I had a friend in high school who wore a Che Guevara T-shirt in a photo for the high school year book. Years later at a party, we were going through the year book and someone asked him about the shirt, "were you a communist?"

He explained that he had picked it up on vacation in California and just liked the way "the guy" looked--beard, long hair and beret. At the time, he thought "the guy" was some sort of rock star.

That level of ignorance persists, decades later. Che Guevara is an icon of anarchist, not left-wing mythology. His appeal wasn't his ideology, but the fact that he and the Castro boys succeeded in overthrowing the establishment. What happens after the overthrow is unimportant to Che fans, and yet its the most important part of the story.

Unfortunately its not the story that Steven Soderbergh wants to tell in his--are you read for this?--4 hour and 23 minute lionization of the revolutionary psychopath.

Every time I think that America will pull out of recession quickly, I'm knocked back to pessimism by the crassness of government. Now I realise that the most powerful female in government is insane:

PELOSI SAYS BIRTH CONTROL WILL HELP ECONOMY
Sun Jan 25 2009 22:13:43 ET

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic "stimulus" package, claiming "contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

Pelosi, the mother of 5 children and 6 grandchildren, who once said, "Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to being a mom," seemed to imply babies are somehow a burden on the treasury.

The revelation came during an exchange Sunday morning on ABC's THIS WEEK.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

What do you think this was about?

"I'm getting uncomfortable," Benicio del Toro said after fielding a question about his new movie's portrayal of the Bolivian and Cuban revolutions. "I'm done. I'm done, I hope you write whatever you want. I don't give a damn."

With that, the Oscar-winning actor walked away, abruptly terminating an interview conducted late last week to discuss director Steven Soderbergh's "Che."

What del Toro was experiencing was cognitive dissonance and the implications of his scamper are very interesting for the left-wing worldview that so many people accept uncritically because they've never seen it challenged. For those of you unfamiliar with the term:

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitudes and beliefs, and also the awareness of one's behavior.

In any kind of monoculture, the worldview is simply accepted whole cloth and as long as the individual can stay in the monoculture, they can live their whole lives secure in their certain knowledge.

Its when they stray out of the warm embrace of the monoculture that things get hairy.

I think you might be able to extrapolate from this observation that its primarily lefties that experience this. Conservatives have endured relentless challenge to their views their entire lives, so are understandably far more comfortable discussing and defending them than your average liberal.

Now you know why Rush Limbaugh is such a scary guy.

The left-wing was gravely disturbed by the theoretical possibility that the government might be listening to an innocent American citizen talking to his terrorist buddies in Pakistan. I've yet to hear of an actual case.

No one on the left is in the least bit concerned about this:

The Washington Post rummages through the old files to discover that the FBI was investigating former Motion Picture Association president Jack Valenti while he was working in the Johnson administration. The suspicion? Valenti was gay.

Predating the modern predilection of the left to out gay Washington officials (if they're Republicans), Bill Moyer, fabulously rich teet-sucker of the Public Broadcasting Corporation and noted liberal conspiracy kook, was a gung ho gay man hunter.

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

Yeah, I'll bet his memory is unclear.

A German language movie about life in East Germany under the watchful eye of the Stasi, or an American future?

Something happened last night that chilled me to the bone. Jim Cramer got chewed up by Jon Stewart for 23 minutes on the Daily Show, absolutely masticated.

If you listened to Cramer's advice in the last year, you lost a ton of money, but no one in the driveby media is ever held to account for the things they say and do--its the unspoken professional courtesy of the New York media clubhouse. For a year, no one in the media laid a glove on Cramer. So what did Cramer do to deserve this professional immolation?

He criticized the Messiah.

This was a high-tech lynching, a warning to anyone else in the media who was thinking about getting out of line, that the same fate awaits them.

You might want to rent "The Lives of Others"...

Michael Savage is a lucky man. Not only does he have the publicity of being banned from the UK for being a right-wing talk-show host, but the politician who banned him is such an easy target. He should Google "Jacqui Smith expenses porno" to see how my tax pounds are spent.

I bet the Whitehouse would think "Ministry of Truth" would be a catchy name for this:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

They want something fishy on health reform? Send them this link.

When you surf the effluent-choked waters of the mainstream media, sooner or later you'll run into a turd.

After installing service pack 2 for Vista, I restarted the machine and up came Windows Messenger with its portal page. An link for a controversy over a video game called "Fat Princess" seemed quirky enough to check out.

Alas, the controversy is manufactured by the oppressive high priesthood of feminism which objects to--well, I'm not sure what they object to, but you know these people--they find everything offensive.

