From the Associated Press:

Andrew Breitbart strips off his blazer, windmills it over his head and lets it fly to the stage with a matador’s flourish. He booms into a microphone, sneering, taunting. Breath sprints to keep up with words.

A Breitbart boil is under way, before a cheering throng of tea partiers on a moonlike strip of Nevada desert back in March.

A finger stabs overhead as the conservative online publisher declares Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a racist. An arm lances outward as he decries Republican leaders as apologists. Voice rising, Breitbart pledges $10,000, then $20,000, then $100,000 for the United Negro College Fund if proof is found to corroborate claims of racial name-calling during tea party protests on Capitol Hill.

“They decided to play lowball, hardball tactics,” Breitbart seethes. “Well, we’re going to have to play it right back at them.”

You could argue he has done just that.

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Over at The Daily Beast, editor Tina Brown weighs in on the Sherrod kerfuffle:

Let’s NOT have a conversation about race. The calls for Obama to now make the Shirley Sherrod debacle a teachable moment fills me with panic that the president will retreat to the Oval Office and craft a soaring piece of oratory, instead of getting on with the humdrum business of firing the stumbling, bumbling members of his own team who, as the saying goes, can’t find their ass with either hand.

It doesn’t take much imagination to know how much the president must have seethed to be derailed from his policy agenda by this Republican attack mutt, Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart’s genre of dirty tricks were old news even in the Whitewater era. Public figures know from the daily incinerated reputations that any time you open your mouth near a Twitter feed, your career can go up in smoke. It remains amazing that USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack didn’t even accord Shirley Sherrod the kind of pause a minor executive in a corporate human resources department would have felt obliged to offer and have someone—anyone—listen to the full tape of Sherrod’s NAACP speech or even read the text.

But Obama can’t keep doing catch-up outrage two media cycles after the fact. On the campaign trail, he was the chief executive of a laser-guided, on-message apparatus, the candidate who seemed to lead from a head that was always the most level of the people round him. Instead, the president sounded as out of it as his old adversary John McCain when Obama said on Good Morning America that “we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.” Yeah, right. There is something loose and jittery about the atmosphere round Obama at the moment of which Vilsack’s clumsy over-reaction gives us a whiff.

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We owe a great favor to Mike Godwin. Those of us who have spent any amount of time arguing nonsense on the Internet are familiar with Godwins Law. Briefly, Godwins Law states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches … given enough time, all discussions —regardless of topic or scope —inevitably wind up being about Hitler and the Nazis.”

The most wonderful aspect of Godwin is that “there is a tradition in many newsgroups, and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically ‘lost’ whatever debate was in progress.”

Now there are exceptions to Godwin, for instance when discussing Jesse James affair with Bombshell McGee, it would be quite difficult to not bring up Nazi references. As a student of Hayek, a personal beef I have, is that sometimes a political argument requires a comparison.

Friedrich A. Hayek believed, the infringements on Liberty caused by programs like National Health Care, or any other central planning, will inevitably lead to a totalitarian government that is indistinguishable from National Socialism, save for the logo on the armbands. However being held to Godwin is a rigorous discipline that forces me to plum the depths of my intellect, for an alternate metaphor when discussing issues with liberals.

I believe that Godwin also applied during the years of the Bush Administration. Their argument was lost when Code Pink and MoveOn started with the BusHitler remarks, and I think images of the current President sporting a Charlie Chaplin moustache should probably be discouraged as well.

But I think we should add another corollary to Godwins Law. I think that if you call your opponent a Racist, you have also lost the argument.

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As the November mid-term elections draw near, race arsonists’ political distractions are seen in full action.  Facing defeat at the polls, the Left is desperately resorting to its only remaining trick.

With different styles and brands of utopian-driven influence — from the dependent welfare state of the American Democratic party, the socialism of Marxist/Leninists’ Workers’ Paradise, the Open Society of Soros’ idol Karl Popper, or any of the current collective salvations of social justice — examining the tactics as they occur is an enlightening exercise.

On Sunday’s This Week, President Obama’s defacto spokesman, V.P. Joe Biden, was sent to poison the well. Host Jake Tapper asked, “The NAACP had a convention in the last week, and they passed a resolution saying that elements of the Tea Party are racist. Do you think elements of the Tea Party are racist?”

