Another Decade, Another Contagion Created by Leftists

And yet more of that impulse for “government love” nearly shot down any effort to correct it. The Democrats were mad at the idea that an executive who has the choice between taking recapitalization from the treasury and taking a golden parachute for themselves needed an enducement to act on the public's interest. What they did nearly weasel in, was that a large percentage of the revenue derived by the eventual liquidation of the Treasury's investment would go to activists acting in the favor of the Democratic party.

Just like the cause of the banking broblem itself, it was all about the class warfare taunt. “Community organizers” wanted it, and we all got it – social manipulation laws requiring underqualifying people had to be offered loans they couldn't affrord in the interest of "social levelling". The purpose was to combat redlining, another grievance recited by the left dug up from 1930’s Philadelphia which supposes that racism was behind the lending of mortgages to people able to pay them off.

See? It succeeded! The “oppressed” who could not make enough to pay back loans got them! Happy now? No? Stlll at it, oh mighty "community organizers"?

“What we have here essentially are a pair of government slush funds created in July as part of the Economic Recovery Act that pump tax dollars into the coffers of low-income housing advocacy groups, such as Acorn.”

“Acorn, one of America’s most militant left-wing ‘community activist groups,’ is spending $16 million this year to register Democrats to vote in November. In the past several years, Acorn’s voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Washington, while several of their employees have been convicted of voter fraud…”

That’s right. Rather than returning any profits made in the long-term from the economic rescue package, Democrats want to first reward their radical allies at ACORN for their help – often illegal help – in getting Democrats elected to office. Families, seniors, small businesses, and all American taxpayers deserve better than what Democratic leaders are attempting to jam down their throats.

Welcomed and Enabled by the Aging Children at MSNBC, of Course

We've noted it before, and we'll be sure to see it again - the more Anti-American they are, the more they support Barack Obama.

In a poll asking who won the Presidential debate of the 26th, Drudge Report readers, 94% of whom were making their choice from US based IP addresses chose McCain. 34% of those polled by MSNBC viewers chose McCain, but only 20% of their sample came from within the US.

It was clear from Obama's dejected exit from the stage that he lost.

It's safe to assume that very few people in Russia, western Europe, and the near east actually saw the debate transmitted live and with real-time translation, as it would have started no earlier than 3 in the morning, the impression they're getting, if from anything at all, is from nothing other than ideologically selected and characterized snippets from news reports, and probably even from MSNBC's website itself.

More to the point, outfits like MSNBC like to casually call their poll respondents 'likely voters', dropping the phrase well after one has long forgotten the what the fine print below the poll results says.

Does the US Federal Reserve system fall underneath the Texas Rangers in terms of reporting?

Oddly enough, the New York Times has an editorial today asking its reader(s) to not blame the New Deal programs of the 1930's for the regulatory "failure" of the current financial problems in the US. Fine, outside of a very few aged Eleanor Roosevelt devotees and some Abraham Lincoln Brigade types, not many people in the US really give a wit about the New Deal. Most probably assume the New Deal is the latest quiz show hosted by cutting-edge comedian Howie Mandel.

Regardless, the NYT, in their most humble opinion, of course lays the blame at the feet of George W. Bush. The evidence laid out is damning to say the least:

Under a law passed in 1994, for example, the Federal Reserve was obligated to regulate banks and nonbank lenders to curb unfair, deceptive and predatory lending.

In 1995, Congress passed a law that restricted the ability of investors to sue companies, securities firms and accounting firms for misstatements and pie-in-the-sky projections.

Then, in 1999, Congress dismantled the Glass- Steagall Act, a pillar of the New Deal, which separated commercial and investment banking.

But perhaps no deregulatory effort had more catastrophic effect than the 2000 law that explicitly excluded derivatives, including those credit default swaps, from regulation under the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936.

The waning money shot linking it all together:

Indeed, it was in the Bush years that antiregulation and deregulation found full expression, fueled by an ideology that markets know best, government
hampers markets, and problems will magically fix themselves.

This blog is certainly open to being corrected, but didn't George W. Bush take the oath of office in 2001 after stealing the election from Al Gore. At least that is the last meme we received. Is there a new take on that election that we do not know about?

So, this whole Texas Rangers thing back in the 1990's was all a ruse by W? He was actually directing the Chairman of the Fed to ignore legislation obligating it to regulate banks and nonbank lenders to curb unfair, deceptive and predatory lending? We thought he spent the whole time getting shit-faced. Whats that, replaced by another meme.

Is there a another meme we missed having Bush return to evil genius status? What happend to the "stupid chimp" meme? Maybe we should visit the US more often.

Therefore it MUST Always be About Hijacked Plane Attacks, You See...

Yet another mindless inversion of reality by Plantu. The Trade Center Towers are again being attacked by something American. Also found scattered through out his pieta of hatred is a flat image of Barack Obama who seems unfamiliar to him, but lets him channel some hypocrisy or another, a John McCain whose crime is being American, and a depiction of George Bush pitching a fit, something Plantu or any other observer has ever seen him do.

When is the Concept of an Overbearing Theocracy Okay?

When you're a western leftist, in Iran, but otherwise only when they can shove it doen your throat.

They said it could run afoul of state ethics laws banning on-the-job political activity, as well as university policy.

Could? Never mind the fact that it's a state university as well, and some of this chaplain's fellow travellers have bumper stickers asking "Who Would Jesus Kill".

- With thanks to alert reader Arf

Hope-o-cracy: His Heart May Be in the Right Place…But His Head Ain't…

(Fist bump to Arf)

A weekend ponder

Why is it that one major hit of the skids in the US of a more capitalistic system immediately engenders howls of "capitalism is dead", "laissez-faire is over", "markets have failed" and "we need a new economic system, NOW!"?

Our more socialistic brothers and sisters have been on the skids for years, yet no vitriolic banshee calls for scrapping that system. If anything, calls for an even deeper version of socialism.

Why is that?

In a word, Next

While not 100 percent, the bug looks set to jump the Atlantique:

What is more, about $1.4 trillion of bank debt falls due in Europe this year and next, just as bondholders have received their first big blow of the crisis thanks to Lehman’s demise. Worries about how HBOS, a British bank, would roll over its wholesale obligations forced it into the arms of Lloyds TSB on September 17th. Other banks, notably in Spain, Iceland and Scandinavia, are even more dependent on the wholesale markets. The ECB plans to impose stricter conditions on its lending in February but that will be difficult while confidence remain so low. Mr Paulson may yet have some imitators across the pond.

Of course, Europe will do this without an underlying "real" economy to fall back upon and with the required assent of at least 15 (Eurozone) if not the full 27 member states in order to proceed on the scale required. That trick may make the process of the Democrats and Republicans look lightening fast and hyper-cordial. Juncker is no doubt loading up on the smokes.

