AP sources: $2 trillion higher deficit projected:

The Obama administration expects the federal deficit over the next decade to be $2 trillion bigger than previously estimated, White House officials said Friday, a setback for a president already facing a Congress and public wary over spending.

(Via Glenn).

Commenting on this bombshell, Hugh asks, “Given this enormous error with its staggering implications, why would anyone believe any of his assurances about the costs of Obamacare?”

UPDATE:  Looks like the information confirms that the White House got its estimates wrong and now accept the CBO’s numbers:

The new projections bring the White House numbers in line with estimates by the independent and non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In June, CBO projected a 9.1 trillion deficit.

(Via: Powerline).

While many Democrats saw their sweeping victories last fall as the sign of a new era of liberal ascendancy, polling taken then and since shows that despite Barack Obama’s brief period of popularity, America remains a center-right nation.  Conservatives outnumber liberals in every state, with nearly twice as many Americans identifying as conservative than as liberal.  If Republicans could hold those conservative voters and bring in just over one-third of moderates, they would win the same popular vote majority Democrats received that fall.

But, up until quite recently (like, um, last month), Republicans have had a problem not just with moderates, but also with conservatives. Many just weren’t convinced we would stand up for any of the principles near and dear to their hearts.

As Michael Barone explains there “are more conservatives than Republicans“.  That expression alone explains why Republicans have had such difficulty the last two election cycles.  Not all conservatives (including a number of very good bloggers ) don’t consider themselves Republican and have regularly (indeed quite frequently during W’s second term) expressed their displeasure with the GOP.

For at least the past six months, since the first Tea Parties in February, growing numbers of Americans have publicly expressed their opposition to increased government spending, a concern the Democratic presidential candidate tapped into in his successful bid for the White House.  With a Republican President and Congress not holding the line on spending, many of those conservatives become disenchanted with the GOP and either didn’t bother to vote or registered their disapproval by pulling the lever for a Third Party candidate or even the Democrat.  (In 2008, Obama got 20% of the conservative vote, up from John Kerry’s 15% four years previously.)

By building on what Peter Wehner and Michael Gerson call the “durable national consensus hold[ing] that American interests are served by the promotion of free trade and classical liberal ideas” that Republicans can hold onto the conservative base while winning back many of the moderates they lost in the last four years and so recapture the majority.

In a piece just published in Commentary, Wehner and Gerson find that President Obama, “by indulging his seemingly limitless faith in the power of government to solve every human ill.” has given the GOP a path to revival.

To be sure, this is not all they say is essential to Republican rebuilding.  (more…)

Every now and again, I include something up in a blog post, hoping some supporter or critic will catch it and build on it. Last night, I did just that, linking a Washington Post/ABC News Poll, to help set up this post.  One of our critics noted that the poll, which i cited in order to show that an overwhelming percentage of Americans are happy with their health care, also showed “over half still think the system itself still needs reform and/or alteration.”

He’s right.  While most people are happy with their current health insurance, many do want reform.  But,just because people support reform doesn’t mean they support the reforms proposed by the Democrats.  And yet, all too many supporters of such plans believe that those who oppose such plans do nothing.  (That said, I, along with a majority of Americans, believe doing nothing would be better than passing the plan currently in Congress.)

Even when free market advocates outline reforms they favor, albeit reforms different from the Democrats’ proposals, Obamacare advocates say such libertarian entrepreneurs are trying to “kill reform.”

The basic point is that we have a pretty good system with some rather serious flaws.  We also have the problem that about 15 million people who lack coverage but would like coverage. (Yes, Democrats do put forward a higher number, but they include many who are eligible for coverage but don’t know about it or who opt not to have coverage due to their youth and/or general good health.)

We don’t need a general “overhaul” as President Obama (and his supporters) often say, but we do need to “mend” this system.  The guiding principle for our elected officials should be how to reform a system while preserving all that is good about it–all that makes so many so happy with the coverage they now have.

