The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

David Axelrod’s Red Roots: Obama Adviser’s Communist Ties Exposed

Posted on | March 4, 2012 | 37 Comments

The cover story of the March print edition of The American Spectator is not yet online and, if you are not yet a subscriber to the magazine, I urge you to rush out to the nearest Barnes & Noble or wherever else you can buy a copy, because it’s definitely worth the $5.95 newstand price.

Presidential historian Paul Kengor has dug up some fascinating facts about the background of David Axelrod, showing President Obama’s top political strategist to have deep ties to the American Communist Party (CPUSA) and other leftist individuals and organizations.

For example, Axelrod’s mother, Myril Bennett Axelrod, worked for the left-wing New York newspaper, PM. Although it lasted less than a decade (1940-48), PM became notorious because of its penetration by Stalinists and others who promoted the Communist Party line on issues both foreign and domestic. Kengor points out that PM‘s famed Washington correspondent, I.F. Stone, was subsequently identified as a Soviet agent both in the so-called “Venona” documents and also by a former top KGB official, Oleg Kalugin.

It is unclear where Axelrod’s mother fit in the orbit of Communists, Soviet sympathizers and other “progressives” who worked at PM, Kengor says, because despite “scouring reel upon reel of microfiche” copies of the newspaper, he was “unable to find a single article with Myril’s byline.” Nevertheless, her association with the paper locates her politics on the far-left fringe of the American politic spectrum in the 1940s, which would seem important to understanding her son’s later activities.

While a student at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s, David Axelrod began working as a political reporter for the Hyde Park Herald, which Kengor says brought Axelrod to the attention of Don Rose and David Canter. Both of these men were associated with the Communist Party and other far-left organizations.

Kengor explains that David Canter’s father, Harry Canter, was “an instructor at the Abraham Lincoln School, an infamous Chicago-based [CPUSA] front that instructed pupils in the teachings of Marx and Lenin.” David Canter followed in his Communist father’s footsteps, so that a 1970 congressional investigation report, “Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications,” lists David Canter 25 times. His Chicago-based publishing company was believed to be partly subsidized by Soviet funds and in the 1960s, Kengor writes, “David Canter and Don Rose joined forces to start a [Chicago-area] community newspaper called Hyde Park-Kenwood Voices.”

This Canter-Rose publication “was on the far left,” Kengor writes. Hyde Park-Kenwood Voices editorialized for the abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), whose investigations had exposed the pro-Soviet subversive activities of both David Canter and his father Harry. At a time when U.S. troops were fighting communism in Vietnam, Hyde Park-Kenwood Voices also published “pro-Hanoi screeds by [Students for a Democratic Society] members based in Chicago,” Kengor writes.

Don Rose was associated with SDS (the left-wing campus organization from which Bill Ayers’s terrorist splinter group Weather Underground spun off in 1969) and was also a member of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, commonly known by the slang term “the Mobe.”

Rose and Canter played a critical role as “mentors” to young David Alexrod, Kengor explains, citing numerous sources including David Canter’s son Marc Canter for the fact that it was a letter of recommendation from Don Rose that helped Axelrod land a job as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. By 1987, all three of these men — Don Rose, David Canter and David Axelrod, who had left journalism to become a paid political adviser — were part of the campaign to re-elect Harold Washington as Chicago’s mayor.

Kengor’s American Spectator article is important because Axelrod’s background — like Obama’s associations with such left-wing figures as Frank Marshall Davis and Bill Ayers — shows how ideas, policies and rhetoric originating in Marxist-Leninist doctrine and anti-American propaganda have been “mainstreamed” into Democratic Party politics.

Critics of Kengor’s investigative report will likely raise the charge of “McCarthyism,” expecting us to miss the irony of that accusation because, of course, revelations from the Venona papers and other sources have largely vindicated Sen. Joseph McCarthy: There were Soviet agents in the U.S. government, and the American Communist Party was at all times an instrument of Soviet subversion.

What strikes me, in Kengor’s extensive account of Axelrod’s background (the article is more than 5,000 words long), is the remarkable degree to which Americans seem to have lost their horror of Communism in the post-Cold War era. There was a time when anyone with such clear connections to the world of Marxist subversion would have been regarded as an untouchable in mainstream American politics. But if a far-left agitator like Obama could be elected president, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that no one is alarmed by the far-left background of his chief political strategist.

