Believe it or not, the following was not written by Chris Matthews, Andrew Sullivan, or Gwyneth Paltrow.

[A]s I began to contemplate ways to assist Barack in his 2012 re-election bid something miraculous happened. I felt God’s (His) Spirit beckoning me in my dreams at night. Listening, cautiously, I learned that Jesus walked the earth to create a more civilized society, Martin (Luther King) walked the earth to create a more justified society, but, Apostle Barack, the name he was called in my dreams, would walk the earth to create a more equalized society, for the middle class and working poor. Apostle Barack, the next young leader with a new cause, had been taken to the mountaintop and allowed to see over the other side. He had the answers to unlock the kingdom of “heaven here on earth” for his followers. The answers were repeated – over and over – in speeches Barack had made from his presidential announcement to his inaugural address. Those speeches or his teaching.s  contained the answers to the middle class and working poor people living in a “heaven here on earth.” For when the answers were unlocked and enacted, Apostle Barack’s vision of America would be realized.

This was actually written by one Barbara Thompson, a professor at Florida A&M University, in a book titled The Gospel According to Apostle Barack: In Search of a More Perfect Political Union as “Heaven Here on Earth.”

But it’s not too different than things Chris Matthews or Andrew Sullivan have said.

“I sat down and watched our president tell me that I am his equal, that I’m no longer outside, I’m fully part of this family and to hear the president who is in some ways a father figure speak to that, the tears came down like with many people in our families, to be included.” – Andrew Sullivan

“He’s never not only broken any law, he’s never done anything wrong? He’s the perfect father, the perfect husband, the perfect American.” – Chris Matthews

Is there any reason – apart from the Democrats’ weird affection for dynastic political power – that this man is a United States Senator?

I have been told that it is rude and uncivil to refer to politicians by nicknames no matter how appropriate… but even the liberal press refers to this guy as ‘Mark Uterus’ for his single-minded obsession with ladyparts.

A pair of ministers in Coeur d’Alene Idaho have been ordered by the Government to perform same-sex weddings, under threat of jail.

City officials told Donald Knapp that he and his wife Evelyn, both ordained ministers who run Hitching Post Wedding Chapel, are required to perform such ceremonies or face months in jail and/or thousands of dollars in fines. The city claims its “non-discrimination” ordinance requires the Knapps to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies now that the courts have overridden Idaho’s voter-approved constitutional amendment that affirmed marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Something else the left lied about.

Will Churches Be Forced To Conduct Gay Weddings? Not a chance. That’s just the scare tactic conservative groups use to frighten voters.

The political left is opposed to imposing travel restrictions on people coming into the USA from Ebola Hot Zones, even though such measures have been extremely effective in other countries. The reason the left opposes them is because of political correctness.

Back in the early phase of the AIDS epidemic, competent epidemiologists suggested shutting down the gay bath houses which were a prominent vector for the spread of the disease. The political left opposed such measures on the basis of political correctness. Then, as now, “gay peoples’ feeling will get hurt” triumphed over rights and reason.

History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Those who fail to learn history, et cetera…

At one time, California was the most prosperous state in the county. But after just a couple of decades of progressive politics and illegal immigration, almost 1 out of every 4 Californians lives in poverty.

A report by the Census Bureau released Thursday shows that over 48 million Americans, around 16%, now live below the poverty line, but the number’s even worse for California, which when cost of living is factored in has a stunning 23.4% in poverty.

But on the plus side, gay marriage is legal, gay history is taught in public schools, and there are transgendered bathrooms for everyone!

Indeed. Perhaps if the Obamacrats spent more time on their actual jobs and less time settling scores and going after their opponents…

Ever since Barack Hussein Obama became president, there has been a notable acceleration in the use of State power to punish, harass, and wreak vengeance on those the left perceives as their enemies. Just a few examples:

• Barack Obama’s use of the IRS to target conservative opponents for harassment.
• Partisan Democrat prosecutors in Wisconsin conducting a campaign of harassment and intimidation against conservative political groups in that state.
• Radical Feminists imposing California’s “Yes Means Yes” law, stripping college males of the rights of due process and the presumption of innocence, all so they can settle their scores with the “Patriarchy.”
• Harry Reid and 52 senate Democrats attempting to gut the First Amendment’s free speech protections; all to get even with a handful of rich donors who support non-Democrat causes.
• And, of course, the Gay Fascist Left using the power of the state to punish bakers, florists, and photographers who do not support gay marriage.

