BUTT CHUGGING: Deadly serious ‘butt chugging’ press conference is the most accidentally hilarious thing you’ll see today [VIDEO].

HOW TO FIGHT A REARGUARD ACTION:  Yes, the Main Stream Media has power.  Most of their power is to tell us we’re being naughty children, unreasonable and uncouth and to shut up.  I have a little more experience than most Americans in how to get around their controls.  So I wrote about it, over at the tatler.  Roger L. Simon is right, this is at the very least an attempted Media Coup D’Etat.  But we don’t have to let them win.

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Yet another video of Obama’s rise to power has surfaced, this one from 2002. Obviously, no goodthinking person would even consider viewing it on his telescreen, lest he repeat the doubleplus ungood thoughtcrime he’s already on file with in the Ministry of Truth for watching last night’s video.

In the 2002 speech, Obama tells his audience, “You know, the principle of empathy gives broader meaning, by the way, to Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but rich people are all for nonviolence. Why wouldn’t they be? They’ve got what they want. They want to make sure people don’t take their stuff.” (Plus more comments bashing the suburbs.) Regarding this speech, before being sent to Minitrue for intensive questioning in Room 101, Power Line’s Scott Johnson wrote:

Now this was a speech on the occasion of Martin Luther King Day, and Obama does not directly criticize King. But he limits the applicability of King’s philosophy (or strategy) in a manner that takes it to the vanishing point.

It seems to me that the spirit of Obama’s remarks here is more in keeping with Malcolm X’s vehement critique of King (as can be heard, for example, in this video) than with that of King himself. There is a gulf between Obama and King that opens up over King’s persistent appeal to the principles of the American founding and Obama’s alienation from them.

In a related post, Power Line’s Steve Hayward, likely also on the way to Room 101, quotes from I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism, by Charles R. Kesler, focusing on “the dog that didn’t bark” during Obama’s speech allegedly tossing Rev. Wright down the Memory Hole:

The dog that didn’t bark on March 18, 2008, was that the crucial words “all men are created equal” do not appear in Obama’s carefully composed speech. And so that “already classic address,” as James Kloppenberg calls it, on a topic that Obama declared he’d been thinking about for twenty years, constitutes a very different kind of argument, with a very different view of America, than one finds in, say, Martin Luther King’s great speech in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial. Obama invokes neither Jefferson nor Lincoln. He refers to the Constitution briefly, noting its “ideal of equal citizenship” and that it “promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.” But he doesn’t mention the conclusion that he had announced in his book, namely, that the Declaration’s and the Constitution’s “people” did not include blacks, and especially not black slaves.

In short, Obama regards the original intention of both the Declaration and the Constitution to be racist and even pro-slavery. But he refrains from making the point explicit because it would confirm the Reverend Wright’s fundamental charge, that the United States is a racist country. And the point of the speech in Philadelphia, at the National Constitution Center, close by Independence Hall, the scene of the great events of 1776 and 1787, was not merely to repeat his condemnation of Wright’s remarks “in unequivocal terms” but to put the whole controversy behind him, without dwelling on his fundamental agreement with Wright’s interpretation of American principles.

That last item dovetails well with the thoughtcrime that Roger L. Simon committed last night in commenting on the 2007 speech:

Barack Obama is a segregationist.

How else do you explain a statement like “We don’t need to build more highways out in the suburbs. We should be investing in minority-owned business, in our neighborhoods”? [emphasis mine]

That is not what most of us had in mind when we were involved in the civil rights movement. Naïve us. Our intention was that everyone should get to live wherever they wanted, even those suburbs. They were open to all. Forget ghettoes and barrios. Equality, brother, equality. How did that old Babs Gonzales song go — “We got a New Frontier, a man in the moon, but we ain’t got integration”?

Oh well, integration was a nice idea once upon a time, but to Barack Obama in 2007 it was already seriously outdated, if it ever had any value. And why should it? An integrated society is not easily broken off into equally easily manipulated interest groups like African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans.

Segregation pays — at the ballot box.

It is also one of the fastest and most reliable routes to power.

Now I’m not trying to say that Obama is a segregationist like Orville Faubus or even a cheap race hustler like Sharpton. He is something different and obviously more complex and subtle, but in the final analysis he relies on the same reactionary racial estrangement as the other two.

