Intolerance and America’s west coast

Blogatrix Cathy Seipp writing in the National Review, relates the tender mild ways of the left. Even as it relates to a man expelling his feelings about Los Angeles based cartoonist Michael Martinez’ boss, editor Michael Kinsley:

«“Why do you keep him on?” one guy wailed, in tones that suggested he was wearing a monocle while peering at a cockroach.

Kinsley patiently explained that the Times hasn't run [George] Will's syndicated column in years (presumably some readers still suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome from the horror of the memory) and that a left-leaning editorial board needs to be balanced by some right-leaning signed columns. Regarding Michael Ramirez, he added: "This is the question I get more than any other: Michael Ramirez, how can I kill him?"»

To put the state of California into a context, here is one ¡No Pasaràn! reader’s take on what this state of social affairs holds for our future:

«I spent 6 months in 2000 in San Jose (SF, Oakland, and SJ form the 'Bay Area'). The whole of San Francisco has been termed the "world's largest outdoor lunatic asylum" by [KSFO radio personality] Lee Rodgers. The entire city is a socialist looney-land -- just what the Democrats would love to remake America into.
I went through there in 1997 on a tourist pilgrimage to drive the California coast from SF to LA by convertible, starting at the Golden Gate Bridge. To get there, I had to drive through San Francisco from south to north. When I did that, I saw people living in their cars with laundry strung from wires attached to cars at one end and to telephone poles at the other.

I was later informed that the route I took wasn't even through the seediest portions of the city, where I was assured that Amsterdam has already been surpassed. You can guess how all of these people vote.

The rest of the Bay Area isn't much better. A few days before my departure from the place -- which was just before the election -- some colleagues took me out to lunch. The conversation turned to the election, and every one of them planned to vote for Gore. Many of them couldn't articulate a reason why.»

So there you have it – To be sure electing Arnold Schwarzenegger is a temporary seeming palliative by those outside of California’s cities, and the handful within who hope for the reintroduction of some common sense. In full view are the rewards of leftism it seems is anger, poverty, and a declining quality of life, not to mention a degraded view of living. It is impossible to look past all of this when those on one side of the Atlantic wish for an America that looks more like Europe. It should be no surprise that the notion is received with considerable resistance.

Ramirez Cartoon: It's a Good Thing the Biden Borders Are Secure

A Michael Ramirez cartoon on the security of the Southern border…

Michael P Ramirez: Count the Ways

Such a mystery, say the talking heads.
While Michael P Ramirez answers: Count the Ways

American Roulette: The Choice

I will vote for Donald Trump, not because I think he is a great–or even good–presidential candidate

confesses John Hinderaker on the Powerline blog,

but because it is blindingly obvious that he is better than Hillary Clinton. He could turn out to be a terrible president, but his down side is better than what we know about Hillary. The great Michael Ramirez expresses the contrast this way …

Character is important in a president. The liberal press has devoted the last month to telling us that Donald Trump is a jerk. He may well be, but he can’t begin to rival Hillary Clinton’s low character.
Deroy Murdock at National Review reminds us what an appalling person Hillary is. I am going to take the liberty of reproducing almost his entire column, because I think it is important. But please do follow the link, where you will find many more links to original sources that I have omitted here:

Hillary Clinton’s “treatment of DS [Department of State] agents on her protective detail was so contemptuous that many of them sought reassignment or employment elsewhere,” according to a just-released summary of an FBI interview with a former State Department official. “Prior to CLINTON’s tenure, being an agent on the Secretary of State’s protective detail was seen as an honor and privilege reserved for senior agents. However, by the end of CLINTON’s tenure, it was staffed largely with new agents because it was difficult to find senior agents willing to work for her.” 

Clinton’s State Department agents are hardly the first to complain about her bullying.

“She derives pleasure from lording over other people who cannot do anything about it and who are less powerful than she is,” author Ronald Kessler told Newsmax TV’s J. D. Hayworth. In fact, Clinton’s well-documented history of profane, unhinged outbursts against those who work for her spans decades. While Clinton’s vulgarity is presented here in relatively family-friendly form, fill in the blanks and imagine the pain that this woman inflicted when she uttered these words. …/…

• “Stay the f*** back, stay the f*** away from me!” the then-–First Lady screamed at her Secret Service agents. “Don’t come within ten yards of me, or else! Just f***ing do as I say, okay!!?” Clinton demanded, according to former FBI agent Gary Aldrich’s Unlimited Access, page 139. 

