(Politico) The issue of race and American politics, never far beneath the surface during Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, is making a loud, overt and surprisingly early appearance in the 2012 presidential race.

And no one knows — least of all Obama himself — what impact the race card, always a wild card, will have on the president’s reelection prospects.

I’ll suggest it backfires, particularly if Team Obama and their sycophants attack Romney’s Mormonism.

In the past several months, Newt Gingrich has drawn sharp criticism for labeling Obama the “food stamp president” and for suggesting poor kids in New York’s majority-minority school system burnish their work ethic by picking up mops. First lady Michelle Obama bridled at the perception that she’s an “angry black woman.” Obama’s Chicago-based campaign has pushed back against stories that he’s more or less given up on the white vote.

Except, Newt wasn’t just talking about Black people: the majority of food stamp recipients are Caucasian. Michelle Obama is the one who brought up the angry black woman thing in order to create racial division. And Team Obama was the one who said they had given up on the white vote.

But nothing has illustrated the potentially explosive political impact of race — an issue that Obama has downplayed throughout his career — like the firestorm around the image of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her finger at the first black president of the United States.

If there were any illusion that 2012 would be the post-racial election most Americans hoped for, it vanished with that single shake of a finger and 30 seconds of sniping lost to history in the turbine roar of Air Force One.

Got that? The duly elected Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, is an evil racist simply because she wagged her finger in the face of a disrespectful half-black President. By that definition, we could call Obama a sexist, since he was disrespectful to Brewer and walked away.

But, what else does Obama have to run on? He certainly can’t run on his record. He doesn’t like to talk about his signature legislation, the Stimulus and Obamacare. He can play with the economic numbers all he wants, but people are hurting, and things are not getting better. The housing industry is still a major mess. Real world prices are rising. Disposable income is very low. Consumer confidence is low. There are historic numbers of people who have given up on the job market. The recession supposedly ended in June, 2009, yet, here in 2012, nothing seems to have changed.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Polk Award-Winning Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings made a startling set of admissions on CSPAN, recently. Not only did he admit that most “journalists” are liberals, but he implied that they really aren’t interested in just reporting the facts of stories. Instead he said they are filled with a liberal “moralistic righteousness” and their goal is to “afflict” those they disagree with.

In the discussion, Hastings laid out how he sees his work as a journalist. “I think any journalist worth his salt often has a real moralistic kind of righteousness to them somewhere in their soul… and we talk in grand terms about ourselves, you know, afflicting the powerful and comforting the afflicted,” he told the CSPAN host.

Not much “objectivity” going on there, is there?

In the video segment featured by Townhall, Hastings is initially asked about his “prestigious” Polk Award and this discussion led CSPAN’s Brian Lamb to ask Hastings about the ideological mindset of Polk Award winners. This brought Hastings to his admission.

Of course, if one has to explain how “prestigious” an award is, one should suspect it ain’t that prestigious! Prestige is something that others should assign to you, not something you should assign to yourself.

Now, you might recall Mr. Hastings as the man whose 2010 Rolling Stone article eventually led to the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. Hastings caught some off-record carping by McChrystal’s staffers the revelation of which made the General look bad to his political leaders. Even then, many might have questioned Hastings’ actions by actually publishing those unguarded and casual, off-record conversations. It smacked of agenda or gotcha journalism.

But as we see in this interview, as far as Hastings is concerned, that is what journalists are supposed to do. They are supposed to approach their work with a “moralistic” agenda guiding them. They aren’t supposed to just publish the facts and let readers decide. They are supposed to “afflict the powerful” and that with all the left-wing political ideology such a crusade implies.

For those of you not able to see the video, here is the meat of the discussion:

Brian Lamb: “Is it fair to say that the Polk Award winners are usually liberal journalists?”

Michael Hastings: “Um, probably. I mean most journalists I know are liberal.”

BL: “Activist journalists. I mean activist people, would you consider yourself an activist?