Readers of this blog will note a sliver of a silver lining should this happen: Spain is experienceing high inflation, low productivity, and a housing bubble deflate. The Zapatero pip is set to squeak.

The Russian State Agrees with SuperFrenchie: The Simpsons Are a Monstrously Scandalous Product

A Moscow court has decreed that the cartoons that a Russian TV channel is showing, such as South Park and the Simpsons, are subversive, writes Marie Jégo in Le Monde — thus (insofar as SuperFrenchy can be said to be representative of les Français) the Russians seem to agree with the French.

…le futur de [la chaîne] 2×2 semble compromis. "Il faut remplacer ces émissions sordides par des programmes éducatifs. Le respect des valeurs familiales, le goût du sport et le patriotisme, voilà ce que nous devons encourager chez les jeunes", a décrété mardi Pavel Zyrianov, 25 ans, député de la Douma.

It is good to know the kind of material that viewers in Russia and America should be barred from seeing…

Crimes in the Name of Honor and Tradition

Frédéric Bobin has a couple of articles in Le Monde about the tradition of killing or disfiguring women in certain parts of the world…

Statism 3:16

Always amusing when the statists pick up their Bible (that of the paleo-God variety) and start thumping away. Of course, in reality it is just another smug tool in the governmentalist tool-box to use in advancing the agenda.

One wonders if this parable will make it into the "official" canon once the whole story is written. From 1999:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

....

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

Of course there was a voice in the wilderness who spoke up at the time, no doubt he was dragooned as a "neo-con":

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Perhaps this particular tale can be filed under "Warm destinations and the well-designed roads which help one get there".

The problem, folks, as John McCain and I and you all know, isn’t too little government interference in our financial markets. It’s too much

Laura Hollis writes An Open Letter to John McCain and Sarah Palin…

That Lecturesome Gravitas was always just Fluff Anyway

Behind the fake revolutionary fantasies that so many Germans carry around, it doesn't amount to much. Bragelina... the Baader-Meinhof Gang... same thing.

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex has been selected to be Germany's entry for best foreign language film at next year's academy awards ceremony. I guess they had to wait for the memory of films with discernable weight, like href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-8Ik27_6Uw"target="_blank">Munich
to fade before they released it. Strange, isn't it that the old European memory problem just keeps coming up.

:(

Our Dickensian Present and Its' New Fagans

No, it isn't the newest European concept of a sitcom, it's about as interesting as thier lives get right now. From RTL this past Friday:

These heinous acts took place last Monday in Brussels, rue Blaes, around 7 in the evening. A homeless man was grievously beaten up with by a Muslim father and son. The father started screaming at him that he had "no right to drink during Ramadan," before attacking him, then joined by his son who was guilty of the worst acts of violence.

Serge, the homeless man in question was actually in the process of drinking a beer.

Rashid's son, 21, was arrested and placed under arrest for assault and battery resulting in an inability to go to work, as the prosecution presented the facts. In explanation to the judge, both fanatics have explained that they feel their aggression was the self-defense! Meanwhile, Serge is still hospitalized with a sever wound in his leg that prevents him from walking. He lost 2 liters of blood and can not afford to rent crutches.

Unusual, you think? No way, Jose. That incredibly origonal notion that appeasing those who hate you will trickle down to the culture, that enlightened European act of trying to come together by trying to reason with the unreasonable while prone just isn't cutting the mustard:

Government-Appointed Kuwaiti Preacher: Europeans Are Immoral, Unclean, and Cowardly

The Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan recently published an article by its columnist Sheikh Nabil Al-'Awadhi, who is a government-appointed preacher at a Kuwaiti mosque and in the past had a television show called "An Hour of Sincerity" on Kuwaiti Al-Rai TV. In the article, titled "The Qualities of the European," Al-'Awadhi states that Europeans are disciplined and law-abiding only because they fear punishment; that they are unclean, since they "only wash when absolutely necessary"; and that they are selfish, cowardly and miserly. It should be noted that in August 2006, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowments suspended Al-'Awadhi from his post as preacher for three months, after he gave a Friday sermon inciting to jihad and calling for harming Jews.

Can you feel the love? Bill Whittle sure can:

A few years before Tolkien put pen to paper, an event took place that a man of his education would have undoubtedly been aware. On February 9th, 1933, the ruling elite of the world’s great Civilization held a debate in the Oxford Union. With thunderclouds growing dark across the English Channel, at a time when resolute action could still have averted the worst catastrophe the world has ever known, these elites resolved that “This House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.”

The Resolution passed by a vote of 275 to 153. Needless to say, this vote did not avert the fight. It guaranteed it.

Count Serge among it's victims.

Popping Greenies, a continuation

Yes, shock horror, film at eleven and all that jazz. More green hypocrisy:

People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.

According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.

As Tim Worstall rightly points out:

If they really had the courage of their convictions they’d not be taking those long flights. The rest is just a fashion statement.

Were it only that the Roles were Reversed...

Europe's much trumpeted Large Hadron Collider is having some rather serious sounding problems.

The collider was officially launched on September 10 when the first particle beam was successfully sent around the full circuit. However, it hit a major glitch last week when a mechanical failure triggered a helium leak and forced a shutdown for what was initially reported to be at least two months.
Now it looks like the investigation and repairs won't be finished in time to restart the LHC before CERN's obligatory winter maintenance period, pushing the restart date back to early spring 2009, officials said.

Faulty wiring, mechanical failures.... Were the roles reversed, and the apparatus in the United States, the news would come to be met with little other than abuse and bloviated extended discourse plausiting theories about American science descending into mediocrity, cultural this and that, and huge amounts of concern feigning sincerity. On the other hand, we only know that it Beagled because it was presented to the public with too much flair to otherwise conceal, especially given that they commissioned a vapidly atmospheric and flattering musical theme by Blur and carried as part of its' payload a creation of hack stunt-artist Damian Hirst.

Why Waste Your Energy on Something Real?

To hell with the global banking system. What matters to Europeans is the opportunity to ridicule.

From the left:

Expressing nostalgia for "the good old days when bankers jumped out of windows," Aeschimann condemned as "extortion" the rescue of U.S. corporate giants by the very state that free-marketeers resent.

Never mind a half century of collective unionized extortion that comes at the expense of the whole population, or the dirigisme of what they try to call Capitalism, underlying is a set of paranoid delusions and lack of memory. While the commentary on the BBC World Service and Radio 4 simplistically ask "is this the failure of capitalism", as if the same observers were intelligent enough to differentiate it from anything else, they forget that the COMECON satellites in the Soviet orbit experienced economic downturns all the time. What they couldn't do well at all was take advantage of the upturns in the economy enough to actually improve medical care, life prospects, or anything else to the degree one could in capitalist market environments or even the less efficient partially socialized areas.

