Democrat says Republicans use hateful language; Then she calls them "crazy crackers"

Karen Finney, former Director of Communications at the Democrat National Committee, was on MSNBC and, speaking of Republicans, declared:

“Those crazy crackers on the right, like if they start with their very hateful language…”

It must not have occurred to her that "crazy crackers" is itself hateful language and that she was the one using it.

Some say the phrase "crazy crackers" goes beyond hateful; they say "cracker" is racist.  For that, Ms. Finney apologized, as Fox News reports:

As long as hateful rhetoric is such a convenient substitute for rational argument, I don't expect politics ever to become more civil.

A more complete video of Ms. Finney's MSNBC appearance, showing the context of her remarks, is here. Ms. Finney is not a marginal figure. In addition to being a former Director of Communications for the DNC, Ms. Finney is columnist for The Hill and a commentator for Politico, MSNBC and The Huffington Post.

Liberal minds think alike?

Deadline.com reports (hat tip: Instapundit):

Another Miami-area TV journalist has been fired as a result of a local NBC affiliate’s broadcast of a misleading edited version of George Zimmerman’s 911 call the night Trayvon Martin was killed. Local TV station WTVJ veteran Jeff Burnside was fired Friday following an investigation of the station’s separate airing of the conversation that was edited in much the same way as the Today show’s broadcast that resulted in the firing of an unidentified NBC News producer based in Miami. Several other employees were disciplined in that incident. The NBC affiliate acknowledged the station independently made the same questionable edits to Zimmerman’s call to police that were widely denounced when the network’s Today show aired its version of the clip last month.

I see two possibilities: (1) there is a replacement for JournoList that tells reporters what to do; or (2) due to both their personal biases and the pressure to produce "newsworthy" stories, dishonesty is second nature to journalists. I don't rule out the former but I lean toward the latter.

UPDATE: A third NBC employee has been fired from the network after yet another misleadingly edited George Zimmerman 911 tape surfaced from the Trayvon Martin shooting.

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OWS: liberally anti-semitic

From the Emergency Committee for Israel, here is a roundup of anti-semitic signs and comments at Occupy protests:

If anti-semitism bothers you, the Emergency Committee for Israel is asking you to contact the donors to anti-semitic propaganda groups (click to enlarge):

Hat tip: Instapundit.

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Study: liberals are clueless about what conservatives think

At The Atlantic, Katherine Mangu-Ward discusses (hat tip: Instapundit) some interesting psychology research from the University of Virginia:

In an effort to figure out why conversations across the aisle so often degenerate into shouting matches, [psychologist Jonathan] Haidt (along with colleagues Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek) asked liberals and conservatives to try on each others' ideological shoes, answering a series of questions as they thought their opponents would:

The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the care and fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with statements such as "one of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or "justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree. [Emph. added]

Haidt theorizes that this kind of blindness to the real motivations of others is driving discord in Washington and around the country.

I say this is part of a more general proposition: liberals live in a self-created fantasy in which they are the heroes. This is of course a pleasant fantasy. The need to protect that fantasy is why liberals tend to be so hostile to any information which threatens their status as heroes. For example, while conservatives accept the existence of CNN and MSNBC, liberals are in constant battle to banish Rush and Fox News through fair means or foul. Even if they don't listen to either, liberals know the information both present is a threat to their fantasy world.

RELATED: Instapundit has more on the same theme:

JEFF GOLDSTEIN RESPONDS TO STANLEY FISH: Progressivism And The Authoritarian Impulse. “Fish’s single standard, distilled and properly understood, is that liberals are (they’ll claim) morally superior by virtue of their very belief in their own political identities — which identity is tied to an ideology that, manifested politically, privileges governmental theft, sanctioned inequality as a function of tribal identity, and a giant foundational question beg: namely, that moral superiority comes from being on the left, so therefore being on the left means you can really do no fundamental moral wrong.” Progressivism is a religion that preaches salvation by faith, and utter damnation for the nonbelievers.

UPDATE: An illustration: “You and I are not racists. I just gave my imaginary child’s college fund to Barack Obama, and your mother is Nancy Pelosi. So of all the people in the world — we are not out to fuck black people.” Democrats can’t be racist. Just ask Bull Connor.

The last illustration above is Bill Maher, who just donated $1M to Obama, talking to videographer Alexandra Pelosi. Again, in their fantasy world, liberals are virtuous just because they are liberals.

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The Misogynist Left Mash-up

This is just a reminder, if any was needed, that liberal complaints about Rush's language should not be taken seriously.

Via GatewayPundit.

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The absurdity of modern newspapers

From the (New York) Amsterdam News:

Calling Andrew Breitbart "anti-black" is hateful and wrong. The body of the article is so sloppy that it even (since corrected) confused Mr. Breitbart with James O'Keefe.

Liberal journalists can also be just downright ridiculous as this headline from Adelaide Now (since modified) shows:
They seem to have lost track of the meaning of words.

Hat tips to NewsBusters and WattUpWithThat.

A divider not a uniter

In his continuing failure to understand the nature of the office of President, Obama showed his petty side at a White House Correspondents dinner. The AP reports:

President Barack Obama exacted his revenge Saturday after weeks of attacks from his would-be Republican challenger Donald Trump, joking that the billionaire businessman could bring change to the White House, transforming it from a stately mansion into a tacky casino with a whirlpool in the garden.

Trump may inspire a lot of jokes but the President of US should not be making personal attacks on US citizens. He should leave that to his campaign staff.

UPDATE: Prof. Reynolds comments: "You don’t punish Donald Trump by giving him attention" and "it’s a pathetic commentary that the allegedly independent White House Press Corps served as a vehicle for an incumbent President to bash his most vocal challenger." Good points.

