Blazing Cat Fur Fighting at Least Three Lawsuits in 2013

I wrote on this previously: "Please Contribute to Blazing Cat Fur Defense Fund."

Now Kathy Shaidle has an update: "Lawfare: Canadian Muslims planning to shut down my husband’s blog."

And at BCF, "Doing It Right: My Support For Israel Has Pissed Off All the Right Radical Muslims":

The Islamist lawfare jihad against me has begun but I will not quit, we battled and defeated Section 13 because we knew that it would be used against anyone who dared speak out against the threat of radical Islam. Muslims from Canada's Radical Shia community are now raising funds for my current lawfare opponent, Canada's leading proponent of Section 13....

I am proud that my work continues to expose the hatred being spread among the Muslim community in Canada.

More at the link.

I'll tell you what: If you're not for Blazing's right to speak out on Islam you're not for freedom of speech. How many progressives are standing up for BCF? I don't know of any, and the lawsuits against him aren't new.

Be sure to hit Blazing's tip jar. I sent some help the other day. He could use it.

Gun Sales Surge After Newtown

At the Jackson Clarion Ledger, "Gun sales spike, armored backpacks promoted after Newtown shootings."

And from CNN last night, an interesting segment:

More at Bloomberg, "Guns Out of Stock at Wal-Mart as Magazine Prices Surge on." (At Memeorandum.)

Mental Illness and the Gun Control Debate

A thought-provoking essay from Robert Leider, at the Wall Street Journal, "Breaking the Gun Control Stalemate."

Read it at the link.

It doesn't make sense for gun control proposals to ignore the history of mental illness in all the recent shooting massacres. If progressives go after guns without mental health reforms, they'll have no credibility. And mind you, I'm being charitable as it is. I'm taking the president at his word, and Senators Feinstein and Schumer. Democrats will go for a big play on firearms. Of course, confiscating guns is what the left's program is all about. They don't give a s*** about the mentally ill except as a hammer to beat opponents. Once they get their legislation going it'll be all about screwing the "evil" gun lobby.

But again, I think Leider's piece is interesting. I just doubt far-left partisans will be as rational about things.

Shameful Media Coverage of the Newtown Massacre

A Matt Lewis commentary, at The Week, "The media should be ashamed of its Connecticut coverage":

...transparent society demands reporting newsworthy incidents — and this definitely qualifies. But it should be done responsibly. And that is not what we have witnessed. We have instead a feeding frenzy that is all about beating the competition — not disseminating information.

It's about being first, beating other media outlets, and making a name for themselves. It's a ghoulish mentality that stokes controversy and violence — for business purposes. It's a sort of "if it bleeds it leads" mentality that causes cable networks to create logos and theme music for such tragic events (all the while, they feign maudlin concern and outrage.)

Come to think of it, the media is guilty of doing what they criticize big business for — putting money (in this case, ratings, newsstand sales, and web traffic) ahead of humanity and decency. Just as greedy businessmen put profit and personal gain ahead of ethics, so too do our media outlets.

More at that top link.

Also see Hugh Hewitt, at The Washington Examiner, "The Media Vultures Gather."

It's a big story, no doubt, marred by lots of erroneous reporting and more of the same ghoulish Democrat politicization that we've seen after all of the last mass shootings, from Tucson to Aurora. And of course President Never-Let-a-Crisis-Go-to-Waste will be up with some gun control legislation faster than you can say political exploitation.

Gun Violence and the Mentally Ill

From Rick Moran, at PJ Media, "Can We Keep Guns Out of the Hands of the Mentally Ill?"

And from Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, at the Atlantic, "Diagnosing Adam Lanza."

RELATED: From Robert Stacy McCain, "Criticism From a Friend: Can We Help Victims of Random Sarcasm Syndrome?"

President Obama's Speech at Newtown, Connecticut

The Washington Post has both the video and transcript, "President Obama’s speech at prayer vigil for Newtown shooting victims (Full transcript)." (Via Memeorandum.)

