Category: American Power

It Is Not Often One Locates An Oversight In Professor Jacobson’s Reasoning

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by Smitty

The Card Game is a great feature over at Legal Insurrection, and last night’s was no exception.

This is cold fusion on the race card (h/t American Power):
“The new racism is denying racism.”

And, a little further on:

Thanks to Bill Maher, of all people, we finally have a simple, effective, and self-perpetuating theory of racial grievance used for political purposes, in which not only racism is racist, the denial of racism is racist, so the charge of racism cannot ever be defeated because to deny it is to confirm it.
Unless of course the charge of racism is made by a Republican or conservative or Tea Partier, in which case the new racism rules do not apply.

And so we need a new term for this Schrödinger Card, and I have a suggestion:

Erasism, noun: (1) The Orwellian attempt to mask one’s own racism by continuously accusing members of an out-group of exactly that, while strenuously denying one’s own habitual DNA-driven thinking.
(2) A masterful blend of Postmodernism, hypocrisy, and racism.
Example: “That Bill Maher is one erasist pig.”

Update: Daily Pundit likes the usage, and Obi’s Sister also approves.

What If The Left Threw A Race War, And No One Came?

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by Smitty

No right thinking person should seek to diminish the tragic facts of the Trayvon Martin case, which merit full investigation and trial. On the other hand, American Power notes: “Trayvon Martin Case Threatens Race War in America“. The coverage on the local news has been at saturation level. Do any right-thinking people not grasp that the media frenzy has nothing whatsoever to do with justice, and everything to do with power?

When #OccupyResoluteDesk said “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon” he owned this whole thing. Should further violence be piled upon violence, Obama is culpable.

Arguably, this is the most leadership Obama has displayed in over three years of occupying the Resolute Desk.

From Wikipedia:

The Resolute desk is a large, nineteenth-century partners’ desk often chosen by presidents of the United States for use in the White House Oval Office as the Oval Office desk. It was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the timbers of the British Arctic Exploration ship Resolute.

What an interesting conjunction of memes, between the #Occupy movement, Hayes, Obama, and even Obama’s contempt for the British.

Would that there was less at stake, for all that.

Update: linked by Don Surber, Dyspepsia Generation, Katy Pundit, and That Mr. G Guy.

If BBH Labs Was Employing The Homeless To Register Voters Or As ‘Sex Workers’, Would It Be OK?

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by Smitty

I need a little help understanding where BBH went wrong. You’re a company, you see a market, you hire some people (jobs!) and then you get a bunch of blowback? You’re paying a wage to unskilled people to be wireless hotspots. Unless there is some medical objection (and maybe constant exposure to that level of RF radiation is not a swift idea) the basis for attacking BBH escapes me.

I can only figure that (a) somebody else’s business model is jeopardized by this, (b) the Left is looking for distraction from #OccupyResoluteDesk and the economy he’s parked in the toilet, or (c) it’s just sheer anti-capitalistic commie talk from the usual suspects.

Now, if they were ennobling the homeless by having them register voters, or having them advocate Sandra Fluke’s crotch maintenance requirements alongside the WiFi business, would that be OK? Maybe this is all a question of bundling.

Sean Hannity Flummoxed By Michelle Malkin

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by Smitty

At American Power:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley Endorses Mitt Romney
Well, what’s amazing is Nikki Haley is touted as a “tea party favorite.”

But Michelle Malkin calls Romney a progressive at the video. She calls Gingrich a progressive as well. It’s an excellent discussion, and badly needed. Sean Hannity’s a little flummoxed with Michelle. Should the grassroots be lining up behind Gov. Haley for a Romney endorsement? It’s all about beating Obama, right?


My take on all of the suddenly tight undergarments in the press is that they don’t get the subtle wisdom of the Tea Party. Sure, conservatives learned the lesson of Perot in ’92: excessive purity buys eight years of Bubba in the White House. However, there are a variety of reasons to refuse to coalesce around any candidate until the GOP convention:

  • All of the candidates need a friendly napalm shower to vulcanize them for the campaign proper, when Obama shows just what a transformational, healing unifier he is. The GOP nominee will stand accused of everything short of being a terrorist insurgent from Bulungi. Prep responses now.
  • When the Tea Party lends its support, the nominee had better know that the Progressive Era isn’t restin’, ain’t pinin’ for the fjords, it is effing DEAD. Actual reform had better ensue, or the nominee can expect backlash. Tea Partiers are getting their realpolitik in early.
  • Also dead: the whole cult of personality thing. Personal regard is where you find it, and it’s great if you can be friendly toward your candidate, and they toward you. But they Are Not Your Friend. Whoever gets to come in and tidy up after #OccupyResoluteDesk is going to have to make tough calls. Step on toes that might be connected to your feet. Club your illusions about rapid policy improvements like a baby seal.

Romney is being quite savvy in lining up the Christine O’Donnell and Nikki Haley support. These are the fresh faces that can hopefully give him a personality transplant, at least temporarily.

They Truly Hate Liberty

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by Smitty

Ladd Ehlinger links Zilla of the Resistance in support of Donald Douglas, who has come under real-world attack for supporting the truth.

It is increasingly hard to give anyone on the Left the benefit of the doubt. On political questions, I am nearly at the point of thinking anyone on the Left is guilty until proven innocent. And even the evidence of innocence may be rigged. They campaign on transparency, then do precisely the opposite. Not acutely, but chronically, as though the truth were their urinal, and any semblance of classically liberal thought merely an act.

What to do?

