Is the Biden campaign really considering Karen Bass for the VP slot?

Since her name has surfaced in that regard, the MSM focus has been on things like receiving a Profile in Courage award in 2009 for bipartisanship while in the California state assembly, co-founding a group that worked to block liquor stores from setting up shop in crack-infested neighborhoods, and speaking out against "Defund the Police."

But, as should be the case with all politicians, we should want to know as much as possible about the set of core principles that drives her. 

We can get a good look at that, as it turns out:

“In the mid-1970s, California Congresswoman Karen Bass, who is now under consideration to be Joe Biden’s running mate, was an organizer for the Venceremos Brigade… An event blurb in an October 1975 issue of the communist Daily World newspaper describes Bass, then 22, as “leader of the Venceremos Brigade in southern California….As a ‘brigadista’ and then organizer for the Venceremos Brigades, Karen visited Cuba every 6 months.” (Tablet magazine, 7/28.)

The Venceremos Brigades were formed in 1969 by one of the factions of Students for a Democratic Society and the Cuban government. The immediate motivation for its founding was Fidel Castro's exhortation, in his New Year's address that year, for all Cubans to help with the sugar harvest. The members of this particular SDS faction, such as Bernadine Dohrn (in whose living room years later Barack Obama would launch his career),  thought, what a great way to express solidarity with the revolution.   

Shortly after the Brigades' founding, the Soviet Union got, shall we say, very involved:

“The ultimate objective of the DGI (Cuban Intelligence’s) in setting up the Venceremos Brigades “is the recruitment of individuals who are politically oriented and who someday may obtain a position, elective or appointive, somewhere in the U.S. Government, which would provide the Cuban Government with access to political, economic and military intelligence.”

Interestingly, right at about this time, Cuba’s DGI, which had always been mentored by the KGB, come under direct and total control of the KGB. Let’s see the sworn testimony of a high-ranking DGI defector during Congressional hearing titled:  The Role of Cuba in International Terrorism and Subversion, Intelligence Activities of the DGI, Feb. 26, 1982, US Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, Feb. 26, 1982?:   

“Mr. Gerardo Peraza (a high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector)” Between the years 1959 to 1970 there was close cooperation between Cuba and the KGB. But by beginning of 1970, the intelligence service of Cuba was placed under the DIRECT ORDERS of KGB Colonel Simonov.” 

Peraza's testimony in that hearing provided us some juicy dots to connect:

“Sen. Denton:  “(Julian Torres) Rizo was at the DGI (Cuba’s KGB-controlled intelligence service) Station chief in New York for 3 years, as I understand it. 

“Mr. PERAZA. “Yes.  He was also an active DGI agent in the Venceremos Brigade camps. 

“Mr. PERAZA. Yes. This was his first intelligence job. His first intelligence job was to recruit members of the Venceremos Brigade. He had also connections with many North Americans, preparing himself to come to the United States. And he continued directing the work of these agents in the United States.”

And wouldn’t you know it?  In another apparent publicity pic from one of her red-carpet trips to Stalinist, Terror-Sponsoring Cuba we find an (apparently) enchanted Karen Bass accompanied by an old Venceremos Brigadista comrade named Gail Reed who is married to Julian Torres Rizo!

None of the possible picks the Biden team is looking at would be good for human freedom, just as Biden himself would be bad for human freedom, but Bass would be egregiously bad. 

 

Just about the time you think you have a tidy take on the national moment

A month ago, I wrote a piece at Precipice entitled"An Absolutist Grapples With Ambiguity." The subject matter was the pandemic and subsequent shutdown and how a guy who rarely blows hot and cold on anything, large or small, couldn't declare that he was in either of the two main camps (open everything up immediately or proceed with extreme caution on a phased approach).

I find myself at a similar juncture with regard to the sociocultural eruption that has occurred in the wake of the George Floyd murder.

I think that, while I still identify as an absolutist, I am so about a narrower range of things than perhaps I'd assumed.

At the core of what's been going on, of course, is the matter of race.

I suppose it was to be expected that Floyd himself would quickly become a symbol rather than a human being with all the complexities that flesh-and-blood individuals contain within them.

One of the artists who created the mural that was displayed at his Minneapolis memorial service described the team's intent thusly:

“We wanted to portray him in a positive light, not as a martyr, but as a hero,” artist Cadex Herrera recently said. “We wanted to make sure that his name was remembered.”

The term "hero" is not only outlandishly inapplicable, it does a disrespect to the memory of him as a full person. It makes a cartoon out of him. He would have told us, at any point during the day of his arrest and murder prior to that, that he was just a guy trying to make his way through life and overcome demons that had led him into many unwise choices and their consequences.

Floyd had a criminal past, including being the ringleader of a home invasion that involved him holding a gun to a pregnant woman's abdomen, and  was on fentanyl and methamphetamine at the time of his May 25 arrest. While this must be part of the entire picture of him presented to the public, it was probably not advisable for the Minneapolis police union head to frame it the way he did, given that the image of law enforcement is not in such great shape in many minds:

The head of the Minneapolis police union says George Floyd’s “violent criminal history” needs to be remembered and that the protests over his death are the work of a “terrorist movement.”

“What is not being told is the violent criminal history of George Floyd. The media will not air this,” police union president Bob Kroll told his members in a letter posted Monday on Twitter.

Ah, but about the time that one wants to extend some understanding to those whose view of police is shaky, one encounters developments such as this:

Several members of the Minneapolis City Council this week have expressed support for radical changes to how the city handles law enforcement, including a move to "dismantle" the police department and replace it with "a transformative new model for public safety."

"We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department," he tweeted. "And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together. We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response. It’s really past due."

His call was echoed by Lisa Bender, the president of the city council.

"Yes," she said in response to Ellison. "We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a transformative new model of public safety."

That was not the first time Bender had addressed calls to "dismantle" the city's police force this week, however. On Wednesday she posted a thread about how a "white person" should think about dismantling the police. 

And these people mean sooner rather than later:

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was booed out of a BLM protest on Saturday evening after not committing to defunding the city’s police department over the death of George Floyd.

