BARE NAKED HYPOCRISY ON DISPLAY

The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh is asking Carnegie Mellon University to reprimand a female student who dressed as the Pope - but naked from the waist down - to pass out birth control in an art parade.

The student reportedly shaved her pubic hair into the shape of a cross while passing out the condoms.

The Catholic League said in a statement:

CMU did not have to ponder what to do about a recent incident involving one of its fraternities: it simply suspended the students, as well as the entire Beta Theta Pi fraternity, for taking sexual pictures and videos inside the frat house and then emailing them to other members; an investigation is pending. But when it comes to a female student who walks the streets naked from the waist down while mocking the pope, the administrators are much more relaxed: she has not been suspended during a probe of this matter.

"The Freedom of Expression Policy" at CMU prizes individual expression, but it is not absolute: it explicitly ties rights to responsibilities. Perhaps most important, the "Carnegie Mellon Code" says students "are expected to meet the highest standards of personal, ethical and moral conduct possible." It would seem axiomatic that the offending student violated these strictures.

If CMU tolerates this incident, invoking no sanctions whatsoever, then it is opening a door it may regret. What if instead of shaved pubic hair in the shape of a cross, a student chooses to depict a swastika?

CMU's decision not to suspend this female student, who publicly ridiculed Catholics and violated the local ordinance on public nudity, while invoking sanctions against the frat boys for offensive behavior behind closed doors, is legally problematic and morally indefensible.

Naturally liberals think it's hilarious and the protest from Catholics is much ado about nothing.  This attitude, of course, is not only completely self-serving but totally hypocritical.  What if the girl had been dressed up in a feathered headdress and leather, naked from the waist down, carrying a tomahawk and dancing around like a stereotypical Native American? Would the libs laugh that off as well?  

How about dressing up like a 19th Century Chinese peasant, complete with coolie hat and pigtail?  Would that be hilarious and no big deal to campus lefties?  What about dressing like some Mexican bandito?  In other words, pick a minority or a religion (other than Christianity, naturally) or a sexual orientation and imagine the uproar from the Left when somebody does exactly what this girl did.

I would think that the public nudity would be a violation of some campus behavior policy.  So regardless of her intention to mock the Catholic Church, the nudity should be enough for her to receive some sort of punishment from the school.  I know for a fact that these kinds of activists think that it is clever strategy to go naked.  The thinking is that Catholics are so uptight and so patriarchal that displays of nudity will freak them out to the point where they are unable to function.  It's stupid but it's also straight out of the Alinsky playbook. At the very least, of course, it is meant to be deeply disrespectful.  

The hypocrisy of these left-wing haters - who demand respect for all of their various protected groups but do not feel obligated to be respectful to those with whom they disagree - should be the focus here. That, along with any double-standards by the schools in terms of who gets punished and who doesn't.  They simply can't have it both ways.  Either free speech trumps sensitivity or sensitivity trumps free speech but it can't be one standard for the dominant liberal culture on campus and another standard for those in the minority.

Another example of this kind of behavior, much more troubling in my opinion because it involves an actual assault, happened recently in Belgium. (Caution, there is a photo that is definitely not safe for work!)

A group of naked women bum-rushed Belgian Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard while he was speaking in Brussels and doused him with water from bottles shaped like the Virgin Mary on Tuesday.

The women were reportedly feminist protesters from the Ukranian-based FEMEN group, which is known for organizing topless protests against the Catholic Church and others.

The look on the faces of the screeching, topless harpies as they attack the Archbishop while he prays tells the story.  They are the haters.  It's an ugliness that the hypocrites of the Left have neither the maturity nor the intellectual honesty to acknowledge.  This is the point that needs to be hammered home again and again.
 

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND

It seems to me that left-wing elites, who see themselves as the intellectual vanguard of their movement, have always relied on an army of foot soldiers to do the actual fighting and destroying.  The original Marxist vision assumed it would be "the workers."  

Later, non-whites, specifically blacks, were seen as the most likely group to overturn the existing order.  But while there have been flare-ups over the decades, the ultimate race war never really broke out.  In the United States, race relations and racial equality under the law has mostly been a gradual, legal and relatively peaceful process.  No cataclysmic upheaval.

