Malkin vindicated: 'Lone nut card' played by Napolitano in NWA terror case

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arrested after attempting to detonate an explosive aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, Michelle Malkin ended her Christmas Day post with a prediction:

Victim card/lone nut card in 3, 2, 1 . . .

The administration has evidently decided to go with the "lone nut" angle:

The U.S. has "no indication" that an attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight was part of a larger plot by a terrorist group, a top Obama administration official said.
"Right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger, but obviously the investigation continues," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union" program on Sunday.

Right. But what of the connections to al-Qaeda in Yemen?

Authorities say the 23-year-old suspect spent months in Yemen being trained for the Christmas Day suicide mission.
Investigators believe Abdulmutallab was connected to al Qaeda by the same radical imam, American-born Anwar Awlaki, who is linked to the American Army major accused of opening fire at Fort Hood in November.
According to investigators, the bomb . . . was built in Yemen by a top al Qaeda bomb maker. . . .

This is incompatible with Napolitano's claim on CNN that this was not "part of anything larger." One cannot train with al-Qaeda under the influence of a radical imam, and utilize an exploisve designed by al-Qaeda, without being part of something larger.

So far, I've seen no evidence of the "victim card" being played on behalf of Abdulmutallab, but this Associated Press biographical profile of the suspect portrays him as having had a "saintly aura" as a student in England. Give the media time, though. Their best spinmeisters are still on holiday.

UPDATE: Further evidence (as if we needed more) that Janet Napolitano is a useless dimwit:

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up the Amsterdam-Detroit flight this week demonstrated that "the system worked."
Asked by CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union" how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who sought to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the flight, Napolitano responded: "We're asking the same questions.”
Napolitano added that there was "no suggestion that [the bomber] was improperly screened."

(Hat-tip: Blogmocracy 2.0.) If failure to keep a bomber off a plane means "the system worked," then obviously this means no changes to the system are necessary, right? Wrong. The al-Qaeda-trained "lone nut" has just given the Transportation Security Administration the excuse it needed to make commercial air travel even more miserable. My libertarian friend Radley Balko observes:

TSA will apparently adopt a new policy prohibiting passengers from moving during the last hour of a flight. Also, no pillows or blankets during that last hour.
In addition to keeping with its usually tradition of making policy on a reactionary basis, this one wouldn’t even have done anything to prevent the attempt over the weekend.

No doubt, the TSA will also enhance its policy of conducting random searches of elderly women from rural Minnesota in order to prevent CAIR from accusing them of "profiling."

TSA: Protecting You From Olga Swenson!

UPDATE II: Ed Morrissey calls this Napolitano's "Chip Diller moment," and Mary Katharine Ham Tweets:

"The system worked." Jasper Schuringa is "the system," apparently.

The "bring your own Dutchman" approach to airline safety.

UPDATE III: And now The Boss weighs in on the clueless nitwit in charge of DHS:

Beginning with her embrace of the impotent euphemism "man-caused disasters" to the hit job on conservatives and veterans that she was forced to apologize for, to her assertion that crossing the border illegally "isn't a crime per se," to her boneheaded claim that 9/11 terrorists came in through the Canadian border, Ja-No has confirmed time and again that she's not ready for prime time.

Yes, but you've got to give Janet Napolitano credit for preventing terrorist attacks by those right-wing extremists, not to mention her perfect record against the Olga Swenson menace. Just imagine what carnage might have been wrought by elderly Lutheran ladies, if not for the vigilance of DHS!

UPDATE IV: Another anti-terror success for TSA:

Police say Ivana Trump has been escorted off a plane in Florida after she became belligerent when children were running and screaming in the aisles.
Authorities say the first ex-wife of billionaire Donald Trump cursed at the children Saturday, and when flight attendants on the New York-bound plane tried to calm her, she became even more aggravated.

No word yet on whether Ivana's attack was part of a larger terrorist conspiracy by rich divorcees.

'What. The. Hell.'

Michelle Malkin reacts to the ObamaCare "provision requiring insurance plans that cover dependents to provide benefits to children up to age 26."

Twenty-six. Think about that. If you're 18 and really serious about getting health-care coverage, here's a suggestion: Join the Marine Corps.

Not only will the Marines provide you with health care, but you also get free food, free housing, free clothing and free travel to exotic countries where you can actually get paid to kill foreigners.

How cool is that, dude? Not to mention, chicks dig that whole muscular-guy-in-a-uniform thing.

So turn off your gaming console, get your lazy butt off the sofa, go to your nearest Marine Corps recruiting station and sign up today. If the taxpayers are going to give you slackers free health-care, at least you should earn it the old-fashioned way: Killing foreigners.

Now the bad news: We're not at war with Canada. Yet.

P.S.: Don't forget to vote for me in the 2009 Malkin Awards.

2009 Malkin Awards: I'm a FINALIST!

Andrew Sullivan has nominated me four times for the prestigious "Malkin Award" and now I see that I am a finalist for the 2009 Malkin. The competition is tough -- I'm up against Erick Erickson, Michael Goldfarb and Glenn Beck, among other worthies -- but let's be honest: None of them can compete with the Greatest Hypothetical Evah!