The presidential reply is as follows:

Well, the truth is that at least elements that were involved in some of the Tea Party folks expressed racist views, you saw that on television. But, I don’t think — I don’t — I wouldn’t characterize the Tea Party as racist.

There are individuals who are either members of or on the periphery of some of their things, their — their protests — that have expressed really unfortunate comments. And, again, it was all over TV, all over your network, you know? A black Congressman walking up the stairs of the Capitol.

But, I don’t believe, the president doesn’t believe that the Tea Party is, uh, is a racist organization.  I don’t believe that. Very conservative.  Very different views on government and a whole lot of things.  But it is not a racist organization.

The day before, on Geraldo at Large, New Black Panther Party leader Malik Zulu Shabazz, in more blunt language, likewise endorsed the NAACP:

“A black man, really, or a black leader cannot be a racist… I have the right to use different language… We endorse fully the NAACP resolution.”

Obama’s mentor, Saul Alinsky would describe his disciple as a “realistic radical,” while denouncing Shabazz as a “rhetorical radical.”

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From Politico:

Agriculture Department spokesman Chris Mather said Sherrod was let go because of what she said in March that was captured on the videotape, not due to her actions in regard to the farmer two decades ago.

“She was asked to resign because of the comment she made when she was a political appointee. It’s not what happened decades ago. It’s the comments she made in March.”

Mather also said that the White House played no part in Sherrod’s resignation. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asked for her resignation and he accepted it when Sherrod gave it, Mather said.

“This is the Secretary’s decision. There was no pressure from the White House,” Mather said.

“Our policy is clear,” Vilsack said in an earlier statement. “There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA and we strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person. We have a duty to ensure that when we provide services to the American people we do so in an equitable manner. But equally important is our duty to instill confidence in the American people that we are fair service providers.”

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Politico finally gets around to reporting on the Shirley Sherrod incident:

The Agriculture Department official who has resigned after a video surfaced showing her saying she withheld assistance from a white farmer insisted on Tuesday that she really lost her job over the tea party’s clash with the NAACP.

A video of Shirley Sherrod, the department’s Georgia director of rural development, telling an NAACP audience that she didn’t give a white farmer the “full force” of what she could provide, went viral Tuesday and prompted Sherrod to leave the department.

The NAACP condemned Sherrod’s comments in a statement, calling them “shameful.”

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July 19, 2010

(BALTIMORE, MD) NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous issued the following statement today after learning of the resignation of Shirley Sherrod of the United States Department of Agriculture:

“Since our founding in 1909, the NAACP has been a multi-racial, multi-faith organization that– while generally rooted in African American communities– fights to end racial discrimination against all Americans.

We concur with US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack in accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod for her remarks at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet.

Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race.

We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers.

Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man. (more…)

Correction: While Ms. Sherrod did discuss withholding help from a white farmer, it was not during her tenure with the USDA

***

This morning, we broke video of a USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, recounting for attendees at an NAACP awards dinner how she withheld help from a white farmer seeking the agency’s help in saving his farm.

Fox News is reporting that Ms. Sherrod has resigned. From Fox:

“There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a written statement. “We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.

Sherrod explained in the video that, at the time, she assumed the state or national Department of Agriculture had referred the white farmer to her. In order to ensure that the farmer could report back that she was indeed helpful, she said she took him to see “one of his own” — a white lawyer.

“I figured that if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him,” she said.

The video clip was first posted by BigGovernment.com. The clip is dated March 27 from an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet.

So, the USDA has issued a statement. We’re still waiting to hear from the NAACP.

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The NAACP’s resolution condemning the Tea Party movement for being explicitly racist is a betrayal of the organization’s historic importance to our country. It saddens me as the chairman of a civil rights organization that is the spiritual grandson of the NAACP that they have allowed their name and their tradition to be pimped by politicians who are worried about keeping their jobs in 2010.

As a student of history, particularly African-American history, I know that the racial pendulum often swings dramatically. In less than two decades after the Civil War, African-Americans would go from being represented in halls of congress and state legislatures all across our country into the neo-slavery of segregation.

