Neither of the two people in the video who have been identified - Patrick Setterstrom and Ellen Cassin – have come forward to tell their sides of the story. In the video, Setterstrom, whose father is the sports director at Alabama’s TV station WKRG, began to unzip and approach the victim. Fortunately for him, Cassin was sober and/or intelligent enough to stop him. A few moments later, another Alabama fan did expose his genitals and rub them on the victim’s face.

What is shocking is the New Orleans Police Department’s initial reluctance to investigate.  They initially said that they could do nothing unless the victim came forward, which is perplexing given that it is the state, not the victim, who brings charges against the perpetrator.  They don’t need the victim’s consent.

A lot of people’s attitudes seem to be that this was just a case of drunkenness and team rivalry gone too far. Let’s test that theory with a little thought experiment. Imagine that this was a girl who drank herself stupid. Let’s imagine that she was touched, her breasts were fondled, and that a man rubbed his genitals on her while she was unconscious.  Can anyone imagine the NOPD – or any police department, anywhere – dragging their heels on investigating unless she came forward?  MacAoidh at the Louisiana blog, The Hayride, also disputes that notion:

And shame on the NOPD for trying to dodge this thing. It’s an assault not just on the victim but on public decency in New Orleans – and make whatever jokes you want about Mardi Gras, even at Mardi Gras you’re not allowed to dry-hump an incapacitated total stranger who would probably not consent if he wasn’t comatose with your junk out for everybody to see. And because of that, law enforcement has the OBLIGATION to do something about it.

This isn’t Gumps Gone Wild. It’s sexual battery. You can get 10 years for that, and it’s not acceptable for the cops not to ID this perp and bring his ass in for trial.

While the victim has so far not come forward, there has been enough pressure by the New Orleans DA’s office and an outraged public for the NOPD to finally decide to investigate.  As Dr. Helen comments,

Given the way that our society laughs and mocks men who are abused in this way, I can understand the guy not coming forward, but he must. It is only when individual men start to say “No, this is not justice for all” and endure the ridicule that men everywhere will no longer have to endure their rights and bodies being violated in this absurd manner without consequence.

Exactly.

UPDATE: It turns out this is not a college prank in any sense of the word. Brian Downing, the man Deadspin identified as the teabagger is in his 30s, married, with a child.  And at the moment he is on his way – with his attorney – to New Orleans to have a little chat with the NOPD. I’m sorry for his family, but I’m glad that it’s looking like there will be some consequences for his behavior.  And what little amusement there is in this whole train wreck can be found in the fact that the tips identifying Downing apparently originated on an Auburn message board.

Initial jobless claims unexpectedly jumped by 24,000 last week to 399,000 as more workers lost their jobs, the Labor Department said Thursday. At the same time, the economy continues to lose workers.

In the 30 months since the recession officially ended, nearly 1 million people have dropped out of the labor force — they aren’t working, and they aren’t looking — according to data from Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the past two months, the labor force shrank by 170,000.

This is virtually unprecedented in past economic recoveries, at least since the BLS has kept detailed records. In the past nine recoveries, the labor force had climbed an average 3.5 million by this point, according to an IBD analysis of the BLS data.

…According to the BLS, the “labor force participation rate” — the ratio of the number of people either working or looking for work compared with the entire working-age population — is now 64%, down from 65.7% when the recession ended in June 2009. That’s the lowest level since women began entering the workforce in far greater numbers several decades ago.

If you adjust for this drop, the unemployment rate would be close to 11%, instead of the official 8.5%.

At this rate, the completely politicized Bureau of Labor Statistics should just remove several million more workers from the labor force, so they can get the unemployment rate down to, say, 4.8%. Like it was during those nightmarish Bush years.

 
Related: Obama Labor Politburo Now Publishing Patently Bogus Unemployment Propaganda.

Defiant Republicans pushed legislation through the House Tuesday night that would keep alive Social Security payroll tax cuts for some 160 million Americans at President Barack Obama’s request—but also would require construction of a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that has sparked a White House veto threat. [Emphasis added]

Passage, on a largely party-line vote of 234-193, sent the measure toward its certain demise in the Democratic-controlled Senate, triggering the final partisan showdown of a remarkably quarrelsome year of divided government.

So, the Republicans accede to the president’s request but are still somehow the bad guys because there are strings attached, in this case Obama’s signing off on the Keystone XL pipeline. Even if you accept opponents’ arithmetic—that the project will create 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, not 100,000 or more as supporters are claiming—it still reduces dependence on foreign oil. Besides, the bill contains other sweeteners, including another round of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

But nothing will stave off the measure’s “certain demise in the Democratic-controlled Senate,” whose leader, Harry Reid, dismissed the pipeline provision as “ideological candy” for the Tea Party set.

Oh, and did I neglect to mention that the government is facing another shutdown on Friday? With the two parties in Congress locked in a stalemate, Democrats, at the president’s urging, are holding up a $1 trillion omnibus bill to fund government for the balance of the fiscal year that began on October 1.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday:

We’ve got a bipartisan agreement on a number of appropriation bills, and the president presumably—in order to create some political issue, which I find difficult to understand—has instructed Democratic senators not to sign the conference report on a bill they support.

A question that naturally arises is when will the liberal-left media, not to mention Democratic leaders in Congress, declare that their own party and the president are holding the government hostage? That is what they did in April, when a governmental shutdown was looming because Republicans, in the words ofDemocratic Whip Steny Hoyer, refused “to compromise on their divisive social agenda.”

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The bumbling Sharpton is such an easy target that a comedy sketch about him practically writes itself. All you need to do is insert his actual on-air gaffes, which the SNL writers did at the end of the bit, recalling nearly verbatim his now-legendary teleprompter flub: “but resist we much … we must … and we will much … about … that … be committed.”

But the real joke, which the writers either missed or ignored, is that Sharpton leads a double life. He is a self-styled crusader for the 99 percent and downtrodden masses while living like a 1 percenter. According to documents obtained by the New York Post, Sharpton last year “drew a $241,732 salary and perks that included first-class or charter air travel”—this despite his owing the IRS $2.6 million in income tax, and the state of New York nearly $900,000.

And there’s more. His nonprofit National Action Network (NAN), which pays his salary, is $1.6 million in the red, most of the debt stemming from $884,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes, interest, and penalties. NAN also paid more than $100,000 to settle two lawsuits, byproducts of the unpaid bills. Last year NAN took in more than $3 million in donations.

Two for-profit companies owned by Sharpton also carry unpaid tax debts, the Post reports. The now-defunct Rev-Al Communications Inc. owes the state nearly $176,000, and Bo-Spanky Consulting Inc. is $3,500 behind on state-tax liens.

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An ingredient in the report that undoubtedly gives it legs is the fact that First Children Malia and Sasha Obama are enrolled at Sidwell Friends. Talk about your guilt by association.

Ellis Turner, associate head of the school, maintains that the menu is developed by an independent contractor and that the Asian theme was an unhappy coincidence. That seems entirely plausible. Upon closer inspection, yesterday’s lunch menu featured only one nominally Japanese dish—teriyaki marinated chicken strips. (The dessert, fortune cookies, is barely Asian, let alone Japanese.)

This story is a non-starter, or at least it should have been. And it would have been had not “voices of reason” on the left paused to tsk-tsk over the disproportionate response from those on the right. The Huffington Post expends a few column inches to the story that includes a link to a blog whose bottom-line take is (drum roll!) that conservatives are racists.

Late in the day yesterday, WUSA rejoined the fray it had started, devoting a segment of its recurring feature “Let’s Be REAL” to an editorial on the story (video here). Reporter Derek McGinty began his lecture of those who took offense by observing, “This was not about the food” but about “what we as Americans pay honor to.” I would argue that it is probably both.

