It's Fizbin Friday...

...where the rules change to accommodate the player.

Out and Ridiculous - Leftist rhetoric can cause violence.

In and Common Sense - President Trump's rhetoric can cause violence against journalists.

Also, "dissent is the first American virtue" and "censorship is bad."

We need a new word for "hypocrisy"...

...also "chutzpah."

When you reflect on all of the Democratic maneuverings after the election to overturn the election, and all of the sententious pronouncements that Trump must accept the results of the election prior to the election, the only fair conclusion is that Democrats have forfeited all moral authority to ever talk about American democracy again.

They can certainly talk about Bolshevik one-party rule.

I'm so old I can remember when dissent was divisive and dangerous.

But that was after it was patriotic and before it was patriotic.

Double standards - if it wasn't for double standards, the left would have no standards.

Out - Journalists protect the public's right to know.

In - Journalists are concerned that too much of the wrong information before an election is unfair to Hillary.

And that answers that question.

The question was, what would it take for Journalists to become critical of leaking to the press?

They never had a problem when it was Bush that was targeted.

But, now, officially, leaking is bad and leakers - formerly called "whistle-blowers" - must be fired.

Thank you, David Gergen.

Remember when that guy was supposed to be the "conservative" voice on Point-Counterpoint?

If it weren't for double-standards, the left would have no standards at all.

Women-only pool times for Jews are bad because they are not inclusive.

Women-only pool times for Muslims are good because they are inclusive.

By the same NYT writer.

Liberalism - Slogans, not rules.

Liberal slogan - it's different when liberals do it.

//So Davis' stand isn't about religious freedom. Not really. Signing off on state documents is not tantamount to being forced, as bakers and photographers have been, to participate in a wedding ceremony. There are certainly bigots out there intent on coercing Christian businesses to choose between their faith and their livelihood; this isn't one of those instances. If you want to participate in civil obedience, don't work for the state.

But jail? Davis was taken into federal custody Thursday. She was held in contempt of court for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. She now faces potential penalties, fines and prison time. She will almost certainly be destroyed.
So there are a few things that are worth contemplating here.

Let's start with the prevailing hypocrisy surrounding the attacks on Davis, a Democrat, and what it tells us about the state of American political debate and policymaking in 2015—because as you may have noticed, the rule of law only seems to be sacred when it happens to comport with liberal values.

As far as I can tell, there are only three unassailable constitutional rights left in the United States: the right not to be "discriminated" against, the right to have an abortion and the right to have a gay marriage. In the eyes of liberals, nothing—not the freedom of association or religion or anything else mentioned in the First Amendment or Second Amendment—will ever supersede these consecrated rights.

The rest? Well, it's malleable, depending on the situation.//

And, lest we forget, because liberals are in charge of the Ministry of Truth and the "memory hole":

//In America, we have a city council in Denver that advocates shutting down a business such as Chick-fil-A because the CEO once took a public position against gay marriage. In this country, people who are here illegally can march in the streets to protest their station without any genuine fear of being rounded up and expelled. They are celebrated. Moreover, we have cities across this country that ignore immigration laws they don't like and create sanctuaries from law. We have cities that ignore federal drug laws because they find them oppressive. Yet no one finds himself in jail. When Californians approved Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, a number of officials refused to enforce the law. They were celebrated. I may even agree with the impulse. But not one elected official has been hauled off to jail for any of these stands.

Yet a Christian struggling to come to terms with the implications of a decision that the Supreme Court reached only a couple of months ago—and our progressive president embraced only a couple of years ago—is hauled off to jail. In the end, the state is creating martyrs. Christians will have no choice but to take more obstinate positions in these battles of the culture war—battles that could easily have been avoided if a judge had exhibited more compassion and come to an accommodation. There are about 125 other marriage clerks in Kentucky who can issue licenses to gay couples. And they should.

Or we could go the other way. And if we're going to be rigid about the rule of law, let's throw all officials who ignore it into cells. We can start with the president and work our way down./

Liberal Fizbin...

...Liberals don't have rules; they have slogans.

