…please shut up.

From John Stossel, who begins thus:

I’m getting tired of Alan Greenspan. First, the former Federal Reserve chairman blamed an allegedly unregulated free market for the housing and financial debacle. Now he favors repealing the Bush-era tax cuts.

This has a certain sad irony. Recall that Greenspan once was an associate of Ayn Rand, the philosophical novelist who provided a moral defense of the free market, or as she put it, the separation of state and economy. Greenspan even contributed three essays to Rand’s book “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” — one for the gold standard, one against antitrust laws, and one against government consumer protection.

It was slightly bizarre when Greenspan accepted President Reagan’s appointment to run the Fed — maybe he thought that as long as the Fed exists, better someone like him run it rather than one who really believes government should centrally plan money and banking. Be that as it may, Greenspan went on to pursue an easy-money policy in the early 2000s that is widely credited, along with the government’s easy-mortgage policy, for the boom and bust that followed.

And later concludes:

…Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation says that since the cuts, “The rich are now shouldering even more of the income tax burden.” The deficit has grown not because we are undertaxed but because government overspends. “Tax revenues are above the historical average, even after the tax cuts,” Riedl writes.

Given the stagnant economy, this is the worst possible time for tax increases. (Is there ever a good time?) Taking money out of the economy will stifle investment and recovery, and it’s unlikely to raise substantial revenue, even if that were a good thing.

Finally, the stupidest thing said about tax cuts is the often-repeated claim that “they ought to be paid for.” How absurd! Tax cuts merely let people keep money they rightfully own. It’s government programs, not tax cuts, that must be paid for. The tax-hungry politicians’ demand that cuts be “paid for” implies the federal budget isn’t $3 trillion, but $15 trillion — the whole GDP — with anything mercifully left in our pockets being some form of government spending. How monstrous!

If cutting taxes leaves less money for government programs, the answer is simple: Ax the programs!

Read it all here.

There’s nothing this humble blogger can add to that!

This is a must-post, since there are, no doubt and for what I can only call unfathomable reasons, some people out there who don’t read Victor Davis Hanson as a matter of habit and some things just have to be shared.

Do you remember candidate Barack Obama offering his hope-and-change platitudes in front of the fake Greek columns during the Democratic convention? Or earlier pontificating at the Victory Monument in Berlin?

Why didn’t an old cigar-chomping Democratic pro take him aside and warn him about offending Nemesis? She is the dreaded goddess who brings divine retribution in ironic fashion to overweening arrogance.

Or maybe a friend could have whispered to Senator Obama to tone it down when he was merciless in damning the Bush administration for its supposedly slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obama railed that Bush showed “unconscionable ineptitude.” Obama further charged that Bush’s response was “achingly slow,” a result of “passive indifference,” and that his team was rife with “corruption and cronyism.”

Those adjectives now apply to Obama himself, as he seems lost amid his own disaster — eerily in about the same Gulf environs. Adding insult to injury, a recent poll revealed that Louisiana residents thought Bush had done a better job with Katrina than Obama has with BP.

Couldn’t one of Obama’s many handlers have warned him to ignore the media’s tingling-leg gaga worship, or their nonsense that Obama is “a god”?

Read on.

In Mark Steyn’s column today:

I believe it was Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

Barack Obama was supposed to be the best, the very best, and yet he is always, reliably, consistently mediocre. His speech on oil was no better or worse than his speech on race. Yet the Obammyboppers who once squealed with delight are weary of last year’s boy band. At the end of the big Oval Office address, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSNBC gang jeered the president. For a bewildered Obama, it must have felt like his Ceausescu balcony moment. Had they caught up with him in the White House parking lot, they’d have put him up against the wall and clubbed him to a pulp with Matthews’ no-longer-tingling leg.

For the first time I felt a wee bit sorry for the poor fellow. What had he done to so enrage his full supporting chorus? In The Washington Post, the reaction of longtime Obammysoxer Eugene Robinson was headlined “Obama Disappoints From The Beginning Of His Speech.”

