Conservative rhetoric encourages left-wing violence

So conservatives should STFU. That's what Eric Boehlert appears to be saying in this post at Media Matters:: "A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this." Oswald was a Communist, as you know, Bob. Or Eric.

Althouse calls this "Cahrayzee! Crazy... and desperate."

Mark Hemingway says "The Reality-Based Community's Having a Breakdown." Jonah Goldberg quotes an apposite passage from his book. And Hemingway follows up.

In a somewhat related post, Neo-neocon says that

we are suffering from a generalized national false memory syndrome about our history and the history of the world, aided and abetted by the press and academia. After all, these two institutions are tremendously instrumental in giving us the bulk of our information as to what’s happening as it occurs (the so-called “first draft of history”), and then in further filtering, explaining, analyzing, and therefore shaping and ultimately defining our memories of historic events, even events that we ourselves have lived though. And these two institutions have in recent decades been ever more strongly taken over by liberals and the Left.

It's Gramsci all over again.

Ric Locke has some thoughts on alternate histories, and mentions Jack Vance.

Also, it's another step towards Media Matters losing all credibility. Keep the crazy coming, MM.

Update: Neo-neocon has another post addressing this directly, in which she quotes from the first Hemingway link above.

Andrea Harris says "This is what Orwell meant," and links indirectly to this post by Kathy Shaidle.

Bill Whittle on "The Destruction of Sarah Palin"

It's a must-see, so go on over there to PJTV. Or read it, if you'd rather.

It might better be titled "The Attempted Destruction of Sarah Palin." I don't think she's destroyed, just yet. The efforts to damage her keep making her look better.

Thanks to The Crack Emcee, commenting at Althouse. Crack Emcee's own blog, The Macho Response, is well worth a look, by the way.

This gets a "psyops" label because of the Alinsky references.

Who is Van Jones?

He is the "Green Jobs Czar." We did not use to have czars in the US. I wonder what happened that we now have so many of them.

He's a self-admitted Communist.

Update: Jones elevates the level of discourse. Republicans are assholes, "some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are gonna have to start gettin' a little bit uppity." Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

Another update: Jones signed a 9/11 Truther petition, and is now scrambling to deny that he knew what he was doing at the time. Most charitable interpretation to put on this: high as a kite.

Much, much more on Jones at Gateway Pundit.

Update: Jones has resigned, at midnight Saturday night or Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. The entire controversy has existed only on Fox News and the Internet, so NY Times readers will be baffled.

Will another "green jobs czar" be appointed? "Green jobs czar" is not a position like postmaster general or secretary of state. It may have been, I suspect it was, created ad hoc to provide a way to get Van Jones into the government. Obama still has not filled many of the structural positions that need appointments, but he is creating new positions outside the structure.

Just like old times

The State Department is still infested with spies. Communist spies, at that. Of course, they have to work cheap, now.

The Justice Department charged Friday that a former State Department analyst and his wife worked as spies for Cuba for nearly 30 years, using a short-wave radio to pass on secret diplomatic information to their Cuban handlers. Officials said the couple, Walter K. Myers, 72, and Gwendolyn S. Myers, 71, received little in the way of compensation from the Cubans except for the short-wave radio and some travel expenses. Rather, the officials said, the couple appears to have been driven by their strong affinity for Cuba and their bitterness toward “American imperialism.”

What, no cigars or rum? Communists do tend to be puritanical. Venona, Mitrokhin, nothing new here. This calls for an investigation into hiring and vetting, and a through screening of the remaining employees and appointees. Were I a betting man, I'd bet that we will not see one.

Spies, they're like cockroaches — where you find one, there are probably more that you did not find. As I said somewhere else a while ago, it's not too hard to confuse the vigilance that is necessary to maintain a country's — that would be our country's — security with an unseemly paranoia that does not go well with the nice clothes, polite talk and cucumber sandwiches.

CWCID (as TigerHawk would say) to Escort81, at TigerHawk's place, who links to this at Yahoo news.