Nowadays, the great hope for the destruction of the West lies with radical Islam.  It's ironic that Islamofascism - the Left's last best hope of destroying our Judeo-Christian culture - is hardly a friend of the Left's stated value system.  But left-wingers don't think that far ahead.  They only dream about destruction, which they feel must come first, before they can create their utopia on Earth.

My point is this: They see radical Islam as the enemy of their enemy, which is why they support it.  This is the answer to the question posed in the article below.    

Why aren't liberals more critical of Islam?

Liberalism is an essentially secular movement that began within Christian culture. (In Worshipping the State, I trace it all the way back to Machiavelli in the early 1500s.) Note the two italicized aspects: secular and within.

As secular, liberalism understood itself as embracing this world as the highest good, advocating a self-conscious return to ancient pagan this-worldliness. But this embrace took place within a Christianized culture. Consequently liberalism tended to define itself directly against that which it was (in its own particular historical context) rejecting.

Modern liberalism thereby developed with a deep antagonism toward Christianity, rather than religion in general. It was culturally powerful Christianity that stood in the way of liberal secular progress in the West—not Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Druidism, etc.

And so, radical Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire rallied his fellow secular soldiers with what would become the battle cry of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: écrasez l'infâme, "destroy the infamous thing." It was a cry directed, not against religion in general, but (as historian Peter Gay rightly notes) "against Christianity itself, against Christian dogma in all its forms, Christian institutions, Christian ethics, and the Christian view of man."

Liberals therefore tended to approve of anything but Christianity. Deism was fine, or even pantheism. The eminent liberal Rousseau praised Islam and declared Christianity incompatible with good government. Hinduism and Buddhism were exotic and tantalizing among the edge-cutting intelligentsia of the 19th century. Christianity, by contrast, was the religion against which actual liberal progress had to be made.

So, other religions were whitewashed even while Christianity was continually tarred. The tarring was part of the liberal strategy aimed at unseating Christianity from its privileged cultural-legal-moral position in the West. The whitewashing of other religions was part of the strategy too, since elevating them helped deflate the privileged status of Christianity.

And so, for liberalism, nothing could be as bad as Christianity. If something goes wrong, blame Christianity first and all of Western culture that is based upon it.

DEAR LEADER HATES WHAT HE CAN'T CONTROL

Noel Sheppard points out a statement made by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press: "The rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff - he hates it."

CHUCK TODD: What I wonder how many people realized at the end [of Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner] when he did his, you know, there's always this part at the end where they get serious for a minute. And it’s usually the part where presidents say, "You know, I think the press has a good job to do and I understand what they have to do." He didn't say that. He wasn't very complimentary of the press. You know, we all can do better.

It did seem, I thought his pot shots joke wise and then the serious stuff about the internet, the rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff - he hates it. Okay? He hates this part of the media. He really thinks that the sort of buzzification - this isn't just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff - he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was trying to make that clear last night.

But does he really hate it?  Or does he simply hate the fact that he can't control it the way he does the Establishment Media?  What he really hates is that new media, social media, the blogosphere, etc. allows groups and even individuals (including your humble blogger) the opportunity to disrupt The Narrative.

But as Ed Driscoll points out, Obama loves new media when it's his own supporters who are waging war.

While the JournoList was busy defending Obama from attacks, it was a member of Obama's campaign in 2007 who mashed up the viral video that launched Obama’s presidential bid via social media, by accusing Hillary Clinton of being the reincarnation of Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984.

The terrorist attack on Benghazi on September 11th 2012, and the eventual feckless "What difference does it make?" response to the Senate by Obama's Secretary of State — the same Hillary Clinton his election campaign repeatedly denigrated would eventually turn the message of Obama's earlier Orwell-inspired video in on itself. Not the least of which because the man responsible for the piece of social media that the Obama administration initially tried to pin the attack on, during their initial modified limited hangout, is still rotting in jail.

So yes, we know "the rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff — [President Obama] hates it. Okay? He hates this part of the media." Every day that YouTube user Nakoula Basseley Nakoula remains incarcerated is proof enough.

MAD MEN REVIEW: "TO HAVE AND TO HOLD"

In this episode we finally touched base with some of the other main characters in the show, particularly Joan and Harry.