I have to agree with Dana Loesch. Obama turned this into a gun control rally, and he's not ashamed to do it. Clear as a bell.

He just politicized a prayer service.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 17, 2012

If you want death threats from the peace and love "no guns" crowd, just say that you thought the president inserted politics into tonight.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 17, 2012

And here's this from Twitchy, "Dana Loesch says Obama’s speech at vigil was political; Libs unleash torrent of hate."

I seriously cannot keep up with all the "c*nts," "burn in hells," "all your fault" Tweets from progressives.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 17, 2012

That's a torrent of hate alright. Progressives are unleashing it all over the place following the shooting.

More from Twitchy, "Post-Newtown witch hunt: NRA president and members bombarded with death threats." And from Weasel Zippers, "Liberals Call For Murder of NRA President and Its Members…"

Well, I mentioned already that the left's gun control agenda is just the prelude to silencing the conservative opposition, the opening program toward stacking conservative corpses in the left's gulag archipelago. The progressive mouthpieces on MSNBC don't even try to hide this agenda. They just put it right out there, so folks shouldn't be surprised at what's coming down the pike, from Weasel Zippers, "MSNBC Knuckle-Dragger Ed Schultz Advocates “Confiscating” Guns From Law-Abiding Americans…"

Democrats Push Gun Control Legislation in Senate

I discussed Senator Charles Schumer earlier, who said the shooting put us at "the tipping point" for the (left's) national conversation on gun control, "Tragedy and Exploitation – the Progressive Way."

And now here comes Senator Dianne Feinstein, "Sen. Feinstein to introduce gun-control bill next year":

WASHINGTON — Two days after the shooting deaths of 26 people at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, Sen. Dianne Feinstein pledged Sunday that she would introduce new gun-control legislation at the beginning of next year’s congressional session.

“It [the bill] will ban the sale, the transfer, the transportation and the possession,” the California senator said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Not retroactively, but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets.”

Feinstein said the purpose of her proposal, a version of the assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004, is to get “weapons of war off the streets of our cities.”

Officials have said that most of those killed in Friday’s massacre — a toll that included 20 children — were shot with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle.

Feinstein has been at the forefront of gun-control efforts nationally. The assault weapons ban that she pushed followed mass killings in a Stockton schoolyard and in a San Francisco office tower. Feinstein was also at San Francisco City Hall in 1978 when Supervisor Dan White killed Mayor George Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk. Feinstein saw White flee their offices and found Milk, memorably saying afterward that when she felt for a pulse, her finger slipped into a bullet hole. Feinstein, then the head of the Board of Supervisors, became mayor upon Moscone’s death.

Oh, she means well alright, but she'll have more credibility when she also starts pushing the discussion on expanding mental health services, with talk of involuntary placement of the mentally ill. That's not the hippest topic, of course, but it's the one we must have if we're going to have a legitimate "national conservation" on gun violence. See Leslie Eastman, at Legal Insurrection, "Mother recounts terrors of raising genius son with violence-oriented mental illness."

RELATED: From Politico, at Memorandum, "Schumer, Feinstein push changes on gun laws."

Obama to Speak at Prayer Vigil in Connecticut

USA Today reports, and Slone reacts on Twitter:

HERE HE COMES: President-never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste:President now on Air Force One and en route Newtown, CT #tcot
— slone (@slone) December 16, 2012

BONUS: Aaron Worthing's post from the other day, "A Few Thoughts About the Crime in Connecticut And Gun Control":

...while I am getting sick of the politicization of every tragedy, I am not going to overly object to people talking about gun control today.  I don’t support gun control, but let’s have this out.  If we can’t stand up for the Second Amendment today, we are just going to lose the argument.

The reality is the “lets ban all guns” theory is simply a bit of what I call “silver bullet utopianism”—that is the idea that a large and complex problem can be solved easily with a proverbial silver bullet.  And it is utopianism, with dangerous consequences in real life if we don’t wake up from it.