Inevitably, when the left-wing comes to power, the first order of business is to punish their perceived enemies. That has been the case in every country in which any brand of Marxism has come into power. There was a naive assumption that the political system of the United States, with its body of laws and system of checks and balances, was immune to these types of abuses. Clearly, the last six years have shown that it is not.

Modern leftism is less a set of political beliefs than a militant pathology. If your political philosophy is based on the idea that those who disagree with you are evil, and/or greedy, and/or racist, and/or homophobic, and/or sexist, then, of course, they need to be punished, and of course, the reason your side was elected was to punish them. Obama himself admitted as much when he stated that the purpose of elections was “to punish our enemies and … reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” And his administration and his party have done exactly that.

And the worst part is that if, somehow, the left’s greedy fingers are ever pried from the levers of state power, the Republicans will do nothing to reverse what has been done, will do nothing to undo what the Obama left has done. They may not abuse power so flagrantly as the left does, but they like having the power all the same.

The only way to keep the State from abusing power is to not let the State have that power in the first place.

A competent and rational president would have picked… perhaps a noted epidemiologist to coordinate the administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak, or perhaps someone from the military accustomed to mustering and managing large numbers of diverse people and resources.

Obama chose a fiercely partisan Democrat lawyer and lobbyist. These are the qualifications of freshly appointed Ebola Czar Ron Klain.

In January of 2011, Klain stepped down as chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden. Before that, Ron Klain was a well-connected Washington lobbyist. According to Senate lobbying disclosure records, Klain’s clients included Fannie Mae, U.S. Airways, Time Warner, CIGNA, and Imclone.

Klain also worked as chief of staff for former Vice President Al Gore, Janet Reno, the Senate Democratic Leadership Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Committee. But that’s not all! Ron Klain did debate prep for both Obama and former president Bill Clinton. And if that weren’t enough, Klain was also general counsel of Al Gore’s election recount committee in 2000.

So, Klain was probably one of those guys high-fiving each other after disqualifying thousands of military votes over minor technicalities.

A cynic might suggest that his appointment shows Obama is more concerned with managing the political and public relations side of the Ebola outbreak the medical side.

This would be like George W. Bush putting Karl Rove in charge of the Hurricane Katrina response.

You may recall how in 2010, former Florida Governor Charlie Crist was the choice of the Republican Establishment as the party’s candidate for Senator. He lost the party’s nomination to an upstart conservative named Marco Rubio.  No doubt if Crist had defeated Rubio, conservatives would have been told to shut up and support him because nothing was more important than loyalty to the party. Since Crist didn’t defeat Rubio, he ran against him as an Independent, and after losing, switched over to the Democrats.

Funny how that party loyalty thing only works one-way.

Anyway, Crist is running for Florida governor again, now as a loyal Obama Democrat. That’s not so weird, but he does have this peculiar thing about always needing to have a fan blowing on him when he makes a public appearance, which resulted in some “Only in Florida” weirdness at his gubernatorial “debate” with current Republican governor Rick Scott.

Charlie Crist, burdened with an almost pathological disdain for humanity’s untidiness, hates to sweat. This trait runs deep, and it was laid bare again last night in an utterly bizarre and totally hilarious bit of political theater that would only happen in Florida. Crist, who claimed to have something called “temperature issues” that can only be “addressed” with a fan, had installed a fan at his feet before the debate.

This was not to Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s liking for reasons that have not yet been fully explained. Scott refused to debate under any condition that would be fanned, giving life to what is now known as #fangate.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have an extremely peculiar situation right now,” the moderator said. ” … We have been told that Gov. Scott will not be participating in this debate. Gov. Crist has asked to have a fan — a small fan — placed underneath his podium. The rules that I was given by the Scott campaign says there should be no fan.” He paused. “Somehow, there is a fan there.”

Eventually, Rick Scott showed up and the debate went on but… pretty weird, right? Though not quite as weird as former Florida Senator Bob Graham who reportedly kept detailed journals recording the time, length, and consistency of his bowel movements.

To follow up on V’s post about chemical weapons found in Iraq: Guess Who, in the Bush administration, didn’t want anyone talking about the weapons?