It is a chilling question and one that has been troubling me for about two weeks.  I read the “low grade civil war” phrase as a declarative statement from a commenter on a news story about the Congressional Town Hall meetings and it has been rattling in my brain ever since.

I’ve been wanting to post about this question and today seemed like the right time since now I’m not the only one worried about this question.  In today’s Washington Times, actor/activist Jon Voight makes this statement:

“There’s a real question at stake now. Is President Obama creating a civil war in our own country?” Mr. Voight tells Inside the Beltway.

“We are witnessing a slow, steady takeover of our true freedoms. We are becoming a socialist nation, and whoever can’t see this is probably hoping it isn’t true. If we permit Mr. Obama to take over all our industries, if we permit him to raise our taxes to support unconstitutional causes, then we will be in default. This great America will become a paralyzed nation.”

“Do not let the Obama administration fool you with all their cunning Alinsky methods. And if you don’t know what that method is, I implore you to get the book ‘Rules for Radicals,’ by Saul Alinsky . Mr. Obama is very well trained in these methods.”

Now this is old news to anyone who really studied Obama’s past.  And I’m not as concerned about this kind of argument, nor the “birthers” distraction.

Here are my real fears about the United States heading into a civil war:

1. There is a clear distinction between those who want a more authoritarian/socialist nation versus those who want to preserve the capitalist/democratic America we live in.
2. There is a clear distinction between those who understand the principles and guidance and importance of the representative legislative process versus those who hide behind the Constitution as an excuse to create laws from the bench.
3. There is a clear distinction between those who favor strong national security vs. those who want a borderless, global government.
4. There is a clear distinction between those who hold US Constitutional principles dear (1st, 2nd, 10th Amendments in particular) and those who are ignorant or want to subvert those principles.
5. There is a clear distinction between those who want to maintain a sensible fiscal policy versus those statists in Washington who spend our tax money with reckless abandon.
6. There is a clear distinction between those who see themselves as Americans first versus those who want to segregate themselves into communities and ignore the national identity.
7. Despite his promises, surveys show that Americans have elected one of the most divisive Presidents since Richard Nixon.

These are serious issues that fundamentally challenge the formation of the Republic itself.  Don’t buy into the childish arguments that every criticism of the Federal Government is based in racism.  That is ignorant and simple-minded talk.

I hope I am wrong, but my perspective has been reinforced by my reading of a 1997 book called “The Fourth Turning”.  I’ll do a review later, but needless to say — it is a chilling book that talks about unmovable historical cycles.  We are in The Crisis period now, according to the authors.

I’m anxious for a vigorous and respectful discussion on my question posed here.  No Americans in 1773 knew there would be a Revolution; no Americans in 1857 knew there would be a bloody Civil War; no Americans in 1928 knew there would be a global Depression and a 2nd global war.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Over the past forty-eight hours, a number of my Facebook friends have linked the AP article reporting the unhappy Barney Frank’s takedown of a LaRouche Democrat for asking her fellow Democrat why he “supports what she called a Nazi policy.”  Not aware of her background (because the AP didn’t divulge it), it seems my friends see this unhinged woman as representative of the growing number of Americans gathering to protest Obamacare.

When they promote this article, these friends and others only further misconceptions about the protesters while making the mean-spirited Massachusetts Democrat seem like a knight in shining armor standing up to an angry mob of astroturfers.  To be sure, they have indicated they wish to point out the excesses of some of those protesters–and they are right to do so–and right to criticize them for it. Despite the President’s flaws, he, like his predecessor, is not another Hitler nor are their policies akin to those of the German National Socialists.

Let us hope that the promotion of this article does not serve to delegitimize the overwhelming majority of protesters who have genuine concerns about a major government overhaul of an industry with which most Americans are happy.  (Well over twice as many Americans are satisfied with the health care they receive than approve of the job Congress is doing.)

And anyway, if they’re going to feature the nuts addressing Barney Frank, why don’t they feature some of his nutty statements?

