sisu

I'm you: Elizabeth Warren channels Christine O'Donnell

"So maybe if I tell you a little about myself, it will explain something about why I'm running for the United States Senate," says Soros-backed "everywoman" — and method actress extraordinaire — Elizabeth Warren in an all-about-little-old-me video at her campaign website.

"My mom and dad worked really hard. My dad sold carpeting, and then fencing, and ended up as a maintenance man. When I was in junior high he had a heart attack, and we lost our car," lip-biting Scott Brown challenger Elizabeth Warren (above) — her voice breaking — explains "why she'll fight for Massachusetts' working families in the United States Senate." A self-made millionaire, Harvard Law School professor and author of President Obama's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, limousine liberal Warren has taken a page from last year's Delaware Republican primary Tea Party winner Christine O'Donnell's playbook. Warren's subliminal message to the weak-minded among us looking for a savior? "I'm you." And apparently it's working:

Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren released her second video advertisement on Monday, which portrays her as a “gutsy” political outsider with “fresh ideas” …

Various people in the ad describe her as an “everyday kind of person,” someone with “everyone’s best interest at heart,” a “strong voice for the middle class,” and “tough.”

And this:

Poll: Elizabeth Warren soars 7 up over Scott Brown.

"I'm not a witch. I'm nothing you've heard. I'm you."

You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but in Massachusetts you can come close. Check out the body language of Democrat establishment pick for the former "Kennedy Seat" Elizabeth Warren (left) and much-ridiculed grassroots Tea Party challenger Christine O'Donnell (right), who beat the Republican establishment pick in the primary but lost in the general last year: The coy, tilted head, the earnest, moist eyes, the pursed lips that seek to soothe. And the words:

O'Donnell: "None of us can be happy with what we see all around us: Politicians who think spending, trading favors and backroom deals are the way to stay in office. I'll go to Washington and do what you'd do.

Warren: "I want there to be a level playing field. I want small businesses, I want families to have a real chance. I want Washington to not to be on the side with the big corporations, but to be on their side."

Cosmic convergence? Or just a cynical, poll-tested Democrat establishment ploy to restore the "Kennedy Seat" to its rightful owners?

Update: Good advice from Chris Bennett in the comments:

"Cosmic convergence"? Or witchcraft? Let's put Warren in the dunking chair, just to be sure.

Update II: Burn, baby, burn:

“Karl Rove is not telling the truth, and I think anyone who is not telling the truth shouldn’t be running ads in this race," she told the Herald. Warren has said she supports negative ads from outside groups so long as they are telling the truth, while U.S. Sen. Scott Brown has said he believes all outside groups should stay out of the race.”  

We're not amused with Scott Brown's disingenuous dismissal of "outside groups," by the way. If it weren't for the disintermediating social-media nationalization of his 2010 special election, Democrat establishment candidate Martha Coakley would be our junior senator today.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Or was Rahm just happy to see Massa?

Early morning at the Roman Baths, Bath, England.

"Looks like you reduced Bill Whittle nearly to speechlessness on PJTV's 'Trifecta' today. Good job!" twittered blogpal Stoutcat this afternoon. Bill Whittle? He of the evocative, beautifully crafted essay "Imperishable" that brought tears of joy to our eyes just the other day? Yes. The one who decided to write out the entire Declaration of Independence in longhand as a gesture to "help recover this document":

And I would urge you now – I would urge each of you listening to this today, especially those of you with children – to help me recover this document. We can’t get that ink back on that paper. But we can do something better. We can put new ink to fresh paper, and copy down once again those words exactly as they were written. We can whisper them aloud as we write them – as I did – and through writing them anew on the page we will inevitably write them anew on our hearts, as fresh and as clear to our eyes and our souls as they were the day that ink dried in that hall in Philadelphia.