8 minutes of hate

Louis Farrakhan speaks at Howard University:

Curiously, starting at 7:16 in these otherwise vile excerpts from his speech, he offers a favorable opinion of the Tea Party:

Now the Tea Party got in. I am happy because the Tea Party is not a part of the old crowd. The Tea party is forcing these Republicans to be strict fiscal conservatives. Plus, they are not under the control of the Zionists. So once they get in and see, the revolution is inside the House.

UPDATE: The above video has been removed but I found a similar hate-fulled excerpt from the speech here:

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Obama, anti-colonialism, and left-wing racism

In an article that is driving the left nuts, Dinesh D'Souza proposes a theory that Pres. Obama's policies are guided more by the philosophy of anti-colonialism than that of socialism. He writes, for example:

Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.

D'Souza cites other policies, such as supporting the Ground Zero victory mosque or changing NASA's mission to Muslim-outreach, that otherwise seem inexplicable but are consistent with his having adopted his father's anti-colonialism as a guiding philosophy. Obama's reverence for his father is well supported by passages from Obama's autobiography. D'Souza writes:

In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"

The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."

Over the weekend, Newt Gingrich picked up on this theory. Now the left is going nuts. MediaMatters, the Soros-funded propaganda site, says that this makes Gingrich (and Fox News) racist. How exactly is never explained. Is the idea that Obama might revere his father racist? Is the idea that his father was influenced by his time in Kenya racist? Is it racist to suggest that someone is an anti-colonialist? No, the charge doesn't make any sense.

The blog, PoliticsPlus, takes this one step further by writing:

In this latest, Newt Gingrich has once again flirted with birtherism to emphasize Barack Obama’s Kenyan roots.

So, suggesting that Obama is influenced by his father is now "flirting with birtherism"? Is it PoliticsPlus' claim that Obama could only have been influenced by his father if Obama was born in Kenya? No, of course not.

Since rational thought can be hard work, it is understandable that the left prefers name-calling.

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Sophisticated liberal thought

Democrats have been struggling to find a way to respond to the Tea Party. Since previous ideas, like the coffee party, didn't work out, so they've created a new variant called "f*uck tea" which comes complete with t-shirts, a video, and song:

Consider the song lyrics (c1:42):

F*ck you, f*ck you very very much
Because we hate what you do and we hate your whole crew
So please don stay in touch
F*ck you, f*ck you very very much

So, it is clear that they "hate" the tea party and "hate" the whole tea party crew. Why do they hate? That is answered by this lyric (c0:15):

Cause we are so unspired, so sick and tired of the hatred you harbor

and also (c1:27):

Do you really enjoy living a life that is so hateful?
Cause there's a hole where you soul should be
Your are losing control of it and it's really distasteful
F*ck you, f*ck you very very much

They "hate" the tea party because the Tea Party is "hateful"? Have they looked in the mirror, recently? Add this as another case study of psychological projection.

Consider one more curious lyric, this one sung over a picture of Rush Limbaugh (c1:17):

You want to be like your father whose approval you're after
Well, that's not how you find it

If you picked one prominent American politician with the biggest father-approval-complex, who would it be? Barack Obama comes to my mind.

Lastly, consider this lyric (c0:26):

So you say it's not OK to be gay
Well, I think you are just evil

They have clearly missed a key point: the Tea Party is an economic/libertarian movement, not a social/religious movement. I suppose that once they decided to hate the Tea Party, they didn't consider the reasons why to be important.

RELATED: LegalInsurrection writes about the collapse of the Coffee Party. (Hat tip: Instapundit)

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Liberal true believers

On My Honor writes:

It's always interested me that so-called liberals who reject traditional morality seem to create a new pseudo-religious orthodoxy, such as pacifism or political correctness or environmentalism, which becomes intolerant of those who don't agree. Hence the term "global warming deniers," harking back to "Holocaust deniers," and the frequent parallels between mankind's effect on the environment to original sin. Some go so far as to claim that we ought to become extinct for the good of the planet.

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Obama as a master communicator

There are many times when Pres. Obama's thoughts seem muddled and incoherent (e.g. is he for or against huge deficits?). At other times, his communications can be crystal clear as here when he he flips the bird to Hillary:
The crowd reaction leaves no doubt that they understand what he did.

Watch here as he flips the bird to a Mayor who supported Hillary:

Here he gives the finger to John McCain:

Hat tip: GatewayPundit and RightWingNews.

In a different form of hate speech, Sen. Reid, on Monday, compared Republicans to the pre-civil-war defenders of slavery. Apparently, he is unaware which party it was that actually supported slavery.

After years of howling, Dems still have no plan

The AP reports that Dems still have no plans for how to close Gitmo:

With debate looming on Obama's spending request to cover military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official says Democrats will deny the Pentagon and Justice Department $80 million to relocate Guantanamo's 241 detainees. ....

The administration has yet to develop a plan for what to do with the detainees, and Obama's promise to close the facility is facing strong GOP opposition.[emph. added]

Karl Marx wrotes endlessly on the evils of "capitalism" but wrote no more than a few cryptic paragraphs on how Marxism was supposed to work.  Similarly, Democrats have spent years writing (and shouting) about Gitmo but it is now obvious that they had put no thought into what would replace it.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

There is nothing funnier than a dead Republican!

The (UK) Telegraph reports:

Mr Obama [smiled] broadly when the comedienne Wanda Sykes excoriated the conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, comparing him to an al-Qaeda hijacker and wishing him dead. She said: "I hope his kidneys fail."

More here, here, and here.