So what? He always “disappoints.” What would have been startling would have been if he hadn’t “disappointed.” His eve-of-election rally for Martha Coakley “disappointed” the Massachusetts electorate so much they gave Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican. His speech for Chicago’s Olympic bid “disappointed” the Oslo committee so much they gave the games to Pyongyang, or Ouagadougou, or any city offering to build a stadium with electrical outlets incompatible with Obama’s prompter. Be honest, guys, his inaugural address “disappointed,” too, didn’t it?

– Truncating –

…. the Technocratic Mastermind offered: “Just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge – a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.

“As a result of these efforts, we’ve directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology.”

Excellent. The president directed his Nobel Prize-winning Head of Meetings to assemble a meeting to tackle the challenge of mobilizing the assembling of the tackling of the challenge mobilization, at the end of which they directed BP to order up some new tackle and connect it to the thingummy next to the whachamacallit. Thank you, Mr. President. That and $4.95 will get you a venti oleaginato at Starbucks.

The doubletalk of Barack Obama.

Chris Matthews and the other leg-tinglers invented an Obama that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, they’re stuck with the one that does, and it will be interesting to see whether he’s capable of plugging the leak in his own support. If not, who knows what the tide might wash up?

Memo to Secretary Rodham Clinton: Do you find yourself of a quiet evening with a strange craving for chicken dinners and county fairs in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe next summer? Need one of those relaunch books to explain why you’re getting back in the game in your country’s hour of need?

“It Takes A Spillage.”

Read it all.

In the Accurate, Blunt, and to the Point Department, there’s Erick Erickson.

Let’s be honest. The White House meeting with British Petroleum was a shakedown.
The White House threatened criminal prosecution of BP, the President gave a miserably received speech, then he hauled BP into the White House and put the Attorney General in the room with the CEO to stare at him, then the President demanded $20 billion.
It was a shakedown.

Had British Petroleum affiliated with Al Qaeda and tried to blow up an airplane, it would have gotten due process rights, a court appointed lawyer, and miranda warning while avoiding Henry Waxman.

But let’s continue our honesty: Who the heck cares besides Joe Barton? What planet has the man been living on? Has he not seen what BP has done and not done? He thinks we owe BP an apology? I don’t think so. [Note: Yeah, I do care that this is probably unconstitutional, but BP is a willing collaborator with Obama. They're made for each other. Barton should be apologizing to the American public, not BP — this administration continues to operate as a thugocracy.]

And keeping with the honesty, let’s also admit the Congressional hearing was a show trial. The only thing separating it from a Soviet show trial is Tony Hayward, the CEO of British Petroleum walked out without any lead in him. The result, however, will be the same as a Soviet show trial: not a single thing will happen. Nothing.

Why? Because while Joe Barton is mourning the shakedown on BP, Barack Obama is still the largest recipient of BP money in Washington. Rahm Emanuel gets a bedroom provided by BP’s pollster Stan Greenburg, who also happens to poll for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and is married to a member of Congress.

Were this a Republican administration the New York Times would be screaming about incest.

And now, marvel at the results. British Petroleum commits to a $20 billion escrow account to pay for damages. The Democrats get a show trial. The government has a vested interest in ensuring BP does not go belly up lest the $20 billion go the way of the dodo bird, gas prices will probably start trickling up, and BP will pay out damages to people put on the unemployment line by Barack Obama’s egregious action to shut down all deep water drilling. About the only safe bet now is British Petroleum stock — they just became too big to fail.

In Washington, BP will keep doling out contributions to Democrats through other entities and everyone will sleep well at night knowing not a single thing will really change.

Have I told you about my windmills? Ignore the oil still leaking and just gaze at my shiny windmills.

…everyone will sleep well at night knowing not a single thing will really change.

Which pretty well sums up what the modern politician considers the ideal world…

I’ll be spending most of my time this weekend doing some work on my boat, as I may take another of my long cruises south along the Mexican coast really soon, and want to have everything 4.0 when I do it.

But this morning…

Something we already knew,

to whit:

When asked to compare Nancy Pelosi to previous House speakers, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) didn’t hold back. In an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS, Pence excoriated her as the “least democratic speaker in the history of the House of Representatives,” arguing that she’s blocked a “free and open debate” in Congress.

