“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” we were told by the opposition during the Bush administration. It seems that now that same opposition believes that “Dissent is the highest form of racism.” So get on board and join the program, or else you’re a racist.

So much for the unity president. From the Obama administration’s knee-jerk reaction to the perfectly legitimate arrest of Henry Louis Gates — said Obama: cops “acted stupidly” — to attending a church for decades whose pastor was clearly race baiting and antisemitic, the notion of Obama as a race unifier is a joke. (Note: Church is like a restaurant — you don’t go back unless you like what’s on the menu).

Fortunately, the race card always has a point of diminishing returns. A Rasmussen poll finds just 12% of Americans agree with the concept that the tea party protesters — whom Democrats continue to ridicule as “tea baggers” — are based in racism, not in opposition to massive tax increases or state-run health care.

What’s most outrageous of all this is the sheer hypocrisy. Jay Nordlinger explains:

But charges of racism are ever-present. Diane Watson, a congresswoman from Los Angeles, said, “They are spreading fear and they’re trying to see that the first president who looks like me fails.” Watson is black. Who are “they”? Obama’s health-care critics. Watson went on to heap kooky but common praise on Fidel Castro, and the old dictator himself got into the act. He wrote in his state media (the only media there are in Cuba), “The extreme Right hates [Obama] for being African-American and fights what the president does to improve the deteriorated image of [the United States]. I don’t have the slightest doubt that the racist Right will do everything possible to wear him down, blocking his program to get him out of the game one way or another, at the least political cost.” Holding forth in that way, Castro could easily be a columnist for, say, the Boston Globe.

At times, the health-care protests have been rowdy and obnoxious — like America. In an op-ed piece published in USA Today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, condemned an “ugly campaign” to “disrupt public meetings” and so on. They said, “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” It is certainly undemocratic. But Pelosi, for one, once had very friendly words for rowdy, obnoxious, and disruptive protesters. On the Internet, Andrew Breitbart circulated a video from 2006, showing Pelosi at one of these town-hall meetings. The focus of the citizens’ ire was George W. Bush and the Iraq War. She said to this extremely angry bunch, “I thank all of you who have spoken out for your courage, your point of view — all of it. Your advocacy is very American and very important.” When the room got almost out of control, a man who appears to have been the moderator of this session — it’s unclear from the video — appealed for calm. Pelosi said, very sweetly and reasonably, “That’s okay, that’s okay.” When a woman shouted at her without cease, Pelosi said, “I understand your anger.” She could not have been more forbearing and patient — like a dear, tender aunt. She later said, “I’m a fan of disruptors, people who make change.” And she said, “Let’s not question each other’s patriotism when we’re having this very honest debate that our country expects and deserves.”

Words to live by.

Some protesters have been carted away from town-hall meetings on health care. A man from Londonderry, N.H. — a retired New York City patrolman — turned up at a meeting with his congresswoman, Carol Shea-Porter. He stood to ask a question, or make a statement, about unionists in the room: He thought that the congresswoman had stacked the hall with them, and wondered whether they even lived in New Hampshire. Shea-Porter had him removed: because he did not have a ticket to ask a question. She had earlier held a lottery, and only winners — those with tickets — could ask questions. She had also called critics of Obamacare “teabaggers,” following the practice established by CNN’s Cooper in the spring. And New Hampshirites noted an irony: Shea-Porter herself had once been a town-hall disruptor, an activist on the left.

The retired New York cop was a benign protester: or perhaps not even a protester at all, just someone seeking answers. But there have been protesters who have smelled of violence. One man showed up with a gun outside a town-hall meeting featuring Obama himself. (The gun was legal.) He had also brought a sign: about watering the tree of liberty. Another protester, outside a different meeting — not featuring the president — had a sign that was more direct: “Death to Obama.” He was duly handed over to the Secret Service.

Surveying the town-hall meetings across the nation — nasty ones and merely raucous ones — commentators have had a field day: warning against militias, new McVeighs, and “right-wing rage” in general. A notable left-wing writer is Rick Perlstein, who acts as kind of an anthropologist studying the Right. Like Malinowski among the Trobrianders, he examines conservative America, then reports back to amazed readers in civilization. He has recently published a piece in the Washington Post: “In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition: Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage.” (The term “birthers” refers to those with an unhealthy interest in President Obama’s birth certificate.)