And to the right:

"Greenspan was considered a master," Tremonti declared. "Now we must ask ourselves whether he is not, after [Osama] bin Laden, the man who hurt America the most. . . . It is clear that what is happening is a disease. It is not the failure of a bank, but the failure of a system. Until a few days ago, very few were willing to realize the intensity and the dramatic nature of the crisis."

Especially all of those people in the entire business press who have been writing about the potential of a banking crisis without quite knowing what shape it would take for the past 18 months.

But the purpose of the message is clear. If there is a downturn, in lieu of looking at the causes or measures to correct it, there has to be a straw man to blame. Enter the all purpose US. If it didn't exist, the euro-ass-clown commentariat would have invented it.

But fear accompanied gloating. The crisis threatens to worsen woes -- inflation, unemployment, weak growth -- of regional powerhouses including Britain, Spain and Italy. Joaquin Almunia, an ideologically moderate Spanish Socialist who is the European Union's economic commissioner, offered a simple analysis.

Deep wisdom there in that simple analysis. In fact that might be the only analysis you will get, after showing the same weaknesses in Europe for the past year that the US has shown. But let's not bother ourselves with anything like that, after all, the US'[ unemployment rate in a recession is still 2 points lower than Germany in what it liked to call its' recent boom.

No, when in doubt, you need the reflection of that great coterie of exhaulted experts that you can't seriously question, a junta of economic nattering such as the likes of those the LA Times sought out and found... And what greater expertise can you find than a cell-phone sales-lump:

"And I'm furious when I see the pictures of Americans who thought they were on the sunny side of life and now have lost their homes and have to live in their cars," Evers said. "I definitely do not feel sorry for the bankers who lost their jobs in the last couple of days. I can't believe that a country like the U.S.A. could have been so careless on a money issue!"

"I was taught that the U.S.A. is the motherland of moneymaking," she added. "And now all I can see is a herd of headless chickens running around on Wall Street."

This in a country where they completely banned short selling, so that no-one will ever be able to do anything is an asset starts to evaporate. There won't be any reason to run around like a headless chicken, nor will there be the opportunity to.

Of course they are serious

Kos opines, either disingenuously or he just missed the memo - I am thinking the latter, about the Democratic party in the US clamoring to bail-out their previously stated enemies on Wall Street:

Yet bizarrely, Democrats are rushing headlong into those boondoggle, flailing their arms in blind panic at the behest of the Bush Administration, all for a proposal that will dump a trillion dollar budget deficit on Obama's lap before he's spent a single dime on anything else.

The answer to "why?" the Democrats in congress are rushing headlong into this boondoggle is found in today's column from Tony Juniper (relevant emphasis added):

In the present crisis, however, there is a huge opportunity to do things differently, through governments taking control of the economy and by spending money – large amounts of it – to stimulate economic activity, cut our reliance on imported fossil fuels and slash climate-changing emissions. By spending now to build a low-carbon economy, we could generate a new army of highly skilled green-collar workers, building new power infrastructure, transport networks and super efficient buildings.

What the Democrats in general, and the statist left in particular, see in this crisis is opportunity. An opportunity to reach deeper and farther than ever thought possible into the money-making machine of the private sector. This is a chance to control private economic activity, steer business and commerce to the approved lefty groups (individuals, businesses, and of course ... NGOs), push the income equality mantra, push the green mantra, patronage, (insert your own socialist totem here).

Now, the left may not "get" all they want in this initial round of the big grab going on/planned. But, the nose will be under/in the tent. Others of Juniper's ilk are already circling the very same lamp-post and giving it a good scratch. The left smells the blood and they want their piece of the action. Do note, any "concessions" received by the left will come as they naturally do, no work/effort just bottom feeding on the misery (and taxes) of others.

Now, the folks on Wall Street have nobody but themselves to blame for being put into this position. If you cry "free people and free markets" and then run to the safety and comfort of the governmental teet once you hit the wall, tough luck. You want taxpayer monies to pull your bacon out of the fire, you get the joy of dealing with the politically machinated strings which come along with the cash.

Enjoy, the rest of us certainly will not be.

The scope of Obama's planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is breathtaking; he sounds as if America's military is the enemy

Islamic terrorists have attacked a hotel and a U.S. embassy in the span of two weeks. Russia is invading American allies and sending warships to our hemisphere. What would Obama do? Gut the military.

Investor's Business Daily continues:

That's right, the Democrat choice for commander in chief wants to not only slash military spending but dismantle our nuclear arsenal — all so he can pay for his massive new welfare programs.

Didn't hear that in his acceptance speech in Denver? That's because he knows better than to make such an anti-military plan widely known. But he made the little-noticed pledge just before the Iowa caucus to a left-wing pacifist group that seeks to reallocate defense dollars to welfare programs. The lobbying group, Caucus for Priorities, was so impressed by Obama's anti-military offering that it steered its 10,000 devotees his way.

In a 132-word videotaped pledge … Obama agreed to hollow out the military by slashing conventional and nuclear weapons. The scope of his planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is breathtaking. He sounds as if the military is the enemy, not the bad guys it's fighting.

Investor's Business Daily (which adds that "Palin's reception of Uribe is a far more serious statement than Obama's visits to the tourist spots of Europe that he chalked up as foreign policy experience") has the transcript…

Obama seems oblivious to the threat from Islamic extremism. During his 4,350-word acceptance speech in Denver, he couldn't summon enough spit even to utter the phrase a single time.

Getting Their "Roots" Done

Jawa Report reveals just who we're talking about when the left talks about the realness of their "grass roots" campaigns being some sort of proletarian uprising against anything. It's fake, and it's fully employed to scurry around election rules and libel laws.

Those smears included false allegations that she belonged to a secessionist political party and that she has radical anti-American views.
Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure.

It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign.

As it is, his holiness the Obama is not the candidate of the post-anything age. He was down in Florida scaring old people, has twice the funding of the Republicans thanks to the corporate shakedown circuit in spite of presenting the illusion that he needs your $12 to oppose corporate America, and is sure to permit the engineering for further fake public dramas.

