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NEW YORK TIMES’ EDITORIAL BOARD: LET’S HAVE A GANG WAR! “Remember the good old days when the Left pretended to worry about ‘eliminationist rhetoric’? Now, they don’t even pretend to worry about a Bernie Sanders volunteer trying to murder Republican Congressmen…Perhaps the politest thing we can say about the New York Times editorialists is that they talk like people who have lost the argument.”

Read the whole thing.

‘A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL PARTY’ is how Michael Walsh, writing in the guise of his leftwing alter-ego, David Kahane, has described the Democratic party on occasion. And the New York Times, its house organ, concurs! In an article yesterday titled “Democrats: Do Not Surrender the Judiciary,” the Gray Lady’s editorial board has a modest plan for their party:

With Republicans controlling the Senate and the judicial filibuster dead, the Democrats’ odds of denying President Trump a second Supreme Court appointment are slim. Barring some unforeseen development, the president will lock in a 5-to-4 conservative majority, shifting the court solidly to the right for a generation.

This is all the more reason for Democrats and progressives to take a page from “The Godfather” and go to the mattresses on this issue.

“I’m confused on if 1. Anyone on The NY Times Ed Board has seen The Godfather or if 2. They have and are suggesting starting a murderous mob war to prevent a SCOTUS pick,” Stephen Miller asks. “Because THIS is what happens when you go to the mattresses,” Twitchy adds:

I’m old enough to remember when the left wanted gun-related metaphors to be considered the equivalent of the N-word; now they’re ready to launch mob wars and put horses’ heads into beds. I eagerly await Paul Krugman’s condemnation of his own newspaper’s eliminationist rhetoric.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Shot:

Not everyone in Hollywood is happy with the effect that the “Me Too” movement has had on their industry.

Director Terry Gilliam is one of the few men in Hollywood brave enough to speak out against the movement. Make no mistake, he knows Harvey Weinstein “is a monster,” but he believes some of the women who chose to work with him knew what they were getting into. And the mob that’s taken a hold of Hollywood in the wake of their allegations is out of control.

“It’s like when mob rule takes over, the mob is out there they are carrying their torches and they are going to burn down Frankenstein’s castle,” Gilliam told AFP.

—“Director Bashes The Me Too ‘Mob’ That’s Taken Control Of Hollywood,” the Daily Caller, yesterday.

● Chaser:

But it’s what you do while you’re here, and what you should be doing is living hopefully and trying to balance your needs and the needs of the world and the planet, and don’t fuck the place up.  So that’s the problem with the idea that it’s all going to go to rat shit eventually so let’s make as much money as possible.  Those people will always be a fungus and if I was running the country I would take them out and shoot them frankly, but that’s something else [laughs].

—Gilliam discussing the environment with a Website called Collider.com, while promoting his 2014 movie, The Zero Theorem, as quoted in “Terry Gilliam’s Eliminationist Rhetoric,” Ed Driscoll.com, September 24, 2014.

As I wrote at the time, “Gilliam’s dystopian 1985 film Brazil ends with Jonathan Pryce’s protagonist being brutally tortured by Michael Palin’s Speer or Eichmann-esque coolly technocratic statist character. Presumably, Pryce’s character dies at the end of the film or shortly afterwards. Who knew until now Gilliam meant it to be a happy ending and the whole film a how-to guide for big government?”

TAKE A BOW, DNC-MSM: Last night, the Boy Scouts became the Hitler Youth. Today, Sean T. Collins, a freelancer who has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired, and the New York Observer among other publications, declares “The world would be a better place if McCain died in Vietnam,” in a since-deleted tweet, as he and other Democrat operatives with bylines attack McCain for wanting to “kill” people by repealing Obamacare, as NewsBusters notes.

Lest you think this is entirely a new attitude amongst the left, recall this New Yorker flashback to the Vietnam War era. “Punch” Sulzberger, who had published the Times from 1963 through 1992, and whose family has controlled the New York Times since the late 19th century, served with distinction as a Marine in the Pacific Theater in WWII and as an officer during the Korean War. His son on the other hand…

[Arthur Ochs “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr.] had been something of a political activist in high school—he had been suspended briefly from Browning for trying to organize a shutdown of the school following the National Guard’s shooting of students at Kent State—and at Tufts he eagerly embraced the antiwar movement. His first arrest for civil disobedience took place outside the Raytheon Company, a defense and space contractor: there, dressed in an old Marine jacket of Punch’s, he joined other demonstrators who were blocking the entrance to the company’s gates. He was soon arrested again, in an antiwar sit-in at the J.F.K. Federal Building in Boston.

