A Reality Check Courtesy of Michelle Malkin

O.K., can we all come back to earth now? I mean the escalation of abject stupidity is now stratospheric. If we fly any higher we will all singe our wings on the sun and crash in flames to the earth.

No one is soaring higher than Frank Rich, who has never had any ties to the mother earth. He really believes he is a certified genius and the world's most learned student of history and politics. This, of course, has never been true and his flights of fantasy are numerous and far flung.

Often we mere mortals realize he is simply shooting off gas and we ride along for amusement, laughing at him and not with him. But I do tire of his constant effort to explain matters simple beyond his meager comprehension through his use of tired analogies and historically incorrect references. I'll cite an example in a moment, but let me broaden the discussion to other liberal, progressive and left wing narrators of current events.

The (totally false) story today across the blogosphere and main stream media wasteland is that the McCain and Palin devotes are raging out of control and may well explode into full blown revolution. Murder and mayhem are in the offing, if we can believe what we read. Conservatives are, we are told, certifiably insane.

This is all because of a couple of questions poised at John McCain's virtually constant Town Hall Meetings and catcalls during Sarah Palin's mega-rallies. Trust me when I tell you the media had to film and them ignore countless hours of thoughtful questions and great speeches to locate and explode these occasional outbursts.

Then they still had to carefully edit the sloganeering to eliminate the intelligent and calming responses from Senator McCain himself (or "that one" as I prefer to call him).

Enter the Frank Rich's of the world (and his cohorts are legion). Let me actually begin with Paul Krugman writing today in the New York Times (I will get to Rich later, I promise). Krugman is simply terrified as he writes:

“Something very ugly is taking shape on the political scene: as McCain’s chances fade, the crowds at his rallies are, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage…What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years. For sure there will be crazy accusations, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some violence.”

Not to be outdone (and to prove beyond a doubt he is an astute student of history and mankind) Franks Rich implies Sarah Palin and John McCain are engaging in behavior that will assure Barack Obama is assassinated. Rich's logic and his inferences are astonishing:

"Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries." ".......what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops." "By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today."

You've just got to love Rich's tossing in the phrase "Wiemar-like rage" to be certain that is brilliantly educated, elite readers understand the Palin and McCain are actually inciting their followers to assassinate someone or everyone of a different race, color or religion.

For those of you who haven't studied pre-World War II history lately, the phrase is used (very often by Rich and many progressive bloggers) to compare the actions of Republicans to the actions of Hitler in inciting mob violence in order to build the Third Reich. Often, in fear that readers might miss the not-so-subtle point , Rich and others simply call their opponents Reich-Wing Republicans. Isn't that clever?

Thank goodness there is someone writing this Sunday who has an ounce of intelligence and a simple sense of balance and perspective. There is someone who can actually look at both sides of the coin. There is someone to provide a "reality check."

Who knew the voice of reason and rational thought would be none other than Michelle Malkin? I hope what I have written above has peaked your interest, because I refuse to spoil one sentence of Malkin's brilliant blog entry by repeating it here. Please just link immediately over to Crush the Obamedia narrative: Look who’s “gripped by insane rage”
After reading Malkin the only word you'll be able to use to describe Frank Rich and his friends is "hypocrite."