Instead of referencing articles which suggest unhinged leftists asre emblematic of a growing movement, it would be nice if the media and other supporters of Obamacare actually took the time to listen to those taking to the streets and participating in the townhalls so as to better understand what really drives them.

(Oh, and, as to that article, the AP still has not corrected its erroneous description of left-wing activist Sheila Leavitt as a physician.)

Just when you think the American liberal left can sink no lower to weaken their own nation….

WASHINGTON POST: The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Investigators are looking into allegations that laws protecting classified information were breached when three lawyers showed their clients the photographs, the sources said. The lawyers were apparently attempting to identify CIA officers and contractors involved in the agency’s interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in facilities outside the United States, where the agency employed harsh techniques.

If detainees at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are tried, either in federal court or by a military commission, defense lawyers are expected to attempt to call CIA personnel to testify.

The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, to support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the inquiry. It was unclear whether the Justice Department is also examining those organizations.

Both groups have long said that they will zealously investigate the CIA’s interrogation program at “black sites” worldwide as part of the defense of their clients. But government investigators are now looking into whether the defense team went too far by allegedly showing the detainees the photos of CIA officers, in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes.

American liberals want to defend terrorists at all costs and provide them with Constitutional protections.  But in doing so, they deny those same protections to American citizens.  The irony is rich if it weren’t so serious.

Abraham Lincoln would have called these acts of treason.  I doubt the self-proclaimed reborn Lincoln at 1600 Penna will feel any sympathy, except for the ACLU.

As Michelle Malkin says:  Privacy for jihadi, but not for thee.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Maybe because she wrote those words in 2005 when Cindy Sheehan was protesting outside George W. Bush’s vacation retreat in Crawford, Texas.  Now that Mrs. Sheehan intends to camp out near Barack Obama’s summer retreat in Martha’s Vineyard, her political theater can no longer serve, to borrow John Hinderaker’s expression, as “a vehicle to return the Democrats to power.”

UPDATE: Linking Byron York’s piece on how the media want the anti-war movement to go away, Glenn opines that they only “boosted it in the hopes of hurting Bush. Now that there’s a Democrat in the White House, the useful idiots are no longer useful.”

In a recent post, I linked Victor Davis Hanson’s Corner post on Obama sudden “creepy” invocation of religion where the Clio of punditry offered this thought about the President’s unpresidential attitude toward critics of his plan:

Rather than demonize opponents as callous and disingenuous, all the president has to do to refute their supposed scare tactics is to explicitly assure the public that abortion receives no state funds in his program, that illegal aliens are not included in his proposed new blanket coverage, and that autonomous government panels will not withhold federal health-care coverage, in the case of the elderly, on the basis of perceived cost-benefit considerations.

Obama’s attitude reminds us yet again of the hypocrisy which has come to define the man.  You’d think a man who ran for president promising to be a new kind of politician, “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame,” would instead of demonizing his opponents, address their arguments.

Hanson has selected some of the chief (but not the only) objections raised by critics of the various Democratic health care proposals.  Why does Obama choose to malign straw men instead of addressing these objections point by point?

Maybe it’s because he’s trying to distinguish himself from his predecessor?

In his successful bid for the White House, Barack Obama promised “throughout the campaign” (to borrow one of his expressions) to be a new kind of politician, more transparent than the then-incumbent.  He would post each bill that lands on his desk online so that we the people would have “five days to look” at it before he signed it.  And he assured us that he had “done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists“:

They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.

His campaign promises notwithstanding, he has not been more transparent than his predecessor nor has he excluded lobbyists from his Administration.  Within days of taking office, he had already broken the promise to post bills online.  By April 9, Jim Harper had found, “Of the eleven bills President Obama has signed, only six have been posted on Whitehouse.gov. None have been posted for a full five days after presentment from Congress.”