More at Washington Post. They sound like standard-model academic lefties, thoroughly Gramsciated and demoralized*, like their neighbors. Good educations, elite backgrounds, accustomed for so long to the benefits of freedom and prosperity that they came to take those things for granted.

* Not demoralized in the usual sense of lacking morale, but in the sense of lacking a moral compass. To one with no compass, all directions are the same; to one with no moral compass, moral equivalence is the background of reasoning. The technical term used in this description of how a society is "demoralized."

Freedom of speech in Ireland ...

… is in the same kind of danger that it faces in Canada. Remember the hearings held by the Human Rights Tribunals against Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant last year, briefly mentioned here at the time, now recounted in Levant's book Shakedown.

Now Mark Steyn draws our attention to a similar case in Ireland, in a Corner post titled Cockles and Muzzles.

Kevin Myers, my old comrade from my Irish Times and Sunday Telegraph days, is undergoing an experience that sounds very familiar to yours truly.

Last year he wrote a column about Africa dissenting from the approved line that there's nothing wrong with the place that can't be solved by tossing a few more gazillion dollars into the dictators' Swiss bank accounts. It was a strong column and he might reasonably have expected an avalanche of outraged letters to the editor. Instead:

The National Migrant Council reported me to An Garda Siochana [that's Oirish for "the coppers"], demanding a criminal prosecution for incitement to hatred, with a no-jury court, and four years imprisonment the possible outcome. Hans Zomer of Dochas reported me to the National Press Council, on numerous grounds.

It is a sad day indeed when to speak your mind is to risk the wrath of the law, aided by the State-backed auxiliary bodies of intellectual conformism...

Tell me about it. What's at issue here is a sustained attempt to criminalize opinion — or, at any rate, opinion which dissents from liberal dinner-party orthodoxy.

RTWT.

WTF? US Government tries to scare Manhattan to death

WSJ today:

Low-Flying Plane Over Manhattan Was a 'Photo Op'

NYPD Says It Was Told Not to Disclose Flight Information

A jumbo jetliner that serves as Air Force One, escorted by a military jet, flew over Lower Manhattan Monday morning, frightening office workers and causing evacuations in what turned out to be a publicity operation approved by a unit of the U.S. Air Force.

At around 10 a.m. EDT, a Boeing 747 was seen accompanied by an F-16 fighter jet flying low over the southern tip of Manhattan and at one point seen circling the Goldman Sachs Tower in nearby Jersey City, N.J.

The circling planes were part of a "photo op," a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.

The larger plane was one of two highly customized Boeing 747-200 series aircraft that serve as Air Force One when the commander in chief is on board. Technically, "Air Force One" is the call sign of any Air Force aircraft carrying the president. But President Barack Obama wasn't aboard the plane Monday.

The "aerial photo mission," conducted by the Air Force's Presidential Airlift Group, was supposed to be in the area of lower Manhattan and New Jersey for around 30 minutes.

It involved one 747 and one F-16 fighter jet, said Vicki Stein, an Air Force spokeswoman. "You would have to ask the White House the specifics on the mission," Ms. Stein said. The plane is part of the Air Force's Presidential Airlift Group, stationed at Maryland's Andrews Air Force Base.

The New York City Police Department said Monday that the flight was authorized by the FAA for the vicinity "with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it," according to an email advisory from Paul J. Browne, deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department.

The low-flying 747 sent workers worried about a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks fleeing their offices in the New York City area.

Traders bolted from the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange after seeing the jets. The exchange, which sits on the east bank of the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan and is blocks from the site of the terrorist-destroyed World Trade Center, didn't order an evacuation.

People trading oil, natural gas and other commodities on the Nymex floor apparently took no chances. A Nymex security official was "literally standing, holding his hands up in a calming gesture. Guys were running right past him," said Pete Donovan, a vice president at Vantage Trading in the crude-futures ring.

But several buildings in the area were ordered evacuated, although workers quickly returned after it became clear that the flyover was a planned event.

