What he said (neo segregation)

Jay Nordlinger at NRO echoes a thought I often have:

The other day, I was reading about “the first Latino fundraiser for Obama’s candidacy.” The president was talking to “about 120 mostly Latino contributors.” And I thought, “Even our fundraisers are segregated now? Must everything in American life be divided up by ethnicity and race?”

I have an idea: How about separate drinking fountains and toilet facilities? Has anyone ever thought of that?

E pluribus unum — a great principle. We ought to think about adopting it and living it someday . . .

While on the subject, his Impromptus column is one of my favorite reads, hitting issues most pundits ignore.

Quick hits

Some political quickies:

I’m sorry, I just fail to see how the exposure of a group of major media figures coordinating efforts to suppress news damaging to the Obama campaign and to propagandize in an attempt to get him elected is news. Are people seriously surprised to hear that this was happening? Could anybody have thought it was not?

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Looks like one Obamacare lie has been exposed pretty quickly:

The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new "high-risk" insurance program under a provision of the federal health care legislation enacted in March.

It has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of pro-abortion Governor Edward Rendell under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.

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How perfect is it that the president of a former civil rights organization which, having become obsolete, devolved into a garden variety hate and grievance group is named…Ben Jealous? It’s downright eponymous.

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Tom Sowell echoes my feelings on said organization: “[T]hat an organization like the NAACP, after years of fighting against genuine racism, should now be playing the game of race-card fraud is especially painful to see.”

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More Sowell: “[Voting for Obama thinking that he would be a post-racial president] was an honest mistake of the kind that decent people have often made when dealing with people whose agendas are not constrained by decency, but only by what they think they can get away with.”

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Jack Kelly on Obama’s curious decision to object to al Qaeda because, of all things, racism:

Objecting to al Qaida mainly because its leaders may harbor racial prejudices is kind of like objecting to Hitler mainly because he gave preference to tall blondes with blue eyes.

Al Qaida is objectionable because of the many murders it commits in pursuit of its Islamo-fascist ideology, which is objectionable enough in itself. The president's comments -- and more so those of his aide -- give the impression he'd think better of these terrorists if they had a diversity officer and an affirmative action program.

Barack Obama pledged to be America's first "post-racial" president. But in office, he's been more obsessed with race than any president since Woodrow Wilson, who imposed segregation on the federal government.

Quick hits 4/20

Some things i ran across in my reading:

James Taranto, on why the left needs racism:

The political left claims to love racial diversity, but it bitterly opposes such diversity on the political right. This is an obvious matter of political self-interest: Since 1964, blacks have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. If Republicans were able to attract black votes, the result would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party. […]

To keep blacks voting Democratic, it is necessary for the party and its supporters to keep alive the idea that racism is prevalent in America and to portray the Republican Party (as well as independent challengers to the Democrats, such as the tea-party movement) as racist. The election of Barack Obama made nonsense of the idea that America remains a racist country and thereby necessitated an intensifying of attacks on the opposition as racist.

Walter Williams, concluding a superb piece on the destructive effects of minimum wage laws: “Tragically, minimum wages have the unquestioned support of good-hearted, well-meaning people with little understanding who become the useful idiots of charlatans, quacks and racists.”

Via Jay Nordlinger, this Benjamin Netanyahu quote is chilling and sad: “Iran’s leaders are barreling toward developing a nuclear weapon, and openly declaring their desire to destroy Israel. In the face of these repeated pledges to remove the Jewish state from the earth, we encounter in the best case a limp reaction, and even that is fading. We do not hear the necessary rejection, no harsh denunciation, no outcry. The world is carrying on as usual, and there are those who direct their fire at us, at Israel.”

Also via JN, a great Bill Buckley quote: “When you wished long life to Fidel Castro, were you wishing a short life to his prisoners?” Unwittingly or not, yes you were.

The despicable Jimmy Carter

Will Collier nicely sums up the man who wakes up every morning thanking God that there was a James Buchanan to keep him from being the worst US president:

For everybody old enough to remember what life was like under Jimmy's stupefying mixture of sophomoric self-righteousness, boundless naivete and gobsmacking incompetence, shoving Mr. Peanut back under the spotlight in his bitter dotage does nothing to help Obama, who's been looking like Carter II since a few hours after his inauguration.

And for those too young to remember history's greatest monster (thanks, Glenn), Jimmah's empty slander is just another sign of the unbecoming moral vanity at the heart of the modern Left, to say nothing of its overweening intolerance for any hint of dissent. People know good and well that being opposed to socialized medicine or trillion-dollar deficits doesn't make them racist. Calling them ugly names isn't going to make them cower away in fear--it's going to make them more convinced than ever that they're in the right.

Except for the true believer DailyKos types, lefties must cringe every time Carter opens his mouth. He's been around too long to be a right wing plant, but he's certainly king of the useful idiots for the righty cause.

UPDATE 9/18/09: James Taranto comes up with an alternate explanation that would be believable if we thought Carter was that clever: "Carter may have a conflict of interest in attacking Americans on Obama's behalf. Perhaps he secretly hopes Obama fails so miserably as to supplant Carter as the worst president of the past century."