A protesters asked Frey a yes or no question: would he commit to defunding the Minneapolis Police Department? The mayor’s answer did not satisfy the female protester, prompting her to tell him to “get the fuck outta here.”

David Schuman tweeted out, “Whoa. @MayorFrey is asked ‘Will you commit to defunding police, yes or no?’ Speaker says his re-election hinges on the answer. Couldn’t hear answer but the crowd erupts in boos, chanting “GO HOME JACOB.'”

Now, with regard to the larger matter of whether there is systemic racism in our society, to what degree, and what it looks like, I'd like to start with today's French Press, David French's biweekly newsletter at The Dispatch. It's powerful and heartrending. I'll be excerpting at some length, because what he has to say is supremely important:

 I daresay that only a vanishingly small number of Americans know that this is a term with an academic meaning that’s not entirely obvious from the words themselves. Here’s one definition—“structural” or “systemic” racism is:

A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist. 

Yet millions of Americans read the accusation that America is beset with “systemic racism” and hear a simpler and more direct meaning of the term—you’re saying our systems (and by implication the people in them) are racist. But that’s completely contrary to their experience. They think, “How can it be that ‘the system is racist’ when I just left a corporate diversity training seminar, I work at an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, my son’s college professors are constantly telling him to ‘check his privilege,’ and no one I know is a bigot? It seems to me that the most powerful actors in ‘the system’ are saying the same things—don’t be racist.”

Then, when you go online or turn on the television, you’re hardly persuaded to change your mind. If you’re conservative, chances are your social media feed is full of images of rioting and looting. There are viral videos (including one the president retweeted Saturday) that declare “George Floyd was not a good person” and “the fact that he has been held up as a martyr sickens me.” There is the constant repetition of statistics about black-on-black crime, and posts and pieces arguing that police racism and brutality are overblown are shared across the length and breadth of social media.

Even a well-meaning person subject to this barrage of messaging is then apt to look at clear racist injustices—like the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, where the killer allegedly used a racial slur after he fired the fatal shot—and say, “Sure, there are racists still in this world, but they’re not part of any ‘system’ I know.” Moreover, compounding the problem, those voices who are most loudly condemning American racism are also the voices he or she trusts the least on other issues—such as abortion, religious liberty, economics, or health care. Something in the conservative mind and heart rebels, I can’t join with them, can I?

We each like to think we’re not unduly influenced by our immediate environment and culture. That’s a phenomenon that affects other people, we believe. I’m the kind of person who has carefully considered both sides and has arrived at my positions through the force of reason and logic. Sure, I’ve got biases, but that only matters at the edges. The core of my beliefs are rooted in reason, conviction, and faith.

Maybe that describes you, but I now realize it didn’t describe me. I freely confess that to some extent where I stood on American racial issues was dictated by where I sat my entire life. I always deplored racism—those values were instilled in me from birth—but I was also someone who recoiled at words like “systemic racism.” I looked at the strides we’d made since slavery and Jim Crow and said, “Look how far we’ve come.” I was less apt to say, “and look how much farther we have to go.” 

Then, where I sit changed, dramatically. I just didn’t know it at the time. I went from being the father of two white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids to the father of three kids—one of them a beautiful little girl from Ethiopia. When Naomi arrived, our experiences changed. Strange incidents started to happen.

There was the white woman who demanded that Naomi—the only black girl in our neighborhood pool—point out her parents, in spite of the fact that she was clearly wearing the colored bracelet showing she was permitted to swim.

There was the time a police officer approached her at a department store and questioned her about who she was with and what she was shopping for. That never happened to my oldest daughter.
There was the classmate who told Naomi that she couldn’t come to our house for a play date because, “My dad says it’s dangerous to go black people’s neighborhoods.” 

I could go on, and—sure—some of the incidents could have a benign explanation, but as they multiplied, and it was clear that Naomi’s experience was clearly different from her siblings, it became increasingly implausible that all the explanations were benign.  

Then the Trump campaign happened, the alt-right rallied to his banner, and our lives truly changed. In October 2016, I wrote a piece describing what happened. It began like this:

I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughter’s face in a gas chamber. It was the evening of September 17, 2015. I had just posted a short item to the Corner calling out notorious Trump ally Ann Coulter for aping the white-nationalist language and rhetoric of the so-called alt-right. Within minutes, the tweets came flooding in. My youngest daughter is African American, adopted from Ethiopia, and in alt-right circles that’s an unforgivable sin. It’s called “race-cucking” or “raising the enemy.”

I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her. I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a “niglet” and a “dindu.” The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with “black bucks.” People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching.

The attacks got worse and some became overtly threatening, including posting image after image of dead and dying African-Americans in the comments section of my wife’s blog. Suddenly, my understanding that “we’ve come so far” in American race relations was replaced by the shocking, personal realization that “we’ve got so far to go.” 

All this was happening as I had already grown alarmed at the sheer vehemence of conservative defensiveness on matters of race. Before the backlash I received for opposing Trump, the piece that generated the most personal anger from conservatives was a 2012 essay in Commentary called “Conservatives and the Trayvon Martin Case” where I critiqued the conservative media’s seeming rooting interest in George Zimmerman’s innocence, and I critiqued George Zimmerman’s decision to arm himself and pursue a teen whose only “crime” was walking to his father’s girlfriend’s house after dark. I did not judge Zimmerman guilty, but I did signal that conservatives should not reflexively defend the police:
[C]onservatives should not be inclined to trust without question the actions of local law enforcement. There is no evidence that a single national conservative commentator knew the first thing about the competence or character of the individuals who made the initial decision not to charge Zimmerman. They don’t know whether those local officials are wise, foolish, or free from racist taint. But they do know, or should know, that public officials (even public-safety officers) make mistakes even when they have the best of intentions, and they should also understand the need not only for constitutional constraints on police actions but also for public accountability. 

This is when I began to learn about conservative political correctness. If politically correct progressives are often guilty of over-racializing American public discourse, and they are, politically correct conservatives commit the opposite sin—and they filter out or angrily reject all the information that contradicts their thesis.

