Run Like the Wind, Mr. Skittles! (James Pinkerton of Fox Edition)

Run Like the Wind, Mr. Skittles! (James Pinkerton of Fox Edition)

TBogg does not write:

Invasion of the Obama Snatchers: Writing from his negro-proof panic room (which doubles as the laundry room when his wife send him out to get milk) a sweaty, disheveled, and quite possibly drunk James Pinkerton types out a warning, inserts it into a hamster ball with Mr. Skittles the Wonder Hamster and then lobs it through a cracked door in the hopes that, God willing, it is not too late to save America.

Run like the wind, Mr. Skittles!
Godspeed and good luck:

James Pinkerton: The Devil Is In the Details: Another Obama Connection You Ought to Know About: Could Lucifer play a role in this presidential election? It may sound crazy, but one of the candidates in this race has publicly praised, even emulated, a writer-activist who himself paid tribute to Lucifer.  That’s right, Lucifer, also known as the Devil, Satan, Beelzebub—you get the idea.... If you’ve never heard of this true fact—and most Americans obviously haven’t—well, that might help to explain why John McCain is behind in the polls....

David Freddoso wrote about it in his book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate;  and the inimitable Ann Coulter noted it, too, just last month. And the connection between Alinsky and Barack Obama—and Alinsky and the left in general—is real enough. As John Fund, author of a newly revised book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, observes, Alinsky, who died in 1972, was a sort of godfather to all the activist groups that emerged in the 60s and 70s, the most famous (or, if you prefer, notorious) of which today is ACORN.... Obama is an on-the-record fan too: Fund quotes The Washington Post’s Peter Slevin, writing in 2007, “Obama embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics and recently said his years as an organizer gave him the best education of his life.”...

The full truth about Alinsky, and whom he admired, is so wacky, or so horrible, that even the media have been reluctant to get into the story.   And so it has received relatively little play.  Oh sure, if John McCain had expressed admiration for a Lucifer admirer, that would have been news, but as we all know, there’s a media double standard on such things....

McCain... would seem to have the greatest interest in taking Obama down.... So why hasn’t he highlighted the Alinsky-Lucifer connection?... [T]he Obama-Alinsky-Lucifer connection is left to float around in the vast soup of the Internet—plenty of mentions, here and there, but no real impact. But had McCain really gone after [Obama-]Ayers AND [Obama-]Wright AND [Obama-]Alinsky-Lucifer, all at once, he would have had a strong argument that Obama was, and is, well out of the mainstream...

When I was introduced to James Pinkerton in the 1990s, the Republican doing the introduction described him as "the smartest of the younger generation of Republicans."

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Comments

[CBBB]

This is a joke right? It was written by someone from the Onion right?

[dilbert dogbert]

It is worse than that. I read that a TV anchorwoman was found beaten to death and it turns out she had a part as Ann Coulter in the movie W. Must have been one of those "vote stealing arab musslim turrist librls" that did it.

[Ken Houghton]

"John Fund, author of a newly revised book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy..."

There's a reason the WSJ editorial page has the reputation it does.

"[Saul] Alinsky, who died in 1972, was a sort of godfather to all the activist groups that emerged in the 60s and 70s, the most famous (or, if you prefer, notorious) of which today is ACORN."

And if you're not stupid enough to prefer "notorious," then you shouldn't be reading the FauxNewsBlog in the first place.

That evil Alinsky, thinking that the poor and other relatively-powerless people should be allowed to participate in a Democracy (or whatever you have down there right now). And the WSJ political editor is made to appear to concur that this is A Bad Thing, even as his Astroturf book gets sold to Mexican paving companies.

[low-tech cyclist]

CBBB - If only. I followed a link to The Corner yesterday, and Stanley Kurtz was going nutso about a "Obama-Ayers-Khalili connection," Mark Steyn was trying to turn some minor deal about the Obama website and credit cards into the scandal of the century, and Andy McCarthy, in addition to singing harmony with Kurtz on Obama-Ayers-Khalili, was angrily defending himself against those who pointed out that he was even less skeptical than Michelle Malkin about the fake attack on the McCain volunteer.

And Kurtz was trying to spin some trivia about Obama, the New Party, and a website called "Fight the Smears" into some dark conspiracy.