The desperation of the "racist" smear

Ed Morrissey on why the left is screaming "racist" at the majority of Americans who disagree with them on health care policy:

It comes from a sense of desperation on the Left, borne of the realization that they miscalculated the health-care debate. As objections have grown, they have tried to find ways to silence the opposition — because they can’t answer the actual objections. Some advocates have honestly tried to argue for the benefits they see from a government-run system, but most just vilify and demonize the opposition instead.

The racism charge is truly a desperate, Hail Mary rhetorical pass. Supposedly, all of this opposition comes from the color of our President’s skin, despite the fact that he won 53% of the vote just nine months ago. However, how do these people explain the same exact furor over the Clinton effort to nationalize health care 16 years ago?

The advocates of ObamaCare don’t want to admit to the radical nature of their agenda and the legitimate philosophical differences between the sides. Meybe it’s because they can’t win that argument.

That the exact same opponents and arguments were used against a white president trying to have government take over health care 16 years ago highlights the fatuousness of charges of racism.

Keep in mind an immutable law of politics in 2009: if a political opponent calls you a racist or ascribes racial motivation to your position on an issue, it is an admission that said opponent's position is too weak to be argued on its merits.

Yeah, in many cases it's just the last refuge of a bigot, but the empty argument aspect still holds.

Quick hits

Some short notes, probably mostly dated due to my week plus on the shelf with the flu.

Mickey Kaus: “If you don’t want people to think that subsidized, voluntary end-of-of-life counseling sessions are the camel’s nose of an attempt to cut costs by limiting end-of-life care, then don’t put them in a bill the overarching, stated purpose of which is to cut health care costs!

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Flashback: Wal-Mart vs FEMA, private sector vs government…guess who prepared for and responded to Katrina better?

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It was nice of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to give the Iranian regime a PR boost by referring to Aquavelvajad (love that Dennis Miller nickname) as the “elected” president of Iran, a quote that was hyped endlessly in the Iranian state TV and press. Every regime needs their useful idiots.

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Things you would see if the left ran the world: government tracking your movement via GPS in order to tax you.

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Certainly a grain of truth in this from Moe Lane, which is actually imitating the style of anti-Bush attacks: “[T]he antiwar movement is run by racists who only like brown people when they can be used as clubs with which to beat anybody to the antiwar movement’s Right. Well, anyone to their Right, and Jews.”

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Little Green Footballs: “This [Israel pounding Hamas in Operation Cast Lead] is one of those ludicrous media memes that refuses to die: fighting against evil only makes evil stronger. You’ll see it in articles about every conflict; it’s a kind of nihilistic philosophical tic that is nearly universal, a counterintuitive observation that’s supposed to impress you with its depth.”

Appeasers are not the most creative sorts, I’ll agree.

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Your congress in action: “Just last week Washington announced it would cut $100 million from the federal administrative budgets and acted like that was some big achievement. Now this week we learn that about the same time those cuts were made public, the House OK’d the purchase of the private jets. The taxpayer money the House plans to spend is to be used to buy three Gulfstream G550s at roughly $65 million each. These are long-range business jets with large, palatial interiors and three temperature zones.”

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Government in action: The guidelines in the House-passed bill state that large SUVs and trucks, typically considered gas guzzlers in everyday conversation, qualify for the $3,500 credit, and in some cases the $4,500 credit, depending on the trade-ins that come through the door for them. New Category 2 trucks -- like the Hummer H-3, Ford Explorer, Chevy Silverado, and Toyota Tundra -- qualify if they get at least 15 MPG combined, and get at least one mile per gallon more than the car or truck being traded in.

Rapid punches

More political shorts combined into one post:

A couple of recent columns, by Jonah Goldberg and Jeff Jacoby, build on my post on Ginsberg’s comment and its implications and are well worth a read.

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Nice to see Obama blame Medicare and Medicaid for driving up the costs of healthcare in his televised prime time presser. Admitting that government is the problem is step one…

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Tom Maguire on Henrylouisgate: “So - do feminists and domestic violence experts agree that if the man of the house shouts at the cops that everything is cool so get out, the cops should simply leave?”

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That 378-0 resolution that, in part, confirmed Obama having been born in Hawaii? 88.8% of the Republicans voted for it, but only 86.3% of the Democrats did.

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Obama said in a Business Week interview “I haven't signed a bill that's raised taxes yet.”

That’s a lie that takes some serious chutzpah, given that it took him only until his 16th day in office to do so: "President Barack Obama signed legislation Wednesday to more than double the federal cigarette [tax] to pay for an expansion of health insurance for poor children."

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Ann Althouse: “If studies show that divorce damages health, then horning into our marriages will become the government’s business too. Obviously another blue pill. You expect us to pay for the red pill, when there’s a blue pill?”

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Education 101: “I worried that a homeless person had wandered onto the school grounds. When I pointed him out to a fellow parent, she giggled and explained that he was a new teacher.

That can’t be true, I thought, and went off to see the principal, who briefed me about the seniority transfer clause in the teachers’ contract. Among all the applicants for a posted vacancy at P.S. 87, our obviously impaired new teacher had the most years in the system, so he automatically got the job.”

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Who took the most money from HMO’s in 2008, by more than a 2-1 margin? Barack Obama! No wonder he wants the whole country run like an HMO.