For example, if you’re a conservative, you’re likely quite aware that the Obama Department of Justice decisively debunked the “hands-up, don’t-shoot” narrative of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. You’re less likely to remember that there was a second Ferguson report, one that found Ferguson’s police department was focused on raising revenue more than increasing public safety, and it used its poor, disproportionately black citizens as virtual ATMs, raising money through traffic stops, citations, and even arrest warrants. It painted a shocking picture of abuse of power. 

If you’re a conservative, you may well be aware of the research cataloged by Heather Mac Donald rebutting claims of systemic racial bias in fatal police shootings. You may be less aware of the recent New York Times report indicating that African Americans make up 19 percent of the population of Minneapolis, 9 percent of the police force and an incredible 58 percent of subjects of police use of force. 

But again, I hear the objection in my head, the sentiment of good friends and thoughtful people—“If racism is this bad, and if the experiences of black Americans are this negative, why don’t I ever see it?”

Let’s perform a thought experiment (I did this on our Dispatch Live event this week, so I apologize to readers who’ve already heard it.) Let’s optimistically imagine that only one out of 10 white Americans is actually racist. Let’s also recognize that—especially in educated quarters of white America—racism is condemned and stigmatized. If this is the reality, when will you ever hear racist sentiments in your daily life? The vast majority of people you encounter aren’t racist, and the minority who are will remain silent lest they lose social standing.

But imagine you’re African American. That means 10 percent of the white people you encounter are going to hate you or think less of you because of the color of your skin. You don’t know in advance who they are or how they’ll react to you, but they’ll be present enough to be at best a persistent source of pain and at worst a source of actual danger. So you know you’ll be pulled over more, and in some of those encounters the officer will be strangely hostile. The store clerk sometimes follows you when you shop. A demeaning comment will taint an otherwise-benign conversation. Your white friends described in the paragraph above may never see these things, but it’s an inescapable part of the fabric of your life. 

This is how we live in a world where a white person can say of racism, “Where is it?” and a black person can say, “How can you not see?”
So now I sit in a different place. But where do I stand? I believe the following things to be true:

Slavery was legal and defended morally and (ultimately) militarily from 1619 to 1865.

After slavery, racial discrimination was lawful and defended morally (and often violently) from 1865 to 1964.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end illegal discrimination or racism, it mainly gave black Americans the legal tools to fight back against legal injustices.

It is unreasonable to believe that social structures and cultural attitudes that were constructed over a period of 345 years will disappear in 56.
Moreover, the consequences of 345 years of legal and cultural discrimination, are going to be dire, deep-seated, complex, and extraordinarily difficult to comprehensively ameliorate. 

It’s hard even to begin to describe all the ramifications of 345 years of legalized oppression and 56 years of contentious change, but we can say two things at once—yes, we have made great strides (and we should acknowledge that fact and remember the men and women who made it possible), but the central and salient consideration of American racial politics shouldn’t center around pride in how far we’ve come, but in humble realization of how much farther we have to go. 

Moreover, taking the next steps down that road will have to mean shedding our partisan baggage. It means acknowledging and understanding that the person who is wrong on abortion and health care may be right about police brutality. It means being less outraged at a knee on football turf than at a knee on a man’s neck. And it means declaring that even though we may not agree on everything about race and American life, we can agree on some things, and we can unite where we agree.

For example, here’s a thought—you don’t have to be a critical race theorist, agree with arguments about implicit bias, or buy into the radical social platform of Black Lives Matter to reach consensus on some changes that can make a difference.

On the other hand, black columnist and radio host Larry Elder sees the matter quite differently:

Larry Elder

@larryelder

One of the big #FakeNews narratives is that "institutional," "structural" and "systemic" racism remain a major problem in America, when, in fact, race has never been a more insignificant barrier to success in America. 

Then there's the matter of what Black Lives Matter is about as a formal organization. Its aims extend well beyond achieving the same respect accorded to black people from law enforcement as any other demographic. No, it's about as intersectional as they come. It involves the cancellation of student debt and medical debt, defunding the extraction and distribution of fossil fuels and "elevation the leadership" of "queer, trans, femmes [and] gender nonconforming."

The real BLM agenda is a great deal like the real Green New Deal agenda:

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's] chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti (the brains and the money behind her political operation ever since her 2018 primary victory) divulged in an unintentionally blunt comment in theWashington Post that the Green New Deal was not only not based in the science of climate change, but in fact not even designed with climate change in mind. "[I]t wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” he is quoted as saying. 

In other words, it's not that they looked for a way to save the world, and just happened to find a way that involved full employment pledges, the retrofitting of millions of buildings, income for those unwilling to work, high-speed passenger rail, and the curtailment of plane travel and carnivorousness. That's precisely backwards. The Green New Deal came about because Chakrabarti wanted to transform the U.S. economy into something more primitive, and environmentalism struck him as the best excuse for doing so.

Total upending of the established order. Including the natural order, the hard and fast biological fact that human beings, like most animal species except for a few types of worms, come in one or the other of two sexes, male or female.

So the various truisms on our national plate require some deft handling, lest any of them blur any of the others. They must each be considered on their own.

There are still some bigoted and racist people in our society.

The law enforcement field must be reformed.

It's unhealthy for anyone of any race to think primarily of himself or herself as a member of that race. Other aspects of being a human are much more significant.

The unrest in American cities is going on so long - after the Floyd murder, and after the arrests of the four officers - because a formally organized revolutionary movement sees it as the best opportunity to date to destabilize the basic established order in our society.

George Floyd's death was unjust and horrific.

George Floyd was a career criminal.

Donald Trump is utterly unfit to deal with this crisis as a president ought.

Democrats generally sympathize with the radical view that America is fundamentally unfair.

Many corporations are displaying utter cowardice in the face of radical intimidation.

And, most importantly, short of divine intervention, it's all going to get worse.

More civilizational rot out of San Francisco

This:

On Saturday, San Francisco voters elected the son of two former Weather Underground murderers to serve as their District Attorney. The voters deserve all the hell that is about to break loose. 

Progressive candidate Chesa Boudin wants to free criminals but prosecute police and ICE agents for doing their jobs. It's no surprise Boudin hates cops so much. His parents did, too. Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert were terrorists in the Weather Underground who murdered two police officers and a security guard during a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored security car outside New York City. 