Lower Manhattan tenants and landlords said they weren't informed of the flyover until after it happened. A spokesman for World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein, who owns several properties near the site of the 2001 attacks, said in an email that the firm got no information ahead of time.

Construction workers fled the 43-story headquarters for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., currently under construction across the street from the trade center site. Gia Moron, a spokeswoman for Goldman, one of the largest businesses in Lower Manhattan, said: "We did not receive a heads up. Our security officers were advised after it happened."

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates bridges, tunnels and airports in the area, said initially the agency had no knowledge of the low-flying plane, according to a spokesman. But a Port Authority executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the agency was still investigating, said the Port Authority's security staff were told of the photo shoot at least by Monday morning and possibly as early as the weekend.

White House deflects questions.

Readers' comments at WSJ.

NY Times says "White House Apologizes for Air Force Flyover," with same facts as everyone else. The fall guy has been found, to "take responsibility." Which means taking blame; there's no responsibility anywhere in government. Commenters seem to think it's a bigger deal than the correspondents do.

Premeditated, using the President's plane. What's the point of the shock treatment? What's the point of the "directives to local authorities?" Incompetence and insanity at high levels.

So was it for money, or for fun? Was Soros shorting something today, and not getting enough of a drop out of the swine flu scare? Or was this done just to watch 'em scurry? Cowardly American capitalists, afraid of a couple of airplanes! Or, possibly, a joyride for some FOB? (How about that? Friends of Bill, Friends of Barack, comes out the same. We need a new one, to be able to tell them apart. Friends of Obama would be FOO. The middle name, that's only to be used abroad, to show that change has come to America, and we are now so much like our enemies that we no longer have to fight, but can discuss terms instead, so FOH wouldn't do.) The descriptions of the maneuvers by commenters make it sound like a joyride. Sharp turns, circling buildings, the triple field goal between the buildings in Jersey City, and so forth. Will we ever find out who was on the plane?

Reynolds has more, more, and more, including a link to Cuffy Meigs's photo set: Obama Tortures 9/11 Victims. Another, with an MSNBC video. And another, and another ("Is it too early to call it 'Planegate' yet?").

Ace has a post or two on this, also. Althouse has a post, and a post with a poll.

On Tuesday, an editorial from the NY Post: Plane Dumb.

A possible movie tie-in? The Obamans are clueless enough to go for this.

Later Tuesday: A training mission? See the screencap? image of a fax? at GretaWire. Well, training in the sense that it wasn't combat. Includes a cost estimate, based on cost-per-hour figures averaged over the life of each type of airplane, so the numbers being bandied about are pretty loose.

AP: White House will probe presidential plane PR stunt. Yeah, right.

At American Digest, Vanderleun has We Need a White House "Stupid Service" and The Wind in the Heights.

A couple of Photoshop contests, at Free Republic and the NY Daily News.

People are calling this "Scare Force One."

Update May 5: Scare Force One Photos Wont Be Made Public. If there ever were any photos. Via Reynolds.

Evan Sayet speaks again

It seems I neglected to link to that first speech of his, the one he called "How Modern Liberals Think." He recently delivered another, "Hating What's Right: How the Modern Liberal Winds Up on the Wrong Side of Every Issue." John Hawkins has both of them conveniently embedded in one post.

I have written and linked a bit here about how modern liberals got to be the way they are, the Gramscian "long march through the institutions," Willi Münzenberg, and so on; Sayet does not speak so much about history, but about the present-day state of affairs.

Via Suzanna Logan, via Reynolds.

Say it, Evan!

Bill of Rights, ROV (Revised Obama Version)

Is the language of the Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights, so archaic as to need translation? I think not. Lawyers argue about points of language, but they do that about statutes written yesterday. Take a look at this White House dot gov page titled "The Constitution."