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For all of the propaganda painting Republicans as obstructionist on health care reform, it should be noted that Jim DeMint led an effort to allow Americans to purchase individual health insurance across state lines, only to see it defeated 62-37 including no votes by Senators Reid and Obama. The same pair also rejected an effort (as part of a 55-32 vote) to allow for the expansion of health care access and reduced costs through the creation of small business health plans.

It would be more accurate to say that Democrats have blocked health care reform, Republicans have blocked a government takeover of health care.

Freudian slip?

A tip of the hat to Powerline for this remarkable find, a quote from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be published in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

It's a fascinating glimpse into the liberal mindset for a couple of reasons.

First is the strangely uncontroversial desire for population control, by any means possible and preferably in populations "that we don't want to have too many of" as she puts it. The wackier factions of the environmental movement have often fantasized about plagues to wipe out significant portions of the human race, and even the more mainstream left mostly sees humans as a bad thing for the planet, and thus populations need to be frozen or outright reduced or unspeakable catastrophes will occur (see Paul Erlich's unintentional comedy for a pointed example).

But second is the leftist impulse that dare not speak its name, namely that we don't want too many of certain kinds of people. You seldom hear it acknowledged, but the abortion movement of the 20th century in general, and Planned Parenthood in particular, grew out of the desire to keep down black populations. "A woman's right to choose" is much like "state's rights" in that it is not in itself, nor are even most (post-1960's/early 1970's, at least) proponents of the concepts in fact trying to find justifications for racist policy, but in that they have often been used as code words for those who want to keep blacks down, be it by segregationist laws or by limiting offspring.

Admitting these kinds of things is usually avoided in these days of political correctness, but then again Mrs. Ginsberg is 76, and it is not that uncommon for people who predate the PC movement to sometimes let slip things that would make their children or grandchildren blush. Nobody (except the loony right) thinks she's a racist per se, but how easily historically racist concepts such as population control and abortion slip into matter of fact conversation for the leftist who lived through the 60's is a fascinating glimpse into their underlying worldview. ("Affirmative action" serves a similar function for later generations).

I'm only going to say this once, etc.

A reminder, should you talk to or otherwise correspond with me in any way in the next three weeks: I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR F-ING BRACKETS!

As you were.

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I’m glad my girlfriend doesn’t live in New Jersey:

“The painful Brazilian wax and its intimate derivatives are in danger of being stripped from salon and spa menus if a recent proposal to ban genital waxing is passed by the state’s Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling.”

I love Instapundit’s lines: “READ MY LIPS: No new waxes!” and “New Jersey Politicians Support Bush.”

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Gee, here’s a shocking development: “European countries that have offered to help the Obama administration close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have begun raising questions about the security risks and requirements if they accept prisoners described by the Bush administration as ‘the worst of the worst,’ according to diplomats and other officials.”

Closing a prison that holds hundreds of the world’s worst mass murderers and war criminals, what could possibly wrong there?

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A sad truth from John McWhorter: “When you’re black and 14, often you have a choice between doing well in school and having black friends.”

The notion that a kid who reads a book or tries in school is “acting white,” pushed by hip hop culture and assorted other black racists, is doing untold damage to black youth. Let’s hope that the election of Obama will start to turn that tide, but I suspect that eradicating black racism will be even harder than eradicating white racism proved to be. White racists had far fewer enablers in the media and academia.

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From a Rasmussen poll: “American workers are far more likely to belong to the investor class than a union. Just 9% of non-union workers would like to join a union.”

Which begs the question…is it good politics for the president to push a massive transfer of wealth from the investor class to unions, even if Big Labor thinks that it has already bought that level of influence?

It’s clearly not good for workers or the country as a whole, so the only remaining question is whether it is good politics.

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Interesting contrast between how big media covered the Iraq antiwar protests of the past (multiply the number of participants by 10, put it on the front page) with how they are covering the current rash of “tea party” protests. Or rather, how they are not covering them.

They hide, hoping you won’t decide.

Math geeks unite! etc.

Scattershooting while wondering what ever happened to Swen Nater:

Tuesday was Square Root Day, 3/3/09. I know I was partying, 7 years is a long time to wait for another chance.

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Some apologies.

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Sign of the times: The per capita rate of civilian killings in the border city of Juarez, Mexico in 2008 was nearly three-and-a-half times as great as the per capita rate of civilian killings in the Iraqi province of Baghdad

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More transparency in the Obama administration? Not so much: When Vice President Joe Biden spoke to the annual meeting of AFL-CIO officials at the plush Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach on March 5, television cameras were not allowed to cover his speech – on orders from the White House, Fox News quoted the AFL-CIO as saying.

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More evidence of the decline and fall of American Journalism. From the New York Times corrections page: “An editorial on Feb. 22 stated incorrectly that unlawfully entering the country is not a criminal offense. It is a misdemeanor for a first-time offender.”

Yes, a major newspaper editor did not know that illegal immigration was, you know, illegal. And still has a job, despite such fundamental ignorance.

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I was surprised to learn that Steve Nash, was the lowest-drafted player (15th) ever to win the MVP award. I would have guessed that some late first rounder or second (or later, in the old days) rounder would have done so at some point, given that some have become major stars.