Yah. 'Think we'll try that ourselves. But back to the harsh reality of what passes for political discourse in the faltering light of what we used to call the Shining City Upon a Hill. First the good news: "Thank you, Sissy, you've just redeemed this show for us," said the "funniest family-friendly satirist on the internet," old buddy, old pal Scrappleface Editor-in-Chief Scott Ott, in Tweetfecta: MassaGate and the Naked Truth About Rahm Emanuel." Emcee Steven Green, the debonair Vodkapundit of our blogging youth, had sent out a provocative twitter invite early afternoon:

Go on and hit us up with your Rahm v Massa questions for today's LIVE Trifecta. Use that #PJTV tag so we can find them.

"We have something here that I think is unprecedented in American politics, a White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, destroyed a fellow democrat's career, forced him out of office, just to make it one vote easier to pass health care, at least if Eric Massa is to be believed … Is Emanuel guilty of something like sexual harassment, or was he just happy to see Massa?" taunted Steven, tormenting his fellow trifectors with our deliberately provocative question:

ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: How close — shower-buddy close? — were Eric Massa & Gen. Wesley Clark?

"I thought we played hardball, but the people watching this stuff, they're meaner than we are," quipped Green, tossing the ball to Whittle:

There comes a point where politics becomes impossible to parody … really I don't know what to say about this. It's so appalling on so many levels …

This most ethical administration ever… he could have walked away with Scott Brown … this bulldog gnawing and chewing and trying to get this thing across the line has resulted now in this level of discourse. It's no longer ask not what your country can do for you, now it's like it's if you drop the soap in the shower, don't pick it up. That's where the level of national discourse has fallen under this administration.

"You have that moment of shock where you go WHAT?" added Ott:

And then you go oh. Oh. Congress. Oh. Washington. Oh. The White House. They have lowered the bar so far I don't know what kind of world these people live in. I can't imagine such a situation. This is so alien to the vast majority of Americans. It defies explanation.

As Bill Whittle gasped in horror upon first being assaulted with our stumper, "Sissy, I don't know."

Update:  Oh. Instalanche! Oh. Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Update II: "This is the best circus Washington has ever seen. Enjoy it!" emails the big guy. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Update III: Ed Driscoll links. Thanks, old friend!

Arianna Huffington: George Soros's whore?

 

"In heels, she towers over the tiny people around her, and she is wearing all the colors of beige that have special names: taupe, sand, cream," wrote New York Magazine's Emily Nussbaum in a breathless October 2006 puff piece on Arianna Huffington, the woman who was literally in bed with Al Franken for cheap laughs in Comedy Central's 1996 "Strange Bedfellows." (Detail of Chris Buck photo)

"Arianna Huffington is as closely linked to George Soros as a woman could get without being in an actual bed with him," writes Kyle-Ann Shiver at The American Thinker, :

Soros used Arianna Huffington as the public face and co-stager of his Shadow Conventions in 2000 …

In the lead-up to the Shadow Conventions, Time magazine did a piece on Ms. Huffington’s newfound love for liberal politics which hinted at Soros’s shadow influence, naming him as the convention’s largest individual donor and noting the extreme liberal tone of the events in spite of their bipartisan billing. Time’s author noted that only three Republicans (John McCain was a keynoter) were slated to speak, and that one of those was having second thoughts, evidently due to Soros’ backing. This was in sharp contrast to the image Ms. Huffington was attempting to project as the voice of a new ‘grassroots’ and ‘bipartisan’ political coalition.

Now comes something calling itself Coffee Party USA claiming the grassroots/bipartisan mantle that will always elude the left, as Glenn Reynolds and several of his readers noted wryly the other day. There's no evidence of shady Soros backing, but the Koffee Klatchers have a structural problem. Charlesmartel explains in the comments at RedState:

The problem with this, and any other wannabe leftist TEA Party equivalent is this: The TEA Party began and has flourished because those involved felt — rightly — that they had no voice in our country today, that they were being ignored or outright mocked by government and the media. The TEA Party has given us back power and a voice.

Any such group on the left is going to run into the very real problem that they already have a voice. The media, Hollywood, academia, basically the entire government — they’re all saying the same thing this Coffee Party will be saying. And the movement loses any motivation and drive right from the get go.

