Around the Web in 80 Minutes (5/6/09)

Question to Left: If You Love America, Why “Transform” It? (D. Prager)

If you met a man who said he would like to “transform” or “remake” his wife, would you conclude that he: a) thought very highly of his wife and loved her? Or b) held his wife in rather low esteem and therefore found loving her rather difficult?

The answer is obvious: Those who wish to remake anything (or anyone) do not think highly of the person or thing they wish to remake.

Little is as revealing of Barack Obama’s and the left’s view of America than their use of the words “transform” and “remake” when applied to what they most want to do to America.

Are You an Obama Winner? Or an Obama Loser? (N. Gingrich)

If there was one feeling that inspired almost a million Americans to come out for the Tax Day Tea Parties last month it was this: That our government, supposedly created of the people, by the people and for the people, is busy picking winners and losers.

The feeling that our politics are increasingly rigged against us didn’t begin with President Obama. Deciding to bailout Wall Street rather than let deserving companies go bankrupt began under President Bush.

But the Obama Administration has elevated rewarding some Americans and punishing others to a governing philosophy.

Trickle-Down Corruption (J. Goldberg)

If a Republican administration, staffed with cronies from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, were cutting special deals for its political allies, I suspect we’d be hearing fewer FDR analogies and more nouns ending with the suffix “gate.”

Take Obama’s “car czar,” Steven Rattner. According to ABC’s Jake Tapper, Rattner is accused of threatening to use the White House to smear a Chrysler creditor if it refused to back the administration’s Chrysler bankruptcy plan. He’s also connected to a massive pension-fund scandal involving the investment firm he used to run. It’s alleged that Rattner’s firm bought the less-than-worthless DVD distribution rights to the achingly awful film Chooch — produced by the brother of an official in the New York comptroller’s office — as a thinly veiled bribe to gain access to New York pensions funds. Chooch, by the way, is Italian slang for “jackass,” which just happens to be the Democrats’ mascot.

What Green Means (IBD Editorials)

Using polling and focus groups, ecoAmerica, an environmental group that develops marketing and messaging strategies, has forged a list of recommendations. It was obtained by the New York Times, which says it's one of “a number of news organizations” that was accidently e-mailed a “summary of the group's latest findings and recommendations.”

Rather than talk about “global warming,” which is already being replaced by the less-specific “climate change,” ecoAmerica suggests that alarmists should discuss “our deteriorating atmosphere.” And instead of picking on carbon dioxide per se, it proposes we simply abandon “the dirty fuels of the past.”

The memo also recommends embroidering conversations with language about “shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency,” which is ironic, since those are the uniquely American qualities that the environmental movement seems to be moving us away from.

What's clear is eco-activists and their allies will do anything to avoid talking about their real goals, which have less to do with cleaning up the environment than with pulling down capitalism.

Every solution they offer to the problems they exaggerate erodes economic freedom, increases regulation or both. Blurring the real meaning of words can't change that.

Let Us Praise Extraordinary Activists Who Stood Against Radical Islam in Times Square (P. Chesler)

[L]et us praise (and continue to praise) those extraordinary grassroots civilians who organized yesterday’s rally in Times Square against Radical Islam and those 300-500 people who came and stood in the driving rain to listen to the words of Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians, direct and indirect victims of Islamic terrorism, enslavement, and persecution, who came together to stand against a common global enemy. […]

The Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam has a website where you may find the names of yesterday’s speakers and the profoundly impressive list of co-sponsoring organizations.

FOX-News was there and ran a brief clip. The Jewish Press printed an announcement about the rally which appeared on May 1st. The AP wire sent out the Coalition’s press release; no one knows if was picked up. However, the mainstream American media, CNN, CSPAN, and Channels 1, 2, 4, 7, 13 were not there. There has been no coverage in my local newspapers, nothing in the NY Post, NY Times, Wall Street Journal. If these (failing) papers do not cover an event, it is still as if that event has never happened—at least for those who rely solely upon the mainstream media.