Watch The Video.

Moving on, we all know that today’s feminist movement is not about women’s rights or opportunities as it purports to be. The reason they ignore the plight of women in many Muslim countries is because their politics, based on the “progressive” school of politics, demand butt munching Islam from the left side of the aisle.

Feminists are hypocrites who pursue the left wing agenda, and anyone not contributing to that gets short shrift like those Muslim women do.

As for any woman in politics who is not supporting “progressives”:

Former New Yorker editor Tina Brown appeared on Thursday’s Good Morning America to deride the mostly Republican women who won primaries on Tuesday as “wingnuts” and to sneer that they represent a “blow to feminism.”

I’d say it’s only a blow to the far left.

From Caroline Glick:

The first rule of strategy is to keep your opponent busy attending to your agenda so he has no time to advance his own. Unfortunately, Israel’s leaders seem unaware of this rule, while Iran’ rulers triumph in its application.

Over the past few weeks, Israel has devoted itself entirely to the consideration of questions that are at best secondary. Questions like how much additional assistance Israel should provide Hamas-controlled Gaza and how best to fend off or surrender to the international diplomatic lynch mob have dominated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s and his senior ministers’ agendas. Our political leaders — as well as our military commanders and intelligence agencies — have been so busy thinking about these issues that they have effectively forgotten the one issue that they should have been considering.

Israel’s greatest strategic challenge — preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — has fallen by the wayside.

Seriously good insight. Here’s the rest.

Another worthwhile and amusing read comes from Wesley Pruden, all about Obama’s search for that “ass” he says he wants to kick.

Larry Elder’s column today is a bang-up job well worth sharing.

While in high school, I was standing at a bus stop next to a gas station. A kid tossed a candy wrapper on the station lot. Somebody yelled, “Hey, pick that up.” The kid, with a straight face, defended himself. He said, “I just created a job.” Someone would be hired, he explained, to pick up the trash, and this would be good for the economy.

Don’t laugh. The kid probably works for the Obama administration.

That sounds about right.

Congress is now considering yet another “stimulus” package. But did the administration’s previous one work? Of the $787 billion stimulus package, President Obama said it would “save or create” 3.5 million new jobs. Has it?

The National Association for Business Economics polled 68 private-sector members. Seventy-three percent said the employment at their companies was neither higher nor lower as a result of the stimulus package.

What about the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office? A February 2009 Washington Times article said:

“President Obama’s economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

“CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.”

This, of course, is far beyond the grasp of the “intelligent” people who set policy in this country, namely our politicians.

I do not challenge the intellectual capacities of Obama, Pelosi and company, because I know they are all highly intelligent: The screwing they have been giving the rest of us Americans has been premeditated, its goals to transform our great nation into a second rate socialist has-been.

…Zogby International asked questions about economics of nearly 5,000 people…

Truncating;

“On every question,” wrote Klein, “the left did much worse. On the monopoly question, the portion of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly (31 percent) was more than twice that of conservatives (13 percent) and more than four times that of libertarians (7 percent). On the question about living standards, the portion of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly (61 percent) was more than four times that of conservatives (13 percent) and almost three times that of libertarians (21 percent).”

Maybe those with more education performed better? No, the report said. “We work with three levels of schooling: (1) high school or less; (2) some college (but not a degree); (3) a college degree or more. In our data, economic enlightenment is not correlated with going to college.”

The left blames the financial collapse on “greed,” ignoring the role played by government involvement — Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Housing Administration, the Community Reinvestment Act and elsewhere. Leftists point to “insufficient regulation” on Wall Street for reckless behavior, rather than to the players’ assumption that too-big-to-fail would protect them.

Elder is so right. The entire column is here.

In the “interesting, but true” department, we have this from John Myers:

To the Greens I have six words regarding the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico: Your President, your policies, your fault.