The wingnuts have totally lost it. Compared to this stuff, their lame attempts to pin the subprime crisis on Fannie and Freddie were the height of reason and intellect. I don't know how The Onion could possibly parody them - they've outrun parody on their own.

[abuzer]

It is real but if he wrote it as a satirical piece it is absolutely brilliant.

[Jim Lund]

Wow, another reason to vote for Obama!

Most candidates are endorsed by and associated with God. God's bipartisanship and the many, many candidates he endorses has really cut the value of his endorsement. And what does God bring to a ticket? Today's voters are not excited by his promises of harp lessons in the by and by.

On the other hand Lucifer has a reputation as a man who keeps his promises and delivers the goods. If Lucifer promises you fame and wealth, you can start yacht shopping. And only Lucifer can make you the lead singer of Slayer. Lucifer is known to be opposed to centrally planned cosmologies. Lucifer disdains regulation and is known to be a sticker for contract enforcement so his endorsement will sway many Republican and Libertarian voters. Few politicians are willing to buck conventional wisdom and associate with Lucifer, so his endorsement really means something! Pinkerton's reporting is sure to help Obama.

[otto]

The funny thing is that Pinkerton is actually quite an agreeable guy, who gives good blogginghead with David Corn.

[Mike]

How can the date be 28/10? Has Brad transfereed to the future??

[RW]

Not The Onion but, yes, really like an onion -- fear after fear, phobia after phobia, shibboleth after shibboleth, stereotype after stereotype -- the secret of the right-wing's nearly infinite ability to ignore cognitive dissonance (while accepting diametric opposites as true) is peeled away: Truthiness gives way to xenophobic terror and finally mass psychosis as the nearly unstoppable slide into nothingness accelerates; only dolchstosslegende can save them now.

[crf]

Search for "Obama" and "birth certificate" if you want to see some more pr0n.

Example from http://gretawire.foxnews.com/2008/10/24/ok-the-internet-rumors-about-the-birth-certificate-lets-end-the-rumors-and-the-viral-nature-of-them/

"I now think Senator Obama should release his birth certificate but I also think, to be fair, so should the other 3….yes, all 4.

So, let’s have it! All 4 need to release their birth certificates to prove each was born in the USA and thus constitutionally able to serve as President."

[donna]

What is wrong with these morons?

[donna]

Obama HAS released his birth certificate. It can be seen at many, many news sources.

These people are just. really. clueless.

[donna]

And McCain was born in Panama....

[Neal]

And where on November 5th will all of these people who write, and those who believe these things?

If God picks their rulers, will they be content that it is God's will?

[X Man]

To quote our Dear Leader, "Bring It On." I'd love -- LOVE -- to see a dozen Repub talking heads on network t.v. raving on about how Obama is tight with the anti-Christ. Satan! SATAN! LOOOOOOSIFURRRRRRR! Bring... it.. ON...
The big O would easily hit 400 in the electoral college.

['As You Know' Bob]

"When I was introduced to James Pinkerton in the 1990s, the Republican doing the introduction described him as 'the smartest of the younger generation of Republicans.'"

And Pinkerton can be a complete idiot and this description can still be true.

[christofay]

James Pinkerton is a grad of Stanford which is sort of Ivy League on the West Coast. Somehow he fell into punditocracy which is what Americans do rather than make cheese; punditocracy is the mental equivalent of athlete's foot, making cheese is good. I don't know what his defect was which kept him from going into the mega-bonus for myself/national disaster for the country industry but there he is. This is a long winded way to say that perhaps our elite universities should be posting bonds against the expectation of losses to the country for any grad that declares young republicancy, inflation banking, or pundiocracy. The money raised for the country could go to funding a better cheese industry, we need the real jobs.

[Michael Turner]

I did an Amazon book search on Rules for Radicals, and it turns out that the Lucifer bit is the last of three epigraphs. The first is from Rabbi Hillel, the second from Thomas Paine.

The actual dedication is two pages before: "To Irene". So this claim that Alinsky "dedicated" Rules for Radicals to Lucifer (a claim easily found now, since this bit of skull shrapnel from somebody's cerebral explosion set off a chain reaction of headasplodation across the wingnut blogosphere) is transparently false.

