CNN exit polls from the 2008 presidential race yielded some interesting results, as follows:

Voting by race and gender
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White men voted 57-41% for McCain.
White women voted 53-46% for McCain.

Black men voted 95-5% for Obama.
Black women voted 96-3% for Obama.

Latino men voted 64-33% for Obama.
Latino women voted 68-30% for Obama.

Other races voted 64-32% for Obama.

In addition to his strength with minority voters, Obama had a significant advantage with young voters and lower income voters. I've read reports in the past that Obama won the college graduate vote (liberals like to pretend this makes them smarter), but that also depends on the race of the college graduate. White college graduates voted 51-47% for McCain. Non-white college graduates voted 75-22% for Obama. As for party affiliation, Democrats and Republicans voted like Democrats and Republicans usually do. Not much to tell there. The story is the independents, who voted for Obama 52-44% overall, but once again, that vote also hinged on race. White independents voted for McCain, 49-47%.

I'm not leading up to any grand discussion of race by citing these statistics. What I'm leading up to is a discussion of 2012 campaign strategy, particularly the strategy of the Democrats. That strategy has been obvious to me for a long time, but it was nice to finally see it in writing, as I did this morning. The writing was done by a left-wing think tank, the Center For American Progress (CFAP), which is run by former Clintonista John Podesta and funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros (aren't the terms "left-wing" and "billionaire" supposed to be a contradiction in terms ? How can someone be both ? Maybe we should check in with the Occupy movement's brain cell for clarification. The Occupiers can form a circle, beat on some tom-toms, do some bong hits, and get back to us with an answer in 3-6 months). Anyway, the CFAP (which is not to be confused with the PFJ) has produced a guide for Obama's 2012 re-election, called The Path To 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election. 270 is the number of electoral college votes it takes to win the presidency. Here are some of the CFAP's observations:

With a little under one year to go before the 2012 presidential election, next year’s battle looks increasingly competitive, with ongoing economic distress and a highly energized Republican base potentially neutralizing the incumbency advantage that President Barack Obama would traditionally hold…In August 2011, Gallup reported record low public approval of President Obama’s handling of the economy, with barely one-quarter (26 percent) approving of the president’s performance on this key indicator. No president in the past 50 years has been re-elected with unemployment as high as it is today. Historically, administrations with unemployment problems have seem them mitigated with significant employment change ahead of an election.

Translation – the economy stinks, and the advantage that gave Obama over the Republican nominee in 2008 now works against Obama. If the 2012 election is about Obama's record and the economy, he loses.

…it is clear that two large forces will ultimately determine the outcome: the shifting demographic balance of the American electorate, and the objective reality and voter perception of the economy in key battleground states. The central questions of the election are thus fairly straightforward. Will the rising electorate of communities of color, the Millennial generation, professionals, single women, and seculars that pushed Obama to victory in 2008 be sufficient and mobilized enough to ensure his re-election in 2012?

Translation – the "shifting demographic base" means that white people comprise an ever falling percentage of the electorate, and minorities comprise an ever rising percentage of the electorate. Latinos in particular are the fastest rising demographic. The percentage of white voters in 2008 was the lowest in election history, and that trend will continue. The Democrats hope to appeal to the rising minority demographic to counter their disadvantage on the economy. The Democrats also count on getting the votes of young people, single women, and the non-religious. What's interesting about this to me is who this "progressive" vision leaves out – white men, married white women, Christians, and adults. I'm not sure who the CFAP is referring to when it says it wants the vote of "professionals". Maybe they meant to say "professors". I consider most adult working people to be professionals, and they aren't particularly fond of the tax and spend policies of Democrats. Successful professional people tend to vote Republican. They don't want their hard-earned wages to be "redistributed" to someone who didn't earn them.

The financial crisis and the Great Recession have severely clouded the electoral picture, making it clear that 2008 marked only the potential for a new progressive alignment in American elections, rather than its consolidation.

Translation – The "progressives" hoped Wall Street's sins would result in an anti-capitalist backlash that would bring the socialist policies of leftists into favor. That has not happened to any large extent, and remains confined to fringe elements like the Occupiers. America has not yet lost it's collective mind and decided to eat the rich. Thus, the "progressives" have more work to do.

CFAP restates it's conclusions:

As we’ve previously argued in other CAP reports (see “New Progressive America,” “State of American Political Ideology, 2009” and “Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties”), the shifting demographic composition of the electorate—rising percentages of communities of color, single and highly educated women, Millennial generation voters, secular voters, and educated whites living in more urbanized states or more urbanized parts of states—clearly favors Democrats and has increased the relative strength of the party in national elections in recent years. In contrast, the Republican Party’s coalition of older, whiter, more rural, and evangelical voters is shrinking and becoming more geographically concentrated and less important to the overall political landscape of the country.

In CFAP's view, the Grand Old Party is just that…old. And as they say on New Year's day, it's out with the old and in with the new. In this case, what is jettisoned from the "progressive" coalition is small town white Christian America. Screw Norman Rockwell. The "progressives" don't care about him. He's so yesterday.

Given the voting demographic the "progressives" hope to capture, what policies do you suppose they might endorse ? Might they endorse wealth redistribution, higher taxes for successful people, no taxes for the less successful, big new entitlement and government spending initiatives, lax immigration policies, higher minimum wages, more government re-engineering of society, etc ? You're darn tootin' they would. Would they demonize wealthy and successful people, act like success is an accident of birth as opposed to being the result of hard work, pile demand after demand onto the shoulders of the business sector, and try to control the minds of our children via a monopoly on government education ??? Absolutely. And if all these "progressive" policies have a negative economic effect on the country, lead to higher prices, fewer jobs, an overall poorer citizenry, stagnant economic growth, the erosion of our founding principles of liberty, and an end to the American dream, do the "progressives" care ? No, they certainly do not. After all, they have election battles to win, and class warfare is their weapon of choice. If someone has their hand out, the "progressives" intend to fill that hand, and the consequences be damned.

When Shirley Sherrod, a black woman, was fired by the government (not by Fox News or Andrew Breitbart), I thought she got a raw deal. She was fired because the cowardly government feared what was contained in Breitbart's initial video, which allegedly showed Sherrod making racist statements to an NAACP crowd. The government feared what Fox News would say about that video, coming on the heels of the NAACP's grandstanding resolution condemning alleged racism in the Tea Party movement. The NAACP's resolution was itself racist, because it attempted to paint a grassroots movement of millions of Americans seeking fiscal sanity and Constitutional liberty as nothing more than a bunch of bigots. The cowardly NAACP also condemned Sherrod initially, even though Sherrod's allegedly racist comments were made IN FRONT OF THE NAACP. Go figure that one out.

When Sherrod was fired by the government. she was forced to pull her car off the road and resign over the phone immediately, without being able to offer any defense of her actions. That conversation went as follows:

Sherrod told CNN that the White House urged her to resign Monday afternoon after the video clip surfaced.

"They harassed me," she said. "I got three calls from the White House. At one point they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight."

Sherrod said the White House calls came from Cheryl Cook, USDA deputy undersecretary for rural development. "The administration was not interested in hearing the truth. They didn't want to hear the truth."

Sherrod wasn't on Glenn Beck that night. The first segment Fox News did on her was on The O'Reilly Factor at 8pm EST. By the time that segment aired (though it was taped a few hours earlier), Sherrod had already been canned. In that segment, Fox host Bill O'Reilly did say Sherrod should be fired for her racist statements. He has since apologized, after discovering the full context of Sherrod's NAACP speech, which showed Sherrod redemptively saying she came to realize she should not judge people by the color of their skin. The first segment Glenn Beck did on Sherrod was on tuesday, when Beck SUPPORTED her and came out against her being fired without being able to tell her side of the story.

So, who was to blame here ?…

Breitbart ? Yes. He aired a video without knowing the full context, which started this whole thing.

Government ? Hell yes. They are the ones who fired Sherrod without cause and without a hearing.

Fox News ? Yes. They aired the Breitbart video without properly vetting it, and some of their hosts jumped to conclusions (others, like Beck, did not).

NAACP ? Yes. They had the same knee-jerk reaction to the Breitbart video as the government and Fox News did.

Now, everybody has recanted and apologized for jumping to conclusions about Shirley Sherrod (though I'm not sure if Breitbart the instigator has apologized), and she is getting her job back, or getting a new job.

So, all is well now, correct ? The wrong has been righted.

No, it's never that simple. Not when politics is involved. When politics is involved, an edge must be gained. The nature of that edge, from the liberal perspective, is that Fox News must be cast as racists, which by extension casts all conservatives as racists in liberal minds. That edge is illustrated in the recent words of none other than Shirley Sherrod, the black woman who was fired without cause or a hearing by a DEMOCRATIC administration. Here's Sherrod talking to Media Matters:

“When you look at their reporting, this is just another way of seeing that they are (racist),” Sherrod told me about Fox in a lengthy interview Tuesday night. “But I have seen that before now. I saw their reporting as biased during the Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration.”

She said Fox showed no professionalism in continuing to bother her for an interview, but failing to correct their coverage.

“I think they should but they won’t. They intended exactly what they did. They were looking for the result they got yesterday,” she said of Fox. “I am just a pawn. I was just here. They are after a bigger thing, they would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person.”

Still, Fox continued to push for an interview with her, Sherrod said.

“It was unbelievable. I am refusing to be on there. They have been calling me and calling me. I have refused to do an interview because they are biased,” she explained. “I don’t think Fox News does it fairly. It is worse so now. I have sat and listened to the way they cover the news even before this administration and I saw what was going on.”

Sherrod said this situation has worsened her view of racism in media coverage.

