Freedom of Speech

Forest Lake event canceled; too political says the "Red Star", the "Star and Sickle", a local paper. The story was first brought to me on my morning commute on the radio, almost perpetually tuned to KTLK.

• Chris Baker 7AM
• Chris Baker 8AM
• Chris Baker 9AM
• Chris Baker 10AM

I discovered the story in print from Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner. Since Forest Lake is but a suburb or two over, this really got me steamed. Frankly, I would have hoped for a better title from the Strip, perhaps "Leftist Group 'Democratic Underground' Nixes Free Speech by Veterans Group".

Many blogs have kept me abreast of this appalling story throughout the day. Powerline was a good example: Heroes too hot for Forest Lake Area High School. But later on, Blackfive produced The left has no heroes with the following video well worth viewing:


Later, Powerline had more followup with The National Heroes Tour Comes to Minnesota. And a Jason Lewis podcast had further discussion.

I haven't taken in all of these items. I get off track simply thinking about Leftists' perpetual claim to being defenders of free speech -- as long as there is no dissent, I guess. But the gall of protesting the true defenders of free speech is simply beyond the pale.

Updates:

• Higher Education in Minnesota
• Nick Coleman defames a hometown hero
• The Vets Strike Back at the Forest Lake High School Disinformation Campaign

As The Election Turns

So around this RINO's digs it has been amusing to read the news as of late. The Republican candidates had their battle early and it looked as if they were going to be bogged down in a mess. With the indicators falling more and more to John McCain, I found myself rooting for a brokered convention. But since I never really knew what that entailed, I now find it much more amusing to watch from the sidelines.



You've got Hillary's Bosnia gaffe as a sideshow, Name That Party going on with elected officials, and of course all the "Typical White Person" jokes you can shake a stick at.


It's funnier than watching the Exorcist!

No, I must admit it is far more entertaining to watch Hillary and Obama duke it out. And spend their money on each other. And have the mainstream media spin lame attempts at manufacturing counterpoints, badly, but the lefties managed to do it worse.



It's not that I'm happy with McCain, even though the pundits make the thought increasingly less difficult to stomach. It's just that seeing the left beat itself up is entirely too amusing. Add to it Rush's Operation Chaos and it's hard to keep a straight face.

The Obama Kerfuffle

I had to search the logfiles of an IRC channel I frequent to reassure myself that until this past weekend I had not really considered the race angle in regard to the 2008 presidential race. Yup, pretty much what I thought -- all this time I've thought of him pretty much a leftist. A Liberal. Perhaps I even had a chuckle about Marxist connections after the Che Guevera flag flap. Up until this past weekend.

Then the Rev. Wright material flooded the blogosphere. I took humor in the ensuing frenzy. And still, it was the character issue that was being noted (finally) in the mainstream media that I was most tickled by. And as the raging waters continued flowing, the racism angle started to rear. I could be amused and have an oddly quizzical expression towards a white middle-class type of Obama supporter, but to me that still wasn't the issue.

And then came Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech. It arrived in my RSS reader amongst my usual conservative-leaning subscriptions. In fact, I skimmed right into the meat of the speech, before I realized it was his speech. The first paragraph was my hook not to skim and move on to the next item in the reader. And then I got to paragraphs two and three and I had to take a closer look at what I was reading because it seemed to be taking a turn I wasn't expecting. And then I discovered that it was "the speech".

For me, this was the point at which I felt Obama made race an issue; previously he had "transcended race". And with this speech he chose to embrace it, to wrap himself in it fully. And essentially to transform from an unabashed Leftist and inexperienced candidate whose grand rhetoric lacked substance into merely on opportunistic black politician like those who have gone before him.

I've shared piles of articles and snippets on the feed, and pretty much everybody has already aired his views. For ease of future reference, let me just capture the "highlights".

• Obama's Incredible Denial Concerning His Pastor


• Anderson Cooper: Romney’s church clearly relevant, Obama’s church not so much


• Obama Denounces Pastor, Continuing Circular Firing Squad


• 'He Probably Wasn’t Listening in Church'


• Deconstructing Obama's lawyerly evasions on Wright


• Obama in Indiana: “[T]he forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again”


• BUSTED... Obama Knew Wright Was Wrong Last Year


• Knowing Obama by the Company He Keeps


• SteynOnline - EVERYONE'S A VICTIM


• Down the memory hole: Wright’s testimonial deleted from Obama’s website


• YouTube Pulls Reverend Wright Video


• Obama's Faith: 'Complex,' or Just Calculated?


• INDEED: One understands why that might not seem obvious


• ANOTHER UPDATE: Oprah Winfrey goes to Wright's church, too?


• Obama's Church Web Site 'Disappears' the 'Black Value System' (Update: They Missed a PDF)


• Obama’s Class Warfare Will Turn on the Voters He Claims to Help


• Obama to deliver “major speech” on race tomorrow; Update: The Jeremiah


• The Religious Wright


• Damn chickens


• Double Life of Barack Obama


• The Dishonesty of Hope

And then I encountered "the speech". Up to this point, it was to me just news about a presidential candidate caught in a tough spot: backpedaling on an issue of his character. After listening to a podcast of "the speech" and reading the transcript, mixed in with others' similar reactions around the blogosphere, I had to accept that from that point onward that Obama no longer "transcended race".