…that black people would get beaten up by racist thugs in the streets. And they were right:

Last night in St. Louis, Missouri, a local conservative found out firsthand about the “Chicago way.” Kenneth Gladney, a black conservative from the city, was handing out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags after a Russ Carnahan town hall meeting on health care in Mehlville. This didn’t go over well with the Obama supporters and union thugs who attended the meeting. They punched him in the face, kicked him in the head, and stomped on him on the pavement. So much for hope and change.

Well, the change is that they probably won’t be prosecuted for it, as they probably would have been under a Bush Justice Department.

[Update a while later]

This is a pretty incredible story. I mean, violence from union members? Who’s ever heard of such a thing? Anyway, I expect that at his next news conference, the president will point out that the man handing out the signs was behaving stupidly.

[Update late afternoon (Pacific)]

Mary Katherine Ham has an interview. I heard one with him on Cavuto in the car at lunchtime as well. It will be interesting to hear if the ACLU or NAACP has anything to say about it. Or if the latter lives down to its name of the association of “liberal” colored people.

[Update a few minutes later]

And as usual, what does a Democrat do when confronted with wrongdoing by his supporters? Blame it on Republicans.

[Another update]

I’m on the left coast, so I missed this episode with my own (worthless, or actually of negative worth) Florida Congressman (soon to be be my ex-Congressman, since we’re almost certainly moving somewhere, and probably back here to LA):

Though only a handful of constituents typically show up at the Lighthouse Point public library once a month with questions for U.S. Rep. Ron Klein’s staffers — often questions about Social Security checks or passport applications — this time about 100 people packed the room for two hours.

The group was rowdy, rude and fired up about healthcare.

“Where the hell is Klein?” demanded Republican activist Ana Gomez-Mallada, even though the congressman was not scheduled to be there. Others branded him a “coward” and a “communist.”

The natives are definitely (and justifiably) growing restless.

Under the Bushitler, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Under The One, it’s the highest form of racism.

[Late morning update]

Meet the scary “racist” mob.

…in the media:

Jon Henke of The Next Right heard the first shot — the newspaper changed its story, literally — and exposed the sniper. The Times (whose parent company once employed me at Congressional Quarterly) initially, and correctly, thought it fair to note that the Service Employees International Union organized a counter protest at Castor’s event.

The paper also included this explosive quote from an SEIU official hinting at plans to instigate trouble at the event: “We’re prepared [for disruption]. We have strategies to deal with it if it should come up.”

That language provided important context about a group whose leader once described his thug-like organizing philosophy like this: “[W]e prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work we use the persuasion of power.”

The rewrite of the story a short time later dropped the quote and changed the tone of the story to what Henke rightly called “something far more SEIU/Democrat friendly.” The second version downplayed SEIU’s role even though it was billed as an organizer, and it spun the story from the critical perspective of pro-Obama protesters.

I don’t think that the Obama honeymoon with the media is over. It’s just the honeymoon with the public (and particularly those who voted for him because it was “cool” without paying any attention to his record or actual statements) that is. So now they’re getting desperate to defend their paramour. It is nice to see the orgy getting smaller, though.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The White House (and the Democrats in Congress) against community organizing:

Nancy Pelosi, who will get her own bound volume in the annals of asininity, has outdone herself. When asked by a reporter whether the protests at various town-hall meetings represented legitimate grassroots opposition or were manufactured “AstroTurf” stunts, she replied, “I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.”

Now this is a pas de trois of dishonesty, slander, and idiocy. Not only is Pelosi lying when she says protesters are bringing swastikas to these town halls, not only is she suggesting that American citizens are Nazis for having the effrontery to get in the way of Obamacare, but she’s also saying that the alleged swastikas are obvious proof that these protests are manufactured by slick P.R. gurus.

How does that work? What public-relations genius says: “Okay, we need these protests to seem like an authentic backlash of real Americans. Make sure everyone has enough Nazi paraphernalia!”

The combination of stupidity and venality of this woman would be hilarious if she weren’t third in line for the presidency.

It’s difficult for mere mortals like us to fully grasp the enormousness of the Democrats’ hypocrisy. Put aside all that talk of dissent being the highest form of patriotism. Overlook that Democrats would have upended jerry cans of gasoline and immolated themselves in protest if the Bush administration had asked people to inform on their neighbors. You can even forget that the DNC’s claims are untrue.

But how can we ignore the fact that the world’s most famous community organizer is whining about community organizing?

Free speech, community organizing, executive jets for me, not for thee. These people are nothing if not hypocritical.