Indeed, our president is the reverse of what he appears to be, pretending to bring the races together when he profits by driving them apart. In that sense, he is similar to Yasser Arafat, talking one way to the West and another to his Palestinian brothers.

Or as John Nolte writes in the “Top Ten Reasons the 2007 Obama Video Matters in 2012:”

Obama’s attacks on the suburbs and the “us vs. them” rhetoric that toxifies the entire speech helps make sense of his divisive presidency and campaign. Moreover, the speech that made Obama a national star was his 2004 address at the Democratic Convention where he was famously unifying and post-racial. That was his “no red states, no blue states” speech.

Now we know the 2004 speech was bullshit.

That’s news.

I’m not sure if that is news at this point, but it’s certainly worth confirming.

But if you’ll excuse me, having committed flagrant Goldsteinisms myself, I’m due to receive the Ludovico Treatment at Minitrue Headquarters to be re-assimilated back into the Borg. Be seeing you!

YES, ANN, TALKING ABOUT RACE IS UGLY (INHERENTLY):  But ask yourself this:  Which side of this political debate is talking about race in a way that suggests that there is an “us” and a “them” that are inherently at odds?  And which side is talking out it in a way that suggests there should be no “us” versus “them”?

The reason the recently released Obama speech video has caused such an outcry is because it has shocked a lot of people (mostly independents) who, in good faith, believed the President would usher in a post-racial era of color blindness.  Not only have the President’s policies over the last 3.75 years failed to fulfill this “hope,” but the new video reveals a man who is far, far from color blindness and an ability to view all Americans equally.

If pointing this fact out is “ugly,” then we simply cannot criticize anything the President ever does or says on the issue of race.  That, to me, is a much greater ugliness, and a dangerous one at that.

THE NEXT MARTHA STEWART? “Enter Brit Morin, a 26-year-old Google alum fashioning herself as a youthful cross between hacker and homemaker.”

CAN AN ILLEGAL ALIEN BE ADMITTED TO THE BAR?:  That’s the question now confronting the Florida Supreme Court.  My favorite line from the story– typical progressive double-speak:  “It wasn’t illegal in the sense of being a criminal,” D’Alemberte said. “But it was not in compliance with the law.”  [Sandy D’Alemberte, a Democrat, is a former president of the American Bar Association who represents the young man petitioning for admission to the Florida Bar].

A DEBATE PREDICATION, BASED ON HISTORY: “Mitt Romney will probably lose the debate tonight. At least in pundit-world. Why? Because Republicans almost always lose by a large majority there, even when they win in more substantial forums. Everyone knows that Ronald Reagan handed Jimmy Carter his hat when they debated in Cleveland on October 28, 1980. But at the time, much of pundit-world concluded that Carter ‘won on content.’ If the bulk of the country failed to appreciate Carter’s forensic mastery, it was because it was seduced by Reagan’s ‘style.’ In the first Reagan–Mondale debate in 1984, when the former vice president was less dull than usual, pundit-world dumped on Reagan and proclaimed a big win for his opponent. Yet post-debate polls showed that a majority of voters ‘said they found Reagan’s answers closer to their own thinking on the issues.'”

MY NEW 4-WHEEL LOVE:  The 2013 Aston Martin Rapide.  Not your typical 4-door family sedan.  Swoon.

ANOTHER REASON WE NEED A SUPERCOMPUTER ON THE MOON: Prof and Mannie can’t bring about the revolution on their own.  (Helpfully reminding Glenn!)

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why We Need A Supercomputer On the Moon.

A MESSAGE TO BLACK VOTERS that’s different from the Obama Daily Caller video.

MESSAGE TO POLITICO: Thanks for quoting InstaPundit, but that wasn’t me, it was guestblogger Elizabeth Price Foley.

REFINERY PROBLEMS SEND CALIFORNIA GAS PRICES SKYROCKETING:

When Errol Emrich drove by a Shell station in his San Jose neighborhood last weekend, regular gas was selling for $4.05 a gallon.

On Monday, it was $4.15. On Tuesday, $4.25. And this weekend? Analysts say it could reach a whopping $4.40.

