Updated: Chairman Anita's 'Mao Moment'

Barack Obama, Communism, Democrats, Intelligence, Propaganda

Journalism just gets less inquisitive and more far-fetched and fatuous by the day. This Christian Science Monitor “writer” believes that when White House communications director Anita Dunn delivered (earlier this year) a long, labored, meaningless address to students, in which she referred to Mao Tse Tung as a favorite “philosopher”—she was merely using irony in the best of Socratic tradition.

This is insane. The woman, Dunn, was incoherent—not an individual capable of deploying subtle rhetorical devices. And she was perfectly serious. She quoted Mao’s meanderings for her sub-intelligent message, and proceeded to draw life’s lessons from the Chairman’s asinine utterance. This was for real. She had “crafted” the message.

The clip (below) was an ugly thing to behold. Like a lizard (or like Larry King), Dunn kept licking her lips and flicking her tongue as she mouthed Mao’s wisdom. Our liberal literati’s explanation? Dunn may have been speaking above Glenn’s head.

Here are the dunderhead’s exact words:

“The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa — not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is ‘you’re going to make choices; you’re going to challenge; you’re going to say why not; you’re going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before.”

What bellies Dunn’s attempt at a retraction is that she coupled Mao and MT as her favorite political philosophers; she made one statement and applied it to both individuals. If she was being ironic about Mao being her Man, then she was also being ironic about Mother. The CSM writer is too stupid to analyze the simplest of texts. Moreover, if she was deploying irony, why would she deliver a lesson to her audience based on the mindless (and menacing) Mao quote? Was the “do it your own way” (à la Uncle Mao) also a twist of irony?

These days stupidity is the default position.

Update (Oct. 19): Writes Roger Kimball:

“Jeremiah Wright. William Ayers. Van Jones. Where does the rogues’ gallery of Barack Obama’s radical friends end? These people are not liberals. They are not ‘progressives.’ They are radicals who hate America and in many cases have advocated or even perpetrated violence in an effort to destroy it.

Thanks to Glenn Beck, the American public has now been introduced to yet another radical member of Obama’s inner circle: Anita Dunn, Interim White House Communications Director, former top advisor to Obama’s political campaign, and wife of Obama’s personal lawyer, Robert Bauer. …”

Updated: Chairman Anita’s ‘Mao Moment’

Barack Obama, Communism, Democrats, Intelligence, Propaganda

Journalism just gets less inquisitive and more far-fetched and fatuous by the day. This Christian Science Monitor “writer” believes that when White House communications director Anita Dunn delivered (earlier this year) a long, labored, meaningless address to students, in which she referred to Mao Tse Tung as a favorite “philosopher”—she was merely using irony in the best of Socratic tradition.

This is insane. The woman, Dunn, was incoherent—not an individual capable of deploying subtle rhetorical devices. And she was perfectly serious. She quoted Mao’s meanderings for her sub-intelligent message, and proceeded to draw life’s lessons from the Chairman’s asinine utterance. This was for real. She had “crafted” the message.

The clip (below) was an ugly thing to behold. Like a lizard (or like Larry King), Dunn kept licking her lips and flicking her tongue as she mouthed Mao’s wisdom. Our liberal literati’s explanation? Dunn may have been speaking above Glenn’s head.

Here are the dunderhead’s exact words:

“The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa — not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is ‘you’re going to make choices; you’re going to challenge; you’re going to say why not; you’re going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before.”

What bellies Dunn’s attempt at a retraction is that she coupled Mao and MT as her favorite political philosophers; she made one statement and applied it to both individuals. If she was being ironic about Mao being her Man, then she was also being ironic about Mother. The CSM writer is too stupid to analyze the simplest of texts. Moreover, if she was deploying irony, why would she deliver a lesson to her audience based on the mindless (and menacing) Mao quote? Was the “do it your own way” (à la Uncle Mao) also a twist of irony?

These days stupidity is the default position.

Update (Oct. 19): Writes Roger Kimball:

“Jeremiah Wright. William Ayers. Van Jones. Where does the rogues’ gallery of Barack Obama’s radical friends end? These people are not liberals. They are not ‘progressives.’ They are radicals who hate America and in many cases have advocated or even perpetrated violence in an effort to destroy it.