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Ari Fleisher asks MSNBC why they are not "going after Democrat members of Congress for why they aren't distancing themselves from Keith Olbermann.”

I think it’s obvious: because the White House hasn't ordered them to.

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Just like Bush, but faster!: “From Election Day 2000 to Election Day 2008, the S&P 500 fell 29.8%. From Election Day 2008 til the afternoon of March 6, it’s down 33.3%.”

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Encouraging sign: Mississippi bans revenue-light cameras; Upon Governor Haley Barbour's signature, Mississippi would join Alaska, Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin which have also banned automated citations (red-light and speed cameras) through judicial or legislative action. A similar ban passed the Montana state House of Representatives last month and currently awaits Senate action. An attempt to ban cameras in Missouri ran into a roadblock in a state Senate committee.

Hopefully Texas will see the light (pun intended) and follow suit; this is a scam whose time has passed.

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A note on buyer’s remorse from The Atlantic: “Like the college students who stayed up late to be inspired by his campaign rallies only to find Obama’s first significant action to be a stimulus program that will transfer about a trillion dollars from them to the Baby Boomers, Silicon Valley Obama supporters are likely to find that a government-dominated economic era will not a great one in which to start companies that threaten big incumbent corporations that have juice with the government. I hope they appreciate the irony.”

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Michael Barone with a sad tale showing that racism may be on life support but is still alive:

"Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers, wife of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, presides over a hearing where white witnesses are advised to leave the room. Congressman Conyers joined the Judiciary Committee in 1965, when the Chairman was Emanuel Celler and the ranking was Republican William McCulloch, co-sponsors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. What would they have thought of this? As a nation, we have become more tolerant and inclusive in the years since 1965. Detroit, alas, seems to have moved in the opposite direction."

You go Canuck! etc.

Who knew? Tuesday’s elections showed that Canadian citizens have a clue after all, surprising pretty much everybody.

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Turns out that the allegations that somebody at a Palin rally in Scranton, PA yelled “Kill him” when Obama’s name was mentioned are false. But you can bet it will be reported as fact a few thousand more times anyway. It’s all about the narrative, you know.

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Don’t piss off your family, or you could end up with an obituary like this:

Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.

Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again.

There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM.

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The disgusting John Murtha, who never apologized for his slander of Marines at Haditha who proved to be innocent, also turns out to believe that "There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area." At least he’s an equal opportunity bigot.

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Funniest note of the week is that McCain appearing on David Letterman’s show gave the far left comedian his highest rating since Oprah guested in December 2005.

Both guys are happy Oprah’s not running, that’s for sure!

In a similar vein, Palin’s appearance on SNL gave them their most viewers since 1994.

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This Olympic athlete has a rather unfortunate name.

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The fear of an Obama presidency has brought some urgency to efforts to sell the Miami Dolphins:

Huizenga wants to sell Ross another 45 percent of the team by Dec. 30, the source told The Palm Beach Post. Huizenga is believed to be motivated by his belief that Barack Obama will win the presidency and help implement tax policies that would take a bigger chunk of Huizenga's revenues from a sale.

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In case you missed it, here’s a list of pork from the bailout bill.

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An interesting electoral map based on 60 day political book sales.

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So you want to date an artistic type, huh?

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It’s fascinating to see the success Obama camp has had (primarily due to the media cheerleading and providing cover for him) in creating a set of rules whereby any criticism, be it:

- about his age or experience;
- about his celebutant status;
- about his association with terrorists, racists, criminals and assorted other bigots and crackpots, indeed his association with any black or white individual;
- about his record;
- about his stands on issues;
- about his gaffes;

is automatically defined as racist. Will the press keep fawning if, having succeeded in electing their candidate, they suddenly realize that they have tacitly agreed to themselves be smeared as racist should they ever decide to level any criticism of a President Obama?

Complicating the matter is a clear indication that an Obama administration will attempt to bully and even criminalize dissent, a process that’s already in motion.

How man bites dog will it be when a potential Obama starts using his Justice Department to stifle the press?

Experience as qualification, etc.

Okay, let me see if I understand the whole experience argument correctly.

One should only vote for McCain if they think he will not die during his term in office.

And one should only vote for Obama if they think he will die on his first day in office.

That pretty much sums it up, right?

Certainly one cannot coherently argue against the Democrat presidential candidate as unprepared to be president without using the same argument against the Republican vice presidential candidate. And certainly one cannot coherently argue against the Republican vice presidential candidate as unprepared to be president without using the same argument against the Democrat presidential candidate.

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Megan McArdle on the Fannie/Freddie bailout:

The claim that this represents the failure of markets is more than a tad silly. Fannie and Freddie weren't truly private companies, didn't act like truly private companies, and wouldn't have been allowed to so dominate the market if they had been. This is yet another failure of a government program.

Given that the whole mortgage crisis is a consequence of the Community Reinvestment Act, and thus the product of congressional action, blaming the free market takes some serious chutzpah.

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Random statistic: in a 2007 Pew Research Center poll, 71% of blacks said that rap music was having a “bad influence” on society while 74% of whites agreed. 61% of blacks said the same of hip hop music, 64% of whites agreed.