It's not the Constitution! It's something you might expect to find in a fifth-grade Social Studies textbook. (They haven't done "history" or "civics" in the schools since, like, forever, you fossil.) There is a difficult-to-see link to the full text. But the full text, at an external link that takes two clicks through a warning to get to, is presented with a side-by-side gloss that makes the whole thing less, not more, comprehensible.

But right there on the page is a section headed "The Bill of Rights" which, darn it, is not the Bill of Rights! Here:

The Bill of Rights

One of the principal points of contention between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists was the lack of an enumeration of basic civil rights in the Constitution. Many Federalists argued, as in Federalist No. 84, that the people surrendered no rights in adopting the Constitution. In several states, however, the ratification debate in some states hinged on the adoption of a bill of rights. The solution was known as the Massachusetts Compromise, in which four states ratified the Constitution but at the same time sent recommendations for amendments to the Congress.

James Madison introduced 12 amendments to the First Congress in 1789. Ten of these would go on to become what we now consider to be the Bill of Rights. One was never passed, while another dealing with Congressional salaries was not ratified until 1992, when it became the 27th Amendment. Based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the English Bill of Rights, the writings of the Enlightenment, and the rights defined in the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights contains rights that many today consider to be fundamental to America.

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.

The Third Amendment prohibits the government from quartering troops in private homes, a major grievance during the American Revolution.

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. The government may not conduct any searches without a warrant, and such warrants must be issued by a judge and based on probable cause.

The Fifth Amendment provides that citizens not be subject to criminal prosecution and punishment without due process. Citizens may not be tried on the same set of facts twice, and are protected from self-incrimination (the right to remain silent). The amendment also establishes the power of eminent domain, ensuring that private property is not seized for public use without just compensation.

The Sixth Amendment assures the right to a speedy trial by a jury of one's peers, to be informed of the crimes with which they are charged, and to confront the witnesses brought by the government. The amendment also provides the accused the right to compel testimony from witnesses, and to legal representation.

The Seventh Amendment provides that civil cases also be tried by jury.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.

The Ninth Amendment states that the list of rights enumerated in the Constitution is not exhaustive, and that the people retain all rights not enumerated.

The Tenth Amendment assigns all powers not delegated to the United States, or prohibited to the states, to either the states or to the people.

See what I mean? It's the ROV. And it's wrong in significant places. Take a look at the second amendment. For instance.

What is the point of presenting a baby-talk version of the basic law of the land, unless the presenter hopes that some of those who read it might mistake it for the real thing; which would change their perception of what the Bill of Rights means.

From Jerry Pournelle's mail.

Added: Obama has also spoken favorably of FDR's idea of a second bill of rights, more European or Soviet in style, in that it would list entitlements, as opposed to freedoms.

Under the bus

This tossing things under the bus just won't stop. Oh, now it's an airbrush. When out of power, on the campaign trail, it's the rough and ready toss under the bus. When (nearly) in power, Winston Smith and his more subtle airbrush are ready at the Ministry of Truth.

Glenn Reynolds does not mention Carol Browner's name in this post,

SOCIALIST TIES? Close enough to be worth airbrushing, anyway. I wouldn’t think this was something that needed hiding, but apparently those who know more, do . . . .

but it's mentioned a few times in the links.

Of course Reynolds is a conservationist and a promoter of CFL bulbs. He might be setting up to recycle this text, with different links, for many more appointees to come.

Here earlier: Browner appointment is "an arrow aimed at the heart of the American economy."

Irrelevant: I am now imagining hand-painted "socialist ties." Plain red, with the hammer-and-sickle in yellow, for the classic look? Or gaudy "social realism" pictures of factories or missiles? Socialists only wear ties when they are having their pictures taken.

Even more stale Ayers

On "Good Morning America." Althouse "live-blogs" the first part of the video, and seems to exhibit some buyer's remorse. Hot Air has both segments; did Althouse miss the second part?