Funny, but you never read about “left-wing rage.” Is that because “right-wing rage” is alliterative, and “left-wing rage” not? Orwell once remarked that you can never be a “rabid anti-Nazi” or a “rabid anti-fascist”: You can only be a “rabid anti-Communist.” If you are more than vaguely or discreetly anti-Communist, you are “rabid.”

Commentators of the Left seem not to accept conservative protest as legitimate at all. They seem practically offended at the very idea of conservative protest: because activism, energy, passion, and all that are supposed to come from the left. And grassroots are not supposed to figure in conservative soil. Indeed, when Pelosi was asked about health-care protesters, she called them “AstroTurf” — i.e., not real. And many have viewed the conservatives, not as an engaged citizenry, but as a mob. You will remember Peter Jennings, the late anchorman for ABC News. He epitomized left-liberal urbanity. And after the 1994 midterm elections, which were good for the Republicans and bad for the Democrats, he said that the voters had thrown “a two-year-old temper tantrum.” That is the mindset — the critical mindset — evident now.

President Obama himself seems a little miffed: He is the one used to doing the protesting, the community-organizing. And now that he is president — can’t everyone just fall in line, stay organized? Addressing the issue of health care, he said, “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way . . .” Exactly.

In general, the Democratic party and the media class are “all wee-weed up,” to use an Obama phrase. They are appalled at the conservative protesters, shocked that such rough and noisy criticism could occur in America. “Hate” is filling the air, they say. And their assassination worries are mounting: What if someone took a shot at, not just the president, but the first black president? You perhaps remember the Bush years — the eight years of George W. Bush. They did not occur so long ago. Let’s do a little revisiting.

Howard Dean — not an unwashed citizen, but a man who was soon to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee — said, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.” Plus, “This,” meaning politics, “is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.” An editor of The New Republic wrote a piece called “The Case for Bush Hatred.” It began, “I hate President George W. Bush” — well, of course.

No one was more inflammatory or mendacious about Bush than Michael Moore, the filmmaker. He made a movie alleging, among other things, that Bush went to war in Afghanistan, not to rout the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but to benefit his business cronies. Almost the entire Democratic establishment turned out for this movie’s Washington premiere. Covering the event, Byron York asked Terry McAuliffe, who was chairman of the DNC (pre-Dean), whether he agreed with Moore on Afghanistan. He said yes. At the 2004 Democratic convention, Jimmy Carter asked Moore to sit with him in the presidential box. He told Moore that there was no one he would rather sit with. Later, the ex-president told Emory students that the movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, was his favorite of all time, along with Casablanca.

Some Democrats — Pelosi, Barney Frank — have been upset that town-hall protesters have brought up the Nazis, when talking about Obamacare and such. Do they remember the Bush years at all — when comparisons to the Nazis were ubiquitous and incessant? “Bushitler” became a routine term. Former senator John Glenn, objecting to Republican campaign rhetoric, said, “It’s the old Hitler business.” Al Gore said that the Bush administration was “unleash[ing] squadrons of digital brownshirts.” Julian Bond, as chairman of the NAACP, said of the Bushies, “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.” Rep. Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire. In a long list of epithets, Garrison Keillor, the National Public Radio favorite, called Republicans “brownshirts in pinstripes.” Etc., etc.

And I have merely cited political and intellectual leaders, not ordinary rabble, who were far worse.

And shall we talk about assassination? Even before Bush was elected president, the kill-Bush talk and imagery started. When Governor Bush was delivering his 2000 convention speech, Craig Kilborn, a CBS talk-show host, showed him on the screen with the words “SNIPERS WANTED.” Six years later, Bill Maher, the comedian-pundit, was having a conversation with John Kerry. He asked the senator what he had gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry answered that he had taken her to Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” (New Hampshire is an early primary state, of course.) Kerry said, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.” (This is the same Kerry who joked in 1988, “Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle.”) Also in 2006, the New York comptroller, Alan Hevesi, spoke to graduating students at Queens College. He said that his fellow Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, would “put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”

A columnist in Britain’s Guardian, Charlie Brooker, wrote, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?” Betty Williams, the Irishwoman who won the Nobel Peace Prize, said, “I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence,’ because I don’t believe that I am non-violent. . . . Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.” A novelist, Nicholson Baker, was so filled with rage at Bush, he wrote a novel mulling the question of assassinating him. In Britain, there was a TV movie — a “fictional documentary” — that was a kind of fantasy: on the assassination of Bush. (It was called Death of a President.) Etc., etc.