A larger issue that liberals fail to grasp is that their criticism of the right for making a mountain out of a molehill is bidirectional. They become as easily if not more incensed over non-issues when the stakes appear to warrant it. Last February, there were vocal protests from the left over U.C. Irvine’s “racist” decision to serve chicken and waffles on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. Nor was there derision directed at Aramark Corporation, which runs the university’s dining hall, when it announced its employees would undergo “sensitivity training.”

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It is the Tea Party, however, that is being singled out for this particular act of petty retaliation, which comes two weeks after the organization sent an invoice in the amount of $8,500 to Mayor Dwight Jones for costs incurred at previous rallies.

The purpose of the invoice was to draw attention to the disparate treatment of the Tea Party, which conducts peaceful demonstrations and pays its own way, and the Occupiers, which do neither: The stories of Occupier violence are legion, and the costs of their protests are being absorbed by taxpayers in cities across the country.

Presented with this stark contrast, the mayor had the option (duty?) of telling Occupy Richmond to put up or shut up—to apply for and obtain the needed permits to assemble in a public park and to pay for security, portable toilets, and other essentials.

Instead he opted for plan B. Under the guise of collecting delinquent fees from Richmond Tea Party, Inc., the city’s department of finance notified the group (which has an actual business address) that it is being subject to a comprehensive tax audit. A letter signed by Cynthia Carr, who identifies herself as “field auditor,” requests multiple pieces of documentation, including a financial statement and federal tax return for 2010. Sauce for the goose?

One explanation for this behavior unbecoming an elected official is that the mayor is an Occupy sympathizer. Another equally plausible theory is that the city of Richmond is understandably wary of incurring the wrath of a group that is prone to throwing Molotov cocktails.

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And definitely not now that one of the movement’s own has taken a page out of the alleged Tea Party handbook and threatened the life of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. For 26-year-old Nathan Shafer, however, “crosshairs” (aka print registration marks) on a map simply didn’t cut it. Instead, he made his threat in words. In a Facebook post addressed to the governor, Shafer wrote, “I hope someone murders you before I do.”

Columbia, South Carolina, station KLTV reports that Shafer’s post was a reaction to a post by Haley herself, which was made after the arrest of 19 Occupy Columbia members outside the State House last Wednesday. On her Facebook page, the governor wrote:

I appreciate freedom of speech. I do not appreciate mattresses on the grounds, urinating in the bushes and damage of state property. Occupiers were given until 6:00 to move off the property. They are welcome to picket during daylight hours. We respect the Rule of Law in South Carolina.

Shafer claims the purpose of his post was to make a point about freedom of speech. But the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division evidently takes a different—and dimmer—view of the limits of free speech. Says KLTV:

The [day after Shafer’s Facebook post] two … agents visited him in Charlotte to discuss the comment. Shafer says he retracted and deleted his statement, promised he wasn’t serious and apologized to the Haley family.

None of which was sufficient to get the state to back off. Notes KLTV: “Threats against public officials are naturally taken very seriously, even when a comment was supposedly made in jest.” Accordingly, SLED agents informed Shafer that he faces prosecution for his alleged threat, prompting him to respond, “I just think the whole situation is completely ridiculous and blown out of proportion.”

At issue now is whether a “reasonable person” would view the statement in question as a genuine threat.

The article notes that a federal court ruled in July that a man who posted online statements calling for President Barack Obama’s assassination was exercising his free speech rights. Specifics of the case in question are not given, but suffice it to say that threatening the life of a U.S. president is a class D felony punishable by between 5 and 10 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.

In the most famous case to date involving an assassination threat against President Obama, Brian Dean Miller, of Dallas, Texas, was sentenced to 27 months’ jail time after posting on Craigslist:

People, the time has come for revolution. It is time for Obama to die. I am dedicating my life to the death of Obama and every employee of the federal government. As I promised in a previous post, if the health care reform bill passed I would become a terrorist. Today I become a terrorist.

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These were just a few of the adjectives that came to the not-terribly-crowded mind of Morning Joe co-host Mika Brezinski during a segment this morning on Newt Gingrich’s critique of the Occupy movement.

Newsbusters provides a transcript of Brezinski’s remarks, echoed and enlarged upon by Columbia professor and guest Jeffrey Sachs. But you need to watch the video to get the full import of Brezinski’s profound shock and outrage. At cue 1:49, her voice quavers and she actually seems on the verge of tears.

BRZEZINSKI: Wow … That’s about the most arrogant and un-self-aware, and those are probably the only words I can use [inaudible] for any politician in this Republican field to say.

SACHS: Disgusting.

BRZEZINSKI: Disgusting.

SACHS: Absolutely disgusting. No sense of any meaning at all of this. Absolutely revolting, actually. And especially when what they’re protesting against is the incredible abuse of power, the criminality on Wall Street and so forth that he—he has taken his millions of dollars. It’s shocking!

BRZEZINSKI: Someone needs a bath, and I don’t think it’s the people from Occupy Wall Street. That’s all I’m going to say. I’ve got nothing else. I’m so disgusted by that that something horrible is going to come … I, I, am I alone here? Am I overreacting? I’m sickened by that … It’s fair to say he’s in the 1%, correct? He’s telling the 99% to take a bath and get a job? Really? Really, I wonder how they do that right now. How, given the state of this country, how anyone’s going to just get a job and take a bath. Who is this man? Who does he think he is? And why is he surging in the polls? I don’t get it. I mean, to hear Newt Gingrich standing on literally [sic] his high horse, after taking advantage of the system, cashing in, being the biggest, literally the biggest hypocrite in the Repubican field, probably in politics today. The biggest hypocrite. And then to cast aspersions and to speak down to these people as if—plghhh—they should be flipped away? It’s disgusting. It’s absolutely disgusting. It’s a very angry way to start the show. I’m extremely sorry. But it’s the first time I’d seen that. And it literally [sic] made my skin crawl. I can’t believe he resonates.

The video begins with the Gingrich comments that “literally made Brezinski’s skin crawl.” A transcript follows:

All the Occupy movements start with a premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park so they can self-righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything. That is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them: ‘Go get a job, right after you take a bath.’

Gingrich’s words are emotionally charged, and I can understand a liberal taking offense at his view that the left has “collapsed as a moral system in this country.” But one is hard-pressed to pinpoint a single criticism that isn’t accurate and truthful.

Not to mention more measured than those used by Vice President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats in their wholesale dismissal of the Tea Party as terrorists, hostage takers, and worse.

I was unable to find a video clip or transcript of Mika Brezinski’s angst over these defamatory comments directed at a group that—like the Occupiers—is “protesting … the incredible abuse of power.” Maybe I just didn’t look literally hard enough.

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Not that he was a stranger to the 1% lifestyle before OWS’s eviction from Zuccotti. Writes the Post:

‘Tents are not for me,’ he confessed, when confronted in the sleek black lobby of the Washington Street hotel where sources described him as a ‘repeat’ guest.

Say it ain’t so, Peter! Actually, don’t bother. The more that is known about Dutro’s seamy double life, the more duplicitous and hypocritical he looks. The Post reveals that the 35-year-old one-percenter in 99-pecenter’s clothing lives only a short taxi ride away in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. He confessed to reporters:

I knew everything was going to be a clusterf**k in the morning [of the Occupy day of action]. How would I get over the bridge when they were shutting it down?

In other words, what choice was left to him but to stay in a five-star, 58-story hotel, with 350-count Egyptian cotton sheets and a 37-inch flat-screen TV in each room? It’s not as though he ordered12-year-old Glenlivet scotch ($375 a bottle) or an $18 pastrami sandwich from room service. Then again…

Dutro is not the only cheater in the 99%’s new world order. Brad Spitzer, a California-based analyst who secretly took part in the protests during a week-long business trip, is also guilty of leading a double life. At least he spread his largesse to a few other protesters, whom he invited to crash in his cushy room.

