Matt Welch:

WilliamsÂ’ firing is a clarifying moment in media mores. You can be Islamophobic, in the form of refusing to run the most innocuous imaginable political cartoons out of a broad-brush fear of Muslims, but you canÂ’t admit it, even when the fear is expressed as a personal feeling and not a group description, winnowed down to the very specific and nightmare-exhuming act of riding on an airplane, and uttered in a context of otherwise repudiating collective guilt and overbroad fearmongering.

Right. We can twist and contort ourselves in fear of Muslims, but we can never admit the reason we are twisting and contorting ourselves -- and repudiating our highest principles -- is out of fear of Muslims. That might make them feel bad about scaring the shit out of us.

I guess the ultimate sort of coercion is the coercion where you're not even permitted to say "I'm doing this because I'm being forced to," but are forced to contrive some fake reason, some claim you're doing it just because you want to.

Hey, a lot of us rightwing bloggers are anonymous for different reasons, but high on the list is Muslims might cut our heads off if they knew where to find us.

But I guess we're not supposed to say that.

Other good stuff at Hot Air, including Megyn Kelly grilling Ibrahim "I'm Offended!" Hooper of CAIR.

Posted by: Ace at 04:14 PM | Comments (260)
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You have to use your secret spin decoder ring to get that interpretation from his words. But make no mistake, he just predicted a 65+ seat loss.

In an article mostly about Obama conceding that maybe he didn't sell his policies well enough (but only because he was too focused on saving the American economy from Bush's disaster), Piffle weighs in.

And confesses: The Democrats are going to lose both houses of Congress.

Because he seizes on the last refuge of a loser.

Blaming other people.

"The central actors in the election are the candidates themselves," Plouffe said. "It's how they handle the last two weeks that's most important."

Show of hands -- if the Democrats were so high on ObamaSuccess that they were poised to gain 15 or 20 seats, who do you think would be credited for that?

Would the "central actors in the election" still be the "candidates themselves"?

Or would it be Hypothetically Awesome Obama?

You guys have been talking up how Obama is going to spin this; well, there's one way. Same way they did it with Martha Coakley. Our candidates just suck, is all.

BTW, this tiny poll linked at Hot Air? It's way wrong. Bet on it.

Posted by: Ace at 03:20 PM | Comments (205)
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Thanks to rdbrewer, who sidebarred it.

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Posted by: Ace at 03:06 PM | Comments (56)
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Answer the questions, Princess Leesza's supporters demand in an orchestrated smear effort.

Hey, Princess Bolivian Marching Powder -- Don't you have some questions that have been put to you as well?

Eh, that allegation is old and crazy. I'm sure there's nothing to it.

Ahhh! The air tastes like fire!!

Nothing at all.

By the way, Lisa Mursczinski looks the way Gary Sinise would, if he were a woman, and much older. And did a lot of coke when he was younger.

Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (259)
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Republicans polling better did than Democrats did in 2006, and polling overstates Democratic performance and understates Republican performance.

I believe that will be even more true this year.

The new survey shows GOP candidates building a 50 percent to 40 percent lead among likely voters. In November 2006, Pew's pre-election poll showed Democrats with a narrower 47 percent to 43 percent advantage among likely voters. The GOP opens up an even larger lead in competitive districts at 51 percent to 39 percent.

Whereas Democrats enjoyed a 7-point edge among independents in 2006, Republicans now hold a staggering 19-point advantage among this group.

NOAA just upgraded from a Category 3 to a Catagory 4 Mass Pudding Immersion.

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (118)
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Details at Be the wave.

Currently we have just a three hours of phone-banking slated, but I'm hoping to get a few more people who'd agree to do four or five hours of district-walking.

You can sign up here, too.

Posted by: Ace at 01:38 PM | Comments (23)
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This is some really crappy video I took (with my awful soon-to-be-ex-phone) of Ladd Ehlinger Jr. directing the dancer in the upcoming Barney Frank video (which will be released at 5:00).

He's half-turned to me there because he's viewing the camera's output on a monitor.

As I mentioned, the NYT was there, doing a story on political advertising, and that story has been picked up by ABCNews, which will be running a feature tonight, too. Maybe even Inside Edition.

Oh: Here's that NYT article.

Vid Up:
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Posted by: Ace at 12:19 PM | Comments (168)
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This article is mostly about bigger-money groups and donors not supporting her, citing viability concerns, but I was grabbed by this:

Even the Tea Party Express, the Sacramento-based national organization that launched a well-financed, late-stage advertising campaign which helped O'Donnell win her primary race, has dialed back its financial support for her.

Documents filed with the Federal Election Commission show that between O'Donnell's September 14 primary victory and mid-October, the Tea Party Express paid for around $11,000 in e-mail blasts and radio ads supporting her. By comparison, records show the group spent more than $64,000 in support of Angle during that period. (Tea Party Express representatives did not respond to messages requesting comment.)