The anonymous photographer-blogger who maintains zombietime.com has done something remarkable: assembled a large collection of photos from anti-Bush and anti-Republican rallies — including Obama rallies. This makes for sickening viewing: all the signs calling for Bush’s death, all the severed Bush heads, the burning effigies, and so on. There is a delightful bumper sticker saying “SUPPORT BUSH” and showing a noose. All in all, this was a years-long orgy of, not just Bush-hatred, but murderous hatred toward that president. To paraphrase a onetime presidential candidate (Bob Dole), where was the outrage?

Nowhere — certainly not in establishment quarters. But there is outrage, or at least fierce indignation, at the relatively tame protesters who are giving Obama and his policies a hard time. You remember Cindy Sheehan, that media star, who had a son killed in Iraq and dedicated herself to hounding President Bush? Such media grandees as Charlie Gibson once danced attention on her. She is a forlorn figure in the Age of Obama. Before she went to Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama was vacationing, to continue her protests, Gibson was asked what he thought. He concluded, “Enough already.” And that can be said about anti-presidential protest in general: now that the un-Bush is in. Can you imagine the reaction if a CBS talk-show host showed a picture of Obama giving a speech and put up the words “SNIPERS WANTED”?

I must say, at a personal level, that it was sickening — almost literally sickening — to go through the materials assembled at zombietime.com. There is a depravity in that collection that you might not have thought possible in America, this basically easygoing, non-jacobinical country. I could never quite get used to the Bush-hatred, sustained as it was. I could tell you several anecdotes — here is one: At a dinner party on the Upper East Side of Manhattan one night, conversation turned to 9/11. I mentioned that the “Pennsylvania plane” — the one essentially brought down by extraordinarily brave passengers — had probably been destined for the Capitol or the White House. My hostess, a notably civilized and kind lady, said, “I wish George W. Bush had been killed that day.” I feel sure that she meant it — as did many other Americans.

And they are hardly positioned now to condemn the anti-Obama protesters. But all the smart people are consumed with worry about militiamen, brownshirts. On Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked a conservative senator whether he was troubled by threats of “violence against the government.” Well, that is a fine question to ask now. Did he notice the murderous displays against Bush? All of us have a little hypocrisy in us, probably. And to point out hypocrisy, as I have done in this article, is one of the easiest things in the world. But the current hypocrisy reeks so bad, it’s surprising that even the hypocrites don’t smell it.

[ABC News] At the end of Wednesday night’s prime-time news conference that was intended to be chiefly about health care, Obama was asked about the incident [the arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.], to which he responded: “I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that.”

But Obama went on to say, “I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

Obama: I don’t have all the facts but those cops sure acted stupidly.

This is typical liberal knee-jerk racial reaction. So much our new post-racial country. Black or white, the cops reacted the same way they would towards any person acting belligerent. Don’t believe me, go try the same.

The police report said Gates, who was returning from a trip to China and found his front door jammed, at first refused to provide an ID and became unruly. He was charged with disorderly conduct but the charges were dropped this week.

Law enforcement sources told ABC News that the conversation between Gates and Crowley was transmitted over Crowley’s open police radio and Gates can be heard yelling.

“Mr. Gates was given plenty of opportunities to stop what he was doing. He didn’t. He acted very irrational. He controlled the outcome of that event,” Crowley told WBZ.

Crowley said Gates, the director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research and former host of the PBS show “African American Lives,” called him a “racist cop.”

“There was a lot of yelling, there was references to my mother,” he added, “something you wouldn’t expect from anybody that should be grateful that you were there investigating a report of a crime in progress, let alone a Harvard University professor.”

He controlled the outcome of the event. Yes he did, didn’t he.

Meanwhile, this evil racist cop tried to save the life of NBA superstar Reggie Lewis 15 years ago.

If we live in such a racist country, as the friends and fellow travelers of Barack Obama argued vehemently throughout this campaign season, how did AmeriKKKa end up electing The One?

– Michelle Malkin tosses the Rev. Wright’s words back at him.

Read the rest. I love a quote by this mil-blogger, mainly because he says what I said, and you know, I’m into that:

“But, now that there’s going to be a Democrat in the White House, patriotism will be in again – so maybe the movies will be a little less dreadful, though they’ll be no less preachy.

Does the election of a black man to the Presidency of the United States mean we can finally give Europe the finger? Seeing as how those hosers have never elected anything but a pasty-white European to high elective office?