We found out that Scarlett (played by Jersey girl Sadie Alexandru) is now working as Harry's secretary.  She talked Dawn into punching out for her at the end of the day so that she could go shopping for a gift.  Joan discovered what Scarlett had been up to and confronted her.  Shortly after that, Joan abruptly fired Scarlett and told her to pack her stuff and leave.  The next time we see Scarlett, she's in her coat and crying, on her way out.

Enter Harry Crane.

When Harry lands this huge TV special that is both big money and hilarious (Joe Namath on Broadway), he demands recognition.  He managed to make money for the firm while making a very important client - Dow Chemical - a little happier about things.  Dow's problem?  They make napalm.  While napalm was nothing new in 1968 (it was, after all, the chemical used in the flamethrowers that were essential to American G.I.s fighting the Japanese in World War II) but now it's getting loads of bad press for its use in Vietnam.  So Harry comes up with an idea for Dow to be the primary sponsor of a comedy hour featuring Namath.  The premise is that the fine folks at Dow are responsible for making people smile and laugh.

The pitch that Harry made to Dow was the result of a conversation between he and Ken, who is the son-in-law of one of Dow's honchos.  Scarlett brings Harry his danish and when Harry tells Ken that he as an idea for Dow, Scarlett cheerfully says on the way out of the room, "Harry has lots of great ideas."  Mad Men is always so great about providing hints of plot lines with a minimum of words.  I think with that one line from Scarlett, viewers everywhere had the same thought: Harry and Scarlett!  Of course, Harry is married with children but hey, this is Mad Men...

So when Harry returns to the office with Ken after the successful pitch to Dow and encounters a tearful Scarlett on her way out, stuff packed in a box, he goes ballistic.  He marches her to Joan's office and informs Joan that he's tired of her "petty dictatorship" and that she had no right to fire his secretary.

At first I thought Harry's over-the-top anger was due to his feelings for Scarlett.  If they aren't romantic feelings then at the very least he feels protective of her.  But while that's still very likely, it quickly became obvious that the firing of Scarlett was simply a skirmish in a larger conflict between Harry and Joan.

We don't know how he knows, but Harry has obviously heard about what Joan did to get her partnership.  Like the rest of us, he's not cool with it.  But rather than feel sorry for Joan, who felt she had no choice but to take the only path offered to her, Harry feels that she prostituted herself and he's not sympathetic.  

He also feels, not without reason, that she benefited from a situation that was not open to him.  He feels unappreciated for everything he's done for the firm.  The television department, which he created as a one-man operation within Sterling, Cooper back in Season 2, is an important source of revenue for the firm and Harry can't be blamed for feeling like his contributions to the well-being of the firm deserve more credit than what Joan did.  Some have dismissed Harry's value by pointing out that he's simply riding the TV wave.  That's certainly true but it was Harry who recognized early on the value of television.  He spotted the trend, created his department and is now reaping the rewards.  That's the way it works.

Also, Joan has been belittling him for years now, ever since he failed to acknowledge her talent when she was helping him with his work (reading scripts to make sure there are no conflicts between the material and the sponsors).  We saw how good Joan was at this type of thing but Harry did not.  So when he was finally allowed to hire an assistant, he hired some new guy with no experience.  Joan was forced to go back to being the de facto office manager.  No promotion for her, and no recognition.  

So, after blasting Joan over the Scarlett situation, Harry decides to push things further by barging into a partners meeting and demanding that he be given a partnership as well.  He lets them all know that he knows what she did for the partnership and Joan has to just sit there and take it.  She may be a partner but because she's a woman and because she got there in a sketchy way, she discovers that she is still not their equal.  At least she's not equal in their eyes.  The partners decide that it's not wise to fire Dawn and that Scarlett's humiliation is punishment enough.  Thus Joan has, effectively, been overruled and put in her place.  It's hard.

But if Harry's rant was somewhat inappropriate and obnxious, so was Joan's behavior towards Scarlett.  Joan has an office.  She could have summoned Scarlett to her office and reprimanded her there.  Instead, she confronted Scarlett at her desk, out in the open, humiliating her.  Then she yelled at her, again out in the open, and fired her.  If Joan were a man and acted like that people would be upset, right? Also, even though Joan is a partner she should have waited to speak to Harry first and let him know what happened and what she wants to do about it.  He at least should have been given an opportunity to weigh in on the problem.  In other words, Joan could have handled it better.