• “If you want to remain on this detail, get your f***ing ass over here and grab those bags!” Hillary yelled at a Secret Service agent, as Joyce Milton reported in The First Partner, page 259. The officer explained in vain that he preferred to keep his hands free, in case a threat arose. 

•  “Good morning, ma’am,” a uniformed Secret Service officer once greeted Hillary Clinton. “F*** off!” she replied, as Ronald Kessler documented in First Family Detail, page 16. …/…

• “Good morning,” an Arkansas state trooper said to Clinton, according to American Evita, by Christopher Andersen, a former contributing editor with Time magazine.

“F*** off!” Hillary told him and his fellow bodyguards. “It’s enough I have to see you s***-kickers every day! I’m not going to talk to you, too! Just do your goddam job and keep your mouth shut.” 

If this is how Hillary Clinton handles those who have stood ready to take bullets for her, how would she treat 325 million everyday Americans?

Liberals tell us that with so many accusers, Donald Trump must be guilty of something. I am not at all sure that is true, given the sudden timing of these accounts and the billions of dollars being devoted to destroying Trump’s candidacy. But it seems far more likely that the many witnesses who have attested to Hillary Clinton’s horrible character over the years are telling the truth. The picture that emerges of Hillary is consistent and disgusting.

Artists Unite: In this era of integrated information, we are witnessing the most concerted attack on freedom in world history

What is provocative art in a hyper-politicized age?

asks The Remodern Review's Richard Bledsoe (thanks to Ed Driscoll).

It’s art that dares to express dissent from the orthodoxy of the ruling establishment. And despite their best efforts to camouflage the nature of their oppressive and destructive grip on the culture, the establishment these days is a hive mind of Progressive dogma.

In this era of integrated information, we are witnessing the most concerted attack on freedom in world history. The powerful are colluding to manipulate the powerless to act as the shock troops to enforce the agenda of the New Aristocracy of the Well Connected. From positions of power in government, administration, academia, media, and the arts, they promote lynch mob tactics against anyone who does not conform to their Orwellian programs of doublethink, thoughtcrimes, and Two Minutes Hates.

The festering ambition in the corrupt hearts of the elitists is unaccountable power for themselves; now they fancy they have the technology to make their tyranny truly global in scale. They like to proselytize about the direction of history, and appeal to idealism in order to sucker the useful idiots they need to act as their muscle. Yet in practice their proposed model will end up looking like every other attempt since Marx: a small group of privileged thugs standing on top of mass graves, while the enslaved populace toils away in fear and hopelessness.

 

There’s nothing progressive about what the Left proposes: it’s a regression to the same old feudalism that is as old as mankind itself, tarted up with some buzzwords and hypocrisy. The Gramsci long march through the institutions has been effective in degrading the culture to make a society ripe for totalitarianism.

We are on the edge now. All too soon, we will either see their plot succeeded, or we will find out what happens when their overreach crumbles, and their grand designs collapse under the weight of hubris and backlash.

 … The elitists have weaponized art into an assault on the achievements of Western civilization, but they have nothing coherent, useful or enduring to replace those achievements with; all they offer is their lust for domination and self-aggrandizement. This makes their program a very niche market.

So the answer is to bypass the filters of the establishment, and take the change directly to the people. In April, at Lotus Contemporary Art of Phoenix, Arizona, a group show of citizen artists took a stand. This will hopefully be the first show of many.

Coordinated by Provocative Art 2016, this exhibit brought together renowned artists from across the country, including Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez, National Review cover artist Roman Genn, and controversial guerilla public artist Sabo.

If Assange Is to Be Fêted, Why No Wikileaks Revelations About Secrets in Russia, China, Iran, or Sweden?

Regarding the celebration surrounding the release of Julian Assange, the cartoonist Michael Ramirez has a different take on the Wikileaks founder's record… 

I have always asked that if Assange (né Julian Paul Hawkins) deserves to be celebrated, even lionized as a hero for the ages, for disclosing secrets, why does he do so only with regards to the military of the United States? Why no "WikilLeaks" about the militaries of countries such as, I dunno, China, North Korea, Russia, Ukraine, France, the UK, Australia, Iran, Israel, or Denmark? Doesn't the public in each of those countries — as well as, for that matter, the public in America and, indeed, in the rest of the world — deserve to know about those governments' secrets as well?