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With few prospects and the growing support of radicalized elements like the Democratic Socialists of America, the Occupiers have become persona non grata in the nation’s cities. A poll released on Thursday by the Public Religion Research Institute reveals that support among Americans for the Occupy movement has dwindled to an all-time low of 29%. To put this number in context, the same percentage of respondents claim to support the odious Tea Party.

The protesters’ war on police is not helping to win the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens. Proudly displaying posters of cop killers Mumia Abu Jamal and Lovelle Mixon at the Oakland encampment was likely a factor in Democratic Mayor Jean Quan’s decision to evict protesters.

Now Occupiers in New York are singling out an even more defenseless group: schoolchildren. (A video clip of young children being made to walk a gauntlet of jeers and taunts can be found here.)

[A]llegations have emerged that some protesters [last Thursday] harassed young kids as they walked to school with their parents near Wall Street in the morning. CBS [to its credit] reports that they saw one protester follow a father and his little daughter down one block, while others chanted ‘follow those kids!’ One mother told CBS, ‘For them it’s horrible. They’re afraid of all the crowds. We’re not even able to get through. They’re just, he’s … very afraid now.’…

Some left-leaning blogs are insisting the incident is one-off and that CBS may have “overhyped” it. Which raises the question, How many schoolchildren need to be hassled before the mainstream media as a whole begin reporting the truth about the Occupy movement?

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Cain’s refusal to call it quits despite repeated missteps remains a source of ongoing consternation for left-leaning commentators, who made it their mission early on to unseat him from the presidential race by whatever means necessary. These measures included insinuating that Cain is a “black man who knows his place” and that he is a victim of brainwashing by evil (read: white) fellow Republicans. If charges like these were leveled at a black Democrat by conservatives, there is no question that the race card would come flying out of the deck.

But I digress. The most recent attempt to paint Cain as unserious comes courtesy of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who oddly claimed on her program last night that Cain’s campaign is an “art project.” (h/t Mediaite) If you find that characterization confusing, wait: Maddow is just getting started.

As a lead-in to her exposé of the real black man behind the curtain, Maddow notes that all candidates, for better or worse, make or became associated with references to popular culture. As an example, she runs a clip in which it is revealed that Newt Gingrich’s cell phone ringtone is “Dancing Queen,” by ABBA. Maddow has a good laugh over that revelation as well as a reference by Jon Huntsman to the late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain (a reference, she is sure, is lost of conservatives).

She continues in same vein with Romney and Perry. Interestingly, she doesn’t ridicule the 2008 candidate whose own questionable cultural references included a scatological brushing of “dirt” off his shoulder, which was meant to deflect the criticisms of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. But again, I digress.

All of this hilarious patter is a warmup act for the main event, which comes at cue 4:13 in this video:

The art project formerly known as Herman Cain is giving us a whole different way of looking at stuff like this on the campaign trail this year. Cain … continually makes what are treated as gaffes, but even though the media treats them as gaffes, they are frankly too perfect to actually just be mistakes. More often than not, what he does that gets covered as a mistake, as a gaffe, is really a sort of genius, obscure, has-to-be-deliberate cultural reference. It’s art referencing art.

Maddow goes on for what seems like an eternity (it is actually about 2 minutes) before reaching her punch line, which is that the Cain campaign is all one big joke by—and on—Herman Cain. As an example of the candidate’s unwitting buffoonery, she cites his reference to a “great poet” in his closing remarks at the Iowa debate. Cain never actually said great—the modifier was added by online detractors and stuck. Nevertheless, the line of verse he cites is from the theme song for Pokémon: The Movie 2000, a fact that has had far-left critics rolling in the aisles ever since.

Funny, I don’t recall liberals laughing so hard when First Lady Michelle Obama hosted the first (and, one hopes, last) ever White House “poetry slam” in May. Nor were they visibly upset that the featured “artist” was a rapper named Common, whose song lyrics include praise for a cop killer.

Herman Cain has been in self-destruct mode ever since allegations of sexual misconduct on his part made headlines. His most recent goofs have included asking how one says delicious in Cuban, which is no different in principle from Barack Obama’s reference to the Austrian language. But expectations run higher for candidates than for elected officials—and should.

Ultimately, I do not believe that Cain will be the GOP nominee. That should free up the Rachel Maddows of cable TV to go after more meaningful game. Unless they’re just having too much fun skewering the black guy.

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The official pronouncement came at the APEC Summit in Hawaii, America’s 57th state. During a news conference captured on video (cue 35:17), he made the following observation:

When I meet with world leaders, whether it is in Europe or here in Asia, the kinds of fundamental reforms and changes [they need to effect] are so much more significant than what we need to do to get our books in order. [Emphasis added]

Turning serious, I’m not sure what prompted Obama to mistake the state he was born in as being in Asia. One factor noted by some commentators is that he was working without his beloved teleprompter (note his struggle to articulate his thoughts in the video clip).

The bottom line, however, is that presidential flubs are a dime a dozen. That is because of all presidents are mere mortals, a fact that must come hard for those who once viewed Obama as larger than life (which includes Obama himself).

It would be well if we could remember this going forward. Should anyone need a “booster shot,” a tidy summary of Obama then and now can be found here.

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Change shotgun to Molotov cocktail, and that popular summer camp sing-along sendup of Woody Guthrie’s 1940s paean to the American socialist dream fits the Occupy movement to a tee.

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On Friday, October 28, the leadership of the Richmond Tea Party hand-delivered an invoice to the city of Richmond in the amount of $8,500. The group is seeking reimbursement for costs associated with three separate Tax Day events at the Richmond’s downtown Kanawha Plaza.

The costs reflected in the invoice include cash outlays by the Tea Party to cover fees for permits mandated by the city government, portable toilets, first-aid care, off-duty police officers for security, and event insurance.

Tea Party volunteer John Pride writes in the Richmond-Times Dispatch:

The Occupy Richmond group met none of these benchmarks while camped out in the same Kanawha Plaza between Oct. 15th and Oct. 31 (the morning they were finally evicted). So in the spirit of our founding principle of equal application of the law, the Richmond Tea Party is requesting a full refund from the City of Richmond for city-imposed costs related to these three rallies.

Pride goes on to highlight differences in personal demeanor and civic responsibility between the two movements (“Tea Partiers never … destroyed the public areas entrusted to us, never demanded access beyond that allowed by our permit, … never strained police and emergency services systems to the detriment of those in need of those protections and services”), but in truth he had me at $8,500. The validity of the Richmond Tea Party’s point is undeniable.

The Occupy movement to date has cost American cities somewhere in the vicinity of $10 million. In New York, the city that has incurred the greatest financial burden, the bill as of October 18 was $3.4 million—and that was just to cover NYPD overtime.

Paradoxically, the cash to cover the Occupy movement’s tantrums in New York and other cities comes out of the pockets of taxpayers, most of whom are members of the 99%.

Now is one of those occasions where (to borrow a page from the president’s handbook) outraged voters are urged to “call and email and tweet and visit” and in other ways pester their members of Congress. It is time to let your representatives know that the days of taxpayer-funded babysitting are over. If they can’t find an alternate way to finance the protests, maybe it is high time we all got together and sent them an invoice.

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• ‘How Are OWS and the Tea Party Different?’ home version
• NYC Occupy Wall Street protests turn violent AFTER eviction plan is scratched
• Occupy L.A.: We will need violence and socialism to achieve our goals
• The left and Big Labor get their ‘Tea Party’
• Obama again urges voters to “call your congressperson” (except in NY-9)

The article quoted food committee member Megan Hayes:

No, no, no, we just need a chance to get organized…. Because we hit the ground running, we became a full-on restaurant in the park in under a month without having a chance to have any organization, any clear guidelines for volunteers. We need a chance to catch our breath, to say all right, winter’s coming, we’re not going anywhere, how can we maximize our output and get as many people as possible fed?