Does anyone think a day like yesterday is even *remotely* possible over there?”

Well, at least the longest and most expensive election in American history is over.

One must congratulate Barack Obama. Should not he at least be given the chance to prove he is not the most liberal president, backed by the most liberal Congress, to ever take office?

Or, rather, should Republicans and conservatives use the playbook — perfected by Democrats just days after the 2000 election — where Bush’s disgraceful treatment became what John Kerry’s own lawyer, Jeff Shapiro, this week termed, “a shameful display of arrogance and weakness” by Democrats.

The peaceful transition of power envisioned by our founders continues. We started it, and no other country does it quite as well. Meanwhile, I get a kick out of the rest of the world hailing us for overcoming our supposed racial bias — you’ll let me know when a black man rules France, or a Jewish person rules Iran, or a Korean rules Japan, or when a Pakistani rules the U.K., won’t you?

Good news: It is possible, but not likely, that Barack Obama will not be a economic socialist, or ineptly naive on foreign policy. He may govern more in the center, perhaps emulating Bill Clinton. It would also appear that the Democrats will not gain the omnipotent 60th seat in the Senate, but they came damn close.

Good news: Race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are officially irrelevant to American politics.

Bad news: If you thought the mainstream media was an Obama lapdog during the election, just wait until Obama is president. Any obsticle for the Obama presidency will instantly be spun into an advantage or at least a non-issue. Revisionist history will reach unprecedented heights.

Bad news: For the next eight years, anyone who dares disagree with any Obama position risks being labeled a bigot or racist. As Charles Krauthammer said recently, if they can make Bill Clinton into a racist they can make anyone into a racist.

The reason Bill Clinton is sulking in his tent is because he feels that Obama surrogates succeeded in painting him as a racist. Clinton has many sins, but from his student days to his post-presidency, his commitment and sincerity in advancing the cause of African Americans have been undeniable. If the man Toni Morrison called the first black president can be turned into a closet racist, then anyone can.

– Charles Krauthammer.

Mike Allan and Jon Martin of The Politico wrote that former Sec. of State Colin Powell’s decision to endorse Barack Obama “stunned both parties.” If that’s true, it just goes to show you how naive both parties are.

Frankly, I think it’s just typical journalist hyperbole, where every exaggerated headline underscores how we the public should be “stunned,” or “outraged,” or “shocked,” et cetera, and this is, but of course, especially true when the story is deemed harmful to Republicans.

In any event, I take issue with Colin Powell’s curious definition of the role of the vice president:

Powell said that he is “troubled” by the direction of the Republican Party, and said he began to doubt McCain when he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

“Not just small towns have values,” he said, responding to one of Palin’s signature lines.

“She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired,” he said. “But at the same, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Sen. McCain made.”

The endorsement is likely to help Obama convince skeptical centrists that he is ready to handle the challenges of commander in chief, and it undercuts McCain’s argument that he is better qualified on national security issues.

On the contrary, what it undercuts, or at least should undercut, is Colin Powell’s judgment, not John McCain’s.

The job of the vice president is not ‘to be ready to be president.’

It is rather this (according Article 1, section 3, of our US Constitution): “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”

That’s it folks. If we redefine the job of the vice president as being ready to be president because they are one heartbeat away, it means we must likewise redefine the role of the speaker of the House of Representatives, who is just two heartbeats away from the presidency. Who believes that Nancy Pelosi, who cannot even lead her own House — what with an historically-low 12 percent approval rating — could do any better?

Sarah Palin is running for vice president, but even so has as much, and perhaps more, foreign policy experience than Barack Obama. Worse, Obama knows this, else why would he have picked as his running mate Joe “foot-in-mouth” Biden, who just this weekend acknowledged that an Obama presidency would immediately be aggressively challenged by foreign powers looking to exploit his inexperience?

The person looking bitter in all of this is Powell. And speaking of “transformational figures,” I think it speaks volumes that Powell appears to defend the Obama relationship with William Ayers, a guy who bombed the Pentagon, where within Powell used to work.

“They’re trying to connect [Obama] to some kind of terrorist feelings, and I think that’s inappropriate,” Powell said. “Now I understand what politics is all about — I know how you can go after one another. And that’s good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It’s not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Gov. Palin has indicated a further rightward shift.”

Powell said he has “heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion [that Obama's] a Muslim and might be associated with terrorists.

“This is not the way we should be doing it in America. I feel strongly about this particular point,” Powell said. “We have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.”