While historians often condemn Southern Democrats and Northern white Republicans for this travesty, few have acknowledged the excesses of the Reconstruction period (1865-1876), perpetuated by some African-American leaders and their white patrons. America has come a long way in terms of race relations, and America does not want to turn back.

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Let me make one thing very clear, my Mother, Elizabeth Thomas West, was a lifetime membership holder with the NAACP. Therefore growing up in our home I clearly understood the mission and vision for this organization. It was a mission and vision that enabled me to have the pride in myself and the heritage of my parents, grandparents, and extended family. It was a mission and vision that, to me, fostered a desire to excel beyond the standard and have a commitment to excellence regardless of skin color.

However, something has happened to that mission and vision, something horrific and inconsistent with the principles and values I recalled emanating from the “ole school” black community. Somewhere along the way victimization mentality has taken root in the black community resulting in astronomical unemployment rates, high incarceration rates, appalling murder rates, breakdown of the black family, and embarrassing teen pregnancy rates.

And in the light of all these negative socioeconomic indicators the NAACP decides that the preeminent focus of their national convention would be on issuing a resolution castigating the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party movement as racist. Even Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas was so compelled as to state that the Tea Party is filled with Klan members…..but we will get to the Congressional Black Caucus a bit later.

Instead of maintaining its mission and vision, the NAACP has now become the “useful idiots” (a term coined by Vladimir Lenin) for liberal racism. They have made themselves into a political hack job organization which now seeks to maintain the liberal progressive socialist control of the 21 century plantation. It is on this new economic plantation where the liberals seek to enslave the black community in order to maintain a devoted, monolithic, voting electorate.

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Correction: While Ms. Sherrod made the remarks captured in the first video featured in this post while she held a federally appointed position, the story she tells refers to actions she took before she held that federal position.

***

Context is everything.

In this piece you will see video evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee and NAACP award recipient and in another clip from the same event a perfect rationalization for why the Tea Party needs to exist.

But first the context:

For the past week, Americans who consider themselves aligned with the Tea Party movement have suffered the indignity of being falsely labeled racist by the NAACP and their pro-bono publicity managers, the main stream media. The constant calls to “repudiate the racists from your ranks” have not only been insulting, but have also served to force a false standard upon America’s fastest-growing and most vibrant political movement that no other group could ever live up to nor would ever be asked to live up to.

While the media has chosen to do the Democratic Party’s bidding in allowing for the NAACP to negatively and falsely brand the millions strong, loosely affiliated tea party phenomenon as “racist”, the moral indignation over race and racism has taken center stage in a summer of economic and political discontent.

The NAACP, an undeniable weapon in the Democratic Party’s arsenal, was more than happy to exploit this nation’s sensitive racial schism for possible political gain. The Democratic Party and the NAACP, needless to say, are playing with fire.

From the beginning of the Tea Party movement, the Left, its aiders and abettors at MSNBC, the NY Times and other reliable left of center propaganda venues, raised race as the driving force behind the movement, even though the evidence was never there. MSNBC even egregiously cut off a black protester’s head in a photograph of a man carrying a gun to a rally in order to discuss that anti-black racism was rearing its head in America.

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DISGUSTING— NAACP Chief and smear merchant Ben Jealous just linked the tea party groups to the KKK, Stormfront and David Duke.

And, it looks like he just labeled the tea party a “white supremist group.”

Unbelievable.

Via CNN:

This week at the NAACP annual convention, we passed over 75 resolutions. They addressed critical issues from education equity, to fixing our broken criminal justice and immigration systems, to our top priority: jobs, jobs, jobs.

One resolution, which was highlighted in my convention speech, created media frenzy: The unanimously passed resolution demanded that the leadership of the Tea Party repudiate its racist elements and make it clear that there is no space in the organization for bigotry.

It is unfortunate that at a time when our nation is reeling in the midst of one of the most devastating downturns in our economy since the Great Depression, the NAACP is compelled to deal with a disturbing, corrosive attack from the Tea Party.

Instead of joining us to repudiate racism, Tea Party leaders have attempted a tit for tat and demanded that we condemn the New Black Panther Party for reported hate speech. It is a false argument. Of course we condemn hate speech from anyone and any organization, including the New Black Panther Party. But that party is a mere flea compared to the influence and size of the Tea Party. And the New Black Panther Party is not a member of the NAACP. What we are asking the Tea Party to eschew is not the racism of some outside organization, but the bigotry within.

