Regular mainstream politics, where phony Democratic hacks do battle with sold-out Republican frauds, tends to become tedious, and yet there are scores of reporters in Washington who masochistically crave the privilege of covering such pointless snoozefests. The reporter who can locate something newsworthy on the oft-ignored fringe of the political spectrum has got a much better chance of scoring an exclusive — and, frankly, it’s a lot more interesting.
Also, I like crazy people. God help me, but I do love a kook. (Ask any journalist who covered last year’s Libertarian Party convention what a target-rich environment that was for kook-lovers.) As long as they are not actually dangerous, the wackos and zanies are so much more fun than the uptight Republicans and dishonest Democrats one usually meets in Washington.
If you look at what non-political videos go virual this would seem very true, the weird stuff is a lot more fun to watch.
I’ve been reading Charles Johnson for 7 or more years, he is what you would call a 9/11 conservative, basically a liberal who took 9/11 seriously and dug deep into the swamp of radical Islam, his fight against radical Islam, his exposure of the Rathergate memo and of faux photography, and his unwavering defense of Israel against all comers have been gifts to the country and the world. His support for the troops is unyielding and nobody searches the web like he does.
Robert Stacy McCain is a professional reporter who unlike many reporters of today, actually reports. He has not been shy about speaking up for conservative causes. Like Johnson he is a supporter of Israel and the troops and a hater of Radical Islam and takes 9/11 as seriously today as if it was 9/12/2001. And when it comes to the causes conservatives believe in He Fights!
Yesterday in a comment on a thread of the tea party in Washington Charles Said this:
VodkaPundit is linking to white supremacist blogger Robert Stacy McCain at Pajamas Media.
Now, I’ve worked with Stacy in person a couple of times, at the DNC last summer and at CPAC in February. Both were crowded, high-stress situations. At no time did I see Stacy treat anyone — of any color, creed, whathaveyou — with anything less than respect and good humor.
So, is Robert Stacy McCain a white supremacist? Hell if I know. But he enjoys breaking bread with agnostic half Jews like me, which would certainly make him a different kind of white supremacist.
And serious action took place in the comments. Charles being Charles shot back again with links from the SPLC to back him up:
Check out any of these groups on the web, Stephen, and see if I’m exaggerating.
Robert Stacy McCain being Robert Stacy McCain didn’t interrupt his eating and drinking, but late that night replied with first a comment on the Vodka thread, than an update on his main tea party blog entry concerning the commentators:
Why engage with people who think that way, except to point out that they think that way? Why should I be compelled to defend myself against such “ransom note” smears? And who is “MPH,” except an anonymous a-hole trying to recycle old left-wing attacks on me?
We are in a fight to preserve what remains of American liberty, and I don’t want to waste time defending myself. However, if I may be forgiven for paraphrasing a Yankee, I’m willing to fight it out on this line if it takes all week. Or I might quote Nathan Bedford Forrest’s famous words to Braxton Bragg
I’ll leave you to read the quote, any person who knows the history of the Civil war would be familiar with it. As a person who once took exception to something Charles implied and received satisfaction I can certainly understand Mr. McCain’s anger and in the same position would have reacted the same.
He will find that Johnson unlike Bragg is almost certain to keep up the fight. Foote describes Bragg’s decision to not press the matter as a combination of retaining Forest’s services to the army (which were considerable) and his belief that as an “irregular” he was “less subject to discipline for irregularities” (P 813 Civil War a Narrative v2, great book buy the whole series BTW). This means we can expect a week of back and forth, Johnson using the net and McCain using his resources as a reporter.
I don’t know either of these men personally but I’ve linked to McCain he is on my blogroll and I’m damn well not taking him off. I’m a registered commentator on LGF have been for years and I’m damn well not leaving that site either. My opinion can be summed up by these two clips this clip:
Update 2: I’ve removed the 2nd embed since it skipped the meat of the scene that I was looking for.
I have no idea how it will end but neither man is going to go anywhere quietly.
Update: Dan Riehl knows Robert Stacy personally and after this post I can see he is the type of friend I would want in my corner:
For better or worse .. worse, at times!! heh! Stacy McCain is my friend. He doesn’t deserve to be accused as he has been by Johnson. And he certainly deserves strong support from me and any other of his alleged friends, or colleagues that want to make any claim to actually knowing the man a bit. It’s Johnson that is now obviously unworthy of any more of my time. And, lastly, I do find that, as I also find Charles these days, to be somewhat sad.
