Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Many of the criticisms of Michael Steele have been unjustified.

The hoopla over $2,000 spent by an RNC staffer at a "sex-themed" club without Steele's knowledge or permission, may have made interesting headlines, but it was not probative of Steele's Chairmanship of the RNC.

Today, however, Steele went to a place he should not have gone, the use of race to defend himself against the onslaught of attacks on the RNC by inside-the-beltway conservatives.

In response to a question as to whether he had "thinner margins of error" because of his race, Steele said that yes, just like Obama, he did have such thinner margins. Granted, Steele did not raise the issue and was responding to a question in which the "thinner margins" terminology was used, but Steele adopted the language by answering in the affirmative.

Such comments do infinitely more damage than any excessive spending ever could do. Suggesting racial motivations in others merely because they disagree with you has become the dominant theme of the attacks on opponents of Obamacare.

By using the race card himself, Steele has given indirect aid and comfort to those behind the smears of the Tea Party movement.

Think Progress, one of the worst offenders, is giddy over Steele's comment. This is just the distraction for which they were hoping.

Steele needs to man up, argue on the merits, and stop whining. But most of all, stop with the race card crap; that's the Democrats' game.

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in the Democratic party, mainstream media and nutroots who insist that everyone who opposes Obama's agenda is an extremist, and that the Tea Parties are the extreme of the extreme:

• Gallup - Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics
• The Hill - Four in 10 Tea Party members are Dems or independents
• Rasmussen - Tea Party 48% Obama 44%

Reportedly, there is a suicide watch at DNC headquarters, but I am skeptical. How can one commit suicide with one's head in the sand?

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Frank Rich has been at the lead of the cabal of Democratic operatives, mainstream media columnists and left-wing bloggers who have engaged in a deliberate year-long smear campaign to paint opposition to Obama's agenda as inherently racist.

Rich's most recent column, It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama!, is mostly an Obama lovefest in which Rich hearts Obama by arguing that since everyone is upset with Obama, Obama must be doing something right.

Rich writes, in his column, of an e-mail Rich received from a prominent liberal Obama supporter who argued that white liberals expected Obama to be more of a firebrand (you mean he's not?) because Obama is black (emphasis mine):

Last week, after I wrote about the role race plays in some of the apocalyptic right-wing hysteria about the health care bill, a friend who is a prominent liberal Obama supporter sent me an e-mail flipping my point. He theorized that race also plays a role in “the often angry and intemperate talk” he has been hearing from “left-liberal friends for the past many months about what a failure and a disappointment” the president has been. In his view, “Obama never said anything, while running, to give anyone the idea” that he was other than a “deliberate, compromise-seeking bipartisan moderate.” [My note: What a joke.] My friend wondered if white liberals who voted for Obama expected a “sweeping Republicans-be-damned kind of agenda” in part — and he emphasized “in part!” — because “they expect a black guy to be intemperate, impetuous, impatient” rather than “measured, deliberate, patient.”

Rich's only evaluation of this claim was to state, non-judgmentally, "I guess anything is possible, particularly when it involves race in America."

That's it. An assessment by a prominent liberal that white liberals expected a black man to be intemperate, impetuous and impatient passed by Frank Rich as if it were nothing.

But if the positions were reversed, and a prominent conservative had said that white conservatives expected a black man to be intemperate, impetuous and impatient ... well you can imagine the flames shooting from Frank Rich's computer keyboard as he typed out another of his vicious attacks.

But apparently negative racial stereotyping is no big deal to race card-playing columnists like Frank Rich, as long as the negative racial stereotyping is by one of their own.

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There is plenty of speculation that the Chinese will agree to, or at least not block, new sanctions on Iran. The Obama administration stands ready to claim the credit, but if China comes around, it may be the threat of unilateral Israeli action which made the case.

The U.S. has no diplomatic leverage because the military option is all but off the table. From all accounts, the Obama administration has dropped the "or else" alternative from its advocacy of sanctions, and is prepared to live with a nuclear Iran. Greg Sheridan from The Australian has an excellent piece on the subject:

US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any serious effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He is determined instead to live with a nuclear Iran, by containment and, if possible, negotiation.

This is the shifting tectonic plate in the Middle East.