Theories vary, but according to Eli Lake’s article, it would have been Karl Rove:

Starting in 2004, some members of the George W. Bush administration and Republican lawmakers began to find evidence of discarded chemical weapons in Iraq. But when the information was brought up with the White House, senior adviser Karl Rove told them to “let these sleeping dogs lie.”

The issue of Iraq’s WMD remnants was suddenly thrust back into the fore this week, with a blockbuster New York Times report accusing the Bush administration of covering up American troops’ chemically induced wounds…

Dave Wurmser—who served at the time as a senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney on national-security issues—remembers…“In 2005-6, Karl Rove and his team blocked public disclosure of these findings and said, ‘Let these sleeping dogs lie; we have lost that fight so better not to remind anyone of it.’”

Rove’s reasons make sense. Except they don’t.

It’s true that a lot of politics is about Controlling The Narrative, and you want people talking about the narratives that work for your side. So you talk up the narratives that do, and you shut up about the ones that don’t. It is sometimes called “message discipline” or “staying on message”.

Except in one important case: WHEN YOU’VE BEEN LIED ABOUT. When someone (the Left) has lied about your integrity or key issue maliciously, you don’t pass up chances to air the exculpatory evidence – also known as The Truth – which will expose your opponents as liars. Especially when those chances to air the truth aren’t going to cost you much.

If Lake’s story is accurate, Rove was so clever about Controlling The Narrative that he lost sight of the most important narrative of all: Spreading the truth. Getting the real story out.

Rove may also have lost sight of the next most important narrative, Obeying the law:

After the U.S. found thousands of the old chemical-weapons shells, Wurmser and others at one point argued that they had an obligation to declare the stocks of chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention and destroy them. The United States was, after all, the occupier of Iraq and had assumed the country’s sovereign responsibilities as a signatory to the convention.

“It was all for nothing; Rove wanted the issue buried,” Wurmser said.

The law being the Chemical Weapons Convention, in this case.

I should acknowledge here that, if Lake’s story is accurate, then the rise of ISIS isn’t 100% the Obama administration’s fault. Oh yes, it’s largely their fault: the Obama administration was quite negligent in letting the Islamists in Iraq make a comeback. But apparently, the Bush administration may have been negligent in its failure to declare-and-destroy Saddam’s WMD stockpiles.

Barack H. Obama, putting down the Bush administration for allegedly being unprepared for the avian flu:

Via Patterico.

UPDATE: Powerline points out Obama’s political desperation. He recently said this:

I actually believe that capitalism is the greatest force for prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known. And I believe in private enterprise — not government, but innovators and risk-takers and makers and doers — driving job creation.

It’s not that Obama is lying – there’s nothing new, in Obama lying about his own beliefs. It’s that he’s now lying to pretend some sort of admiration for capitalism. How are the mighty fallen! Remember him saying in better times how we’ve got to “spread the wealth around”? And wanting to tell business owners, “You didn’t build that!”

So, according the Obama Administration, we can’t impose travel restrictions to control the spread of a deadly infectious disease because the guy who’s job it is to stop the spread of deadly infectious disease says the travel restrictions would hurt the economies of the countries where the disease is running rampant. (150 people enter the USA every day from the Ebola Hot Zone).

However, the same administration is perfectly willing – indeed eager – to force massive new EPA regulations that will hurt the American economy while providing no quantifiable environmental benefit.

O_o

It seems increasingly evident that most universities today have become not much more than zoos where you can watch left-wing progressives fling poo at each other? Up at Wellesley, the leftist progressives are in convulsive outrage because a woman who claims to actually be a man wants to be a diversity bureaucrat.

Timothy Boatwright was born a girl, and checked off the “female” box when applying to the Massachusetts all-women’s school, according to an article in the New York Times. But when he got there, he introduced himself as a “masculine-of-center genderqueer” person named “Timothy” (the name he picked for himself) and asked them to use male pronouns when referring to him.

And, by all accounts, Boatwright felt welcome on campus — until the day he announced that he wanted to run for the school’s office of multicultural affairs coordinator, whose job is to promote a “culture of diversity” on campus.

But some students thought that allowing Boatwright to have the position would just perpetuate patriarchy. They were so opposed, in fact, that when the other three candidates (all women of color) dropped out, they started an anonymous Facebook campaign encouraging people not to vote at all to keep him from winning the position.