“I think it is race. You think we have come a long way in terms of race relations in this country, but we keep going backwards,” she said. “We have become more racist. This was their doing, Breitbart put that together misrepresenting what I was saying and Fox carried it.”

Think about this. Sherrod says she won't talk to Fox News, who has made numerous requests to interview her, but at the same time she says Fox has it's facts wrong (which was true initially, just as the NAACP and the government had the facts wrong). Isn't that the whole reason she SHOULD have gone on Fox, to set the record straight ??? Not to mention that Sherrod did decide to talk to Media Matters, a known left-wing propaganda outfit. For Sherrod to say "we have become more racist" is obviously false, and for her to say Fox News "would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person,” is just totally, off-the-wall, batshit crazy and outrageous. It's actually far worse than anything Fox News said about her.

Thus, we've come full circle back to the left-wing agenda, which is to cast conservatives as racists, whether they be in the Tea Party movement, at Fox News, or wherever. And now Shirley Sherrod, who thinks Fox News wants to re-institute slavery, Jim Crow laws, or some other claptrap, is a part of it. Sorry Shirley, but being treated unfairly for a day or two doesn't explain away statements like this. You are now engaging in the same kind of tactics the NAACP engaged in when it cast the Tea Party movement as racist (I still haven't heard an apology for THAT yet, btw. Fox News DID apologize for their mistake).

Being a white male fiscal conservative, I have no street cred in liberal eyes, because wild-eyed liberals all suspect I'm a big fat old racist too (they don't really think that. They just have to pretend they do. It's for the greater good, you see. Alinsky outlined the strategy long ago). So, instead of offering my opinion on the race card games being played by left wingers, I'm going to defer to Tea Party speaker Katrina Pierson, a black woman. This was her response to the NAACP's lousy resolution against the Tea Party movement:

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. As well as 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. They are Democrats who bow to a Democrat master today as they once did two hundred years ago. Once this is realized by the forgotten society, race in this country will be as irrelevant as those who thrive off of it. -Katrina Pierson

Thanks, Katrina. I think race is irrelevant too. It's a non-issue within the Tea Party movement, but the left wants to continue playing that race card forever. We aren't a "nation of cowards" on racial matters, as Attorney General Eric Holder once said. What we are is a nation divided along lines of people who either think – A) race does not matter (all men are created equal), or B) race should be used as a political weapon for advantage. I choose option A. I'll leave it for others to decide who the racists are.

On tuesday, the National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People (NAACP) passed a resolution calling for the Tea Party movement to condemn the alleged racist elements within it's organization. Here's NAACP President Benjamin Jealous:

"We felt the time had come to stand up and say, 'It's time for the tea party to be responsible members of this democracy and make sure they don't tolerate bigots or bigotry among their members,'" NAACP President Ben Jealous said ahead of the debate. "We don't have a problem with the tea party's existence. We have an issue with their acceptance and welcoming of white supremacists into their organizations."

White supremacists ? I've been to Tea Party events. I've talked to a lot of Tea Party people. I've never heard anything about white supremacism, and I've never heard a racist statement made against Obama or black people in general. I've talked to several black people who are IN the Tea Party movement. Do these black people also hate…black people ?

Much of this concocted brouhaha stems from one alleged racial incident at one specific Tea Party event, where black Congressmen were walking past a Tea Party crowd who were shouting "kill the bill." The crowd was referring to Obama's healthcare reform bill. At that event, it was claimed that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver was spat upon by a Tea Party protester. That never happened (at least not intentionally), but the media still pretends it did. The other alleged incident at that Tea Party event involved Tea Party members shouting the n-word at the black Congressmen. Every news organization in the country has looked for audio or video evidence of that, but none has been produced to date. Maybe it did happen, or maybe it didn't. All I ever heard on the numerous tapes of the event was the crowd shouting "kill the bill." Even assuming a Tea Party protester or two did hurl the n-word at the Congressmen, how exactly is that an indictment of the entire Tea Party movement as a racist organization ? Every single Tea Partier I've met and heard would abhor such behavior.

The other question to ask is, why would the NAACP single out the Tea Party for it's alleged "racist elements" ? If you look at any large, diverse group of people, you will be able to find some racist elements. Let's take one such group at random, say, oh, I dunno….the Democrats. Why hasn't the NAACP passed a resolution to condemn these racist elements ?…

"You'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva." — Fritz Hollings (D, S.C.)

"You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent." – Vice President Joe Biden.

And my all-time favorite, from Mr. Great Society (welfare state) himself:

"I'll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." – Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One according Ronald Kessler's Book, "Inside The White House"

I could go on with these examples, but the examples are not the point. The point is, the real reason the NAACP passed a resolution against the Tea Party movement has absolutely nothing to do with an alleged case or two of racism. That can be found anywhere, even in the NAACP's favored Democratic party, as I have just illustrated. The real reason for the NAACP's resolution has everything to do with partisan politics. This is just the latest example of a left-wing group playing the race card to gain a political edge, and that is why the NAACP has just embarrassed itself. This is a low point for them. The NAACP is in reality engaging in the very types of actions it claims to deplore. Listen to the fearmongering being pedaled in this next NAACP quote:

"They are pulling people together and focusing on the negative, and then it's hard to make anything positive out of that," said Anita L. Russell, president of the Kansas City, Mo., branch of the NAACP, which introduced the resolution. "And then these groups, these extremist groups, are looking for something, and they are latching on to this. The thing is going to grow and grow out of control."

The Tea Party movement is focusing on less intrusive government, constitutional principles, lower taxes, individual freedom, and political activism. How is that "focusing on the negative," or "extremist," and how is it going to "grow out of control" ???

And if the NAACP were really concerned about civil rights here, wouldn't they be defending BLACK Tea Party members who have been called names and beaten up (see: Kenneth Gladney) because of their political beliefs ???

They’ve been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement — and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation’s first black president.
“I’ve been told I hate myself. I’ve been called an Uncle Tom. I’ve been told I’m a spook at the door,” said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government…

Yet, no resolution from the NAACP about these things. Of course not, because they are inconvenient to the real agenda.

My final quote comes from a former NAACP chapter President, who is now a Tea Party member. I have heard him speak in person at a Tea Party event:

"Those ideas that Tea Party people are racist and that we're trying to instigate a racist climate in this country, that's simply a lie. That's out and out falsehood," said Rev. C.L. Bryant, a former president of NAACP's Garland, Texas, chapter who is now a leading Tea Party activist.

"I have not heard one racial slur that came out of that march," said Bryant, referring to the Tea Party protest on Capitol Hill where members of Congress alleged racist comments. "Those were simply Americans who were protesting."

That's right. The Tea Party movement has NOTHING to do with racism, and I think even the NAACP knows it. This is all about politics, period.

The NAACP is planning a march of their own to build momentum against the Tea Party. It's called One Nation. That's perfectly fine, but it does raise a question:

Isn't it time to reconsider the NAACP's tax-exempt status, since it is so obviously a partisan political group now ????

Over and out, race-baiters.

I haven't had time to generate a new post for nearly a week now, so I have a few different topics I want to comment upon briefly.
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The other day I heard NBC news bemoaning the fact that Rep. David Obey (D-WI) will not seek re-election. NBC practically deified the guy in it's failed attempt at accurate reportage. I assume the rest of the non-Fox News teevee media did the same, being that the rest really ARE the same (Democrats). I'd like to add my two cents about Obey. He is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and is therefore more responsible than any other Congressperson for the explosion in federal spending over the last years. He wrote the stimulus bill boondoggle, and was instrumental in constructing and passing ObamaCare, which will raise everyone's health insurance premiums, raise spending further, raise taxes, create a massive new entitlement, and insert the federal government between doctor and patient.

Btw, Obey said his only regret about the stimulus bill was that it wasn't LARGER. I'm not kidding.

People like Obey are the problem with Congress. Good riddance.
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Barack Obama's presidential election victory has two definite positive aspects. First, it showed that African-Americans can win major elections in the United States, and second, 32 African Americans are running for Congress this year…as Republicans, according to the New York times. The Times claims this is the biggest black Republican surge since Reconstruction. I seriously doubt that, but I'm sure all liberal groups will come out publicly to celebrate the new-found diversity within the Republican party (that was sarcasm, in case my left-leaning readers missed it).
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Speaking of Congress, guess who's ba-a-ack and running for Congress in Ohio ? Former Democrat James Traficant from Youngstown, who served nine terms in Congress before serving seven years in prison for bribery, tax evasion, and obstruction. This is just one more example of the "most ethical Congress in history," as Nancy Pelosi called her Democrat cronies after they took over from the "culture of corruption," which is how Nan described the former Republican-led Congress. Being a felon doesn't prohibit one from running for Congress. I guess the thinking is – without criminals being eligible, how could they possible fill all those Congressional seats ?
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Here's the funniest thing I heard about all week.

The Phoenix Suns NBA basketball team donned jerseys emblazoned with the words 'Los Suns' to protest the new Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants. In addition to the incorrect grammar (the correct English-to-Spanish translation of 'The Suns' is 'Los Soles,') and in addition to the fact that Suns owner Robert Tarver, who supports the Suns protest, owns a number of banks which received $140 million in TARP bailout funds (if he really needed the money, maybe he should have sold the basketball team before grabbing taxpayer cash), the Washington Times made a great suggestion:

"[W]hile millionaire athletes become walking billboards for a political cause, the state of Arizona might want to review the terms of its relationship with the Suns. If Mr. Sarver wants to use his team to push a political agenda, perhaps citizens can push back. Imagine Phoenix residents channeling the spirits of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. by turning up en masse to Suns games, sneaking in without tickets, demanding special services like free food and access to box seats, overtaxing arena security and ruining the game for the people with tickets. They can call it a celebration of diversity."