Another organizer Chris O’Donnell, was even more vehement in his denials that the occupiers are trying to force the bums out:

I can definitely tell you that none of us are concerned about ‘freeloaders.’ All of us have concerns about general camp security, but it wouldn’t be fair to say this is an attempt to get freeloaders or homeless people or anybody like that out of the park.

But another story that appeared Sunday in the New York Daily News suggests at the very least that Hayes and O’Donnell don’t speak for everyone at the park. Writer Harry Siegel reports:

The ‘model’ civilization that’s sprung up at Zuccotti is itself increasingly divided between the stakeholders in the nascent movement … and hangers-on, including a fast-growing contingent of lawbreakers and lowlifes, many of whom seem to have come to Zuccotti in the last week with the cynical encouragement of the NYPD.

But where the story gets interesting is about halfway down, where Siegel acknowledges that the protesters have asked New York City’s finest to “intervene with troublemakers inside the park.” [Emphasis added] Two paragraphs earlier, the Daily News reporter writes:

Even when organizers have requested their intervention, police enter to a mixed chorus of ‘brutality’ and ‘pig’ calls side by side with chanted reminders that ‘you are the 99%.’

Siegel also admits to being incredulous at the conventional police response to demands that they should evict the bums:

‘He’s got a right to express himself, you’ve got a right to express yourself,’ I heard three cops repeat in recent days, using nearly identical language, when asked to intervene….

For good measure, Siegel quotes one of the occupiers as quipping upon hearing this pat response from the pigs—I mean, police— “The first time I’ve heard cops mention our First Amendment rights.”

If the irony hasn’t sunk in, consider this observation by James Taranto:

The Obamavillians [protesters]—who, keep in mind, describe themselves as ‘occupying’ a publicly accessible plot of private land—are complaining that the cops aren’t tough enough with those they don’t want around.

So to summarize: The protesters consider the police enemies and hurl insults (and sometimes worse) at the men in blue. Yet, they demand that the cops take action to expel the unwanted element, who have precisely the same rights to the space as do the protesters themselves. If that scenario isn’t a microcosm of the Obama presidency, nothing is.

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Ditto for the Obama re-election campaign. Its latest hire is Broderick Johnson, who has come aboard in the role of senior campaign adviser.

Johnson, should the name be unfamiliar, is a longtime Wall Street lobbyist. His clients include have included Bank of America, Fannie Mae, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Shell Oil, AT&T, Comcast, and other OWS-defined enemies of the state.

Johnson currently is a partner at Collins Johnson Group, a D.C.-based communications firm that claims to provide

superior strategic planning and political consulting services to multinational corporations, government entities, political campaigns and parties, elected leaders, nonprofit organizations, issue groups, investors and entrepreneurs.

If you’re a member of the anti-Wall Street protest movement, you can find plenty of people in those sectors whose homes you might want to visit.

Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller notes that Johnson, while still a registered lobbyist, visited the White House 17 times. The visits must have been of a personal nature because 2008 candidate Barack Obama was unequivocal about banning lobbyists from his administration. He even signed an executive order his first day in office excluding former lobbyists from working “on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”

And Barack Obama keeps his promises. Or at least he does 60% of the time. He said so himself on a campaign swing through Nevada and California yesterday:

I carry around a little checklist, and I think we’ve got about 60 percent of it done so far. And that’s not bad for three years, because I need another five.

Actually, the president’s math is suspect. If he made good on 60% of his promises in three years, then he needs only two more years to complete the remainder.

But I digress. Writes Matthew Boyle:

The Obama re-election campaign appears to have tried to hide or downplay Johnson’s lobbying history, as the original campaign press release announcing his hire completely ignored it. Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse hasn’t returned The DC’s request for comment on the issue, either.

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News anchor Natalie Morales had an answer:

Well, I think there—as a parent, there’s a huge civics lesson, and it teaches, you know, what is important about this. What are—I think you have to ask the questions, ‘What are they there for, what are the reasons behind this?’ And I think the idea of having that civil discourse is important to teach our kids…. [Ed’s note: Take a minute to stop laughing and collect yourself.]

Tempting though it is to focus on the hypocrisy of Lauer and company—who after all saw no such civics lesson in the fledgling Tea Party movement and fail to see the total incivility of the Occupiers—there is far bigger game to bag in this story. It comes by way of a New York Post article, which suggests the  protests do indeed embody a teachable moment, if not the one the Today crew envisions.

According to the Post, OWS’s Finance Committee (!) has amassed $500,000 in donations, and the cash continues to pour in. Yet like the wealthy 1% whose greed they so revile, the OWS leadership refuses to spread the wealth. Bryan Smith, 45, a TV producer from Los Angeles who joined OWS three weeks ago, is quoted as saying:

F–k Finance. I hope Mayor Bloomberg gets an injunction and demands to see the movement’s books. We need to know how much money we really have and where it’s going.

Smith, the Post notes, is a member of the Comfort Working Group, one of 30 small collectives that have sprung up within the greater Occupy Wall Street movement. Responsibilities of Smith’s group include determining what basic necessities campers need, like thermal underwear, and then raising money by soliciting donations on the street.

Smith grumbles that on a recent day he collected $2,000, a third of which went to his group, while the Finance Committee seized the bulk of the cash. When he complained that protesters need basic comfort items, he was told to fill out paperwork. “Are they the government now?” Smith fumed. I would argue that the answer is no. The government collects taxes from people who work for a living, not from ordinary panhandlers.

The Comfort Working Group is not the only collective with a grievance against the Finance Committee. The artfully named Pulse Working Group, which oversees the incessant drumming that is driving area residents draft, needs $8,000 for new drums and a small lockable shed to house the instruments when they are not in use. Last week, someone stabbed holes in many of the protesters’ drums—imagine!

At a recent meeting of the General Assembly, Pulse Group founder Elijah Moses made a request for the needed funds and was turned down.

“I’m really frustrated,” said the 19-year-old Moses. Perhaps he should try asking a bank for a loan.

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One writer at the Atlanta Post, which describes itself as “the #1 news source for African-American business news and African-American politics,” listed Cain’s brainwashing remark as the #1 offense in a compendium of the candidate’s “seven most outrageous statements.” Talk show host Tavis Smiley was not merely incensed but incredulous, asking, “How does he get away with saying this to black folk?”And David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, an organization dedicated to improving the socioeconomic status of blacks, is quoted by The Christian Post as saying:

[Cain] is not somebody that is knowledgeable about African-Americans as a whole. He’s an individual.

It could be argued that David Bositis is also an individual, who therefore has no greater claim than Herman Cain to knowing “about African-Americans as a whole,” but I digress. In the two weeks since Cain made his incendiary remark, his poll numbers have climbed. While no one on the left has yet imputed a cause-and-effect relationship (although I suspect that claim will be made sooner rather than later if Cain’s star continues to rise), the candidate has become a hot topic among liberal talkers.

One of them is Goldie Taylor, who writes for another black news website, The Grio. Appearing on Martin Bashir’s show on MSNBC, Taylor expressed her opinion that if

[Herman Cain] could shed his ethnicity today, if he could become what I call the color of water, he would do it. He would do it in an effort to prove that he and people just like him could fit in anywhere and have the same level of success no matter what their race, gender, or ethnicity happened to be. [Video here.]

The comment is interesting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is Taylor’s implication that “people like” Cain—by which I presume she means people of color—can’t enjoy “the same level of success” as the former Godfather Pizza CEO. She must not have been paying attention when the president said at a fundraiser on Tuesday:

What’s great about this country is you’ve got a good idea, you’ve got a service that nobody else has thought of, you know what, go out there, start a business. Make money…. Anybody in America should be able to make it if they try.