MH: “I think any.. no, no… I think any journalist worth his salt often has a real moralistic kind of righteousness to them somewhere in their soul. And I think that’s a, you know, we’re gonna protect the — and we talk in grand terms about ourselves, you know, afflicting the powerful and comforting the afflicted.”

One can just feel Hastings’ discomfiture with his admission as he struggles with his reply. With his first thought that he doesn’t consider himself an “activist,” he seems to have a vague feeling he shouldn’t be admitting all this, but he does it anyway.

Naturally we aren’t surprised by the whole affair.

Finally, I know what many of you are going to say. Many of you are going to be rolling your eyes asking me if I think this is new. Of course I don’t think that the sentiments that Hastings related is in any way “new.” But what is unusual is to see a “journalist” admitting out in the open like this to his and his fellow’s blatant bias. That and it is my job to report on these things, so please stop with the “are you surprised” rejoinders, will ya?

If you want a case of clear bias, the Washington D.C. affiliate of CBS will surely fill the bill for its bias against pro-life supporters. On January 23 the DC affiliate featured on its website a photo slide show of pictures taken at the March for Life rally held annually at the nation’s capitol. Curiously, though, there wasn’t a single photo of any pro-lifers. Instead the photo essay featured only photos of abortion-supporting protestors that stood on the sidelines taunting the pro-life marchers.

The photo slide show initially featured seven photos of abortion supporters such as one of marchers holding signs saying “Family Planning Saves Lives Worldwide,” one featuring women holding signs saying that abortion should be kept legal, and another showing a woman sporting an abortion on demand sticker.

Upwards to 50,000 pro-life supporters turned out in the DC cold to participate in the March for Life, yet apparently CBS could only find the small handful of pro-abortion supporters to photograph.

Pro-life advocates like Jill Stanek were incredulous and it wasn’t long before the comments section on the CBS website exploded with pro-lifers crying foul. Dozens of unhappy commenters remarked on how badly the bias of CBS galled them.

Finally a day or so later, CBS altered its slide show and added some photos of some of the actual participants of the pro-life march. The slide show now features 7 photos of pro-lifers and an equal amount of pro-abortion supporters.

Interestingly, though, there was no notice and no explanation by the CBS affiliate that it altered/added to the slide show and no explanation why the slide show had no pro-life photos for the first few days it was live on the web.

Pro-lifers can take heart that they were heard by the TV station causing it to take action to correct the sleight. But the fact that CBS put up a slide show of photos taken at a pro-life rally but didn’t feature a single photo of any pro-lifers pretty much shows the bias from which the TV station came when it initially posted the webpage.

But even with the alteration, we still see CBS’ bias. After all there were 50,0000 pro-life supporters and a paltry few hundred pro-infanticide supporters yet CBS gives them equal treatment as if they were the same.

Yep, the bias still reigns.

The gauzy puffery that the Old Media slathers upon the Occupy Wall Street movement has helped keep most Americans in the dark about how nasty, how violent, how outrageous, and even how incredibly lacking in integrity this movement is. On the conservative blogs the truth is well known, of course, but the fact that few Americans seem to know how bad the OWSers are shows that as conservatives we are not effectively getting our message out there.

For the initial two years of its existence the Old Media spent its every waking moment destroying, maligning, and out right lying about the Tea Party movement. Even today you’ll see an occasional swipe at the Tea Patiers made by some hater from the left and the Old Media is happy to “report” the slander, naturally.

You might remember when Obama operative Anna Park tried to start a counter movement that she prosaically called “the Coffee Party” during the heyday of the Tea Party. You may also recall that those Old Media mavens, while daily lying and lambasting the Tea Partiers, fell all over themselves to play up the silly and quickly failed and forgotten “Coffee Party” effort.

Similarly, when the Occupiers hit the scene, the Old Media went into paroxysms of ecstasy over the whole thing. Even today, after conservatives have so effortlessly ripped away the veneer from the absurdity and essential anti-Americanness of the OWSers, the Old Media is still slathering OWS with unearned and illicit praise.