And if you find the whole thing a silly waste of time and can’t believe people get worked up about it, that shows you’re not of ‘the tribe,’ that means you are a hater, racist, homophobe, bitter-clinger.

One begins to think maybe Glenn Beck is right and maybe it’s time to boycott college.

If you’re not familiar with it, a college degree is a thing that we tell our kids to buy with money they don’t have, in hopes that it will help them make money they might earn, which will give them the ability to pay back the money they spent in order to make the money they’re paying it back with.

It seems that a college degree is often a way to spend four or five years pretending that it’s very important that a transgendered shemale not get a job in the multicultural affairs department while running up six figures of student loan debt. (A year’s tuition at Wellesley College is $45,000.)

The lesbian mayor of Houston is backing down from her demand that churches in her city turn over all of their sermons, emails, and other communications so her lawyers could examine them for any criticism of her.

Mayor Parker admitted that the subpoenas were too broad, and that the pastors’ sermons should not have been included. “It’s not about what did you preach on last Sunday,” she said. “It should have been clarified, it will be clarified.”

However, she still maintains that the Government has the right to monitor the content of religious speech; because that’s who the Democrats are these days.

Contrary to the incredible lies spread by Democrat press operatives, the Centers for Disease Control has not had its budget cut by Republicans. While the military copes with reductions to Depression-Era levels of manpower and cuts to soldiers’ pay, benefits, and health care, the CDC like every other civilian Federal Bureaucracy has enjoyed substantial funding increases; with Republicans spending even more than Obama requested.

But instead of the Centers for Disease Controls focusing on a central mission of controlling infectious diseases, they have found plenty of other things to spend money on, including:

• Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws. CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden appoints a 15-member “Community Preventive Services Task Force” to promote pet Nanny State projects. An obscure Obamacare rule–Section 4003(b)(1)–stealthily increased the task force’s authority to study “any policies, programs, processes or activities designed to affect or otherwise affecting health at the population level.” Last year, the meddling panel extended the agency’s reach into transportation safety with a call to impose a federal universal motorcycle helmet law on the country. Is riding a Harley a disease? Why is this the CDC’s business?
• Video games and TV violence. At Obama’s behest, in the wake of high-profile school shootings, the CDC scored $10 million last year to study violent video games and media images, as well as to assess “existing strategies for preventing gun violence and identifying the most pressing research questions, with the greatest potential public health impact.” Whatever that means. Why is this the CDC’s business?
• Playground equipment. The CDC’s “Injury Centers” (Did you know there are 13 of them?) have crafted a “national action plan” and funded countless studies to prevent boo-boos and accidents on the nation’s playgrounds. Apparently, there aren’t enough teachers, parents, local school districts, and county and state regulators to police the slides and seesaws. Why is this the CDC’s business?
• “Social norming” in the schools. The CDC has funded studies and campaigns “promoting positive community norms” and “safe, stable, nurturing relationships (SSNRs)” in homes and schools. It’s the mother of all government values clarifications programs. So bad attitudes are now a disease. Again, I ask: Why is this the CDC’s business?

And then, when it comes to actually doing what should be their one job — preventing the spread of infectious diseases – they completely fail at it.

Not only did [Ebolie-infected] nurse Vinson call the CDC multiple times before boarding the flight, she was already running a fever when she called the CDC before taking her flight and they still allowed her to board the flight, which means she was infectious while on the plane.

Something to remember the next time a leftist drone insists we need a gigantic bureaucratic state to protect us. [via Michelle Malkin]

A “journalist” working at Deadspin thought he had found his ticket to the Big Time. If you’re a “journalist” and you can add “Destroyed the career of a major Republican politician” to your resume, you’ve pretty much got a meal ticket for the rest of your life. So, anyway, this guy… his name is Dave McKenna… thought he had a great scoop that Republican Cory Gardner, senate candidate in Colorado (who is leading in the polls but not outside the margin of Democrat voter fraud) was lying about his high school football career. And, of course, a lot of other Democrat press operatives ran with the story.

Had Mr. McKenna bothered to ask the Gardner campaign… or even bothered to check one of the yearbooks from Gardner’s old high school, he would have seen that Gardner wasn’t making up anything. The entire hit piece was a lie, but very few of the Democrat press operatives who promoted the story have backed down or apologized.  Lies that serve the party and Obama are “good lies,” don’tcha know.

