Jihad-watchers beclowning themselves over Perry/Ismaili thing. [Updated]

Alternative title: Pam Geller loses her anti-Idiotarian Status.

Yeah.  I’m kicking it Old School here: “anti-Idiotarian” is one of those terms of art from the far-off dawn of the blogosphere (which is to say, 2003 or so).  Then again, a lot of the people who are going to be talked about here have been in the ‘sphere for that long; so keep that in mind.  There’s a history here, and it’s not always a nice one.

Give you the background: Pamela Geller – who has been hysterically screaming at the top of her lungs about Islam (admittedly, not always unreasonably) for as long as I can remember – has picked for her latest digital jihad* Governor Rick Perry’s** association with the Ismailis.  At issue (aside from Perry being friendly with Grover Norquist, which apparently is intolerable right there***) is a curriculum that Perry had his education people put together about Islam that involved input from Ismaili groups in Texas: oddly enough, Geller goes off on this curriculum in the American Thinker without actually linking to it.

Remember that Old School thing from the last paragraph?  Well, when you’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while you tend to recognize the tell-tale signs of a snow job.  One of the prime ones?  Not linking to what you’re complaining about. Continue reading Jihad-watchers beclowning themselves over Perry/Ismaili thing. [Updated]

Stopping more Tax Hikes on the poor in Florida.

This ad comes from Grover Norquist’s Americans For Tax Reform, and it’s aimed squarely at the Florida legislature’s attempt to emulate the Obama administration’s recent lower-class tax hike:

The argument here is actually very simple: cigarette taxes are in fact taxes, not ‘user fees’ or any other kind of bureaucratic nonsense. People like to pretend otherwise because it’s easier to pass something that’s not called a tax, and because in this particular case the the average member of the group that Rasmussen likes to call the Political Class probably doesn’t smoke anyway. In other words, if it’s not affecting them personally, it’s not their problem. This is not a particularly inclusive attitude, but then nobody was accusing the Political Class with an excess of empathy anyway.

Continue reading Stopping more Tax Hikes on the poor in Florida.