After all Barack Obama was the progressive Green candidate, a thinker who could steer the course in the 21st Century. Oprah anointed then-Senator Obama as “The Chosen One”. To Oprah and a great majority of Liberals, Obama was the anti-Dubya; a larger than life leader with savior qualities that would lead us to peace and overcome all obstacles.

So far, so bad. America’s endgame for Iraq is in question because of increasing levels of Shiite-Sunni violence. Afghanistan looks more untenable all the time. The recovery is sluggish and healthcare has been rammed down the throats of the American people. Now we face an enormous crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s been almost two months since an explosion sent crude pumping into the Gulf and the Obama administration has shown an astonishing lack of leadership.

David Gergen, a centrist political commentator and advisor to four Presidents, has pointed out a basic lack of leadership from the Obama administration: “Ultimately it is not the responsibility of BP or any other company to protect American interests but the responsibility of the Federal government.”

Heh heh, the only interests our current Capital Hill Democrat majority and White House wonderboy are protecting are their own liberal political interests.

Ahem, sorry, go on…

So here it is, a news flash to Oprah and the Liberals: When it comes to leadership, Barack Obama is a lot more Herbert Hoover than he is Harry Truman, regardless of how many “the buck stops here” speeches Obama chooses to give…

The more unpleasantness we encounter, the more Obama talks about doing such two fisted things as “kickin’ butt”, but while the talk is talked, no walk seems to be getting walked.

The President bristles at criticism that the Gulf crisis is his Katrina. Even in the face of the failure of BP to stem the spill with its top-kill option, Obama was defending the Federal government’s record and promised aggressive action to ensure future drilling is done safely. He has extended a moratorium on new exploration drilling in the Gulf and announced that 33 current projects in the deep water will be suspended along with two permits for exploration wells in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska.

“As we continue our response effort, we’re also moving quickly on steps to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens again,” he said. “I’ve said before that producing oil here in America is an essential part of our overall energy strategy. But all drilling must be safe.”

Respectfully Mr. President, can we not worry about future leaks until we fix this one? After all, the BP gusher has well surpassed the 1989 Exxon spill in Alaska as the largest ever in the United States. Crude has continued to spew for 52 days after it began with a rig explosion that killed 11 people. Every effort to stop the spill has so far proved unsuccessful.

When I was a boy on the farm we didn’t worry about the horses that might get out; we scurried about to catch the horse that had gotten out. And right now there is a big and nasty animal rolling about the Gulf presenting a clear and present danger to the United States. Meanwhile we are getting the Green lecture—how to stop future oil spills. Which brings me to my second news flash—it is Green policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

That’s a true and familiar tune, isn’t it? For decades now, our largest domestic problems have originated on the left side of the aisle in their efforts to bring us a new, improved America or to fix what either ain’t broke or will, by nature of the American people, eventually be repaired by the forces of the marketplace without “help” from the government.

“An extended moratorium on safely producing our oil and natural gas resources from the Gulf of Mexico would create a moratorium on economic growth and job creation,” said Jack Gerard, chief executive of the American petroleum Institute.

It’s worth noting that the Gulf of Mexico currently produces about 1.6 million barrels of oil per day—an amount larger than the output of Canada’s oil sands. It was expected to grow to 1.9 million barrels by 2025. But the jury is out on this until Obama—”The Chosen One”—chooses leadership over politics and stops this catastrophe.

Here, here!

The entire column.

Speaking of the Gaza flotilla kerfuffle, as I was reading today’s Best Of The Web Today, I followed one of the many links one finds therein on any given day, and found an article in the Moscow Times By Yulia Latynina that most definitely agrees with those of us in the world who are not dumb enough to be fooled by the phony righteousness or dense naivety of certain elements, not to mention any names like the U.N., the EU, the Arab world in general, liberal pissants everywhere, the profoundly gullible and the uninformed.

Israeli defense forces intercepted a flotilla with humanitarian aid headed for blockaded Gaza, killing at least nine people and causing an international scandal. The activists knew long in advance that their flotilla would be intercepted. In fact, that is how they planned it from the start.

Which agrees with our own assessment here at Hard Astarboard.