This is the giant story of the past few weeks which the world has largely missed, distracted by the theatre of the absurd of Obama's contrived and mock confrontation with Israel over 1600 apartments to be built in three years' time in a Jewish suburb in East Jerusalem.

Iran is the only semi-intelligible explanation for Obama's bizarre over-reaction against the Israelis.

So Israel has assumed the role of bad guy, and has taken the case directly to the Chinese that the choice is not between sanctions and no sanctions, but between sanctions and an Israeli attack. As reported by the Times of London:

Israel will send its most senior military strategist to China this week to convince Beijing that it is serious about plans to bomb nuclear facilities in Iran if international sanctions fail to curb Tehran’s development of atomic weapons.

The visit, part of an intense round of diplomacy between China and Israel, follows signs that Beijing will shortly back tougher economic sanctions against Iran at the United Nations security council....

Diplomatic observers have been astonished by the pace of Israeli diplomacy in China.

Major-General Amir Eshel, who heads the Israeli army’s planning directorate, will fly to Beijing this week. Eshel, an air force pilot, will warn China of the international consequences of military action, particularly the potential disruption to oil supplies on which much of China’s manufacturing and international trade depend. Tougher sanctions, he will argue, are the lesser of two evils.

Last month Major-General Amos Yadlin, the head of Israeli military intelligence, was dispatched to Beijing with the latest information about Iran’s progress towards making a nuclear device, which some experts believe could be achieved later this year.

“Yadlin was given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal permission to release Mossad’s latest evidence about Iran’s progress towards testing nuclear warheads, enriching uranium and adopting their Shahab missiles to carry nuclear warheads,” said a source.

In a move described as “incredibly rare”, China sent a general to Tel Aviv last week to inspect the Israeli air force’s strike capabilities. Military relations between the two countries have been strained since a deal to export Israeli-built early warning aircraft to China collapsed under American pressure in 2000.

Israel is not prepared to live with a nuclear Iran, unlike the Obama administration.

Given that Israel, at a minimum, would need for the U.S. to look the other way as Israeli planes flew towards Iran, I'm not so sure the Israeli threat remains credible after the events of the past few weeks.

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I knew it would happen, and today it did.

I received a call from a former client and friend, a guy in his late 70s, who was a huge Obama supporter and a fairly mainstream liberal and Democrat.

In the past my friend very much enjoyed getting me agitated by frequently mentioning the latest Frank Rich or Maureen Dowd column about the evil of Sarah Palin. At his age, getting me aggravated was pretty much his main form of entertainment.

In the months after the election the relationship was somewhat strained. There were certain things we just didn't talk about, although he would poke me in the political eye from time to time.

I haven't spoken to my friend in many months, probably since the fall or summer. So I was pleased when his name showed up as an incoming call on my cell phone, although I wondered how we would dance around the subject of Him.

The first sentence out of his mouth was, "Let's get it out of the way, you were right about Obama."

Not being satisfied with mere contrition, I asked him whether he was bs-ing me, and he said no, he meant it.

My friend spends half the year in Florida along with his similarly ancient friends. He's predicting a "Republican sweep" in November, although his dissatisfaction with Obama is not the result of a conversion to conservatism. He feels that Obama broke so many promises, and "he's just another politician."

If Obama has lost my friend, the Frank Rich-loving, Sarah Palin-hating greedy Democratic geezer that he is, the Democrats are in deep electoral trouble.

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The NY Times ran an article yesterday about the growth of unpaid internships, Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say:

With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor....

[Nancy J.] Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.

Which companies have unpaid internships? Well, the NY Times, for one (italics mine):

Academic-Year Internships

The New York Times invites ambitious, motivated graduate students in journalism to apply for semester-long internships on one of our news desks. Working alongside our reporters and editors, students can expect to observe news events, evaluate news releases and competitors’ stories for possible coverage, and have their work critiqued by New York Times staffers.

To be eligible, students must provide letters from their colleges or universities stating that they are receiving academic credit for the internship and providing the contact information for the professor or academic professional responsible for monitoring internships.

Students should expect to write several articles during their semester at The Times and will receive pay at minimum freelance rates for these news stories, as well as for any legwork or stringing. The internship itself is unpaid.