As I quipped today on Twitter, one only has to drive through downtown D.C. late into the night to see how successful the ban on prostitution is.  You see them, openly and notoriously operating on corners only blocks away from the White House.

(Must... resist... urge... to make cheap “politicians are prostitutes” joke.)

The same can be said for drugs and illegal immigration.  I can name for you several spots where the illegal workers line up.  Everyone can.  It’s no secret.  It’s open and notorious.

And it is downright bizarre to see many of the same liberals who advocate drug legalization, or open borders on the theory that “you just can’t stop the flow” simultaneously argue that banning guns will accomplish anything but disarming solely the law-abiding citizens.

And there are several other problems with banning guns.  For one thing, what liberals are advocating is that the government have a monopoly on the use of deadly force—or more precisely the government and the criminals who violate the law.  Good law abiding citizens shouldn’t protect themselves, the argument goes, the government should protect them...

Well, the left-wing sickos have no shame.

It's all about stripping law-abiding citizens of their guns. The left's "gun control" agenda certainly won't stop gun violence.

PREVIOUSLY: "Tragedy and Exploitation – the Progressive Way."

Tragedy and Exploitation – the Progressive Way

I watched "Face the Nation" earlier. All the panelists were exploiting the tragedy to push for more gun control, with host Bob Schieffer being the most aggressive of them all, even broadcasting a big gun-control editorial at the bottom of the hour. It's really amazing to listen to this. Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer suggested the country was ready for action since Sandy Hook was "the tipping point" in the so-called national conversation. Surprisingly, Schumer sounded at times reasonable, especially when he slammed idiot progressives for wanting to take away Americans' guns. Here's the segment with Schumer's comments, "Is it time for tougher gun laws?" Also on the show was the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. Over the top, he said this massacre was the nation's "new 9/11" (and folks can just ponder the mind-bogging, incommensurable obscenities dripping from that remark). And what gun control love fest would be complete without the despicable "big thinker" David Frum, who befouled himself with a disgusting series of comments over the past few days. Frum's an objectively bad person and few have topped his inhuman posturing on this, and that's saying a lot.

In any case, here's Derek Hunter, at Townhall, "Tragedy and Exploitation – the Progressive Way":

I’ve said before how progressives will exploit anyone and anything to advance their agenda, but I’d always thought there was a line, somewhere, of decency they wouldn’t cross. I was wrong.

With the blood of the victims still wet, progressives began their call for gun control. They had no idea if the guns were purchased legally (they were, and stolen from the first murder victim, the killer’s mother), what kind of guns they were (they were pistols, not “assault weapons,” though a semi-automatic rifle was found, unused, in the killer’s car), or even if the killer was in custody or dead (there were stories of a hunt for a second shooter) before they succumbed to the siren call of their agenda.

Michael Moore, noted tragedy profiteer, took to Twitter with “Only minutes away from pundits & politicians say, "This isn't the time to talk about gun control." Really? When is that moment?”

A short time later he followed up with “The NRA hates freedom. They don't want you to have the freedom to send your children to school & expect them to come home alive.”

No fiction writer could do the sickness of that man justice.

But Moore wasn’t alone, David Frum was his usual self and joined a chorus of his fellow progressives that included Piers Morgan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and nearly the entire homepage of The Huffington Post in calling for more gun control.

Actress Rashida Jones tweeted, “Gun control is our only road to freedom. Freedom from the fear of senselessly losing children. I'm so saddened. WE NEED LAWS NOW.”

The stupidity of these people is self-evident. States with the most freedom to own and carry guns have the lowest crime rates. Meanwhile, cities such as Chicago, where it’s illegal to own a gun, have the most gun violence.

But although the side of liberty has the statistics, progressives play on emotion. Facts don’t matter in a world of crying children, and progressives know it. A complicated issue is offered a simple solution that appeals to the feeling of helplessness and promises to alleviate it. It’s a tactic used by despots throughout history.