It's after this trying day that Joan goes with her friend Kate for a night on the town that includes a visit to the Electric Circus.  The next day Kate encourages Joan to ignore what the men think.  Whatever she wants is right there for her to take.  Kate envies and admires her.  Joan decides to enhance her status by shedding some of her old responsibilities (giving the keys to the supply closet and supervision of time cards to Dawn).

Harry had a meeting with Bert and Roger, who are unwilling to be bullied into giving him a partnership.  But they do acknowledge and reward his initiative by handing him a check for $23,000. It's his commission for the Dow Chemical TV show and it's more than his annual salary.  It's a big payday for him.  But he lets them know that if he gets a better offer from another firm that he will leave.  Time will tell.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT THEY'RE SAYING...

In which Peggy steals a line she learned from Don.  I love the line and the idea behind it.  "If you don't like what they're saying, change the conversation."   

Advertising, ultimately, is all about communicating ideas.  Changing the conversation means more than merely shifting the focus from one subject to another.  You hear that accusation made all the time when having a political debate. "Now you're changing the subject!!!" Yes, it can be taken as a sign that somebody is losing an argument.  

But beyond that, however, is the idea that if you want to win a messaging war then you first must pick your battles.  Picking your battles includes selecting the right place (in real terms) or the right subject (in rhetorical terms) in which to have the conversation.  In other words, don't let the other side maneuver you into an area where they have the advantage.  Make sure you are the one maneuvering them.

Don't accuse others of things you can't prove or that they can defend easily.  Avoid using words and assumptions that can blow up in your face.  Use their words against them and give them no opportunity to successfully defend themselves.  Make them run away from their own position and that's how you win.
    

MAD MEN MUSIC: "BONNIE AND CLYDE"

This is the song that was playing during the scene in the episode "To Have and to Hold" in which Joan and her friend Kate are enjoying themselves at the Electric Circus nightclub, located in the East Village.  

Interestingly, this is the same neighborhood that Betty visited in the season opener while looking for her daughter's friend.  That visit highlighted the pathetic squalor of hippie wannabes who were really nothing more than druggies squatting in abandoned buildings in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods.  

The Electric Circus, however, was a very popular destination in 1968, with the gritty working class neighborhood adding extra spice to the experience for trendy visitors.

The people playing Bonnie and Clyde in the video are Brigitte Bardot and the songwriter, Serge Gainsbourg.

One interesting thing that I discovered while searching Electric Circus is this Village Voice article dated July 6, 1967 in which famed New York City columnist Jack Newfield reported on the club's opening night festivities. In it he writes:

By 10 p.m., the scheduled opening time, there was a line of people on St. Mark's Place a half-block long, populated by a variety of Beautiful People types who probably never had to stand on line for anything before in their lives. The cavalcade of rented limousines curled back around Third Avenue, an illusory boon to the area's wizened panhandlers. Across the street several hundred locals -- hippies and East Europeans -- stood behind police barriers. Four costumed karate experts slowly shepherded the customers -- $15 a head -- in, two by two, just like the ark. And downstairs, welterweight fighter Joe Shaw, the lonely bouncer in the almost vacant Dom, watched the exploding flashbulbs silhouette the karate choppers in their clean white robes, a symbol of faddist passions of the Electronic Age.

Inside, people danced, sweated, pushed and blinked. The few Linear Conceptualizers quit immediately. There was the Poet of Pop, Tom Wolfe, and the Fugs's Tuli Kupferberg, and novelist Mary McCarthy, and Kennedy-in-law Steve Smith, and folk-singer David Blue, and halfback George Plimpton. It looked like the cover of the next Beatles' album. The New Frontier met the Underground, while the Beautiful People kept score.

I highlighted the "two by two, just like the ark" line because I know that Matthew Weiner and his crew must have read this article while doing their own research.  I can't help but wonder if they got the idea for the title and theme of the subsequent episode, "The Flood," from this article.  One never knows where the next inspiration will come from.

There are groovy vintage photos of the Electric Circus and the people who partied there here and here.