It's a book promo! He's promoting his book. And it's a reprint edition at that, of the old book, Fugitive Days. He's trading on his celebrity as an associate of Obama to sell a new edition of his old book about his time as an active terrorist! Wow. What nerve. Or sheer obliviousness, more likely. The man has lived all his life on his father's fortune, while hating his father and his father's/his own whole social class. What a case study he would be for a "talking cure" psychoanalyst! Oh Doctor Freud?

The new book coming is the one with John Brown on the cover, Race Course Against White Supremacy. Whatever that means. Probably something like "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at." But with a little extra bit of racial piquancy, a bit of warm spice to offset the insipid white ingredients. The thing about useful idiots is that they don't realize that they will be among the first to face the firing squads when the revolution really comes.

Oh, my. This election just won't be over for a while.

Do I have to have an Ayers tag? I guess so. Dammit.

Still more stale Ayers

More of William Ayers's writings from the past are coming to light. Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground manifesto, is available now from Little Green Footballs in .pdf form.

Maybe Prairie Fire is Manifesto 2.0. At Streetlog (which seems to be a brand-new repository of Weather Underground documents) is the original Weatherman manifesto: You Don’t Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows, from 1969. By Ayers, Dohrn and number of others.

Zombie has found the Spring 1975 first issue of the Weather Underground newspaper, Osawatomie. What? It's a town in Kansas, and, more importantly, a nickname of John Brown, an early terrorist who used the anti-slavery cause as his excuse for murder and arson. And Procrustes at The Real Barack Obama has found the second issue, and written a post discussing both.

Obama's Secretary of Education?

I seem to recall Ronald Reagan calling for the elimination of the Federal Department of Education. That didn't happen. Presidents do not get to do everything that they would like to do. Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's not so good. Maybe it evens out. Although in the case of the Department of Education, maybe not. We, in our capacity as "the government," keep throwing more and more money at education, without achieving much in the way of results.

There is a prominent educator to whom Obama owes much: William Ayers. His portrait:
A wealthy man, scion of wealth, who hates the country and the system which made him wealthy. He has not given it all to the poor, though. No, he lives pretty high. In Russia, or the USSR in earlier days, he would have been called a member of the nomenklatura.

"Guilty as sin, free as a bird." Feet on the flag, unrepentant terrorist. He is the penultimate step of the "long march through the institutions." Is his disciple, Obama, the ultimate step? Obama's opacity makes it impossible to say. We know more about "Joe the plumber" than we do about Obama. From Chicago Magazine, "No Regrets."

Where do rumors come from?

Some are like folk songs, that jes' growed from sources untraceable. Some, however, are carefully composed, recorded, and disseminated.

Charlie Martin, the keeper of the Palin Rumors List, has a new piece Dissecting the Palin Rumor Mill.

Mark Steyn on trial

A note to remind myself that Andrew Coyne is live-blogging, starting with this post. Ezra Levant is blogging the hearing, starting with this post. More from Jay Currie, starting with this post.

At Coyne's second post, commenter Douglas quotes former Canadian PM John Diefenbaker:

I am a Canadian,
free to speak without fear,
free to worship in my own way,
free to stand for what I think right,
free to oppose what I believe wrong,
or free to choose those
who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom
I pledge to uphold
for myself and all mankind.

Canada has slid a fair way down the slippery slope since Diefenbaker came up with that, the Canadian Pledge, in the debates leading to initial passage of Canada's Bill of Rights.

Americans should be paying more attention to this hearing. This could happen here.

Gleanings

Just another batch of things that caught my eye.

Drug war casualty: "Marie Walsh was the very picture of American suburban respectability. She and her husband, a company executive, lived in a £400,000 house in an affluent area near San Diego, California. But the 53-year-old had a secret that even her husband and three children did not know: she was really Susan Lefevre, a convicted drug dealer who had been on the run for 32 years after escaping from the Detroit House of Corrections."

Fierce comment threads at Althouse and Volokh on Ayers and Dohrn, and Barack Obama's relationship with them. The Althouse thread inspires a post by Blake: Terrorism and Indoctrination vs. Education, which gets some silly comments by yours truly.