Actually, Hunter is only partially correct on the weapons used. We didn't know that the Bushmaster was used until yesterday, when the medical examiner issued a report on the findings from the crime scene. Initial police reports said only that two handguns were used. But Hunter is right to note that the facts don't matter to the despicable gun-confiscation leftists. Just to mention that the gunman may have had a semiautomatic rifle was enough for radical leftists to launch the most heinous campaign of lies and disinformation. These people are depraved. As Hunter continues:

The president was reserved and presidential in his remarks, and the White House said this is not the time to press an agenda (we’ll see how long that lasts). But their allies would have none of it. Progressive activists and their fellow travellers in the media have a storied history of dancing on graves to advance their agenda, but rarely have they danced so gleefully on such tiny graves yet to be dug. Time will tell which argument wins the day, but I have my suspicions. As President Obama’s former chief of staff once famously said, “You never want a serious crisis go to waste.”

Dancing on the graves. The blood hadn't dried and horrible, horrible progressive ghouls were demanding immediate action on gun control in Congress. Never let a crisis go to waste for these people, even before families are able to collect their loved ones. Godless and inhumane. Progressives are destroying this country right before our eyes. Don't let them. Stand for decency. Stand for liberty. Stand for reason and what is right, all that is the exact opposite of what the authoritarian collectivist left is pushing.

Connecticut Killer's Mother Taught Him How to Shoot

This story's at the New York Times, "Killer's Mother, His First Victim, Was a Gun Enthusiast, Friends Say" (via Memeorandum), and Telegraph UK, "Connecticut school massacre: Gunman's mother taught him to shoot."

She loved her guns, apparently, which is fine. But notice this bizarre and internally contradictory passage at the Telegraph's piece:

The killings have once again pushed America’s lax gun laws to the top of the political agenda. It was claimed last night that he had even tried to bolster his arsenal by buying another gun on Tuesday — three days before his murderous assault — but was refused because he did not have a “proper” permit.

The authors didn't think that through, eh? Connecticut's gun laws are not "lax," a point made even more obvious in the case of the suspect, who was turned down for another weapon by those very same not-so-lax state gun laws.

More here: "Semiautomatic Rifle Was Used in Attack."

Madness, Deinstitutionalization and Murder

From Clayton Cramer's research paper at The Federalist Society (via Althouse):

Studies in New York and Connecticut from the 1920s through the 1940s showed a much lower arrest rate for the mentally ill. In an era when involuntary commitment was relatively easy, those who were considered a danger to themselves or others would be hospitalized at the first signs of serious mental illness. The connection between insanity and crime was apparent, and the society took a precautionary approach. Mentally ill persons who were not hospitalized were those not considered a danger to others. This changed as deinstitutionalization took effect.

Be sure to read it all. For example:

Patrick Purdy, a mentally ill drifter, used his Social Security Disability payments to buy guns, while having a series of run-ins with the law. After one suicide attempt in jail in 1987, a mental health evaluation concluded that he was “a danger to his health and others.” In January 1989, Purdy went onto a schoolyard in Stockton, California with an AK-47 rifle, murdered five children and wounded twenty-nine others, before taking his own life.

Lots more examples like that at the link, but Purdy's is interesting. His crimes led to the passage of the federal assault weapons ban in 1994 (which expired in 2004). The left always uses these horrific killings to take away guns, and the media's working hard now to exploit Sandy Hook for the same purposes. See: "Media Sets Gun Control Narrative, Shuts Down Mental Health Debate."

  RELATED: At The Other McCain, "Guns Don’t Kill People …"

Semiautomatic Rifle Was Used in Attack

More details on the Sandy Hook Massacre, and an update to my previous report, "Ghoulish Walter James Casper III Exploits Connecticut School Massacre to Push Gun Control, Spread Lies and Disinformation."

At the Wall Street Journal, "Semiautomatic Rifle Was Used in Attack":

SANDY HOOK, Conn.—The 26 victims who were shot inside a Connecticut elementary school on Friday were each hit by more than one bullet, most of them from the high-powered semiautomatic rifle wielded by the 20-year-old suspect, the state's chief medical examiner said on Saturday.