There should be a law that children of terrorists who share their parents' worldview are barred from holding public office, especially the role of the chief law enforcement officer. Boudin's dad is still in prison so he can't kill any more cops, but his mother is out. Naturally, she is an assistant professor at Columbia University. 

After his parents killed the cops, Boudin was sent to live with two other terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Dohrn declared war on the United States and was on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Ayers bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol building, and the New York City Police Department before he and Dohrn became fugitives and went into hiding. The pair eventually came out of hiding and settled in as university professors. 

As district attorney, Boudin plans to decriminalize crime and close down jails. He believes the criminal justice system is racist, and he plans to cut back on the time criminals serve under parole supervision, which he thinks is also racist. Boudin also wants to stop prosecuting gang members to the full extent of the law because he thinks that's racist, too. He thinks everything is racist.

Boudin plans to hand out U-Visas to immigrants like candy. U-Visas were originally meant for immigrants who could aid in the prosecution of crimes, but now they are rampantly misused and Boudin vows to misuse them even more. Boudin thinks every illegal alien is the victim of a crime committed by ICE and President Trump, so every immigrant will get a Visa. Boudin also wants to advocate on behalf of anyone in the United States facing deportation, including aliens who murdered cops like his parents did. 

A perfect example of the fruits of the long march through the institutions that 1960s radicals undertook when that decade came to a close.

On the other hand, given the clown show shaping up on the left, the Very Stable Genius looks like the sane alternative

I'm smart enough to know that when it comes to political dynamics, one must take heed of the findings of those who make it their life's work to take deep dives into reams of wonky data. Still, my powers of intuition have served me fairly well over the years, and I have this sense that it's probable the Democrats are going to get their asses handed to them next year. Up and down the ballot (at least for federal-level offices.)

There's the economy. Even if it cools off a bit, it will still be outpacing any moment in time from the Most Equal Comrade era.

There's the illegal-alien problem. Trump actually did play his hand very well by suggesting that the illegals be sent to sanctuary states and cities. Of course, it's a move of questionable legality, but it served its purpose. Dem figures in those areas are howling and the post-American public is saying, "Why?" It's a brilliant move in the same way that Mitch McConnell's calling for a Senate vote on the Green New Deal was. Hey, Dems, your position on the issue has been very clear. Why are you so suddenly unwilling to put your money where your mouth is?

There's the passive aggressive snowflake-ism on steroids I posted about yesterday.  Lefties don't just get the vapors now, they become "physically ill" when they hear that Mike Pence is going to be the commencement speaker at the university of which they're alums. They claim that calling out Ilhan Omar's Jew-hatred endangers her life.

Even with the increasing secularization and permanent adolescence of post-America, the proliferation of "fat queer activists" and "non-binary persons of color" and the like strike most folks as a bridge too far. The basic human yearning for a sense of normalcy kicks in. Then there are the subsidiary issues, such as perv guys taking advantage of being able to use girls' restrooms, and male athletes taking home the gold medals in women's athletic events.

There's the increasingly violent way that leftist intolerance expresses itself, most recently in the melee that broke out at the University of Missouri - Kansas City during Michael Knowles's "A Man Is Not A Woman" talk.

There's the sense that the tide has turned regarding where society stands on the offing of people who aren't born yet. Gosnell and Unplanned have done well at the box office. A number of states have passed heartbeat bills.

It all adds up to a picture of a fractured society, yes, but one that, once a vote is taken, is not going to be willing to jump off the precipice into the abyss. When push comes to shove, more citizens than not are going say that that requires giving up too much that is going well, I think.

When Dems hold forth at Congressional hearings, their silliness and / or their evil are on full display

For the silliness, look no further than yesterday's House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on "global warming." It was short on witness with any kind of science expertise, but long on grandstanders. There was the Reverend Leo Woodbury of the Kingdom Living Temple Church, who pontificated about "environmental justice." Reverend Lennox Yearwood, president of - I kid you not, there's a real outfit with this name - the Hip Hop Caucus who said, "Climate change is a civil rights issue."

One Freedom-Hater legislator got a big-time case of the feels when interacting with one person appearing before the committee, due to that person's deep wisdom and vast knowledge accumulated over a long and experience-filled life:

New Mexico Democratic Rep. Debra Haaland broke into tears when speaking to one of hearing witnesses — a 16-year-old environmental activists. Haaland said, “I just want to recognize your presence here.”

Nadia Nazar, the 16-year-old founder of the Zero Hour Movement, said the Trump administration’s inaction on “climate change is violating my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” according to her prepared remarks.

There was a "scientist" from the Union of Concerned Scientists who wanted to try to claim that at least 21 people recently died in some kind of "polar vortex," a dog-vomit concept being peddled by these ever-mer desperate alarmists.

Judith Curry was there as a voice of reason. God bless her.

Then there was Ilhan Omar's display of her signature obnoxiousness at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Venezuela. (By the way, what the hell is she doing still sitting on that committee now that her Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred are well known?)

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday angered Trump administration Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams by saying his role in the Iran-Contra scandal gives her no reason to think he can be truthful before Congress. 

Abrams appeared at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing to talk about Venezuela, and the Michigan Democrat started her portion of the hearing by saying she doesn't trust him. 

"I fail to understand why members of this committee of the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful," Omar said after noting that Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress about Iran-Contra.

When Abrams tried to reply, Omar said she hadn't asked him a question. 

"It is not right [if] members of this committee can attack the witness who is not permitted to reply," Abrams said. 

"That was not a question," Omar said. "Thank you for your participation." 

Omar has been the subject of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats after some of her tweets were labeled anti-Semitic. But she avoided talk about religion in her back-and-forth with Abrams, who is Jewish. 

Omar then asked Abrams if he supported violence against civilians if it furthers U.S. policy. 

"That is a ridiculous question," Abrams said. 

"Yes or no," Omar insisted. 

"No," Abrams said. 

"I will take that as a yes," she said. 

"I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack, which is not a question," he said. 

Abrams refused another question that alluded to his past, but then did reply when she asked if it's U.S. policy to ensure human rights are not violated. 

"I suppose there is a question in there, and the answer is that the entire thrust of American policy in Venezuela is to support the Venezuelan people's effort to restore democracy to their country. That's our policy," he said. 