"Swear to God, if they ever want a Gentile prime minister, my first order would be to deploy the IDF in a north-south line, facing east. My second order would be 'forward march' and the order to halt would not be given until it was time for the troops to rinse their bayonets in the Jordan. After a brief rest halt, the order 'about face' would be given, and the next halt would be at the Mediterranean coast."

Sully later made that hypothetical hyperbole the basis of accusing me of advocating genocide(!?!), which of course I was not. Peaceful by nature, I grew up a few miles from the ruins of New Manchester Mill -- burned by Stoneman's cavalry in 1864 -- and therefore have always had a keen understanding of what war really means (cf., Hiroshima).

Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah recognize only one definition of "peace": Dead Jews. So when they start blowing up buses and firing rockets at civilians, these terrorist monsters are sending out an invitation to war, and they can't complain about getting an RSVP from the IDF.

Notice that this perspective doesn't require playing moral referee between Jews and Palestinians, or settling the historical grievances between them. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the reality that more than 60 years after Israel declared its independence, her terrorist enemies don't even recognize Israel's right to existence, and endlessly foment hatred against Jews. Ergo, Sonny Corleone in Gaza.

However, you don't have to share my idiosyncratic view of geopolitics to vote for me in the Malkin Awards competition. Any accusation of bloodthirsty warmongering based on that particular quote is invalid under that widely recognized codicil of the Blog Ethics Code known as the Glenn Greenwald Rule:

Anything said while ridiculing Glenn Greenwald is OK, because he always deserves it.

Hurry up and vote for me in the Malkin Awards, and be sure to hit my tip jar, because you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of Genesis 12:3.

Oh, boy! 'Fistgate' on Fox!

Sean Hannity just announced that Michelle Malkin's going to be on after the commercial to talk about every middle-schooler's favorite subject!

Don't try this at home, kids!

UPDATE: The Boss gives big props to Gateway Pundit! Attagirl, Michelle!

UPDATE II: Michelle and Hannity made a point about the kind of sexually explicit stuff that is being pushed on kids in the name of "tolerance" -- you can't quote most of it on TV, or in a mainstream newspaper. And the advocates of "tolerance" know this.

If the average taxpayer or the average parent were to see the worst of this stuff, there would be a riot.. And if they understood the psychological influence of "comprehensive sexuality education" -- or saw what goes on in the classrooms where kids are taught this stuff -- they'd be urging that the instigators of such programs be fired. Ten years ago, I interviewed Wendy Shalit:

Her conflict with a sexually explicit culture actually began years earlier when, as a fourth-grader, her complaints about a sex-education class led her parents to request that she be excused from the classes. She spent those hours in the library.
"I was glad to be in the library, because the other girls got teased, and I would just pretend like I didn't know what they were talking about," she recalls. "And in a lot of cases, I didn't, and I was glad not to, frankly."
Sex education in public schools should be "completely abolished," Miss Shalit says. “At best, it's redundant, because kids do not learn the facts from sex education. They know it already."
But Miss Shalit also says sex education hurts girls -- "and boys, too" -- by eroding natural modesty. "The problem is that we have it so early now, we really don't allow people to develop their personalities before their sexual identity," she says.

Wendy's book is A Return to Modesty.

Hate to point this out again, but . . .

There are five A's in RAAAAACIST. For some reason, Michelle Malkin misspells (or miscounts) the word:

Crying “RAAAAAACIST:” Always the first and last refuge of left-wing scoundrels.

Maybe Harry Reid is angry because Bob Byrd has gone wobbly on health care?

The question with Reid is, which came first, the scoundrel or the left-wing? He's a shameless opportunist whose instincts are much like those of another congressional pugilist, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Mentia).

Via Memeorandum. More from Hot Air, Big Government, Riehl World View, Ed Driscoll, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Red State. and Richard McEnroe at Three Beers Later.

UPDATE: Harry Reid has a problem with all those raaaaacist people who don't support ObamaCare. You know who I mean: Nevada voters!

President Barack Obama has lost ground in the last month in getting Nevadans to embrace his health care reform package and, for the first time, opposition is above 50 percent and support is below 40 percent, a new poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal reveals.
The telephone poll of 625 registered voters found that 53 percent of Nevadans oppose the president's attempt to provide a remedy for problems in the nation's health care system. Support for the plan is at 39 percent.

So, a 53% majority of Nevada voters are haters. And their hate, as Harry Reid suspects, is related to race -- namely his 2010 re-election race:

Nevadans aren't warming up to Sen. Harry Reid, despite plenty of early advertising designed to boost his image, a new poll shows.
Just 38 percent of respondents said they had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Senate majority leader, the same percentage as in October and 1 point higher than in August.
The survey of 625 registered Nevada voters by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research suggests the promotional bombardment that Reid launched more than six weeks ago has yet to hit its target.
"I'd be worried," said Michael Franz, an assistant professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, who studies political advertising. "I'd stop if I had aired ads for two or three weeks and it wasn't moving the needle."