PR FIRM BEHIND THE VIDEO?
The YouTube poster who uploaded the video did so under the account name "eswinner". He names his channel "AGroupofConcernedAmericans". The goal of his channel, says "eswinner", is:

Offering a fair and unbiased view towards life and politics...
I try to give an unbiased account of all things American.
The video was uploaded four times under the "eswinner" account, using different titles for each video. The video was also uploaded to Google Video on the same day and with the same title.
That Picasa page of "eswinner" is used by an "Ethan" advertising on Craig's List that he will rent out his yacht to interested parties. But "Ethan" also leaves his e-mail account: ewinner@winnr.com.
And just what is winnr.com? An alternate dns designation for Winner & Associates. A firm that employs one Ethan S. Winner.
Hundreds of pictures on the Picassa page belonging to "eswinner" show that the page belongs to the same Ethan S. Winner that is employed by the public relations firm of Winner & Associates. Other instances of an "eswinner" or "ewinner" posting on the internet are found sprinkled here and there. All of those postings seem to fit the profile of Ethan S. Winner and suggest that eswinner and Ethan Winner are one and the same.

Some might do this partly for love, and partly for money. More likely the love was a rationalization of the money.
Either way, the reasoning at some point that the skill to manipulate the public's views by going deep under the radar will eventually be rationalized into a ethic which permits one to think that taking care of numero uno is as important for the cause as the cause itself. Gotta be refreshed, right?

These people are professional guns for hire. Looking at their portfolio makes that clear. And they only work for big clients. The kind of clients that pay big bucks. The kind of people hired by Exxon to convince people that the effects of the Valdez spill were over. The kind of people hired to help push through oil fields in Chad and Cameroon or help companies respond to boycott threats over the Beijing Olympics.
The kind of people who would have an in-house attorney to handle PR for Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. And get them a movie deal.
Also the kind of people hired by the European Union to help sell the new EU treaty. Who was the lead in that effort? Ethan S. Winner.

Not bad for a guy outdoing Goebbels.

Here's my prediction. They will start borrowing from the Ségolène Royal imprint as best they can. About two weeks before election day, someone who doesn't seem too close to the Obama campaign will make a tacit threat to the public and make the suggestion that a Obama loss might lead to public unrest. Someone in the press will find a reason to play old tapes of the Rodney King riots with the implication of a narrative speciously spun around catchphrases like 'lack of national unity' and the usual instruments formerly used by revolutionaries when people actually pay attention when they would throw spaghetti at the wall.
And somehow the threat of violence will be painted over nicely. The subtext is to use an emotionally trained response from the past to pry open skepticism that people might have about their reasoned choices.

"Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice," Royal told RTL radio.
"It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country (if he won)," she said.
Pressed on whether there would be actual violence, Royal said: "I think so, I think so," referring specifically to France's volatile suburbs hit by widespread rioting in 2005.

The goal is to get the though through peoples' heads that a choice for what seems mainstream gets a negative stroke. Behold the BITE model at work using a conduit identified by every underperforming academic's hero, Marshall McCluhan decades ago – a time the left's world view seems to idolize and forever look back to.

They're Popping the Wrong Kind of Greenies

So do you really want to know what a hypocrite looks like?

The program, set up by the DNC Host Committee through the Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau and rolled out about a week before the convention started, raised a total of $18.34 worth of Canary Tags, offsetting 0.9 tons of carbon emissions.

Remember, it's all because they (heart) the earth.

Trouble in Paradise

A nation weeps. All we can say is that all is not well in Jellystone Park.

Meanwhile, gathering more dust than attention, is this kind of Yada yada yada that comes up when a European concludes that discovering his own toe-cheese instantly rises to the level of a social injustice.

Gosh, who knew

While waiting for delivery of the daily bowl of gruel, one notices this:

A British government minister attacked Republican US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as "horrendous" at the Labour Party conference on Saturday.

The outburst from Communities Secretary Hazel Blears threatens to undermine Prime Minister Gordon Brown's determination for the British government to maintain a neutral position in the US presidential election.

Speaking at a fringe meeting of the centre-left party during its annual party conference in Manchester, Blears said Palin was capitalising on people's disillusionment with regular politics.

"I just think there is so much anti-politics -- not just in this country but around the world," Blears said.

"One of the reasons why Sarah Palin has been such a phenomenon is because she's anti-politics, anti-Washington.

"Her politics are horrendous, but actually she's struck a chord with people -- 'I'm a maverick, I'm not part of those powerful people' -- and people identified with that."

Gee, why do you think she has struck a chord? Gee, why do you think people have identified with that message? Gee, should the proles be interested in supporting candidates who only deepen our already deep disillusionment with "regular" politics?

Professional politicians have done such a fabulous job in both Westminster and Washington, as a voting and tax-paying class we really should be more grateful.

Poison Chalice

Working under the rules of business as ususal, this news is not of any particular interest:

Up to 10,000 staff at the New York office of the bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers will share a bonus pool set aside for them that is worth $2.5bn (£1.4bn)...

However, there is now a rather large problem at play. Given that the financial sector is set to lock on hard to the teets of various governmental schemes there is a new set of rules in place. It is one thing, and quite properly so, to let firms determine the pay and remuneration in a truly free-market system. But, when any firm or industry runs howling into the arms of governmental "care" the rules change. No longer are these firms using monies freely given and freely exchanged by the free market. Using governmental funds which are obtained via force from the taxpayer comes with quite very long and tangled strings.

Those claiming the financial markets have "failed" could not be any further from reality. The markets have in fact worked perfectly. The markets discovered these massive problems in the financial sector and acted swiftly and efficiently, as should be the case. Now that governmentalism is entering the market-place at a 90 degree angle, those involved will be playing by the hamstrung, inefficient, and political rules which marr reality on a daily basis.

Not only will the taxpayer be on the hoof for the billions directly related to the financial sector "help" being provided by governments, at least in the US the taxpayer will undoubtedly get to experience the extreme pleasure of paying for even more "social justice" ornaments being hung on the bail-out Christmas tree:

Still, competing interests were already complicating the negotiations, as Democrats pushed for assistance for distressed homeowners and for oversight authority of the bailout program.

US taxpayers should be giving a hearty thanks to the "smartest" guys in the room.

(Update: Start picking your poison)

A post about not too much

Do not doubt, 7.5 kilometers paved with good intentions. Courtesy of the leisure class:

More than 10,000 marched in the Swedish city of Malmoe on Saturday in a demonstration against the excesses of globalisation, organised as part of the European Social Forum being held there.

The marchers, many carrying banners, set off from the suburb of Rosengaard at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT) accompanied by several marching bands, in what was one of the biggest organised in Sweden.

"We are all here because we have a common message," Thor Rutgersson, a 25-year-old teacher told AFP.

"We want better conditions for workers, for students and more cooperation to fight poverty in Europe," he added.

The march included delegations from all over Europe, including trade unionists and students.

"It is important that the countries from eastern Europe are here today," said Piotr Ostrowsky of the Polish confederation of trade unions, the OPZZ.