More insight from Newsbuster reader c5then commenting on the Washington Post's Coffee Party USA coverage:

I guess the WaPo agrees that to them and this liberal facebooker, it's all about style over substance and looks over content.

They don't even attempt to point out WHY the term Tea Party was chosen and what historical significance it has.

I guess that it's appropriate that this was in the style section. I wonder if the democrats are capable of a grass-roots organization. Every liberal "cause" in my lifetime has been driven by the George Soros' and MoveOn shakers that control and direct the democrats.

No wonder the truly grassroots — and, yes, bipartisan — tea partiers terrify these deeply disingenuous astroturfers.

In possibly related news, Business Week reports that "George Soros is helping drive up gold prices by doubling his bet in a market even he considers a 'bubble' as Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Barclays Capital and HSBC Holdings Plc predict more gains before it bursts."

Update: "Coincidence?" asks The Other McCain conspiratorially:

Arianna, George Soros and John McCain: The three people who did the most to ensure the election of Barack Obama.

Strange bedfellows, indeed. Thanks for the link!

Update II: Professor Jacobson of Legal Insurrection looks behind the curtain:

"It is very clear from [founder Annabel] Park's background, and her own Tweets, that the Coffee Party simply is part of the perpetual Obama campaign, a means by which to subvert the real grassroots Tea Party movement by co-opting part of the message, but in a way which supports keeping Obama in power."

We gather together

In the wee hours we awoke to find Tiny (above inspecting the Thanksgiving Lite table yesterday morning) and Baby still fast a asleep. Normally they would have been up and at our eyes, ears, nose and throat with their jaws, claws and crazy-hour dashes across our reclining self in the countdown to breakfast at 4:45 a.m. sharp. Tired but happy hosts of yesterday's gala blogfeast like ourselves, however, they overslept.

Plus ça change . . . Nothing changes but the date. Herewith a timely repost:

November 19, 2006. We awoke early morning to find the totally awesome General John Abizaid, head of CENTCOM, addressing an audience of the best and brightest in a C-Span rerun of a Friday forum at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he encouraged his audience to "Think of [the War on Terror] as a chance to confront fascism in 1920, if we had only had the guts to do it." What a treat under any circumstances, but especially when the alternative was all-OJ-book-and-"TomKat"-wedding-all-the-time on the increasingly unwatchable 24/7 cables. The General is a user-friendly Rumsfeld/Cheney, a brilliant, articulate, congenial spokesman for what used to be called The Bush Doctrine and its key "strategery" that dare not speak its name, "stay the course." Abizaid prefaced his remarks with a humorous reference to his appearance before the Senate Committee on Armed Services a few days before, saying he had worn his medals then but was now wearing fatigues, as his formal attire had been bloodied.

Ken, Sol, MB -- who told Tuck she wants to move into our atmospheric Victorian-hunting-lodge-esque living room at once -- Jean and Tuck help themselves to the delights of the groaning board at our elegant Thanksgiving Lite gathering of local bloggers yesterday. It had the festive feeling of our long-ago Christmas parties of friends from the Art Institute, but this time, it was a meeting not of people who happened to work at the same place but of minds, a disparate group who happen to share an understanding of how the world works.

Searching cyberspace for a video of the Kennedy School event to review at our leisure, we came upon our blogfriend Laura Lee Donoho's insightfully titled "Senator Despair vs. General Abizaid," a reference to the moment of truth that we happened to have seen for ourselves last week, when Senator Hillary! in full sourpuss mode had the nerve to chide the gallant and soft-spoken General Abizaid for undue optimism, saying in that you'll-never-amount-to-anything voice that is her signature, "Hope is not a strategy." [Her words have been widely misquoted and are now being presented in news "reports," reflecting the General's response, as "Hope is not a method."] Madame Clinton's question was widely referenced in the media, while Abizaid's reply -- a keeper that belongs in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, not to mention the hearts and minds of his countrymen -- was widely ignored, as it was on Gwen Ifill's PBS show, where her self-satisfied, smirking circle of like-minded Hillary watchers chortled with delight at the General's bitchslapping. His reply resonates:

Despair is not a method. When I come to Washington, I feel despair. When I’m in Iraq with my commanders, when I talk to my soldiers and Iraqi leadership, they are not despairing.