Nine different Republicans raaaaacists are running in the primary for a chance to take on Harry, and either of the two best-known GOP candidates beats Reid in a head-to-head poll matchup.

Clearly, the Nevada Chamber of Commerce needs to come up with a new slogan:

Nevada: Where Everything Fun Is Legal,
Including Gambling, Prostitution and Hate

Remind me to bill you guys for the consulting fees . . .

That other 'climate of hate'

Not the Tea Party "rage" hyped up by the Defamation League. Not the phony "Southern populist terrorism" scare that made Andrew Sullivan hysterical with fear. And not the Boston Globe's bogus claim that President Obama has been targeted by a record number of threats.

No, I'm talking about the climate of hate in the real world where, Michelle Malkin reports, police are being gunned down in cold blood:

The Left's police-hating chickens are coming home to roost. While partisan liberals have gone out of their way to blame conservative media and the Tea Party movement for creating a "climate of hate," they are silent on the cultural and literal war on cops that has raged for decades – and escalated tragically this year.
The total number of law enforcement officers shot and killed this year is up 19 percent over last year, according to the Christian Science Monitor. More officers have died in ambush incidents this year than any other since 2000. . . .
Clemmons had told numerous friends and family members to “watch the TV” before the massacre because he was going to “kill a bunch of cops.” The witnesses did worse than nothing. Several have been arrested for actively aiding and abetting Clemmons – with shelter, food, money, and medical aid — before he was discovered in Seattle early Tuesday morning and shot after threatening a patrol officer investigating Clemmons’ stolen vehicle. . . .

Read the whole thing.

Holiday Book Sale 2010 Begins!

Last year's Holiday Book Sale was a smashing success, so we're back again for more. Why fight the crowds at the mall, when you can buy books from your favorite blog? Ordering online through Amazon is easy and, through the Amazon Associates program, I get a small commission on each book you buy here. Let's start with three recent bestsellers where I've got a personal connection:

• Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies by Michelle Malkin -- Not only is this the first major book to expose the corrupt background of the Obama administration, including the role of ACORN and SEIU, but it's also the Best. Book. Evah! (That's because my name is mentioned in the acknowledgements on page 291.) Think of it this way: Christmas is about love. You love Michelle, you love me, you love whoever you're buying the book for, and I'm going to love my Amazon commission. What a perfect gift, huh?
• Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America by Ann Coulter -- OK, so Ann didn't give me a shout-out in the acknowledgements. She did, however, cite me in the footnotes (page 265) for my reporting on a 2007 hate-hoax at George Washington University. Also, I got to hang out with Ann during her visit to D.C. in August. I only hang out with cool people, so all Coulter books bear The Other McCain Seal Of Coolness, even those that don't mention me in the footnotes.
• Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin -- I covered Palin during the 2008 campaign and, when someone jokingly suggested me to help the Sweetheart of the Heartland write her memoir, I countered with a much better suggestion: Lynn Vincent, with whom I co-authored Donkey Cons. The result? A smash bestseller! Too bad a certain GOP presidential candidate ignored my advice about that Wall Street bailout, but the whole concept of "President McCain" was frightening to the American people, and who can blame them? (Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bob Barr!) But give Crazy Cousin John this: He made exactly one good decision during that campaign and that was Sarah Palin. Buy her book.

You notice something here? All three of these books are written by smart, powerful, beautiful women -- just like my wife. And my smart, powerful, beautiful wife expects me to make money from this blogging thing, so you should definitely order some books.

Your conservative friends and family members will enjoy these thoughtful gifts. And what about your liberal friends and relatives? Just imagine the look on their faces when they open the package and see what you've given them.

Now, imagine giving your annoying liberal sister-in-law all three of these books: Malkin, Coulter and Palin.

Some things are priceless, and that's a holiday memory you can cherish forever.

You'll pay for this, Jules Crittenden!

In writing about Andrew Sullivan, the city editor of a Boston newspaper manages to use two painfully suggestive terms, "bottomless" and "cavernous." I'm billing him for two cases of industrial-strength brain bleach.

Meanwhile, I previously overlooked the latest not-to-be-missed Ace beatdown on Sully's latest excursion to insanity. And Michelle Malkin is moved to mercy:

Perhaps the publisher and editors of the august Atlantic magazine should consider giving the man an extended sick leave.
Or at least some Zyprexa.

About three bottles of Zyprexa ought to do the trick, if washed down with enough whiskey. Mercy.

Ouch, Boss!

OK, I probably deserved this shot from Michelle Malkin:

And no, it isn't "playing the victim" to expose their bigotry.
It’s calling them out.

Without naming me, she evidently refers to my post yesterday:

Grant that the editors of Newsweek hate Sarah Palin. We have every reason to believe that the choice of photo of Palin in shorts represented an attempt to diminish and belittle Palin, to portray her as a cheesecake bimbo, the political equivalent of Lindsay Lohan. . . .
That this is "sexist," OK. Gotcha. But does Sarah Palin want to assume a feminist victimhood posture, to say that she is being oppressed by the patriarchy?