[Update a few minutes later]

Organizing the wrong community.

[Another update]

New rules for radicals:

In today’s world, the “radicals” are the ones who protest the takeover of a huge swath of the economy by government bureaucrats who have proven they can’t even run a program that gives free money away to car buyers properly. It is radicals who want to preserve the pillars of a system that over 80 percent of Americans still believe works — though certainly not perfectly.

In this new world, radicals are the ones who protest adding trillions to our debt and who have the temerity to ask if legislators have read the bills they sign. You’ve seen them. Those radicals who are ranting and raving about silly things like the Constitution.

So here is a plan. Instead of making the case for health care “reform,” let’s launch an offensive against citizens. Nazis. Fanatics. Mobs. Thugs. Whatever you call them.

And if you’re really patriotic, you can even report them.

The not-so-silent majority is waking up.

Victor Davis Hanson explains why Americans are in revolt against their new masters, who have hijacked the government of the people.

Jim Garaghty has a critique, with which I agree:

I actually don’t like the Obama-Joker poster, for several reasons. For starters, this image is too “hot” — i.e., the Joker was a sadist and a psychopath, and Obama is neither. Obama’s the opposite of Heath Ledger’s portrayal; the Joker was a nihilist and Obama is a utopian idealist.

There’s something particularly wrongheaded about using a character who says his purpose is to “show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are” to symbolize a politician in love with centralized planning.

As we watch the President’s poll numbers drop, I feel like a lot of damaging memes are starting to stick to Obama — used car salesman, not stupid but doesn’t know issues in depth (tonsil profiteering!), bad first instincts, a wimp on foreign affairs, melting before our eyes without Bush or McCain to run against… The “Joker” image doesn’t fit any of those, and I think is too easily used as fodder for distractions.

I think that the metaphor of Bush as Dark Knight and Islamism as the nihilist joker is interesting, but this poster is probably counterproductive, because while it may make some feel good, it isn’t grounded in a valid analogy. On the other hand:

William Ayers seemed, at one point in his life, intrigued at the thought of “watching the world burn.”

But he was “just a guy in Obama’s neighborhood” (with whom he helped propagandize schoolchildren with the Annenberg funds), so that’s all right.

[Update on Thursday morning]

Frank J. has his own take:

First off, it’s worth looking at whether the poster is racist. Liberals seem pretty certain it is. An LA Weekly blogger commented that “the only thing missing is a noose.” Now, you might be scratching your head and saying that the only people who would call this racist are brain-dead liberals who shriek “racism!” at every criticism about Obama as an alternative to thinking and only cause more problems by confusing the issue of racism and should thus be chased out of society and forced to live in the sewers, only emerging at night to feed on garbage and bugs.

And while that’s quite fair and probably true, we should still give the possibility of racism a fair hearing. Don’t you remember the long, racist history of black people being compared to the Joker? Of course not, because I just made that up — but it could be true in some alternate universe. Also, the image involves white makeup on a black person. White on black — that has to be racist somehow. I’ll bet makeup places won’t even sell white pancake makeup to black people. They’d be like “No! Get out of here, black person! We won’t sell that to you! That’s racist!”

Beyond the racism in the image that’s quite obvious to crazy people, the other question is whether there are any real substantive comparisons between Obama and the Joker. On the surface, they don’t seem at all alike. The Joker is psychotic, and I’ve heard Obama called a lot of things — arrogant, incompetent, deceitful, a Communist — but not psychotic. Obama doesn’t seem like he’s out to kill anyone — not even terrorists — and only leaves the option of killing people on the table to help make ends meet in his health care plan.

Especially terrorists.

Though he doesn’t seem averse to persuading Granny that it’s time to go.

And then there’s comment number two:

The similarities also include the circumstances that brought each to power. As Alfred said “and in their desperation, they turned to a man they fully didn’t understand.”

And the election of Obama is a joke, a bad one on us.

It’s sure not seeming all that funny to me.

…as James Tiberious Kirk:

For all his talk of being different, representing “hope,” and bringing “change” Obama has turned out to be quite the bore. He is the consummate insider, a recycler of old ideas and failed policies. People wanted to beam up to the starship and explore strange new worlds. We wanted to boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before. Obama is in the wrong franchise. He and crazy Doc Brown, I mean Joe Biden, gassed up the DeLorean and took us back in time. To 1976.

Palin passed the Kobayashi Maru. She is qualified to command the ship. She has all the qualities we want in a captain; valor, principals, vision and most of all, the ability to change the rules.

We’ll see if she’s changed them to her advantage.