Saturday's march extended 7.5 kilometres (nearly five miles) and finished in the city centre without incident. A large police presence had been on stand-by on the fringes of the route.

On Friday, about 100 people threw rocks at police and broke windows in the city centre at the tail end of a demonstration organised by a group called Reclaim the Streets, which had attracted some 700 participants.

The fifth European Social Forum began Thursday and wraps up on Sunday.

France loves blacks — when they are American (i.e., foreign) blacks and not French blacks

In an interview with Le Monde's Jean Birnbaum and Benoît Hopquin (who still can't spell the first name of Jesse Jackson), Louis-Georges Tin (Maître de conférences à l'IUFM d'Orléans, porte-parole du Conseil représentatif des associations noires (CRAN)) suggests that France loves blacks — when the blacks are American (i.e., foreign) blacks, that is, and a bit less when the blacks are French (domestic) blacks…

D'une manière générale, en France, on aime beaucoup les Noirs d'Amérique... Si vous prenez un discours de Barack Obama, de Martin Luther King ou de Jessie Jackson, et que vous le montrez à un Français, il le jugera formidable. Si vous lui dites qu'il a été prononcé par un Noir français, il vous dira : "Attention au communautarisme !" En France, critiquer le racisme des autres, on sait faire, surtout s'il s'agit des Américains. Mais balayer devant sa porte, c'est plus difficile.

Adventures in Shortdom

Yes, those terrible, terrible short-sellers who do nothing but ruin the financial markets with their bottom-feeding. You know, short-sellers like the guys who exposed the Enron scam:

In January 2001, we began contacting a number of analysts at various Wall Street firms with whom we did business and invited them to our offices to discuss Enron. Over the next few months a number of them accepted our invitation and met with us to discuss Enron and its valuation. We were struck by how many of them conceded that there was no way to analyze Enron, but that investing in Enron was instead a "trust me" story. One analyst, while admitting that Enron was a "black box" regarding profits, said that, as long as Enron delivered, who was he to argue! It was clear to us that most of these analysts were hopelessly conflicted over the investment banking and advisory fees that Enron was paying to their firms. We took their "buy" recommendations, both current and future, with a very large grain of salt!

Holding firms accountable via the markets. Can't have any of that now, can we. No worries though, the quick and nimble monolith of governmentalism will certainly save the day.

The Russian Foe Whom Numbers of French Deride as the "Warmonger", the "Comic Doctor Strangelove", "Parrot of the Caucasus"

Le Monde's Piotr Smolar has an interview with Mikheïl Saakachvili. Needless to say, Le Monde's readers opine (sic) that Georgia's president is an American poodle; that he is a puppet; that he is "the Caucasian parrot"; that he is a liar; that he is dangerous; that he is a warmonger; that he is the equivalent of Dugashvili (Stalin); that he is unstable; that he suffers from mental trouble; and that he is a "comic Dr. Strangelove". That it is in Europe's interest that Russia remain a great power. And that "Medvedev et Poutine ne sont pas de vrais démocrates, mais eux, au moins, savent garder leur sang-froid !" All of which leads a rare reader (by the name of Raboliot) to state:

A lire les commentaires haineux à l'encontre de Saakachvili sur ce forum, je constate que le service communication de l'ambassade d'URSS, pardon de Russie, à mis ses plus brillants sujets derrière leur PC...C'est vrai que le problème d'une démocratie à leurs frontières est abominable et Annonciateur de catastrophes.. Il faut donc discréditer Saakachvili : C'est un suppôt des USA, un "cadavre politique" "un malade" on ressort les vieilles rengaines apprises dans les écoles du KGB.

Xavier adds that

J'ai l'impression de voir dans la plupart des commentaires postés ici qu'une mascarade de la propagande "soviétique". Le mieux pour ceux qui tentent de décrédibiliser la Géorgie étant tout simplement de faire passer son président pour fou, voire mieux de le traiter de "connard", on évite ainsi bien facilement le débat et la vérité qui se trame actuellement.Car qui est le plus fou des deux? celui qui recherche l'intégrité de son territoire ou bien celui qui l'étend?

While Ilias points out that

Être pro-Poutin par anti-américanisme aveugle c est comme être pro-Hitler par anti-anglisme a la question tchécoslovaque en 1938.

Choices from the Left: Jackboot or Birkenstock

It is quite difficult to know how many times one should keep pointing out the obvious. When it comes to the MSM it seems the message never sinks in when it comes to the differences among the various statists looking to run our lives. What should be obvious to even the casual observer is lost on our betters in the media. As an example:

Nestled in the vineyards and rolling uplands east of Vienna, the town of Neusiedl am See is celebrated for its wine taverns, fine fish restaurants and water sports. Geraniums peak from window boxes; the cobblestone streets are meticulously swept clean each morning. The only thing the casual visitor might find mildly unnerving is the squawk of storks from their huge nests on the old town's chimney tops.

But for Austrian far-right politician Heinz-Christian Strache, Neusiedl am See is ripe for revolution.

Now, what is exactly "far-right" about Mr. Strache? What the media fails to notice about the "blood and soil" branch of the statist tree is what these, in reality, "far-left" statists stand for:

- Against economic globalisation
- Deep state control over all facets of an individual's life
- Deep state control over all aspects of societal life
- Heavy state influence over economic matters
- Heavy state influence over individual matters
- Heavy state care of the individual from cradle-to-grave
- Against the free flow of individuals (ie. anti-immigration)

With the exception of last highly noxious item, what differentiates these "far-right" blood-and-soilers from the others on the far-left statist tree, nothing but a matter of degree. As Erik Svane far more lucidly quoted Jonah Goldberg:

Fascism, at its core, is the view that every nook and cranny of society should work together in spiritual union toward the same goals overseen by the state. "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State," is how Mussolini defined it. Mussolini coined the word "totalitarian" to describe not a tyrannical society but a humane one in which everyone is taken care of and contributes equally. It was an organic concept in which every class, every individual, was part of the larger whole.

Yet the media continues to miss the boat on the far-right-far-leftism:

This produces some jarring juxtapositions. Though he has built his career on dire warnings about the dangers of foreigners, Strache poses on his website as Che Guevara, donning the rebel's trademark beret and highlighting the last three letters of his name for anyone who misses the point. He praises Venezuela's left-wing demagogue Hugo Chavez and, in his campaign rap "Viva HC!", chants "Yes-We-Can" (in English), a reference to the campaign slogan of Barack Obama. That's an odd choice given that Strache is urging that some African immigrants be deported. "Austria! First!" he sings, backed by an unsettling crowd chant. "Our Homeland! Our people! Our culture! Our language! Is what I stand for, HC Strache!"