Most Americans are unaware that real communists and socialists and other anti-American groups form the core of OWS. Few Americans understand that these people are drug addicts and criminals that have indulged every imaginable crime at these events. From property destruction to child abandonment to rape to gun crimes, just about every crime imaginable from small to large have been committed at these events. People have even died at these things!

There is even a website dedicated to chronicling the arrests made at OWS events. As of the writing of this article they had noted 5,975 arrests at OWS events across the nation. And this is a left-wing hosted website, too. You see they are proud of these arrests.

Compared to the several years of Tea Party events, the OWS events have been a criminal’s paradise. Not only have the Tea Partiers never had any arrests, or fights, or criminality, at their events they’ve even left every park they used cleaner than they were when they started their events!

Just because the OWS movement is dying down right now — maybe only due to the winter cold — that doesn’t mean the outrages of the OWSers is slowing. Just recently a church that made the foolish mistake of helping these criminals found its facilities vandalized. A $12,000 baptismal fount was stolen along with laptops and other items. These creeps even urinated on Church property. There have been other churches that have been vandalized when they tried to assist the OWSers, too.

With all the criminality that has occurred at these supposedly peaceful events, the public should have long ago turned against OWS. Yet polls still show that Americans have not turned against OWS. Why? Because the Old Media has told them how great it all is and has made a concerted effort to hide the truth from people.

By contrast, the Tea Party’s image has been thoroughly battered with Americans. Is it any surprise with the near daily barrage of hate the Old Media bludgeons the Tea Party with?

If no other example is believable to show how the Old Media establishment is sold out to the far left, the difference in the way it has treated the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement is solid proof of that bias.

Sadly, even after we’ve exposed all the criminality at the OWS events in conservative media outlets from newspapers to TV to blogs, the fact that Americans still have not turned foursquare against the Occupiers shows that we have made little headway in reaching the country with the truth.

On Wednesday morning the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake posted an infographic that was a perfect example of how one can use a graphic chart to influence the public in subtle ways, ways that we of the center right better start employing in our own efforts if we want to win over the public.

Blake’s post, “Why People Hate Congress,” fits in well with President Obama’s class warfare rhetoric as employed in his campaign to set different economic classes against each other in a desperate and cynically populist bid to get reelected next year. There is little of substance to Blake’s post other than to fan the flames of the sort of hatred that he wants to see grow in order to aid Obama in 2012.

The Post’s Blake also ended up having to pull the graphic off his The Fix blog post because it simply did not illustrate what he claimed it did in his story — but that is another issue that we’ll deal with at the end of this report.

Blake begins his piece asking, “Want to know why Americans hate Congress?” He then goes on to claim it is in part because our elected representatives in Washington D.C. are members of the eeeevil rich.

The fact that members of Congress are getting richer (and 57 members come from the top 1 percent, according to USA Today) confirms what Americans suspect about the people who are running this country: that they don’t empathize with normal people.

Of course, with a dispassionate application of logic, having a few dollars more than the next guy does not ipso facto make the richer guy so out of touch that he cannot empathize with anyone in a lower salary range. Only those filled with hate make this assumption. Empathy has nothing to do with class, money, or politics. It has to do with one’s character.

Further there are plenty of members of Congress with the character to understand and have empathy with others. Then there are some that don’t. People are people, rich or poor.

It is also telling that even Blake admits that Congress has always been filled with “the rich.” The founders were not groveling in poverty, after all. It often takes a person that has achieved a certain place in society to become elected. I mean, should they be elected, how can anyone expect “the poor” or even the lower middle class to afford to fund homes both in D.C. and back in their district? Who can afford to leave their family and business if half the year off more to fly off the D.C. to attend to government business? And with the costs of elections and the Byzantine election laws these days causing many candidates to self fund, it will only be natural that “the rich” end up being our representatives in Congress.