Thanks to Glenn Beck, the American public has now been introduced to yet another radical member of Obama’s inner circle: Anita Dunn, Interim White House Communications Director, former top advisor to Obama’s political campaign, and wife of Obama’s personal lawyer, Robert Bauer. …”

Clean Bill Of Racial Health For ‘Mocked Minority’

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Old Right, Propaganda, Race, Racism, Reason, Republicans

Although the progressive research group Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (James Carville is among its stars) has done its darnedest to disparage the conservative base of the Republican Party, its racism spotters have exempted this “mocked minority” from the media’s ubiquitously leveled charges of racism. (Much to the surprise of Chris Matthews, who has made this ad hominem a part of his “journalistic” bag of tricks.)

The Group’s Key Findings:

“Instead of focusing on these intense ideological divisions, the press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters’ beliefs – but they need to get over it. Conducted on the heels of Joe Wilson’s incendiary comments at the president’s joint session address, we gave these groups of older, white Republican base voters in Georgia full opportunity to bring race into their discussion – but it did not ever become a central element, and indeed, was almost beside the point.”

Greenberg-Quinlan-Rosner’s still-gleeful “conclusion”: “conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America.”

Had members of the mainstream mindless contingent read this space, they might have saved some energy, although they’d have to cite an adversary. We’ve dealt many a deductive death knell to the racism libel:

Throughout the presidential campaign—and to emphasize the country’s racial backwardness—the popular press kept at it: “Is the country ready for a black president?” “Will Americans ever elect a black man as president?” These were the campaign’s most repeated refrains. To which my response has been consistent: America is not remotely racist. If anything; Americans are remarkably naïve about human differences—cultural or racial.

Alas, as one wag said, “Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.” Non-stop, relentless propaganda, enforced by the tyranny of political correctness, helps explain why most Americans, who harbor no racial animus, believe racism saturates their society. As they see it, in electing Barack Obama, they’ve begun to atone for their original sin.

Updated: Bachmann: Banks Gave Money To ACORN For Government Rating

Affirmative Action, Ann Coulter, Bush, Conservatism, Debt, Ethics, Private Property, Regulation, Republicans, Socialism, Welfare

Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota, inadvertently traces the “Minority Housing Meltdown”: The community reinvestment Act” (CRA), a creation of the federal Frankenstein, compelled private banks to make home loans to individuals with poor credit. Since no bank wants to make bad loans, this legislation in effect threatens banks to so do. Unless the bank lends to those unworthy of credit, it will not be allowed to do interstate business or expand its operations.

But, the benevolent government also offers the errant banks redemption. In order to get a positive Community Reinvestment Act rating, a bank may give over cash or in-kind donations to ACORN. A bank can also partner with ACORN to make loans to the pool of poor they represent.

By the way, where are the media stories about Super Mom Bachman who has raised five kids and 23 foster children? Maybe when the morons are through belaboring Michele Obama’s biceps, they can tell us more about Bachmann. (Here you are welcome to improvise with your own clichés of improbability.)

Fast forward toward the end of the YouTube clip for the Bachmann interview.

Update (Oct. 16): No ACORN essay is complete without mention of Bush’s crucial role in the mortgage meltdown. I have not studied the NRO Kurtz piece, but somehow I doubt it gives Bush the “credit” he is due in the diversity depression.

In 2003, Norman Singleton wrote this:

“Today the House passed, by voice vote, the American Dream Downpayment Act (HR 1276). This new welfare program forces taxpayers to subsidize the downpayments of ‘low income’ Americans. This new welfare program is a Bush Administration priority and was sponsored by Katherine Harris. The GOP is already touting how this will help with their outreach to minorities.”

Read Ron Paul’s rapid-fire response to the Bush affirmative action mortgage program.

Unless our token conservatives pay their “respects” to Bush, author of the “ownership society,” reborn conservatives—NRO, Weekly Standard—should not be lauded.

And by the by, the many poisonous pundits should atone again and again for being wrong at the time, and misleading the masses for Benito Bush. On second thought, why don’t they just go away?!

Take “snake-oil merchants like Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal,” who is Fox’s new Philosopher King. Moore obfuscated about the bailout (while making the obligatory noises about the merits of the free market he flouts). And Moore’s previous book was entitled Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer. If that’s not an indictment, nothing is. ‘Bush’s bailout society’ is an instantiation of the principles upon which ‘Bush’s ownership society’ was founded: credit for those who are not creditworthy.”

The only pundit who was vocal about the Bush economics was Michele Malkin. Not party hack Ann Coulter.

[Thanks, Stephen; I have been rather ill, but I hope to be back at my WND perch next week with renewed verve.]