//Some newsrooms are pushing back hard on the notion that the recent spike in police officer deaths is tied somehow to the anti-cop rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement.

That's a sharp contrast from the press' more recent habit of tying Tea Party rhetoric to similarly deadly acts.

The Black Lives Matters movement, which was born out of concerns over police brutality in African-American communities, has come under fire recently for some of its members' charged rhetoric.

"Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon!" a group of activists chanted at a recent protest in New York City.//

The Left doesn't have rules; it has slogans.

Sounds about right.

//SILLY MEGYN. THE LEFT DOESN’T HAVE RULES, IT HAS SLOGANS: Megyn Kelly gets angry: Why don’t the left’s “civility” rules apply to Black Lives Matter protesters? “In fact, incredible as it may seem, at about two-thirds of the way in here the guy debating Katie Pavlich (and Kelly) actually repeats the lefty smear that Loughner was a tea partier. Pavlich tries to call him on it but he doesn’t miss a beat. Even here, with Kelly demanding accountability from the left for its double standard on incendiary rhetoric, the lie that the tea party somehow bears responsibility for Giffords’s near-murder slides easily into the conversation. And you know what? I bet Fowler really believes it. I don’t think he was knowingly lying in repeating the long-ago debunked theory that Loughner was some sort of right-wing crazy instead of a regular ol’ crazy. I think left-wing opinion makers built that narrative so quickly and solidly after the shooting that even now, four years later, it remains an article of faith among some Democrats that Loughner was moved by conservative rhetoric to try to kill Giffords. We’re never going to get Stalinists to apologize for this game. They invented it and they’re better at it than we’ll ever be.”

They’ll do it as long as it works. Make it painful and they’ll stop.//

Leftists are so funny.

They spend 40 years talking about how corporations must have a "conscience" and not make profits their sole goal, and then when some corporations decide that contraception violates their conscience, they suddenly discover that having a "corporate conscience" is a bad thing.

It's another day of Liberal Fizbin.

America - Now with more hope and change.


7 years ago, Senator Obama thought raising the debt ceiling was unpatriotic; today, President Obama thinks that not raising the debt ceiling is unpatriotic.

Other than the fact that he's the president, what new facts has he learned to change his mind?

Liberals joke about Shooting their political opponents.

Off comes the serious "no one should ever use violent rhetoric" masks and on goes the "we can use violent rhetoric" mask.

On the Piers Morgan show, the suggestion is made by a guest that Morgan show up with a semi-automatic weapon and shoot the guy who has been leading the pointless stunt to deport Morgan.  Horse-laughs ensue, because that's a joke that would never, ever incite anyone to violence.

I don't care what the rule is, but I would like to see one rule.  Either that kind of thing is rhetoric - so grow up and stop whining - or it is a dangerous incitement - so knock it off.

Pick one.

Liberal Fizbin.

It's hard to keep track of the liberal rules.

"Gay-baiting" is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, unless it can be used to attack a Republican.

Liberals constantly tell us that we can't blame 9/11 on Islam... ...

but then they turn around and blame mass shootings on the NRA.

Which is weird, when you think of it, because the 9/11 terrorists explicitly said that they were killing in the name of Islam, but none of the insane asshats who have shot up a mall or a school have ever done so in the name of the NRA.

Glen Reynolds writes:

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Reflections on Newtown: A week after an American tragedy, what have we learned? Excerpt:

Is Hate A Liberal Value? A 20-year-old lunatic stole some guns and killed people. Who’s to blame? According to a lot of our supposedly rational and tolerant opinion leaders, it’s . . . the NRA, a civil-rights organization whose only crime was to oppose laws banning guns. (Ironically, it wasn’t even successful in Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.)
The hatred was intense. One Rhode Island professor issued a call — later deleted — for NRA head Wayne LaPierre’s “head on a stick.” People like author Joyce Carol Oates and actress Marg Helgenberger wished for NRA members to be shot. So did Texas Democratic Party official John Cobarruvias, who also called the NRA a “terrorist organization,” and Texas Republican congressman Louis Gohmert a “terror baby.”
Nor were reporters, who are supposed to be neutral, much better. As The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg commented, “Reporters on my Twitter feed seem to hate the NRA more than anything else, ever. ”
Calling people murderers and wishing them to be shot sits oddly with claims to be against violence. The NRA — like the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers or Planned Parenthood — exists to advocate policies its members want. It’s free speech. The group-hate directed at the NRA is ugly and says ugly things about those consumed by it.