But the most intriguing aspect of Taylor’s analysis is the implication that Cain is not comfortable in his skin—that he would shed if he could. She further states that “the base that he [Cain] believes he is after is a right-wing, ultra-conservative base that does not want to either see racism as a dilemma or see it as a way—or see it as an attack on them.”

In short, Cain has been brainwashed into accepting a pernicious right-wing narrative. I’m waiting for Tavis Smiley and the others to express their righteous indignation that another black man has been accused of having been brainwashed.

In reality, though, it isn’t Cain’s skin color that is the source of his self-delusion. That, rather, is something he shares in common with all conservatives. As I wrote here, liberals generally see themselves as the lone “intellectuals” in the room. As for conservatives? The prevailing view of them is best summed up in the words of the left’s most cerebral living thinker, who said “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

It is for this reason that conservatives will never support, let alone become enthusiastic, about a black candidate. Oh, wait.

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On Friday the administration filed a formal appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that Secret Service records of White House visitors are subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

In August U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell upheld a March 2009 FOIA request for White House visitor records made by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a DC-based watchdog group. Initially, the request was denied, prompting CREW to sue for injunctive relief.

The judge’s ruling rejected an argument by administration attorneys that the visitor’s log is the property of the White House even though it is maintained and used by the Secret Service. Ironically, the same argument was used by the Bush 43 administration, which candidate Obama roundly castigated for its secrecy.

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The Associated Press quotes New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as having said during his weekly radio show:

My understanding is that Brookfield got lots of calls from many elected officials threatening them and saying … ‘We’re going to make your life more difficult.’

My copy of Rules for Radicals is on loan, so I’m afraid I can’t quote you the specific chapter where Saul Alinksy advocates using your friends in high places to effect the illusion of populist will.

Putting aside entirely the strong arm tactics on behalf of a supposedly “grass roots” initiative, doesn’t allying with the political power base run counter to everything the Wall Street Occupiers claim to stand for?

The Blaze asks the question this way:

If the Occupiers [sic] friends can control a massive multinational corporation (Brookfield), a powerful billionaire mayor, and defy the largest, most well-organized police department in the country, what will they consider outside their reach?

NOTE TO READERS: Pamela Brubaker, a PhD candidate in communications at Penn State, is seeking volunteers for an online survey relating to perceptions of marriage and how the topic is treated in the media. Anyone interested in participating should click here.

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That would include the man who is arguably Wall Street’s biggest detractor and an OWS sympathizer—Barack Obama. A study by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Project finds that Obama has received more in campaign donations from the financial sector than any other politician in the last two decades.

So far, the president has received $16 million in Wall Street contributions. The amount, which accounts for 20% of Obama’s total campaign funding, is $2.7 million more than George W. Bush received.

The Daily Caller quotes former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer as commenting:

It’s almost as if President Obama won’t cross across a Wall Street picket line except to get inside with [his] hand out, so he can raise money. That sort of support causes him to look hypocritical.

Fleischer adds that if Obama and other Democrats, including New York Sen. Charles Schumer, are so offended by Wall Street’s actions, they should put their mouths where their money is. Schumer has received roughly $8.7 million from the financial sector since 1989.

But the disconnect between what Obama says and does becomes more pronounced when you examine his specific list of donors. One of them is Bank of America, which donated $421,242 to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. The president returned their kindness last week when he pounced all over B of A for its newly announced $5 monthly fee on debit card users.

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He understands these issues, not just because he’s smart but because he’s lived them.

He was raised by a single mother who struggled to put herself through school and pay the bills. And when she needed help, who stepped in? His grandmother, waking up early every morning to take a bus to her job at the bank.

Then Mrs. Obama excused herself because she had to get over to Target before the sale on economy-sized boxes of cornflakes ended.

The First Lady’s sob story, such as it is, is not the first fictional tale of personal hardship she has spun. During her husband’s presidential campaign she made similar claims about her own upbringing, telling voters,”I was raised in a working-class family on the south Side of Chicago. That’s how I identify myself, a working-class girl.”

But that’s not how one of her long-time friends, Angela Acree, remembered her to Sharon Churcher of The Mail:

Michelle was from a middle-class family.

She came from a regular family. They had a nice home. It wasn’t a mansion, but it was just fine. It was a decent neighbourhood.

Adds Churcher, who paid a visit to the house where Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was raised:

Instead of the one-room tenement that now appears in most accounts of her upbringing, we found a well-kept neighbourhood of red-brick Arts and Craft-style houses which have long been home to respectable black families.

And what about her husband’s own childhood—his grandmother getting on a bus every morning to go to work (oh, the humanity!) or his single mother struggling to make ends meet? According to Obama’s own half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s mother sent him to Honolulu at age 10 to stay with his maternal grandparents. She remained behind in Indonesia to complete her dissertation on peasant blacksmithing in Java.

The neighborhood in Honolulu where Obama was raised, Makiki, is described as “unassuming” but not impoverished. Honolulu historian and archivist DeSoto Brown wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Obama’s neighbors “were mostly store clerks, restaurant workers and small business owners—many aspiring to government jobs.” (Not unlike the future president himself!)

In vivid contrast to either Obama’s make-believe poverty are the real-life experiences of Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET). Johnson, who appeared yesterday on Fox News Sunday, told host Chris Wallace:

I grew up in a family of 10 kids, first one to go to college, and I’ve earned my success. I’ve earned my right to fly private if I choose to do so. And by attacking me, is not going to convince me that I should take a bigger hit because I happen to be wealthy.

Johnson also had some advice for the president, who he said “should recalibrate his message,” adding, “You don’t get people to like you by attacking them or demeaning their success.”

It would seem as though the president’s better half could benefit as well from Johnson’s cautionary tale.

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Now on to business. It is not at all clear whether the smart black number the First Lady can be seen wearing in the accompanying photo was acquired during her much-publicized shopping spree at Target the day before. Suffice it to say that the Obamas did not celebrate the event at the Pizza Hut Express in the store where Michelle was coincidentally captured on video pushing a red cart.

Instead, they dined at Restaurant Eve, in Alexandria, Virginia, where à la carte appetizers average $17 and main courses $38. Desserts are $12. There is no telling whether the Obamas opted for one of the “tasting room menus,” which run from $120 to $150 (add in another $45 if you elect to start with Black River Osetra caviar with steamed goose egg custard and Maine lobster).

So do I begrudge the happy couple their fancy evening out? Of course not. Will their extravagance make any impression on the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who have joined the president in his class warfare on corporate fat cats? Highly doubtful. Does it send a wrong message to those the president is asking to continue making sacrifices and make him look two-faced? One can only hope so.

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Last month, seven North Dakota oil companies were charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds that had landed in oil waste pits in the western part of the state. The pits are a byproduct ofoil and gas drilling operations. The maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine.

But a law’s a law, right? Well, sometimes. It appears that a different standard (call it “No harm, no fowl”?) obtains when it comes to “good” forms of energy. Comments George Fenwick, president of the American Bird Conservancy (ABC):

It is perplexing that similar prosecutions have yet to be brought against the operators of wind farms. Every year wind turbines kill hundreds of thousands of birds, including eagles, hawks, and songbirds, but the operators are being allowed to get away with it. It looks like a double standard.

The ABC cites a 2009 estimate by the Fish and Wildlife Service that places the number of bird deaths from wind turbine collisions at 440,000. That number is expected to rise dramatically by 2030, by which point wind energy will be 12 times as prevalent as it is now.

Kevin Cramer, North Dakota’s public service commissioner, shares Fenwick’s presumption that a double standard is at work. Appearing on a Bismarck, North Dakota, radio show, Cramer called the government action “chilling” in a free society, adding:

[W]hen you selectively prosecute this way, it’s the worst injustice and the grossest form of discrimination in a free society that you can ever have.

