Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Weapons turned inward

When Paul Krugman complained that the bitter internecine conflict between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton meant that "a large part of the progressive movement seems to have lost its sanity" he must have meant Crazy Like a Fox. It would be more accurate to say that progressive politics has now come to resemble extremist politics. Consider the tactic of plausible deniability.

Plausible deniability refers to informal arrangement through which a person may deny any connection to a disreputable activity he actually orders. The two ends to this clever arrangement are the protected principal and the secret agent acting on the mastermind's behalf. When Geraldine Ferraro said that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position" only to resign after Hillary Clinton expressed her high-minded indignation, were the two acts unrelated?

Or consider how hijackers and hostages takers get the authorities' attentions by demonstrating their seriousness.

The principle followed by kidnappers in Baghdad who sent five severed fingers belonging to "four Americans and an Austrian taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq" was that if you want to be taken seriously you have to demonstrate how far you are willing to go in order to get what you want. And although neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton have sent anyone actual severed fingers yet, both have amply shown their astonished supporters that they are willing to ignite race war, tear the Party apart or engage in political cannibalism to serve their own individual ambitions. What's really awesome about Hillary and Barack is not their resumes but the lengths to which they are willing to go.

Plausible deniability. Severed political fingers. These tactics are not a demented application of rational rules but the rational application of the demented rules of left-wing politics. The problem with the axiom "by any means necessary" is that it means "by any means necessary". Neither Hillary nor Barack have lost their sanity. But the rules themselves have been taken to their own inevitable conclusions.




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105 Comments:

Blogger Elroy Jetson said...

The line of plausable deniabilty is approaching the feet of both Hillary and Obama. So far, they have only touched the line. With six weeks between now and the next primary in Pennsylvania, it may be a matter of when and not if.

3/12/2008 09:59:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

What is interesting here is that the politics are unlike the Dem politics of the past. That is there is not appeal to the sense of the party that the great middle must be reached to win. That the appeal of the candidates and the party is best served by whoever can win over the average person in the middle of the country.

It's as if the entire Party has become enamored of the belief that Moveon.org, Code Pink and ANSWER represent winning coalitions not dangerous encumbrances best shed.

The more Obama claims he's offended by "racist" remarks the more he becomes Al Sharpton with a better diet regime. The more Hillary cries sexism, the more she resembles unelectable feminists.

Neither argues "this candidate is too extreme, on the edge of mainstream, average acceptability." Instead it's a rush to the far left. One that cannot be undone by convention time.

Obama will probably win. And by that time he's going to be just another Sharpton. He can't play the race card and then un-play it. No matter how many Obama-messiah glowing covers Rolling Stone or Time puts out.

Dems once again are going to show (deservedly) that they are simply not to be trusted in the WH.

The obvious play for each is to run to the center, offering "no more Iraqs" but "victory in Iraq" and SOME smackdown of Iran with no ground troops. Americans don't like Iran and would like to see some payback. People WANT to see their side win.

3/12/2008 10:10:00 PM  
Blogger Cedarford said...

The menace of the cancer of identity politics dividing Americans was unfortunately achieved long ago. The communist Jews that created the NAACP took care to infuse not only class consciousness but race consciousness where warfare between groups based on identity would achieve the Jew's idea of "social justice" and proper allocation of power - with blacks properly guided by wise, progressive Jews...

Then the blacks threw the Jews out of positions of power towards blacks coincidental with the usual suspects seeking to divide America in other ways with feminist and gay identity politics. And the cancer spread further.

Now, the cancer of identity politics is fueling two hyperambitious politicians sense of massive entitlement. And it appears to be being taken to its logical solution - dividing the Party that championed it. Helping create not equality, but a caste system based on level of victimization created various levels of who is owed and thus "deserves" rank and title more.

Black males at the top of the "being owed" list.
Black females 2nd.
White females 3rd.
White males last, unless gay.

Latinos? Not settled yet. Perhaps ahead of white females, perhaps behind them, with Asians lumped in with white males at the bottom with whites.

What a wonderful Democratic Party!

Couldn't be more satisfying to me watching the seeds of implosion germinate...

The sooner the Democrat implosion happens, the better, because America divided such is a weaker, angrier nation.

3/12/2008 11:32:00 PM  
Blogger Fat Man said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/13/2008 12:08:00 AM  
Blogger Alexis said...

whiskey:

Imagine that a political party apparatus is like a business. Bills must be paid. Staff need to be paid. Auxiliary businesses such as advertisers need to be paid. So, it may actually be more lucrative for a political party to get paid by rich eccentrics than to distance themselves from lunatics with money. If the choice is between political victory while remaining a pauper or political defeat while mooching off the largesse of Soros, there will be many sellouts. Why should one assume the point of politics is winning political power or moving an agenda forward? For some people, it’s a business, and while they may deceive themselves into believing their own political theater, the most important aspect of their politics is to extract enough money from the rich to pay for the votes of the poor. That’s what a political machine does.