Sol and Tuck and Ken and Teresa and our new blogfriend Jill of Business of Life -- who brought a homemade pecan-and-cranberry pie fresh from her oven -- come back for seconds.

Laura Lee's soldier son had this to say about it all:

I saw McCain and Clinton both beat up on General Abizaid. They are BOTH worthless. Abizaid basically said, hey this is what we are doing given the constraints you put us under, sure we could use more troops but we can’t send more given the military’s force structure (ie we don’t need more troops in Iraq, we need a bigger military period, I guess McCain thinks the Pentagon can arbitrarily make the military bigger whenever there is a need). I just saw Lou Dobbs ranting, Well what is West Point producing nowadays, Generals like Abizaid look like politicians. Another idiot who needs to pull his head out of his ass and figure out what he’s talking about.

Needless to say, Lou Dobbs is not in danger of figuring out what he himself is talking about any time soon.

Don't take my picture! Guests relax in the studio while SpongeBob (upper right) looks on.

Two other contenders for Bartlett's citation this week:

1. President Bush's Iraq/Vietnam analogy ["Peace with honor" need not apply]:

We’ll succeed, unless we quit.

2. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton re the UN's toxic disingenuousness:

In a larger sense, the United Nations must confront a more significant question, that of its relevance and utility in confronting the challenges of the 21st century. We believe that the United Nations is ill served when its members seek to transform the organization into a forum that is little more than a self-serving and a polemical attack against Israel or the United States . . . The problem of anti-Israel bias is not unique to the Human Rights Council. It is endemic to the culture of the United Nations. It is a decades-old, systematic problem that transcends the whole panoply of the UN organizations and agencies.

Hope may not be a strategy -- or a method -- but national leaders like General Abizaid, President Bush and Ambassador Bolton do give us reason to not yet despair.

Update: Maggie's blesses us with a Thanksgiving Day link.

Sarah Palin = 1, Saul Alinsky = 0

Less is fewer? Why would you write "in less than" 140 characters when you knew the proper grammar would be "in fewer than"? [see Usage Note] Because you were twittering and honing your prose to keep the tweet count to at or below 140 characters, that's why. The written language evolving right before our eyes. Above, the eyes have it in fanciful Sunday breakfast fruit bowl with canteloupe, strawberry-infused apple and blueberries.

Like President Obama when it comes to the rationale behind police work in Cambridge, when it comes to the rationale behind Sarah Palin's stepping down from her Alaska governorship Sunday, Palinologists have a nasty habit of rushing to judgment in a fact-challenged cloud of psychological denial and projection, curiously incurious about what makes "the other" tick. Why did she really quit? Scroll down beyond Mr. Potatoskin Head (below) for the answer, but first let's review the narrative. Most talking heads cast Palin's exit as a disastrous admission of defeat, but as Carl Cameron said when the Alaska Governor first announced her decision three-plus weeks back:

She's done it again. To some, it's the end of her career. To others, it's the start of her presidential campaign.

And as we blogged at the time:

Like Barack Obama, Sarah Palin can be a blank canvas upon which huddled masses yearning to breathe free — or in Obama's case, huddled masses yearning to be on the dole — project their inchoate longings. The difference is that while Obama speaks from the latest polls, Palin — in Fox Brit ex pat Stuart Varney's words — "speaks from the heart, and maybe that's what Americans want."

Forget about 140 or fewer characters. Tuck trumps Twitter with a postprandial Tw-eat that says "Great meal!" in five menu items: baked stuffed potato skin, mushroom, Stroganoff sauce, sweet potato puree and peas.