In context, Alinsky is saying, in effect: "This is just a book of technique or recipes or tools, all of which can be used for good or evil. After all, Lucifer himself was a rebellion-leader." Perhaps Alinsky found another way to say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Here are the three epigraphs, verbatim:

"Where there are no men, be thou a man." Rabbi Hillel

"Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul ...." Thomas Paine

"Lest we forget an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins--or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer." Saul Alinsky

The Paine quote is from "The American Crisis", an essay from late 1776. I think it supplies supportive context for my interpretation of the Lucifer epigraph, since it speaks of becoming a devil (or suffering under devils, or suffering as a devil) in selling one's soul. In more context:

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as strait and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, is far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; But if a thief break into my house, burn and destroy my property, and kill or threaten to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever," to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it, is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it is done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case, and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one, whose character is that of a stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who as the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow and the slain of America. . . ."

A few other thoughts and hints: The Rolling Stones "Sympathy for the Devil" predated the publication of Rules for Radicals by a few years, and it's thought that the song's lyrics could have been inspired by an anti-Soviet satire, The Master and Margarita. Alinsky appears to have been much more New Left than Old Left; and the mention of "history" and "mythology" and the wry bit about how they can easily be conflated and confused, could be taken as an allusion to how the USSR tended to mythologize its brutal leadership and rewrite history into myth (a tendency that perhaps had already reached a notable zenith in North Korea under Kim il Sung).

Desperate, sad grasping by Pinkerton, in any case.

[dr. doctrine]

Sorry to report the untimely demise of Mr. Skittles. He rolled by our house last night, and after using him for a soccer ball for a while, the cats ate him and pooped on his lil' SOS.

[Mark]

Wow. That is unhinged. If I thought Pinkerton would be willing to satirize the concern trolling done by the McCain campaign, I would interpret this as a mean joke at their expense. I mean, suggesting that McCain would have done better if he had only linked Barack Obama to a mythological bogeyman is just out there. I encourage James Pinkerton to next look into the possibility of an Obama-Voldemort connection, and to see what relationship he has with Gargamel.

[dr. doctrine]

The top of the post says October 28, 2008 and the bottom says October 28, 2008 at 01:39 PM. Yet the comments are dated October 26, 2008 and October 27, 2008. I think Pinkerton is right. There is something up here. Obama's supporters are playing with the space-time blog-continuum, bending it to their capricious whims. Too bad the cats eated Mr. Skittles.

[kharris]

Oh, now. Quit pretending this is a surprise. How many people you sorta thought you could respect turned into mindless zombies repeating the Bush line through the middle years of his administration? The goods were out already. Bush was eager for war before he ever took office, on record saying great presidents fight wars. He failed his way through school. He ducked the draft, ducked the drug test, ducked the Air Guard. He mocked a woman on death row in front of a reporter. He resorted to race-bating against a white guy who adopted a dark-skinned kid. We knew he lied early and often. But anybody who ever worked for the guy or supported his policies as a daily thing has pretended that consciousness was a partisan act.

This ain't new kids. Being more attached to party and dogma than truth means what it looks like it means. The truth is not all that important. Put enough power behind the guys who are asking you to lie and pretty soon, you've lied so much it just doesn't seem to matter any more.

People who only lie when there is no other way to back the party line aren't provisionally honest. They aren't honest on weekends around the pool. They aren't truth moles waiting for a day when telling the truth that one time will save the day. They are liars. The hang out with liars, admire liars, hire liars, work to get other people to lie. It isn't a surprise anymore.

[james]

The Master and Margarita...what a wonderful book.

Looking for some light relevant reading? Take a peek at Cintra Wilson's new book Caligula for President.
I haven't laughed out loud so much reading a book since John Irving's World According to Garp.

With the weeping and gnashing of teeth that is going to emanate from the right-wing nutosphere on 5 November I've got myself a nice pile of humorous books to drown out the whining with my own laughter and renewed sense of hope.

[james]

The Master and Margarita...what a wonderful book.

Looking for some light relevant reading? Take a peek at Cintra Wilson's new book Caligula for President.
I haven't laughed out loud so much reading a book since John Irving's World According to Garp.

With the weeping and gnashing of teeth that is going to emanate from the right-wing nutosphere on 5 November I've got myself a nice pile of humorous books to drown out the whining with my own laughter and renewed sense of hope.

[Supt Parrot]

Wasn't Pinkerton basically laughed out of the first Bush Administration by Dick Darman?

[MattYoung]

This guy?