Preferred candidates will have a demonstrated interest in journalism, including previous internships on daily newspapers. They need not be majoring in journalism or communications, provided they have this experience and the published clips. The clips should show range — breaking news, features and news analysis.

To apply students must fill out the application and submit it with a resume, two letters of recommendation from their professors, six newspaper or online clips, or both, and a letter outlining what they hope to learn from the internship.

Location: The New York Times headquarters building, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10018, or one of the Metropolitan desk offices around the city.

Hours: Approximately 6 to 8 hours a week; days flexible.

Salary: Unpaid; must receive academic credit. There are, however, opportunities for paid freelance assignments.

It is hard to say, from this description, that this internship is "largely a benevolent contribution to the intern." The NY Times gets real work from the interns, and only if the interns publish an article do the interns get paid (probably a union thing, my guess).

Perhaps the NY Times thinks it is off the hook because the intern is getting academic credit. Which means that the intern is paying tuition to work for free for the NY Times.

The tuition-for-internship structure is common in academia, including law schools. But that doesn't make it legal for the employers to fail to pay the students for their labor.

I demand an investigation by Clarke Hoyt as to the NY Times' labor practices with regard to student interns.

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This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:

As those of you who follow this blog know, almost every Saturday I highlight the use of the race card for political purposes.

The use of the race card for political purposes is the prime legacy of the Obama campaign and presidency, as witnessed in the macabre feeding frenzy by the mainstream media and left-wing bloggers pushing the astro-meme that Tea Partiers and others opposed to Barack Obama's agenda are racist.

These false allegations are a deliberate attempt to stir up racial strife so that the strife can be used to smear tens of millions of people who oppose Obama's agenda for reasons having nothing to do with skin color.

Last week we explored the Mother of All Race Cards. Tonight we take a trip into the Twilight Zone of card games.

Tonight we examine how a Democratic activist used her own racist past, in which she let a black child die, to launch an attack on the Tea Parties.

Really. No sh-t.

Here is the relevant portion of the post by Melissa Webster, Communications Director of the Mobile, Alabama Area Democratic Association, recounting how she let a drowning black child die because she supposedly had been taught not to kiss black boys, Racism and the Tea Party (emphasis mine):

It was the summer of 1980, when I was eleven years old, a friend of mine and I decided to spend a day at the swimming pool of my neighborhood hotel. As we walked toward the pool we noticed a crowd of black children staring into the water at the deep end. When we got to them one of us asked what they were looking at and a little girl pointed into the water and said, "He's been down there a long time." We looked to where she was pointing and saw a little boy, no more than eight or nine, lying on the bottom of the pool. We immediately jumped in and pulled him out while one of the children ran to get an adult. We laid the boy on the concrete along the pool and I felt for a pulse. It was faint, but still there, and my friend and a man who ran to the pool began CPR on him. As I watched frozen in fear, knowing they were doing it wrong, thinking I should move my friend out of the way, tilt the child's head back to open the air passage and do the mouth to mouth myself because I was the only one there who really knew how, a voice in my head screamed, "You don't kiss a black boy. You don't kiss a black boy."

So I said nothing, did nothing, and watched him slowly die. Yes, I was only a kid in a scary situation, but I knew even then it was the color of his skin that kept me paralyzed, and I've felt the shame and remorse ever since.

Webster uses her own racist experience to, you guessed it, launch an attack based on the now discredited claims that health care protesters at the Capitol shouted racial epithets and spit at black Congressmen.

Here is Webster's hook into the Tea Parties (emphasis mine):

For the most part, I have ignored the fringe group turned mainstream antics of the so-called Tea Party protestors, considering them more an embarrassment and nuisance than someone to be taken seriously. I've ignored them, that is, until this past weekend when a benign difference in ideology turned into an angry mob of racial slurs, homophobic rants and excessive mouth phlegm as President Obama and congress set out to make history with the health care reform bill. I couldn't ignore it any longer. I know firsthand the consequences of racism and am appalled such a lack of respect for our American lawmakers occurred, reminding me of an incident from my own childhood and how far I've come, and how far all of us have yet to go.

Someone who let a child die because of her own racism has the audacity to take discredited allegations that a handful of people engaged in racist conduct, and use that to smear tens of millions of people.