John Fund had put his finger on the problem weeks ago, reporting that frivolous "attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration." Adding at least the appearance of impropriety to the series of accusations, it was reported last week that "the independent investigator who has accused Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of violating state ethics laws is a major donor to the Democratic Party as well as a partner in a law firm that represented Barack Obama's presidential campaign."

But it was the self-described "Rodeo Clown" with a mission and a microphone, Fox News supernova Glenn Beck who connected the dots the other day with this 140-characters-or-fewer tweet [via KatyinIndy]:

Sarah P. Think like a Comm organizer.They were overloading the system. She is 6 steps ahead. VERY SMART lady.

Expanding beyond 140 characters, Palin recognized that her adversaries — from the dirt-digging thugs on the ground to the fancy lawyers and their bosses behind the curtain — were soldiers in an Alinskyesque, Cloward-Piven-inspired army of "community organizers" out to destroy her and the small-government, free-market principles she stands and fights for by sowing discontent from within the system. Understanding their modus operandi, she outfoxed them, quoting Gen. MacArthur as she exited stage right victorious [via goparchitect]:

We are not retreating; we are advancing in another direction.

Coda: "This guy has a social justice agenda," Glenn Beck told Fox & Friends this morning:

He is going to set all of the wrongs of the past right.

I have a feeling that the paradigm is about to change.

People who have been forced to live in a politically correct world … are just going to say "I'm not living in your politically correct world, and I don't care anymore." You've never seen the media really go after him. He's never really been cornered. How does he react?

The people he surrounds himself with, have you heard them with new ears? When you put in a science czar who has advocated forced abortions and made the case that we could put sterilants into the water to control the births, something's very wrong.

Tea party!

Update: Music to my ears:

Cambridge cop on Obama: 'I voted for him. I will not again."

Listen and take heart. The City Upon a Hill is shining still!

Update II: "Dan Riehl = 1, Palin haters = 0," we wrote in the comments to Dan's perfect-pitch "Sarah Palin: They Just Don't Get Her, Or Us." Thanks for the linky love!

Obama is Al Sharpton with a better tailor

Tiger lily, tiger lily, burning bright. Framed by Starburst Lilies, Tiny on the front porch this afta soaks up the rays in the aftermath of a mild morning Nor'easter that gave us a good soaking.

A little birdie told us. Notes from the twittersphere. Race to the finish:

"If you are a racist, everything is about race, twitters ConNews.

Hucksters' hope:

Is "THE RACE INDUSTRY" TOO BIG TO FAIL? asks SissyWillis.

The clothes make the man?

"Obama is Al Sharpton with a better tailor," sez we.

Moral equivalence separates "us" from "them" both ways:

"BHO has conversation w/ Cambridge Police Sgt. and still comes in front of cameras and says that the Sgt. AND Prof. Gates 'OverReacted.' BULL!" twitters OwenS2.

Two warring tribes, a selection of our own tweets:

"Obama has nothing but contempt for the 'little people.'"

"Thrilling the way law enforcement brotherhood standing behind Sgt. Crowley against the vicious racialist attack of members of the 'race industry.'"

"The left's 'critique' of the right = psychological projection."

Conman Aversion Derangement Syndrome (CADS) comes to mind.

Update from our imail correspondent:

Just caught up with Sisu. Am delighted that Obama's "God Damn America" Reverend Wright slip is showing.

A girl can't be too careful.

Roll over, George Washington, and tell Ben Franklin the news

"One of the most iconic and enduring images in American art,"  Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware" (detail, above), "will be "out of sight until 2011 as the artwork gets a touchup and an ornate new frame and its gallery undergoes a renovation." (Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Oil on canvas, 149 x 255," Metropolitan Museum of Art)

George Washington @Twitter*:

The best way to preserve the confidence of the people durably is to promote their true interests.

Sissy Willis @ Twitter:

Try telling that to Rahm "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" Emanuel.

 

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, explaining "What I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do."