But special attention has to be paid to the graphic Blake used to illustrate his story. And what a masterwork of subtlety it is. Blake claimed that the illustration made by a well-known hate-the-rich researcher from California showed in graphic form the distribution of wealth among both chambers of Congress. The graphic depicts the “top 1%” and the “next 9%” in the color red. Then it uses blue to show the “following 10%” and the “bottom 80%.” Notice what is going on? That’s right, this graphic uses the color red to depict the eeevil rich. And what is the color red in politics these days? None other than the color the Old Media has assigned to the Republican Party.

This graphic is a great illustration of the way the left influences the emotions of the viewer toward their positions. George Scoville puts it perfectly in his post about this graphic.

If you don’t make your living thinking strategically about political communications, this might not have jumped out at you. But this is a very clever and very deceptive messaging tactic. If Democrats… are going to use this type of tactic, then Republicans and pro-liberty advocacy organizations need to take a page from this playbook quickly. We certainly can’t rely on the media to apply the kind of scrutiny that pulls back the curtain for casual political observers.

Exactly right. We on the right don’t think of this type of messaging often enough.

Then there is the rest of this story. In truth, the graphic that Blake claimed illustrated the riches of Congress directly, in fact did not. It actually meant to illustrate the wealth distribution of all Americans as a percentage of Congress.

A little later on Wednesday morning, Aaron Blake removed the graphic and issued this mea culpa:

This post initially used a chart that included data that we and others misunderstood. It did not reflect the wealth of Congress, but instead the wealth of the country, described according to numbers of seats in Congress. The Fix regrets the error.

Ooops. I guess the facts were “too good to check for the good folks at the Washington Post.”

But wait. Don’t get upset at Mr. Blake too quickly. After all, this graphic stirred the liberal heart. A quick glance makes viewers imagine that it is showing the number of eeevil Republicans compared to the nice, poor Democrats in Congress. In fact, that is precisely the emotion that the graphic is intended to evoke. So, we can fault Mr. Blake for not looking close enough at the graphic to discern its statistical facts, but we cannot fault him for having instantly grasped the subliminal message it was intended to relay. The fact is, the graphic works beautifully.

These are the sort of tactics the left employs, folks. We’d best become hip to them fast.

(Politico) The number of officers killed in the line of duty jumped 13 percent in 2011 compared with the year before — and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder condemned the increase as “a devastating and unacceptable trend” that he blamed on illegal firearms.

The number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty rose to 173 this year, from 153 in 2010, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund announced Wednesday. This year’s figure is 23 percent higher than 122 killed in the line of duty in 2009.

So, the guns themselves are illegal? Er, no

Holder said “too many guns have fallen into the hands of those who are not legally permitted to possess them,” in explaining the increase.

So, what does Holder propose to do?

“This is a devastating and unacceptable trend. Each of these deaths is a tragic reminder of the threats that law enforcement officers face each day,” Holder in a statement. “I want to assure the family members and loved ones who have mourned the loss of these heroes that we are responding to this year’s increased violence with renewed vigilance and will do everything within our power — and use every tool at our disposal — to keep our police officers safe.”

You know what else is a devastating and unacceptable trend? Hundreds of Mexicans being killed by guns allowed to walk into Mexico illegally, thanks to operations under the Department of Justice. Also, an AG that lies about it.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Top ten lists at year’s end are always subjective, to be sure. But some lists seem rather obviously out of whack at first glance. Politico’s “Top 10 political blunders of 2011” is one of those lists that is glaring for what isn’t present as opposed to what is. And what isn’t seems to bespeak that Politico wanted to avoid focusing on Democrat failures in a year when there are so many Democrat failures.

Politico bills this list as one of the “worst political strategic decisions” of 2011. Strangely enough, this list contains fully seven GOP “blunders” yet only three Democrat goofs. Some of the GOP blunders are also questionable for any top ten list considering what is missing from the thing.