I love it. Let's see how the Suns owner would react to people crashing HIS gate. I'm certain his reaction would be quite different. I'm also wondering when Prez Obama, an NBA fan, is going to weigh in on how greedy those professional athletes are for making so much money. Maybe the Los Suns should redistribute THEIR wealth to the illegals. Let's see how long their protest lasts then.
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I know how disappointed the Leftmedia was when the Times Square bomber turned out to be yet another Muslim jihadist, rather than the violent right-wing Tea Party nut the left has been dreaming about and masturbating over for better than a year now. NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Fox News Democrat Bob Beckel, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer, and even Geraldo Rivera all salivated over the prospect of a potential white male Tea party Times Square bomber. A Daily Kos poll had 8% thinking it was a jihadist, and about 80% thinking it was a Tea Partier or a right-wing anti-Obama nut of some kind. That is some serious wishful thinking.

I commisserate, lefties. Your thin-skinned political correctness nerves must be getting very frayed by now with the complete absence of Tea Party violence, especially when we are witnessing one violent left-wing protest after another, both here and around the world. I wish the Left better luck in the future. Hopefully, an unhinged Tea Party affiliate will blow up an IRS building soon and kill hundreds of people so you left-wing pr*cks can feel all happy and righteous again (and yes, that was sarcasm too, mixed in with a heaping tablespoon of disgust).

I do commend our brilliant Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, who made the following statement immediately after the Times Square bombing attempt. "We're treating it as if it could be a potential terrorist attack," said Secretary Master Of The Obvious. Gee, ya think ?

Finally, when Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) was asked about the Tea Party movement, Carson, unfazed by reality, chose to fixate upon the "real" threat:

"I worked in homeland security. I'm from intelligence, and I'll tell you, one of the largest threats to our internal security — I mean terrorism has an Islamic face — but it really comes from racial supremacist groups. Its the kind of thing we keep a threat assessment on record [for]."

Notice how Carson sickeningly equates the Tea Party movement with white supremacist groups. Could he be a former….Reverend ? Also of interest is how Carson says the "real" threat doesn't come from jihadists. It's white people we need to worry about. This dude needs PC-ectomy surgery very, very soon.

(Note to liberals – I'm not saying true white supremacist groups don't need to be watched. They do, but the Tea Party movement is NOT one of those groups. Andre Carson is being racist by pretending it is).

Welcome To The Machine - On the same day President Obama invited Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) to the White House to pressure him to switch his vote on health care reform, Obama appointed Matheson's brother, Scott Matheson, to a judgeship on the 10th Circuit Court Of Appeals. I'm sure that was an entirely random, coincidental event with absolutely no underlying political calculations whatsoever…not at all similar to the way things are done in Obama's old stomping grounds…not at all similar to the Chicago way….not at all. This is the most ethical administration ever…especially when they aren't lying about everything.
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Global Warming Kettle Calls Pot Black – "First of all, we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody is like — a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, see, look at that, there’s all this snow on the ground, this doesn’t mean anything. I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer; it means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow." – Barack "The Weatherman" Obama.

The glaring problem with Obama's "everything is climate change now" rhetoric is that Vancouver doesn't usually get much snow in February. The average temperature there in February is 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Not exactly snow weather, and a temp of 55 degrees is just an example of normal weather variation. Exit questions – What if Sarah Palin said something this dumb ? How many months would it be before the media stopped talking about it ?
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Nominee For Idiot Of The Year - The following video shows MSNBC talker Dylan Ratigan "interviewing" a Tea Party representative, and hijacking his own interview by refusing to allow the Tea Party guy to answer the questions put to him. Ratigan instead used the segment as a transparent ploy to parrot the constant MSNBC propaganda point that the Tea Party movement is a racist movement.

This might be a new low in what passes for journalism. Either that, or Ratigan fancies himself the next Keith Olbermann, a dubious aspiration at best.

While I'm on the subject of the Tea Party movement…I keep hearing from liberals that the Tea Parties are chock full of racist signs, and having attended Tea Parties, I haven't seen any. Not one. I have seen a couple signs on the internet that COULD be interpreted as racist (and could also be liberal plants), out of the hundreds of thousands of signs from which to choose at Tea Party events. Can some liberal please show me all these racist Tea Party signs ??? I really want to see what all the fuss is about.
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A Good Day To Die – "Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good." – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) link

I've heard of the bigotry of soft expectations, but this is ridiculous. By Reid's standard, if only 20,000 people lost their jobs next month, that would be, as Tony the Tiger used to say, "GRRREEAAT !"

Time for a new Senate Majority Leader. This one's broken.
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Rules ? We Don't Need No Stinking Rules - From NBC News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today the American people ought to know more about what she called "total obstruction" by the Republican Party in the Senate. Referring to Sen. Jim Bunning's hold-up of unemployment benefits earlier this week, Pelosi said, "It's not about rules, it's about a decision they've made to obstruct."

Here we have Pelosi admitting that the Pay-Go rules passed by the Democrats a couple weeks ago are basically meaningless. They bypassed them the first time they had the opportunity to enforce them, and then they have the gall to portray the one Senator who called the Dems on their dishonesty an obstructionist. Wow. Words fail me.

Time for a new Congress. This one's broken.
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Obama As The New Bush - Students in Jakarta, Indonesia are protesting President Obama's upcoming visit to that country. Obama previously has been very popular in Indonesia, having spent part of his childhood in Jakarta. From the Associated Press:

Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta's parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to this predominantly Muslim country.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama's head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Protest organizer Ahmad Irhamul Fikri, spokesman for the Coordinating Board for Campus Proselytizing Institute, said bigger rallies will be staged next Friday in more Indonesian cities ahead of Obama's March 20-22 visit.

If there's a bright side here…maybe this will shut up some of the fringe element nuts known as the Birthers, who think Obama is a foreign-born Muslim who wants to establish a Caliphate here in America, or something.

Democrats have been telling us that Harry Reid's comments about President Barack Obama were NOT racist. Reid said Obama could become President because he was "light skinned" and had "no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one." Dems also tell us that Bill Clinton's remarks about Barack Obama were NOT racist. Clinton told Ted Kennedy that "a few years ago, this guy [Obama] would have been getting us coffee." Dems also tell us that VP Joe Biden's comments about Obama were NOT racist. Biden said Obama was "clean" and "articulate." In trying to make sense of these new standards for non-racism the Democrats have created, it suddenly hit me…..I am light skinned with no Negro dialect unless I want to have one (aka, white). I'm also clean, articulate enough, and I know how to make coffee……………..OMG ! I'm qualified to be President Of The United States ! Plus, I have a few qualities our current Prez does not have. I have worked extensively in the private sector and have run a successful business. Holy cats ! Maybe I'm OVER-qualified.
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For anyone who did not see John Stossel's program about crony capitalism on the Fox Business Network last night, you really missed something. The program will air again on friday. Don't miss it, even though the depravity of our federal government, exposed by Stossel, might make you ill. You will see how big government works hand-in-hand with big business to distort the free market, discourage innovation, beat down the little guy, and rape the taxpayers in the process. You will see how the government picks winners and losers in business. Some of the winners are – big tobacco, big pharma, big health insurance, one window company over all the others, big toy companies. See how big business writes the government regulations that benefit themselves. It is absolutely perverse, and as always, the ONLY solution is to limit government power over our lives.
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Related to Stossel's story about crony capitalism, some people might want to rethink labeling President Obama as a socialist, or at least amend it. In light of how Obama and company are either taking over or micromanaging business and the market, consider the following definition (which doesn't apply only to Obama and the Democrats, not by a long shot. That party called the Republicans does it too).

Fascism – a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology.

Sound familiar ?
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After the government bailed out every big business in sight over the last 16 months or so (see – fascism and crony capitalism), President Demagogue Obama gave a speech last night where he pretended to be a friend to the people (lol) by calling for a new tax on the banks. Here's President Demagogue Obama:

"We want our money bank and we are going to get it," [Obama] said, surrounded by members of his economic team.

Obama said his commitment is to "recover every single dime the American people are owed. And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people."

Sounds good, right ? After all, we're only punishing those mean old bankers. How can that not be good ?

Here's how. First, most of the large banks have already paid back those TARP funds with interest, resulting in a net profit for the taxpayers, yet they will still be hit with Obama's new tax. Second, don't forget that many banks were forced to accept TARP funds from the government, even when they didn't want them. They will be hit with Obama's new tax too. Third, the ones who will really pay the bank tax are THE CUSTOMERS OF THE BANKS, in other words, the taxpayers themselves. Obama will be getting our money back by TAXING US more. Fourth, it wasn't only banks that received bailout funds. There's GM, GE, Fannie Mae, etc. Where is their tax ? Thanks, President Demagogue, but no thanks.

Obama continued:

"Our country has endured the deepest recession we've faced in generations, and much of the turmoil was caused by irresponsibility on the part of banks and financial institutions,"

Yes, much of the turmoil was caused by irresponsible lending on the part of banks and financial institutions…………….but why can't anyone on Capitol Hill ever fess up to the fact that THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WANTED AND ENCOURAGED THEM TO DO IT ? The entire financial house of cards surrounding the housing market and the credit crisis was legislated into existence by the freaking Congress of the United States, starting all the way back in the Carter administration and never stopping. Prior to Congress manipulating the market, we had usury laws. We didn't have subprime mortgages. We didn't have Fannie Mae securitizing, bundling, and selling half the loans in the country. We didn't have commercial banks in the mortgage market. We didn't have Congress fining banks and denying mergers for not making enough loans to poor people. When is a presidential administration or a Congress going to admit that they brought the whole recession into existence with their boneheaded policies to "help" people ? Damn, they must think we're stupid.