There is nothing jarring or juxtaposed, the goals of all mentioned are identical: Deeper state integration and control into the life of every individual. The only difference is whether you prefer a shiny leather jackboot stamping on your face forever -or- a moldy tattered Birkenstock.

The judges and the divorce lawyers are corrupt, inefficient, lazy, stupid; the judges are like pit bosses in Vegas casinos

I don't care if the judges and the lawyers die of heart attacks in the process of getting their job done

Alec Baldwin tells ABC News.

They are corrupt, inefficient, lazy, stupid -- they're the most God-awful people.

Baldwin believes that many family court lawyers and their manipulations and delays make the child custody duel much worse than it needs to be.

The judges are like pit bosses in Vegas casinos. Their job is to make sure everybody stays at the table and keeps gambling.

Update: Interview on Larry King Live

Obama the Good, Bush the Bad, and McCain the Ugly

As they never tire telling us, the French are always masters of nuance as well as the champions in always finding just the exact literary simile that fits. This was proven again tonight, when France 2 (!) broadcast a news item (!) on political TV ads in America, comparing leading politicians to the characters of a… spaghetti western (!?!)

Using the emblematic characters of Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the entirely serious-minded (sic), profound (sic), and thoughtful (sic) news channel proceeds to tell viewers that political ads in America are misleading and even totally false, whether it's the ad of Obama — compared to The Good — depicting John McCain saying America's economy is sound or the ad of John McCain — compared to the Ugly — stating that Obama wanted sex ed in kindergarten before toddlers could even read…

Who, then, is the Bad — known in the French title as the Crook or the Gangster? (In French, as in Italian, the order of the title is The Good, the Ugly, the Bad.) France 2 (on whose website, incidentally, a poll shows 52% of respondents wanting French troops out of Afghanistan — as opposed to 40% in favor of them staying) mentions the Swift Boat ad of four years ago — "a total lie" against John Kerry — which allowed for the victory of… (you got it) the Crook…

The only logical end game for socialized medicine

Europe is just like slow death, and the only time those people talk about national duty is when they talk about putting the elderly down like rabid dogs.

Looks like the pilot isn't going to be picked up...

Given the mass hysteria (real wrath of God stuff) kicked-up by those financial markets doing what they are actually designed to do, a simple query....

The anti-capitalism scribblers on the left, along with their even more extreme trogladyte minions further out on the fringe left where the really radical nose-picking goes on, have busily been writing the epitaph for capitalism, all based upon a few days of trading here and there

Now that those markets are making the same type of move, to the positive side, will the very same noxious brew of collectivists, statists, leftists, dog-washers, you name it, reassess their opinions?

If the markets continue to self-correct in a positive fashion will it be noted on the left? Of course, the question presumes the left is coming from the vantage point of facts and reality and not just using yet another current event to bang the ideological bongos for more utopianism, more socialism, and more sloganeering against the individual.

As an aside, over the past week one has been deluged with reportage about the "failing" financial markets hurting the little guys (Jean/Joe six-pack). Oddly it is hard to recall hearing from the very same voices how previous rising financial markets benefitted the very same Jean/Joe. If moves in financial markets can hurt, they can also help. Of course when it comes to the statist left, all "narratives" are one-way: theirs.

That would be a neat trick. How does it work?

Not knowing the meaning of words tends to lead one to make silly comments:

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. In a new TV ad that repeats widely debunked claims about the Democratic tax plan, the Republican campaign calls Obama's tax increases "painful."

Whether an individual coughs up $Zero or $Zillions, they have the ability to be just as "patriotic" as the other. What is interesting is this plan by Senator Obama. The number most often heard is that "95% of Americans" will receive a tax-cut under the Senator's plan. How does that work?

According to the IRS the top 50% of all earners in the US pay 96.93% of all income taxes. Conversely, the bottom 50% of earners pay 3.07% of all income taxes.

The bottom 50% pay basically no income taxes. How will the "95% of Americans" number be reached? The only alternative for an individual to receive a tax-cut would be via lowering payroll taxes, for some. That would be good and bad. The good, we can finally stop hearing the incessant garbage from the left about how payroll taxes are (cue angels playing melodious harps in the background) a sacred inter-generational covenant among all Americans which is a burden happily, equally, and eagerly borne by all (cut angels playing melodious harps in the background). The bad, the successful among the Americans will have yet another financial burden to carry while others get a free-ride.

So how will that work?

La Baf Tries to Hold an Auction at the Jeff Koons Exhibit in the Versailles Château's Gallerie des Miroirs

What with Jeff Koons a millionaire from the sale of his plastic art, two Koons wannabes (Arthur Koons and Erik Koons of La Baf) decide to strike it rich by holding an auction of their blow-up toys at the Château de Versailles as well.

Gonflage à l'exposition Koons du Chateau de Versailles
envoyé par Labaf

Hélas! Things go terribly wrong when a controversy rises over whose Koons sculpture is the (most?) real one and a heated exchange breaks out in the Gallerie des Miroirs that continues into the Cour de Marbre.















Update: La Baf was mentioned in the February 2009 issue (# 129) of Technikart…

One more hack journalmalist theorizes away the fact that Jews are hunted down in the streets of Paris

It's not at all what it appears to be. Everyone is behaving splendidly. Really.

That's Funny, I Though it was the Other Way Around

Normally it's missing a few marbles that makes people into vegetarians, and least of the identity politics variety.

Do Obama's Vision and Values Include Making Fun of Veterans' Wounds and Scars?

It's one thing (one which is bad enough), as Jonah Goldberg points out, that Barack Obama and his campaign staff do not realize that

One reason McCain is not versed in the mechanical details of sending e-mail and typing on a keyboard is that the North Vietnamese broke his fingers and shattered both of his arms. As Forbes, Slate and the Boston Globe reported in 2000, McCain's injuries make using a keyboard painfully laborious.

(Jonah Goldberg goes on to ask: "what does it say about his supposedly 'cybersavvy' staffers that they don't know how to conduct a five-minute Google search?", adding that "by this logic [incidentally], Obama is even less qualified to be commander in chief because, unlike McCain, Obama has never fired a gun, flown a plane or led men during wartime.")

It's another thing, as Christopher Cook points out, that Barack Obama seems to intentionally mock McCain's war wounds (at 12:20 in the video).

At a moment when describing a McCain ad, Obama adds a somatic gesture to create an image of John McCain. That gesture involves changing his stance and arm position to imitate the way McCain stands—a stance the Senator developed as a result of the injuries he suffered while he was a "guest" at the Hanoi Hilton.

…The gesture was clearly an imitation of McCain—the context makes that plain. Obama makes no other such bodily gestures EXCEPT when he's creating a picture of McCain in the windmill commercial.