Naturally, the same questions apply to Edward Snowden — so uninterested in revealing the Kremlin's secrets that he has obtained refuge in Moscow from Vladimir Putin — and Bradley (aka Chelsea) Manning…

Editorial Cartoons: Are They Humor or Are They Propaganda?

Above and below are typical entries from the page on About.com's Political Humor by "Political Humor Expert" Daniel Kurtzman that is supposed to show the reader 20 Cartoons and Memes That Put Climate Change in Perspective.

As Hollywood in Toto has asked before (albeit about FunnyOrDie.com), doesn't this type of humor sites turn out not to be so much about humor but about propaganda that "doubles as a political weapon, a cudgel meant to smite Obama’s enemies"? Recently, About.com had a(n only slightly tongue-in-cheek) pictorial of (I kid you not) Photos of Obama Being Awesome (Funny, Playful and Cool Photos of President Barack Obama)!

So: Need we add that every single Cartoon and Meme That Puts Climate Change in Perspective mocks the conservative point of view, and the conservative point of view alone? That not a single Cartoon and Meme That Puts Climate Change in Perspective pokes the slightest amount of fun at the progressive point of view? (No Michael Ramirezes here, thank you very much.)

Below is a cartoon that About.com's "Political Humor Expert" did not choose as a Cartoon or Meme That Puts Climate Change in Perspective.

Now, think of New York City, of Miami, of Galveston, of San Francisco, of Tokyo, of Sydney, of Goa, of Alexandria, of Saint Tropez, of Copenhagen.

Correct me if I am wrong, but in the past 5 years, in the past 50 years, even offhand in the past 500 years (?), has the sea level in any of those places risen by even one inch, by even one centimeter?

So don't you think that if the humorists had any kind of level thinking (instead of double standards), they might, y'know, just once in a while poke fun at the politicians and scientists (and the cartoonists?) who continue their shouts and screams about the sky that's fallin'?
Related: Artists Unite: In this era of integrated information, we
are witnessing the most concerted attack on freedom in world history

Update: Don't forget Issac Cordal's equally melodramatic Berlin sculpture called Politicians discussing global warming.

Gaffes Blown Out of Proportion and Gaffes Unreported or Under-Reported, Not Worthy of Media Interest

… the way the media focus relentlessly on gaffes and ignores substantive issues when covering one side, while ignoring gaffes and issues critical of the other side, does serious damage to the integrity of news reporting.

That is what Michael Ramirez concludes when taking off from editorial cartooning to pen a viewpoint for Investor's Business Daily: Media's One-Sided Coverage Is Clear Evidence Of Bias.

In an elementary school in Trenton, New Jersey, reading off a flash card that had been prepared by the teacher, the special guest counseled the child writing potato on the blackboard, "You're close, but you left a little something off। The 'e' on the end."
The media reacted swiftly and relentlessly.

The story was on all the front pages and was carried by all the major networks.

To the mainstream media, it was the moment that Dan Quayle confirmed "what a waste it is to lose one's mind."

It didn't matter that the flash card given to the vice president was prepared by a teacher and was itself misspelled. It was carried on every news wire, every news program and in every late night TV monologue.

Quayle's mind must have been on other things. It wasn't like he repeated the mistake in all 57 states, or more precisely in Beaverton, Ore., in May 2008; or while traveling on the "Intercontinental" railroad in Cincinnati on Sept. 23, 2011; or perhaps, while he was speaking to the "President" of Canada in Chicago on Aug. 7, 2007.

He might not have known how to say it in "Austrian" while in Strasbourg, France, on April 5, 2009; or perhaps he was thinking of "Polish Death Camps" at the White House on May 30, 2012; or thinking about when he met with world leaders in that splendid "Asian" city, Honolulu, on Nov. 16, 2011.

He might have been thinking of the brave Navy "corpse" man at the prayer breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2010, which may not sound so strange to someone who also said: "On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today..."

All these examples were unreported or under-reported gaffes of President Obama.

The mainstream media didn't seem to think these incidents were worthy of a media feeding frenzy, unlike those of poor Dan Quayle.

If Vice President Quayle had only been misspelling "Ohio" as "Oiho" with three college students instead of one elementary student, at an institution of higher learning like Ohio State University instead of an elementary school, the media would certainly have ignored it.

Or, perhaps, they would have been all over it, as the Washington Post was ... quick to defend President Obama, claiming the photo must have been "Photoshopped."

