Liberals Tolerate Any Opinion; As Long As It's Theirs

Actress Out Of San Francisco Production After Endorsing Tea Party Candidate

A famed actress is facing backlash in San Francisco’s Latino community, after she voiced support for a conservative candidate for California governor.

Maria Conchita Alonso starred in a campaign ad for Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino County, a Tea Party favorite who is seeking the Republican nomination.
Donnelly has voiced strong views against illegal immigration and was once involved with the Minutemen Project, a group that patrolled the border with Mexico to catch immigrants coming across.

“Politicians and big government are killing our prosperity, pushing welfare costs through the roof and driving our schools into the ground,” Donnelly said in the ad. Standing next to Donnelly, Alonso jokingly translated in Spanish, “We’re screwed.” Alonso is an actress of Cuban and Venezuelan descent. She is perhaps best known for her role in the movie “Moscow on the Hudson” which also starred Robin Williams.

She also played in "Running Man" (1987) with Ahnold, "Predator 2" (1990) with Danny Glover and Gary Busey, and 30 other movies, so she's not exactly an ingenue in the business.

The actress was to perform next month at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco’s Mission District in a Spanish-language version of “The Vagina Monologues,” scheduled for a run from February 14th through 17th. The show is being produced by none other than Eliana Lopez, wife of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.

“We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately,” Lopez told KPIX 5. She said Alonso abruptly resigned from the cast on Friday, given the backlash on the immigration issue.

“Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe,” Lopez said.

Of course, she's right.  This is not a First Amendment issue, but this is a free speech issue.  Imagine the outrage at would follow if farmers, oil producers, and energy companies refused to hire people known to work for liberal politicians and express liberal views because "Doing what they are doing is against is against what we believe".

For that matter, consider the case of the "Little Sisters of the Poor", the Catholic nuns resisting Obamacare's contraception mandate.  While they are willing to hire anyone, they don't want to be forced to provide something that's against their beliefs. But liberals demand that they do something that they don't want to.

Also consider the baker currently being forced by a court to bake a wedding cake for a single sex couple, despite his objections to single sex marriage.

Apparently, being opposed to peoples views is grounds for denying conservatives, not liberals, the right to follow their beliefs, and for liberals to deny conservatives the right to work, but not the other way around.

Alonso received an earful from listeners of Spanish-language radio station KIQI 1010 AM in San Francisco on Friday, after she said in an interview that she supported many of Donnelly’s views on illegal immigration. Several listeners took her to task after she used the term “illegal” to describe undocumented immigrants.

It's called illegal because it's against the law.

In the ad, Alonso holds a chihuahua named “Tequila” and uses some vulgar language which has also been a point of contention among some Latino viewers.

“We don’t act like that. First of all, that is not a typical Latina,” said Jim Salinas, a long time Mission resident and former president of the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club. Salinas said there probably would have been boycotts if Alonso had stayed on the production.

So, only "typical" Latinas have the right to work in San Francisco?  Can we have fuller definition of typical then? Do they only come from Mexico, Guatemala or El Salvador, illeg from peasant stock, and support democrats?

She's not a stereotypical Latina, you moron.  She was born in Cuba, during the communist revolution, and raised in Venezula, a country currently in the throws of a pseudo-communist takeover.  She understands what is at stake.  You should listen to her, instead of trying to shut her up.

“First Amendment rights, we all have the right to say something. But it’s also our right to say we object to that,” Salinas said.

Leo Lacayo, a prominent San Francisco Latino Republican, has been pushing his party to be more moderate on immigration. He thinks Alonso is being treated unfairly.
“It was a political ad, it was a funny ad,” Lacayo said. “That anybody would lose employment over what their political leanings are is absurd.”

Wait, there are two conservative Latinos in San Francisco?  One more and they may think it's a movement.

Instapundit snarks: THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, WE’D SEE MCCARTHY-STYLE BLACKLISTS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Famed Actress Booted Out of Production for Endorsing Tea Party Candidate for Governor.

and Stacy McCain reminds us:

A couple years ago, Alonzo called Sean Penn a “communist a–hole,” a statement that everybody knows is true, but which has so much more authority when it is said by a refugee from Cuba.

Do We Care if the Internet Lynch Mob is After Richard Cohen?

Probably not, say Stacy McCain: Richard Cohen and a Plate Glass Window

It probably seemed like a good idea: Trash Iowa, trash the Tea Party — an easy day’s work for a Washington Post columnist, and hey, why not throw in a cheap shot at Sarah Palin for good measure?

. . . Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah (considered to the right of Cruz, if such a thing is possible), Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s recent vice presidential candidate and its resident abacus, and the inevitable Sarah Palin, the Alaska quitter who, I think, actually now lives in Arizona. If this is the future of the GOP, then it’s in the past.

None of these candidates bears the slightest resemblance to Christie. And the more literate of them — that’s not you, Palin —– must have chortled over post-election newspaper columns extolling Christie as precisely the sort of candidate the GOP ought to run in 2016.

His publisher hailed the column as “brilliant,” but it was just another 750 words of the useless op-ed drivel Richard Cohen has been getting paid to write for decades. Except ...

