Malcolm X Defends Black Extremism At Oxford Union

Yes Or No: A Great Way To Conduct A (Squirming) Debate

Notice - there's no question who's in charge under these rules:

The American people, and they'll do as they're told.

That scares these guys to death,...

Another Dose Of Political Truth That's Worth A Donation

It was weird, to hear Ted Cruz's Army give lectures on political battle as they were losing so spectacularly, while at the same time dissing the only Republican who keeps showing 'em how it's done. I don't get it. Or I don't get how they can't get it. Even if they don't agree with TMR's analysis, they still ought to start grappling with two observations, with a commitment to eventual acceptance if they want to stay viable:

1. Christie, having his photo taken with Obama during a hurricane, didn't hurt Romney - Romney never stood a chance.

2. With the Tea Party exposing itself as racist over Trayvon (and coupled with that long-and-openly-discussed, specifically-hispanic phony, Ted Cruz) the Tea was too poisoned to ever win support against ObamaCare - a program for, just as specifically, those you're now known to despise.

That's it. That's the reality you're starting from.

Not Chris Christie - a Republican with skills - he's unsullied by any of it.

ADDED - The Atlantic sees it:

America needs a strong, rational, positive, practical conservative movement. It needs that bulwark against liberal delusion and hubris. It needs a voice that says we are imperfect, that life is complex, that government can create need even as it meets need, that you can’t fix everything and freedom is worth some danger and sorrow. And there are smart, honest conservatives at the ready to be that voice, to help govern practically and sincerely with that voice, but they are drowned out by the guttural scream of craven utopians raging against reality.

This moment in American political life is insane. That a group of narrow-minded zealots could push us to the brink of economic ruin, that they maintain a base of support in their frenzied, quixotic, incompetent gambit, that there is an apparatus that exists to defend this kind of nonsense—it came on us slowly but it is no less an emergency. This is broken. This cannot go on. 

And if you can’t see that then it’s not just the world that’s gone mad. You're crazy too.

They Hate Chris Christie: While Chris Christie Kicks Ass

 

 I got this from Hot Air - "killing them with kindness" above - and "setting traps" below.

 

Everything Always Looks Different In The Light Of Day

Why do I feel like I've awakened from a Republican hangover?

"Debates were a disaster for the party in 2012, an endless circus made up entirely of clowns on a national tour of shame. 

These debates were on TV, people watched (and mocked) them, and the real candidates, the ones the money people were counting on to win the stupid race, were forced to say unacceptable things to appeal to raging loons."

Oh yeah - THAT'S why,...

 

My Pals

 

 And, don't forget, these are "values voters" he's talking about,….

This Is The Way All Debates Should Be Done: On Helium

Put Up Your Dukes (Or I'll Murder You,...)

Back-in-the-day, presidential debates involved fighting words, and duels, and any other manner of conflict, which has been all but wiped away by political correctness. Saturday Night Live seemed inspired to bring it back with this skit - and it's about as funny as they've gotten recently.

In a modern American debate, of course, this moment in 2000 is about as close to real political fisticuffs as we've seen:

 Georgie made Al Gore look like the ass he is,...

 

Last Night's Debate: Translated Through Film

ADDED - FOR CLARIFICATION:

I knew, when that first kid, Jeremy, asked Romney what he was going to do to help him get employment after he finishes school, and Mitt's answer consisted of repeating the phrase, "I know what it takes to create jobs" - and that was ACCEPTED BY EVERYONE as an answer - we weren't "out of the woods," but entering them,...
 

A Nation Of Idiots (Yes, There's That Word Again!)

Yawn. Stretch. Go Check The Fridge,...

There are few things more frustrating than to have someone asked a "yes" or "no" question and the first word out of their mouth isn't "yes" or "no".

 I don't know about you, but I've got better things to do than be yanked around,...

 

With Three Weeks Left? It's Coming: Will Zero Zero-In?

Oooh, David Horsey, that is one cold dig right there:

Apparently, undecided voters admire a candidate who can turn on a dime and abandon yesterday's convictions in favor of today's more convenient ones. But what happens if Romney has run out of convictions to abandon? Is there anything left, any small principle to which he still clings? 

Well, there is one. 

In tonight's debate, look for yesterday's Mormon to show up as a guy who can't remember ever visiting Salt Lake City.

Round One: It Was Mitt Romney By A Knock-Out,...

Religion: Not Worth It At The Level Of Freedom

Hat Tip: Hot Air

Kick Ass: You Believers Are Little Kim Jong-Ils

Here were some of last night's winning arguments in Torono Canada's great debate, between atheist Christopher Hitchens (above) and NewAge Catholic Tony Blair, over whether "religion is a force for good in the world":

Once you assume a creator and a plan it make us subjects in a cruel experiment,...celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea.

Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things.

It's very touching for Tony to say that he recently went to a meeting to bridge the religious divide in Northern Ireland, where does the religious divide come from? Four-hundred years and more in my own country of birth of people killing each other's children depending on what kind of Christian they were.

Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs, to appeal to our fear and to our guilt — is it good for the world? To terrify children with the image of hell ... to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

These are but a few more steps as the march of reason, against terrifying crazy people capable of unwarranted attacks, carries on,...

Christopher's Hitchin's On The Trip To Heaven

The Intelligence² Debate - Christopher Hitchens (Unedited)
Uploaded by Xrunner17. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Stephen Fry Brings The Good News (A Way Out)

The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited)
Uploaded by Xrunner17. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

Don't Paint The White House Black Just Yet

I've wondered why the media hasn't followed up on this since it happened:

Above is a video of the 3rd debate. Advance it to 3:30 and you hear John McCain accuse Barack Obama of launching his political campaign in Bill Ayers's living room, and Obama clearly saying, "that's not true."