So Instead of the scenes above that I would prefer to see, we will see the scene below:
With good reason, being tagged a racist is about as damaging a tag as exists because the damage is caused once the accusation is made.
And that is the point. If you want to ruin someone’s reputation, just keep posting the words “racist” in close proximity to their name on the internet so that web search engines associate the person and the accusation. That is what some people tried to do to Glenn Beck recently by making accusations of past criminal conduct in the form of a question for the very purpose of influencing Google and other search engines.
The false accusation of racism is a despicable tactic. It damages the person against whom it is made and the victims of true racism.
And that is why I felt it necessary to speak up this time.
But the greatest defense comes from Cynthia Yockey and deserves quoting:
Beyond those few common principles, I find enormous diversity of belief and opinion in the Right, as well as a diversity of sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race and what have you. Plus, I find women in positions of power and authority. People on the Right are able to have opposite and mutually exclusive opinions on various matters. Put together, that is real diversity.
So, yes, Stacy and I are at daggers drawn over homosexual equality, especially gay marriage equality. But he states his reasons — and his feelings. I state mine. And we remain staunch and loyal friends.
In addition, Stacy is NOT a racist — there’s just no way.
As I’ve said I don’t know Robert Stacy McCain personally, but after hearing his friends come to his defense, I sure would like to.
Ok we can safely say that the attendance at the 9/12 rally was between 500,000 and 2 million people. Either way that an awful lot of people.
The MSM will see this sign
Charles Johnson has seen some signs he didn’t like, and also pointed out that the John Birch Society planned to attend. He didn’t mention the Ron Paul guys but from the Tea Party in Boston I attended a few months ago there were a few Ron Paul guys there so I’d be shocked if there weren’t thousands of Paulians there.
I didn’t like the signs he pointed out either, the John Birch Society are a bunch of nuts and I’m already on record referring to Ron Paul as a Crazy Uncle.
It’s not so odd that 1% of any population might be off its rocker, the problem is in a country of 300,000,000 that is 3 million people. Even if 1/10 of one percent is crackers that’s 300,000 people. To give you some perspective that’s more troops than we have in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Based on the 1% theory that would put the number of absolute nuts there between 5,000 and 200,000. If you use the 1/10 theory that makes a range of 500-20,000
Now if I’m the MSM and I’ve ignored the buildup to this story I’m going to highlight those crazy uncles and their signs and dismiss the movement altogether.
A promoter of the parties might choose to totally ignore the crazy uncles altogether.
As I proclaim myself a normal reasonable person I’m going to notice between 499,500 and 1,980,000 normal American with legitimate complaints about the moves this government has made without forgetting also that there is going to be a smattering of crazy uncles in the mix.
Oh and I suspect like the Boston Tea Party I attended there will be practically no arrests (if any) and no damage. After all these are the taxpayers, they would be paying for repairs.
I submit that the last sign and the stuff you will see posted by Vodkapundit and Glenn (where 12,000 showed up in Illinois) are much more typical. And I’ll also bet that all the adults know what their signs say.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion but based on what I’ve seen both from the net and personally 99% or more of these are regular people who have just decided they’ve had enough. There will be hangers on who want attention and the movement should take note to keep the fringes on the fringe. Pointing that out is just beinghonest, but attempts to make this something this movement something is not that’s either an agenda or Sullivan’s syndrome.
There is a lot going on so this might not be big news but it’s news:
At least two rockets were launched from Lebanon into northern Israel today, and Israeli forces returned fire across the border, an Israeli Army spokesman said, speaking anonymously according to regulation.
Well the first place to look when something like this is Israellycool, but since it happened just before the Sabbath and he is an observant Jew, there is very little there, same with The Muqata.
Perhaps if Israel would just withdraw from occupied Lebanese territories, these sorts of incidents would stop. Hezbollah wouldn’t have any incentive any more to attack Israelis.
Oh, sorry…Israel already withdrew some nine years ago.
We will see if this is just a couple of shots or if the idea is to get things going while America is distracted.
Update: Yourish notices a familiar pattern of knowledge and inaction by the UN.
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