So it turns out that not only is the “anti-rap/hip hop positions are racist” myth false, but in an ironic twist the myth itself is racist.

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The (London) Observer’s Richard Moore reports what has to be in the running for quote of the year from British speed cyclist Chris Hoy:

Next day, Hoy meets some Scottish journalists. One puts it to him that: 'In the last 24 hours everyone has been offering an opinion on Chris Hoy. But what does Chris Hoy think of Chris Hoy?'

Hoy doesn't miss a beat: 'Chris Hoy thinks that the day Chris Hoy refers to Chris Hoy in the third person is the day that Chris Hoy disappears up his own arse.'

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What a contrast between two Boston sports figures:

Paul Pierce suffers the most minor knee sprain in the history of sports, returning to the game a little over a minute later with no ill effects whatsoever in that game or any other, and is rolled off the court in a wheelchair.

Tom Brady suffers a catastrophic knee injury, a torn ACL and torn MCL combo that will require total knee reconstruction surgery, and walks off the field under his own power.

That’s about as far apart on the grown ass man/wimpy little boy spectrum as you can get.

What about Blogging Americans? etc.

We know that Democrats love defining people by group membership instead of acknowledging them as individuals, but I still find this list of categories of Obama supporters to be hilarious.

They alphabetized it, presumably to avoid offending anybody, but I think they missed a golden opportunity to rank the groups in order of how much they are oppressed by evil white men. Should African Americans or LGBT be ranked higher? I can’t say, but I’m sure there is some platform approved answer.

What about people who cross over into more than one group? If I’m a senior lesbian Pacific islander woman of faith living abroad who’s an environmentalist and a union member, which group do I join?

And hey, why isn’t White Guys a category? Is this tent truly big? I don’t see Verbose Americans either, so I have no idea where Joe Biden fits.

My favorite is the priceless new euphemism for American Indians…First Americans. For those occasions when “Native American” is no longer sufficiently politically correct.

My favorite line is “We're ready to take the offense for organized labor.” If this list tells me anything, it’s that they’re ready to take offense on behalf of pretty much anybody for pretty much anything. And what about disorganized labor, like the day laborers that congregate at a local convenience store waiting to be hired for cash. Oh, never mind…Latinos!

And why would Americans with Disabilities vote Obama, when his party believes in the right to eliminate them before birth precisely because they are to be born with said disability? Curious group there, maybe it should be called “Americans Democrats Think Should Be Aborted.”

This page is just a fascinating glimpse into the mind of the modern liberal.

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Obama’s formal nomination last Thursday should prove to even the remaining knuckle-dragging holdouts that America is the least racist society in the world. That has been obvious to most of us for 2-3 decades by now, but there is still a bigoted element that is desperate to keep alive the myth of the US as an inherently and irredeemably racist society.

That notion looks pretty indefensible today, but it won’t stop those who get rich from the politics of grievance from continuing to pretend that it’s still 1963. Nor will it convince the academics who promote “[insert group name] Studies” pseudo-scholarship from preaching their message of hate. But you have to think that those few reactionary holdouts are becoming marginalized in the way that their ideological brethren in the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements were a few decades back.

However you feel about Obama the man, politician or candidate, we owe him a debt of gratitude for that.

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The old joke “World ends; blacks, women hardest hit” is supposed to be a slap at media bias. But then you hear that House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said that African-Americans are/would be “disproportionately impacted” by climate change.

Proving once again that parody in this age of rampant political correctness is no longer possible.

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In 1970, almost 60% of the oil consumed by the US was produced domestically. Now it’s 25%. Since the peak in 1970, US oil production has declined by a stunning 47%.

Any politician that has ever, at any point since 1970, done anything to block new oil exploration and drilling or new refinery construction has been derelict in the service of his constituents. May history judge them harshly.

The supposed rationale for this nearly four decades of obstruction has been that the people should sacrifice for the benefit of the environment (or, to be more accurate, environmental special interests). But that does not stand up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny, as the most advanced and safest drilling and transporting technologies are those of US companies.

Diminishing US production means more from places like Venezuela, the “Stan” countries, and Africa, as well as the usual laundry list of countries whose goal is the establishment of a global caliphate. Closing the Arctic to the US means that Russia will explore and drill it. Keeping us from drilling off the coast of Florida means that China (with cooperation from Cuba) does instead.

How many of those countries do you expect to do a better job of drilling, transporting and refining in an environmentally sound manner than we could? I’ll submit that it’s the same as the number of Texas Rangers World Series games I’ve attended.

I will go back to a conclusion I frequently reach after these types of discussions: it’s not about a desire to avoid damage to the environment, it’s about a desire to damage the US. And to make a few green special interests and a whole bunch of lawyers filthy rich in the process, on your dime.

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Management consultant types love to talk about thinking outside the box, but that doesn’t keep some people from thinking inside the box.

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Socialized medicine 101: 64-year-old Barbara Wagner of Springfield, Oregon has lung cancer. The Oregonian describes her experience with the state’s health care rationing scheme:

After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that would cost $4,000 a month, the newspaper reported, "Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn't cover the treatment, but that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide."

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that a state that would encourage and pay for a cancer patient’s suicide but not pay for her chemotherapy is going in the Obama column in November.