Punch had showed little reaction after the first arrest, but when he got word of the second one he flew to Boston. Over dinner, he asked his son why he was involved in the protests and what kind of behavior the family might expect from him in the future. Arthur assured his father that he was not planning on a career of getting himself arrested. After dinner, as the two men walked in the Boston Common, Punch asked what his son later characterized as “the dumbest question I’ve ever heard in my life”: “If a young American soldier comes upon a young North Vietnamese soldier, which one do you want to see get shot?” Arthur answered, “I would want to see the American get shot. It’s the other guy’s country; we shouldn’t be there.” To the elder Sulzberger, this bordered on traitor’s talk. “How can you say that?” he yelled. Years later, Arthur said of the incident, “It’s the closest he’s ever come to hitting me.”

Pinch and the rest of the MSM haven’t exactly matured much since the Woodstock era. As Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon wrote of the Times in a 2014 piece titled “Fast Times at Eighth Avenue High,” “The next time our reporters and producers and anchors and bloggers affect an air of moral or social superiority, the next time they pretend to know the answers to every political and economic and cultural question, remember this: They are basically teenagers.”

And regarding their adolescent rage, and that of the non-media wing of the Democrat Party, as Glenn has written, “Trump, as I keep saying, is a symptom of how rottenly dysfunctional our sorry political class is. Take away Trump and they’re just as awful and destructive. He just brings their awfulness to the fore, where it’s no longer ignorable. Now they’re willing to play with fire, risking the future of the polity over little more than hurt feelings, in a way that would have been unthinkable not long ago.”

Related: “And now, in sports news, Deadspin preparing victory lap in event of Sen. John McCain’s death,” tweeting, “I don’t want to hear another [f***ing] word about John McCain unless he dies or does something useful for once.”

I’m so old, I can remember when the left pretended to condemn eliminationist rhetoric.

UPDATE: Liberals Stop Pretending to Care About John McCain After His Health Care Vote.

CONGRESSMAN LUIS GUTIERREZ: When Democrats Take Majority We’re Going To “Eliminate” Trump.

The Lincoln United Methodist Church is a sanctuary church and according to Gutierrez’s website, he “spoke to a packed house about the need to defend DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and other forms of legal immigration status that are under attack from Republicans and Donald Trump.”

Gutierrez said that while Trump is attempting to criminalize immigrants, the president is the “real criminal.” The Congressman said illegal immigrants are not criminals and that history will determine who the true criminals are.

“For me, the major criminal that exists in the United States of America is called Donald Trump, he lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House,” Gutierrez said to the congregation. “And we’re going to take actions today, and we’re going to take actions tomorrow. And there will soon be a majority in the House of Representatives, and I’m going to make sure that I am there to make sure of one thing, that we write those articles of impeachment and take him to trial before the Senate and eliminate him as president of the United States of America.”

I’m so old I can remember when eliminationist rhetoric was an incitement to violence.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Why, yes I can, considering TNR’s response to the Obama-approved government “slimdown” in 2013:

As Jim Geraghty tweeted in 2013, “The New Republic: Your first choice for violent, authoritarian, eliminationist rhetoric!”; little has changed since Marty Peretz left the building, apparently.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

The speaker, who is wearing a Black Lives Matter sweatshirt, isn’t identified by name but says at one point, “I am a pre-school teacher who is going to f**king radicalize mother-f**king four year olds and five year olds.” This brings a huge cheer from the crowd.

After opening the rant with, “F**k white supremacy. F**k the U.S. empire” the speaker attacks capitalism. “You know what America thrives off of? Capitalism,” the speaker says, adding, “We use our mother=f**king, f**king black and brown bodies to live and survive while white people own f**king properties after that.” But the speaker has a solution for this problem, “So you know what we need to do? We need to start giving f**king money.” The rant continues, “White people, give your f**king money, your f**king house, your f**king property, we need it f**king all. You need to reparate black and indigenous people right now.”

A minute or so later, the speaker takes it up a notch saying, “And we need to stark killing people. First off, we need to start killing the White House. The White House must die.”

I eagerly await Paul Krugman’s swift and brutal denunciation of this ugly and violent eliminationist rhetoric by a person with such influence over others.

IS THIS THE KIND OF PROTEST OBAMA FINDS “HEARTENING?” A Black Lives Matter Protester: ‘We Need to Start Killing People.’

This pre-school teacher wants to violently overthrow our government and our economy, in the name of Black Lives Matter. What a great message to be giving to the next generation, let alone to share on the internet. She screamed, “F**k white supremacy, f**k the U.S. empire, f**k your imperialist a** lives. That s**t gotta go.” She also yelled, “We need to start killing people. First off, we need to start killing the White House. The White House must die. The White House, your f**king White House, your f**king Presidents, they must go!”

