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.” Sullivan takes us on an unfantastic journey devoting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 posts to deriding the movement. You see, the mistake the Tea Party Movement made is not consulting Sullivan and his clearly superior British intellect first – the man has a PhD in Government from Harvard, donchya know.

Talking Points Memo (TPM)  > Trouble in paradise, specifically Guantanamo Bay. Harsh reality may be setting for Obama. Seems Obama’s DOJ is stonewalling Gitmo case just like Bush. I guess sending the terrorists to Pennsylvania is no loger viable? In any case, the anger of the Liberalati is rising. Hard left Gitmo lawyer David Cynamon says:

What I have been hoping for, and am getting increasingly frustrated about, is to see that closing Guantanamo be matched with a change in policy at the Justice Department to actually try to get these cases heard to test the evidence and then to determine, if there’s no evidence, to release these people. That part I haven’t seen at all.

Think Progress > Lee Fang nostalgically engages in Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) by wishing that Bush would hate himself as much as Fang and other BDS sufferers do. In a promo video for Bush’s Presidential library, Bush fails to say that he lied and people died, that he traded blood for oil, that 9/11 was his inside job and that he personally used a weather satellite to aim Katrina at New Orleans because lots of black people live there.

The Conscience of a Liberal >Krugman  ties income inequality with “intense partisanship” in The financial factor  ”But what caused the fall and rise of inequality?… regulation and deregulation.” So Krugman is arguing for more regulation – you’re shocked, I know. The kicker is that he damages his own argument, “OK, correlation does not imply causation yada yada.” Meh.

Crooks and Liars > Nicole Belle writes an open letter to National Organization for Marriage, hoping to affect change by the sheer force of her condescending insults:

I find your stance akin to those bigots who protested for miscegenation…

…unless of course, your marriage is simply not as strong as mine and having others commit would suddenly inspire you or your spouse to up and leave.

…it might actually have more credibility if you could find an actual doctor to claim her job is somehow threatened, rather than using a really, really bad actor.

…you boneheads.

Yours in complete and utter scorn…

Aren’t top liberal bloggers fun people?

Wonkette > It’s correction time as Wonkete jumps to conclusions about a fake YouTube video of “the libidinous fartsack Silvio Berlusconi, who still lives with his mom, assaulting some poor woman who just wanted to write a goddamn parking ticket in peace.”  Isn’t that special. Then comes the correction:

Oh well shit our own former editor Alex Pareene debunked this dumb thing three years ago. Ha ha, fact-checking!

Do you think Wonkette will see how their hyperactive, venomous hatred made them assume the worst even after their own blogger debunked it three years ago? Fat chance. 

Glenn Greenwald > Greenwald spends another day taking on the “Obama DOJ’s inexcusable embrace of some of the most radical Bush/Cheney secrecy doctrines.” Uh-oh, sounds like MORE trouble in paradise. Wait, wait… isn’t criticizing the DOJ racist since Attorney General Eric Holder is the first black man to be appointed to the office? OH, that’s right – Greenwald is a liberal. Different standards, my bad – he’s not racist.

Political Animal | Steve Benen > Benen spends time patronizing Glenn Beck for his speaking style. Benen, unable to hold back his poisonous sneer, accuses Beck of actually being “insane,” “deranged,” and “crazy” and says, “might try to eat his shoes while arguing with mailboxes. Getting dressed and making it to a television studio every day would be difficult.” I’ve no doubt it’s Benen who needs therapy.

Camille Paglia at Salon.com brings to light a stunning, heartbreaking story from DC about the alleged murder of a straight man by three gay men that is being ignored by the mainstream media. I’m breaking  from my usual blog format to bring a tiny bit more attention to Craig Brownstein’s valiant efforts :

Friends of mine and I have found ourselves at the crossroads of the Washington, D.C., media, gay press and the murder of a straight man at the home of a noted gay rights and marriage attorney. Print may be morbid, but maybe citizen journalism/investigation may fill the void. There is a three-year-old unsolved murder of a straight man who was drugged, incapacitated, sexually assaulted, suffocated, then stabbed in the home of three gay men, one of them being an old college friend. One of the defendants — not charged with murder, however — is noted K Street attorney Joe Price, who is active in Lambda legal circles.

The crime scene in Dupont Circle is just a few blocks from where I, my partner and two close friends live. The murder of Robert Wone had all the ingredients of a D.C. scandal: sex, drugs and murder. Yet there is almost zero buzz on the streets about this. The D.C. mainstream print media gave minimal coverage, and you can guess how few column inches or how little airtime the TV guys gave it. The four of us launched a blog, and we’ve broken news.

Why does the death of a straight man in the home of three gay guys not become “news” à la Chandra Levy? The four of us gay Washingtonians are all plugged into the media in some capacity, yet we can’t figure this out. Another question is why the gay media avoids this crime and issue. Some coverage, yet only a little.

The Web site dc.bilerico gave us space for a guest post. A recent Fox 5 / WTTG piece. And finally our site.

Craig Brownstein
Washington, D.C.

Paglia’s Response: From your description of the appalling news blackout on this crime, it appears to be a blatant case of politically correct censorship. The 11th commandment of the liberal mainstream media is that no evil shalt be spoken of any gay persons, who have been sanctified by their precious victim status, without which liberalism would implode. You and your gay friends are to be congratulated for your passionate truth-seeking. I am very glad for the opportunity to publicize the facts in Salon. Please keep me informed of future developments.

The bottom line is that the liberal media machine pretends, for political purposes, that gay people are immune from such uncomfortable ugliness such as committing murder. Everyone is equally capable of murder and the press should not discriminate based on sexual preference.

I wonder where the ACLU is on this one – oh wait – this case doesn’t fit in their neat, tidy packaged worldview where straight people are never victimized by gay people:

The ACLU also works to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights, including people of color; women; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people; prisoners; and people with disabilities.

If the rights of society’s most vulnerable members are denied, everybody’s rights are imperiled.

But, I digress.

Pass it on for Robert Wone.

Juan Cole of Informed Comment discovered an interesting report from Guardian TV.

A Guardian Television report suggests that 75% of the 80,000 Afghan army troops are regular marijuana users. Many are alleged to be village juvenile delinquents who were kicked out. Discipline and tactical know-how is limited. They are facing old-time guerrillas like the Hizb-i Islami of Gulbadin Hikmatyar.

Will 4,000 additional US trainers, promised by President Obama on Friday, be enough?

At least they’re in a good mood.