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Rep. Elijah Cummings was on with Andrea Mitchell this week to discuss the bogus tea party racism story. Cummings said,

“The best way that the tea party can rid racism from their ranks is to help people get jobs.”

Huh?

What does he think the tea party is, an employment agency?…
What does he want the tea party to do?… Ram through another stimulus? Pass the hat?
Unreal.

And, besides… When the tea party does create jobs they just beat the hell out of them anyway! That’s worked really well.

Does Elijah have any idea what the h*ll he’s talking about?

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The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that racial slurs and swastikas were spray painted on a fence in  Southern New Jersey late Sunday or early Monday. The article states:

Obscene references to President Obama and African Americans were scrawled in black across backyard fences owned by five residents, according to Monroe Township Police Capt. John Cortesi. Two “crudely drawn swastikas” also appeared on the fences, which face heavily traveled Corkery Lane.

As expected, the NAACP chimed in as well:

Loretta Williams, president of the Gloucester County NAACP, said her organization wanted the incident treated as a bias crime and not a prank.

“This is something we won’t tolerate,” she said. “People have no right to spread their hate message, whether it’s on a fence, a wall, or over the Internet, and intimidate people.”

It’s interesting how the NAACP denounces hate speech when they are the target, but it’s free speech or is to be tolerated when one of their own spews the hate:

Samir: My job is to educate black people, whether they want to be educated or not. I don’t give a damn what they may think about white people, I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracker I hate him. Because we are still in this condition.

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As a co-founder of the Quincy Tea Party I was appalled at the lack of social responsibility and restraint Mr. Jealous displayed in his remarks regarding the Tea Party Movement. I found myself becoming increasingly irritated when he began his political spin and roll tactics to distance himself from his statements. Motivational speaking can backfire if it is at the expense of someone else. Especially if that someone else is 20,000,000 of your countrymen.

But alas, the truth will set us free. You see, Mr. Jealous ignited the single largest surge in Tea Party membership in the movement’s history. The current membership explosion has even surpassed the surge that followed the passage of the Health Control Law. I was amazed by the email and telephone traffic generated by his unfounded remarks. I feel as though we should pay Mr. Jealous a consulting fee or give him some sort of recruiting award.

Mr. Jealous seems to be unaware that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool the Tea Party ever. This grassroots group of Americans has been abused, ridiculed, slandered, and hacked on by every form of progressive, democrat and leftist organization in existence from the day it was born. The Tea Party can take a verbal punch better than any candidate or spin doctor the left can muster. We are the grassroots equivalent of Muhammad Ali. The Tea Party is the classiest and most resilient group that has assembled in this country since the Civil Rights Movement. That being said the Tea Party Movement is about as likely to give up, as Dr. Martin Luther King was during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

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The NAACP should only propose resolutions that they have exercised themselves. The Tea Party, having only been active for a year and half, is the only group being singled out for racism in today’s society. There are races committed to the destruction of our entire nation and the Tea Party is being targeted as a threat. Perhaps it is a threat.

Could it be that the 2008 election served a greater purpose? The existence of the NAACP, and others like it, are threatened by the existence of the Tea Party. The reality is that we colored people no longer require the assistance from other Negros for advancement in 2010.

These groups run to the rescue of distressed brown people only when the media deems it newsworthy. Meanwhile, there are inner city black children who continue to grow up fatherless while sharing a neighborhood with stray bullets, drugs and a plethora of liquor stores on every corner. To my understanding of the” I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King’s intention was far from gang-banging and gangster rap.

I don’t believe that the true meaning of this nation’s creed was to move black people from one form of slavery to another. The NAACP has been completely ineffective in my lifetime, and the lack of leadership in the black community has contributed to the ability of these groups to speak on behalf of the rest of us. The ignored and forgotten society that lives among the projects has been abandoned by the likes of NAACP. And, along with other groups and individuals that rode in the coat-tails of MLK, they are irrelevant but continue to feed off of the codependence that they have created among blacks for validation.