Yet what prompted this post wasn't the ho-hum outrage of wymen bent on holding their own feminist auto-da-fe for the unbelievers, but Winda Benedetti's idiotic defense of the video game.

Here we are one year later and “Fat Princess” has finally arrived on the PlayStation Network and I have finally played it and I am, as it turns out, a woman. All of this, I believe, qualifies me to say: I don’t know what the big fat deal is.

Artist Weng Chen, the woman who created the concept art for the princesses, believes portly can be pretty too.

I’m a pro-woman kinda woman (Go women!) who would happily pay the dues to join Club Feminist (we do pay dues, right?) And yet, there’s not a single pro-woman bone in my body that is offended by this game. (Does this mean my membership application is going to be rejected?)

So seeped in fascism is Ms Benedetti, that she misses the entire point of the controversy--nobody cares about a video game featuring rotund royalty. Its controversial because feminists insist that they should be the arbitrators of other people's choices based on their peculiar religious beliefs.

Benedetti is unoffended by the game, which means you are now allowed to go ahead and play it. Of course if she were offended, you would be condemned to be burned at the stake.

The implicit acceptance of the view that women, or anyone for that matter, should determine other people's choices is positively anachronistic--Salem witch trial stuff. Almost as backward is the idea that the purchase of a video game should be based on its political correctness.

The biggest obstacle for women are women themselves. This kind of fatuous public reaction only undermines their prospects for being taken seriously.

ADDENDUM

Speaking of being taken seriously, Hillary Clinton betrayed her sore spot when an apparent translator error resulted in her being asked what her husband thought of a Chinese trade deal with the Congo.

"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" Clinton replied, clearly irked by the thought of being her husband Bill's spokeswoman.

"My husband is not secretary of state, I am," she replied. "If you want my opinion I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband."

I almost can't express the profundity of this remark. In one sentence Secretary Clinton expresses everything wrong with affirmative action and political correctness. Mrs. Clinton is, by all accounts, a capable and intelligent woman, who has never done a damn thing on her own merit. She rose to partner in the prestigious Rose law firm (third oldest in the U.S.) because her husband was governor and Rose was and is the ultimate establishment law firm (Clinton associates Webster Hubbell and Vince Foster were also partners...). Is there any doubt that Hillary Clinton won her Senate seat because of who her husband is? Ironically, her most recent appointment is about the closest she's ever come to actually earning something by her own labors. The hard fought primary campaign meant that she had enough chips to demand a high-level cabinet appointment, but any objective analysis makes it clear that she really only has one qualification for the job--her relationship to Bill Clinton.

Among the Axis of Evil boys, chicks don't rate, and when Kim Jong Il demanded the diplomatic crown jewels (among other things...) from the Obama administration in exchange for the Al Gore minions he had locked up in his basement, he accepted a visit from Bill Clinton, and pointedly invited Hillary to stay home.

To be fair, many women, and they might indeed have feminists viewpoints, have understood the native reality of the human species, and achieved power and influence on their own terms--running successful businesses and being elected to public office without a well-connected spouse or near-relative. Its the difference between charismatic and fiat authority.

What happened to Salon?

It used to be a mildly amusing news website, with a decidedly liberal elan, reflecting a broad range of topics. I used to read it primarily to get my dose of Camille Paglia, who I enjoy even when I disagree with her.

A brief visit today revealed a kind of bug-eyed paranoia over Glenn Beck. Rush Limbaugh is often the topic of conversation as well, but regardless of the target, the new Salon seems to be all about demonizing and discrediting the conservative provocateurs.

I found this particularly amusing as it concerns Beck, who is famous for acknowledging his moral and intellectual failures, which when you hear them, sound curiously "liberal" in character and thus eminently forgiveable had his politics turned out differently.

I personally don't find Beck all that interesting, and come to think of it, I've never caught more than a few minutes of his show. Its not my kind of humor, but in fairness, I don't much go for any talk show anymore except for Dennis Miller and the occasional tete-a-tete with Rush Limbaugh. A talk show host's job is to provoke a response, and I don't enjoy being manipulated--by anyone.

Yet, Salon's obsession with conservative talk show hosts is something I find fascinating.

The first question that occurs to me is to ask who Salon is talking to? Well, I've taken to calling them neo-contras because regardless of education, regional and cultural background, the one thing they have in common is that they are all "against". They define their lives as a struggle "against" the institutions and cultures from which they feel outcast.