First we need a rundown on what is on this list, and in the order Politico places them.

• Obama pivots to deficits
• Republicans vote on the Ryan budget
• Tim Pawlenty bets it all on Ames
• Mitt Romney hides
• Rick Perry debates
• Jon Huntsman returns from China
• Mr. Daley goes to Washington
• Mitch and Haley stay home
• Dems pick Charlotte
• John Kasich pushes S.B. 5

Isn’t it fascinating that some of these “top blunders” did not actually result in a major reversal of great import of some type or another? Take the Jon Huntsman point, for instance. Jon Huntsman is not consequential and his decision to enter the GOP primary race instead of staying in China is not going to make much difference to anyone, anywhere. The Mitch Daniels point is also specious for such a list as Daniel’s decision to sit out 2012 did not necessarily end his career. Further the blunder of Democrats picking Charlotte, North Carolina, while certainly a messy proposition fraught with mistakes, is hardly any kind of end of the world goof, is it?

Now let’s talk about what is not on that list. Solyndra is not on that list. How can this be? This is a political blunder of epic proportions. Even the left-wing Washington Post is saying that the decision supposedly based on science and good economics was instead “infused with politics at every level.” Millions of tax dollars were thrown away during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression at a failing company just to suit Obama’s desire to tout his fantasy of “green jobs.”

If you don’t want to pick Solyndra, why you can reach for the debacle of Fast And Furious for inclusion on such a list. Here we have a program that was supposed to track guns used by Mexican narco-terrorists so that these evil cretins could be ferreted out deep in Mexico. Instead, thousands of American guns sold to these criminals right here in America were lost in the Mexican interior and then were turned to kill hundreds of Mexicans and perhaps two U.S. law enforcement officers. Then, making matters worse, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder — an Obama appointee — has lied repeatedly about what he knew about the program and when he knew it. Now over 90 government officials are calling for Holder’s resignation. If this isn’t a major political blunder, what is? This has made Eric Holder an embattled Attorney General, at the least. Yet, it makes no spot on this top ten blunder list.

Another thing missing is GOP House Speaker John Boehner’s blunder with the recent tax fight that seemed to show that he had no control over his own majority in the House of Representatives, revealing him to be somewhat hapless. I’d think that blunder outweighs anything Jon Huntsman could do and it is most certainly a worse blunder than Rick Perry’s debating style in import to the country

I’d also like to assign a bad strategic decision to Obama’s Osawatomie, Kansas speech that he disgorged onto the nation, a speech so filled with class warfare and un-presidential, overly harsh rhetoric. Also, where is Anthony Weiner on this list? Weiner went from one of the most up-and-coming, young Democrats in Congress to a resigned disgrace over his decision to claim that his Internet account was hacked instead of admitting that he sent nudie pictures of himself to some young woman clear across the country. It totally torpedoed his bid to step from Congress to higher office and greater fame. That seems like a major strategic blunder to me. How about you?

While I agree with the Kasich example — his effort to mirror Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s success at paring down union power was a major legislative abortion — I should say that the Democrat’s efforts to recall all sorts of GOP officials in Wisconsin is a bigger failure. Not to mention the idiotic flee-bagging engaged in by Indiana and Wisconsin Democrats during Walker and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniel’s efforts to enact those same fiscally sane measures. Democrat’s fleeing their states early this year to attempt to hamper Republicans efforts to cut state budgets was a huge strategic flop and likely led to their inability to recall Republicans in Wisconsin. It may also lead to stronger GOP support in both Indiana and Wisconsin.

In any case, I could go on and on with blunders that occurred in 2011 that Politico ignored, but I think you get the picture. Granted it is hard to settle on a mere ten examples of any top blunders, but it just seems that some of the “top blunders” Politico chose are not so consequential as those they left off the list.

On Monday morning a story whipped through the liberal blogosphere (and unfortunately one generally conservative news source) that had the left gleefully attacking the Tea Party Movement. They were thrilled, you see, to find a Tea Partier advocating for the assassination of President Obama and his entire family. Only they didn’t. Find such a Tea Partier, I mean.