To my fellow post-Americans: We have turned the House of Representatives into a sewer. We have to live with it until November 2020. Please, let's redeem ourselves and restore it to being a place where grownups deliberate sane policy when we get the opportunity.

Democrats hate freedom and are the enemy - the two latest examples

As I always say when the issue is food, now it's personal. Corey Booker goes there:

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is not only a potential 2020 presidential candidate; he’s a vegan who says the world “can’t sustain” people eating meat.

Booker told the February issue of  VegNews that he became a vegetarian in 1992 when, after a few days of trying the new lifestyle, he said, “Oh my gosh, I will never go back to eating meat.” He made the decision to go vegan in 2014.

He goes the whole hog - pun intended. Not enough land. Corporate interests. "Public good."  Antibiotics. Confined-feeding hog production.

“You see the planet earth moving towards what is the Standard American Diet,” he told VegNews. “We’ve seen this massive increase in consumption of meat produced by the industrial animal agriculture industry.”

“The tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially produced animal agriculture because of environmental impact. It’s just not possible, as China, as Africa move toward consuming meat the same way America does because we just don’t have enough land.”
In addition to convincing the masses to give up meat, Booker has other legislative goals that would interfere with America’s eating habits.

“Legislatively, I want to continue to be a part of a movement of folk who are fighting against corporate interests that are undermining the public good and the public welfare,” he said.

Booker went on to explain that he aims “to continue supporting bills that are about public health, whether it is pumping in all these antibiotics into animals that are literally threatening the safety of Americans.”

He also believes cramming too many pigs into barns “is harmful and violates our collective values as a country.” 

Look here, you totalitarian, have you ever been within twenty miles of a farm, large or small? In my role covering local government, I sit in on a lot of zoning-appeals hearings about confined-feeding operations, and the neighbors who try to scare the public with speculation about waste in streams and smelly neighborhoods nearly always lose their cases.

And along with grains, meat is probably the longest-running foodstuff in the history of our species.

But more to the point, what goes in your fellow human being's mouth is none of your stinking Stalinist business.

Then there's Kristen's decision to hop on the abolish-private-insurance bandwagon:

This weekend, we learned that another presidential hopeful, Kirsten Gillibrand, also wants to bury the insurance industry.  In fact, in a recent interview with the Lovett or Leave It podcast, she called the end of private health insurance “an urgent goal” for the Democratic Party.

This is not exactly surprising, since Gillibrand has been a single-payer advocate for years. In 2017, she said:

“As I’ve been traveling around New York, the number one thing I keep hearing from New Yorkers is that people are very worried that their health care is still too expensive. Under the health care system we have now, too many insurance companies continue to value their profits more than they value the people they are supposed to be helping. It’s time for something better.”

So, while her latest statement isn’t shocking, it’s yet another indicator the Democrats’ 2020 primary is shaping up to be a radical race to the left. 

I think we're going to hear this word "urgent" a lot in coming months. It's the Freedom-Haters' justification for assuming the role of arbiter of what you can buy, eat, or offer in the marketplace as a product of any kind.

How far do these people think they can push this dog vomit?

The basic phoniness of the secular-utopian vision

What a half-century of metastasizing can do to a sociocultural movement.

It was fifty years ago that major news periodicals were reporting, as if back from a Joseph Conrad-esque expedition, on the hippie phenomenon. The tone of the coverage imparted a sense that this was unprecedentedly exotic. Greatest-Generation types - the hippies' parents - bought it, and responded by either walking on eggshells so as to not irreversibly sunder familial ties, or, if financial leverage could be employed, laying down ultimatums while the window of opportunity to exert influence was still open.

But the movement was comprised of strains that had been with American society for some time. The Beat movement in literature had been around ten years, if one dates it to the publication of the genre's major works, longer if one dates it to the antics of its leading lights that became the stuff of those works. Vegetarianism and communal living had been practiced in various times and places for well over a century. Spiritual inquiry based on immediate mystical experience, even of the chemically induced variety, had been around since at least the time of the works of William James and Richard Maurice Bucke.

In San Francisco, before the national media coverage, the movement had really been composed of art students at various Bay Area schools, folk singers recently taken with rock & roll, poets, and the marijuana dealers supplying them.

After the media coverage, busloads of runaway kids - mostly girls - from across the continent were arriving and being immediately greeted with, "Hey, darlin', got a place to crash? We have a real groovy scene happening at my place."

The types of drugs in circulation proliferated, too.

First came the psychedelics, held up by the mystical-experience prophets of the day as a bold leap forward for human understanding. Eventually, Timothy Leary and Alan Watts were found to be alcoholics, and Alan Ginsberg was revealed to be a deeply disturbed sybarite of the homosexual variety.

Then came speed, cocaine and heroin.

The scene boiled down to dope-peddling men preying on teenage girls by offering them lodging and getting them high. The distillation of this scenario into its darkest cult possibilities was, of course, the Manson "family."

Not exactly a novel development. Exploitative guys working angles to get vulnerable chicks to have sex is a story as old as our species.

A few months after the peak, in terms of media making it a trend, of the hippie phenomenon, the student-radical movement came to the fore. Again, it was the confluence of a number of strains that had been present on the political landscape for some time. Students for a Democratic Society had splintered off from the League for Industrial Democracy. William Appleman Williams had founded Studies on the Left in the 1950s. Some of the New Left's leaders were red-diaper babies and had attended Communist summer camps and schools. The campus sit-ins that appeared in the spring of 1965, nearly simultaneously with introduction of US ground troops to South Vietnam and aerial bombing in the North, were explicitly about rallying support for a Communist victory.

But by the end of the 1960s, it was apparent that the hippies and the radicals didn't have much use for each other. Abbie Hoffman was prevented from taking the stage at Woodstock. Saul Alinsky spoke of the uselessness of hippies in the cause of revolution.

Then came feminism. Again, the strains had been in place for a while. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique came out in 1963, and the National Organization for Women was founded in the summer of 1966. The real breakout moment, though, was when women both in radical organizations and on hippie communes felt that they were being elbowed out of leadership positions.