Adopted Man Finds Biological Father on Death Row.

Bagpipe bands violate EU noise regulations and must be muted. (via)

PSA from Hungary intended to promote bicycling. Looks pretty persuasive to me.

How'd you like to walk (or cycle) across this footbridge? (via)

Strange But True photos at the L.A. Times.

Great tits cope well with warming. Well, that's good news! (via)

ROFLcon. Sounds like fun. Over, though; it was held the last weekend in April. The blog includes a list of Sleeper Hits of the Internet, a bunch of (mostly) fun videos that you may have missed. And that seems to require a mention of ROFLMAO. "Do-doo-do-do-do."

Who likes Obama, and why?

Also at Hot Air: prominent on the wall of the newly opened Obama office in Houston is a Cuban flag, decorated or defaced with the iconic high-contrast Che-in-a-beret image. The Hillary! ad below is pathetic and sadly funny; the Obama decor, sinister, and worrisome in a more serious way. It is indicative of the emptiness of the Obama campaign that any rebel with or without a cause feels attracted to it. "We want the world, and we want it NOW!" Everything for everybody, except of course the people we're taking that stuff from, for the greater good; or we're gonna hold our breath, or raise a lot of taxes, or something. (Aside: It is universally agreed that the way to stimulate the economy is to loosen credit, or as with the current bill, just hand out cash. Why do Democrats and Socialists and such think that doing the reverse, i.e. raising taxes, making it harder to do business, will not slow down the economy? To campaign on "the economy is bad, so we must raise taxes" just makes no sense. And see No Recession by Larry Kudlow.)

Update: Make that two of those Che-in-a-beret Cuban flags and a "peace sign" flag. Why would the office of a US Democratic Party candidate have Cuban Communist Party symbols as decor? It is a puzzlement. I wonder if any readers remember that the peace sign stands, not for peace, but specifically for nuclear disarmament, and is still claimed as their logo by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. (Who also oppose nuclear power; which means they must support coal-burning, right? But I'm sure they are opposed to global warming.) History of the symbol.

Charles has a follow-up to a tendentious response by James Joyner: Outside the Beltway and Off the Rails. You wouldn't fly a hammer-and-sickle, it would be a historical curiosity. Likewise the noise some are making about Confederate flags here and there: the Confederacy has been out of business for going on a hundred and fifty years. Cuba is still currently Communist. And another followup: We Got Mail! In which letter-writers reveal that, as I suspected, there are those about who have no clue about the historical Che Guevara, but have faith in the mythical one.

Another update: Ace of Spades adds a comment. And still more on this at Lone Star Times (one, two, three, four posts so far.) Maybe it's just one flag, relocated between TV shoots.

Fausta has a (Che-flag-free) Obama roundup: Foreign millions for Obama.

And another update: Daniel Henninger in the WSJ, by way of Glenn Reynolds:

Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928.

Here is the edited version, stripped of the flying surfboard:

"Our road will not be easy . . . the cynics. . . where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits . . . That's what happens when lobbyists set the agenda. . . It's a game where trade deals like Nafta ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart . . . It's a game . . . CEO bonuses . . . while another mother goes without health care for her sick child . . . We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace . . . even if they're not rich . . ."

Here's his America: "lies awake at night wondering how he's going to pay the bills . . . she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill . . . the senior I met who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt . . . the teacher who works at Dunkin' Donuts after school just to make ends meet . . . I was not born into money or status . . . I've fought to bring jobs to the jobless in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant . . . to make sure people weren't denied their rights because of what they looked like or where they came from . . . Now we carry our message to farms and factories."

[sarcasm] What an awful country we live in. Let's just tear the whole thing down and start over. Change! This "freedom" business really is not working. Let's try something else. Like taking billions away from the people of this country to give to the governments of other countries, as specified in Obama's pet legislation, the Global Poverty Bill. [/sarcasm off]

Ann Althouse posts on the Henninger article: Obama's message is just too depressing. She quotes parts of the article that I omitted, and omits the parts that I quoted.