Given that I don't like it when people tell me how to frame my response to attacks on me, I suppose that I shouldn't be telling others how to frame their responses to attacks on them. The Golden Rule, in other words.

So if I'm correct that The Boss was aiming that elbow at me, I acknowledge the fault was mine. Mea culpa.

The old rule in the Washington Time newsroom was, "When in doubt, blame McCain." When I resigned last year, I wondered how they'd get along without having me around as the reliable scapegoat.

Answer? Not too good. Not too good at all.

Michelle Malkin: 'Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror'

How true. And I'll risk accusations of Glenn-Beckism by pointing out that "terrorism" and "political correctness" are both legacies of Marxist-Leninist thought.

Lenin advocated "revolutionary terror," first as a means of attacking the bourgeois regime and then, once the revolutioaries had seized power, as a means of intimidating the population and compelling cooperation with the revolutionary agenda.

The phrase "politically correct" is also of Marxist-Leninist origin. The concept of "democratic centralism" required that the Bolshevik vanguard arrogate to itself the authority to dictate what was and was not true, what policies should be pursued, etc. Once the Communst leadership had decided what the proper "party line" was, then all dissenters were said to be politically incorrect, and were anathematized as Enemies of the People.

This was how it came to be that after Stalin after Trotsky -- who had been second only to Lenin in the leadership of the Bolshevik Revolution -- he ordered Trotsky's image airbrushed out of photos of the original revolutionary leadership. And that was only one example of where political correctness led.

It is amazing to me the degree to which this type of Marxist-Leninist thinking has not merely survived, but thrived despite the collapse of the Soviet Union. And nowhere is this more true -- in a deeply ironic way -- than in the way so many conservatives have forgotten the Soviet origins of modern terrorism. I quote from a 1977 Heritage Foundation study:

The International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . . . has been the most important Soviet agency for the support of terrorism. Through this agency, the Soviets established two training schools for terrorists: the Lenin Institute or Institute of Social Studies and the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. Both of them regularly train their students -- 300 to 600 at any one time at the Lenin Institute - -in the techniques of "sabotage, terrorism, assassination, and other kinds of clandestine ar:d violent warfare."

Another Heritage Foundation study from 1984:

The presence in the U.S. of large numbers of disaffected aliens, many from cultures with traditions of political violence, could be of concern. . . . It is not unreasonable to assume that some of these may be sympathetic to the political goals of some terrorist movements that espouse their national, religious, or ideological beliefs. This minority may provide an audience for terrorist propaganda or a valuable infrastructure for terrorist financial or logistical support.

Both of those studies were written by the author of The Soviet Strategy of Terror, published in 1981 by the Heritage Foundation. But the politically incorrect Sam Francis has been airbrushed out of conservative history. So it is that we have lost a vital key to understanding the problem of terrorism by "disaffected aliens . . . sympathetic to the political goals of some terrorist movements."

History, Ancient and Modern
Certainly, it is possible to see the roots of Islamic terror in the 7th century A.D., beginning with the warrior-prophet Muhammed and continuing with the Muslim conquests that advanced by the sword across Turkey and into Asia, over North Africa, to Spain, and into Europe before finally being halted by the Christian victory over the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683.

All of that is relevant background, but has little to do with the specific manifestation of terror-jihad that has arisen in the Islamic world since the 1960s. The fanatical anti-American stance of these groups has very particular connection to the Soviet strategy of terror.

The PLO and Fatah, in particular, received support from a network of communist agents. And the propaganda agents of the Kremlin were also involved. If you'll go back and study it, you'll notice that the Palestinian cause was embraced by the New Left shortly after American student radicals began trekking to Cuba and Eastern Europe for "study."

The skeptic will point out that Marxism is dogmatically atheist, while Islamic terrorism is devoutly religious. True, but it is likewise true that although Marxism is anti-nationalist, the Soviets exploited nationalist sentiment (e.g., in Vietnam) wherever they felt it might advance their long-term revolutionary goal.

Terrorism and 'Liberation'
What is today considered a religious phenomenon -- Islam's jihad against the West -- actually originated with 2oth-century Arab nationalism, of which "Palestinian liberation" was the principle manifestation from the 1960s onward. This was all part of the Soviet agenda of creating satellites via "wars of national liberation."

Whether it was the Viet Cong or the Sandinistas or the PLO, all such revolutionary outfits shared a common anti-American agenda. The Soviets supported all these groups for the same reason: One "brushfire" war at a time, the U.S. could be deprived of potential allies in its Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union, which claimed to speak on behalf of the victims of American "imperialism."

When the Ayatollah's Shi'ite revolutionaries in Iran dubbed America "The Great Satan," they were merely expressing in religious terms what the Soviets were proclaiming in secular terms. In the calculus of the Cold War, what was bad for the U.S.A. was good for Moscow, you see. It wasn't until the Soviets tried to impose their will by direct military intervention in Afghanistan that they got a taste of the fanaticism of "liberation" the Kremlin had done so much to foment.