Not much joy in this election year, but at least some of the Democrat campaigns are providing entertainment value.

In Texas, the woman Democrat running for governor who is famous mainly for her fanatical support of abortion, stepped in it pretty badly with an ad that focused on the fact that her Republican opponent is confined to a wheelchair. Democrats can’t seem to figure out why the ad is offensive; maybe they should imagine what would happen if a Republican in 2016 were to open an ad with lingering close-up of Hillary’s cankles. So, anyway, the the woman Democrat running for governor of Texas is now trying to get over her gaffe by staging lots of photo ops with people in wheelchairs. Kind of like if Todd Akin had spent the rest of his campaign visiting rape crisis centers.

In Kentucky, Alison Lumbergh Grimes or whatever her name is, has found herself in a bit of a spot because she refuses to say whether she voted for Obama (when everyone knows she did), or whether she will vote for Harry Reid as Senate majority leader (which everyone knows she will). It’s not so much that being a brain-dead loyal democrat is a bad thing — they love that — but if your goals is to defeat Mitch McConnell, you should probably position yourself as an alternative to a sleazy, oleaginous hack politician, not a replacement for one.

Speaking of oleaginous hack Republicans, Thom Tillis in North Carolina is not getting any traction against Democrat Kay Hagan, even though a story has just come out about her and her husband skimming off the Obama Stimulus. But it’s OK because she’s a Democrat; I mean, it’s not like somebody in her office closed an exit off a bridge or anything.

Also, Democrats are running an ad targeting Africa-American voters and telling them that if Republicans will win, racist white cops will shoot them. Hey, they convinced women that Romney would outlaw tampons, so why not?

UPDATE (from Jeff): HotAir goes with “Alison Lundergan Grimes” and points out that even MoveOn.org is now attacking her. Blue-on-blue violence!

Some might disagree with my view that the U.S. is a centrally-planned economy (and thus, non-capitalist; more of a social-fascist economy). But it is. A central planning board carefully rigs the three most important features of a large economy: its interest rates, its money supply, and the practices of its financial markets and banks.

Of course, that doesn’t mean our economy always co-operates with our brave central planners. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that our planners even have a clue. This chart (via ZH) shows some of their cluelessness:

It tells a story like this:

• In 2009, they thought publicly forecast that they’d have interest rates back to normal by 2011.
• In 2010, they publicly forecast that they’d be rigging up some normal rates by 2012.
• And so on, with each new year. Today, they forecast having normal rates by 2016-17.

These are some of the very people (*cough* Janet Yellen) who had no clue that the 2008 Global Financial Crisis was coming.

As to the economy: If it were recovering (for real) all these years, interest rates would indeed have been back to normal by 2010-11. But our economy hasn’t been recovering much, all these years. Just the markets. (Oh, wait.)

Apparently, there is some debate on the left now about how much they should tolerate Islam’s basic hostility toward women, gays, and human rights generally. It was started when Bill Maher had the audacity to suggest that maybe Mohammedans should be criticized for their anti-liberal attitudes toward women and minorities. The deep progressive left thinkers like Ben Affleck, Rosie O’Donnell, and Toure have reacted by proclaiming that any and all criticism of Islam is racist and xenophobic. But it’s pretty hard to get around the fact that serious Christians who believe homosexuality is wrong will pray for those who are gay, and serious Mohammedans who think homosexuality is wrong will frakking kill you.

Cracked.com has been drifting hard to the left lately, and instead of the fun lists they used to do like “Ten Crazy Things Star Wars Actors Have Put in Their Anuses,” there has been a notable increase in the amount of content on the theme of “People Whose Views Are Outside the Progressive Left Are Scary and Stupid.” But this article on “Five Six Myths About Homos Everybody Supposedly Still Believes” is only moderately left in its execution (mainly because of the pro forma religion-bashing which has become obligatory on the left).  I’ll save you the trouble:

6. All the statistics on the percentage of homos in the population are probably wrong.

5. Contrary to popular belief, bisexuals are not gay people in denial and really do exist.

4. People in same-sex relationships do not necessarily fall into traditional gender roles.

3. Most gay people are not as spittingly hostile to religion as the gay activist left is.

2. Not all gay people are as wealthy and stylish as the positive role models portrayed by Hollywood.

1. Sexuality is constant over time.