The goal of the activists was not to deliver aid to the people of Gaza but to rack up dead bodies. From the standpoint of the organizers, the ideal ending would have been if the Israeli navy had sunk the entire flotilla.

There is a very good reason why Israel is blockading Gaza. The territory is governed by Hamas, which has the professed goal of destroying Israel and is recognized by some Western governments as a terrorist organization. If activists had wanted to send a flotilla to Osama bin Laden carrying “humanitarian aid” of suspect content, would the authorities be obliged to let it pass unchecked?

Unfortunately, in Gaza we are dealing not only with militants but with a bloodthirsty strategy that long ago abandoned the goal of achieving the maximum possible number of enemy dead. Now Hamas strives to maximize the number of their own women and children killed as human shields in order to win support from the gullible element of world opinion.

The old method was simple: Palestinian militants lobbed missiles into Israeli territory.

The new tactic is for militants to place a rocket launcher on the roof of one of their own schools — or better yet, a kindergarten. If the missile finds its target, then, God willing, two Israelis will die. But if all goes well, the Israeli missile fired in retaliation will give the militants the bodies of 10 innocent children to display to reporters.

The organizers of the flotilla are cut from the same cloth. Would it ever enter your head to feel sorry for a man who bypassed airport security, forced his way onto an airplane and then cried “Executioners!” while shooting at the police sent to apprehend him?

But even that is not the most shocking aspect of the flotilla incident. There were 700 people aboard that flotilla. Of course, many were supporters of Hamas. But there were also Europeans. In a world where terrorists destroy the World Trade Center and bomb the London metro — and where Hamas is dead-set on destroying Israel — it is amazing how many idiots can be found who are ready to defend anyone who whines, “The world owes me.”

And this is the scariest part: The flotilla was essentially designed to exploit the misplaced sympathies of gullible rights activists. The militants have mastered a new strategy, and the myopic do-gooders of the world are their willing pawns.

Hear, hear!!!!

Here is the entire piece.

**** Unfamiliar with the subject of the article, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, I looked him up to see why the author of the column above thought he was innocent.

From Wikipedia:

Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is a Russian enterpreneur, businessman, philanthropist, and convicted felon. In 2004, Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia, and was the 16th wealthiest man in the world, although much of his wealth evaporated because of the collapse in the value of his holding in the Russian petroleum company Yukos.

On October 25, 2003, Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport by the Russian prosecutor general’s office on charges of fraud. Shortly thereafter, on October 31, the government under Vladimir Putin froze shares of Yukos because of tax charges. The Russian Government took further actions against Yukos, leading to a collapse in the share price. It purported to sell a major asset of Yukos in December 2004.

On May 31, 2005, Khodorkovsky was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to nine years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to 8 years. In 2003, prior to his arrest, Khodorkovsky funded several Russian parties, including Yabloko, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and even, allegedly, the pro-Kremlin United Russia.

In October 2005 he was moved into prison camp number 13 in the city of Krasnokamensk, Zabaykalsky Krai.

In March 2006, Forbes magazine surmised that Khodorkovsky’s personal fortune had declined to a fraction of its former level, stating that he “still has somewhere below $500 m.”

On March 31 2009, a new trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev began in Moscow for fresh charges on embezzlement and money laundering, and continues to the present day. The two men face up to 22 more years in prison.

The other side of the coin:

Khodorkovsky has received a high level of independent third party support from groups and individuals who believe the process, charges, and two trials against him are politically motivated. On Nov. 29, 2004, The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights published a report which concluded “he Assembly considers that the circumstances of the arrest and prosecution of leading Yukos executives suggest that the interest of the State’s action in these cases goes beyond the mere pursuit of criminal justice, to include such elements as to weaken an outspoken political opponent, to intimidate other wealthy individuals and to regain control of strategic economic assets.”