Authorities worked into Saturday morning at a temporary morgue on the school grounds to identify the bodies, H. Wayne Carver II said, as state authorities released the names of those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

On Saturday afternoon, authorities revealed the truth behind the grim numerical toll: a list of names, overwhelmingly female, heart-rendingly young. Twenty of the 26 victims in the school were just 6 or 7 years old.

"I believe they were all first-graders," Mr. Carver said.

Six adults also were killed in the school, including school psychologist Mary Jo Sherlach, the oldest victim, at age 56.

Mr. Carver said his staff would perform an autopsy Sunday on the two remaining dead in the spree: the suspect, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who took his own life at the school, and his mother, Nancy Lanza, 52, whom Mr. Lanza shot and killed in the house the two shared in town.

Mr. Lanza's body was found close to the rifle and two handguns he carried, police said, and he is believed to have taken his own life.

Continue reading.

It wasn't until today that the medical examiner could release these details, including the information on finding the suspect's body and the weapons used. As the report continues:

The forcible entry helped solve one of the many unanswered questions about the massacre Friday: how a heavily armed young man was able to pass through the locked security doors of an elementary school.

School staff members saw evidence of forced entry as they were ushered out of the school, said Mary Ann Jacob, a clerk at the school library who hid with others in a storage room during the shooting spree. As they left the building, Ms. Jacob said she saw that the plate-glass window next to the building's front door was broken.

But much remained unanswered, and much of what had been assumed in the rush of the crisis turned out to be wrong. It was incorrect, Lt. J. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police said, that Mr. Lanza's mother had had any connection to Sandy Hook Elementary, where early reports suggested she had been a teacher.

Law-enforcement officials initially said an assault rifle had been discovered in a car in the school's parking lot. In fact, said Mr. Carver, the medical examiner, it had been the primary weapon used in the killings.

Robert Stacy McCain live-blogged developments yesterday. In an update he mentions the dramatic shifts in what was known throughout the day, "Chris Rock Was Right":

When I got up Friday morning, live-blogging a mass murder was not part of my plan for the day. In fact, at the end of a post Friday morning about labor union violence in Michigan, I promised further developments on that story. As I was researching that, however, the TV kept updating with news about a shooting at a school in Connecticut and I figured this might be a story worth mentioning on the blog.

The original 12:15 p.m. ET post relayed reports that “three people have been wounded or injured and one person, the suspected shooter, is dead,” but added the caution that “early reports on events like this can be often be confusing and/or inaccurate.”

To say the very least.

By the time I added the first update, NBC was already reporting 20 dead and next it was 24, then 26, then 27, and all these changing numbers were coming amid a welter of confusing (and, as it turned out, largely wrong) details about the shooter, about the victims, etc. And this kept going for about six hours. Everything is still pretty sketchy, but we now have the bare-bones facts of the story.

Well, the actual facts of the story didn't matter to the radical leftists like Angie Coiro and her hate-addled followers like Walter James "Hatesac" Casper III. Indeed, it's not about "gun control" with these people. It's about literally destroying right-wing impediments to statist authoritarianism:

@damkina Because the #NRA is partnered w/ #ALEC, which is fueled by the #Koch brothers. Unending $$$. We can't tackle this in bits &pieces.
— Angie Coiro (@Angie_Coiro) December 15, 2012

RT @leftonmain: NRA Under Twitter, Facebook Attack After Shootings huff.to/U17j8V \\ Only a taste of what's coming to them & #ALEC.
— Angie Coiro (@Angie_Coiro) December 15, 2012

Yes, "Only a taste of what's coming to them."

Stalin couldn't have stated his plans for liquidation of political enemies any more clearly.