Again, nothing new. Men and women are different, and since time immemorial, groupings of human beings have tended to be patriarchally structured.

Then came the Stonewall Inn riot of 1969, and the push for normalization of homosexuality was underway. This introduced an element that further complicated the dynamic within the structured settings of the counterculture.

In 1970, the first Earth Day was held. The table for that had been set by Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring.

One interesting thing about the birth of the modern environmental movement is that it represents the work-within-the-system / long-march-through-the-institutions approach to which many radicals turned in the wake of the fragmenting of the take-it-to-the-streets front that had held sway since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964.

Organizer Denis Hayes had his credentials as a vagabond and rabble-rouser in order. He dropped out of college and hitchhiked around Europe and Asia for three years. Even upon returning to school (Stanford), he burnished his radical bona fides by leading a campus takeover of a weapons-research laboratory.

Alas, he graduated and then started studies at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, only to leave at the behest of Senator Gaylord Nelson, who wanted help organizing Earth Day.

This work-within-the-system approach was part of the more general mainstreaming of the notion of a counterculture. Columbia Records had as its slogan for a while "The Man Can't Bust Our Music."  Woodstock is remembered as the crescendo of the hippie ethos, but it was mostly middle-class college students who, after the weekend, got on the freeways of upstate New York and headed back home to pack for the fall semester. Norman Lear's CBS situation comedies, beginning with All in the Family, brought candid examinations of topics such as racial dynamics and abortion into middle class living rooms. (There was even a commendably amusing sendup of the left-leaning perpetual English-lit grad student in the character of Meathead.)

Meanwhile, the counterculture was fragmenting along lines any observer of human nature could have predicted. Feminism devolved into two main camps: abortion zealotry, and lesbian navel-gazing. The civil-rights movement, or rather what it had morphed into, saw environmentalists' emphasis on restoration of natural spaces as benign neglect of urban areas.  Male homosexuals claimed certain professions, particularly and interestingly those focused on enhancing women's looks, as their own, providing them cachet not available to other sectors of what the counterculture had become.

The fragmentation continues. In 2015, Democrat presidential candidate Martin O'Malley was booed offstage for saying that all lives mattered at a Black Lives Matter rally. "Transgender" activists claim that plain old homosexuals don't understand the particular kind of marginalization they experience.

There are still public figures trying to tie all this together, particularly in the realms of entertainment and broadcast journalism. Of course, 2017 has been the year of discovering that they are nothing but sexually predatory charlatans. Talk about ruined credibility.

Oh, and the list of deified rock stars who have died from being extremely unkind to themselves grows by the year.

Grassroots-level left-leaners - the kind who pollute your Facebook newsfeed - generally still hold on to the dream of a united front. They'll gloss over and make excuses for these fissures and turn up the volume on their platitudes.


It's wearing thin, though.

The reason for the Left's howls of anguish as a result of the 2016 election and this year's dismantling of much of the regulatory apparatus is that it's a stark signal that they have not won politically, and that culturally their dream has been exposed as hollow. A plurality of the American populace has said, "Well, if they've ruined all the major institutions of society - education, journalism, arts and entertainment, even much of the business world, and even many churches - we'll just work around the ruin."

Anyone sending a son or daughter to a university, anybody going to work for a Fortune 200 company, anybody subjecting himself, for God knows what reason, to the CBS Evening News, anybody who feels compelled to attend a Presbyterian, Episcopalian or Methodist church, who has had the good fortune to remain immune to the countercultural enterprise, fully understands the agenda that will permeate all dealings with the institution in question.

The crowd gathered at the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park a half-century ago would barely recognize the assemblage of mutants and peddlers of delusion that are their descendants.

The whole story boils down to this: yet another failed search for a "dream" that, once and for all, can be realized even though it flies in the face of what we all know about how reality, particularly human nature, works.

Why we call them jackboots - today's edition

How advanced is the rot? This advanced:

black activist group at the University of California-Santa Cruz is threatening administrators with more uprisings unless specific, and very expensive, demands are met.

So far, the activist group has taken over a campus building, in what it calls a “reclamation,” with its first set of demands and have promised more if additional demands aren’t met.

The College Fix explains:

After three days of occupation by students of Kerr Hall, Chancellor George Blumenthal agreed to give all black and Caribbean-identified students a 4-year housing guarantee to live in the Rosa Parks African American Themed House; bring back the building’s lounge; paint its exterior the “Pan-Afrikan colors” of red, green and black; and force all new incoming students to go through a mandatory diversity competency training.

Blumenthal said in a memo that campus leaders and the black activists, known as the Afrikan Black Coalition, “fundamentally agree[d]” on those stipulations. But now, the group has demanded the university purchase more property “to serve as a low income housing cooperative for historically disadvantaged students,” $100,000 for the SOMeCa student organization which pushes diversity and civic engagement, and the creation of a Black Studies department or a Black Studies Minor or Major, notes The Fix.

To accentuate these demands, the activists are using a quote from a former Black Panther Party member and convicted murderer, Assata Shakur:

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom; It is our duty to win; We must love each other and support each other; We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

If the demands are not met by the fall of 2017, the group threatens to occupy more buildings. However, the activists prefer using the term “reclaim” because “occupy” is tied to the “white-centric” Occupy Movement:

“We are pushing back against the language of ‘occupation’ in recognition of the largely white-centric and fairly recent ‘Occupy Movement.’ We are pushing back against the language of ‘occupation’ in recognition of the very real settler occupations that are hxstorical [sic] and ongoing, such as the European colonization and occupation of ‘The Americas,’ as well as the current context of occupation in Palestine.”

And those are the real racists and anti-Semites on campus.

"Disadvantaged" my tail end. All you have to do is turn on the thuggery and the elites of the world beg you to humiliate and subjugate them.

Scenes from today's nationwide feminist rant

Ashley Judd keeps it classy:

Judd said, “I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege. I’m not as nasty as using little girls like Pokemon before their bodies have even developed. I am not as nasty as your own daughter being your favorite sex symbol, like your wet dreams infused with your own genes. But, yeah, I’m a nasty woman, a loud, vulgar proud woman. I’m not nasty, like the combo of Trump and Pence being served up to me in my voting booth. I’m nasty like the battles my grandmothers fought to get me into that voting booth. I’m nasty, like the fight for wage equality. Scarlett Johansson, why were the female actors paid less than half of what the male actors earned last year? See, even when we do go into higher paying jobs, our wages are still cut with blades sharpened by testosterone.”