In her book, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, blogress Michelle Malkin shows that despite Obama’s pledge, lobbyists are running rampant in Obama’s White House, having “made seventeen exceptions ot his no-lobbyist rule” just in the first two weeks of his Administration.  It’s not just lobbyists.  Numerous other Administration officials have have failed to pay their taxes or worked closely with corrupt individuals and associations.  It almost seems as if the only members of the President’s cabinet without ethics problems are Education Secretary Arne Duncan, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Bush Administration holdover.

In short, the candidate who ran against Washington has staffed his White House with Washington insiders, with a cabinet made up mostly of longtime denizens of the nation’s capitol.

Any many of those note from Washington have political roots in the machine politics of Chicago, even his wife, whose father was a cog in the Daley machine.  Mrs. Obama has learned from her father’s patron; her salary “nearly tripled” right after her husband was elected to the United States Senate in 2004, a cost the University of Chicago Medical Center might have better have been able to defray with a federal earmark he helped secure.

And like many who cut their teeth in Chicago politics, Michelle Obama had numerous shady associations as did her husband’s other Chicago cronies, including Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel.  Both worked closely with since-mpeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, the latter elected in 2002 to Blagojevich’s House seat.  Emanuel pocketed at least $100,000 for Freddie Mac stock he received when serving on the Board of that government-sponsored enterprise (GSE).  While the GSE cooked its books during Emanuel’s tenure, the Admnistration’ transparency pledges notwithstanding, “White House officials,” Malkin reminds us “refused to fulfill the [Chicago Tribune's] request for public documents related [to] Emanuel’s tenure as a Freddie Mac director.” (more…)

Just received an e-mail promoting something called the 2009 Anti-Heterosexism Conference to be held this November in West Palm Beach, Florida.  My first thought was that this was some kind of spoof, but then I looked at their agenda and saw that it was not.

While some of the language describing the conference sounds like PC gibberish, “The goal of the conference is to explore and begin undoing the heterosexist attitudes that exist on personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural levels,” they do address at least one issue which merits greater attention, the “scientifically unsound” methods of “reparative” theory (you know that stuff that’s supposed to cure us of our homosexual inclinations).

Beyond that, in the panels yet to be developed (they have issue a call for “workshop presentations”), I fear that the organizers seeks to label as “heterosexist” anyone who dares suggest there is a difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality, that is, that gender does make a difference in the way we relate to one another.

I do wish our blog had a significant source of outside income so I could attend the conference and report back to y’all on its proceedings.

In one of the best essays I’ve read on the President Obama’s attitude toward those who oppose his plans for a government overhaul of our health care system, Katherine Mangu-Ward dissects the Democrat’s words, notably his op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, concluding When it comes to health care reform, Obama doesn’t believe reasonable people can disagree.

Mangu-Ward finds that even before this past Sunday, Barack Obama was eager to deride those who opposed further government control of health care as cynics:

Back in the misty days of January 2007, he warned the Democratic National Committee about us. The “cynics,” he predicted, would fight health care reform. “With such cynicism, government doesn’t become a force of good, a means of giving people the opportunity to lead better lives; it just becomes an obstacle for people to get rid of. Too often, this cynicism makes us afraid to say what we believe. It makes us fearful. We don’t trust the truth.” He blended together his own health care plan, government as a force for good, and truth into a delicious rhetorical smoothie, and they ate it up.

Sorry, Mr. President, it’s not cynicism which prevents me from seeing government as a force of good, but experience, experience with the efficacy of the free market and experience encountering the obstacles of state-run services.   That’s not just my own experience, it’s also that of countless others who have seen the failure of government endeavors to improve out lot, initiatives which succeeded only in impeding the efficient delivery of services and slowing (if not blocking) innovation.  Such experiences have reaffirmed the commitment of many who now oppose Obamacare to a principle, the idea of freedom.