You remember Emanuel's quotatable quote about fooling all of the people some of the time (see caption, above). As we wrote in our recent appreciation of Roger L. Simon, "Part of my leftism was a sales pitch," re Rahm Emanuel's conscience-free self-revelation:

Translation: Take the money and run when people are preoccupied, and you can get away with spending it in ways they would never agree to were they paying attention.

Roll over, George Washington, and tell Ben Franklin the news.

*Re George Washington @ Twitter: Thanks to Preacher Gilbert, who just started following us on Twitter last night. He's also following foundingfather, a compilation of quotations by "the World's Apostle of Liberty." It looks like we're in good company.

Obama's sledging strategy of intimidation

"This incident is sure to raise his profile, though for all the wrong reasons," writes a Telegraph sports guy re Sri Lankan left-handed batsman and wicket-keeper Kumar Sangakkara, above, one of five players injured yesterday when Islamist terrorists — delicately termed "gunmen" by the Telegraph — opened fire on their team bus in Lahore, Pakistan. According to Wikipedia, "Sangakkara has won a certain degree of admiration for his clever use of sledging," AKA "mental disintegration." AFP photo.

"Sledging is a term used in cricket to describe the practice whereby some players seek to gain an advantage by insulting or verbally intimidating their opponents":

There is debate in the cricketing world as to whether this constitutes poor sportsmanship or good-humoured banter.The purpose is to try to weaken the opponent's concentration, thereby causing him to make mistakes or underperform. It can be effective because the batsman stands within hearing range of the bowler and certain fielders; and vice-versa.

'Sounds a lot like the current Administration's Alinksyesque, divide-and-conquer, anti-Limbaugh jihad — not to mention the earlier eight-year Soros-seeded anti-Bush campaign and the whirlwind anti-Palin assault last fall. Rush explains the Rahm-Emanuel-choreographed reaction of White House and media allies to the Rush phenomenon in general and his "first televised address to the nation" at CPAC Saturday in particular:

Well, I don't hurt. I am not hurt by any of this. What this is, though, is cruel. It is cruel because it is a game of manipulation emanating from the Oval Office … In that speech were not just illustrations of what's wrong with this administration and liberalism. There were solutions, solution after solution after solution, because conservatism is a solution … None of the things that I said in that speech are being repeated by the Drive-By Media which I knew would be the case, because face-to-face discussions and debates are not going to happen. Instead, Alinsky's Rules for Radicals number 12 has been employed: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Rush relishes being in the crosshairs of his ideological adversary in the White House. The importance of being noticed and all that. Besides, it's good for business. But the real target of Obama's sledging strategy of intimidation is the Republican Party, beginning with the opening shot last January when the President thuggishly warned his critics that "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."

“I do think he's an intellectual force, which is why the Republicans pay such attention to him," Rahm Emanuel told CBS News's Bob Schieffer on Sunday in a rare moment of truthfulness before spinning off to repeat the big lie that Rush wants Obama the President of the United States — as opposed to Obama's socialist agenda, the real object of Limbaugh's critique — to fail.

Taunting GOP party leaders who may have been watching Face the Nation on Sunday, the Commander-in-Chief's unctuous, take-no-prisoners hitman Rahm Emanuel volunteered that Rush is “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party." [We're no Dittohead, but El Rushbo's CPAC keynote Saturday was a warm comforter of common sense and wisdom that fell gently on our shoulders, making us glad he's on our side, unlike those fuddy-duddy Northeast Corridor Republicans who, in Charles Krauthammer's words, can't "tell the lion from the lamb."] We were horrified to find ourselves watching LIVE on CNN Saturday night as our own "Energizer-in-Chief," RNC Chair Michael Steele took the bait in response to a dig from Rahm Emanuel fellow traveler D.L. Hughley, host of a relatively new "comedic news show." When Hughley referred to Rush as "the de facto leader of the Republican party," Steele dutifully followed the MSM narrative, dismissing Rush as an "entertainer" whose show is "incendiary" and "ugly." He offered Limbaugh a lame apology next day, but Rush wasn't buying. Meanwhile, Chris Matthews and his fellow bottomfeeders were off and running down the cricket pitch.