Category: American Spectator, Barack Obama, Chicago, Democrats, Election 2012, History

‘Her Perceived Sexuality’? Occupy Oakland Protesters Accused of Robbing Lesbian, Stealing Her Obama Pin

Posted on | March 4, 2012 | 15 Comments

An Oakland Tribune report of a Feb. 22 altercation at an Occupy Oakland protest leaves us attempting to read between the lines:

Three Occupy Oakland protesters suspected of stealing an Oakland woman’s wallet and making offensive remarks about her perceived sexuality were charged Friday with robbery and committing a hate crime, both felonies, authorities said.
Michael Davis, 32, Nneka Crawford, 23, and Randolph Wilkins, 24, all of Oakland, were charged with the felonies by Assistant District Attorney Paul Hora. . . .
Police said that some Occupy Oakland protesters were demonstrating against a Wells Fargo Bank branch there when a woman across the street expressed her opinion about the Occupy movement and the way it’s being handled, Wingate said.
[Oakland Police Sgt. Randy] Wingate said a handful of protesters quickly surrounded her and prevented from leaving the area. Her wallet was taken from her purse, and protesters yanked a Barack Obama pin from her clothing, police said.
Wingate said she was also verbally abused, including making derogatory remarks about her perceived sexuality. A protester punched the woman, and she was bruised and scratched in the altercation.

The phrase “derogatory remarks about her perceived sexuality” is sort of a head-scratcher: Is the victim actually a lesbian, or did the Occupiers just call her something (e.g., “bull dyke”) because they wished to insult her? A report from KTVU — which has the Occupiers “calling her slurs based on their perception of her sexual orientation” — is no more helpful in determining the nature of the alleged hate crime.

Nevertheless, the fact that a woman wearing an Obama pin is not safe from attack at an Occupy protest comes as sort of a surprise. And I wonder if there might not be a 14th Amendment “equal protection” case to be made against this hate crime law: What if a heterosexual housewife wearing a Ronald Reagan T-shirt had been attacked by Occupiers who called her a “breeder”? Wouldn’t that also be a hate crime? If not, why not?

Also, what about “slut”? We know that Rush Limbaugh can’t say “slut” on the radio without causing a major controversy, and doesn’t that word describe a “perceived sexuality”? 

Finally, if “perceived sexuality” is to be so zealously protected, would the Oakland Police press hate-crime charges against protesters if they shouted “bitter old spinster” at Maureen Dowd?

Category: Crime

While We Were Out, Rush Limbaugh Apologized and Romney Won the Washington State GOP Caucuses

Posted on | March 4, 2012 | 62 Comments

The entire crew of the blog — me, Smitty and Wombat — left home yesterday evening to attend the “Remember Breitbart” event in D.C., and got back home in the wee a.m. hours. Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh issued this statement:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke. . . .
My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

So “slut” joins the “n-word” on the List of Forbidden Terms, and we are now at a loss for any way to describe Meghan McCain.

In other important news developments, Mitt Romney scored a surprisingly easy win in Washington State’s Republican caucuses:

With 99% of the vote in, Romney had 38%. Texas Rep. Ron Paul had 25% and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had 24%. They were trailed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 10%.

As Ed Morrissey points out, no delegates were awarded as a result of this vote. Most news accounts omit the non-binding nature of Saturday’s vote, which was for some reason very important news when Romney lost non-binding contests in three states on Feb. 7.

Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Washington State

To Andrew

Posted on | March 3, 2012 | 12 Comments

Your spirit lives,
Everyone gives,
For in your wake,
We know what’s at stake

Category: Uncategorized

FMJRA 2.0: Troglodyte

Posted on | March 3, 2012 | 20 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

R.I.P., Andrew Breitbart: Innovative Genius of New Media Dies at Age 43

My Saturday Night in Hell

Breitbart: Who He Was, How He Was

Santorum Turns the Tables on Mitt in Michigan With Robo-Calls to Democrats

REPUBLICAN PRIMARY RESULTS HQ: Michigan and Arizona Vote Tonight

Paul And McCotter Grill Bernanke On Inflation, Which Is Unexpectedly Higher Than Bernanke Will Admit

Old And Busted: Representative Democracy. New Hotness: European Disenfranchisement

The SNL Lin-sanity Sketch

Rick Santorum Hears Hillary Clinton’s Caution About GOP Campaign Rhetoric, Delivers Cupcake And Pony Speech

God Rest The Souls Of The Dead Service Members In Afghanistan

Ann Coulter: What?