"Cut with blades sharpened by testosterone."

Wow.

Lisa Belkin, the national correspondent for Yahoo News, accompanied a busload of gals from Louisville out to Washington .

The plan was to drive on Friday in order to ignore the inauguration. “Counterprogramming,” joked Bridget Pitcock, chief of staff at a managed care company in Louisville. This trip was her idea. Reading about early plans for the march soon after Election Day, she called her wife of three years, Meg Hancock, and announced they would need to rent a van and fill it with others who were “outraged and in despair.”

Now they had, and once the van was filled to bursting with people, luggage and hand-drawn signs, Hancock, an assistant professor of sports administration at the University of Louisville, paused before taking the driver’s seat to offer a prayer she’d written a few days before.

“Let’s take a moment of silence for the world we knew,” she said. “If you march to say ‘f*** you’ to Trump, I get that. But if you march to say ‘f*** yeah’ for women, for people of color, for the disenfranchised, I’ll be the first to hand you a megaphone. The fact is, today we know our world changes, but it’s not because Donald Trump says it does. It’s because we say it does. And we say how it does.

“Because today,” Hancock continued, “is a demonstration of our commitment to each other, to our LGBT brothers and sisters. To our our black and brown brothers and sisters. To our Muslim brothers, but especially our sisters. To our Syrian refugees, to our immigrants. To our homeless, our poor, our hungry. We commit to listen, to seek to understand, to stand up, to rise up, to educate, to advocate. Our world changes today not because of Donald Trump. Our world changes today because of us. And it is an honor to be a part of that change with you.”

A nineteen-year-old engages in some vicarious gushing, and granny is gratified:

“My nana fangirled over Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis,” said Blair Wilson, a 19-year-old college student who was traveling to the march with her grandmother, Linda Wilhelms. A veteran of marches — her first protest, in 1969, was against the Vietnam War — Wilhelms was excited to introduce her only granddaughter to this world. “Having her there, experiencing the emotions and energy of the event, was my motivation to attend,” Wilhelms said. “She is an amazingly strong-willed, opinionated young woman. I have worked hard to help her develop a sense of right and wrong, and she is all I ever hoped she would be. She is my hero!”

If you're not cool with the extermination of fetal Americans, your group isn't welcome at these rallies:

Thursday, New Wave Feminists applied for and were granted status as an event partner.

They provided the Women’s March with a biography, a link to their Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and contact information on two board members. “It’s not like we snuck in there and they didn’t know we were pro-life,” said New Wave Feminsit’s Founder and President Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa said. In fact, she made it clear, saying on the application “while we are a pro-life group, our main goal is not to make abortion illegal, we want to make it unthinkable and unnecessary by supporting women.” So, while they didn’t agree on abortion, they agreed on most things and, not being an event about abortion, there was no reason these women shouldn’t be included. Harmony amongst women was achieved.

Then, the Altantic ran an article yesterday which reported on the inclusion of pro-life feminists and the internet immediately melted down. “A differing opinion on one facet of feminism! Quel horreur!” Fainting couches were put into use and smelling salts were brought into the safest of spaces to protect the fairer sex to the affront of hearing a different opinion.
Herndon-De La Rosa said that the response on social media was unbelievable “Twitter exploded and everyone (was saying) ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe someone else has a different opinion on something than me, I can’t handle it.'” she recalled, shocked at the reaction to diversity of thought. “It was the most asinine thing. This is a march for women. Guess what? We all thinks different things, and that’s ok and you’re not so fragile that you can’t handle me marching next to you because I support women in a different way than you do when they’re facing crisis pregnancies.”

Then, their name disappeared from the Women’s March website. No communication, no explanation (although the Women’s March did later tweet that New Wave Feminists were only ever added as an error, but the timing is questionable), just poof. Gone.  

Madonna speaks of "blowing up the White House." 

Plus she drops F-bombs faster than the TV networks can hit their mute buttons.

This being 2017, "mainstream" news outlets have to take note of the racial makeup of crowds like these, and whaddya know, The Washington Post finds they are mostly white.

 

 

On the Dems looking at Ellison as DNC chair

The irony is rich indeed. The Left is working overtime to see that the notion that Steve Bannon is a racist and antisemite takes root in the American psyche. Without any substantiation, I might add. (See post below.) Meanwhile, the major political party that is the receptacle for its ideology is seriously considering making Keith Ellison its chair.

That would be the Keith Ellison who wrote a number of articles glowingly depicting Louis Farrakhan, calling him a "role model for black youth." That would be the Keith Ellison who has twice received a 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, who spoke at a closed-door CAIR meeting in 2006, who compared 9/11 to the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany, who served on the steering committee of the National Lawyers Guild.

They don't come any more radical.

There is a temptation to shrug and say that last week's elections proved the Democrats' minority status, exposed just how out of touch they are, and how all their demonstrations and stunts are destined to ultimately come to naught.

One more thing to consider, though: leftists, by their very nature, are easily given to fiercely militant defense of what they stand for. Conservatives are inherently inclined toward pursuing their ends through polemics and the workings of institutions, both governmental and private. That's a tricky fact to present without coming off as smug, but there it is. You don't see the Federalist Society, the American Enterprise Institute or the Family Research Council organizing riots.

Of course, the recent groundswell of enthusiasm for the current Republican president-elect presented us with a new element upon which some want to pin the label "alt-right." Hence the cacophony that was the subject of the post below.

But while Bannon may be pushy, boorish and one who routinely ruffles feathers, he has nothing that, in a sane world, would be as disqualifying as the track record of the man the Democrats want to lead them.

About Robert Creamer

He's an old associate of The Most Equal Comrade, and he's tireless at fomenting tyranny.

He's as much an architect of the "A"CA as Ezekiel Emmanuel or Jonathan Gruber, but he contributed his part from the hoosegow:

Robert Creamer, founder and partner of Democracy Partners, the group behind the organized violence at Trump rallies, as shown in the video by James O’Keefe and Project Veritas, is no ordinary agitator. Creamer, a convicted felon, is arguably the spiritual godfather of ObamaCarre and much of the current progressive left agenda.