Go wallow in your own sordid past, Ms. Webster, but don't project your own inadequacies onto the rest of us.

I think this comment to Webster's post says it all:

Sad story, but I grew up in Texas, and no one ever told me it was wrong to kiss a black boy. I have a hard time understanding how you could let that inhibit you. But I'm a tea partier who supports several black and latino candidates, so what do I know. I'm less of a racist than you are, but you call me racist. Go figure.

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The jobs numbers released yesterday were nothing to cheer. Strip out the temporary hiring of Census workers, and a weather-related adjustment from February, and there was almost no net job growth.

As the stagnant 9.7% overall jobless rate reflected, there was no meaningful job improvement.

But you would not know it from reading the headlines. As during the campaign, the mainstream media echo-chamber fell all over the facts in the hopes of spinning things Obama's way:

• NY Times: Signaling Jobs Recovery, Payrolls Surged in March
• AP via MSNBC: 162,000 jobs added in March, most in 3 years
• ABC: U.S. Economy Adds 162,000 Jobs

The negative facts, well those were buried deep in the articles. It took the NY Times several paragraphs of fawning cheerleading to get to the bad news:

The March report may have been inflated, though, by a rebound from February when many people could not work because of snowstorms. Additionally, nearly a third of the hiring in March was temporary work on the 2010 census.

Well, you don't say. In other words, the spin about the good news was based on the same gimmicks as the Stimulus Plan and health care bill. Spin upon spin by the permanent Obama campaign and its media servants.

Think Republicans have a good chance of taking back the House, and getting close in the Senate?

Remember that Republicans are running not just against Democrats, but against the mainstream media, thrill running up its leg and all.

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Another day, some more agitation by the Obama administration and Agitprop by the mainstream media, this time directed by Obama himself at Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts.

This country is boiling over, after over a year of a strategy of crazy, in which Democratic leaders and in-the-pocket columnists and bloggers attempted to portray all opponents as racist and violent.

There are only so many times a President and party in power can insult and belittle people before people push back.

And it is not for nothing.

I called it, I called it, I called it, over a year ago, in my post "Steal This Country."

The tactic is to create "community within our Nation, chaos in theirs;" that is, unify the supporters and create divisions among opponents. It is an outgrowth of 1960s radical thought advocated by Abbie Hoffman and others.

Creating chaos requires an endless stream of enemies, crises, and opportunities not to miss from the havoc, as I noted in February 2009, when things were just getting started:

There seems to be a deliberateness to the chaos, a purpose to the ever-increasing exclamation points, as in crisis (!), catastrophe (!!), act now or else (!!!), ... we're on the verge of (!!!!). An attempt to keep so many parts moving so quickly that by the time we realize what has happened, we will have an economic and political system based on punishing achievement in the name of fairness, redistributing goods and services in the name of equality, and above all, dependence on a government which controls everything by endlessly proclaiming that only it has good intentions.

We've already read this book. The ending stinks.

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McClatchy reporter William Douglas was instrumental in spreading the claim that protesters at the Capitol shouted racial epithets at Congressmen.

As Jack Cashill at American Thinker documents, Douglas either was a speed writer of epic proportions, or Douglas pre-wrote much of the article in advance. You be the judge. I am completely neutral on the subject (heh).

None of this would have happened if McClatchy Watch still was active. Day in, day out inspection of McClatchy newspapers might, just might, have deterred the pre-writing of articles.

McClatchy Watch on Twitter just doesn't do it.

Bring back McClatchy Watch. We need it now more than ever.

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"The fiercely pro-Israeli Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was among the guests at the controversy-filled Arab League summit in Libya with the supposed aim of forming a unified strategy against Tel Aviv's illegal settlement plans in Palestinian territories.

At one point, according to reports, Berlusconi, whose country ruled Libya for over three decades after 1911, stooped to kiss Gaddafi's hand upon arrival at the summit."

Via PressTV (Iran) which must have thought this was a good thing (h/t BarcePundit).

Thank goodness we live in a nation led by a President who never would embarrass us this way.