The notion that some lives have less value than others, especially before birth and near death, is a core principle of leftist political thought. It’s good that we have laboratories like Oregon to inform us of some of the consequences of unchecked liberalism.

"We're inferior!", etc.

Government 101: India has a form of “affirmative action” in the form of state sanctioned discrimination in favor of the lowest castes. The practice runs directly counter to fundamental laws preventing discrimination based on caste, much as racial preferences (aka “affirmative action”) in the US directly contradict the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As you would expect, the Indian version creates to the same kind of perverse incentives as does our own. Enter the Gujjar tribe, which is part of a group called (I’m not making this up) the “other backward classes.” This puts it one rung above the bottom of India’s traditional social structure. And this really pisses off the Gujjar.

Well, sure, you say, who would want to be considered a backward class?

Umm, no, you’re forgetting how “affirmative action” works. See, the Gujjar have been rioting throughout this year because they want their caste to be downgraded. So they too can get preferential treatment from the government for university placements and government jobs. In one particularly ugly stretch in May, more than 45000 police were deployed and at least 39 Gujjar were killed during daily rioting.

Could anything possibly better capture the essence of “affirmative action?”

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I’m a fan of the new Hornets uniforms and logos, which is notable since I am usually a bit of a curmudgeon on such things.

As for the team wearing them, I’ll continue to hate, thank you.

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A London Telegraph poll of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia showed Obama preferred over McCain by a 52% to 15% margin. The poll also found “a striking level of anti-American feeling in every country.”

Kind of goes together, doesn’t it?

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Do you remember the last president who made raising taxes on high earners and increasing protectionist trade policies the centerpieces of his economic plan? You’re probably not old enough, it’s been a long time since the Herbert Hoover administration.

Worked out well, didn’t it?

Trade rose from 40% to 55% of world GDP between 1990 and 2004, according to the World Bank. During the same period, the world economy grew by 50%. The five fastest-growing countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Ireland and Vietnam) all had double-digit percentage increases in trade. The countries that traded the least (Iran and most of Africa) have stagnate economies.

Free trade is the world’s best hope for lifting people out of poverty. No other issue, not even school vouchers, so clearly pits the desires of narrow special interest groups against the welfare of the poor.

To be against free trade is to be for poverty, it’s really as simple as that.

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Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus: "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious,
arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

At least I’m in good company!

The possibility that governments will gain the power to ration energy is one of the greatest threats we face in the coming decades. Like the rationing of food and other necessities that are fundamental features of the various flavors of communism and socialism, it will always be sold in moral terms and as for the good of the people, even as it destroys their lives.

We must diligently work to defeat it, at every opportunity and at any cost.

My opponent is a psychic, etc.

Obama’s camp is running an attack ad in Indiana that shows McCain saying, "I don't believe we're headed into a recession." It’s from a debate in January, and it proved to be absolutely correct as we did not end up having a recession.

As far as attack ads go, pointing out your opponent’s dead-on predictions is not the greatest strategy.

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This is from a commercial that’s been ubiquitous on the Ticket lately, but it still cracks me up. I can’t even remember what it’s selling, so I guess they’ve failed on me, indeed I don’t even notice it’s that ad until I hear the relevant line start.

Brian Billick on commitment: “In a bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken’s involved, but the pig’s committed.”

The thing is, I can easily hear a football coach saying such a thing.

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Check out this video: “A World Without the American Soldier”
Especially notable in that it was created by Brits.

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From the Virginian, via Instapundit:

[R]obber barons like Pickens, allied with the MSM and the Democrats are on the way to making billions on “alternative energy.” The formula is simple: keep oil prices high, prevent the use of coal, stop nuclear power production, scare people with doomsday scenarios of global warming via “greenhouse gasses,” pass laws mandating the use of power sources that Pickens and the Greens own and rake in the billions as consumers get financially raped.

And of course Al Gore, who is on his way to becoming a billionaire via what amounts to pump and dump tactics for his green investments.

I like the suggestion of Walter Williams: if you want to drill in ANWR, turn over ownership of it to green groups and watch the regulatory and litigative hurdles disappear like magic.

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Massachusetts has been considering adopting 20-year mandatory sentencing for pedophiles convicted of raping a child under the age of 12. Democrat State Rep. James Fagan isn’t fond of the idea, which is fair enough as reasonable people can disagree on the issue.

But his description of how he would handle the law in his other job as a defense attorney is one of the most shocking and appalling things I have ever read. He says he would “rip apart” 6-year old victims and “make sure the rest of their life is ruined,” and ultimately grill them so hard that “when they’re 8 years old they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”

I hope this miserable cretin does not have children, and is not an influence on the life of anybody else’s children. It’s a cliché, but some people really should not reproduce.

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Did you know that the first minimum wage law, 1931’s Davis-Bacon Act, was designed for the specific purpose of keeping blacks from taking jobs from whites? Now you do.

In a related note, the last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate was…1930.

Judicial philosophy etc.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on the question of how cases should be decided: “Look, it’s not my view: It’s what is permissible and impermissible under the Constitution. If you want this or that, by all means pass a law — and if the Constitution permits it, I’ll okay it. Even if it’s a law I deplore. But if the Constitution does not, I won’t.”