Of Motives and Murders
The homicidal rage of "Sudden Jihad Syndrome" -- evidently the motive for Nidal Malik Hassan's murderous rampage -- is the legacy of a history forgotten.

Objectively, there is no reason that the Islamic world should be infested with violent anti-Americanism. There is no objective reason why Israelis should constantly be plagued by Palestinian terror, nor that Iranians should suffer under the yoke of the mullahs and Ahmadinejad. The resentments which give rise to these phenomena are unacknowledged fruit of the Marxist-Leninist legacy.

Wherever it is proclaimed that capitalism is exploitation and that the United States is an agent of oppression, then the specific form and rhetoric of "anti-imperialist" violence -- whether religious or secular, ethnic or nationalist -- is just a detail.

All of these latter-day "revolutionary" movements are, in some sense, mere third-hand replicas of a Bolshevik prototype. The Taliban are an Afghan clone of the Khmer Rouge, Hugo Chavez is the Ceauşescu of Venezuela and Saddam Hussein was a Mesopotamian Stalin. Conservatives ought to understand this, and to say it out loud, no matter how politically incorrect it may be to say it.

More effort ought to be devoted to persuading the Islamic world that that their religion ought not require the periodic slaughter of Americans, Europeans or Israelis. But before we can persuade them of this, Americans must first persuade ourselves.

NY23: Please, God, let it end tonight

All you can do at this point is to get out the vote and pray:

Michelle Malkin is one of the few people you're likely to see on TV tonight who actually knows what it means. . . .
Last night, Malkin warned readers to be ready to watch Democrats and their media allies downplay an expected "conservative surge" in this off-off-year election.
OK, I can cope with that. . . . What I genuinely dread, however, is the possibility of vote-fraud shenanigans. Last night, I heard Hoffman spokesman Rob Ryan repeat his warnings about the danger of ballot-box mischief. And now ACORN whistleblower Anita Montcrief is worried, too. . . .

Read the whole thing. And pray. Pray hard.

Update (Smitty): NiceDeb has the details.

National Desk, Syracuse, N.Y., 3:45 p.m.

BREAKING UPDATE: Michelle Malkin demands Scozzafava withdrawal in NY23. Other bloggers join call. The Other McCain finally gets back to his hotel room for working lunch.

Dump Dede. EXPECT UPDATES . . .

UPDATE (1725, Smitty) The Monty Python remain critical of some products mentioned in this post (NSFW).

NY23 UPDATE: Why is Sarah MIA?

Sarah Palin could make a huge difference in the NY23 special election, and everybody knows it. I hinted at this earlier today -- "Lipstick, baby!" -- and as I like to remind my readers from time to time, there are no accidents.

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman is in the fight of his life against the GOP establishment's hand-picked RINO, in a crucial election that Hoffman's media coordinator Rob Ryan says is "a referendum on the future of the Republican Party."

One point to make clear: No official in the Hoffman campaign has said a word to me about Sarah Palin. But some of Hoffman's supporters are heartbroken that Sarah -- whom I dubbed the "Sweetheart of the Heartland" last year -- hasn't joined the fight against Dede Scozzafava, whom Michelle Malkin has described as "ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing." Allow me to address myself directly to Mrs. Palin:

Doug Hoffman is your kind of candidate, his supporters are your supporters, and the people at the RNC and the NRCC who are siding with Scozzafava . . . well, ask around, ma'am. Your enemies are Doug Hoffman's enemies.

A smart reporter doesn't burn his sources, so I'll exercise some professional discipline here, and let my friend Josh Painter at Texas for Palin speak:

In New York's 23rd District, for example, Sarah can set herself apart from Newt Gingrich by giving her support to Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, as have Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee. Gingrich, rather inexplicably, has joined the RNC and NRCC in endorsing liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava. . . . It is in individual contests like these where Sarah Palin can go against the GOP establishment and still keep those friends she has and needs inside the Beltway.

Sorry, Josh, I'll disagree here: Forget about everybody "inside the Beltway," Mrs. Palin, and think about the people in NY23 -- decent, honest people who are working their hearts out and praying as hard as they can. The battlefield is there, the battle is underway, and every minute counts. (I'll also dare to disagree with my friend Dan Riehl, but it's merely a disagreement. Nobody smart ever picks a fight with Dan.)

Big money is flooding into NY23, and Doug Hoffman needs every penny he can get. Trust me when I say that there are people working overtime for Hoffman who haven't gotten paid yet and don't know when or if they'll get paid. (Mitt Romney won't give Hoffman a dime, so scratch Mitt from your 2012 list.)

Money isn't everything in politics, however. It wouldn't cost Palin a penny to support Hoffman. All she has to do is issue a 200-word press statement -- or record a 30-second video and put it on YouTube -- and she could make all the difference in the world in NY23.

We are 17 days from Nov. 3. Every minute counts, and let me quote one more source:

"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
-- Ronald Reagan, Oct. 27, 1964

This is a time for choosing, Mrs. Palin. A battle rages in upstate New York. Doug Hoffman needs help. And people are praying.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Prayers are answered. No blogger could be more grateful than I. But sometimes, when it's been weeks without a 'Lanche, I start worrying . . .