You know, when the Tea Party Express began hitting me with emails telling me to get behind O'Donnell, I wrote to them: "Don't do this." After a bit of argument (friendly) about it, I even got rude: "Do you really need to fundraise [and take a skim from that fundraising; that's how these groups pay the bills] this badly?"

After being called on that for obnoxiousness rudeness, I apologized.

Point is, I argued. Don't do this.

And now they're cutting off her funding, too.

Swell.

O'Donnell: The "I'm Not A Witch" Ad Didn't Work Like We'd Planned: I thought it was a good idea for an ad, actually, so this isn't me all gloatey. Other people said "Horrible ad!" and I disagreed with them.

I think at the end of the day if you have a stack of problems a mile high there's really not a "good" way to deal with them, if by "good" you mean "make them go away." If it wasn't the witch thing it would be the lawsuit thing.

Posted by: Ace at 11:21 AM | Comments (374)
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The chief executive drops an insult, calling Williams crazy for thinking that Muslims might be a worry on airplanes.

NPRÂ’s chief executive is defending the firing of news analyst Juan Williams after his comments on the Fox News Channel about Muslims and says Williams veered from journalistic ethics several times before.

Williams told Fox News commentator Bill OÂ’Reilly he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim garb on an airplane. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said Thursday at the Atlanta Press Club that controversial opinions should not come from NPR reporters or news analysts.

Schiller also said whatever feelings Williams has about Muslims should be between him and “his psychiatrist or his publicist.”

Controversial opinions should not be aired? Controversial according to whom? Doctrinaire PC left-liberals, right?

But "Teabaggers" is okay?

Of course CAIR pushed the firing:

Before Williams was fired, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said such commentary from a journalist about other racial, ethnic or religious minority groups would not be tolerated.

“NPR should address the fact that one of its news analysts seems to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said.

I think it's time to give CAIR back a bit of what it dishes out -- let's start firing any Muslim who voices a "controversial" opinion from their day-jobs. I think we could find a few voicing "controversial" opinions in their off-hours.

We'll see how they like these rules then.

And on NPR: It's time. And we will have the Congress. Dan Rieh writes "A Failed Mission Should Not Be Funded," citing NPR's own laugh-giggle mission statement, expressing its devotion to diversity and unpopular views, as a good reason to defund it.

Mike Huckabee agrees.

"NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left," Huckabee said in a statement provided to CNN.

Williams told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Monday that he gets "worried" and "nervous" on flights when he sees people wearing "Muslim garb." NPR terminated Williams' contract on Wednesday evening.

Huckabee said he "will no longer accept interview requests from NPR as long as they are going to practice a form of censorship, and since NPR is funded with public funds, it is a form of censorship."

"It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR," he said.

You tell 'em, Mike.

And I don't even want to hear from the conservatives who like NPR. Yeah, once in a while, I'm in the car with an NPR listener, and yeah, it can be a good, tony sort of radio show. But you can't be conservative and continue to claim that the government should be in the business of paying for your hobbies and entertainment. If we can't even agree that NPR should be defunded, then what can be defunded?

It's time. The parts of NPR that work will be picked up by commercial radio. Or subscriber radio, maybe XM Sirius.

It's time to get the government out of the business of leftist propaganda.

Period.

More: They were looking to fire him for being on Fox in the first place.

Mr. Williams’s contributions on Fox raised eyebrows at NPR in the past. In February 2009, NPR said it had asked that he stop being identified on “The O’Reilly Factor” as a “senior correspondent for NPR,” even though that title was accurate.

Alicia C. Shepard, the NPR ombudswoman, said at the time that Mr. Williams was a “lightning rod” for the public radio organization in part because he “tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox.”

Ms. Shepard said she had received 378 listener e-mails in 2008 listing complaints and frustrations about Mr. Williams.

Ah. So you're saying he spoke conservatively on Fox, or at least moderately?

And how did he speak on NPR, praytell?

Isn't this the real issue -- NPR's insistence that it gets to be by liberals, for liberals, but funded by everyone?

Get fucking George Soros to fund this happyland for liberals. He has the money.

We're out. Period.

One more thing: At Slate, Saletan said the left is doing to Williams what the right did with Sherrod -- truncating his comments to cut off the part where he rescues himself with some feel-goodery.

He's right, but his argument concedes far too much -- Williams shouldn't be fired for making utterly noncontroversial statements about Muslims being more worrisome on airplanes than Lutherans even if he hadn't "saved" himself with the feel-goodery.

This is NPR. I fucking pay for it. If it's devoted to unconventional and unpopular ideas and diversity -- then let's have some, at long fucking last.

NPR is a perfect liberal bubble-- supported by taxpayers against their will, designed explicitly to be offensive or condescending to 90% of those taxpayers who are involuntarily funding it, arrogant and nasty and entitled about this state of affairs, and relentlessly hypocritical. NPR is a left-liberal's idea of "diversity" -- a taxpayer-extorted fantasyland showcasing diverse opinons all the way from the center left to the hard left.

Fuck them all, make them earn their $450,000 per year pay.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (240)
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His previous videos linked at RedState. The new one, below.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (149)
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