Btw, President Demagogue. The country is $12 trillion in debt, and you are on target to add another $9-10 trillion to that number. WE WANT OUR MONEY BACK. So do our children, whose futures you are mortgaging. You can start by not spending all our money in the first place, you phony populist mouthbreather.
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Maybe we need a dark-skinned black person for President. One with a Negro dialect who can add two plus two and come up with four. That would be a great improvement.

As someone who holds mostly fiscal conservative/Libertarian political belefs, and as someone who has been falsely slandered as a racist by liberals more times than I can count because of it, I am keenly aware of the double standard that exists regarding the topic of race. The Harry Reid incident is another example of it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made a stupid racial remark about Barack Obama. In 2008, Reid said Obama could be elected president because he is “light skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Not at all good (and who even uses the term 'Negro' these days ?). Reid's remarks just came to light in a new book called Game Change. If I was Obama and Reid said those words to my face, I'd want to punch him in the mouth. It's like telling a Jew that he could become President because he doesn't look or act too Jew-y.

This isn't the first time a Senate Majority Leader has gotten himself in hot water over perceived racist remarks. In 2002, Trent Lott (R-MS) said the following about endorsing late Senator Strom Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat presidential bid, "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either." Lott didn't explicitly mention race, but because Thurmond's 1948 campaign platform included racial segregation, Lott was cast as a racist.

Now, I don't know if either Reid or Lott is a racist. Maybe they both are, maybe neither of them are. I can't look into their hearts and judge them, so I won't. Both Lott and Reid apologized for their remarks, but what is instructive here is what happened after the racially insensitive remarks were made and the apologies given.

After Reid's remarks, Obama accepted his apology and declared the matter closed. Democrats rushed to Reid's defense as GOP'ers called for Reid to step down. Reid said he has no intention of stepping down.

After Lott's remarks, according to Politico:

President George W. Bush, by contrast, said in 2002 that Lott's comments did "not reflect the spirit of our country," explaining that "any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive, and it is wrong." Lott later wrote in his book, “Herding Cats,” that Bush’s public comments about the matter were “devastating” and that many on his staff had “grown certain that some powerful Bush staffers had launched a power play to replace me as Senate majority leader.”

Democrats attacked Lott, and the Republicans forced Trent Lott out as Senate Majority Leader.

So I ask, why the double standard ? If these types of racially insensitive remarks are wrong and call for punishment, then they are ALWAYS wrong and call for punishment. It shouldn't matter to which political party the offender belongs.

We can also add hypocrisy to Reid's offenses. When others have made racially insensitive remarks, none other than Harry Reid leapt to judge them racist (as long as they were Republicans).

Unlike the Republicans, I am not saying Reid should step down over this, even though I pretty much despise him. The man couldn't tell the truth if there was a gun held to his head. He's been lying for so long that I doubt he'd even recognize the truth if he heard it. In my opinion, Harry Reid is a 100% pure political creature in the very worst sense of the word. He will say or do anything for political advantage.

But I know how the Democrats and Republicans play their political cat-and-mouse games, and frankly, it makes me a little sick. Both parties have entirely self-serving situational ethics at best. I'm tired of it.

All I want to know is, why is it okay when Harry Reid makes racial remarks, and not okay when Trent Lott or other non-Democrats do it ?

I disagree with President Obama on several policy areas – health care reform, government spending, his $9 trillion in projected deficits, the stimulus package, cap and trade, EFCA, to name a few. I attended the 9/12 Tea Party rally to protest these policies.

According to many liberals, that makes me a racist. Even former President Jimmy "stagflation" Carter said so. Here's what the Peanut Man said during an NBC interview:

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American. I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way and I've seen the rest of the country that shared the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time … and I think it's bubbled up to the surface, because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country."

Carter is out of his mind, but this is interesting, because when I attended the 9/12 D.C. rally, along with around 100,000 other people, NOBODY brought up the issue of Obama's race, which leads me to believe his race is NOT the issue. What was clear at the 9/12 rally was that Obama's expansive big government policies are the issue, along with the expansive big government policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Yet, Jimmy Carter thinks it is "overwhelmingly" about race. Oh, well. You can't fix stupid. The Peanut Man is entitled to his opinions, and he does have his supporters. For example, Osama Bin Laden is a big fan of Carter's latest book about Israel.

Another nominee for the Stupid Hall Of Fame is Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is currently under investigation for her husband's ties to a bank that received federal bailout money. I brought up Waters on this blog before, when she was tallking about nationalizing the banks. I disagreed strenuously with Mrs. Waters about that. Because Waters is black, I guess I'm a racist again, according to the liberal anti-free speech Thought Police.

Here's Commissar Waters talking about the Tea Parties, according to The Hill:

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said that it's not enough for African-Americans to levy allegations of racism against the right-leaning protesters, and that the media must look into their views.

"I want those people talked to; I want them interviewed," Waters told the liberal Bill Press Radio show in a podcast. "I want journalists to be all over those rallies and the marches with the birthers and the teabaggers."

"What I'm looking for is the very people who carry the signs who are referring to the policies in very, very strange ways like 'Obamacare' and 'Barry Obamacare with Kennedy,'" she said. "What I've been interested in is hearing from those people that everybody's referring to — everybody on the Mall, in the rally."

So, not only should we protestors be smeared as racists, we should be investigated too. Our brains should be probed for using racist terms like…."ObamaCare" ????? Huh ? I don't quite get the racist element in that term. What about "HillaryCare" ? Was that racist too ? Notice that Waters herself has no qualms about using actual defamatory terms like "teabaggers" to slur her opposition. We've gone through the looking glass, folks. The inmates are running the asylum. Up is down. This is crazy.

After all this insane race baiting, I have to agree with Pete Wehner of Commentary Magazine, who says liberals are having a nervous breakdown:

It’s fascinating to watch how furious liberals have become despite Obama’s being president and Democrats’ controlling the Senate and the House by wide margins. This period should be—they expected it to be—years of milk and honey for them. But events and reality have intervened. They see the Anointed One, Barack Obama—their “sort of God”—failing. He is not only a mere mortal but also a deeply flawed one.

They see support for Obama’s effort to nationalize our health-care system collapsing. They see the American people rising up against his brand of liberalism. They see Republicans with all the intensity on their side. They see GOP candidates leading in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. They see the popularity of their majority leader, Harry Reid, cratering. They see the Republican party drawing almost even with Democrats on issues like health care—and surging ahead of Democrats on many other issues. They see a dangerous loss of support for Obama among independents and the elderly.

We’re only eight months into the Age of Obama—the period in which he promised to unite our divided country, heal our wounds, and bind up our divisions—and Obama’s critics are now routinely labeled as unpatriotic, racists, liars, mobsters, evil mongers, practitioners of un-American tactics, and more. As Obama’s failures mount up, it will only get worse. The volume will only get louder. And the charges will only get more desperate and incendiary.

It will be an ugly and sad thing to witness. Nervous breakdowns often are.

Also, to paraphrase Wehner, all this time we thought liberals were merely suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Now we are finding out they are just deranged, period.

During President Obama's latest health care reform campaign speech before a joint session of Congress, he pretended to throw a bone to Republicans with a weak call for "demonstration projects" on medical tort reform. Rather odd, when you consider such demonstration projects have already been done, and have been done for years.

"Whole states are demonstration projects," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. "Texas passed tort reform in 2003 and … insurance premiums went down 30 percent. California passed tort reform and premiums went down 40 percent. Let's enact tort reform. Let's not just try that with demonstration projects. We already know it works. Let's put it into law." (link)

Tort reform with settlement caps has already been proven to be effective, both in decreasing the amounts of malpractice liability insurance paid by doctors (these are the premium decreases Rep. Smith is talking about), and in increasing the number of doctors in states with effective tort reform, particularly in areas of medical specialization. President Obama surely knows this, so holding out a carrot to Republicans by calling for demonstration projects is disingenuous. While the President is correct that tort reform is not a "silver bullet," we should be making all efforts to reduce the costs of health care, and this is one. Even if it only saves 5%, that's 5% less than we're paying now. It makes no sense not to pursue it if cost containment is the overarching goal, as the President says.
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After Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) improperly shouted out "you lie" at the President during the aforementioned Obama health care reform campaign speech, several Democrats and mainstream media members (but I repeat myself) saw it as Wilson genuinely disagreeing with the President about whether illegals would be covered under ObamaCare. Ah, I'm just kidding. They don't ever give Republicans credit for legitimate thoughts. What they really saw was what they always see when a right winger disagrees with the President – RACISM. That's the left's silver bullet.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), said that people will put on "white hoods and ride through the countryside" if emerging racist attitudes, which he alleges are subtly supported by Rep. Wilson, are not rebuked. Wilson's racist attitudes were indeed subtle, because Wilson didn't say anything at all racist. In fact, rather than call Wilson's alleged racist attitudes subtle, why don't we call them what they really are – imaginary ? And how about we rebuke Hank Johnson for making the false accusation ? I won't hold my breath.

Deranged liberal N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd said she heard "You lie, BOY" when Wilson made his remark. I suggest Ms. Dowd start immediately on a strong course of anti-psychotic medication, because she's having auditory hallucinations. I only hope Ms. Dowd's dog doesn't start telling her to kill people. The Son Of Sam had a big problem with that.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who suspects racism is behind nearly everything, said of the Wilson comment, "I suspect that Obama's race leads some of his critics to feel they have permission to deny him the legitimacy, stature and common courtesy that are any president's due. I can't prove this, however."

Yes, it IS hard to prove something when there's no evidence for it, Mr. Robinson, but I notice that doesn't stop you from making the accusation. Of course, no Democrats EVER questioned the legitimacy of the Bush presidency, except for every day for 8 straight years, and no Democrat EVER treated President Bush with disrespect (lol). Robinson went on to bemoan the fact that "there's no way to compel people to search their souls for traces of conscious or unconscious racial bias." See, Republicans are so racist that THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW IT. It's unconscious on their part, like so many of Eugene Robinson's columns.