But is it true? Of course it is - but, just like with the John Edwards Scandal, everything that bloggers have been discovering about Ayers and Obama is something somebody doesn't want the voters to know. Several mainstream media outlets and major newspapers - like the New York Times and the L.A. Times - have claimed that there is “no recorded basis” for John McCain’s statement that Obama launched his political career in Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn’s living room.

O.K., check this out:

Click on the image above and you'll see a recently-removed, full-sized, screen shot from a January 27, 2005 blog post that was on Maria Warren's liberal blog "Musings And Migraines". It was saved by Patterico, a blogger at "Patterico's Pontifications" and Warren's post clearly says:

"When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the livingroom of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him–introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread." [Underlined emphasis TMR's]

So what do we have here? We have Obama telling a bald-faced lie to the American people in the third debate. We now know he also told a bald-faced lie to the American people in his debate with Hillary Clinton when he claimed Ayers was just a guy in his neighborhood. We also now know Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn had to have had a much deeper relationship than Obama has claimed if Ayers and Dohrn were selling Obama as "the best thing since sliced bread." (Why would anybody say that if they didn't know a person well? TMR has traced them all the way back to 1987.) And now we know that all the other stories about Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn should be given much more weight - and journalistic study - than they have been so far.

TMR will be more than happy to answer any questions regarding Barack Obama's many lies, but, right now, I'm happy to finally be able to settle this one, and end a solid post with the time-honored street phrase:

Gotcha, bitch.

The Macho Response's Truly Conventional Wisdom Roundup, II: Sarah Palin Is Smarter (And More Honest) Than Joe Biden And The MSM

In the popular media wisdom, Sarah Palin is the neophyte who knows nothing about foreign policy while Joe Biden is the savvy diplomatic pro. Then what are we to make of Mr. Biden's fantastic debate voyage last week when he made factual claims that would have got Mrs. Palin mocked from New York to Los Angeles?

Start with Lebanon, where Mr. Biden asserted that "When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it.' Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel."

The U.S. never kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, and no one else has either. Perhaps Mr. Biden meant to say Syria, except that the U.S. also didn't do that. The Lebanese ousted Syria's military in 2005. As for NATO, Messrs. Biden and Obama may have proposed sending alliance troops in, but if they did that was also a fantasy. The U.S. has had all it can handle trying to convince NATO countries to deploy to Afghanistan.

Speaking of which, Mr. Biden also averred that "Our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan." In trying to correct him, Mrs. Palin mispronounced the general's name -- saying "General McClellan" instead of General David McKiernan. But Mr. Biden's claim was the bigger error, because General McKiernan said that while "Afghanistan is not Iraq," he also said a "sustained commitment" to counterinsurgency would be required. That is consistent with Mr. McCain's point that the "surge principles" of Iraq could work in Afghanistan.

Then there's the Senator's astonishing claim that Mr. Obama "did not say he'd sit down with Ahmadinejad" without preconditions. Yet Mr. Biden himself criticized Mr. Obama on this point in 2007 at the National Press Club: "Would I make a blanket commitment to meet unconditionally with the leaders of each of those countries within the first year I was elected President? Absolutely, positively no."

Or how about his rewriting of Bosnia history to assert that John McCain didn't support President Clinton in the 1990s. "My recommendations on Bosnia, I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of lives. And initially John McCain opposed it along with a lot of other people. But the end result was it worked." Mr. Biden's immodesty aside, Mr. McCain supported Mr. Clinton on Bosnia, as did Bob Dole even as he was running against him for President in 1996 -- in contrast to the way Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders have tried to undermine President Bush on Iraq.

Closer to home, the Delaware blarney stone also invited Americans to join him at "Katie's restaurant" in Wilmington to witness middle-class struggles. Just one problem: Katie's closed in the 1980s. The mistake is more than a memory lapse because it exposes how phony is Mr. Biden's attempt to pose for this campaign as Lunchbucket Joe.

We think the word "lie" is overused in politics today, having become a favorite of the blogosphere and at the New York Times. So we won't say Mr. Biden was deliberately making events up when he made these and other false statements. Perhaps he merely misspoke. In any case, Mrs. Palin may not know as much about the world as Mr. Biden does, but at least most of what she knows is true.

— The Editors, on the vice-presidential debates, in The Wall Street Journal

Now I Want You To Listen And Listen Good: I Did Not Have A Party With That Terrorist, Mr. Ayers

"John McCain, after being asked about William Ayers, noted that Obama had launched his campaign in Ayers’ living room:

MCCAIN: Well, again, while you were on the board of the Woods Foundation, you and Mr. Ayers, together, you sent $230,000 to ACORN. So — and you launched your political campaign in Mr. Ayers’ living room.

OBAMA: That’s absolutely not true.

MCCAIN: And the facts are facts and records are records.

OBAMA: And that’s not the facts.

Unfortunately for Obama, those are the facts, both about Ayers and ACORN. Obama paid ACORN over $800,000 this summer for GOTV efforts, which Obama now denies, although he did finally admit that he represented ACORN as an attorney in a lending-practices case. Obama did launch his career at a party hosted by Ayers, which is such a matter of public record that I’m frankly surprised he bothered to deny it.”

— Ed Morrissey, catching Barack Obama's first huge - and obvious - lie of the third McCain/Obama debate, that revealed him as just so much Hot Air

Why, it looked a little too much like this:



Hat Tip: Hot Air