New York: American

To steal a phrase from the race-baiting left - I have to wonder if, when people say 'racist', they mean 'anti-socialist'. Or, as put not-at-all subtly in the comic The Knight Life: Do you think, when people say 'racist', they mean something else? In other words, is the far left simply trying to defend socialism by hiding criticism of it in ludicrous and false accusations of racism?*

A very interesting series of columns from Svetlana Kunin are being published in IBD. Here's an excerpt from the third - you can click through and then see the first two, also:
Whenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States.

Busted.
Thursday’s off-lead story by James Glanz and Walter Gibbs is on recent revelations that Peter Galbraith, an “unpaid adviser to the Kurds” who has influenced Democratic policymakers like former senator/VP Joe Biden and Sen. John Kerry, stands to make millions from his closeness to the Kurds and a Norwegian oil company.

Given the Times sympathies for anti-war and leftish “blood for oil” arguments, the Times couldn’t ignore the story, and indeed provides a lot of new damning details -- but also has one enormous gaffe that lets Vice President Biden off the hook.
...As the scope of Mr. Galbraith’s financial interests in Kurdistan become clear, they have the potential to inflame some of Iraqis’ deepest fears, including conspiracy theories that the true reason for the American invasion of their country was to take its oil.

Good news:
The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.

Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and "take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people."

The problem is that the Senate won't run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.

Have you found yourself increasingly tilting your head at the news over the past few months? Squinting a bit? Cocking your head at an angle?

Does it seem like something just doesn't seem right - but you can't quite put your finger on it. Like when you hear a faint buzzing but you can't quite figure out what's making it.

Maybe I can help.

It's really this whole bizarro, pathetic Dede Scozzafava thing that finally brought the light on over my head. Particularly with headlines like this:

The Collapse of Dede Scozzafava, Moderate Republican

Scozzafava and the GOP civil war
Besieged by the hard right, moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava withdrew from NY-23: Is the GOP going too extreme?