Liberals see Rep. Joe Wilson, a white male, a Republican, and a southerner, and they just can't help themselves, they jump to the conclusion that he's a racist without the slightest evidence. There's a bias at work there alright, but it isn't coming from the Republicans. It's coming from the liberals.

While I'm on this subject, why do you think media outlets like MSNBC and CNN continually point out that most of the Tea Party protesters in D.C. last weekend were white ? Why does that even matter ? It only matters to them because they are dishonestly pushing a racist element to the protests. You'd never hear MSNBC imply racism over the fact that 96% of blacks voted for Obama, yet almost nightly you hear smirking MSNBC fools like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow talking about how so very white the Tea Party and townhall protesters are. I have news for them. There's nothing wrong with being white, just as there's nothing wrong with being of any ethnic background. This is nothing but bottom feeding demagoguery from MSNBC, and it's shameful.

Btw, when is MSNBC going to get some black hosts ? Maybe we should give Olbermoron and Madcow a dose of their own medicine and kick them off the air for a little diversity. We can replace them with people who can actually think.

If all you've got is to call people racist, based upon nothing, you ain't got a thing. You're just an idiot. I'm sick of it. If you want to know who is holding this country back from getting beyond race, I just told you who. It's the very people who are obsessed with dividing us up along racial lines for political gain. This is 2009, not 1955. We've moved on, even if so many liberals have not.

- One nice thing about Bill Clinton's presidency was that you could oppose his policies without being called a racist (mostly).

- People who think Bush went into Iraq to enrich Halliburton have no right to complain about the Birthers.

- When you go looking for "code words" for racism, aren't you just making stuff up ?

- When I talk about Obama's huge first year deficit ($1.8 trillion) on this blog, why do liberals always bring up Bush's deficits to excuse Obama's ? (Note to libs – By doing that, you aren't countering my argument. You are only making the argument that Obama is worse than Bush).

- Obama can offer health insurance to 30-45 million more people with health care reform, or he can reduce health care costs, but he can't do both at the same time.

- Obama's health care reform offers less choice, not more choice.

- Only Democrats think Rush Limbaugh is the head of the Republican party.

- Why is it that when liberals call conservatives racists nearly non-stop, nothing ever happens to those liberals, but when Glenn Beck calls Obama a racist one time, 20 advertisers are pressured into dropping their ads from Beck's show ?

- The only point being made by those people who are carrying guns outside events at which the President is speaking is that the gun carriers are oblivious morons.

- Is there any doubt at all that House Democrats are seeking the financial records of health insurance companies in order to demonize those companies ?

- Why is it okay for Congress to buy private jets with taxpayer dollars, but it's not okay for CEO's to fly private jets to Washington D.C. after being bailed out with taxpayer dollars ?

- Why would we want the federal government, an organization that is nearly $12 trillion in debt (and counting), to run our health care system, which represents 17% of our economy ?

- The "Obama is Hitler" signs must stop, because Obama is not like Hitler – he's much more like a combination of Saul Alinsky and P.T. Barnum. (Note to liberal media – that Obama-Hitler "I've Changed" sign you idiots at MSNBC, NBC, and CNN keep attributing to right wingers came from a Lyndon Larouche group, a communist group. Is even a tiny bit of journalistic integrity too much to ask ?)

- Speaking of Saul Alinsky, doesn't Obama's playbook seem awfully close to Alinsky's Rules For Radicals (pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it) ?

- MSNBC is such a biased organization that they actually edited out the fact that it was a black man who was carrying the AR-15 outside an Obama event, so MSNBC could peddle it's racist angle to the story.

- In the interesting political poll of the week, Gallup polling showed that conservatives outnumber liberals almost two to one when it comes to political ideology, yet Democrats have a sizeable lead over Republicans in party affiliation. (In other words, conservative doesn't always equate to Republican. I can identify with that).

- If you want to know why the health care public option was in, then it was out, then it was back in again….it's because up to 100 House Democrats said it better be back in again.

ZoNation pumps up the funny.

If you want to see what post-racial America really looks like (it does exist, even if race baiting liberals like Henry Louis Gates don't think so), watch this video.

Amen.

If you just broke into your own home by forcing open the front door, and then the police showed up to investigate after receiving a call from a passerby that two men wearing backpacks broke into your home, would you:

A) Explain the situation and thank the police for trying to protect your home from potential burglars, or
B) Rant and rave and call the police racists.

I'd pick option A, but it seems that Henry Louis Gates Jr. chose option B. Oh, excuse me. I mean HARVARD BLACK SCHOLAR Henry Louis Gates Jr. chose option B. I've yet to read a news report that didn't refer to Gates as a Harvard black scholar, as if that is somehow supposed to make a difference in the events that took place.

Gates, the Harvard black scholar, accused the police of racial profiling. If you ask me, this brings Gates' scholarly reputation into serious question. The police didn't pull Gates' car over at random on the highway to hassle him because he was black. THAT would have been racial profiling. No, the police were responding to a call, to a potential crime. The police went to Gates' house, in effect, to protect Gates and his possessions. That's what the police do. That's their job. Protect and serve. The police asked Gates to produce identification to prove he was who he said he was. No problem there, either. What were the police supposed to do, just take Gates' word for it and leave ? They'd pretty much have to be the dumbest police in the world to do that. Even Mayberry Deputy Barney Fife wasn't that dumb. Barney would have asked for ID.

That's as far as I can go with the facts, because I don't know exactly what happened after that. I wasn't in Gates' house, so I have no way of knowing. We have conflicting testimony from the parties involved. Gates thinks the police were being racist, and the police say they were following protocol and Gates was being disorderly. Gates ended up being arrested for disorderly conduct. The charges were later dropped. All I'll say about that is, if I'm the police, I'm going to do everything I can to calmly extricate myself from what was nothing but a misunderstanding. If I'm Gates, ditto. Obviously, that didn't happen.

What is instructive here is how liberal knees automatically jerked toward blaming the police (the liberal default position), even without command of all the facts. That knee jerking worked it's way all the way up to liberal numero uno, President Barack Obama, who said the police "acted stupidly" in the Gates case. Obama used the Gates incident to launch into a riff about how blacks and Latinos are treated unfairly by the police.

I've known for a long time not to hassle the police. Things won't go well for you if you do. If you hassle them long enough, you'll end up in handcuffs, just like Gates did. It doesn't matter what color you are. I'm white, and I can attest to that fact personally (don't ask, cuz I'm not telling). If you are out of control, they will put you under control. That's part of their job too, and it's not easy. I wouldn't want to do their job. My default position is to respect the police. I guess that's one of many reasons I'm not a liberal. I'm suspicious of people who view the police as the enemy. The enemies of the police are commonly known as "criminals."

Not that I'm saying Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a criminal. He isn't. That situation just spun out of control. If I had to offer an opinion, I'd say it was Gates who was a victim of his own prejudices, not the police. Gates is sticking with his racial profiling story, no matter how inappropriate, and wants to make a PBS documentary about it. The police know better. The black officer on the scene at Gates' arrest confirms that. He supports the actions of the cops. So does the police union. President Obama even knows that he spoke out of turn. Obama said he "could have calibrated those words differently." (Don't you love politi-speak ? Why can't Obama just say "I'm sorry" like a normal person ?) White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has decided to blame the media's "obsession" for keeping the story going (translation – Obama looks bad, so the White House wants the story to go away. If Obama had looked good on this issue, he'd be making an hour long speech on race relations on primetime television about it).

But at least Gates' arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, might get to have a beer with the two Ivy Leaguers, Obama and Gates. I'm sure they can tell Crowley all about racial profiling, even though Crowley teaches a class about it.

Update 7/27/09 – A copy of the police report of Gate's arrest is online now. It makes Gates look like an pompous jerk.

The Senate formally apologized for slavery yesterday, one hundred and forty four years too late, one hundred and forty four years after slavery was abolished.

Do we all feel better now ? A bunch of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery have apologized for it. Now we know that America doesn't condone slavery (and here I thought the Civil War settled that issue). Thank goodness. All those American pro-slavery groups can go pound salt. If there are any, that is, which there aren't (I hope).

But even the Senate's unaminous and meaningless kumbayah vote to apologize for slavery isn't without controversy here in grievance-based America, where it seems everyone feels slighted over something. The Senate's slavery apology contained a disclaimer which stated the apology didn't authorize any reparations claim for the descendants of slaves.

Cue the outrage. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected to the reparations disclaimer.

Sigh.

To be clear, I believe reparations for slavery were in order, but they were in order 144 YEARS AGO, not now. They were in order for people who actually WERE slaves. There are no reparations in order for people who are six or seven generations removed from slavery, for people who have the same civil rights as everyone else, for people who even have MORE civil rights than everyone else (affirmative action). I agree with President Obama, who said the best reparations are "good schools in the inner city." Obama embodies the lunacy of the reparations argument. Should we pay reparations to Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, just because his skin contains the required amount of melanin ? I don't think so.

As I'm writing this, there are some teevee talking heads arguing about whether or not the coverage of Michael Jackson's death is motivated by race. One talking head is saying it is, that the media is talking about all Jackson's drug use because he is black.

Sigh.

That talking head must not remember the teevee coverage of the deaths of Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Anna Nicole Smith, or Elvis Presley. The media wallowed in all the minutiae of each one's drug use, ad nauseum. It's about celebrity, not race.