None of which has deterred U.S. Attorney Timothy Purdon from pressing forward, despite criticism that the case is a targeted effort to advance the Obama administration’s war on fossil fuels. Even the presiding judge has observed that violations of the Migratory Bird Act, which dates to 1918, are normally treated as Class B or C misdemeanors.

For their part, the oil companies under indictment have pleaded not guilty, though, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

[T]hey are not unamazed. They say they’re not responsible for the bird deaths and that, even if they were, the deaths were ‘incidental’ to lawful commercial activity in full compliance with all environmental laws.

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And so were the photogs (those sneaky devils), snapping shots of the First Lady in her shades, Nike cap, and pedal pushers.

OK, I’m fooled. I completely buy into the notion that Michelle Obama—the same person who took an $80,000-a-day vacation on the Costa del Sol and wears $42,150 diamond bracelets—clips coupons and shops at discount stores with the rest of the starving masses.

One might say, as the Associated Press did in its coverage of the ostensible shopping spree, that it was all part of energizing the base—that Mrs. Obama is her husband’s secret campaign weapon. But then why the get-up, which according to Scott Pelley of CBS was so effective a disguise that no recognized her until she reached the checkout?

CBS quotes Kristina Schake, communications director for the First Lady, as commenting:

It is not uncommon for the First Lady to slip out to run an errand, eat at a local restaurant or otherwise enjoy the city outside the White House gates.

In other words, this stunt was in no way a transparent effort on the president’s part to suggest that he and his are just working stiffs, trying to make ends meet?

If you believe that, Target has a bridge it is willing to sell you. It’s located in aisle 6.

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Indeed it would—eventually. Even if Congress were to write a check for the $2.3 billion the project would cost, work on it would not start for another four years.

But that was the least of the boo-boos the president committed while using the bridge as a visual aid. He also made a pitch for another of his pet projects: replacing the nation’s centuries-plus-old railroads with a system of moderately high-speed electric trains. Volumes have been written about the false comparison between transportation system in China, whose high-speed rail the president holds aloft as a model, and that of the U.S. This didn’t prevent Obama from telling the crowd:

Now, we used to have the best infrastructure in the world here in America. We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad, the Interstate Highway System. We built the Hoover Dam. We built the Grand Central Station.

So how can we now sit back and let China build the best railroads? And let Europe build the best highways? And have Singapore build a nicer airport? [Emphasis added]

Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Timespounced on this latest “Bushism”:

A railroad between continents? A railroad from, say, New York City all the way across the Atlantic to France? Now, THAT would be a bridge!

So whose ass does the president kick for this malapropism? Is it his speech writers who confused the prefixes trans- and inter-? Or was Obama ad-libbing, as he was when he made reference to the “Austrian language?” Or when he claimed while lobbying for auto industry bailouts that “the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it”? (The German Karl Benz is generally acknowledged as the inventor of the modern car.)

But Obama’s biggest gaffe of all may be the timing of his mention of his beloved high-speed railinitiative. Two days before his bridge-side rally, the Democrat-controlled Senate Appropriations subcommittee that sets the Transportation Department’s budget cut the requested $53 billion funding for the program through 2018. It makes it look as though the president isn’t paying attention.

A final word about high-speed trains and the liberal mindset. In July, one of China’s vaunted high-speed trains smashed into another that was stalled on a section of track in Zhejiang province. The accident killed 32 people and injured scores of others. If such a disaster were to occur in the U.S., would the nation’s putative high-speed rail system go the way of nuclear power plants? Maybe before we leap into the expenditure for a redundant transportation project, liberals should examine photographs of the wreckage of the Chinese train. They could even come up with a nifty term to defend their fear of high-speed rail projects. They could call it “the China syndrome.”

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If the president is earnest about creating jobs (and Charles Krauthammer makes a powerfully persuasive argument in today’s Washington Post that he is not), he could learn a thing or two from his missus.

In 2009, a starving 26-year-old fashion designer by the name of Jason Wu was catapulted to instant fame and wealth when the First Lady auditioned an off-the-shoulder affair at her husband’s inauguration that Wu had dreamed up. She engineered another rags-to-riches story in May for costumier-turned-fashion designer Barbara Tfank by wearing one of Tfank’s creations during a visit at Buckingham Palace with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Just this week Mrs. Obama waved her magic wand again. The Mail UK reports that the First Lady made a grand entrance at the Democratic Party dinner in New York decked out in $42,150 worth of diamond-encrusted bracelets designed by soon-to-be-formerly-obscure Texas jeweler Katie Decker.

This is how jobs are created, a fashion at a time. The details—the type and amount of fabric or the number and nature of precious stones used—are inconsequential. The important thing is that the president’s wife is advancing the careers of hard-working Americans and simultaneously developing a market for their wares, at least for that select subset of consumers who can afford them. That would be the idle rich, much-maligned by her husband.

In fact, the Obamas are themselves members of that fraternity, albeit just barely. Their estimated net worth, at $5.5 million, most of it from book royalties, makes them one of the least rich couples to take up residence in the White House.

That hasn’t prevented the First Lady from dressing up like a member of the super-rich and jetting off (in Air Force One) to sport her fancy duds at vacation destinations that most Americans will experience, if ever, only in pictures. And the fact that she is doing this at a time when most families are struggling mightily to put bread on the table—a condition that 53% of Americans now blame her husband for—bothers her not in the slightest.

Then again, perhaps Michelle Obama is wise enough to understand that the people whose careers she builds, her husband will break down soon enough, given his bleed-the-rich, redistributionist druthers.

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Ultimately, the courts rejected efforts to block construction of the center, which they said was protected by the Constitution. The courts got this one right. No one I know and respect ever denied the Cordoba Institute’s right to build a mosque on any site of its choosing. The issue was never one of rights but, rather, of whatis right, in the moral sense. It is hard to conceive in a city with an area of 305 square miles that Feisal Abdul Rauf, the contentious imam behind the project, could not find an alternate spot that was not in the now-spectral shadow of the twin towers.

It is equally hard to imagine that liberals, who claim to own the patent on tolerance and compassion, had so little of either for the families of 9/11 victims, who were among the project’s most vociferous opponents. What possible harm could have come from indulging their request that Cordoba find a different plot of real estate for its religious center? Oh, that’s right—I keep forgetting: Mention of the fact that the terrorist plot to kill 3,000 Americans was carried out in the name of Islam is not permitted according to the liberal handbook.

The Park51 center, as it will henceforth officially be known, opened with a photo exhibit of children’s art. How innocent! And the project’s usually bellicose developer and chief financier, Sharif El-Gamal, was all sweetness and light as he tut-tutted:

We made incredible mistakes. The biggest mistake we made was not to include 9/11 families. We didn’t understand that we had a responsibility to discuss our private project with family members that lost loved ones.

If only he had had a V-8!

One small blessing that Rauf and El-Gamal can be thankful for is that no harm is likely to come to their center now that it is built. America is still by and large a peaceful and law-abiding nation. The two men wouldn’t enjoy the same peace of mind had they built the structure in Rauf’s native Kuwait or its neighboring countries.

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John Podhoretz, who is either a masochist or a man endowed with infinite patience, takes the time to chronicle a number of the recycled phrases in a New York Post article that would be funny if it weren’t so sad. (An example is the line “This isn’t class warfare, this is math,” which, JPod notes, Obama said verbatim on September 8.)

The basic premise of the president’s speech is that every taxpayer should pay his fair share. I doubt there is a sentient being among us who wouldn’t agree with that notion. Some would even extend it to 51.6 million American tax filers, or 36%, who pay absolutely nothing into the system but still enjoy the same rights, privileges, and services as those of us who do.

But that segment of the population is not the one the president has in mind when he speaks of income equality. He means millionaires and billionaires (which—credit due—is a slight improvement over his previous definition of rich people, which meant couples jointly earning $250,000 or more). In making his case—that we should raise the top marginal rate to a point where the richest Americans end up contributing $1.5 trillion in new tax revenues—he argues that “middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.” He’s right: They shouldn’t. And with rare exception they don’t.