Unfortunately for the Post, the incident was captured by several different cameras from multiple angles. Oops. Apparently, misspellings are only important when they are done by someone with whom they philosophically disagree.

It was an unimportant issue that was wildly blown out of proportion by a biased media back in 1992 and now, completely ignored by a hypercritical and biased media in 2012.

And there's no better example of the double standards and inherent bias of the media today.

In a surprise March 6 press conference, the president again had an opportunity to repudiate the disgraceful Priorities USA ad blaming Mitt Romney for the death of Joe Soptic's wife.

He declined to do so.

It's an important story, one that reveals the character of both the Obama campaign and the president himself. And yet, the real story behind it remains virtually uncovered.

A quick refresher — an ad for Obama featured laid-off steel worker Joe Soptic, who blamed Romney for losing his job and his health insurance and, incredibly, for killing his wife after Bain Capital acquired the GST Steel plant in Kansas City, Kan., in 1993.

The story goes that because his wife was no longer covered by his health insurance, her cancer went undetected and she had no access to proper health care and subsequently died.

Accusing Mitt Of Murder

Unfortunately for Joe's story, Romney had left Bain two years before Joe lost his job. His wife had retained her own health insurance through her job. Six years later, she went into the hospital for pneumonia and they detected cancer. Tragically she died shortly after.

At that time, seven years after Romney left Bain and five years after Soptic had lost his job, Romney was governor of Massachusetts.

Initially, the White House denied any knowledge of the ad. Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, "We have nothing, no involvement, with any ads that are done by Priorities USA (the super-PAC that ran the ad). We don't have any knowledge of the story of the family."

Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter continued that line, telling CNN, "I don't know the facts about when Mr. Soptic's wife got sick, or the facts about his health insurance."

These explanations were implausible because the Obama campaign had featured Joe Soptic and his story on a May 14, 2012, conference call set up by the Obama campaign.

This contemptible ad reflects the worst of politics. The fact the president does not have the character to publicly demand the ad be withdrawn and condemned reveals more about President Obama than it does about Mitt Romney.

But that's typical of an administration that routinely lies, distorts and fabricates to divert attention from its own abysmal record and that will do anything to get re-elected.

The real question is whether the Obama campaign and Priorities USA coordinated their message, which would be illegal.

The White House says no. Of course, they also claimed to have never heard of Joe's story.

But this story, like many others, can be found in the same place where the stories about William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, the real cost of the GM bailout, Sec. 407 of the Welfare Reform act, the source of national intelligence leaks and the truth about Operation Fast and Furious reside.

And that, as far as the media are concerned, is nowhere.

Massive Media Failure

As White House reporter for ABC News Jake Tapper recently commented, "The media is failing the country."

I agree.

A July 16 Rasmussen poll revealed "59% of likely U.S. voters believe Obama has received the best treatment from the media so far" and "51% expect most reporters to help Obama." Only 9% expect the media to help Romney.

The media should, at bare minimum, be expected to reveal the truth. But it won't even do that.

Still the media focus nonstop on unsubstantiated reports about Mitt Romney's tax returns — not on anything substantial.

MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin, when asked about Mitt Romney's tax returns on the Today Show, said, "The press still likes this story a lot."

He added, "The media are very susceptible to doing what the Obama campaign wants, which is to focus on this."

The fact the media are susceptible to do what any campaign wants is disturbing enough.

But the way the media focus relentlessly on gaffes and ignores substantive issues when covering one side, while ignoring gaffes and issues critical of the other side, does serious damage to the integrity of news reporting.

In a letter to Dr. James Currie in 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

But what of a press that limits itself to only covering news that favors its own political ideology?

Where is the real news?

Since the recovery began in June 2009, real median household income has fallen 4.8%, according to a new report from Sentier Research. This report is especially damning because incomes only dropped 2.6% during the recession.

Shouldn't this be front page news?

The deficit is closing in on $16 trillion. That's $1 trillion more than our entire GDP in 2011. The U.S. is on its way to becoming Spain. The president's solution? Raise taxes on the upper 2%. But that takes in only about $45 billion. The CBO reports our deficit in 2012 is $1.1 trillion.

Where are the media truth tellers on this?

ABC's Tapper criticized the media for not covering the economy more.

"A lot of people are hurting out there," he said. "Unemployment is 8.3%. That doesn't even take into account the underemployed."