Perfect.

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If you’re not familiar with the international teams, here’s a great preview from a friend of Kurt at Forum Blue & Gold.

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Why has “global warming” been replaced by “climate change?”

Because we’re a few years into what is expected to be a three decade cycle of global cooling, meaning those who want control of every aspect of your life needed more versatile terminology.

Odd that those who are most critical of pre-emptive war for the national interest and based on irrefutable evidence are most eager to go all-in on a pre-emptive war based on the flimsy predictions of theoretical computer models.

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How is it that Obama is considered the (or a) candidate of change? He seems to me to be almost wholly reactionary, with a mixture of positions pulled straight from the playbooks of the 1970’s, 1960’s and 1930’s. To label an old-fashioned Chicago machine politician espousing extreme welfare statism at home and reflexive appeasement abroad as being a reformer or an advocate of change is as silly as it is dishonest.

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Government 101: George Mason U economist Donald Boudreaux, blogging at Café Hayek (great name!), on the necessity of airline regulation:

"Suppose that all government regulation of airlines were abolished today. Does ... Congressman [Oberstar] suppose that airline executives would tomorrow fire all inspectors and maintenance crews, indifferent to the prospect of losing multimillion-dollar assets in fiery crashes? Does he not see that airlines with poor safety records would have difficulty attracting customers? Is he unaware that airlines' insurers have ample incentives to work closely with airlines at keeping air-travel safety at optimal levels? In short, is Mr. Oberstar really so dimwitted to think that airlines will be safe only if they are regulated by government?"

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The absurd lengths to which Obama supporters will go to play the race card deserves as much ridicule as possible. Peter Kirsanow weighs in with "25 Reasons You May be a Racist"

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My Senator And Me: A Dog's Eye View Of Washington, D.C. is a children’s book written by Ted Kennedy. What caught my eye was this note from a cited review: “Kennedy's introduction to the political process is clear, informative, and loaded with child appeal, in part due to the choice of narrator: his Portuguese Water Dog, Splash.”

Yes, the man who killed Mary Jo Kopechne has a dog named Splash. Disgusting chutzpah from a disgusting man.

Favridiculous etc

When I turn on the ESPNews to get scores off the crawl and see the subjects roll by, NL … AL … NFL … NBA … Olympics … Favre. Brett Favre, he has become his own category, hell maybe he’s become his own sport.

The good news is DirecTV just moved the Big Ten Network from channel 220 to 610 so there is a spot open for the Favre Channel.

The worst thing is, after a month or more of it already, there’s still a ton to go. Just wait until they play and exhibition game, and when he plays an exhibition game, and when he or Aaron Rogers do well or poorly in an exhibition game, and don’t even get me started on what happens when one of them is named the starter and then throws two picks in a real game.

You think you’re beaten down now, just wait…

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This quote from Israeli air commander Col. Ziv Levy (from a 60 Minutes segment earlier this year) is chilling: “We spend a lot of time and a lot of effort in training and being prepared for the worst. We cannot lose a single war. The first war we lose, Israel will cease to exist.”

It’s a simple point and we all know it well, but it still needs to be repeated regularly lest we forget or downplay Israel’s peril.

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Queen’s “We Will Rock You” may have been a simple song, but don’t blame guitarist
Brian May. That’s Doctor May to you, buster! He has just published his doctoral thesis, "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud”.

When he’s not gigging he’s busy being the Chancellor of John Moores University and doing segments on an astronomy TV show.
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/08/02/1938239.shtml
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0387777059/

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If only the default position on racial grievance was that of Walter Williams and his “Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon Granted to All Persons of European Descent,” the world would be a much better place.
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/gift.html

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Government 101: In 1972, the FDA passed a law requiring child safety caps on many medications, the driving force being publicity surrounding children poisoned by aspirin. You can guess what happened then – many people, especially older, left the caps off because they were too hard to open. And people became more likely to leave bottles in places where children can get to them, lulled into carelessness because they felt the caps were safer.

The result: an additional 3000 children have been poisoned by aspirin because of the regulation (per consumer advocate John Stossel).

Random thoughts

An irony of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s reactionary, racist hate mongering: he was born in 1941, which means he lived 23 years (until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) when it was legal for the government to discriminate against blacks on the basis of their race…and has now lived 30 years (and counting) since the legality of the government discriminating against whites on the basis of their race was affirmed (in the Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision).

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My favorite bird? Yep, you guessed it.

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Maybe the most amazing NBA stat I’ve ever seen: in April, Jose Calderon dished out 66 assists and turned the ball over…once.

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From an Obama speech: “[A Pennsylvania man] can't afford four more years of an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies; a policy that is not only keeping gas at record prices but funding both sides of the war on terror and destroying our planet.”

Psst, Barack…one of the sides in the war on terror is the good guys, funding them is a good thing.

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That deserves a “Wow!”: Argentine Olympian and occasional NBA rotation player Walter “Fabio” Herrmann can palm a basketball using just his index finger and thumb. Try that out sometime.

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This Israeli story would seem certain to be a parody were we not so well-acquainted with hate speech as academic scholarship:

A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers' committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.

The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that "the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals."

The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: "In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done."

The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.