According to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, households making more than $1 million this year will pay an average of 29.1% of their income in federal taxes. By way of contrast, those making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15% of their income in federal taxes, and those making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average 12.5%.

On the night that Obama unveiled his jobs bill, he made the argument that “nothing in this proposed bill hasn’t been tried before or agreed to before by some or all members of the Republican Party.” Although in of itself that’s not a ringing endorsement for enacting a piece of legislation, his claim could be extended to his proposal to increase the highest marginal tax rate on income. It’s been done before, many times. In 1944 the top tier was raised all the way up to 94%. However, every time the highest marginal tax rate has been adjusted upward, the other four marginal rates have been adjusted as well. To do otherwise would be unfair. That seems a truism to everyone except the man who professes to champion fairness.

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Both stories are headlined at The Blaze, and the contrast is striking, even if the central figure in the first story—New Black Panther leader Malik Shabazz—is so extreme that he has managed to marginalize himself and his group.

I nevertheless stand behind Shabazz’s constitutionally protected right to speak his mind, right up until the point where he shouts “Fire” in a crowded theater (a point he is dangerously close to reaching). I am equally supportive of the First Amendment rights of 12-year-old son, Shawn Stevens, of Dover, New Hampshire. Those rights haven’t prevented officials at the middle school he attends from confiscating his American flag because the rod it is attached to is viewed as a potential “weapon.”

The child’s mother, Theresa Stevens, states that Shawn, who is autistic, brought the flag to school to show friends. He had received it as a gift from a family friend whose son is in Afghanistan. To her dismay, she received a phone call that morning telling her “this flag needs to be immediately removed from school because it can be considered a weapon.”

The school’s Co-Principal Kimberly Lyndes told the Fosters Daily Democrat that the problem wasn’t patriotism but safety, adding:

A student came to school yesterday with a flag that was rather large and didn’t fit inside the backpack. A staff member felt that it could potentially be dangerous because of the pointy end and took the item and let the student know and the parent know that they took the item and could pick it up.

But as Teresa Stevens correctly notes, students routinely carry sharp-tipped items, such as compasses and pencils, to school. When she argued that these standard school supplies could also be classified as “possible weapons,” Stevens claims she was told, “Well, we don’t let [students] wave them around in class, and your son has autism.”

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A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000.

The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns.

The Journal further notes that other companies that produce cars for the masses have had their bids for loans rejected, while manufacturers of vehicles whose target market is wealthy fat cats receive the subsidies. The paper quotes Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, as saying:

This is not for average Americans. This is for people to put something in their driveway that is a conversation piece. It’s status symbol thing.

One supposes a corporate jet won’t fit in the driveway.

Meanwhile, Fisker stock, which had been in decline prior to the White House cash injection, continued its slide following a high of $35.40 a share on September 21, 2009. Currently, the stock is selling for around $3 a share. Tesla has performed somehwat better, achieving a high of $36 a share in November of 2010 before descending to its current price of $25.

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He’s right. As Noel Sheppard points out at NewsBusters, one of the people who characterized the program that way is none other Hardball host Chris Matthews, who went Perry one better, calling Social Security a “bad Ponzi scheme.”

OK, one might say that Chris Matthews is not running for office (be thankful for small things) and is not terribly bright in any case, but he’s not the only liberal to make that observation. In 1967,liberal Nobel Prize-winning economist and Paul Samuelson wrote in a column in Newsweek titled “Something for Nothing”:

Social Security is squarely based on what has been called the eighth wonder of the world—compound interest. A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game contrived. And that is a fact, not a paradox. [Emphasis added]

Stanley Kurtz of National Review chronicles a host of other liberals who have made the same allegation, all more distinguished than Chris Matthews. The list includes Stanford University economists Victor Fuchs and John Shoven, who authored a 1999Los Angeles Times op-ed titled “Ponzi Game Needs Equitable Solution” and former Lyndon Johnson speechwriter Ben Wattenberg, who called both Social Security and Medicare “chain letter games.”

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Titled “Tea Party Zombies Must Die”, the shoot-em-up RPG allows liberals to take out their political frustrations by gunning down prominent members of the Tea Party and FOX News Channel personalities. The latter includes veteran journalist Brit Hume, who is one of the fairest and most open-minded journalists living, but I suppose all conservatives look alike to liberals. (Screen grabs can be viewed here.)

The game is the creation of StarvingEyes Advergaming, a Brooklyn-based company, whose CEO, Jason Oda, told Stephen Gutowski of the Media Research Center that the game “was just a personal project. I am not worried about it effecting business.”

As Gutowski reports, StarvingEyes was worked with major clients such as Hotels.com, MeowMix, TLC, and Motorola. Their funeral, right?

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So said Barack Obama on January 12, in an effort to quell the hysteria from the left, which had gone ballistic (er… resorted to name-calling) over the shootings in Tucson. The president’s words, delivered at a memorial service two days after the massacre, were perfectly suited to the occasion. They struck the ideal balance: They were politic and non-specific, shrewdly couched so as to avoid pointing fingers at his supporters.

As hollow as those words were, they trumped Obama’s reaction yesterday to the bellicose and profane comments at a Labor Day rally by Teamsters Union boss James Hoffa. Hoffa was there to warm up (read: stoke) the crowd for a speech by the president. Hoffa told the thousands of members assembled:

We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war….

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march … Everybody here’s got a vote … Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong. [Emphasis added]

The president’s reaction? Nothing. For once, words failed him.

After videos of Hoffa’s “pep talk” went viral, the Tea Party Express called upon the president to “condemn this inappropriate and uncivil rhetoric,” adding that it “has no place in the public forum.” This, too, so far has been met with silence.

Obama can run from this latest “unpleasantness,” as he has done in the past. However, he is running out of hiding places. Elements of the mainstream media, once willing to run interference for him, have reported the incident and the president’s conspicuous lack of response. Do I feel another speech coming on? Or is that just a migraine?

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The New Republic, in an uncharacteristic act of charity, defends Perry against the charges of despising science per se, adding, “He rejects scientific findings when they complicate his theological or ideological worldview.” [Emphasis in the original]

Putting aside Perry’s views on evolution, isn’t it unscientific to impute the views of one member of a group to the entire population? Paul Krugman, whose Sunday column in the New York Times was titled “Republicans Against Science,” apparently thinks not. Ditto for Al Gore, who has become absolutely apoplectic over skeptics of the view that recent changes in climate are (to coin a phrase) “man-caused disasters.”

Let’s assume for the moment that Gore is right—that the planet teeters on the brink of climactic catastrophe and that human technology is entirely to blame. Before we start fashioning dunce caps for Republicans and other non-believers in scientific “fact,” a question raised by Jonah Goldberg at “The Corner” requires an answer:

Why does the Left get to pick which issues are the benchmarks for “science”? Why can’t the measure of being pro-science be the question of heritability of intelligence? Or the existence of fetal pain? Or the distribution of cognitive abilities among the sexes at the extreme right tail of the bell curve?

Jonah goes on to cite close to a dozen scientific issues Democrats would rather not talk about, including nuclear power, which if used more widely as an energy source would diminish Americans’ reliance on environment-destroying fossil fuels.

Why are these topics not open for discussion and debate? Could it be Democrats are bullish on science only so long as the subject matter isn’t disquieting or likely to upset their base?

Consider their fondness for parading lists of signatories from the science community who swear on a stack of Bibles (whoops! Make that a copy of Darwin) that, for example, humans have the capacity to effect major planetary change. If a list of signatories is the measure of an argument’s validity, then why do Democrats choose to ignore this list of names appended to a statement that posits 25 general conclusions about nature of human intellgience, one of which follows?