Problems at California refineries have slashed supplies across the state, cutting fuel production and raising wholesale prices — the price stations pay for their gasoline — by as much as 73 cents, to levels not seen since 2007.

And that almost certainly will boost prices at the pump again soon.

“California gasoline prices may surge in the next five days, perhaps to levels higher than February’s $4.33-a-gallon average,” said Patrick DeHaan, an analyst with Gasbuddy.com. “It is within the realm of possibility that average prices reach near $4.40 or even higher if the situation worsens.”

Under my plan, energy prices will necessarily skyrocket…

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WE’VE LOST TRACK OF SOME SYRIAN CHEMICAL WEAPONS: In the article Ed just linked, at the bottom is this link to Hot Air and Panetta saying we lost some chemical weapons.  Oh, shucks.  I guess they’ll turn up sometime or other.

NOT GOOD: Chinese cyber attack hits White House military office.

REPORT: Turkey Strikes Syria In Response To Weekend Shelling of Turkish Village.

UPDATE: More at the Washington Post.

DRILL, BABY, DRILL: Ambitious $1 Billion Project Aims to Drill A Hole All the Way to Earth’s Mantle.

I hope the DEEP SEVENs don’t mind.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals on Grocery & Personal Care.

Also, today only: Hitachi 18-Volt 3-Tool Combo Kit, $159.99.

POOLS OF WASTE AND CIVIL LIBERTY INTRUSIONS: at the DHS fusion centers.  Between this and the video of Obama channeling Sharpton look for the media to be ultra-protective at the debate and condemn as racist any vague suggestion Romney might make that Obama might be less than competent.  Take that in account as you watch.

FAST WORK FROM ROMNEY WORLD: Joe Biden’s unexpected endorsement of their campaign yesterday — “The middle class has been buried for the the last four years!” — is already being featured in their campaign videos.

UPDATE: In Honor of Biden, Romney Campaign Releases ‘Honest Joe’ T-Shirt — and Jay Leno was goofing on Biden’s gaffe last night as well.

SOCIALISM: IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL LEAVE: Spain’s Tax Take Tumbles as Companies Go Abroad, CNBC reports.

Meanwhile, in a related post, one blogger is pondering, “Forget The Breakup Of The EU, How About The Breakup Of Spain?” 

“It’s a new wrinkle in the whole EU debt crisis. Will regions of indebted countries exit the Eurozone as separate entities while the parent nations try to cling to membership?”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Private survey suggests job growth remains mediocre. “Private-sector employers added 162,000 jobs last month, according to a survey released Wednesday by payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc. That doesn’t bode well for the official monthly jobs report that will be issued Friday by the Labor Department.”

‘DON’T MOVE THEM AFTER MIDNIGHT!’ Whoops! Newt Gingrich tweets, ‘Will Obama move terrorists from gizmo?’

QUOTING OBAMA IS RACIST: “It’s funny how quickly liberals and the media (PTR) can do a heel-turn,” Jim Treacher writes:

OUT: “You selectively edited that!”
IN: “You put back in all the parts we selectively edited out!”

You know, I followed the ’08 presidential race pretty damn closely, and this is the first I’m hearing about that speech. I’m willing to bet that all the people insisting it isn’t news hadn’t heard of it either, or hadn’t seen the whole thing. But they’ve decided you don’t need to know about it. Romney’s dog 30 years ago is important, but Obama’s racebaiting speech 5 years ago isn’t.

Quoting his supporters is also racist, even though in 2009 and 2010, we were supposed to assume the worst about the Tea Party from its most extreme members, whom the networks invariably chose to feature on their broadcasts.

GLENN, I’M SYMPATHETIC TO MANY OF YOUR ARGUMENTS, and I agree that there’s been an effort to make people feel that we’re not allowed to criticize Obama and many people — in the media and in normal life — have an instinct to protect him from criticism. Politics, like any other human endeavor, entails human emotion, and unless you want to turn away from politics altogether, you have to play within reality that exists. The emotions around race are deep and complex. I recommend not toying with them. Move to something more optimistic and positive. That’s what Romney and Ryan seem to want to do with their campaign. They can’t control what their supporters choose to talk about, but this racial material is dragging them down.