"Rush will turn his enemies' thrusts to his advantage," we wrote in the comments to Ann Althouse's post on the subject this morning:

My only concern is that Northeast Corridor Republicans afraid of losing their invitations to the best Beltway parties and independents who aren't paying attention will be taken in by Rahm Emanuel's Alinskyesque maneuvers.

As Glenn Beck said with disgust this evening re Michael Steele's performance, "At least have the balls to stand up and say what you believe. I'm tired of the game playing."

Update: "Obama WH Secret Phone Conferences Bear Fruit With TV Media’s Limbaugh Attack," writes Warner Todd Huston of Stop the ACLU [via Little Green Footballs]:

Back on January 29, we discussed the daily strategy phone call engineered by Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for friendly TV commentators and “reporters.” Politico reported that Emanuel has a daily phone conference call with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, and CNN’s James Carville and Paul Begala …

As soon as the sun rose on the day after Limbaugh’s CPAC appearance, three of the four of the phone call participants attacked Limbaugh with the same talking points. It seems obvious that they coordinated their attack together in the Obama secret strategy session. It is amazing that a president’s staff can have such power over major media figures without a peep being heard from those that only months ago bashed former presidents over a perceived undue, even “dangerous,” control of the media.

What would you expect of a political culture capable of producing former Clinton aide Paul Begala's obscenely insolent "Stroke of the pen. Law of the Land. Kinda Cool."

Update: "Is that cricket?" quips Professor Reynolds. Thank you sir, for all the eyeballs.

Update II: Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings links: "Is Rush Limbaugh Barack Obama's Goldstein?"

Update III: The Anchoress links with her usual comprehensive coverage and a handy list of links to related essays.

Update IV: The story behind the story goes viral on Drudge — center, all caps, above the fold: "Enemies List: White House Plots Limbaugh Coverage":

Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.

As Jonah Goldberg wrote in "The Tired War on Rush Limbaugh":

Just because the Democrats’ shtick is old and often dishonest doesn’t mean it’s tactically dumb. Limbaugh and other right-wing talkers are popular with a third of the country. Fairly or not, they turn off moderates and self-described independents (and, for the left, conservative talk radio is the font of all evil). Most politicians would prefer to have 70 percent of the public on their side at the cost of losing 30 percent, even if that requires being less than fair to the 30 percent.

It's the demographics, stupid.

"Timeless wisdom versus hopenchangy socialism"

"So how do conservatives hold on to power when the population has been trained for two or three generations of Left-tinged rule to reflexively expect 'government to fix it' — whatever it may be?" wrote The Barrister at Maggie's Farm presciently back in October of 2006 in what we called, in our own post on the topic, "a tour de force essay that puts its finger on what ails us." (Unattributed image of Maggie and Ronnie, deep in conversation, on a brisk walk through the woods at [presumably] Camp David.)

"I never liked soaring rhetoric, and coupled with creeping (leaping?) socialism, I like it even less," we wrote in the comments of Texas Rainmaker's inspired imagining of what a Reagan/Obama debate would sound like:

Timeless wisdom versus hopenchangy socialism.

We imailed the link to Goomp, who writes back "Excellent and scary." Roger Kimball has a transcript of exerpts to whet your appetite. Be sure to treat yourself to the whole thing early and often, a cautionary tale that resonates and rouses our better angels. Our own personal favorite is this little holier-than-thou lecture/sermon of First Lady Michelle Obama's from February of 2008:

And Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism, that you put down your division, that you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone, that you push yourself to be better and that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

"GAK. I couldn't even listen to the whole thing," imails our sis:

She: Good God, Ronnie must be spinning in his grave at how short a time it's taken to come to this.

We: I know. The phoniness of Obama's "soaring rhetoric" is what gets me . . . vs. the calm, measured rhetoric of OUR RONNIE.

She: "Soaring rhetoric" interspersed with plenty of "uh, uh, uh"s.