Creamer, along with his wife, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky is no stranger to agitation, violence, and expanding the progressive agenda. As Investor’s Business Daily pointed out in March 5, 2010 editorial regarding protests against House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski over the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, which expanded Medicare benefits and funded the change with a supplemental tax:

An interesting historical footnote is that leading the protest against Rostenkowski was Jan Schakowsky -- then Director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens -– and currently Democratic representative from the Ninth Congressional District of Illinois, and chief deputy whip to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was Schakowshy’s husband, Robert Creamer, a Huffington Post blogger, who wrote what is arguably the bible of current health care reform efforts, Stand-Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, while serving a prison term for check kiting.

As Breitbart has reported, Creamer, in addition to being the inspiration for ObamaCare, was also involved in heavily promoting the Iran nuclear deal, which effectively removed all impediments to Iran becoming a nuclear power and in providing $150 billion for this state sponsor of terror to foment revolution targeted against Israel and American interests:

Creamer, a political consultant who is intimately connected with Obama’s inner political circle,  pleaded guilty in 2005 to tax violations and bank fraud. He served time in a federal prison and was under house arrest. After finishing his sentence, Creamer worked for Obama’s presidential campaign, training organizers.
As Breitbart News first exposed in 2009, Creamer used his prison time to work on a political manual: Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win. In it, he devised a strategy to guide a future “progressive” president. His plan included implementing “universal health care” as a first step to other radical reforms, including amnesty for illegal aliens. Obama strategist David Axelrod called the book “a blueprint for future victories.”…
The Wall Street Journal reports that Creamer advocated for the Iran deal with the help of the Ploughshares Fund, a pro-Iran organization.
According to a transcript of the [Ploughshares] call reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, participants stressed that the Iran agreement was the most important of the Obama administration’s second term, and they needed to prepare for battle with Republicans.
“The other side will go crazy. We have to be really clear that it’s a good deal,” said Robert Creamer of Americans United for Change, a liberal action group. His wife is Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.), a close ally of the White House in selling the agreement.

Creamer, who has visited the White House some 342 times since 2009, as noted, has been up to his eyeballs with left-wing agitation and the progressive agenda, as well as being involved in the corruption that has plagued Illinois under Democratic governors. As Joel B. Pollak wrote in Breitbart in December, 2009:

Rep. Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, used to be the leader of Citizen Action/Illinois. He also founded its predecessor, Illinois Public Action, in which Ms. Schakowsky served as Program Director. He runs a political consulting firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, which lists ACORN and the SEIU among its clients and which made $541,000 working for disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
Creamer resigned from Citizen Action/Illinois after the FBI began investigating him for bank fraud and tax evasion at Illinois Public Action. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to five months in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, plus eleven months of house arrest.
While in prison–or “forced sabbatical,” he called it -- Creamer wrote a lengthy political manual, Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win (Seven Locks Press, 2007).
The book was endorsed by leading Democrats and their allies, including SEIU boss Andy Stern -- the most frequent visitor thus far to the Obama White House -- and chief Obama strategist David Axelrod, who noted that Creamer’s tome “provides a blueprint for future victories.”
In the book, Creamer draws lessons from decades of experience on the radical left, including the teachings of arch-radical Saul Alinsky, and several episodes from Rep. Schakowsky’s political career. He also lays out a “Progressive Agenda for Structural Change,” which includes a ten-point plan for foisting universal health care on the American people in 2009….
“We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.”
“We must create a national consensus that the health care system is in crisis.”
“Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing
the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”“We need to systematically forge relationships with large sectors of the business/employer community.”
“We need to convince political leaders that they owe their elections, at least in part, to the groundswell of support of [sic] universal health care, and that they face political peril if they fail to deliver on universal health care in 2009.”
“We need not agree in advance on the components of a plan, but we must foster a process that can ultimately yield consensus.”
“Over the next two years, we must design and organize a massive national field program.”
“We must focus especially on the mobilization of the labor movement and the faith community.”
“We must systematically leverage the connections and resources of a massive array of institutions and organizations of all types.”
“To be successful, we must put in place commitments for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used to finance paid communications and mobilization once the battle is joined.”
Creamer adds : “To win we must not just generate understanding, but emotion -- fear, revulsion, anger, disgust.”
Democrats have followed Creamer’s plan to the letter. They have claimed our health care system is in crisis despite polls showing the overwhelming majority of Americans are happy with the care they receive.

For my money, one of the most important books of the last ten years is Radical-in-Chief by Stanley Kurtz. Published shortly after the Most Equal Comrade took office in 2009, it looks exhaustively at the web of Chicago-based radical leftist groups through which the MEC maneuvered. In a piece at NRO a couple of days ago, Kurtz summarizes what he had written about Creamer then.

Creamer is a longtime Alinskyite activist and a leader in Obama’s old community organizing network. Creamer was a key figure in the work of Chicago’s community organizer training center, the Midwest Academy, to which Obama had close ties. I write extensively about the hard-left ideology and hardball tactics of the Midwest Academy, and Creamer’s role at the center of it all, in my political biography of President Obama, Radical-in-Chief (see Chapter 5, esp. 144-45; 186-88).

The Midwest Academy was founded by die-hard socialists who had once been part of the radical 60s SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). An influential figure in Saul Alinsky’s early Chicago operations, Creamer worked with the Midwest Academy’s founders to persuade young socialist revolutionaries in the 70s to adopt a more “pragmatic” Alinskyite stance. In other words, Creamer helped persuade these young revolutionaries to organize, and provide quiet socialist guidance, to movements that were liberal in appearance, yet radical in their ultimate intentions and effects.

While retaining his ties to the Midwest Academy, Creamer rose to become a prominent Democratic strategist and, as numerous reports have indicated, a frequent visitor to the Obama White House. Creamer was an important early advocate of what we now call the healthcare “public option,” an idea that appears to have been at least partially inspired by one of the Midwest Academy’s earlier organizing campaigns. 

Folks, this is why we call 'em Freedom-Haters.