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/saul-david-alinsky/

A community lobbyist, good at it.

If we are talking about the same guy, then he was moderate and often spoke against the violent style radical groups.

OK, makes sense, I'll vote twice for Obama.

[FairNotThat]

Kevin Hassett is at it again on Bloomberg.

This is probably the last straw in my giving up on Mr. Bloomberg's esteemed website - under what theory does Bloomberg publish campaign propaganda as "Opinion"?

Republicans don't bother me because they are conservative, they bother me because they are illogical. The left doesn't fight back so well because being retarded offends their sensibilities.

[harold]

Didn't Alinsky do a lot of work in Woodlawn, sponsored by the Catholic Church in Hyde Park?

[Jack]

"When I was introduced to James Pinkerton in the 1990s, the Republican doing the introduction described him as 'the smartest of the younger generation of Republicans.'"

Sounds about right.

[Jack]

"When I was introduced to James Pinkerton in the 1990s, the Republican doing the introduction described him as 'the smartest of the younger generation of Republicans.'"

Sounds about right.

[Michael Turner]

P.S., I think Alinsky's recommendation of an "over-the-shoulder" acknowledgment of Lucifer is a pretty obvious allusion to "get thee behind me, Satan". It's some index of the wingnuttery in the Bible Belt that these people aren't picking up on that one and bashing Alinsky for (indirectly) making himself and community organizers out to be Christ-like, and therefore susceptible to the temptations of Christ. Then again, perception of irony and subtlety isn't exactly their strong suit, is it? Nor, it would seem, is looking stuff up, to make sure that the way it's presented by their favored propagandists (Ann Coulter being one of them, in this case) is not too good to be true.

[Michael Turner]

Sigh. I can't leave this one alone. Googling on "Alinsky", "Obama" and "Lucifer" nets over 10,000 hits now. From the tone of a brief sampling, these mentions are almost entirely among those who'd never vote for Obama anyway. So maybe there's not much real harm done. Still, I'm always up for a good piss into gale-force winds, so let me point out:

The "Lucifer" epigram is on the same page of Rules for Radicals as a Thomas Paine quote that, in full context, could perhaps be used to support the invasion Afghanistan because of 9/11, but could just as plausibly be used to call the subsequent invasion of Iraq "murder", full stop. One could argue thus: "That great patriot, Thomas Paine, once said that an offensive war is murder, and from the same passage, you can see that he would have thought G.W. Bush a 'stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man', one to whom he could never swear allegiance without feeling he was whoring out his soul. You could look it up."

Against this view, for much-needed balance, let me point out that the most common letter in my paragraph above is "e". What, you don't get it? Dufus: "e" is the first letter of the word "evil"! Which would make me Spawn of Satan, slam-dunk! So how can anyone trust a word I write? Can I complain now in my defense that all of those e's are being quoted out of context and padded with other, more damning letters? Oh, what an ultra-liberal uber-parser super-lame excuse *that* is. For shame.

[PaulC]

...with a capital T and that rhymes with P and... err... that's next to O and that stands for Obama.

[low-tech cyclist]

Brad, a question for you:

Peter Robinson at The Corner links approvingly to this paper from the Minneapolis Fed (http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/research/WP/WP666.pdf) that claims to debunk four purported myths about the current financial crisis. Those myths are:

1. Bank lending to nonfinancial corporations and individuals has declined sharply.
2. Interbank lending is essentially nonexistent.
3. Commercial paper issuance by nonfinancial corporations has declined sharply, and rates have risen to unprecedented levels.
4. Banks play a large role in channeling funds from savers to borrowers.

They agree that there is a financial crisis, but my understanding was that 'myths' 1-3 *are* the essence of the crisis, and the paper's authors don't provide an alternate understanding of what the nature of the crisis is. The bursting of the housing bubble doesn't constitute a crisis, nor do the failures or rescues of Lehman, Bear Stearns, AIG, and similar institutions, nor does the rapid descent of the stock market.

My questions are: are these guys right? And if so, what is the current financial crisis about? And if not, what's up with the Minneapolis Fed?

[kharris]

low-tech

This link:

http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2008/10/bank-lending-growth-is-not-evidence.html

will get you a quick-and-dirty take on the Minneapolis Fed piece. It has been ridiculed, dismissed and generally torn to shreds since it was first published. Which is fully consistent with The Corner finding virtue in it.