The right to bear arms guarantees citizens the individual protection against the state. That's the central liberty guarantee extant in the Second Amendment. Along with freedom of speech, it's perhaps the most important right Americans have to defend against tyranny. And the radical left would strip those rights in a split second, obliterating the civil liberties of millions of law-abiding people who had nothing to do with this massacre or any one before it. Indeed, mass shooting like Sandy Hook are possible explicitly because upstanding citizens obey the law and come to places of work and school unarmed. It's the criminals who violate those so-called gun free zone to wreak unfathomable evil. The left's policies facilitate the killing, and then these sick-fucks exploit the murders to bring about even more draconian policies that will ultimately bring about even more killing. It's the progressive death loop of ever-expanding gun confiscation. This is the evil the Walter James Casper III tweeted out yesterday in his utterly inhumane rush to politically capitalize on the deaths of those innocent children, 16 of them just 6 years old. This is why decent, intelligent and God-fearing people stand up for the truth. This is why decent, law-abiding Americans repudiate the left's lies. They know where it leads. They know the left's policies will bring the reign of terror and the camps. The piles of bodies stacked like cord wood is the "taste of what's coming." The leftists just lay it out there for everyone to see. It would be shocking but we've seen this play before and the millions of piled corpses before the final curtain.

Stand tall against it. Stand for liberty. Stand against the left's program of death and destruction of the individual.

Morsi Imposes Martial Law in Egypt

At Weasel Zippers, "Egypt: Morsi Imposes Martial Law In Run Up To Constitutional Referendum…"

This RT video has the developments from over the weekend. And see Barry Rubin, "A Turning Point in Egypt: Not on Direction But on the Speed of Islamist Transformation."

Nelson Mandela Outed as Communist Party Member After Decades of Denial

Of course he was a Communist. They always lie about their true affiliations. Progressives always lie about their ultimate aims. Their entire ideological program is predicated on deception and propaganda. That's just how these people work.

At Telegraph UK, "Nelson Mandela 'proven' to be a member of the Communist Party after decades of denial":

A new book claims that, 50 years after he was first accused of being a Communist, Nelson Mandela was a Communist party member after all.

For decades, it was one of the enduring disputes of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle. Was Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress, really a secret Communist, as the white-only government of the time alleged? Or, as he claimed during the infamous 1963 trial that saw him jailed for life, was it simply a smear to discredit him in a world riven by Cold War tensions?

Now, nearly half a century after the court case that made him the world's best-known prisoner of conscience, a new book claims that whatever the wider injustice perpetrated, the apartheid-era prosecutors were indeed right on one question: Mr Mandela was a Communist party member after all.

The former South African president, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, has always denied being a member of the South African branch of the movement, which mounted an armed campaign of guerrilla resistance along with the ANC.

But research by a British historian, Professor Stephen Ellis, has unearthed fresh evidence that during his early years as an activist, Mr Mandela did hold senior rank in the South African Communist Party, or SACP. He says Mr Mandela joined the SACP to enlist the help of the Communist superpowers for the ANC's campaign of armed resistance to white rule.

His book also provides fresh detail on how the ANC's military wing had bomb-making lessons from the IRA, and intelligence training from the East German Stasi, which it used to carry out brutal interrogations of suspected "spies" at secret prison camps.

There's lots more at that top link.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

We've Got al Qaeda on the Run Alright ... In Africa, Stronger Than Ever!

Oh yes, al Qaeda has been decimated, war is peace, ignorance is strength and freedom is slavery!

All hail Dear Leader Barack Hussein!

At the Wall Street Journal, "Terror Fight Shifts to Africa: U.S. Considers Seeking Congressional Backing for Operations Against Extremists":

WASHINGTON—Military counterterrorism officials are seeking more capability to pursue extremist groups in Africa and elsewhere that they believe threaten the U.S., and the Obama administration is considering asking Congress to approve expanded authority to do it.

The move, according to administration and congressional officials, would be aimed at allowing U.S. military operations in Mali, Nigeria, Libya and possibly other countries where militants have loose or nonexistent ties to al Qaeda's Pakistan headquarters. Depending on the request, congressional authorization could cover the use of armed drones and special operations teams across a region larger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, the officials said.