Speaking of race-based issues, the Supreme Court reversed the appellate court ruling in the Ricci case, and ruled that New Haven discriminated against 19 firefighters (18 white and 1 hispanic) when they threw out the results of a promotion test because no blacks scored high enough to be promoted. New Haven officials were afraid of protests by civil rights groups if no blacks were promoted, so they discriminated against the 19 firefighters and denied them the promotions they earned. As with so many of these types of cases, the Supreme Court vote was split. The 5-4 majority decision was resisted by the Court's four liberal members (who think discrimination is fine and dandy as long as it's done against white people). Of note is the fact that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was one of those overturned by the Supremes. As one of the appellate court judges, Sotomayor thought discrimination against white people was hunky-dory in the Ricci case too.

Your going to hears lots of grievance-mongering and spin about the Ricci case, but there is no reason for any of it. This country was founded on the notion that all men are created equal, and equal protection under the law is mandated in our Constitution. We have a Civil Rights Act that says you may not discriminate against people based upon race. That goes for ALL races. That's why slavery and Jim Crow laws were wrong. All we should do in this country is give everyone the same opportunity (as in, all the New Haven firefighters had the SAME opportunity for promotion, regardless of race. They all took the same test. That's equality). When we go beyond that to dictate outcomes based solely upon race, we violate our own principles and make a mockery of them.

It's time to get beyond race, as well as all the other false constructs that divide us. I've watched the civil rights movement go from one of righteousness in the 60's to the "gimme" entitlement mindset of today. No. You aren't entitled to anything in this country, except the equal opportunity to achieve or fail. After that, it's up to you, no matter who you are.

To all Republicans in Congress who are afraid to oppose Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor because she is a Latina….

Are you kidding me ?!?! Grow a pair.

Sotomayor's ethnicity has nothing to do with her qualifications (or lack thereof) for the Supreme Court. Sure, the Democrats will play the race card (as they always do) if you oppose her, but those same Democrats had no problem opposing a Latino Bush nominee, Miguel Estrada, to the D.C. Appeals Court in 2001. The Democrats filibustered Estrada's nomination, and Sotomayor's own legal group helped sink Estrada. Somehow, the Democrats opposition to Estrada didn't alienate the entire Hispanic vote, which is what some GOP wimps fear if they oppose Sotomayor.

I'm not even saying Sotomayor shouldn't be confirmed. It's too early to make that judgement, but, as I outlined in a previous post, there are some significant questions that must be asked of Sotomayor during her confirmation hearings, and if Republicans don't ask them, nobody will.

The Washington Examiner describes the alleged "box" the GOP is in regarding Sotomayor:

Some Republican operatives fear that GOP senators will dig through Sotomayor’s past but do little about it during the nomination hearings out of fear that heavy criticism will paint them as insensitive. Sessions in particular has a problem. He lost his 1986 bid to become a federal judge after Judiciary Committee Democrats accused him of being a racist, citing past statements about the American Civil Liberties Union and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Democrats and especially the liberal blogosphere are watching Sessions closely, looking for any move they could label a racial attack, and their scrutiny could undermine his ability to go after Sotomayor on her record.

“Unless a shoe drops, I think there will be limited discussion and then her nomination will pass,” one GOP operative said.

Complicating matters for the GOP is that Sotomayor is not just a minority, she is Hispanic. Hispanics represent a fast-growing segment of voters whom Republicans hope to win over.

“Republicans want to placate their base, but they aren’t going to want to alienate Hispanics,” Soper said.

What a crock that is. What, because Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was accused of being a racist by Democrats 23 years ago, now Sotomayor gets a free pass, even though Sotomayor has made her own race-based comments that need further clarification ? I don't think so.

For whatever reason, the Republicans have never confronted Democratic Supreme Court nominees with the same level of bloodlust in which Democrats have gone after Republican nominees (think Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas). Bork's nomination was so hostile that it even gave rise to a new verb – to get "borked." It's worth listening to "Liberal Lion" Ted Kennedy's disgusting attack on Bork one more time:

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is — and is often the only — protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy… President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."

Democrats are even warning Republicans not to go after Sotomayor, she of the inspiring story, who went from a Bronx housing project to the Supreme Court. President Obama referred to Sotomayor's "extraordinary journey," as if she is Sojourner Truth or something. Do you remember anyone ever talking about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas like that ? Thomas journey was every bit as extraordinary as Sotomayor's, if not more so. Here's a bit of it:

Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia, a small, impoverished African American community. His family are descendents of American Slaves in the American South. His father left his family when he was two years old. After a house fire left them homeless, Thomas and his younger brother Myers were taken to Savannah, Georgia, where their mother worked as a domestic employee. Thomas' sister Emma stayed behind with relatives in Pin Point.

When Thomas was 7, the family moved in with his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson, and Anderson's wife, Christine, in Savannah. Anderson had little formal education, but had built a fuel oil business that also sold ice. Thomas calls his grandfather "the greatest man I have ever known." When Thomas was 10, Anderson started taking the family to help at a farm every day from sunrise to sunset. His grandfather believed in hard work and self-reliance; he would counsel Thomas to "never let the sun catch you in bed."

Yet, the centerpiece of the Thomas confirmation hearings was a pubic hair in a Coca-Cola, because, you know, you can't have an inspirational story if you're a conservative. If you're a conservative, you get the "high-tech lynching of a black man."

Republicans have to get over this fear of being called racists, especially when it's coming from loons, such as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who said the following about Republican opposition to Sotomayor:

"I think that she’s [Sotomayor] going to have to defend everything that Republicans choose to attack her on, that’s the nature of the adversarial process at this point. In fact I think that it is, it’s rich to have Rush Limbaugh, he of Barack The Magic Negro fame, attacking people for being racists at this point. I mean, certainly the attack on Sotomayor, to the extend that it is based on her race, to the extent that the attacks on her are based on the idea that she was an affirmative action choice – I think that’s probably the weakest ammunition they’re going to have against her. I mean you don’t get to be summa cum laude at Princeton on the basis of some sort of favoritism, you don’t get to be Phi Beta Kappa on the basis of somebody trying to do you a favor or trying to redress some past wrong. So if they want to lead with attacking her on the basis of race and affirmative action, I think it means she’s going to have a pretty easy confirmation process."

Notice how Maddow erects a straw man by saying Republicans will attack Sotomayor based upon her race, when, of course, Republicans will do no such thing. Republicans don't care about Sotomayor's race any more than they cared about the race of Clarence Thomas, Miguel Estrada, Alberto Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, Michael Steele, or a host of others. It appears only liberal nutjobs like Rachel Maddow care about race, and who fricking cares what they think ???? The race card is about the sorriest card in the deck these days.

To the fearful GOP'ers – do your job and ask the tough questions. You don't have to act like the vile Ted Kennedy did with Bork, but this is important. A Supreme Court nomination is for LIFE. You don't get any do overs.

As I mentioned in my last post, some Democrats are seeing all kinds of imaginary racial codespeak in the words of John McCain and Sarah Palin. So I have to ask those same Democrats, are the following words from Barack Obama an example of that same racial codespeak ? And if not, why not ?

A couple minutes after congratulating McCain for toning down his rhetoric, Obama warned that people shouldn't be "hoodwinked" or "bamboozled" by McCain.

In the movie Malcom X, Denzel Washington delivers these words as a warning to black people about white politicians who seek to mislead them. Denzel says, "Every election year, these politicians are sent up here to pacify us. You’ve been hoodwinked. Bamboozled.” (link to video here)

Also, Representative John Lewis (D-GA) compared McCain and Palin's rhetoric to that of George Wallace.

"Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse. "During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

Boy, I thought McCain=Bush was a real stretch. Now they have McCain being the same as George Wallace. Stop the insanity. What is doubly strange here is that John McCain has previously expressed his admiration for John Lewis. I assume that no longer applies. McCain has called upon Barack Obama to denounce these racial comments coming from the Democrats. Let's see if Obama does it. He should. Of course, if we use the Democrat's standard of hypersensitive intolerance for alleged racial codespeak, Obama will also have to denounce himself, since Obama using "hoodwinked" and "bamboozled" is a far more overt nod to race-based pandering than anything McCain or Palin have said. Btw, Obama used the exact same "hoodwinked" and "bamboozled" rhetoric about the Clintons in South Carolina during the primaries.

So, what say you, Democrats ? Do we have one standard here, or a double standard ? Any condemnations of your fellow Democrats yet, including Barack Obama ? Or are we still playing 'let's pretend' ?

When Democrat Barney Frank started taking some heat (though not nearly enough yet) for being one of the prime enablers of the mortgage crisis by sinking any regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by pushing banks to eliminate loan standards in order to increase home ownership, Mr. Frank found the true culprits. It isn't Barney Frank, oh no. Even though his efforts may well sink the entire world economy, Barney Frank still won't admit to any blame. Instead, he pins blame on his favorite whipping boys, those racist Republicans. Quoting Mr. Frank at a mortgage foreclosure symposium in Boston:

“They get to take things out on poor people. Let’s be honest. The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn’t hurt them either, from their standpoint. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people."

Even with our banks falling over like dominoes and the stock market dropping like a rock, the lying moron Barney Frank plays racial politics to cover his own malfeasance. Un-believable. We will NEVER get sound fiscal policy with disgusting pigs like Barney Frank as our congressional leaders.
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ACORN (Association of Community Organizers For Reform Now) is being investigated in a dozen states for voter fraud, including all the key battleground states. ACORN has a long history of facilitating voter fraud. ACORN is recruiting for Barack Obama. ACORN was also involved in pressuring banks to eliminate their loan standards to increase low-income home ownership, which has led directly to the mortgage crisis. Barack Obama has funnelled $800,000 to ACORN, and the Democrats tried to push 20% of the $700 billion financial bailout package to ACORN. Thankfully they failed with that twisted effort.