Keith DeHavelle outlined this great example of how the left wing blogs glommed onto this story of an idiot that wrote on his Facebook page that Obama and his family should be assassinated and then assigned it to a “Tea Party darling” when in truth neither the nut in question nor any part of the story itself is connected in any way to a Tea Party group or Tea Party sentiment.

The story began when unsuccessful candidate for the Carson, California City Council, Jules Manson, decided it would be a great idea to post on his Facebook Page all about his hope that Obama and his family would be assassinated.

.

In an acute example of how erudite this Jules Manson is, he wrote, “Assassinate the f—ing n—er and his monkey children.”

I hope this ignoramus realizes he just committed a federal crime.

Anyway, it wasn’t long before this guy’s Facebook account was canceled and pulled off the web for its hate-speak. Rightly so, too.

But as the morning rolled on the left-wing blogs went nuts defining this guy variously as a “Tea Party Darling,” a libertarian supporter of Ron Paul, along with other labels. Unfortunately, they seemed to have a little trouble taking the time to find out about the real facts about this guy before posting.

Worse was the incorrect description by the New York Daily News — usually a conservative news source — that called Manson “A rabid Tea Party wannabe politician.”

The truth of what Manson “is,” however, is a bit different.

It turns out that Manson explained quite clearly on his own webpage that he does not identify with either of the two main national parties.

I am a mechanical engineer working usually within aerospace and defense industry. For a long time I switched between the two parties but found they were not representing the best interest of the general public. I believe honoring the constitution, a contract between the government and the governed, is key in a free democracy. I recently became a member of the Libertarian Party because they mirror many of my views. Such views include smaller government, less taxation, representation for the people, a free market system which allows small business to prosper, and individual liberties and rights. This means I am a constitutional conservative for reforms to return representation back to the public where it belongs. At the city level, such as Carson, this can be done by banning all campaign financing and requiring each candidate to fund their own campaign. This is key to restoring democracy. I believe this can and must be done.

There is also nothing on any of his various webpages and blog posts that identified him as a Tea Partier.

The best coverage of this seems to come from a left-winger blog called Angry Black Lady Chronicles. Left-wing or no, the poster there did a good job tracking down all the particulars of the story and comes to the proper conclusion that this nutcase, Manson, has no connection whatever with the Tea Party movement. As DeHavelle notes, Manson has statements showing him to be anti-Tea Party, even. Not only that but Manson was the editor of SupportAtheism.com. So, he’s not religious, either. This guy seems to be quite far from the Tea Party movement.

Sadly, what we see here are all sorts of bloggers and news sources leaping to a story, labeling a kook, but not taking the time to get down to the truth before hitting that post now button. We saw this when that criminal, mental case shot Gabrielle Giffords, as well. That shooter was labeled a Tea Partier even before anyone even knew his name. How one can claim they know a person’s entire history before they even know a name… well, that one was never explained to me.

While this particular bad actor’s name was known ahead of time, too many leapt to their keyboards to lay claims as to what he “was” and was not before any of them bothered to learn anything about him. That is bad form no matter who does it.

(Des Moines Register) Sobriety, wisdom and judgment.

Those are qualities Mitt Romney said he looks for in a leader. Those are qualities Romney himself has demonstrated in his career in business, public service and government. Those qualities help the former Massachusetts governor stand out as the most qualified Republican candidate competing in the Iowa caucuses.

Sobriety: While other candidates have pandered to extremes with attacks on the courts and sermons on Christian values, Romney has pointedly refrained from reckless rhetoric and moralizing. He may be accused of being too cautious, but choosing words carefully is a skill essential for anyone who could be sitting in the White House and reacting to world events.