Richard Cohen Has Written Something Insane About Interracial Marriage
– Gawker

Richard Cohen on Black-White Marriage
– The Atlantic Monthly

Racist Op-Ed Columns Are a Strange Business Strategy
– Slate

Yeah, he went there, thinking to make a clever attack on conservatives without considering the fact that the Young Turks of the online Left have had him on their target list for some time. It’s not fair that this old liberal should have that prime op-ed real estate, you see.

These Young Turks wanted Cohen gone, and his clumsy race-baiting (even though aimed at Republicans) was sufficiently offensive that they decided (in the memorable phrase of Spencer Ackerman) to smash Richard Cohen through a plate glass window.

Should we care? Probably not.

Cohen is one of the regular, conventionally liberal columnists at the Washington Post. While he can be counted on to say something sensible once every few months or so, which no doubt angers the 'Young Twerks' of the left, that's not often enough for me to miss him if he should vanish from the punditosphere.  It would be particularly sweet if the his downfall were the result of a campaign of deliberate misdirection by his own political allies.

And since Stacy left out the actual quote that led to the high dudgeon by the commentariat:

People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America.

Do the leftist media goons now consider themselves to be those with the "conventional views?"  String him up!

UPDATE: Althouse makes precisely this point:

But when Cohen (complacently, predictably liberal) said "conventional views," he didn't mean liberals, even though liberals (including, notably, him) are quite conventional. He meant those other guys — the bad guys — and he had no idea that anyone could think of him as anything other than one of the good guys — the liberals — because that's how conventional he was!

What Do 'Stakeholders' Do With Stakes?

They usually try to drive them into the hearts of their opponents:

I ran into this article on  Why Is The Tea Party 'Extremist,' But Democratic Support For Big Government 'Moderate'? over at Instapundit. You should read the whole thing, but this passage resonated to me:

Let’s say you oppose the idea that a corporation’s fundamental objective should be to make money for its stockholders. You could present various collectivist arguments, contending that the means of production should be controlled by “society as a whole,” rather than by selfish, profit-seeking individuals. Or you could take the more devious approach of trying to erase the very concept of a stockholder. How? By introducing the pseudo-concept of “stakeholder.”

A stakeholder is a person who holds a stake, right?  I'm too busy to check, but I'll hazard guess that the term originated from mining claims being marked geographically with stakes, and person with a share in the claim being a stake holder.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

A “stakeholder,” according to one dictionary, is “a person, group or organization that has an interest or concern in an organization.” The laundry list of examples includes “creditors, directors, employees, government (and its agencies), owners (shareholders), suppliers, unions and the community from which the business draws its resources.”

This is a much broader context; calling anyone with an 'interest' in the issue a 'stakeholder', whether that interest is positive or negative.

A concept is supposed to unite things that share an essential similarity. The essential characteristic integrating stockholders is their ownership of a company, which gives them distinctive rights and which clearly differentiates them from all other people. The term “stakeholder,” however, focuses instead on the superficial characteristic of having some “interest or concern” in the company. This approach packages stockholders together with everyone from the janitor to the vending-machine supplier to the residents of the same town.

Essentially, the word 'stakeholder' is an invitation for anyone to meddle.

Since almost anybody can be included in the “stakeholder” classification , the true function of this fuzzy term is to nullify the concept of a stockholder, who becomes just another “stakeholder,” with no distinctive rights.

The term 'stakeholder' is a common term in science, or at least in the regions where science touches on management, where invoking it commonly means to invite the various NGOs that feed off issues to come and support the governments point of view.

It's one of those special bureaucratese words that make me check my wallet, whenever I hear it. Wombat-Socho's grand compilation of Rule 5 posts,  "Rule 5 Monday: Palate Cleanser" is up at The Other McCain.

Social Scientist With Agenda Shocked to Find Tea Party More Scientifically Literate than Average

And more shockingly, admits it.

Because the "asymmetry thesis" just won't leave me alone, I decided it would be sort of interesting to see what the relationship was between a "science comprehension" scale I've been developing and political outlooks...

It turns out that there is about as strong a correlation between scores on the science comprehension scale and identifying with the Tea Party as there is between scores on the science comprehension scale and Conservrepub.

Except that it has the opposite sign: that is, identifying with the Tea Party correlates positively (r = 0.05, p = 0.05) with scores on the science comprehension measure:

For the statistically inexperienced, the p=0.05 means the effect is likely to be found 5% of the time if the two populations (tea party and non-tea party) actually had identical distributions, through random sampling error.

Now, that's not a huge difference, but it's statistically significant by the commonly held conventions, and goes strongly against the message in the media, who tend to envision the Tea Party as barely more advanced than Neandertals, swinging clubs at all that's good and dear to civilization (and liberals).  It really shouldn't be surprising, since Tea Party members are, on the whole, wealthier and better educated than average.

Even more shockingly, he goes on to discuss his cognitive dissonance:

I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension.

But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party. All my impressions come from watching cable tv -- & I don't watch Fox News very often -- and reading the "paper" (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).

I'm a little embarrassed, but mainly I'm just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.