[kharris]

low-tech,

One simply issue to note. Take point 4 in the negative - "Banks do not play a large role in channeling funds from savers to borrowers." If so, then the first two points don't really matter in the larger context. I am unaware of anyone limping through the streets moaning "bank lending to non-financial corporations has declined sharply, woe is me!" but even if that is happening, it is a red herring if banks don't play a large role as a financial intermediaries. We go off chasing bank lending stats and miss the fact that credit markets are nearly non-functional.

The list reads as if the authors found 4 things which, if they had become widely believed, would be in error. That gave the authors the opportunity to imply that "there are some financial things that aren't as bad as people believe, so the financial situation in general isn't as bad as people believe." The financial situation is bad, without regard to whether interbank lending is going well.

[Neil B.]

Well, getting back to secular concerns:
The complaint by McC/Palin that a slightly higher graduated income tax (not just the having, versus not) is "socialist" is misleading and irks me. Hey, when are those who say they don’t like “redistribution” by tax rates, going to prove your honesty by opposing the current cap gains rate already being lower than the tax on people who, ironically, actually did work hard to produce new value and earn the money directly? (I mean the base CG tax rate before any inflationary “time” adjustments - I support indexing.) McCain wants to make the CG rate even lower! I don’t want my earned income to be redistributed to mostly worthless speculators! If we want to encourage real capital investment, than have a tax break like deducting initial investment from taxable income, at the front end, instead of a sop to traders. (You'd be surprised, how many people don't even consider than my selling XYZ stock to Mr. B brings me the money, not company XYZ.)

[Dan'l]

Pinkerton was once part of the Kemp faction in the first Bush administration, trumpeting an "Empowerment Agenda" -- taking the 60s community-activist lefty concept of empowering local communities (HEAVILY indebted to Alinsky) and giving it a Republican twist of reducing individual dependency on the federal government. One of the more positive initiatives of the GOP at the time (Kemp had some good intentions, despite his myriad errors), subsequently twisted further into dismantling of the social safety net by their successors. That Pinkerton would now slime Alinsky shows the cynicism behind the effort to re-articulate New Left critiques of centralized power in the service of GOP attacks on the poor, and the squashing of efforts toward democracy from below.

[Neil Bates]

This is a great link, with self-explanatory URL: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1627-the-god-that-failed-the-30-year-lie-of-the-market-cult.html.

[Michael Turner]

Good one about Kemp. From The Liberal Prospect, 2002

"As a congressman and as Bush's HUD Secretary, Jack Kemp tried to appeal to both constituencies. "Empower" the poor, he said, by helping the residents of HUD-subsidized projects become managers and homeowners. Kemp's idea sounded good. After all, it had worked in England, where Margaret Thatcher gained blue-collar support for selling off public housing to the tenants at reduced prices. But the plan didn't make much sense on this side of the Atlantic. Many middle-class families lived in England's public housing, which was in sound physical condition. In the U.S., the restriction of subsidized housing to the very poor now means that its tenants cannot pay for routine operating expenses, much less the cost of major repairs required in many older and run-down buildings. Despite warnings from HUD staff, Kemp plunged ahead with this Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) program but soon discovered that few tenants wanted to buy their buildings under those conditions. Only a few thousand units have been sold."

Kemp's heart was in the right place, relatively speaking. OTOH, he was probably the biggest single salesman/policy enterpreneur for supply-sider ideology. Was his heart in the right place there, too? The road to hell and all that.

I wouldn't say I'm a Big Government Liberal. There are quite a few businesses government should probably get out of, and stay out of, or at least restrict itself to policies that can be administered with simple and efficient transfer payments. But it seems to me that conservatives fall down over and over on the same strategic point whenever they try to shrink government. They always go for the shock-treatment marketization, the shortcut. With some of these programs, you've got to be as careful getting out as you were careless going in (to paraphrase what Obama has said about his Iraq policy). Maybe more careful. "Privatize federal housing by selling it to the occupants -- worked for Maggie, didn't it?" might have been the way for Kemp to sell what Kemp wanted to see, to his boss and to some in Congress. But it was not the way to implement it.

[Alex]

But why won't McCain address his cannibal problem? (http://yorksranter.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/the-crucial-cannibal-vote/)

Can we allow an eater of man's flesh near the White House?

[albatross]

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

--Winston Churchill