Conservative Doug Hoffman slams Scozzafava in guest-blog at Malkin

The Conservative Party candidate in NY-23 whacks that RINO right between her beady little eyes:

I don’t think conservatives will be fooled. The more they learn about Dede Scozzafava, the worse she does in the polls. And the more they learn about my campaign, the better we do.
We can win this thing, but we're up against limited time and an awful RNC and NRCC decision to support a liberal candidate.
Well, if the Republican Party wants to declare war against conservatives, I'm going to fight on the side of conservatives.
If you want to join my fight, I need you. We need money and we need volunteers – boots on the ground. If you can help, go to my website and sign up. Then show up.
It’s time for conservatives to show the Republican establishment who's in charge.

Not just "yes," sir, but "Hell, yes!"

Trust me: Very Important People might make this The Mother Of All Showdowns with the RINO sellouts in the GOP Establishment. Lipstick, baby.

Full background on this crucial campaign at The American Spectator. I'm planning to travel to upstate New York in the coming week to cover the final push toward the Nov. 3 election. But before you hit my tip jar, be sure you hit Doug Hoffman's tip jar first.

Some jobs The Boss does best

"No mention . . .
"No mention . . .
"No mention . . ."

Right. And no mention of a lot of other things that I'd like to mention, but won't or can't, because only liberals are allowed to discuss stuff like that. Liberals endlessly boast about their own tolerance and enlightenment, taking turns giving each other awards, while denouncing the rest of humanity as hateful and benighted.

Liberals never have to worry about anyone questioning their sincerity and bona fides, because if you publicly question the good faith of liberals . . .

Well, don't forget: There are 5 A's in raaaaacism.

Michelle Obama's Victimhood Card . . . Or, Who's Afraid of South Carolina?

Michelle Malkin is so stunned, she can't even get snarktastic at the incredible absurdity of this one:

U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said Friday that a conversation with White House staff left him with the sense that a hostile environment in South Carolina is keeping the first lady from visiting.
The high-ranking South Carolina Democrat said he has received more than 100 invitations for Michelle Obama. But this summer when he brought one of those requests to her staff on behalf of his alma mater, South Carolina State University, Clyburn said her security was an issue.
The conversation came after former Richland County GOP activist Rusty DePass suggested on Facebook in June that an escaped zoo gorilla was not harmful because it was probably one of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors. . . .

Hmmm. Is Rusty DePass one of those hateful Darwinists? Never mind. The idea that the First Lady of the United States has any legitimate fear of violence in South Carolina -- but is safe in ultra-violent places like Chicago and D.C. -- is so transparently bogus that not even Robert Gibbs would dare defend it.

Exit question: If the White House wants to stigmatize South Carolina this way, what are the chances that Obama will carry North Carolina and Virginia again in 2012? IYKWIMAITYD.

Twittering with 'Gen. J.C. Christian': Thank God for foolish enemies!

OK, so I noticed this morning that a gay liberal blogger was sending Tweets trying to get one of my advertisers to cancel. The fact that his target was the much-criticized Pamela Anderson Extreme Video" ad was kind of surprising.

Little did I suspect that the silicone-boob-laden ad -- which I'd never bothered to click -- links to a PETA site attacking Kentucky Fried Chicken for alleged violations of animal rights. (Admit it: Every bucket of extra-crispy is a chicken-hating act of genocide.)

Let's evaluate the purely capitalistic angle for a minute: Internet advertisers pay for eyeballs. If PETA wants people to click through to see their anti-KFC site, would their money be best spent on:

• The blog that invented Rule 5 Sunday?

or

• Some gay left-winger's site?

The way I see it, PETA is making a shrewd move here. Nobody at a gay left-wing blog is interested in seeing a Pamela Anderson nude video and, as far as the animal-rights message is concerned, targeting a liberal audience would just be preaching to the converted. (Whatever private deviance "Gen. J.C. Christian" may indulge, no one has ever accused him of being a commercial poultry producer.)

God gives us enemies for a reason. So far I've been blessed with a non-stop parade of fools, and I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that this white gay liberal was pushing the "raaaaacism" smear at his PETA pals. (Fact: Hitler was a vegetarian.)

About three years ago, I had an e-mail exchange with this same blogger after he'd made the mistake of repeating an erroneous assertion from a Michelangelo Signorile column. He'd had the decency to correct his mistake, which lets me know that even if he's a total gay wackjob, he's at least cognizant that he can't make up his own facts. Therefore, when I noticed him attacking me this morning, I sent him a direct message via Twitter:

Criticizing me is fair game, JC. Trying to organize a smear-based advertising boycott? Not so much. Chill.

To which J.C. replied:

Don't care about your other advertisers, but PETA should be supporting liberal blogs.

Ah! So now we see the selfish greed behind all this. Repeating the Charles Johnson "white supremacist blogger" meme was just J.C.'s way of trying to leverage a few bucks of advertising out of my hands and into his own.