Based on this principle, this idea, many have put forward reform proposals to improve our health care system different from those Democrats have offered.  Yet, the President ignores our proposals, suggesting that since we don’t want to fix things the way he believes they should be fixed, we want to do nothing and so preserve the status quo, leaving Mangu-Ward to conclude:

Obama’s path is so clearly illuminated by the light of his own reason, he simply can’t entertain another possible way of being, a different set of beliefs, held by an intelligent person who is well-informed and well-intentioned—or so his language about cynicism, fear, and lies strongly implies. His assumption of bad faith or idiocy on the part of his opponents is done, it seems, with a pure heart.

As Glenn who alerted me to this essay might say, just read the whole thing.

The more I ponder the President’s comment yesterday to religious leaders that we Americans are “neglecting to live out” the call to the”ethical and moral obligation [to] look out for one another,” the more it troubles me.  It sounds more like the a preacher’s admonition to a wayward flock to mend their selfish ways lest they suffer fire and brimstone than of a President’s appeal to act in the national interest.

Victor Davis Hanson finds the invocation of at the “moral argument comes at the eleventh hour” somewhat “creepy,” asking, “isn’t the use of religion as a political tool precisely what Obama and others have objected to in the Christian Right?”

Indeed, Obama’s religious appeal doesn’t seem to trouble those ever ready to denounce his predecessor for letting his faith guide his politics and for hobnobbing with socially conserative religious leaders.  Now, no one seems concerned that Obama is attempting to enlist more socially liberal religious leaders in his push for greater government control over the economy, even asking Reform rabbis to address the subject in their High Holy Day sermons.

It is this creepy mixing of religion and politics which really troubles me, a political leader defining a government program in religious terms, asking us to turn to government to fulfill our moral obligations to our fellows.  And his presumption that we’re neglecting to act out of that obligation, effectively ignoring the abundant examples of charitable good works done everyday by citizens across the political spectrum and holding a variety of political beliefs.

UPDATE:  Commenting on the same interview I reference above, Ann Althouse writes, Obama would like you to see government as religion (h/t Glenn).

My brother just forwarded me e-mail reporting that Ohio Democratic Congressman Steve Driehaus has decided to pack his August 26, 2009 townhall meeting with his supporters, making the event, according to the Hamilton County Republican Party,  a “‘ticketed’ affair and handing out tickets only to political friends in the Democratic Party.”

This is particularly rich coming from a man who boasted to the Cincinnati Enquirer that he helped delay a vote on a health care overhaul to solicit the views of citizens:

Health care reform is a complex task that requires input from all those affected. That’s why I joined with other moderate Democrats in delaying a vote on health care reform until the fall. Before we move forward, we need to have these conversations so that every voice is heard and every viewpoint is considered.

Guess this guy wants to go back to Washington and vote with with his party because, well, that’s what he heard when he was back in Cincinnati since he only listened to his fellow partisans.

This guy, Driehaus, who represents the district where I was born, seems a lot like the guy who represents the district where I currently reside.  Henry Waxman had a “public” meeting while back in his district, but didn’t advertise it to the public.  I only found out about it because I called his office to ask if he would be available, during the recess, to take questions from his constituents.

Oh, and you had to register online for the Waxman forum.  When I tried to sign up, there was already a waiting list.

No wonder people are angry.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Rusty points out that one Republican is borrowing a page from her Democratic colleages:

While U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R) travels across Eastern Washington discussing health care reform, one of her only stops in Spokane was a closed affair Wednesday .

Just because the Democrats are doing it doesn’t make it right.  Like Driehaus and Waxman, Rodgers should be wiling to listen to those at odds with her point of view.  Despite the intense astroturfing of Obamacare advocates, there are people who genuinely favor increased government control; they too have a right to be heard.

I’m watching and Twittering the latest Obama babble on the web.  Join in and watch…. just try not to get brainwashed.

LINK HERE FOR THE ORGANIZING FOR AMERICA OBAMA HEALTHCARE FORUM

Follow me live on Twitter too: 

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Trying to “retake the upper ground in this month’s healthcare debate,” President Obama, in a “conference call with religious leaders” cast reform as a “moral conviction”:

The one thing that you all share is a moral conviction . . . .  This debate over healthcare goes to the heart of who we are as American people… This is part of an ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another.  In the wealthiest nation on Earth, we are neglecting to live out that call.