THAT'S SO RACIST: MASTER BEDROOM EDITION

Well, you can add the term "master bedroom" to the list of words and phrases that have now been blacklisted deemed politically incorrect by liberals.  So all you "racists" out there had better get this through your heads: From now on you will refer to the largest bedroom in the house as the "owners bedroom."

In Occupied Maryland the real estate community is slowly but surely unpacking the knapsack of homebuilder "racism" and "gender bias" by cleansing the lexicon of insensitive and hurtful terms.  According to the Baltimore Business Daily:

A survey of 10 major Washington, D.C.-area homebuilders found that six no longer use the term "master" in their floor plans to describe the largest bedroom in the house. They have replaced it with "owner's suite" or "owner's bedroom" or, in one case, "mastre bedroom."

Why? In large part for exactly the reason you would think: "Master" has connotation problems, in gender (it skews toward male) and race (the slave-master).

Enter the owner's suite.

"I imagine it's not only a more accurate description but also a more politically correct term of art," said Steve Nardella, senior vice president of operations for Bethesda-based Winchester Homes Inc.

Either way, the "master suite" has been linguistically shoved aside.

The article does not specify if any of the brokers or builders interviewed had earned Master's degrees...

REALLY CHARLIE RANGEL? REALLY??

Harlem's shame, the disgraced Charlie Rangel (D-NY), is suing Speaker John Boehner and six other lawmakers, alleging problems with the House ethics investigation that led to his censure in 2010.

In a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, Rangel alleges "numerous, flagrant, knowing and intentional violations" of his due process  rights.

The lawsuit names Boehner; Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who was chairwoman of the House ethics committee at the time of the censure; and other committee members and staff. The congressman alleges that evidence was withheld by the committee staff.

The lawsuit doesn't allege any wrongdoing by Boehner. Democrats controlled the chamber and the ethics panel at the time of Rangel's censure. In the complaint, Rangel named Boehner as a defendant because he says it would be up to Boehner to purge the censure from the Congressional Record.

In December 2010, the House voted 333-79 to censure Rangel for multiple ethical misdeeds - including failing to pay taxes for 17 years on rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic and soliciting donations from companies with business before the Ways and Means Committee while he was chairman. The donations were going to a center being built in Rangel's honor at the City College of New York.

Censure is the most serious punishment, short of expulsion, that Congress can impose on one of its own members. Rangel became the first congressman in nearly three decades to be publicly rebuked in such a fashion.

It was a stunning fall for Rangel, who has spent more than four decades in Congress and once chaired the powerful tax-writing committee. He had lost the chairmanship earlier in 2010 in a separate ethics case involving accepting corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean in violation of House rules.

It really should have happened sooner.  Only the fact that Nancy Pelosi was Speaker kept him out of trouble for so long.  Both the New York Times and the New York Post were reporting on his shady dealings in 2008.  But even Pelosi could cover for him only so long.  Rangel doesn't claim that he is innocent, just that he was smeared by his colleagues.

Rangel's lawyer also states that the Harlem lawmaker's due process rights were violated under the Constitution and that the U.S. District Court of D.C. has a responsibility to decide on the case.

"The court cannot, under the circumstances described above, leave undisturbed and without adequate remedy, a plaintiff who has been knowingly, intentionally and willfully denied his right to due process, the protection of his other fundamental rights and his protected liberty interest, where the House has been purposefully misled as described herein: he must have this court to repair to, in order to vindicate his constitutional rights," Rangel's complaint states.

Naturally he's the victim of a conspiracy, not his own greed.

Apparently he believes that his numerous, flagrant, knowing and intentional violations of federal and state tax laws should not have been subject to censure.  This is the problem with a thoroughly corrupt politician who is not held accountable by his constituency.  He is a joke, but nobody is laughing.

