Kipling versus Breitbart.com. Spoiler: Kipling wins.

Point:

It was weeks ere we could see the wood for the trees, but so soon as the staff [of a newspaper] realised that they had proprietors who backed them right or wrong, and specially when they were wrong (which is the sole secret of journalism), and that their fate did not hang on any passing owner’s passing mood, they did miracles.

Rudyard Kipling, “The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat.”

Continue reading Kipling versus Breitbart.com. Spoiler: Kipling wins.

Breitbart.com told that Chuck Hagel took money from “Friends of Hamas.”

Well now.

On Thursday, Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed that one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called “Friends of Hamas.”

That is quite the accusation, and it gives the Left a rare opportunity to go after the Breitbart constellation of websites.  All they have to do to debunk it is to have Hagel reveal his foreign donors.  I mean, how likely is it that the White house could have messed up vetting Chuck Hagel that badly…

Called for comment and reached via telephone, Associate Communications Director at the White House Eric Schultz identified himself, heard the question, was silent for several seconds, and then hung up the phone immediately without comment.

…Well now.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh MSNBC calls NAACP a bunch of racists!

…Which is, of course, a thoroughly nasty thing to say about the organization.  Are there individuals in the NAACP who are racist?  Without a doubt; some people plain just don’t like other people who don’t look like them.  And there are going to be people out there who can hide attitudes like that under various guises (including, alas, the venerable Democratic trick of finding a convenient Republican/conservative target, and unleashing a full torrent of racialized/ethnicized/sexualized venom upon her [usually her]).  But for MSNBC to argue that Mitt Romney went out to the NAACP to appeal to the racists in their ranks is just downright appalling… hold up, I’m getting a clarification over my ear mike.

:pause:

OhhhhhMSNBC is actually claiming that Romney spoke to the NAACP in order to appeal to white racists.

Continue reading #rsrh MSNBC calls NAACP a bunch of racists!

Soledad O’Brien critic of Joel Pollak’s criticism of Derrick Bell’s Critical Race Theory.

Also: this is Wikipedia’s problem, in a nutshell.

Background: Soledad O’Brien managed to look like an utter idiot on CNN on Thursday when Breitbart.com’s Joel Pollak casually eviscerated her over the concept of critical race theory (CRT).

(pause)

OK, deeper background: CRT is more or less identity politics run through an academic gobbledygook filter; some of its adherents have made some somewhat… incautious comments about white supremacy and the sham nature of the American civil rights movement.  This all matters because Breitbart.com’s got footage of Barack Obama as a college student introducing Derrick Bell (H/T: Ann Althouse) – a man who once argued that American whites would happily sell American blacks to space aliens if offered enough in exchange*.  Admittedly, we all do stupid things in college – and if the media had brought up Obama’s collegiate antics in 2008 (or 2004) it’s fair to say that it only might have caused, to use a term from my kids’ favorite show, ‘confusion and delay’ for the Obama campaign.  Neither of those should have been a consideration for the media when it came to doing their jobs – but, hey, we all know that these people think that ‘doing their jobs’ means ‘keeping conservatives out of office.’ Continue reading Soledad O’Brien critic of Joel Pollak’s criticism of Derrick Bell’s Critical Race Theory.

Big Government: Hey, guess who dumped 20K documents in a dumpster?

Nine days after there was an announcement that their group was going to be investigated?  Yup, that’s right: ACORN.  San Diego office – just before California AG Jerry Brown came to visit.  Alas, if only somebody had had the foresight to wait for this sort of thing to happen, and retrieve the documents…

Oh.  Right.

SanDiegoACORNDocumentDumpScandal-100909-Photo41

They didn’t shred, they didn’t redact, and they threw out people’s sensitive and personal information – including things like copies of Social Security cards, W-4 forms, and driver’s licenses. I’m not a lawyer, but apparently that’s grounds for legal action right there; document disposal requirements are very, very strict.  Which is why the local ACORN branch is trying the novel ‘Oops, fall cleaning‘ excuse.

Which almost might be believable, except of course for the underage El Salvadoran illegal immigrant brothel thing.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

It’s not even a ‘Battle’ of the Signs. No contest.

This video by Short for Ordinary (via Breitbart TV) contrasting the sign-acquiring strategies of the folks against health care rationing vs. those of the ones for it:


(For those without ready video: the 1000+ demonstrating against health care rationing at the Tuscon Recess Rally [Giffords*] made their own; the 200 demonstrating for it were generally handed them at about the same time that they got their juice and bagels)

…is illustrative of two things: first, all the creativity and energy seems to be flowing through the folks who are trying to stop health care rationing. The folks brought in to astroturf support for it are… dull**. Second: screaming names at these people doesn’t seem to be stopping them; they instead look like they’re using the insults as a reminder of why they keep going out there to say their piece. Which is as good a reason as any to conclude why they’re not going away.

While I am not of course privy to the thoughts of the President, I suggest that perhaps this is not the community he thought that he’d be organizing once he took office…

Moe Lane Continue reading It’s not even a ‘Battle’ of the Signs. No contest.

I’ll be on the B-Cast at around 5:30 today.

Link here.

Mind you, it’s me – so it’ll be about zombies. On the other hand, I might be able to sneak a comment or two in about this OfA desperate rally at the fallback point conference call.  Goodness knows it’s not really a subject change.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I was at the ALG / Net Right Nation shindig.

It was fun; they (“they” being Americans for Limited Government & Net Right Nation) were nice people, and they gave me a beer. This is an easy way to make me your friend, for those who might not know this. There was also food. This is likewise a very simple way to make me your friend.

They had Andrew Breitbart talking: I have a photo of him taken from my cell phone, but I haven’t figured out how to transfer it yet. I didn’t take notes or anything, but the gist is that we conservatives – the menfolk, at least – should stop wearing Reagan-evoking suits all the time and get back into the business of claiming a piece of popular culture. Not wearing a suit at the time, and being all about abusing popular culture for my own purposes, I thought that this was a marvelous notion.

There will be a better post of all of this once I get the video of the talk sent to me.

Crossposted to RedState.