Past The Dem Hypocrisy, There Is A Point Being Made

Trifecta Trounces Turbo Tax Timmy’s Tomfoolery & Turpitude

Rick Santorum On Meet The Press

Affirmative Action Is Raaaaacism

Celebrating A CoMittMent To Rolling American Exceptionalism

Rick Santorum in Lansing, Michigan, Calls Romney’s Attack Ad Campaign a ‘Joke’

Is #OccupyResoluteDesk Starting To, You Know, Sweat It?

The Ad Is Just Fantastic, That Is Really What I Think. Oh, By The Way: Which One’s Pink?

MICHIGAN GOP PRIMARY TODAY

LIVE AT FIVE – 02.28.12

Media Gets ‘Tantalizing’ Thrill From 2007 Palin E-Mail Joke About Divorce

I Guess Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer Is A Democrat?

EXCLUSIVE: Election Day in Hell, Michigan: Does Romney Have a Snowball’s Chance of Winning?

LIVE AT FIVE – 02.29.12

Is Matt Drudge Not A Mitt Romney Fan?

I Am Joe

Rule 5 Wednesday

Memo From the National Affairs Desk:
‘If I Could Walk That Way …’

‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran, Beta-Male Fascist

LIVE AT FIVESIX – 03.01.12

2007 Interview With Andrew Breitbart

Dear Lord . . .

LIVE AT FIVE – 03.02.12

Top linkers this week:

  1. The Camp Of The Saints (11)
  2. Daily Pundit (9)
  3. Lonely Conservative (6)
  4. (tied) Don Surber, Katy Pundit, That Mr. G Guy, and Zilla of the Resistance (5)

 

Category: FMJRA Award

HUGE: Gingrich Tennessee Co-Chair Resigns and Endorses Rick Santorum

Posted on | March 3, 2012 | 37 Comments

Knoxville News-Sentinel:

State Sen. Stacey Campfield, co-chairman of Newt Gingrich’s campaign in Tennessee, announced today he is quitting that position to support Rick Santorum in the Republican presidential race.
The Knoxville Republican made his announcement in a post on his blog. In an interview, Campfield said he believes that conservatives need to unite behind a single candidate and that Santorum is best positioned to defeat “establishment Republican” candidate Mitt Romney.

Campfield’s blog post offers an extremely nuanced argument: He admires Newt, he prefers Newt, but he has come to grips with the simple fact that Newt can’t win. If conservatives are serious about stopping Romney, they have to get behind Santorum:

[T]he conservative with the momentum and ability to still make it happen is Rick Santorum. . . .
I am stepping down as the statewide co chairman for Newt Gingrich and throwing all of my support behind Rick Santorum. Going with me are the top 3 second congressional district delegates for Newt (Dr. Lenard Brown, Dr. Aaron Margulise and Scott Smith). We all now throw our support behind Rick Santorum and hope for his success. We encourage other people who are supporting other candidates (not just in Tennessee but across the nation) to follow suit and throw your support behind Rick Santorum so we can coalesce and have a conservative to lead our party, and our country back to victory and prosperity.

Campfield and his colleagues deserve praise for this tough, pragmatic decision. Santorum has dipped in the most recent national polls, and I made no secret of my bitter disappointment with the outcome in Michigan, which I saw as the result of the Santorum campaign’s self-inflicted wounds.

Nevertheless, Santorum still leads in Ohio and he also leads in Tennessee, where Newt is running a distant third. Whatever errors Santorum has made in recent weeks, it is still not too late for him to learn from his mistakes and recapture his lost momentum. If Santorum can win Ohio, Tennessee and Oklahoma on Tuesday, the contest for the GOP nomination will then clearly be a two-man race. And if conservatives are serious about stopping Romney — as serious as Sen. Campfield is — then there will still be a fighting chance, with a candidate who has shown a willingness to fight the tough fights.

“Where’s the Spirit? Where’s the Guts, Huh?”


Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Tennessee

The Dangerous Truth

Posted on | March 3, 2012 | 11 Comments

Science keeps proving what I’ve been saying for years: Men and women are different. People with common sense may wonder why we need science to tell us this, but feminism — an ideology which attempts to impose a regime of pseudo-androgyny — must be disproven, and therein lies the importance of science:

According to this hypothesis, domestic violence varies with women’s reproductive value or expected future reproduction, declining steeply as women age.” That hypothesis was tested against data taken from nearly 4,000 New York City domestic-abuse cases, and the view was largely borne out: Domestic violence is strongly correlated with women’s age, which is a proxy for fertility.
Fertility and violence interact in complicated ways: Men are more likely to be violent toward fertile women, and fertile women select men who are more likely to be violent. A study of women’s sexual preferences conducted at St. Andrew’s University (and since replicated) found that in most cases women preferred photos of men whose faces had been digitally altered to make them more feminine — but during ovulation, they reversed their preferences and chose photos of men whose faces had been digitally altered to make them more masculine: “A growing literature has shown that women in the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle demonstrate stronger preferences for men with masculine traits than they do when in the non-fertile phases of the cycle,” the study says. It is well established that high levels of testosterone in men are associated with a number of personality traits: aggression, assertiveness, territoriality — and violence.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Studies like this merely demonstrate a general tendency and there is, of course, wide variation among individuals in the extent to which the demonstrable tendency is exhibited. Some women may have no such tendency at all.

Nevertheless, in general — that is to say, when speaking of women as a group, as a category — we see evidence of a personality trait that quite likely represents a hard-wired biological difference, uniquely related to women’s role in the reproductive process.

Kevin Williamson examines this “Chicks Dig Jerks” factor in a very narrow context, namely situations like the Chris Brown-Rhianna domestic-violence case. But I would beg you to consider the possibility that this scientific tidbit has wide applicability, because if we accept as demonstrably true that women (in general) have personality traits that are biologically hard-wired, making them different from men in important ways — well, this is one of those Ideas Have Consequences moments.

How do these differences impact the workplace, where the law requires that men and women be treated equally — as though they are the same — even though they are demonstrably different? Williamson touches upon an obvious consequence of this idea:

[E]ven in the 21st century, testosterone levels correlate with status in organizations such as the U.S. Army. (But not in the U.S. job force: High levels of testosterone correlate negatively with career success in the United States. Corporate America really is full of girly-men. But you knew that.)

Bingo, Kev: The “gender-neutral” workplace disadvantages masculinity, as does our education system. The legal regime of “equal opportunity” actually has highly unequal effects, one of which is the declining career prospects for young men and (an inevitable correlation) the declining marital prospects for young women.

If women prefer more masculine men — as science would seem to indicate — and if such men are disadvantaged in terms of education and employment, then the men who are most desireable as mates increasingly lack the kind of economic wherewithal to fulfill the breadwinner role of husband and father.

Many young women complain that they find themselves working in offices surrounded by “girly-men” and are perplexed by the apparent shortage of marriageable men. Meanwhile, the lower rungs of the socio-economic scale are increasingly crowded by unmarried mothers and fatherless children. And amid all this misery, we are not permitted to wonder aloud whether these problems are side-effects of a regime of “equality” which in fact has drastically unequal consequences.

Category: Feminism, Science, Sex

If You Don’t Like Slut As A Title For Sandra Fluke, How About Czar?

Posted on | March 3, 2012 | 37 Comments

by Smitty

In the annals of sluttiness, the Sandra Fluke story is some form of higher-order prostitution. Let’s call it politics. Some don’t like calling the woman a slut. Concur.

  • Her sexuality really should be a private matter, irrespective of her insistence on making it public. That goes both for media and funding.
  • The point at hand is really far greater than the number of men/women/who_knows? that have used Fluke like a trampoline.

I, for one, rejoice that Limbaugh decided to punt on the hunt for a term more blunt to describe this runt and her risible stunt. Likely a criticism shunt.

Director Blue gets at that pesky reality swirling in the distance, away from Fluke:

Meanwhile, Iran still is moving ahead with their plans for nuclear terrorism, gas prices are poised to hit $5/gal. and real inflation is moving toward 10%. And Obama wants free contraceptives. Happy to see that Democrats have their heads screwed on straight.

Also, the President’s budget, again, is a turd, while Harry Reid’s constipation rages and he won’t even leave one. The deficit is about to wrap around the moon. &c, &c, &c.

This entire contraception debate is a twofer: it both destroys and distracts. When you understand that the Administration is purely about destroying this country, all of this idiocy comes into diabolical focus.

What will Sandra Fluke’s Czar title be in the next Obama Administration? I like Postmodern Absurd Distraction Czar. Your suggestions in the comments.

Update: linked at The Conservatory. Jonas Brother? I was think more Andrew Ian Dodge, myself, not to make light of a serious Senate candidate. At least the Maine-iacs won’t be eating any more yellow Snowe.

Category: Blogging
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