Wisdom: Romney obviously is very smart. He graduated as valedictorian at Brigham Young University and finished in the top 5 percent in his MBA class at Harvard, where he also earned a law degree. Romney also exhibits the wisdom of a man who listened and learned from his father and his mother, from his church and from his own trials and errors in life. He does not lack self confidence, but he is not afraid to admit when he has been wrong.

Judgment: Romney disagrees with Democrats on most issues, but he offers smart and well-reasoned alternatives rather than simply proposing to swing a wrecking ball in Washington. He is a serious student of public policy who examines the data before making a decision. His detailed policy paper on the economy contains 87 pages of carefully crafted positions on taxes, energy, trade and regulatory policy, complete with 127 footnotes.

It’s a long piece, and it should be noted that not only did they pay attention to all the candidates, their speeches, their debates, their history, but they also interviewed them (except for Huntsman).

Bachmann: Overall impression: An impressive fireball who can absorb and regurgitate tons of information, even if some of it turns out to be inaccurate.

Newt: Overall impression: Between the books he’s read and the books he’s written, Gingrich juggles endless ideas, but he has yet to make the case he could focus his attention on the important ones.

Crazy Uncle Ron: He insists these principles he’s held for 30 years make him the only true Republican. (You know, like dropping pork into bills then voting against them so he can say he doesn’t vote for pork, blaming the US for 9/11, taking money from neo-Nazi’s, hating Israel, taking Iran’s side against the US – all Republican ideas or something)

Perry: Overall impression: After some debate stumbles, he asks voters to take a second look, but it may take more than that. (Perhaps if Rick would stop speaking in simplistic soundbites and offer some real world policies, rather than unrealistic unicorn droppings)

Santorum: Overall impression: He’d use the presidential bully pulpit to be the nation’s minister-in-chief.

Now it’s down to the voting.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Did you know that the only reason those famed “Reagan Democrats” voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 was because they were… uh… racists? Well on the little watched Ed Show on MSNBC, Salon’s Joan Walsh assured the nation — or at least the 20 people watching — that this was the truth.

Sometimes a talking head on TV will say something so stupid that jaws drop nationwide as a result. Often that stupidity becomes the talk of the news cycle, too. But usually that only happens when there are actually viewers for the show upon which the stupidity is uttered. In this case, Joan Walsh of Salon uttered the stupidity, but since no one watches MSNBC — most especially the Ed Show — I thought I’d help pass around her comments to make her stupidity the talk of the day. It’s just a service from us here to you in the Internet tubes.

The rotund Ed Schultz was disparaging the Reagan Democrats as “dead” (both figuratively and literally) and was saying that Reagan Democrats could not possibly be a factor in 2012. Whatever merits of that claim, when Schultz turned to Salon’s Joan Walsh he got one of the most absurd comments about Reagan Democrats evah!

Walsh said:

You and I both know that a segment of the white working class did go over to Ronald Reagan, did abandon the Democratic party. Some of it was race, and some it was just believing that government was out of control and some people were getting something for nothing.

What, you may gasp? Reagan Democrats were all racists and that is why they voted Republican in the millions?

You may be confused by the comment. What was the big racial issue of 1980? Was Jimmy Carter really an African American and only the Reagan Democrats knew it? Was Reagan running on a repeal the Civil Rights bill platform and we just didn’t know it? I know, maybe Carter’s VP candidate, Walter Mondale, was the African American… hmmm, no he’s as white-bread as one can humanly get. Couldn’t have been MonDull!

Yes, you got it. There was no racial component to either the 1980 or 1984 elections. The fact is Joan Walsh is simply — and clumsily at that — trying to warp the past with her racebaiting as a way to win for Obama in the present. If Democrats crossed over in 1980 to vote Reagan, Walsh is saying, then they were raaaacists just like they will be if they do so today. THAT is her message. This is nothing more than Walsh’s attempt to throw the race card at anyone that is sick and tired of Obama’s destructive regime.

Walsh revealed a desperate ploy to staunch the bleeding of this destructive and self-destructive president. Nothing more. Nothing less.