First, I think we avoid being drawn solely into the moment. In the death throes of Progressivism, they are wildly wrecking as much as they can. Fools that they are, they live only in the present tense. Stay calm and adult. Remember that, after this societal kidney stone is passed, we still have to live with our actions. We that have a conscience and moral compass, that is. Expect the Left to lack such.

Second, don’t lose sight of compassion. There may be a tiny fraction of the Left that are salvageable. While dispensing 99% tough love to the 99% idiot crowd, keep the eye peeled for the 1% whose reasoning faculties are not totally shot.

Thirdly, don’t expect it to end soon. Progressivism may be dying, but, like some vast serpent in a Lovecraft story, it’s got significant thrashing to do. The Left wants you to give up and join the Cthulhu worship. Then there is the dirty diaper of debt that Progress leaves. It really isn’t clear to me that anyone knows just how bad things are, financially. Remember: they want you to despair. Resist we much.

Fourth, yawn at these appeals to foolish authority. The people that claim they can fix it are the people who have been tubing it for decades. If they sound stupid, or speak in contradictions (you have to tell your life story to fly, but can’t show government ID to vote) it is quite likely that they are stupid. Touching on #3 above, I frequently cite the Book of Exodus in the context of how long it is going to take to un-trash the American mind. These #OWS people are slaves, and they will beget slaves, but perhaps by the third generation we can again be a land of promise.

The Infinite Viciousness of the Online Left

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Donald Douglas at American Power today reprints the e-mail that Karl Salnonen sent to a number of college officials as part of Salonen’s smear-campaign effort to get Professor Douglas fired.

This is the latest permutation of a blogwar dating back months, if not years, of which I first became aware when “Advice Goddess” Amy Alkon discussed being smeared by the Left as a racist transsexual. Alkon had identified Salonen and the notorious troll Loretta Serrano as part of a smear campaign to hurt sales of Alkon’s book, I See Rude People. At some point, Professor Douglas also clashed with Salonen so that Douglas has likewise become targeted for defamation.

Three months ago, Salonen made the empty threat of a libel suit against Douglas — lying lefties always make such threats, but never actually sue — and so now, unable to bluff Douglas into silence, Salonen tries to get him fired. And in the process, Salonen dares to invoke my name:

Dr. Douglas has decided to share his information with his compatriots and fellow right-wing bloggers (see the PDF from Stacy McCain’s site entitled “Carl Salonen & The Left Wing Trolls…”)

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Does Salonen sincerely believe that Professor Douglas’s supervisors will fire him because of something I wrote? Surely there is no need for Salonen to provide a PDF of a post which is still online, and which I would be be more than happy for any college president to read, as it says in part:

That the Left’s cultural ambitions now extend so far that Carl Salonen and his merry band of online character assassins would attempt the destruction of Amy Alkon — a mere syndicated advice columnist, who writes about etiquette and relationships, etc. — demonstrates the enduring totalitarian spirit of the Left.
You had better speak out against the Left’s thuggery now, because if hatemongers like Carl Salonen and Loretta Serrano ever get their way, you won’t be able to speak out in the future.

I stand by every word of that, and defy Salonen to disprove the assertions of objective fact, that he is a character assassin and a hatemonger engaged in online thuggery.

As for the rest of it, go to American Power and read the whole thing.

‘Violated Online’: The Vicious Arts of Internet Character Assassination

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Having previously smeared “Advice Goddess” Amy Alkon, Carl Salonen has now turned his slander machine against Professor Donald Douglas:

The allegations are that I’m (1) a child pornographer who (2) requires his students to read his postings. These are breathtaking lies. Carl Salonen submitted not a shred of evidence in support. This is pure, demented libel. But that’s typical for progressives.

Hate and Lies: It’s who the Left is and what the Left does.

Such disgusting character assassination is the subject of a new book by Steven Wyler, Violated Online: How Online Slander Can Destroy Your Life & What You Must Do to Protect Yourself:

Millions of people are attacked, exposed and violated on the Internet. A lawsuit filed against Steven Wyer’s business destroyed his company and his credibility. His reputation was ruined because of the Internet. He learned that innocent until proven guilty is a myth, especially in the digital world. The online postings hurt his family, his income and his future. Since this battle, he has talked to hundreds of people with similar stories. Their narratives would sound like fiction were it not for the fact that he has helped many of them reclaim their lives through his company, Reputation Advocate.
The American government has passed laws that leave its citizens open to be maligned with impunity by accusers-both real and fictitious. While most people use the internet, they do not know how to protect themselves against slander. Tragically, there is no one to protect us. We have to do it ourselves.
Violated Online will help any person understand the defense strategies needed to survive online exposure and how to take action now.

Pamela Geller Vindicated, Again, While the LGF Auto-Beclownment Continues

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Donald Douglas at American Power has a post about how LGF’s Charles Johnson bullied a Forbes writer into removing a reference in her article to an incontrovertible fact: Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik cited Little Green Footballs in his “manifesto.”

Breivik linked LGF 20 times, mostly while quoting anti-jihad blogger “Fjordman,” a former LGF commenter. And so Charles Johnson was outraged by Forbes writer Abigail Easman’s article:

Obviously, it’s incorrect to call LGF “popular.” Period.

And let me just remind you that, three weeks before the Oslo massacre, Pamela Geller was being criticized for going public with her concerns about neo-Nazi elements in the English Defence League. My defense of her at that time was simple: If Pamela Geller says you’ve got an anti-Semitism problem, you probably have an anti-Semitism problem.

Fast-forward to the aftermath of Oslo, and Breivik’s claims of “connections” with members of the EDL. 

If this is true, don’t you kind of wonder if the EDL members who were buddies with the Norwegian terrorist were some of the same neo-Nazi types Geller was warning about?

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