He’s right that we have an ethical obligation to look out for one another, but he’s wrong to suggest that the government must be the agency which helps us fulfill that obligation.  Many people, including yours truly, donate to organizations and institutions which provide medical services to the less fortunate (the issue at hand in the current conversation).  Some doctors, including very conservative ones, waive their fees for patients unable to pay.  Individuals volunteer their time to help in hospitals and clinics at home and abroad.

So, he’s wrong, we are not neglecting that call.  Far from it.  To say as much dismisses the charitable work and liberal giving of millions, if not tens of millions, of Americans.  Given that generosity, when the president accuses his fellow citizens of neglecting that call, Obama believes that for us to truly fulfill our moral obligations to one another, the government must step in.

And that is a very dangerous attitude for a politician to have, particularly in a country with the history and ethos of ours.

(H/t GatewayPundit and Greta’s show on FoxNews–which I had on as background while sorting some stuff on my desk.)

(more…)

While Bruce has been quite busy with work, he frequently forwards links he receives via Twitter, he alerted me to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s note on Facebook about the President’s decision to grant $2 billion in loans to “to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro.”

So, while Democrats (and a smattering of Republicans) have blocked attempts to exploit resources off our own shores, the Democratic President is helping a foreign country exploit its resources.  If his predecessor had done this, liberals would be screaming how he was polluting a third world country in order to secure profits for his cronies in the oil industry.

If we can help subsidize Brazil’s efforts to extract its natural resources, why can’t we allow private companies to exploit our own on their own dime?

Considering this conundrum, Ed Morrissey offers:

Let American companies do what Obama is paying Brazilian companies to do — drill offshore.  We won’t have to pay them money or float them any loans to do it, either.  In fact, we will make money off of the leases, while the effort creates hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in the US, creating more tax revenue rather than emptying out the Treasury.

Michelle speculates about a Soros connection.

Yesterday evening while doing my cardio at the gym, I had the good fortune (though some of our readers might say misfortune) to catch a bit of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. And boy was it an education.   I gotta give Ms. Maddow credit, unlike the guy who precedes here (you know the angry fellow who draws between one-third and one-half of his nemesis’s audience), she has a pleasant demeanor and doesn’t seem like she’s about to bite someone’s head off, but then again, maybe she just comes across that way without sound.

Well, last night, she had a segment, Reading the fine print on grassroots groups to try to show that some supposedly grassroots rally on energy was just a staged shindig ginned up by the (evil) oil companies.  She did, believe it or not, made some interesting points about people being bussed in and waving pre-printed signs.

So, as soon as the transcript is up, I’m going to take down her tips on seeing through such shenanigans to see the astroturf that lies beneath and apply them to the folks bussed in to rallies and town halls to agitate for ObamaCare.  (And also something about handing our posters, you know, like the unions packing Obamacare do.)

When I review the transcript*, we’ll see what she says about large organizations funding these gatherings.  What was also interesting was how she segued from “proving” that this energy rally was astroturfed to discussing health care with Vermont’s Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, suggesting perhaps that the health care rallies were similarly staged events.  Given Miss Maddow’s record of misinformation on those rallying against Obamacare, no wonder she’s decided to turn her attention to another industry.

* (more…)

Once again, the mainstream media covers for the unhappy Barney Frank, reporting his arrogance as a principled reaction to a troglodytic Republican.  In an article for the AP, a reporter neglects the many times the cranky Democrat condescended to his constituents to focus on an exchange with an unhinged left-winger:

Rep. Barney Frank lashed out at protester who held a poster depicting President Barack Obama with a Hitler-style mustache during a heated town hall meeting on federal health care reform.

“On what planet do you spend most of your time?” Frank asked the woman, who had stepped up to the podium at a southeastern Massachusetts senior center to ask why Frank supports what she called a Nazi policy.

“Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it,” Frank replied.

Now, I agree with those who consider it inappropriate to compare the President to Hitler, but wonder whether, during the first eight years of the current decade, Mr. Frank ever faulted his ideological confrères for making such comparisons to the previous president.  (I’ll link any examples readers can provide.)

Now, first, let’s address one thing the AP reporter left out and one fallacy he let in.  He did not tell us that the woman asking the question is a LaRouche Democrat.  And the unnamed journalist identifies Sheila Leavitt as a physician when she is anything but.

The reporter, well, maybe the editor writing the headline did get something right, the mean-spirited man from Massachusetts did lash out — as he often does — and not just against left-wing loonies.

Left-wing extremists do have a habit of comparing American Presidents and their policies to the Nazis and theirs.  If it is wrong to compare Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler (and I believe it is), then it was wrong to compare George W. Bush to that murderous tyrant and thug.  It would be far easier to take seriously those leveling the complaints today if they could provide evidence that they, in the previous eight years, made similar criticisms of those agitating against that Republican.

Scour the mainstream media for the first eight years of the current decade and you will invariably find a reference to the nefarious machinations of the diabolical Karl Rove.  In nearly every single report, you’ll find that the accusations against that good man and shrewd political tactician were based more on circumstantial evidence, innuendo and prejudice than anything else.

No one, for example, has been able to substantiate the “conventional wisdom” that Rove was behind the spate of initiatives defining marriage on various state ballots in 2004.

When evidence emerges, however, that a Rove counterpart in the Obama campaign/Administration, David Axelrod is drawing money from a firm tapped to make ads touting Obamacare (and with money from those dread pharmaceutical industry), there is virtual silence in the mainstream media.

Rove never profited from deals like this, getting the Administration’s lobbyist allies to pay his firm to produce ads while working in the White House as senior adviser to the President.

Over at Politico (via Glenn), Ben Smith observes:

It’s hard to imagine a situation in which, say, Karl Rove was still getting checks from a firm that was, in turn, employed by the drug lobby not drawing fire from the left, and Axelrod’s arrangement is, a bit belatedly, getting that attention.

UPDATE: Thanks to the blogs, looks like this is finally getting some MSM notice.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  An insightful collegiate blogger offers:

I don’t think it’s a political conflict of interest. Axelfraud supports government-run healthcare, and now he’s getting paid to support it, so it doesn’t change anything.

Left-wing bloggers have made much of the fact that at a few of rallies and town halls, a handful of opponents of Obamacare, have arrived bearing arms.  Finding in this smattering “escalating number of incidents,” blogger Josh Marshall proclaims in high dudgeon that “the American right has a deep-seated problem with political violence.”

The only problem with Marshall’s analysis is that the “right-wingers” he identifies as exemplary of this problem engaged in their violent activities in the 1990s and neither of them (he identifies only two incidents) had ties to the type of conservative organizations helping organize (or participating in) the current round of protests.  They’re as representative of the modern conservative movement as Fred Phelps is of the Democratic Party.

And as Glenn (who alerted me to the Marshall post) points out, violence at these rallies has been directed against, not promoted by, those protesting the President’s plan.

That said, I agree with John Hinderaker; it’s a pretty dumb idea to bring guns to political rallies.

Bob Owens sums it up:

As much as I support the open carry movement in theory, I have a very hard time seeing open carry at a political event full of people as anything other than a very bad idea. It is needlessly provocative (and I suspect in many instances, purposefully so), and potentially dangerous.

While the protestors themselves may not have any intent to use the firearms they are carrying, open carry in dense, emotional crowds opens up a whole host of possible scenarios that could end in disaster.

Not just that, the whole idea of political rally is, in line, with the First Amendment to “peaceably assemble.”  Bringing a gun to a rally suggests the bearer has some other purpose in mind.  Not just that, those who bear arms at such rallies give left-wingers ammunition to attack those who wish to petition the government for a redress of grievances.