Well, here’s an idea. If you don’t want to be polarizing, you shouldn’t play political footsie with someone as controversial as William Ayers, an unapologetic self-sworn enemy of the United States.

And as far as the suggestion that Powell “heard senior members” of the Republican Party suggest Obama is Muslim, this is, until Powell bothers to name names, just the typical kind of race/religion baiting that we’ve come to expect from the Obama campaign.

It’s a tactic of playing the preemptive race card — people don’t actually have to say anything that sounds racist anymore. Instead, they can just be predetermined to be racist once Democrats accuse them of something they might say in the future.

Here’s Neal Boortz:

Throughout this campaign, we have heard the steady cries of racism … people say that the only reason the most liberal Senator ever to run for president – a leftist Senator with a penchant for Marxist ideology – could possibly lose this election is because he is black and people are racist. As we get closer to the election, these stories have exploded into the media.

Let’s go down the list of the few we got just over the weekend!

We have foreign leaders (technically a former leader) like Fidel Castro saying that the only reason million of people will not vote for Barack Obama is because of “profound racism in the United States.”

In South Carolina, we have vandals spray painting “Republican means slavery” on the door of the GOP campaign headquarters. Because, to the mind of an ignorant voter with a racial chip on his shoulder, being a Republican automatically makes you a racist because you don’t want Barack Obama to be president. Please remember the idiot Whoppi Goldberg when McCain appeared on The View. She asked McCain if he were elected would she become a slave again.

Here’s Time Magazine proclaiming that the John McCain and Sarah Palin are using Obama’s race to make him appear “anti-American.” It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with his view of this country, could it?

Then we have Frank Rich in the New York Times over the weekend. Frank Rich says, “From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.” So there you have it. Not surprising that The New York Times publishes a column proclaiming that it is the Republicans who are playing the race card, and if Obama loses, it is because Republicans have stirred the racist pot.

Remember also other charges of racism in this campaign:

• The use of the word “skinny” in referring to Obama is racist.
• Using the words “community organizer” is racist.
• Saying Obama – an ultra-leftist – doesn’t see America the same way a conservative would is racist.
• Using his middle name is racist.

Just remember my friends: This is only the beginning. When Obama becomes our (czar) President any utterance of disapproval with any proposal he floats before the congress will, of course, be racist. It is going to be a fun four years.

Indeed.

Remember the comparison Rep. John Lewis (D, GA) made a few days ago, equating the McCain campaign to rhetoric of George Wallace. Such talk takes the expression “beyond the pale” to a whole new level.

Seriously, folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement, says the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign reminds him of the hateful atmosphere that segregationist Gov. George Wallace fostered in Alabama in the 1960s.

How dare McCain actually try to win! If McCain won’t just roll over for Barack Obama — the CHOSEN ONE — the he must be a racist!

Link:

“[Franklin] Raines, who you’re talking about, worked for Fannie Mae, was there for a while. The only connection that people could bring up about Raines and Barack Obama is they both are African-American, other than that there is nothing.”

– Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV)

I love the twisting of words by Harry Reid. What a transparent jerk. The radio host comments that Barack Obama “has three people tied to the mortgage mess…” Two of them are former CEOs of Fannie Mae! But Reid attempts to counter with a ridiculous bait-and-switch about McCain “lobbyists” (a completely legal and constitutionally-protected activity, by the way).

In Reid’s twisted logic former Fannie Mae lobbyists working for McCain are somehow worse than two former CEOs of Fannie Mae who cooked the books, overstated Fannie Mae profits for the sole purpose of generating higher bonuses, and helped create this loan and credit crisis (completely illegal activities) — even as each of these CEOs made millions of dollars in the process!

If an Enron or Arthur Anderson accounting fraudster was working for John McCain, wouldn’t the media be screaming bloody murder? Did you know that Barack Obama has received $42,000 in campaign contributions for each of his years in Congress? Did you know that is 4 times higher than any other member of Congress? (Apparently Obama hasn’t the disdain for Fannie lobbyists that Reid has).

Both James Johnson (CEO Fannie Mae, 1991-98) and Franklin Raines (CEO, 1999-2004) additionally received preferential loan deals from the now infamous Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo.

But to Harry Reid, Raines is just a guy “who worked for Fannie Mae,” as though he was a door greeter or something, while the radio host is a racist.

I never thought the Democrats could find a bigger weenie than Tom Daschle, but they sure proved me wrong!