I remember when “eliminationist rhetoric” was considered bad by the left, instead of aspirational. More here.

WHITES NOT WELCOME: ACLU Official Mocks Elderly White People, Tells Them They Have ‘Five Years Left’

Rialto, California, held a regularly scheduled city council meeting last Tuesday after a city councilman apologized for planning an event to discuss the possibility of Rialto becoming a “sanctuary city.”

Luis Nolasco, a community engagement and policy advocate for the ACLU of Southern California, stood up to speak at the city council meeting and attacked many of the white people present, saying they are not actual residents of Rialto.

Nolasco said, “This is my town.”

He said that the important part of the sanctuary city discussion is “who are the people we are talking about.”

The ACLU official said that “the people in this room are not representative of Rialto. Sorry to break it, but growing up here white people were the minority.”

“The reality is that black and Latinos are the majority of the city, and that is representative of the city, and that’s going to continue to be the case for future generations,” Nolasco, 26, added.

The city of Rialto is 72.4 percent Latino, according to a 2015 Census estimate.

“It’s kind of mean for me to say it but these people have probably like five years left,” Nolasco said while gesturing to the white attendees at the meeting. A video of the meeting shows that several of them were elderly.

Eliminationist rhetoric.

YOU WENT FULL REICHSTAG, MAN. NEVER GO FULL REICHSTAG: The New Republic on the firebombing of the GOP’s North Carolina HQ:

tnr_new_republic_gop_firebombed_10-16-16

It’s a rather ironic post, considering that TNR tweeted this during the government “slimdown” in the fall of 2013:

tnr_new_republic_tank_strike_on_gop_10-1-13

As Jim Geraghty tweeted at the time, “The New Republic: Your first choice for violent, authoritarian, eliminationist rhetoric!” And now conspiracy theories as well. Come back Marty Peretz, all is forgiven!

Related: Look what happened to this Trump/Pence vehicle at the Iowa campaign headquarters.

 

YOU KEEP USING THAT WORD. I DO NOT THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS:

Shot: Obama’s Impassioned Plea to Vote: ‘Tolerance is on the Ballot.’

—The increasingly politicized Internet Movie Database, Sunday.

Chaser: Five Times Hillary Clinton Tried To ‘Other’ Barack Obama.

Heat Street, Sunday.

Hangover: Clinton Campaign Doubles Down: Says Trump Supporters Are “Deplorable.” And as Glenn noted last week, “People are focusing on the ‘Basket Of Deplorables’ line — which is an awful line because it’s simultaneously memorable without being evocative — but the worst part of Hillary’s speech was where she called opponents ‘irredeemable’ and ‘not America.’ That’s pretty much eliminationist rhetoric, right there.”

 

TRUMP NEEDS “THE CRAP BEAT OUT OF HIM JUST ONCE,” JAY LENO TELLS THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER:

Sitting in the Mercedes-Benz Lounge at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance last month, Leno, leaning on his self-deprecating humor that captivated decades of NBC viewers, singled out Trump. “I think this is the problem with Donald Trump. I don’t think anybody has just ever beaten the crap out of him, so he has this attitude of ‘whatever.’ When you have the crap beat out of you, you learn how to negotiate, you learn how to deal with people,” Leno explains. “You learn that kindness is the greatest virtue you can have.”

I’m old enough to remember when the American left (and Jay has admitted that’s his political worldview) at least pretended to frown upon bullying and eliminationist rhetoric. But then, we live in an era when someone who attempted to assassinate a Republican presidential candidate is let off with two years and deportation. As Glenn wrote earlier this week of Trump’s would-be assassin, it’s “hard to imagine someone who went after Obama or Hillary getting this kind of treatment.” Similarly, it’s impossible to imagine Leno saying that smug leftists such as Obama or Hillary should have the crap beaten out of them. And it’s a particularly fascinating admission given that Leno had Trump on as a guest of the Tonight Show at least ten times without coming to blows.

The timing of Leno’s quote also recalls similar language in the air during the fall of 2008, such as when Reebok decided it would be a good idea to politicize their heretofore apolitical mascot “Terry Tate Office Linebacker,” by issuing a clip in which he’s depicted violently ramming Sarah Palin, that year’s Republican vice presidential nominee, to the ground:

PEOPLE ARE FOCUSING ON THE “BASKET OF DEPLORABLES” LINE — which is an awful line because it’s simultaneously memorable without being evocative — but the worst part of Hillary’s speech was where she called opponents “irredeemable” and “not America.” That’s pretty much eliminationist rhetoric, right there.