The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered.

These findings are troublesome for a political party that would choose to coddle one of its most loyal voter blocs rather than expose them to the truth.They are also a tough pill to swallow for blacks, who have been reassured repeatedly that their below-average test scores are the product of years of systematic oppression or cultural bias in the test, not some inborn limitation. If one wanted to be really cruel, one might even accuse Democrats and blacks of rejecting scientific findings when they complicate their ideological worldview.

In full disclosure, let me be the first to point out that this statement was published in 1994. Let me also point out that the research since then has been ongoing and that the theory supporting a connection between race and intelligence has gained even wider acceptance.

Discussion, anyone?

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Wait, that’s no CEO. It’s our own dear First Lady, Michelle Obama. And that ten mil she squandered on massages and high-end vodka isn’t even hers—it’s yours.

The Mail quotes a White House source as calling Mrs. Obama a “vacation junkie,” adding:

It’s disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage of her privileged position while the most hardworking Americans can barely afford a week or two off work.

When it’s all added up, she’s spent more than $10 million in taxpayers’ money on her vacations.

The First Lady is believed to have taken 42 days of vacation in the past year, including a $375,000 “getaway” at the Costa del Sol in Spain, where she spent $2,000 a night on a suite at the ritzy Villa Padierna.

Mrs. Obama knows how to travel in style as well. Rather than wait for her hubby to finish out the business day last Thursday, she took Air Force Two to Martha’s Vineyard several hours earlier. Cost to taxpayers: $149,000 minus time on the ground and extra security detail.

Says the source:

The vacations are totally Michelle’s idea. She’s like a junkie. She can’t schedule enough getaways, and she lives from one to the next—all the while sticking it to hardworking Americans.

It all sounds terribly greedy and extravagant, but have pity. The poor woman, after all, is out of work. Let’s just hope her husband follows suit in November of 2012.

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Unfortunately for the president, that bit of wisdom extended onto side #2 of the fortune cookie he extracted it from, which read, “but actions matter more.”

A good leader leads not only by words but by example. Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost another 420 points. So what did the president do to bolster the confidence of panicked voters? He led by example. With 14 million Americans out of work, he embarked on a “10-day retreat at a 28-acre Martha’s Vineyard compound called Blue Heron Farm, which costs an estimated $50,000 per week to rent.” He went, in the words of usually sympathetic Washington Post columnist Colbert King “to dwell in splendid seclusion among the rich and famous.”

King goes on to ask:

What is he thinking? It’s not as if the Obama family is living in deprivation in Washington.

Without leaving the White House grounds, they have access to five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, a jogging trail, a putting green and a movie theater that shows first-run films on demand. That’s hardly roughing it.

But words matter. So here are some more of the president’s words:

We will not rest until we are succeeding in generating the jobs that this economy needs. (November 2, 2009)

I will not rest until businesses are investing again, and businesses are hiring again. (November 23, 2009)

We will not rest until we build an economy that’s ready for America’s future. (January 28, 2010)

I’m not gonna rest and my administration is not gonna rest in our efforts to help people who are looking to find a job. (March 5 2010)

My administration will not rest until every American who is able and ready and willing to work can find a job. (July 8, 2010)

One more quote:

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (King James Bible)

Welcome to Day 7.

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This week’s contender was shot by Toby Harnden of the generally rightwing English daily The Telegraph (h/t Mediaite). The most polite interpretation of the image is that it shows the candidate administering life support to a corndog. The least polite interpretation is that she is—well, suffice it to say this is a family publication.

The text, also the work of Harnden, is snarky and hostile:

On the eve of the Ames Straw Poll, the Republican candidates made a last push for votes at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines—a huge spectacle in which cattle, pigs and horses are on display as well as politicians and Iowans queue to for fairground rides and some of the most unhealthy food on the planet (I was going to try the Fried Twinkies but the queue was, alas, too long).

Most unhealthy food on the planet? I would have thought that dubious honor belongs to Scotch pie, a British culinary invention in which minced beef and suet (aka, rendered beef fat) are encased in a pastry crust made with lard (aka pork fat).

Frances Martel at Mediaite believes there is something more insidious at work than merely portraying Bachmann in the least flattering light possible. And that is “a deliberate attempt to undermine the one characteristic Rep. Bachmann has that no one seems to disagree with: she’s photogenic.”

Martel speculates:

Then there’s the sexist subtext here: would the Telegraph have run a similar photo of a presidential candidate consuming an obvious phallic symbol if said candidate were male? Phallic symbols make for good comedy, sure, but the Telegraph is not Mad Magazine, and there appears to be no intent at humor here, only degradation.

Phallic symbols make for good comedy? Maybe females of the species have much to teach us after all.

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On the subject of Obama’s vacation in the midst of economic turmoil and ongoing debt problems Carney said, “I don’t think Americans out there would begrudge that notion that the President would spend some time with his family,” adding:

There is no such thing as a presidential vacation. The presidency travels with you. [Obama] will be in constant communication and get regular briefings from his national security team as well as his economic team.

On the subject of the president’s photo op—a widely published image of him saluting the fallen warriors—Carney said that

the picture was carefully taken so that it did not show the cases containing remains… The White House routinely releases photos taken by the White House photographers in specific circumstances where it would be inappropriate to include members of the media. In this case, the White House released the photo, in the interests of transparency, so that the American people could have as much insight as possible into this historic and sobering event.

Contrast the two statements with the following one, which addresses the same topics:

Back in July, when they were planning what the President should do during his month-long vacation (as part of their effort to persuade the public that he wasn’t actually on vacation in the generally accepted sense of what vacation means—i.e., having fun and not working), the image-makers hit upon a clever idea. Every week, they decided, they would send the President somewhere … for a day or a day and a half to hold an event of some kind in which he would mix with ‘real Americans.’

Now, I’m not going to feign shock at the fact that this President is using photo ops in an attempt—some might say a cynical attempt—to influence public opinion. It would be news if he weren’t doing just that….

This last statement was part of an article published TIMEMagazine in 2001. The president whose vacation plans and photo ops it was deriding as cynical were George W. Bush. The author of the article was Jay Carney.

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The media did its part to emphasize the war-is-hell aspect of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan by running footage of slain soldiers’ coffins being unloaded from cargo planes at U.S. air bases. Lest there be any confusion or short memories of just how intense, and uncivil, these protests became, a stroll down memory lane via this slideshow should suffice as a reminder.

That was then. And this is now. And now one scarcely hears a peep from the anti-war protesters, despite a disconcerting observation by Ira Stoll at reason.com, who writes:

The Obama administration is on pace to have more American soldiers killed in casualties related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than the George W. Bush administration did in its first term.

Citing the website iCasualties.org, which maintains data on military personnel killed in action, Stoll notes the sobering specifics:

630 American soldiers died in the Afghanistan operation in the years 2001 through 2008, when Mr. Bush was president, while 1097 American soldiers have died in the years 2009, 2010, and 2011.

Not to mention, the president has added a third war—in Libya—which, despite his early predictions of U.S. involvement being measured in days has dragged on for months. The war has cost American taxpayers $60 million a month since the bombing began in March, but it has been even more costly in terms of human lives.

So the question logically arises: Where are the marchers and demonstrators now? Why aren’t they out picketing in front of the White House, holding aloft posters of Barack Obama with a noose around his neck? (Oh, that’s right…)

Stoll posed questions like these to Michael McPhearson, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, which organized some of the largest antiwar protests during the Bush administration. The explanation he gave is simple: It’s all political partisanship:

Once Obama got into office, they kind of demobilized themselves.

Because he’s a Democrat, they don’t want to oppose him in the same way as they opposed Bush. The politics of it allows him more breathing room when it comes to the wars.

In other words, the protests were nothing more than demonstrations of liberal hypocrisy. Suprised?

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