You wouldn't expect to find a lot of Glenn Beck listeners reading Salon, and that's what makes Salon's publishing agenda so curious. Aren't they in fact adopting the very tactics that they allegedly decry? Isn't the whole point of a series on Glenn Beck to provoke anger, hatred and fear?

Yes it is.

I'm not making a moral judgment here--this kind of provocation works politically, so I expect I'll see it until my eyes close for the final time. The larger question is what can we learn from the dynamic? Beck and Limbaugh are allegedly provoking hatred against an administration and a political party, and while it might seem that Salon is targeting Beck personally, the reality is that their readers are focusing their ire on Beck listeners, on Mormons--on their fellow Americans. You don't have to take my word for it--read the letters to the editor.

That seems to be to be a flawed strategy and Alinksy agrees.

RULE 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Is Salon cutting off Beck from sympathy, or enhancing it? Let me submit what I think is an interesting insight--Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc... aren't personalities, they are reflections. Why am I tepid on Hannity and bullish on Miller? Simple really--I identify with Miller and his style of conversation. Dennis Miller is a reflection of my own tastes in humor and politics, just as Glenn Beck attracts an audience attuned to his own style. In attacking these guys, you attack their audiences, who metaphorically circle the wagons--exactly the opposite of what rule 13 is supposed to accomplish.

Salon, like the Obama administration and it coterie of former community activists and other devotees of Alinksy's rules for radicals, have instincts honed from careers spent as outsiders fighting institutional power. Now they find themselves as custodians of those institutions or its defenders and they simply have the wrong instincts.

I spooked a mule deer the other day, while hiking and the deer did what mule deer do when the flight instinct kicks in--she "stotted" up the mountain side. Stotting is a kind of four-legged jump that allows the deer to cover a lot of vertical terrain very quickly, and mule deer instinctly move to higher ground when startled. Whitetailed deer live in very different terrain--essentially flat land and river bottoms. Scare a Whitetail and it will head down, because down is where the cover is. The different types of deer maintain their respective territories because their instincts are well-suited to one kind of terrain, but not the other.

The left finds itself with well-developed reflexes for the wrong kind of terrain. The right seems to be adapting to its new environment rather better (been to a tea-party lately?).

Recommended reading: Five-thirty-eight has some interesting insights into Glenn Beck's appeal to the new post-modern-conservative. I think he's right on the money with this.

A number of things have come out in the wake of the Fort Hood murders that point to the unspoken reality of our times--political correctness kills.

13 people were killed and another 30 injured. Ten times that many people have had their lives devastated by the loss of a loved one. This is what Evan Thomas of Newsweek had to say on Inside Washington--a local Washington D.C. political round table with balanced view-points--meaning four liberals to one conservative (Charles Krauthammer).

I cringe that he's a Muslim. I mean, because it inflames all the fears. I think he's probably just a nut case. But with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going and it just -- I mean these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse.

NPR's Nina Totenberg (Presidential fellator wannabe...) soon chimed in with agreement: "It really is tragic that he was a Muslim."

Clearly the real tragedy here is how this affects the liberal establishment.

While that has its comic aspects, less amusing is the reality that Maj. Nidal M. Hasan clearly telegraphed his intentions.

"It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims," he said in the presentation.

"It was really strange," said one staff member who attended the presentation and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the investigation of Hasan. "The senior doctors looked really upset" at the end. These medical presentations occurred each Wednesday afternoon, and other students had lectured on new medications and treatment of specific mental illnesses.

An Army spokesman said Monday night he was unaware of the presentation, and a Walter Reed spokesman declined to comment. It is unclear whether anyone in attendance reported the briefing to counterintelligence or law enforcement authorities whose job it is to identify threats from within the military ranks.

One does not have to wonder about the reception for a complaint about a Muslim officer would have been considering the attitude of one of the military's top officers.

“Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse,” Casey said.

Clearly we should heal Hasan's wounds, give him his pistols back, and turn him loose in Washington D.C. The place badly needs some liberal diversity...

Not exactly sure how a non-profit files for bankruptcy protection, but ACORN is apparently considering it.

As its financial resources dwindle, radical advocacy group and organized crime syndicate ACORN may have to file for bankruptcy protection before Christmas, ACORN insiders say.

"They may have to file for bankruptcy if they don't have several big pending grants approved or get emergency loans," a highly placed ACORN source told me over the weekend. This information bolsters Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) claim last week that ACORN is in turmoil amidst internal power struggles and on the verge of bankruptcy.

The organization owes over 2 million in backtaxes, and those may be payroll taxes, which would make ACORN directors personally liable.