Have ACORN or the Democrats done anything wrong ? Nope, not according to the Democrats or ACORN. Instead, it's the fault of, guess who, those racist Republicans, who the Dems claim are just trying to keep minorities from voting. Absolute bullcrap.
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When Sarah Palin brought up Barack Obama's connection to domestic terrorist William Ayers on the campaign trail, a relationship that Obama has been consistently deceptive about, Democrats jumped in and accused Palin of racism. Here are the "offending" words from Palin:

“Our opponent is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America. We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”

Now, I don't see anything even remotely racist there, but Democrats use any chance to find that secret double-blind hidden GOP racist subtext.

“They are trying to throw out these codes,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York. “He’s ‘not one of us?’” That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.”

“Racism is alive and well in this country, and McCain and Palin are trying to appeal to that and it’s unfortunate,” said Representative Ed Towns, also a Democrat from New York.

I don't know why Ed Towns included John McCain in his accusations. Maybe it was because McCain pointed to Obama during the debate and called him "that one." Democrats saw racism in that too.

FYI – Meeks is also one of the Democrats who called it racist when the GOP, including John McCain, tried to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2005. How'd that work out, Mr. Meeks ? Meeks even called the Fannie and Freddie regulators racist for trying to impose any semblance of fiscal sanity upon Fannie and Freddie.
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Barack Obama has played the race card several times, first against the Clintons in the primaries, and in the general election he keeps saying things like, ""they [GOP] are going to tell you…he [Obama] doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." OF course, the Republicans have never said any such thing.

The Democrats and the Obama campaign have been so darned sure that the Republicans were going to use racist tactics against Obama that they are tilting at windlmills. Their paranoia has gotten the better of them. NOBODY on the Republican side is referring to race AT ALL, because it's a non-issue. It's a figment of fevered Democratic imaginations.

I have a suggestion, Dems. Grow up, and knock it off. The only side that ever brings up race is YOUR side. Therefore, I conclude that it must be the Democrats who are obsessed with it, not the GOP.

And I'm not bitterly clinging to my guns or my religion, nor do I mistrust people who don't look like me.

Barack Obama, his campaign cronies, and the liberal media have been predicting racially-oriented attacks against Obama from the "Republican smear machine" for at least a year now. Actually, "predicting" is the wrong word. The Obamans didn't predict racist attacks, they STATED WITH CERTAINTY that the racist Republicans would try to scare Americans to death by playing the race card against Obama. In fact, they were so certain these attacks would occur that they have imagined them into being out of nothing. In the absence of any overt racism by Republicans, the Obamans go looking for the "subtext," the "veiled racism." Let me explain how this subtle form of racism happens.

If a Republican says "Obama is inexperienced," what the Republican really means is "Obama is black."
If a Republican says "Obama wants to lose the war in Iraq," what the Republican really means is "Obama is black."
If a Republican says "Obama's economic plan is a disaster," what the Republican really means is "Obama is black."
If a Republican says "Obama is all style and no substance," what the Republican really means is….well, you get the picture.

See how that works ? It's quite simple. Such lunacy used to be called paranoia, but no more. Now, such phony baloney is taken seriously by the news media, and some of the most imaginary of the media personalities (Keith Olbermann comes immediately to mind), believe completely in this imaginary Republican racism ("look Rachel ! McCain called Obama a CELEBRITY ! That's a code word !").

Even worse, Barack Obama apparently believes in this imaginary racism too. He as much as called John McCain's campaign racist by making the following statement:

“[McCain's] spending an awful lot of time talking about me. You notice that?” Obama asked a crowd of just over one thousand seated in a university gym. “I haven’t seen an ad yet where he talks about what he’s going to do. And the reason is because those folks know they don’t have any good answers, they know they’ve had their turn over the last eight years and made a mess of things. They know that you’re not real happy with them and so the only way they figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me,” Obama continued, repeating an attack from earlier in the day. “What they’re saying is ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, he’s a got a funny name.’”

Let's be clear. John McCain has NEVER made a racial reference to Barack Obama. He has NEVER said anything remotely resembling the "he doesn't look like us" comment that Obama is attributing to him. Obama is offering up a complete fiction here.

Obama has played variations on the "I don't look like the other presidents" theme many times. He played the race card against the Clintons, though in fairness, there were a couple comments from Bill Clinton that could reasonably have been considered race-based, and a left wing blogger and Hillary supporter did start that Michelle Obama "whitey" rumor. Now Obama is playing the race card again against John McCain in the face of absolutely no evidence. When the McCain campaign correctly shot back at the Obama campaign for the phony racist charge, Obama's press secretary Bill Burton responded with the following coverup:

"Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they’re using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he’ll continue to talk about."

Say what ??? If Obama doesn't believe McCain is using race as an issue, then why did Obama ACCUSE McCain of using race as an issue ? Of course Obama was talking about race. Burton's illogical gibberish has become an Obama campaign staple, where the opposite of the truth is presented as the truth by the Obamans. Another recent example of this phenomenon is Obama's statement about offshore oil drilling, where Obama claims that drilling will "merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years." Again, say what ??? The failed policies of the past 30 years are to a large part based upon the fact that DOMESTIC OIL DRILLING HAS BEEN BANNED the entire time. Enabling offshore oil drilling would be a reversal of the failed policies of the past, not a continuance of them. Obama's statement about drilling is as fictional as his statements about Republican racism.

Obama owes McCain an apology for his race-based comments, not that I expect McCain will receive one. It seems to me that when race does enter this political campaign, it originates from Obama's side, not from the opposition.

It was a wacky weekend for the party of D, that allegedly stands for Democratic. Many votes were cast that won't count, and many other votes were counted that were not cast. We all should have seen this coming the moment they made Howard Dean the head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). To everybody I've ever spoken with about Howie (who always seems angry for no apparent reason) – Told you so.

In sunday's primary in Puerto Rico, Hillary Clinton trounced Barack Obama, capturing 68% of the vote to Obama's 32%. The win earned Hillary 38 delegates to Obama's 17.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, those 38 earned delegates in Puerto Rico were trumped by the DNC's awarding of 59 unearned Michigan delegates to Barack Obama on saturday. The party of D operatives were congratulating themselves for their Solomonic wisdom all over the news shows yesterday, but it must be noted for the record, NOBODY IN MICHIGAN VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA. Sooo, how do you get 59 elected delegates without receiving any votes ? Why, you belong to the party of D, that allegedly stands for Democratic, that's how. John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and the other party of D nominees should be po'ed, because they deserved those 59 delegates every bit as much as Barack Obama did. Some deserved them more.

In the face of heated criticism, the DNC Outlaws Bylaws Committee made other compromises on saturday as well. They seated Florida's delegates in addition to the imaginary Michigan election they held in their minds, and then they decided the 2.3 million Florida and Michigan votes would count as half votes. This move at least brought those states in line with the DNC's own internal rules, though not in line with any Constitutional principle, except maybe that old revoked one about slaves counting as 3/5's of a person. Keep trying Florida and Michigan. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be real citizens. At least the 3/5ths compromise had the nobler goal of ending slavery behind it. The party of D was on the wrong side of the slavery debate when it counted too. Btw, did you know that Barack Obama is the first black man to EVER become a Senator in the party of D, the oldest political party in the country ? Yes, it is so. The Republican party, founded in 1854 by Abe Lincoln, elected it's first black man to the Senate, Hiram Rhodes Revels, in 1870. Just an interesting historical tidbit.

During the DNC's debate over whether to count millions of votes on saturday, one heckler repeatedly asked what I'll call THE QUESTION OF THE YEAR, before he was escorted out of the building by security. The question was :

HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELVES THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IF YOU DON'T COUNT THE VOTES ?

Indeed. How, exactly ?

Speaking of counting the vote and real citizens, let's return to Puerto Rico for a minute. Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. They fight in our military. Nearly 70 have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. Puerto Ricans can vote in U.S. elections if they live on the mainland, but they can't vote in U.S. elections if they live on the island. They can vote in the primaries, but not the general election. Puerto Ricans live in this bizarre American colonial netherworld. Without getting into whether Puerto Rico should become a state, remain a colony, or become independent, I recommend this: As long as Puerto Ricans are U.S. citiizens, they should receive the full right to vote. I've already had my fill of votes not counting in this election cycle. I remain astonished that all it takes to suppress millions of American votes is some shenanigans from a handful of misguided politicians. We have to be better than that. The party of D can take all their wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Bush/Gore election of 2000 and stick it where the sun don't shine. They have forfeited the right to complain about anything.

Seeing as how the Democratic party is no longer democratic, I propose America has a contest to rename the Democrats into something more appropriate. I suggest the "Oxymoron party", or maybe the "Revisionist party".
===
In other news, Barack Obama quit his church after 20 years, in the wake of more wacked out remarks by that deranged Catholic priest, Pfleger, who said Hillary had a sense of entitlement to the Democratic nomination because she was white. The TUCC congregation ate Pfleger's remarks up. They loved it. Obama has no doubt grown tired of defending every loony racist statement that emanates from TUCC (Trinity Unbelievably Crazy Church), but the question about Obama will not go away. The question is, why did Obama sit there and listen to that nonsense for 20 years ? And Barack, please don't continue to insult our intelligence by saying you never heard that type of language when you were there. You KNOW you did. We KNOW you did. TUCC is based upon Black Liberation Theology, which assumes white oppression. At one time you embraced that church, when it was politically convenient, and now you have removed yourself from it, because it's politically invconvenient. That sounds less like a leader, and more like an opportunist to me, but let's move on. I also want a real discussion of the issues instead of all this stuff about preachers, because it's on the issues that Barack Obama really gets scary.