Obama may not have been directly saying "ha, ha, you got your arms broken and a bayonet plunged into your groin and I didn't." It doesn't matter. His way of imitating John McCain is by imitating the man's physical stance.

Barack Obama is a puerile, emotionally under-developed little man. It's appalling to think that he could be this close to the presidency.

And by the way… Let's not even go into the subject about what this says about the left's alleged undying respect for servicemen and veterans…

Jeff Koons Blows Up the Château de Versailles

America has invaded the gilded chambers and sculptured gardens of the Château de Versailles in the form of a much-debated exhibition by the American superstar artist Jeff Koons

writes Elaine Sciolino in the New York Times.

“I’m thrilled with the totality of the whole experience,” he said Wednesday as he posed for photographers in the palace gardens in front of “Split-Rocker,” his 11-ton stainless-steel sculpture covered in 90,000 live flowers and plants. “It’s so profound — the high point of my artistic life.”

Not everyone here was as pleased by the installation. Several dozen people demonstrated outside the palace gates early Wednesday, a protest organized by the National Union of Writers of France, a little-known, right-wing group dedicated to artistic purity in France.

Protests?! Against the authorities and the state?! Maybe this ought to be a job for La Baf as well…

The exhibition “strikes at the heart of a civilization” and “is an outrage to Marie Antoinette,” said Arnaud-Aaron Upinsky, the group’s chairman.

He has called the exhibition “a truly sullying of the most sacred aspects of our heritage and identity,” and in an open letter in July to the minister of culture, Christine Albanel, he demanded that the exhibit be canceled.

…Some visitors to the museum seemed unsettled by the presence of Mr. Koons’s work in the grand 17th-century edifice, with its marble walls, ceiling paintings, marble sculptures, chandeliers and more than 350 mirrors.

Jumko Jaim, a homemaker from Tokyo on her first trip to Paris, called herself shocked at the sight of the porcelainlike ceramic “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” in the center of the Venus Salon.

“This object doesn’t suit the beauty of the décor,” Ms. Jaim said. “It spoils it. There’s so much nice modern art in the world. Why this?”

…“I paid to see all of Versailles,” said Sylvie Guérin, an administrative technician from Montreal. “I didn’t come here to see a red lobster that I can buy in a gas station in Quebec to go in my pool.”

If Jeff Koons can sell a red lobster from a Québec gas station to go in the pool for 12 million Euros, maybe plain individuals (such as La Baf members) ought to bring their own inflatable toys to the Château de Versailles to sell for 12 million Euros as well…

Go Ahead, Question His Patriotism

If you've felt bad about questioning Obama's honor and his sense of obligation to his fellow citizens were he to be president, don't:

While campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

“Global citizen Obama's” effort had two purposes:

1) to create something over which to maintain antagonism and righteous indignation over
2) To give him a way to appear to sweep in and look like a saviour, when he was more than willing to demand an American withdrawal from Iraq when it would have obviously caused the place to descend irreversibly into an abyss.

Case in point

Often times those individuals not on the barking left, the real lamp-post scratching left, try to engage leftie howlers in discussion on issues, rarely with any success. Based entirely on irrationality and hyper-emotive sloganeering, the "ideas" of the howling left are impossibly wrapped-up in statism and socialism to ever be unwound. One tug of the string and the whole tattered mess falls apart. Thusly, the howlers are so beholden to their warped ideology that they can never give an inch to reality.

Case in point, those falling financial markets. How does one approach, from a rational stand-point, claims such as this just six weeks ago:

I am intensely annoyed by the incessant reporting of movements in the FTSE 100 index on just about every news bulletin I hear as if this is indication of either my well being or that of the UK economy as a whole.

Neither is true. As far as is possible I have no money invested in the London Stock Exchange. I think it irrational for anyone to do so right now. Second, and more important, a substantial proportion of the FTSE has nothing to do with the UK. Either, as is the case with the Ukrainian companies noted above, they’re using it as a market place which indicates no link with any real economic activity in the UK, or even if the company is registered and trades here much of the activity it undertakes is elsewhere. In that case the rise and fall of the FTSE is no real indicator of the health of the UK economy at all.

So, "the FTSE is no real indicator of the health of the UK economy at all" a mere six weeks ago. Today, from the very same source:

This is Melt Down

Yesterday is rightly being called a ‘black Monday’.

Lehman has gone. Merrill Lynch has gone. AIG is teetering. HBOS looks like one for the lifeboat. There will be more.

The financial markets as we know them have failed. More important, the political philosophy that has backed them has failed. Neo-liberalism has to die, for good.

So, financial markets have no bearing on the life of an "ordinary" citizen six weeks ago, today financial markets are in "melt down" dragging with it every man, woman, and child. Is it too much to ask for a wee bit of consistency from the lamp-post scratching crowd? 

How else can we all engage in that lucid, tolerant, prosaic, nuanced, and celebratory happening of exchanging ideas and debating the issues from an open-minded point-of-view? 

(Yes, I am aware those types of discussions only occur on the left when everyone already agrees with each other in lock-step fashion.)

Lucid Frenchman "Gets It" and Shows Off His Unsurpassed Lucidity, Comparing McCain to… a Serial Woman Killer

Le Monde's Dominique Dhombres compares John McCain to Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (and Sarah Palin to his pitbull).

A la fin du discours, John McCain venait l'embrasser, elle [Palin] et toute sa famille. Allure de gentleman, tempes grisonnantes, il avait alors tout à fait l'air de Monsieur Verdoux, l'élégant père de famille, assassin de douze femmes par nécessité, admirablement campé par Charlie Chaplin. C'était en quelque sorte Monsieur Verdoux et son pitbull.

The comparison is not one made of Putin or Medvedev. It is not one made of Robert Mugabe or China's Hu. Apparently, it was never made of mass graves expert Saddam Hussein. No, it is the comparison a typically lucid Frenchman makes of (who else?) America's Republican candidate…

Hey!

Hold on just one minute there, Sparky!

The Intolerant Euro-press: From Smug Certitude to Pulsing Blood Vessels

Soeren Kern writing in The American Thinker surveys the attitude-revealing European press coverage of US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and finds that we're being treated rather unsurprisingly to the usual confusion and rattling off of "opinions-as-facts".

European commentary on Sarah Palin has ranged from ridicule, to ridicule, to more ridicule, to
reluctant acknowledgment that Barack Obama may have met his match. In any case, many European elites are sensing that the Democratic presidential candidate, by failing to pick US Senator Hillary Clinton as his running mate, may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

In other words, the usual. The press aren't analyzing, and the opinion-makers of the continent of superior enlightenment, are as we've seen so many times citing their owninventions and imaginings. What's revealing about them is the limited and usual set of subject they are spun around: imagining that she is a literal creationist in the mold of a hermit or aesetic, citing her lack of experience despite having treated Sen. Obama to no such
scrutiny with regard to many subjects, but his even thinner experience in particular.