Its darkly funny that an organization premised on social theft would get themselves in trouble over non-payment of taxes.

The recent video-sting of ACORN is going to make a Congressional rescue problematic--for political reasons as well as the exceptional slow pace at which Congress works. My guess is that ACORN goes away, and with it the "bad smell". Democrats and their bagmen can always reconstitute ACORN's function under a different name, or even better, under a lot of different names. That way when they get caught stuffing the ballot box, they can sniff that is an "isolated case".

What will be most interesting is what will happen to ACORN's directors. If ACORN's tax problem become their tax problem, expect some very interesting negotiations. There is no doubt that they can sink a lot of political careers. If we had any real reporters in this country, someone would be watching who contacts whom, very closely.

Proving once again that you don't have to be an animal to be radical left--but it helps.

Florida ANSWER, a radical left-wing fascist group, sent a number of young brown shirts to bust some heads at the Tea Party protest. Dumbass criminals just don't seem to realize how many video cameras are at these things.

Will the state media ignore it? While Obama's Justice Department decline to prosecute? My guess is that Tea Party protest will be banned "because of all the violence..."

Can concentration camps be far behind?

The last time I linked to Little Green Footballs was almost certainly in 2004, during the Rathergate controversy. That extraordinary piece of journalism put Charles Johnson on the map as far as the blogosphere was concerned, along with Powerline and a couple of other blogs. Interestingly, while Michelle Malkin and other bloggers have gone on to multi-media success, Johnson became the blogosphere's Cindy Sheehan.

I stopped reading LGF rather quickly and abruptly when it became clear to me that Johnson was....er-r-r-r...a bit of a nut. His paranoid rants on Islam were divorced from reality--and that's putting it mildly.

A few months ago, I read something about Johnson that I managed to dig up again.

When I met Charles, back in 2004, he was fiftyish and driving a somewhat battered Hyundai. According to Raj, he'd been cleaned out in recent divorce and didn't have much more than that Hyundai, his computer and his bike. That's got to be a tough thing to take at fifty. It is probably fair to say that Little Green Footballs and the blogosphere were about the only things Charles had going for him. Which is, quite frankly, somewhat sad.

Sad, and dangerous.

Dangerous because it gave Charles Johnson, middle-aged mediocrity, the out he needed when it came to dealing with the fact that he was just another average guy. It's something that the vast majority of us have to deal with at some point in our lives. We spend our first forty or so years believing that we are indeed special, that we can indeed do anything we want to (if only we work hard for it). It's what's been drilled into us since birth. And then, one day, we wake up and realize that we aren't special. We cannot do whatever we put minds to. We discover we are mediocre. We are average.

What's important to note about this, at least as it applies to Charles Johnson, is that the notoriety gained from the Rather Affair, combined with popularity of Little Green Footballs has allowed Charles the opportunity to avoid, up until about a year ago, the day he had to reckon with his own mediocrity. He could look past his personal and professional setbacks and gaze upon the glory that was blogospheric prominence. If nothing else, he could now claim to being an influencer... Someone of importance... A leader.

And herein lies the seeds of Charles Johnson's self-destruction: He is not a leader. He's an average guy.

I'm not writing to disparage Johnson, who I don't know from Adam, but this turn of events brought to mind the oft-repeated lesson that while technology evolves, human nature does not--at least not nearly as quickly. The early hope for a democratic media soon gave way to the reality of kicking and scratching for attention and a shot at the big time--cable news guest commentator spots (woo-wee!). Whereas some moved rather naturally into expanded roles (Glenn Harland Reynolds), others were aggressively careerist (Michelle Malkin), Charles Johnson saw his success as an anointing; divine approval of his opinions.

He's more like a religious leader now, leading his minions in whatever philosophical direction the spirit leads him. Johnson was never a movement conservative, rather his opinions just happen to coincide, for a little while, with the conservative viewpoint. I suspect his new allegiance to the left will be just as tenuous.

Its funny how the left is so touchy. Dick Durbin calls our troops Nazis. John Kerry compares them to Genghis Kahn, and the left fist-pumps their agreement. Glenn Beck notes--correctly, that progressive political movements have featured brutal dictators who casually slaughtered millions in the name of "progress". Our progressives haven't slaughtered anyone yet. No they've just tried to ram their policies down our throats behind closed doors, inserted secret amendments flatly contradicting public promises, and are even now considering how to back-door the healthcare bill into law.

Yeah. Modern progressives, Khmer Rouge, Stalinists and Hugo Chavez bear no resemblance to each other at all...