Did you get that? If Israeli soldiers rape Arab women, it is evidence of racism. And if Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women, it is evidence of racism. Could you imagine a more perfect illustration of modern education?

Random stuff

I could not prouder to live in Dallas, but every village has its idiot. Our continual source of embarrassment is County Commissioner John Wiley Price, one of the country’s most despicable and consistent racists. His latest escapade, complaining when a fellow commissioner said that the central collections office "has become a black hole," was typical of his career, but this one made the national news. That Judge and fellow ignorant bigot Thomas Jones demanded an apology was just piling on, we were already ducking our heads in shame.

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Apparently NBC now stands for No Barack Criticism.

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According to a recent World Bank study, biofuels have forced up global food prices 75% while only negligibly reducing worldwide oil demand. Can we stop this nonsense immediately before it drives people back into poverty faster than the growth of global capitalism and trade lifts them out of it? Biofuel research and production should be strictly limited to non-food sources. Not that we'd expect greens to care about easing poverty or anything - it's antithetical to their mission.

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Was it really Raul Castro that said "Socialism means social justice and equality, but equality of rights, of opportunities, not of income. Equality is not egalitarianism."? When a Castro brother makes more economic sense than one of our own presidential candidates…should I be happy for Cubans or fearful for my own countrymen?

I think the answer is “yes.”

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Terrorist Mohammed Siddique Khan, ringleader of the 2005 London subway suicide bombers, made a farewell video to his infant daughter on which he said "I love you to bits."

I guess he wants to also see her die in an explosion some day?

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I could not agree more with this from Jay Nordlinger:

While in Japan, President Bush placed a message on a “wishing tree.” Apparently, this is an old tradition. (Is that a redundancy?) Bush’s message: “I wish for a world free from tyranny: the tyranny of hunger, disease; and free from tyrannical governments. I wish for a world in which the universal desire for liberty is realized.”

That is what I would have expected from him — and one reason I admire him so much. Most people, it seems certain, would have wished for “peace.” Bush is a man who recognizes that genuine peace comes from freedom.

And this, from the same column:

Was talking to a friend of mine back home in Michigan. Bright guy, well educated, very successful. And very much a liberal Democrat. He said we had to have Obama in November — because “we can’t have Big Oil running the government any longer.”

I ask for the millionth time: How can perfectly normal and non-crazy people believe that stuff?

I ask myself the same question of so many people in so many settings. How is it that otherwise educated people can lose (or never gain) the ability to think critically in the area of politics? Can it be as simple as university brainwashing?

There are some fascinating psychological research possibilities here, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any such studies.

Talk to you soon, or at least sooner than last time I hope.

Rapid punches

This time it's an homage to Junior Miller instead of Blackie Sherrod.

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There is no need for me to eulogize William F. Buckley, as there so many touching tributes from his friends and colleagues. But I would be remiss if I did not thank him for his influence on me and on this country. I was introduced to him on early editions of Firing Line, which began just as I was really becoming interested in politics and history, and he was an inspiration to me over the years. To one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century…RIP.

CORRECTION: Firing Line debuted in 1966, earlier than I had thought - I'm not quite that old.

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The perfect illustration of the politically correct mindset is captured in this headline from London’s Daily Mail:

“Government Renames Islamic Terrorism As ‘Anti-Islamic Activity’ To Woo Muslims.”

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Speaking of PC idiocy, the fascists at the NCAA have strong-armed another yet team into changing their name, Arkansas State plays their last home game as the Indians tonight. Apparently white liberals would rather them honor indigenous animals than indigenous people.

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From John Hollinger’s analysis (no free link) of the Primoz Brezec-Juan Dixon trade:

“The Euraptors were crestfallen when they acquired Dixon at the deadline last season and found out he was American. Exchanging him for Brezec fixes that nagging problem.”

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Every time I hear of the “scientific consensus” vis-a-vis global warming, I’m reminded of an Albert Einstein quote which I read in a Jay Nordlinger column.

In the 1930’s, 100 “Aryan” scientists signed a letter attacking Einstein and saying his Theory of Relativity was a Jewish hoax. Asked for a response, Einstein said “If what they were saying were true, one signature would have been enough.”

Indeed.

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John Hinderaker on the reeling New York Times: “[I]f a newspaper devotes its resources and its inherited goodwill with the public over a period of decades to advance the interests of one of our political parties, sooner or later people will notice.”

The paper has never quite caught on to the fact that, with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in the late ‘80’s and the explosion of the internet in the late 90’s, dissenting points of view can now be heard and thus partisan spin is no longer accepted uncritically. Now it’s too late for the once great newspaper to regain its dignity.

Lest you think it’s only newspapers, recall Dan Rather and CBS running a fake story in an attempt to swing the 2004 presidential election to their preferred candidate.

The old media are so desperate to see a Democrat elected that there's no telling what kind of shenanigans we'll see in the coming months. It's only February and they're already in full campaign mode before they even have a candidate!

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Did you catch Jesse Jackson’s take on the Super Bowl?

"Look at the Super Bowl last Sunday, New England vs. the Giants. They were able to transcend race because the playing field was even. The rules were public and the goals were clear, and there was inherent justice in the competition.''

Who knew Jackson was such an opponent of “affirmative action?”