And just in case the paper's editors were not being absolutely clear about their choice for US president, yet another article proclaims: "Obama embodies the future King dreamt about."

Britain's leftwing Guardian newspaper tries to figure out "How to solve the Sarah Palin problem." Another story titled "Sarah Palin's war against information" asserts that "The McCain team knows that if the media do their job and give Palin the same scrutiny that any candidate for high office must endure, she will collapse." Still
another story warns that "Obama faces lurking forces of darkness."

Left out are any inkling of awareness that the Guardian doesn't have dictatorial and coercive powers over the whole of humanity, or that Palin was put under more scrutiny and obvious hostile electioneering against her by the American press that Obama has had at all (virtually all of it involving the press
electioneering in his favor) over the 20 months since his media constructed success has. The reader and viewer of the general interest press still knows nearly nothing about his policy outlook. We've been offered umpteen fawning spreads on his family life, his any other sort of secular sainthood he could be offered, but little else.

But more than anything, what we find as always in the European press is the expression of a kind of personal intolerant hatred based entirely on Palin not being entirely like them in their predictable and suspiciously uniform world view. Never mind the arrogance evident in that expectation, or the negligence to report much of anything substantial at all – these writers are quite obviously looking through
the prism of where they fit into the story, not where the story fits into the news. All we're left with is the narcissism of these writers showing through – one which European readers have grown numb to, and have grown to accept any opinions they register as fact.

According to France's center-right Le Figaro,
Palin will "trigger the eruption of moral intolerance in the campaign." This is actually rather funny, because French elites are notoriously tolerant with everyone, except for those who do not agree with them.

In keeping with the policies versus values theme, the Paris-based leftwing Le Monde says "The choice of Ms Palin has turned the centrist John McCain into the 'heir to Bush'." And the weekly newsmagazine Le Point calls Palin "the fanatic of the American heartland." It describes her speech to the Republican Convention as a "declaration of war [on the] Democrats as well as on the media and elites who dare to raise doubts about her ability to serve as vice-president of the United States."

Unsurprisingly, the opinions expressed by these rags reflects an incredible ignorance of American society. It's the radicalism of the Democrats and their further-fringe hangers on that has placed Republicans in the White House. Moreover, when a French newspaper starts to actually appear to be worried about tolerance, you know that you have a rare and special moment where
they've even found themselves running out of the usual lazy and specious arguments so obvious to those living outside of their bubble.

Those silver linings

They are there if you look!

The Gullible New York Times Falls for Another European Hypocrite Leftist

He looks like a sprite: boyish, handsome in his black Hugo Boss T-shirt and blue jeans. He reminds some of Tintin, the eternally young comic-book hero of so many childhood adventures.

Once again, the NYT shows their fact-checking and appallingly low journalistic standards. This time it doesn’t actually have directly to do with their domestic political opponents, or taking “their fight” to their enemy... which is to say their fellow citizens.

Their “boyish sprite” is 34.

No, this time they fell in thrall of France’s too-old-to-believe Marxist boy-wonder and aging child, Olivier Besancenot, a man who’s made a meal-ticket out of parading a fake working-class cred for himself.

In a poll last month by the firm CSA, 49 percent of respondents said Mr. Besancenot was currently Mr. Sarkozy’s leading opponent, behind the Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë (54 percent), but ahead of other Socialists like Martine Aubry (36 percent) and Ms. Royal (32 percent).

Mr. Besancenot is a postman, a member of the working class, who delivers the mail part time in the wealthy Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.

But he is also the leader of the Communist Revolutionary League, and in a long interview here, in party offices above a printing factory in this racially mixed city just east of Paris — where cheap clothing stores abut shops selling North African and Middle Eastern spices and take-out food — he describes himself without blushing as a revolutionary.

But given the travesties of the past, from the bureaucratic savagery of Soviet Communism to the chaos of Mao, he said, “revolution needs to be reinvented, for no revolutionary experiment has ever succeeded. ”They have only been betrayed, either crushed by an armed elite or destroyed by “bureaucratic counter-revolution,” he said, adding, “We are trying to strike that balance of taking power without being taken by power.”

The fact that this would represent a chilling abuse of political power, and finds the acts of dictatorships benign by virtue of example is not even hinted at.

Oddly enough, 5 Years Later, we here at ¡No Pasarán! have done a significantly better job to inform French and American readers readers alike about this man than the NYT or even some of the players in the France’s own press have about “lunch bucket” Olivier.

We often wondered if the factor Aggravant still working? To this question, the candidate Besancenot spoke of his monthly salary of less than €1200 as a Postal worker. Blessed are the believers, because the reality is somewhat different. He’s paid mainly by the party. For example, he very regularly got compensation as a European parliamentary assistant when Alain Krivine was an MEP, in amount considerably above the monthly €5000.

What is his provenance? To this question, Olivier Besancenot speaks with modesty of a small studio in the 18th arrondissement. The journalist would have had much to see - a really good size apartment in the neighborhood of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre - the most expensive part of the 18th, one of the most sought after by Parisian Bobos. Of course, he owns it... something impossible on a postal worker’s salary, but who’s saying...

He is a liar. He is a fake, a venal user of the sympathy of his followers, and extremely skilled in living off of make-work commissions and off of the public’s money while trying to tout a veneer of honesty. In short, he’s a subsidized elitist of the sort one only finds in either western Europe or the parts of the underdeveloped world where attention to graft can be obscured.

But the NYT finds this unworthy of their report, if not a cute ‘human interest’ item that I’m sure many of their employees wish vicariously in him something for themselves.

Follow the Gourd!

Hot damn! Those late summer revival meetings must be clipping along at a fevered pace. Those on the hard-left are embracing Jesus through the "Jesus was a community-organiser/Pontius Pilate was a governor" meme like it is the end times.

One supposes these new super-converts will now stop bleating about a certain other sister and her beliefs about creationism and anti-abortionism. You know, hypocrisy being one of them seven deadlies and all.

Maybe those now filling the pews are members of the Judean People's Front...

It's structural

French surrender, that is.

Seven Years Later…

The website Five Years Later has has undergone a facelift.

The makeover occurred, appropriately enough, on September 11, for the website is named for the year it went up (2006) in relation to the year of the terrorist attacks on Manhattan and the Pentagon. It is no accident, therefore, that two or three of the top stories concern remembering the day of the 9-11 attacks.

Also commemorating September 11 is L'Insolent, which points out that the New York Times omitted any reference to the Islamic terrorist attacks seven years earlier on its front page of that date…