OBAMA'S DERPY DERP SEQUESTER FAIL REDUX

Once again Barack Obama has managed to achieve bipartisanship in Washington - in opposition to his agenda.  In the latest blow to Dear Leader's credibility and influence, the House overwhelmingly passed a measure to end furloughs at the Federal Aviation Administration, sending it to President Obama for his signature. White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday the president would sign the bill, which the Senate approved late Thursday by unanimous consent. Meanwhile, the proglodytes are upset, complaining that Democrats caved to Republican demands, and have essentially lost the sequester fight:

The point of sequestration is supposedly to create just enough chaos that regular people - people with political clout, such as, say, business travelers - demand that Congress fix it. Or as the Democrats conceived it, to create the public pressure they need to knock Republicans off their absolutist position on taxes

Well, they got their outcry…and then promptly folded. They allowed Republicans to inaccurately characterize the FAA furloughs as a political stunt. Then without any organized effort to cast the flight delays as part of the same problem that’s also keeping poor people homeless they assented to providing special treatment to the traveling class.

So now the big, predictable opportunity to return to the sequestration debate under genuine public scrutiny is gone.

Inaccurately characterized?  Wrong again.  This was nothing but a political stunt and everybody knew it:

The corrupt media is largely falling into line, blaming "steep budget cuts" for the flight delays. But President Obama's original FAA budget request for fiscal year 2013 was $15,146 million. Congress, knowing sequestration loomed, appropriated $16,008 million. From that, sequestration cut $637 million; so this year's actual, final FAA budget is $15,371 million. That's a cool $225 million more than Obama's original budget request.

So why can't the FAA simply implement the original plan? Heck, they could even ask Congress to rescind the extra $225 million they don't need - and use it for deficit reduction. But that would prove there is plenty of room to cut spending in the bloated federal budget. And the Obama administration instead insists on arbitrarily and artificially making spending cuts painful.

On Tuesday the Wall Street Journal summed up the "harm offensive" strategy:

The Federal Aviation Administration claims the sequester spending cuts are forcing it to delay some 6,700 flights a day, but rarely has a bureaucracy taken such joy in inconveniencing the public.

Though the FAA says it is strapped for cash, the air traffic control agency managed to find the dollars to update its interactive "command center" tool on its website so passengers can check if their airports are behind schedule due to what it calls sequester-related "staffing" problems. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn noticed this rare case of FAA technological entrepreneurship and fired off a letter Wednesday protesting what he called the agency's "full blown media rollout" to hype the flight delays.

That had zero impact on FAA bosses, who were on Capitol Hill rationalizing their dereliction. But after Mr. Coburn published his letter on his website, FAA regional employees wrote to blow the whistle on their bosses. As one email put it, "the FAA management has stated in meetings that they need to make the furloughs as hard as possible for the public so that they understand how serious it is."

Strategies include encouraging union workers to take the same furlough day to increase congestion. "I am disgusted with everything that I see since the sequester took place," another FAA employee wrote. "Whether in HQ or at the field level it is clear that our management has no intention of managing anything. The only effort that I see is geared towards generating fear and demonstrating failure."

Harry Reid began the week with a statement that was framed as a dire warning but was really more of a boast:

"In airports across the country, millions of Americans will get their first taste of the pain of sequestration."

But the braggadocio quickly turned to concern and then panic as the public saw right through the media smokescreen and correctly blamed the incompetent Obama administration for the annoying delays.  Once Senate Dems backed down, Obama had no choice but to signal that he would sign the legislation because to veto it would only confirm the suspicion: that his goal was to turn the American people into collateral damage in order to hurt the House GOP.
    
Speaker Boehner left no doubt who he blamed for the problem:

"The disruption to America's air traffic system over the past week was a consequence of the administration's choice to implement the president's sequestration cuts in the most painful manner possible... With this solution, Americans will no longer be burdened by President Obama’s flight delays and our economy will not take an unnecessary hit."

House Majority Leader Cantor weighed in as well on the GOP's latest triumph:

As a CQ / Roll Call reporter tweeted last night, "Make no mistake, this FAA fix is a complete, utter cave by Senate Democrats and, if signed, by the White House." This is a sentiment expressed in other press reports over the last 12 hours, including, Politico: "Democrats blink first on aviation" and Chicago Tribune: "White House Scrambles For Damage Control."

Consider that the Democrats opening position was they would only replace the sequester with tax increases. By the first of this week Senator Reid proposed replacing the whole sequester with phony war savings. And by last night, Senate Democrats were adopting our targeted "cut this, not that" approach. This victory is in large part a result of our standing together under the banner of #Obamaflightdelays.

When Dear Leader tries to harm us, we'll just keep dancing. Power to the people!