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The recent rants of the leader of the New Black Panther Party, (“I hate white people! Every last iota of a cracker I hate….” ) couldn’t have been more amusing. That is before justifying the killing of some cracker children.

Up until that point his speech sounded like one from a common street-corner nutcase or Chris Rock working out new material for an upcoming HBO special. But it plunged to a new level of low advocating harming children rather than protecting them. To his credit at least his message wasn’t shrouded in feigned concern about childhood obesity like Michelle Obama’s recent speech to the NAACP in which she first glossed over real strides made in this country when it comes to race relations, then focused on inadequate black schools and then launched into what she views as most crucial, the issue of fat black kids. However one has to question – If she’s truly committed to protecting black children from the harmful effects of bad eating habits why she didn’t ask the NAACP to join her in taking the following steps -

• Denouncing the New Black Panther party – After all if young black kids are influenced by them and actually off a cracker baby (as ordered) it would undoubtedly result in their incarceration – where they wouldn’t be served the healthiest of foods.
• Apologizing to Mr. Gladney – Rather than condone the beating of this black tea party member as the NAACP did, Mrs. Obama and the NAACP should instead support him for engaging in independent thought, even if his views differ from theirs. After surviving slavery at the very least haven’t black people earned the right to free thinking? If not, the minds of black people are still in chains which could be a very anxiety provoking concept to black youths – and anxiety commonly leads to compulsive eating.

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Other than the Klan, is there a more useless organization in American than the NAACP? Violent crime in black urban communities remains unsettling, the learning gap between black and other students still exists, marriage is all but nonexistent among poor blacks, and all too many households are headed by single mothers.

So where does the NAACP level its attack? Beyond street crime, apart from dysfunctional communities, ignoring the skyrocketing rates of HIV AIDS, they say the real problem for black folks is … the Tea Party movement. Benjamin Jealous, the NAACP’s president, says Tea Party activism is “pushing the country backwards.”

But wait, the problems facing urban black communities pre-date the growth of Tea Party formations by a significant number of years. But facts aside, since the end of the 1980s, the NAACP has been completely unable to craft an authentic agenda dealing with the real issues facing black communities.

So what’s a stuffy, out-of-step civil rights group to do? It throws down the victim card and places blame for its organizational failures in odd places.

Last time I checked, most Tea Party formations are organized around issues like limited government, maximum individual liberty, free markets and fiscal responsibility. Issues of race have not been a featured part of any Tea party gathering in any place that I’ve been aware of.

But, facts to liberals are like kryptonite to Superman. And neither facts nor logic seemingly played a role in the NAACP’s decision to take up a resolution at its national convention condemning “The Tea Party”for“explicitly racist behavior.

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I condemn the NAACP. They’ve lost their way. They’ve become a political pawn.

I’ve seen some of the examples of offensive signs at tea party rallies, but they are from individuals in the crowd and not indicative of the organizers or the featured speakers. These offenders are the exception rather than the norm.

Contrast that to a May press conference held by the Missouri NAACP. Local NAACP leaders, along with a national board member, defended men charged in 2009 with beating up a black man who was apparently beaten for no other reason than because he was supporting the tea party movement. It was a press conference in which the victim was derisively referred to as a “Negro” and an “Uncle Tom.”

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I condemn the NAACP. I condemn them for allowing the group to be used as a political tool to do the dirty work of the progressive movement. Instead of criticizing tea parties, the NAACP would be better served denouncing the racist comments made by a member of the New Black Panther Party and their voter intimidation outside a Philadelphia polling place in the last presidential election.

I condemn the NAACP, along with every race-baiting, sinful thinking poverty pimp and addle-pated black, brown and white denier of truth. The truth is, I believe, that they conduct and have conducted themselves as if there were no God — as if there were no Constitution — as if there had never been hard-fought civil rights victories.

They have dishonored the memory of that great American, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Almost two-score and seven years ago, he urged us all that Abraham Lincoln was due respect for the Emancipation. King urged us to expect America to deliver to all men the “riches of freedom and the security of justice.” He urged us to come together in brotherhood. He implored us to be not bitter, nor guilty of wrongful deeds. Finally, it was King’s hope that all would be judged by content of character above all else.

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