In June 2009 the Council of Europe published a report which criticized the Russian government’s handling of the Yukos case, entitled “Allegations of Politically Motivated Abuses of the Criminal Justice System in Council of Europe Member States”

“The Yukos affair epitomises this authoritarian abuse of the system. I wish to recall here the excellent work done by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, rapporteur of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, in her two reports2 on this subject. I do not intend to comment on the ins and outs of this case which saw Yukos, a privately owned oil company, made bankrupt and broken up for the benefit of the stateowned company Rosneft. The assets were bought at auction by a rather obscure financial group, Baikalfinansgroup, for almost €7 billion. It is still not known who is behind this financial group. A number of experts believe that the state-owned company Gazprom had a hand in the matter. The former heads of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, were sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for fraud and tax evasion. Vasiliy Aleksanyan, former vice-chairman of the company, who is suffering from Aids, was released on bail in January 2009 after being held in inhuman conditions condemned by the European Court of Human Rights.3 Lastly, Svetlana Bakhmina, deputy head of Yukos’s legal department, who was sentenced in 2005 to six and a half years’ imprisonment for tax fraud, saw her application for early release turned down in October 2008, even though she had served half of her sentence, had expressed “remorse” and was seven months pregnant. Thanks to the support of thousands of people around the world and the personal intervention of the United States President, George W. Bush, she was released in April 2009 after giving birth to a girl on 28 November 2008.”

Statements of support for Khodorkovsky and criticism of the state’s persecution have been passed by the Italian Parliament, the German Bundestag, and the U.S. House of Representatives, among many other official bodies.

Wow! They certainly play hardball in Russian politics, don’t they? If Khodorkovsky is an innocent man, as Yulia Latynina believes, well, there we are with a political structure whose major players honed their ruthlessness and Machiavellan skills under the former communist regime. You know, something like what Obama and the rest of the “progressives” seem to have in mind for us.

Surely, that’s something to think about…

This one, by Michele Malkin, needed to be shared.

In Chicago politics, there’s an old term for the publicly subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats’ friends and special interests: boodle.

In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House.

There’s always been an ageless, interdependent relationship between Windy City politicos and “goo-goos” (the cynical Chicago term for good government reformers). Chicago-style “reform” has always entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the guise of public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption.

Yes, and there is now so much of it accumulated, that it inevitably found its way into the White House. Who’d'a believed that could happen?

In July 2009, when “Culture of Corruption” was first released, liberal critics scoffed:

How could you possibly write a 400-page book about Barack Obama’s rotten administration when he’s only been in office six months?!

When I proceeded to rattle off case after case of Chicago-style back-scratching, transparency-trampling and crooked special interest-dealing in the new White House, liberal critics such as “The View’s” Joy Behar interjected:

B-b-b-but what about Bush? Why don’t you write a book about Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush?

When I pointed out that I had reported extensively on cronyism in the Bush era (see Harriet Miers, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security), and when I further pointed out that while the Bush-bashing market overflowed, there remained a massive vacuum of critical analysis of Obama, liberal critics sputtered:

So what? Doesn’t every administration have corruption?

When I patiently explained that no other administration in modern American history had set itself up as loftily as the Hope and Change reformers had done, or when I cited endless examples of Obama’s broken promises on everything from lobbyists to transparency to Washington business as usual, liberal critics changed the subject again…

…Read the whole column.

Remember?

I just read an interesting column by John Stossel, where he weighs in on the issue.

“Backwards and hateful ideas … oust John Stossel,” said Colorofchange.org.

In a newspaper, the organization went on:

“It’s time that FOX drop Stossel … we’ll go directly after the network with a public campaign unlike anything we’ve pursued to date.”.

Media Matters joined: “By airing Stossel’s repugnant comments, Fox legitimizes his indefensible position.”

What “indefensible” position did I take?

I said this: “Private businesses ought to get to discriminate. I won’t ever go to a place that’s racist, and I will tell everybody else not to, and I’ll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist.”

Read that carefully: I condemned racism. I said I’d speak out against and boycott a racist’s business. But to some people, I committed heresy. I failed to accept the entire catechism. I didn’t say that we need government to fight racism and prohibit racist policies in private establishments.

That’s always the way of the Racecard Left, ain’t it? You’re in for a penny, in for a pound. Their way or the highway and anyone who’s for the latter is a racist.

Here’s the entire column.