Read the whole thing.
 

Let me add for the irony impaired, who may be quick to dub this post "repugnant," I don't think we should blame Islam for 9/11,  but I also don't think that the NRA is responsible for Newtown.

At some point, the individuals involved need to step up  and be responsible for their own evil.

Slouching toward Gomorrah.

Australians liberals honor Philosopher for advocating the normalization of bestiality whle condemning people for fearing that they are seeking to normalize bestiality.

Senator Cory Bernardi has been reviled for associating homosexuality with something repugnant, bestiality. Yet Australia has just awarded its highest civilian honour to a philosopher who provides a moral defence of sex with animals.

Professor Peter Singer, the renowned Australian philosopher at Princeton University, believes that the taboo on bestiality is an anomaly, a prohibition that will crumble like all the others. But in the last Queen’s Birthday honours list he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for “eminent service to philosophy and bioethics”. The award is equivalent to a knighthood in Britain.

In defending “consensual” sex between humans and animals Singer is concerned only with whether the sexual contact is “mutually satisfying”. What it means for an animal to give consent to sex with a human is unclear. Wag your tail three times for a yes, Fido?

And the same criterion of mutual satisfaction could be used to justify sex between adults and children. Indeed, paedophiles have been known to deploy just that argument.

If such a moral universe were to pertain, Bernardi would be quite right to claim that we are on a slippery slope to having sex with animals, a slope on which gay marriage is but a way station. Yet Bernardi is excommunicated for articulating a slippery slope argument while Singer is given its highest honour for celebrating it.

It's just another round in the game of Liberal Fizbin.

Liberal Fizbin - 2012: Romney wrong for speaking about Libya/Egypt; 2004: Kerry's criticism of Bush on Iraq is just good politics.

From the Washington Examiner:

When Romney gave a press conference Wednesday, the questions focused on whether it was appropriate for him to criticize Obama at the time he did. Romney's responses didn't really matter, because reporters had already decided their narrative. Obama did not take any questions in his own press conference moments later.

In 2004, John Kerry routinely attacked President Bush's handling of Iraq when things weren't going well in the country. And the media dutifully reported on Bush's foreign policy blunders in Iraq. But now, instead of scrutinizing Obama's handling of a foreign policy crisis, the media has decided that the real story in Egypt and Libya is a Mitt Romney gaffe.

What are the rules? What do the liberals need?

Harry Reid Plays Liberal Fizbin.

It's gone beyond parody.

So, demanding that Obama prove that he is a "natural born" American based on hearsay is racist and irrational, even though the hearsay appears might have started because Obama may have been claiming that he was born in Kenya. We know this because Harry Reid told us in 2009 that:

“Let's be clear. It's a phony issue and does not deserve even a minute of our attention on the floor of the United States Senate," Reid announced today, giving the issue just that minute. "It's absurd, irresponsible, baseless and the false claims of long ago have been refuted.”

But Harry Reid can demand that Romney prove that he paid taxes because Reid claims to have hearsay reports that Romney paid no taxes for ten years.

With Nancy Pelosi characterizing Jews as being principally motivated by concern for their ducats and Harry Reid playing liberal fizbin, you havt to think that there might be something to Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. When you think of the insensitive things said by ranking Democrats such as Pelosi, Biden and Reid, you can't help but conclude that the whole party would be helped by culling out the dumbest ones.

Liberal Fizbin - Christian business not welcome in Boston because it supports traditional marriage, but...

...Islamic sect that calls for death to gays gets free land.

How do liberals keep the rules straight?

According to the Boston Herald:

Given his stance on Chick-fil-A, would Mayor Tom Menino grant permits to a group that has counted among its leaders a man who has repeatedly called homosexuality a “crime that must be punished” by death?