IF SOMEONE DID THIS TO HILLARY IT WOULD BE A SIGN OF SOCIETY’S HOPELESS MISOGYNY: Naked Donald Trump statues pop up in several cities.

The group named the political art project “The Emperor Has No Balls,” inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale of an overly confident ruler titled “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” according to The Washington Post.

“Like it or not, Trump is a larger-than-life figure in world culture at the moment,” an Indecline spokesperson told the newspaper Thursday.

“Looking back in history, that’s how those figures were memorialized and idolized in their time — with statues,” he added.

The artist behind the project, who posted a video of the process, is a Las-Vegas sculptor who goes by Ginger and has extensive experience in creating and designing monsters for horror films and haunted houses.

“When the guys [from INDECLINE] approached me, it was all because of my monster-making abilities,” he told the Post.

“Trump is just yet another monster, so it was absolutely in my wheelhouse to be able to create these monstrosities.”

Also, calling someone a “monster” is eliminationist rhetoric that might lead to violence. Well, unless the target is a Republican, anyway.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Reporting from Washington — Law enforcement officials had only begun their examination of a Tucson supermarket scene where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 17 others were shot Saturday when many on the political left settled on a culprit: overheated political rhetoric.

Even before the name of the shooter was known, a fierce debate spilled out across blogs and social media, with liberal commentators blaming the attack on the violent imagery evoked by some “tea party” candidates and conservatives during the recent midterm elections.

They noted that Giffords’ tea party-backed opponent, Jesse Kelly, held a fundraiser at a shooting range in which he invited supporters to “help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office” by shooting an M-16 rifle with him. They pointed to an online map Sarah Palin posted during the midterm election that used cross hairs to mark each congressional Democrat she wanted to defeat, along with her frequent use of shooting metaphors on the campaign trail.

—“In Gabrielle Giffords shooting, many on left quick to lay blame,” the Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2011.

Flash-forward to today; L.A. Times editors choose cartoon of Ted Cruz armed with a long-barreled pistol about to duel with an unarmed Donald Trump to illustrate Jonah Goldberg’s latest column for the paper, “How to stop Donald Trump.”

Given that in January of 2011, Michael Hirsh of the left-leaning National Journal appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews and called for, as Jeff Poor of the Daily Caller wrote at the time, “a moral sanction against gun metaphors similar to the ‘N’ word,” why on earth would the L.A. Times choose such an obviously racist visual metaphor during a heated election year?

And given that, as Glenn asked a few minutes ago, “If Trump Is the One Promoting Violence, Then Why Do So Many Americans Say They Want to Punch Him in the Face?,” why is the Times ratcheting up the eliminationist rhetoric to a whole new level?

IF WE CAN’T HAVE SMOD, HE’S THE NEXT BEST THING: CNN Compares Donald Trump to ‘Death Star.’

Remember, this is the same network that once got the vapors over its guests using a word like “crosshairs.” But now comparing Trump to a planetary killing machine* is perfectly fine.

Related: “New York Times columnist Ross Douthat apologized for joking about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign ending in an assassination attempt.”

Paul Krugman, always on the lookout for “eliminationist rhetoric,” call your office.

* To be fair, one that’s on the side of the angels, but still.

OBAMA — STILL POLARIZING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, writes Victor Davis Hanson, with a detail that should have gotten much wider play last week:

Polls confirm that Obama is the most polarizing president in recent memory. There is little middle ground: supporters worship him; detractors in greater number seem to vehemently dislike him. Why then does the president, desperate for some sort of legacy, continue to embrace polarization?

A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly; the album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes. So why wouldn’t the president’s advisors at least have advised him that such a gratuitous White House sanction might be incongruous with a visual message of racial hatred? Was Obama seeking cultural authenticity, of the sort he seeks by wearing a T-shirt, with his baseball cap on backwards and thumb up?

Read the whole thing.

VDH naturally asks how the media would have responded if GWB had invited a figure this polarizing to the White House, but the current president’s own history is also telling. Recall that in January of 2011 after the Tucson shooting, “Obama [Called] for a New Era of Civility in U.S. Politics,” as the New York Times described his widely praised speech. Jared Lee Loughner severely wounded a congresswoman, killed or wounded 17 others — and killed a federal judge. And last week, Obama met with someone whose album cover features an image of a judge who had just been murdered. And a media that was once utterly obsessed over “eliminationist rhetoric” and bulls-eye clip-art didn’t lose a moment of sleep.

obama_kendrick_lamar_article_banner_1-17-16-1

As Jonah Goldberg once said of the DNC-MSM, “To Hell With You People.”