And an important post from Neo-neocon, about hope and false hope: Obama: too young at heart.

Yes, there is such a thing as false hope, and it can be as dangerous as a cancer patient’s refusal to undergo a difficult chemotherapy that offers decent odds of survival in favor of a course of laetrile that offers nothing but empty promises. And yet, hope springs eternal—false and otherwise.

My goodness, this post is going on much too long. But one more update, a sidenote on Che Guevara: It seems he was a Galway man! Or a grandson of Galway, at any rate. (Via a commenter at The Jawa Report.)

Oh, what the heck, one more: In Focus: The Sickly Deification of Obama.

It's a poll of teenagers

Mark Steyn in The Corner:

Fictional Heroes

If I lived in contemporary Britain, where polygamists are entitled to claim multiple welfare benefits per spouse and where The Three Little Pigs is ruled ineligible for a government award lest it offend Muslims, I'd be inclined to believe Richard the Lionheart, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Winston Churchill never existed. And so it seems:

LONDON (AFP) - Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real. The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

It's a poll of teenagers. Oddly, the Yahoo-AFP story linked by Steyn does not say that. It says "UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people." It makes a difference. French or EU psyops? We don't check every single story to find out if it's been distorted this way. We can't. But someone, presumably the stringer at AFP, decided to leave that little detail out. Bad journalism, bad! No donut for AFP today!

Not the Holy Land Foundation, but similar

Care International, another such organization in Boston. Coverage of the trial has been so pervasive that I had completely missed it. Now it's over, and the verdicts are coming out. But Miss Kelly has been blogging the trial and such coverage of it as exists, for some time. Thanks to Solomonia.

More Holy Land Foundation jurors are talking

There has been some blog reaction to an article at the Investigative Project on Terrorism by Michael Fechter. The piece is mainly an interview with juror Kristina Williams. It includes video.

Most of the blog reactions are just quotations and comments.
Captain Ed: The Idiot Who Torpedoed The Holy Land Foundation Trial.
Hot Air: Steve Emerson’s IPT uncovers jury bullying in Holy Land Foundation trial?
LGF: IPT Investigation Uncovers HLF Jury Room Bullying. Over 600 comments!
Jihad Watch: Investigative Project uncovers Holy Land Foundation jury bullying
Patterico: Inside the Jury Room at the Holy Land Foundation Trial

I expect there will be more.

If you want something done right

… don't let your opponents do it. J.R. Dunn at The American Thinker, The 'Torture' Fraud of the Left:

It's no news that the Bush Administration has done a horrible job of selling itself and its policies. Bush, being a Texan, evidently believes that accomplishments speak for themselves. But the great world, unfortunately, is not Texas. If you don't create your own narrative, lay down your own version of events, someone else is going to do it for you. And you probably will not like the results.

The Administration has been getting kicked around by the media since election day in 2000. All the slick PR people are Democrats, it seems. Or as Simon says in a comment at Althouse,

The reason that the anti-war side is winning the propaganda war (or if you'd rather use a term with less pejorative connotations, "war of words" is because this administration has systematically failed to make the case for what we're doing in Iraq, why it's important we're there, how we're going to move forwards, and what the consequences of surrender would be. The current administration has failed, over and over again, even the most basic communications competency, and in a democracy, that's a fatal flaw, because when you're doing something important and the people turn against you, ceteris paribus, in due course they're going to reassert themselves and shut it down. If we now yank troops out, it won't be because of the myriad failings in the conduct of the war itself, it'll be because the administration has failed to carry the public.

Thanks for the Dunn piece to Gagdad Bob, who says, among much else,"There is no sanctimonious moral scold like leftist moral scold -- for example, you are the moral equivalent of Hitler if you don't believe in Al Gore's weather hysteria." Both linked posts are worth a RTWT. And see It's cold on Presidents' Day, here in February.