Actually, he has done that  . . . and more! Menino effectively gave away city land valued at $1.8 million to the organization, and he gave a speech at its ribbon-cutting ceremony.

It’s the Islamic Society of Boston’s mosque, and when it comes to anti-gay sentiment, one of its early supporters makes Chick-fil-A look like the Provincetown Men’s Chorus.

What's the explanation for this?

Is it that Christians don't issue fatwahs?

Or is it the warm feeling that Menino gets when he thinks about how tolerant and charitable he must be by giving away someone else's property to an officially recognized constituent of the "diversity community"?

Liberal Fizbin - More invasion of privacy in Wisconsin.

Private sex doesn't matter, until it does.

A Wisconsin "citizen-journalist" group is all over the claim that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker fathered a child when he was 20 years old.

Unfortunately, another newspaper spoke to the woman who says it wasn't Scott Walker.

Of course, I'm certain that this woman is quite happy to have her experience from 25 years ago splashed across the Wisconsin media.

But, hey!, her sacrifice is all for a good cause.

Liberal Fizbin - You are a racist if you mention Obama's anti-American pastor, but Gary Wills gets to "question" whether Mormons are just a bit too deferential to the "original" Constitution...

...i.e., the one with slavery.

Ann Althouse points out:

Garry Wills, he's not anti-Mormon. He just has questions. A lot of questions. Can't blame a man for asking questions, can you? I'd say you can. This is an effort to smear Romney with some really silly insinuations. Why would the fact that the President is a Mormon — even assuming Wills states the belief correctly and Romney himself holds that belief — affect what the Constitution means, what non-Mormons will be able to think about what it means, and how the Supreme Court would interpret it?

In any case, isn't the belief that the framers of the Constitution were divinely inspired fairly common? Where does it get you... other than to profound reverence and dedication? What's wrong with that? The President is supposed to be dedicated to the Constitution. The original Constitution is structured around the existing institution of slavery, but what's the point of bringing that up? Wills is asking questions, not making arguments, which let's him be very slippery. He knows that the part of the Constitution that liberals care about is all in the amendments, and perhaps he'd like to separate the good part of the Constitution — the amendments — from the bad part — the part with slavery... and all the structural safeguards that conservatives would like to see enforced.

Here is Gary Wills' ruminations:

"Will a Mormon president treat constitutional clauses as divine injunctions? If so, what grounds will we non-Mormons have for interpreting with secular arguments what is presented as God’s will? For that matter, what right will the Supreme Court have to treat the document as anything less than a divinely inspired covenant? Does the First Amendment actually separate church and state, or does that not count, since it is merely an amendment, not the original word of God? But why, then, did a mere amendment change the first inspiration that made slaves less than full persons?

Jeepers, I don't know, Gary. You're a Catholic. Do you think it is fair to aks whether a Catholic president might take orders from the Pope?

Fargin' bigot.

We've had Mormon elected officials for one hundred years. Is there anything in their behavior that suggests they don't understand how the game of American pluralism is played?


Do we have to go through this every time some new group - one that is not an official part of the Democrat sodality - makes a play for the gold ring of the Presidency?

Even liberal Mormon feminists like Joanna Brooks is getting the message:

But if there’s no time for phone calls or web searches, well, at the very least, there are fact-checkers. And here’s a modest proposal for the editors at the New York Review of Books and the New York Times and every other publication that will be running a lot of Mormon content this campaign season but has no Mormons on its editorial staff: Hire a Mormon fact checker.

There are a number of advanced graduate students in Mormon Studies—many studying at very fine secular institutions. They know Mormon history, doctrine, and culture. They know it from scholarship, and they know it from experience. Real good kids. (And some of them have kids of their own to feed.) Put one or two of them on retainer through December. Let them proof your Mormon-related copy for you. They have their work cut out for them.

Accuracy and Fairness - now there's an idea.

Liberal Fizbin - Talking about Obama's church is racist and should be censored according to "centrist Democrat" Doug Schoen...

...but the NYT can run another story about Mormonism and the presidential election.