The Leftist Thug's Playbook

Former senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel (D - Luna) was caught giving fellow moonbats advice on how to harrass someone they didn't agree with:

“Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is, picket him all the time,” Gravel said, in an audio tape obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism and provided to FOX News.

“Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time.”

The subject of Gravel's wrath is a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who, *GASP* wants to prosecute the suspected head of Islamic Jihad in the U.S. for contempt for failure to testify before a grand jury. Perfect. The Party of Tolerance defending the Religion of Peace.

"Call him a racist. Call him whatever you want to kill him." Gee, that sure sounds familiar. I'm sure glad we don't have any cowardly scumbags around here that do that to those they disagree with.

Congrats to All; Palousitics is #1 Again

If you pay attention to the little BlogNetNews widget on the sidebar, you will have noticed that Palousitics is the #1 most influential political blog in Washington again this week. My thanks to all the "Forbes Gang" for helping make this possible.

Speaking of the "Forbes Gang," note that BlogNetNews has added some more categories to their influence index. One of these is for the most inluential conerative blog. Our own Mike Costello's blog The Pajamahadin is #3, with Palousitics at #4, no doubt thanks to Mike's excellent writing skills.

BNN also now has a 12-week rolling average, in which Palousitics is #5. Considering the big-time Puget Sound political blogs that places us with, that's pretty humbling.

Remember Rule #1 of Murphy's Rules of Combat: "If the enemy is in range, so are you." As we grow in influence and effectiveness, we will draw fire from the opposition. Recent events have proven that to be true. Take these as awards for a job well done and motivation to keep on doing what we have been doing.

"Oppose a political view, but don't try to suppress it"

Rossi sign vandalism in West Olympia, from Thurston Opinions


Rossi sign vandalism in Winthrop, from HorsesAss.Org
After years in the national political wilderness, Democrats are out for revenge and to make sure that they maintain a "permanent majority." The method they seem to have chosen to accomplish these goals is to destroy free speech, at least the free speech of those who disagree with them.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supports the revival of the "Fairness Doctrine," which would silence conservative talk radio and blogs. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has stated that he wants to "change the political climate" that allows people to criticize his wife. Obama supporters even managed to shut down blogs unfriendly to the Obamesssiah.

We've seen in it Washington as well, where Democrats have enjoyed a majority for years. In 2005, two Seattle radio hosts were successfully sued and muzzled by environmentalist wackos opposed to the initiative to repeal the 9 1/2 cent gas tax hike. Last year, the Washintgon Public Disclosure Commission considered putting regulations on political blogs.

Now, as Cav reported last week, the Democrats are going after the Building Industry Association of Washington, the only business group in Washington with the stones to stand up to Queen Christine.

I have never met BIAW Executive Vice President Tom McCabe, but we have mutual friends. It sounds like we believe in the same things and employ the same "tell it like it is" style. Richard Davis, writing in the Everett Daily Herald says:

BIAW executive vice president Tom McCabe has remained something of an Olympia outsider, rarely engaging directly in the city's collegial coalitions and compromises. In addition to battling with labor unions, state agencies and environmental activists, he has been known to throw sharp elbows at other business groups who pursue less combative strategies.

BIAW doesn't always play nice.

And why should they, when the opposition engages in lies, exaggerations, slander, fear-mongering, and vandalism? You can't play nice when you are dealing with ideological extremists.
As Davis states:

Now comes this lawsuit, another attempt to curtail BIAW's political speech. However you feel about the group, you should not want them silenced this way.

My God, is that we have come to in this country? "Liberal fascism" is not just the title of a book.

In any case, the Daily Herald resport that McCabe says the lawsuit "isn't going to slow us down." And reast assured, attacks on this blog aren't going to slow us down or shut us up either.

Will Palousitics Be Next?

Blogger blogs with bad things to say about the Obamessiah are being shut down. From Publius' Forum:

Apparently, this campaign merely took advantage of Google/Blogger’s flawed system of finding spam blogs. So, it looks like what we have here is an Obama dirty trick to shut down political opposition. Looks like Obmatons aren’t much for that whole democracy thing, eh?