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Keep moving, nothing to see here:

Now Mr Obama is expected to rule out the development of new weapons systems — despite reservations from the military, which is mindful that Russia and China are modernising and expanding their nuclear forces respectively. He will also drop the notion, espoused by his predecessor, that nuclear warheads can be deployed in certain circumstances; for example, if another country resorts to attacking US forces with chemical or biological weapons.

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Thanks to a reader for calling my attention to the ongoing spasms of vindictiveness in the U.S. policy towards Honduras.

As noted in numerous posts here, the U.S. tried to force the return to power of Chavista and wannabe President-for-Life Manuel Zelaya. Only through the resoluteness of the Honduran people and government were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama kept from achieving Zelaya's return.

I thought that it was over, as far at the U.S. was concerned, when it was reported that Clinton was seeking to convince other Latin American nations, which had followed the U.S. lead in refusing to recognize the government of Honduras, to reverse course.

But apparently when it comes to the hurt egos of this administration, it never really is over (sound familiar, Mr. Netanyahu?).

As reported by the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, the tenacity of the Obama administration's vendetta against Honduras was driven by the fact that Republicans had sided with those who removed Zelaya at the behest of the Honduran Supreme Court. (The Obama administration denies this, per the article.)

Four months after a presidential election, reports from Honduras suggest the Obama administration remains obsessed with repairing its foreign-policy image by regaining the upper hand. The display of raw colonialist hubris is so pronounced that locals now refer to U.S. ambassador Hugo Llorens as "the proconsul."

Washington's bullying is two-pronged. First is a maniacal determination to punish those involved in removing Mr. Zelaya. Second is an attempt to force Honduras to allow Mr. Zelaya, who now lives in the Dominican Republic, to return without facing any repercussions for the illegal actions that provoked his removal. Both goals are damaging the bilateral relationship, polarizing the nation and raising the risk of a resurgence of political violence.

La Gringa's Blogicito has more on internal turmoil in Honduras resulting from the continued push to assure that Zelaya can return to Honduras without fear of prosecution, even for non-political offenses.

What really is going on with U.S. policy towards Honduras?

It appears that the institutional vendetta is not over, and that the Obama administration still wants to make an example of Honduras.

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The reaction to Obama's announcement that he is opening up some offshore areas to drilling is laughable. There will be no drilling anytime soon, and the plan closes more areas to drilling than it opens.

This likely is Obama's attempt to tack to the center as the health care bill continues to stir disquiet among the masses of unwashed and unknowing knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.

Yet Obama did break a liberal intellectual and political barrier by even using the words "drill" and "offshore" in the same paragraph (for which I give him credit).

Hence the overheated reaction by the people for whom the thought of offshore drilling is as scary as an 80-year old grandmother at a Tea Party rally carrying a "Kill the Bill" sign:

• "“Its like a kick in the face” says Jonathan Ruiz of Florida International University. Jonathan campaigned for Obama for fourteen months, and now he’s livid about today’s announcement by the administration to open half the east coast to offshore drilling."
• "This is a foolish move, both substantively and politically. Obama is either an exceptionally bad negotiator, or he actually believes in some truly awful policy ideas. Neither of these possibilities bodes well for environmental policy."
• "we must agree. just when the base has felt like dems can actually get their agenda on the road, obama has handed the repubbbs a give-away."

Chill, babies, chill. Nothing is happening anytime soon.

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Oh, how the columnists at the NY Times and the left-wing blogs desperately want a militia threat with which to beat law-abiding citizens over the head in the name of Obamamania.

Sorry to disappoint Count Frankula and the other fear-mongers and race-card players, once again (h/t JammieWearingFool):

There's a lot of anger out there. But the alleged plot by Midwestern militants and violent outbursts by scattered individuals don't signal any coming wave of extremist violence, federal investigators say.

There's more fizzle than fight among self-styled militias and other groups right now, they say, and little chance of a return to the organized violence that proved so deadly in the 1990s.

Militia extremist statements "primarily have served as an expression of anger after a particular event," according to an FBI intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press. "The FBI assesses the likelihood of violent conflict from the remaining group members or other militia extremists as low."

Of course, reality will not change anything for those intellectually dishonest columnists and bloggers who wake up every morning hoping that there will have been an act of violence they can pin on the "right wing."

Update: So Much for That ‘Rising Risk’

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