When Barack Obama gave his speech about race and racism the other day, he more or less fessed up to one thing…that he was not being honest when he said he had never heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright make racist, hate-filled, anti-american statements. Here's Obama Version 1 versus Obama Version 2:

VERSION 1 (the evasion):

"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation."

VERSION 2 (the truth):

"Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed."

Good. I'm glad we cleared that up. The fact that Obama covered up initially is troubling, but at least we can move on now. Btw, Mr. Obama, none of my pastors or priests (I can't speak for the rabbis) have ever made any racist statements along the lines of Rev. Wright for me to disagree with. Any pastor or priest I've ever heard give a sermon tended to talk about God and scripture, not how America gave AIDS to Africa, how whitey keeps blacks in poverty, the United States of KKKA, or how we deserved 9/11. That stuff seems a little off-topic to me. Some have told me I don't understand the culture in black churches. I admit I've only attended a handful of black services, but I haven't heard anything like Rev. Wright in those either.

The other question Obama needed to address in his speech was why he attended Wright's church for 20 years and why Wright was his advisor and friend, given Wright's racist rhetoric. In this regard Obama failed miserably (but in very eloquent fashion. The man sure can give a speech). Obama said Wright's inflammatory statements were not the full content of Wright's character. While I am certain that is true, so what ? I mean, there was certainly more to Don Imus than a guy who made a tasteless racist joke, but Barack Obama was quick to call for Imus' resignation last year. Here's Obama on that issue:

“There’s nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude,” – Barack Obama in an ABC interview, April 11, 2007

Obama also told ABC that he would never appear on Imus' show after hearing Imus make the 'nappy-headed hos' remark. There was no call for wider understanding from Obama on the Imus incident, and remember, Imus was JOKING. Rev. Wright wasn't. It seems what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.

Obama was basically saying that we all know people who make racist comments when he said he could no more disown Wright than he could the black community, and by talking about his white grandmother fearing black men on the street. That's why Obama's speech included a synopsis of the history of race in america, from slavery to the civil rights movement. Obama even used Wright's age as a justification of Wright's attitudes. I'd call that speech Obama's racial "kitchen sink" strategy.

Obama does have a rather unique viewpoint, since he grew up in both black and white cultures, and Obama is right that we've all heard racial statements made from time to time. That is inescapable.

But the thing is, Obama kept going back for more, and didn't disavow it until the you-know-what hit the fan. Along that line, Obama's website just recently removed a testimonial from Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

And the latest Gallup national poll has Hillary in the lead.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’… I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character… And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.”

I assume most people in america know the above words by Martin Luther King. I hope they do. They should, because they were some of the most important words spoken by an american in the last half century. We could never be a truly great nation with the stain of racism on our national soul, a stain that mocked our own notion that "all men are created equal." Since MLK can say it far better than I, here are links to two of his most famous writings:

I Have A Dream

Letters From A Birmingham Jail

By breaking the bonds of segregation, Jim Crow, and institutional racism, the King-led civil rights movement freed this entire country. Racism is a mental disorder, brought about by fear and ignorance, which leads to hatred. MLK helped cleanse us of that disorder at the ultimate cost of his own life. When you look back a short 40-50 years to King's time, it is obvious that great progress has been made. Racism has not been completely eliminated, and perhaps it never can be, but by any objective measure, the changes that MLK helped bring about have led us to a far better place.

Martin Luther King's goal was to unite us all in brotherhood, not to split us up into opposing camps in some imaginary racial or class war, as some would have us do today. In King's words, "Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood."

He was a Baptist minister at heart, a hero who maybe reluctantly stepped up to accept the great challenge that was thrown upon him, but step up he did, with tremendous courage. I wonder how many of us could have risen to such a challenge, could have shouldered such a burden. He did, and that is what made him a great man. MLK was a progressive leader with conservative christian moral values. His cause transcended politics. In the Letters From A Birmingham Jail, MLK closed with "Yours In Peace And Brotherhood". That is his legacy, peace and brotherhood.

Let's always look with a suspicious eye on anyone who proposes anything other than that.

(Note – I've had very limited computer time for the last week, so I apologize for not posting much. It won't last much longer. Thanks).

Surprise, surprise. I guess I should have seen this coming, but I didn't. I keep hoping we have grown past all this stuff, but we haven't. Here we are approaching the South Carolina primary, the first with a significant percentage of black voters (50% of 2004 S.C. primary voters were black), and suddenly, out of the blue, the Clintons are charged with being racists, based on racially insensitive remarks that Hill and Billary supposedly made.

What were the 'racially insensitive' remarks made by the KKKlintons ?

1. Hillary said Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality was only brought to fruition when LBJ signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, her meaning being that it takes action along with words to accomplish desired change. She was trying to contrast her experience and action with Obama's words.

2. Bill said Obama was telling a "fairy tale" about his opposition to the Iraq war.

If you are wondering how any of that is racist, I'm right there with you. I'm wondering too. I agree Hillary's comment about MLK was ill-conceived. After all, it could hardly be said that King wasn't a man of action. He was. He did a lot more than just make speeches, and without him, there probably is no Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. That doesn't make Hillary's comment racist. You really have to go fishing to extract that meaning from her words, and it appears Obama's campaign did go fishing. An Obama staffer compiled a list of statements from the Clintons that they thought could potentially be spun as racial, and used against Hillary.

Does this mean Bill isn't the first black president anymore ?

Is this an example of how Obama is going to bring people together ?

Hillary successfully defended herself against the silly racial charge on yesterday's episode of Meet The Press (and after the race subject was finished, she spent the rest of the program lying her butt off about her shifting positions on the Iraq war and everything that happened back in the late 90's. That was must-see-tv. Classic Clinton Crapola).

For his part, Bill Clinton has been making the rounds of black radio stations in South Carolina, apologizing for the racial statement he never made. White guilt is incredible, isn't it ?

Expect Obama to disavow this entire subject very soon (now that the point has been made, and the race card played, that is). Ain't politics grand ?

For anyone who isn't familiar with the story of the teen racial problems in the small southern town of Jena, Louisiana, there is a pretty good overview of the smarmy tale here

There is a lot to sort out amid all the conflicting stories being thrown out by the teenagers on both sides of the Jena dustup, but there is one thing I think we can all agree on, based on witness accounts from both sides: those six black kids (the "Jena Six") DID beat and stomp that white kid into unconsciousness, and that IS a violent crime. At least I hope we can all agree on that, being reasonable people.

I don't want to try the case of the Jena Six here, since I was not one of the witnesses, but my feeling is that the initial charges of attempted murder were excessive, and that the reduced charges of aggravated battery are proportional to the crime. Sounds like another initial case of an overzealous prosecutor to me, as in the media feeding frenzy commonly known as the Duke Rape Case. Prosecutors often charge the maximum and then reduce charges later, which I have never liked, but that's what they do. The son of a friend of mine was just charged with assault for an auto accident because a passenger in the car, the driver's buddy, broke his arm. No way is that assault, there wasn't even any intent, but that's what they charged him with. Makes no sense at all. That's a travesty, but at last word, neither Al Sharpton nor Jesse Jackson have staged a 'No Justice, No Peace' protest rally for him, as they have for the Jena Six.

And it's Al and Jesse I want to talk about. Is it just me, or do Reverend Al Sharpton and Reverend Jesse Jackson sound more and more like the very racists they used to protest against ? When Jesse says Barack Obama isn't acting black enough on the Jena Six issue, I mean, what in the heck is that but a call to racism ? Can you imagine what would happen if the race was reversed, and a white preacher told a white politician he wasn't acting white enough because he wasn't speaking out in favor of some whites who committed a crime against blacks ? My God, he'd be shunned and out of a job quicker than you could say KKK, and rightfully so.

Jesse also made the following statement. “Across this country, there are two justice systems—one for blacks and one for whites. Black young men are not more likely to commit crimes than whites, but they are more likely to be stopped by police, more likely to be arrested if stopped, more likely to be charged if arrested, more likely to be jailed if convicted, more likely to be charged with felonies and more likely to be tried and imprisoned as adults.” Jesse is a master of the sound byte for sure, but actually, blacks are FAR more likely to commit crimes than whites. Blacks are 12% of the population, but commit over half the murders, muggings, and other violent crimes. That's hardly a secret, even if it goes mostly unreported. If we can't start with the truth, then we can't have any kind of meaningful discussion, Mr Jackson. And btw, the police aren't sent out on assignment every day to meet their monthly quota of arresting black people across the country. The police are primarily responders. They go to where they are called. They go to where situations arise. If they are patrolling your neighborhood frequently, you should look at what is wrong with your neighborhood first, not what is wrong with the police. What the police are mostly trying to do is keep people safe.

Reverend Al chimed in regarding the Jena Six. “You cannot have justice meted out based on who you are rather than what you did…This is the most blatant example of disparity in the justice system that we’ve seen. You can’t have two standards of justice.” Now, if Al is talking about the original charges of attempted murder, he has a point, but from what I'm hearing from the protesters, they want the charges dismissed completely, which definitely WOULD be a disparity of justice, because the Jena Six DID THE CRIME. Does that matter anymore ? Apparently not to the Al and Jesse racial pot stirrers it doesn't. Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six, who is referred to on the 'Free The Jena Six' website as 'a football star', has FOUR prior convictions for violent crimes, including two prior battery convictions, which I guess the website must have overlooked, wink, wink. The Jena Six isn't some big civil rights issue. Mychal Bell isn't Rosa Parks, and he never will be. Jena in 2007 isn't Selma in 1965, and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are certainly not Martin Luther King.

When Al and Jesse's Traveling Racial Hype Show comes to town, truth is the first casualty. Ask the Duke lacrosse team. If we don't want everything in this society to be divided by race, let's start calling out the people who DO divide everything in this society by race, on both sides.