Capitalism is the Great Uniter, and once my gay liberal antagonist tipped his hand -- hey, I Write For Money, too -- I knew I'd found a friend. So I fired off a quick string of direct messages:

LOL. Oh, great -- now I'm accused of being a SPECIESIST!

In point of fact, some of my conservative readers have complained about that PETA ad. Also, my wife is SDA and (mostly) vegetarian.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I realized that these raaaaacist smears were God's way of reminding me to have a sense of humor.

When you start taking politics too seriously, it'll drive ya nuts. So I'm just trying to relax, have a good time and earn a living.

The smear artists wouldn't bother attacking me if I was actually a Robert Byrd-type Klan Kleagle. There's no advantage in that, see? But if they can, by endless repetition, convince you that the World's Most Fun-Loving Blogger is in fact a secret agent for The Flemish Menace -- deprive me of readership by getting me de-linked by the conservative blogosphere -- then they'll have achieved something.

Which is why I don't play the "deny, denounce and repudiate" game that Republican idiots have been playing for the past 10 or 15 years. I know who I am, and my friends know who I am, and since I'm not who Charles Johnson says I am, I just laugh at his cheap lies and smack him around from time to time, as it suits my mood. His jealous rage is entirely impotent. From the standpoint of the convservative blogosphere, Mad King Charles is now as inert as argon.

The Left's smear artists are either bullies or dupes, or perhaps both. Once you figure out how they roll, and start throwing their bovine excrement back in their faces, they'll eventually learn to leave you alone.

Notice that Michelle Malkin doesn't fear them at all. I was in Denver when Michelle braved that crazy mob scene at the Mint, where Charlie Martin and Jim Hoft gallantly defended her from physical assault led by the unhinged 9/11 Truther Alex Jones. (Take a bow, Charlie.) When Michelle got back to the Founding Bloggers/PJM headquarters, she was in no way daunted, but indeed more determined than ever to expose The Mendacity Of Hope.

Having failed to silence or intimidate Malkin, now the Left deploys front-page Ransom Note smears in The Washington Post -- the only way she'll ever be mentioned in the Post, which would never publish her popular syndicated column.

Gutless liars and bullies. Thank God for such enemies!

UPDATE: "Springtime for Potok and Irony."

UPDATE II: VIDEO EXPOSE: Colonel Sanders and the Hate That's Finger-Lickin' Good!

Thank you, Paleo Pat

My friend at Political Byline discovered that, according to Stormfront (which ought to know), Patrick Lanzo has made his restaurant available for "white pride" events organized by, inter alia, the late J.B. Stoner.

OK, so if this is true, it clearly puts Lanzo on the far side of a clearly defined line between any sort of mere "political incorrectness" and outright hatemongering.

Paleo Pat's research is appreciated; however, I disagree with his characterization that my own previous discussion of Lanzo's restaurant as "spinning" for Lanzo. As I clearly said, "To explain is not to defend." Obviously, I erred in failing to research Lanzo before endeavoring to explain him, which makes me guilty of carelessness, and I appreciate Paleo Pat clarifying the nature of Lanzo's operation.

What J.B. Stoner promoted ought to be called by its right name: Evil. Did Lanzo know what he was getting himself into when he hosted Stoner's events? I don't know. But he either needs to reconsider his actions or else admit that he's on the other side of that line.

A Weekend in Pittsburgh
It was probably unwise for me to rush to prepare that post about Lanzo's place Friday morning before I left for the Brindle wedding, knowing that I would be offline for most of the next two days. As I told Smitty when he called to tell me about Paleo Pat's post, it was not my intent to defend any of Lanzo's actions, but rather:

• To clarify that Lanzo is not representative of Paulding County or Georgia;
• To attempt to explain the cultural signficance of Lanzo's actions; and
• To repudiate the idea (promoted by CBS News) that what Lanzo has done has some meaningful relevance to political opposition to ObamaCare in general.

While I was riding back from Pennsylvania with Matthew Vadum this afternoon, we had a long discussion about how liberals, by dishonesty-in-labeling, attempt to suppress free discussion of sensitive issues. Fear of the smear causes people to shy away from discussing any issue where disagreement with liberals is characterized as racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

The result of liberalism's "rhetorical terrorism" -- what else shall we call it? -- is that only liberals are permitted to discuss these issues. Those who protest against these limitations on free speech are subjected to a particularly vicious sort of attack from liberals, because where free discussion is allowed, liberalism loses.

Go read what terrible things were said about Michelle Malkin when she published In Defense of Internment. Malkin took on a very difficult topic, exploring the reality of the U.S. security situation circa 1941-42, explaining circumstances so as to cast a new light on that troubling episode in American history. For her skill in performing a difficult task -- a task she surely knew out that the outset would expose her to angry attacks -- Malkin was denounced as if she were actually endorsing the internship of Japanese during WWII, or advocating some similar policy today.