 But not really embarrassed enough to reconsider his other biases...

Of course, I still subscribe to my various political and moral assessments--all very negative-- of what I understand the "Tea Party movement" to stand for. I just no longer assume that the people who happen to hold those values are less likely than people who share my political outlooks to have acquired the sorts of knowledge and dispositions that a decent science comprehension scale measures.

and quick to find a way to minimize and dismiss the results...

Next time I collect data, too, I won't be surprised at all if the correlations between science comprehension and political ideology or identification with the Tea Party movement disappear or flip their signs. These effects are trivially small, & if I sample 2000+ people it's pretty likely any discrepancy I see will be "statistically significant" --which has precious little to do with "practically significant."

 Found at Instapundit, and reinforced at Hot Air.

Did Obama Outsource the IRS Harassment to Unions?

President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.

According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.

The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:
Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30

In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”

The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:

April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.

In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.

But the preznit has denied knowing about the IRS harassment of the Tea Party, hasn't he?  And he would never lie, right?

Well no; look at this exchange:

Last Thursday at the President’s press conference with the Turkish prime minister, Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News asked the following question, bold print for emphasis:

“Mr. President, I want to ask you about the IRS. Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd? And when they did find out, do you think that you should have learned about it before you learned about it from news reports as you said last Friday? And also, are you opposed to there being a special counsel appointed to lead the Justice Department investigation?”

The President’s response? (Again bold print emphasis.)

“But let me make sure that I answer your specific question. I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press.”

He, in fact, very specifically did not answer the question asked, whether anyone (including himself presumably) knew anything about the agencies action.  What he answered was that no one knew about the IR report before it leaked, not the more general question that was asked.  Was it just a preprogramed talking point coming out on cue (sort of), or a deliberate side stepping of the tough question?

"Will No One Rid me of this Turbulent Tea Party?"

The quote of course, refers to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who challenged King Henry II for control over the Church in England at the time.  The folklore has it that King Henry II uttered these words in irritation at Becket, and a group of his knights took this as a call for direct action, and killed him as he was praying.

St. Thomas Becket in stained glass

Did a similar thing happen with the IRS, with the Tea Party playing the role of troublesome Archbishop, and Obama playing the role of King Henry II, whose knights at the IRS sought to bring the Tea Party to heel by denying them the tax exempt status?  Or will there turn out to be more active direction from the White House.

Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general's report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog's report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with "Tea Party," `'Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.

The good news in all this it that in 2014 Obamacare will start the process of federalizing health care information, with all citizens taxpayers having to prove whether or not they have healthcare and if so, what:

As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information?

Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme. Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual. This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.

This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.”

But we can sleep assured that the IRS would never consider using such knowledge to investigate citizens with an eye towards punishing those who resist government edicts.  After all, as King Henry II President Obama says, we have no reason to fear tyranny from our government.

Tea Partiers Caught With Gun, Explosives Hoard

Did I say Tea Partiers?  I meant Occutards!  

Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources

The privileged daughter of a prominent city doctor, and her boyfriend — a Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street activist — have been busted for allegedly having a cache of weapons and a bombmaking explosive in their Greenwich Village apartment.

Morgan Gliedman — who is nine-months pregnant — and her baby daddy, Aaron Greene, 31, also had instructions on making bombs, including a stack of papers with a cover sheet titled, “The Terrorist Encyclopedia,’’ sources told The Post yesterday.

People who know Greene say his political views are “extreme,” the sources said.
Morgan Gliedman, daughter of Realtor Susyn Schops Gliedman and prominent doctor Paul Gliedman, was busted at this building with her OWS boyfriend.

Cops found the stash in the couple’s West Ninth Street home Saturday when they went there to look for Gliedman, 27, who was wanted for alleged credit-card theft.

A detective discovered a plastic container with seven grams of a white chemical powder called HMTD, which is so powerful, cops evacuated several nearby buildings.

Police also found a flare launcher, which is a commercial replica of a grenade launcher; a modified 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun; ammo; and nine high-capacity rifle magazines, the sources said.

Cops also allegedly uncovered papers about creating homemade booby traps, improvised submachine guns, and various handwritten notebooks containing chemical formulas.

The parallels between this and Bill Ayers/Bernadine Dohrn has been noted by others. At least no one was blown up this time.

Tea Partiers Guilty of Conspiracy, WMD Charges

Did I say Tea Partiers? I meant Occupods.

Three more men charged with planning to bomb a highway bridge in Ohio admitted their roles in the plot Wednesday in a move meant to avoid life prison sentences.

The device was a dud provided by an FBI informant and no one was hurt.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said the public was never in danger even though the target was a highway bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park between Cleveland and Akron.

Two 20-year-old suburban Cleveland men, Connor Stevens of Berea and Brandon Baxter of Lakewood, and Douglas Wright, 26, of Indianapolis, pleaded guilty to three-count ...

Meanwhile Occupy Cleveland continued to support the malefactors.

...Occupy Cleveland held a small press conference where they continued to defend the men and say that they were victims of entrapment. U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach said, ”Make no mistake about it—it was their plot. It was the defendants who selected the target they wished to destroy.”