In recent polls, the most important issue to Americans continues to be the economy and jobs. What's not being reported is that there are fewer people employed today than at the end of the last recession — the longest spell without net jobs growth since at least World War II.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at the end of the recession 59.4% of Americans had jobs. That's just 58.4% today.

As Joe Biden said in Athens, Ohio, on October 15, 2008, "The No. 1 job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, 'a three-letter word': jobs. J-O-B-S."

No one is more of an expert on gaffes than Joe Biden. But don't tell that to a biased media.

The media's No. 1 job should be to cover the substantive issues of this campaign without regard to party affiliation or philosophical bias.

That it's now acceptable for many in the media to flaunt their bias should be, to use Joe Biden's words, "a big f-ing deal." Sadly, it isn't.

Thankfully, the Media Has Its Priorities Straight

Hitting the proverbial nail on its head once again is Michael Ramirez (thanks to Instapundit)

As We Predicted in 2008, Accusations of American Racism Would, and Will, Never Cease

As we predicted weeks before the 2008 vote, the (then-hypothetical) election of Barack Obama would in no way bring an end, not to American racism, but to accusations of American racism.

In its issue immediately prior to the 2016 elections, Charlie Hebdo was back to its tired old prejudices and its tired old tricks, saying Obama [Would] Again Be a [U.S.] Citizen Like All the Others, while the poor black man (victim) is forced to flee under a hail of bullets fired by white police officers. In the meantime, Jean-Yves Camus reports on the alt-right (Ku Klux Klan Without the Hoods) while a "Jacob Hamburger" compares The Donald to (sigh) a cowboy and a gangster.

A couple of weeks prior to the 2008 election, I wrote a post asking a series of questions…

(By how many percentage points must Barack Obama win for "America" to "prove" (to itself as well as to others) that it is no longer racist? … What if the Illinois senator wins by, say, 60%? That's a pretty impressive victory by any standard. But does that mean that the other 40% must necessarily be racists? Must race be the only, or the main, reason for their voting against Obama? … And how about the future? Given that one in seven Americans is black (it's actually about 12.85% or closer to one in eight, but since we are talking about presidential terms, seven is an easier figure to handle), must Americans from now on elect an African-American every seven election cycles to prove they aren't racist? … Or must Americans make up for the 220 years without an African-American at the helm, meaning that the next six presidents (the total number of white males in the White House, 43, divided by 7) must be black.)

Here was/is the point of the questions

What is the point about these questions? The point is as follows: Make no mistake about it. Should Obama win the election, the hand-wringing and wild charges about American racism — both at home and abroad — will at best cease temporarily. Any opposition to President Obama's policies will be construed as racism "rearing its ugly head" again.

And at best (at best, according to the — non-thinking — bean-counters, that is), in the faraway future, we will be told by the snickerers and the snorters: "Well yeah, a black American was elected in 2008 (even reelected in 2012), but that was a one-time travesty!"

Or they will say that oh, sure there is an African-Americans (there are African-Americans) whom Americans have elected president, but… his (but their) skin color wasn't dark enough. "Would they ever" — insert knowing ironic smile here — "elect a really dark Negro?"

 … Why does this come up? Because Americans — or certainly, conservative Americans from small town America — must be accused of something sinister.  If it isn't racism, it's fascism. If it isn't fascism, it's something else. Americans must be treacherous, they must be greedy, they must be warmongers, they must be reactionary, they must be clueless. And… they must be racist.

 … the basic truth about racism is as follows: racism is far less an accurate description of an attitude prevalent in a given society, in a given individual, than it is a weapon that is wielded to demonize one's opponents while making oneself appear heroic by parroting (and by doing nothing else than parroting) politically correct platitudes. More often than not, in other words, the fight against alleged pockets of racism is nothing more noble than a self-serving act of self-praise.

Watch the video, Erik Explains Racism in the 2008 Election to His Cat

See No Pasarán's previous coverage of Charlie Hebdo (which
features an explanatory cartoon on the magazine's English page)…

Related — Witness the Unbelievable Amount of Racism
That Exists Among Conservatives and in the Tea Party

• Dennis Prager: Foreigners of every race know that
the U.S. is the least racist country in the world but most black
Americans and the entire left deny it (the entire left, foreign as
well as American)

• A week or two before the 2008 election, Michael
Ramirez drew a cartoon called Who Are We to Judge?