Liberalism and Half-Truths
Malkin didn't wilt under the heat of that particular furnace and having been tried by fire, as it were, is stronger for the experience. Yet most school textbooks continue to teach a dumbed-down PC-inflected version of that historical epoch, as if Malkin had never written her book. And this is yet another baleful consequence of liberalism: To suppress facts so as to facilitate the propogation of half-truths and prevent clear thought about difficult problems.

"Don't read Malkin!" is the effect of the smears against her, which is exactly what Charles Johnson was trying to do when he smeared Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.

Some people might tell you, "Don't read Paleo Pat!" or "Don't read Stacy McCain!" for very similar reasons. It's like that idiotic notation at the margins of medieval maps: Here be dragons!

It is not a convenient thing, career-wise, for a journalist to push back against liberalism's continual efforts to set limits on permissible discourse. And, I suppose, there might be some who would say that I am engaged in a similar practice by drawing a clear line and declaring the late J.B. Stoner to be on the opposite side of that line. Yet I think that anyone who will research the biography of Stoner would see why such a line must be drawn.

Furthermore, I'm only one person, and do not say that law or policy ought to be changed to punish people merely for disagreeing with me. Rather, I agree with Thomas Jefferson:

[T]ruth is great and will prevail if left to herself . . . she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

It is modern liberalism's hostility to "free argument and debate" that is the proper target of those forms of protest we call political incorrectness. To employ hateful epithets or associate with J.B. Stoner are certainly not helpful to this project and, I would argue, amount to lending aid and comfort to liberalism.

Finally, I do not consider it impossible to redeem someone who, for whatever reasons, has gotten themselves on the wrong side of a line. If Patrick Lanzo reads this and has cause to reconsider and reform, going forward to avoid repetition of past errors, this would be a great good. And he might, by his good example, persuade others to take similar steps in the same direction.

After all, I used to be a Democrat, so who am I to judge people for their unfortunate past associations?

3, 2, 1 -- Raaaaacist!

Brian Ledbetter at Snapped Shot created a GIF -- exposing an imitation of a Matisse painting -- that got him linked by name at Michelle Malkin.

Well, guess who cried "raaaaacism"? That white-to-the-point-of-translucence honky, Charles Johnson:

164 Charles
10/09/2009 2:39:26 pm PDT
By the way, I strongly suspect that the real reason for all this fake outrage is because the Obamas chose a painting by an African American artist -- instead of the "original" by a European white man.

OK, time to explain that my college minor was art, and included one semester in African-American art history taught by Professor Oakley Holmes (author of The Complete Annotated Resource Guide to Black American Art), so I know everything all the way back to the impressive ancient sculptures of Ife and Benin.

To say that this one work by one artist (Alma Thomas) is blatantly derivative is not to make a value judgment about anything, except perhaps about the standards for the White House art collection. Hell, I never cared for Matisse in the first place, any more than I cared for Picasso or Modigliani, to name two other famed practicioners of that intellectual fraud known as "Modern Art." (Modigliani is like a multiple-choice question: Bad draftsmanship, ugly models, or both?)

The fact that Charles Johnson sees this as evidence of racial prejudice only goes to show that he sees everything as evidence of racial prejudice.

Hey, wait a minute: "Matisse." Doesn't that name sound vaguely . . . Belgian?

THE FLEMISH MENACE!

UPDATE: More raaaaacist art. (Say what you will about Chris Muir, when he draws chicks, he draws 'em right.)

LGF still demonizing Malkin

"America Loses - Right Wings Blogs Celebrate"

That's the headline in the perverse domain of Mad King Charles:

Michelle Malkin and her commenters (and many other right wing bloggers) are dancing and celebrating this morning, because America lost its bid for the Olympics . . .
This completely puts the lie to the excuse that those who say they want Obama to fail really mean they want his policies to fail.
No, they want Obama himself to fail, and if that means America fails too, they're just fine with that.

The Sullyfication of Lizardland continues. While Charles Johnson's thirst for vengeance against me obviously explains my personal interest in his decline into irrelevance -- LGF is now just another unreadably worthless liberal site -- it is important to note what a despicably dishonest creature Johnson is.

If I am a "white supremacist blogger," as Johnson now insists, why didn't he see fit to warn anyone about this prior to my coming to the defense of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and others after Charles had smeared them?

Charles Johnson deliberately misformed his readers about Geller et al. for months before I first spoke out against his cruel and unjust defamation. The one thing he doesn't want deluded LGF readers to discover is the true history of his vicious campaign of lies against conservatives who supported European opponents of jihad.

Johnson smeared Geller over and over again, and savagely maligned anyone who defended her. It was the sheer sadism of Johnson's assault on her that caused me to speak out.

I've got more important things than the Sissy King of Lizardland to worry about today, but you ask Pamela what she suffered because of Charles Johnson's mendacious evil. He called her a "Poster Girl for Eurofascists"! Just like he called Jim Hoft a "borderline illiterate bigot."

Cowardly liars can hurt you, but they cannot destroy you, if you'll stand up to their bullying and call them what they are. They can't survive the truth.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
-- Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 KJV

Have faith and courage, and be assured that the dishonest and ungodly will ultimately destroy themselves.