Stay tuned. Looks like I may be making the move from Blogger sooner than I had planned.

Deja Vu All Over Again?

Dave Oliveria, an associate editor at the Spokesman-Review who runs the "Huckleberries Online" blog (and the blogfather of the Inland Northwest,) sent me this e-mail yesterday:

tom; you might be interested in following this one that i just posted:http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo/archive.asp?postID=22455
-- dfo

It was about two weeks from ExStreamas utterance of "white shitbag" to Kiley Smith's appearance on Hannity & Colmes.

I'm feeling a similar dynamic building again with the fallout from Dinesh D'Souza's lecture and Ed Weber's column. Should be interesting.

Solution To Political Polarization - One Pole

I suppose that Dinesh D'Souza’s speech at Washington State University late last month was indeed polarizing, as its critics charge. After all, how can you even have poles when only one side of a debate is permitted a voice? As is typically the case on a college campus, every effort was made to shout down a conservative voice and further, to intimidate those who might consider inviting another conservative speaker.


Edward Weber, the director of the WSU’s Thomas S. Foley Public Policy Institute, expressed dismay last week in a Spokane Spokesman-Review guest editorial at the vitriol generated by the appearance of a conservative speaker. The title of Dinesh D'Souza’s speech was "Racism is not the Problem" and in it he argued against racial preferences in public policy. Dr. Weber seemed to have been taken by surprise by the antagonistic response from the left that the speech or even the invitation evoked.
“The question-and-answer period immediately following the talk and ensuing commentary in WSU's campus newspaper, The Evergreen, made clear that many took offense at D'Souza's message, going so far as to accuse D'Souza and, by extension, the Foley Institute, of further polarizing the campus on the issue of race, and accusing the Foley of being irresponsible,” he wrote.
Welcome to my world Dr. Weber. This is WSU, where faculty feel free to confront and attempt to bully the College Republicans for taking a position on a debate that departs from their own. This is WSU where the administration purchases tickets for protestors, with a former president’s approval, so that they can disrupt and shout down a play. This is WSU, where a student of mine once informed me that she and several others had been paid out of state funds to protest a speech. This is WSU where a student was nearly forced out of the College of Education for holding conservative religious beliefs and for wearing a camouflage cap to class.
It was a revealing editorial that everyone should read. In it Dr. Weber admits that he had allowed himself to be intimidated into shunning conservative speakers.
“While no one has ever stopped me from inviting a conservative speaker to WSU, the hegemony of the left-leaning liberal viewpoint is such that the only grief I've ever received from my advisory board or others is when I have invited John Ashcroft, John Sununu, Mr. D'Souza, and a handful of others to campus under the Foley banner. I have never been interrogated or otherwise questioned about any liberal speaker so invited....”
“As a result, I have shied away from inviting too many of "the wrong kind" of intellectual. For that lack of courage I must apologize to all of the conservatives on campus -- students, staff and professors -- and in the surrounding communities of Washington State. I should have fought harder to bring more conservative voices to campus.”
That’s an admission that should leave honest people quaking, but is more likely to cause WSU’s academic lefties to lift their chins high in smug satisfaction. Here is a man who is entrusted with encouraging philosophical conversations and yet confesses that he has allowed himself to be bullied into muzzling one side of the debate. All the while he insists that he believes in the “marketplace of ideas.” He just lacked the courage to stand up for that belief.
And of course, the left does not believe in any marketplace, whether it’s the marketplace of ideas or the marketplace of retail stores. The left believes that it should be making choices for all of us who lack their intellectual capacity and fail to grasp the issues as they do. Stated simply, the left does not trust the great unwashed to arrive at the correct conclusions when presented with both sides, and so only one side should be allowed on the podium.
There is quite an irony to this episode as the former speaker of the United States House of Representatives Thomas Foley himself was not especially tolerant of contrary opinions. Before the voters sent him packing into an earlier than he had planned retirement, he was attempting to shut down conservative talk radio by re-imposing the “Fairness Doctrine.” It wasn’t enough for him that the left either dominated or monopolized all other news and entertainment. In its own way, the Foley Institute has upheld one of its namesake’s doctrines.