The idea comes as the U.S. prepares by 2014 to draw down its remaining forces in Afghanistan, which were authorized by Congress in response to the country serving as base for the al Qaeda plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. That authorization has since been applied to pursuing al Qaeda-linked groups as far as Somalia and Yemen, but the threat posed by militants has widened to include other areas and other alliances.

The discussion about seeking new authority underscores the growing U.S. alarm over Islamic extremists in North Africa, where an al Qaeda offshoot has seized control of territory following a coup in Mali to provide the group and its offshoots a working base for operations. The U.S. administration has called the Mali situation a "powder keg" that could destabilize surrounding countries and imperil Western interests.

"The conditions today are vastly different than they were previously," Gen. Carter Ham, the head of U.S. Africa command, said in an interview. "There are now non-al Qaeda-associated groups that present significant threats to the United States." He called the debate over new authorization a "worthy discussion."hreats to the United States." He called the debate over new authorization a "worthy discussion."

Really?

But I thought al Qaeda was "on the run"? "Decimated"? Dear Leader promised us: "Obama Has Touted Al Qaeda’s Demise 32 Times since Benghazi Attack."

Well, it's okay if President Hussein lies on occasion. The great left-forces needed Obama's reelection to complete our fundamental transformation of America. It's all about trade offs, and I trust Brother Barack to do his progressive best to keep pushing for the withering away of the state and the full achievement of communism. Honesty and integrity are bourgeois notions, hopelessly inadequate for the challenges of today's day and age. Besides, the reactionary forces of conservatism and tradition are too stupid to even handle the truth. And, added bonus, if terrorism's really still a problem Dear Leader can claim continued exigencies for his unprecedented expansion of the kill list citizens' elimination program.

It's all working out as planned!

More from Walter Russell Mead, "The War on Terror We Aren’t Fighting Shifts to Africa."

Obama Honors Rosa Parks Anniversary With Picture of Himself

Yeah, it's a bit much, like propaganda for the leadership cult.

At Twitchy, "Narcissist in chief: President Obama honors Rosa Parks anniversary with picture of himself; Update: Adam Baldwin with the win."

Today is the 57th Anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Pic: President Obama on Rosa Parks bus twitter.com/whitehouse/sta…
— The White House (@whitehouse) December 1, 2012

Also at Gateway Pundit, "Figures. Obama Honors Rosa Parks Anniversary With Picture of Himself on a Bus."

Venezuelans Vote to Oust Reelect Socialist Hugo Chávez

Here's George Moneo at Babalú, "The beginning of the end?": "Exit polls have Chavez behind Capriles, 51.3% to 48.06%. In Spanish at ABC.es."

And at Fausta's, "#Venezuela: The results – it’s Chavez."

And check the background report at the Wall Street Journal, "Venezuelans Turn Out to Pick a Leader: Tensions Run High in Polarized South American Nation, as Leftist Chávez Faces Toughest Election in His 14-Year Presidency."

Added: Here's Reuters, "Venezuela's Chavez re-elected to extend socialist rule":

Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez won re-election on Sunday, quashing the opposition's best chance at unseating him in 14 years and cementing himself as a dominant figure in modern Latin American history.

The 58-year-old Chavez took 54.42 percent of the vote, with 90 percent of the ballots counted, to 44.97 percent for the young opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, official results showed.

Chavez's victory would extend his rule of the OPEC member state to two decades, though he is recovering from cancer and the possibility of a recurrence hangs over his political future.

Jubilant supporters poured onto the streets of Caracas to celebrate the victory of a man who has near-Messianic status among Venezuela's poor, and there was relief too among leftist allies around the region - from Cuba to Bolivia - who rely on his oil-financed generosity.

"I'm celebrating with a big heart," said Mary Reina, a 62-year-old Chavez supporter who lives in the hillside slum where the president cast his vote.

"Chavez is the hope of the people and of Latin America."