As Vladimir Lenin would have said, "The lie that an insufferable blowhard is a "brilliant speaker" told often enough becomes the truth.

Update: Maggie's remembers.

"To trash Bush was to belong"

"And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness." (Leviticus 16:22) Above image found in google image search unattributed.

"To trash Bush was to belong," writes Debra J. Saunders, putting her finger on the primal tribal imperative that underlies the relentless scapegoating of our 43rd president by his political adversaries gadding the corridors of power these last eight years, together with their allies in the media, here and abroad. First a few excerpts from Saunders's column, and then on to Glenn C. Lowry's extremely thought-provoking, not unrelated "The Call of the Tribe: The role of identity in our politics and our lives" [via Maggie's Farm]. First Saunders on the etiology of BDS:

From the day President Bush took office, the long knives were out for him — in ways they will not (and should not) be out for President-elect Barack Obama. The chattering class saw Dubya as a walking style crime in a cowboy suit. They hit Bush for everything — for the way he mangled syntax, for the books he read, because he worked out too much.

Note now that the buff Obama is taking office, stories gushing about Obama's daily workouts flood the channels. Oh, yes, and the same people who belittled Bush for sending troops to war even though he only served in the National Guard somehow do not seem to notice Obama's utter lack of military experience …

There was little upside in supporting Bush, even if you had supported his agenda [Yes YOU, Northeast Corridor Conservatives].

"We all hear the call of some tribe or another," writes Glenn C. Lowry in the article referenced above, expanding upon the same theme — our own perennial obsession,  "the importance of being noticed" — from another angle:

[T]here are times when the call of the tribe just might be a siren’s call and when an excessive focus on “identity” could lead one badly astray. What is more, I firmly believe that now is just such a time.

At the close of what by all accounts has been a most extraordinary national political campaign — one in which questions of identity have played a huge role — I believe it is important to at least raise (if not answer!), in a gentle and nonpartisan way, the question of what role “identity” ought to play in our politics and in our lives.

Do read the whole thing. Here's a taste of the existential moment of choice the author is grappling with:

Evidently, Woody’s family had also been passing for white in pre-integration Park Manor. The neighborhood’s changing racial composition had forced them to choose between staying and raising their children among “their own kind.” This was a fateful decision for Woody who, as he matured, became determined not simply to live among blacks but, perhaps in atonement for his parents’ sins, unambiguously to become one. The boys in the neighborhood did not make this easy. Many delighted in teasing him about being a “white boy,” and most simply refused to credit his insistent, often-repeated claim: “I’m a brother, too!”

"Growing into intellectual maturity has been, for me, largely a process of becoming free of the need to have my choices validated by the brothers," concludes Lowry:

After many years I have come to understand that, until I became willing to risk the derision of the crowd, I had no chance to discover the most important truths about myself or about life — to know my calling, to perceive my deepest value commitments, and to recognize the goals most worth striving toward.

Would that members of the reflexively Bush-bashing community would have such insight about "the goals most worth striving toward."

Update: The totally awesome Ed Driscoll links.

Update II: "I've got over two dozen posts on the subject - by far my most favoritest topic — under Cultural Tribes," writes the totally awesome Assistant Village Idiot. Our most favoritest too.

Update III: Awesomeness squared: The professor links!

Update IV: Maggie's joins the party.

Update V: More shock and awe from Protein Wisdom!

Update VI: "Now they notice," headlines Kate of Small Dead Animals.

Update VII: Harassment and interdiction fires from Argghhh!

Update VIII: Fausta links.

Update IX: "Got Bush-hate? You’re so cool!" blogs The Anchoress.

Update X: "I’ve often wondered if I were the only one who could see the spiritual side of the fight that President Bush has had to endure in his sacrificial presidency to protect and defend our nation but no, there are some who do," writes Laura Lee, linking Paul Kengor's "Bush at the Stone Table: The Sacrificial Presidency of George W. Bush," at The American Thinker, comparing GWs sacrifice to that of Aslan/Christ.