3/13/2008 12:45:00 AM  
Blogger someone said...

"What is interesting here is that the politics are unlike the Dem politics of the past."

Actually, it's exactly in accord with the Dem politics of 2000, specifically Gore's attempt to steal the election in the courts. Win at all costs, process be damned.

3/13/2008 12:58:00 AM  
Blogger PeterBoston said...

The lesson not yet learned by the Democrats is that if you want to play identity politics that you have to field candidates with a substance greater than their "identity." Most Americans really couldn't care less if the POTUS were Black or female so long as they had the right stuff for the job.

It's pretty obvious that neither Hillary nor Obama can punch in the POTUS weight class so all they have to campaign on is gender and race. What makes it difficult is that neither can ever admit it.

The Dems trotted out Nance Pelosi to flaunt her gender and look what they got for that. Clueless incompetence that must be explained away by other means. Baseball people are smarter than politicians. When Branch Rickey broke the MLB color line he did it with a ballplayer who could play baseball with the best of them. Jackie Robinson was a Black baseball player all right and the nabobs could scream about the Black part but nobody could criticize the baseball player part. Obama can't hit a curve ball, and it shows.

Race should be part of the Conversation but we need people with intelligence and character like Thomas Sowell to lead it.

3/13/2008 02:05:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

I think it would be a mistake to imagine the crisis gripping the Democratic Party stems entirely from the rogue behavior of the Clintons. The crisis is fundamentally ideological.

About six months ago I got a 400 page compendium of Ron Paul's speeches, pamphlets, etc. Someone asked me to form an opinion of them. It seemed clear that Paul was kicking out an underlying signal, though plausibly deniable, to anyone tuned into it. But Ron Paul's ideas were shunted off to the side by tacit consent. He wasn't censored so much as quietly rejected.

What really shakes me to the core is that mirror image coded messages -- all the stuff churned out by Code Pink, Move On, Daily Kos, CAIR, Jeremiah Wright and all the rest of them -- occupies the mainstream, not the fringe of the Democratic Party. In their case it wasn't quietly rejected as an embarrassment but camouflaged. Papered over. Carried under other color; as if by being mislabeled the poison ceased to exist.

Surprise.

This toxic brew of identity politics, festering Marxism and sexual pandering -- like some unmentionable deal between bandidos -- has leaped the leaped from the world of whispers onto the open stage. Now it's out. That's what is ripping the Democratic campaign apart. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.

Not the moral failings of one or two of its leading members, but their whole corrosive message is cascading through the barriers of illusion, as when one acid bath dissolves the neighboring vat, releasing still more in an ever-widening expansion. What's killing the campaign isn't the lies but the truth they're finally telling about each other.

Ideology has reshaped the Democratic Party. A Truman, Kennedy or Lieberman couldn't survive in it any more. The new center is Clinton and Obama. They are the result of ideology, not the other way around. And that political ideational shift has to have an effect. In fact we are watching the effect.

What's truly essential about this crisis is that the Democratic Party can't help it. Where will it end? Not in Denver. This fight has legs; it is unfinished business. A lot of this stuff has been put on hold from the 1960s. Painted and plastered over. Now it's oozing out of the woodwork.

Obama's great skill was the only chance to keep the illusion going for just a little longer. But not even he can keep the lid on any more.

3/13/2008 03:19:00 AM  
Blogger hdgreene said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/13/2008 05:14:00 AM  
Blogger Barry Meislin said...

Wait a minute. Paul Krugman is complaining that the Democratic Party has lost its sanity?

Paul Krugman?

3/13/2008 05:15:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

"..cancer of identity politics.."


C4,

If you're a "healthy cell" i.e. white irish POTUS, "identity politics" is certainly a cancer. If you're "ethnic", I would think you'd want to kill the organism and its so called "healthy cells". And I'd say more power to you.

3/13/2008 05:55:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

(VIDEO) Obama's Pastor: "Jesus was a poor black man who lived in a country controlled by rich white people."

First Lady Michelle
ht- Elijah

3/13/2008 06:27:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

"He's sick of Negroes who do not get it? How 'bout Negroes who just blatantly LIE from the pulpit. "Pastor" Wright's bigotry at the very least - expressed in this clip - is more than enough for genuine Christian pastors across the nation to rebuke...

The IRS checking into whether this meets the minimum requirement to revoke non-profit status is certainly fair.

But it is unthinkable that a "pastor" of ANY other race would ever be allowed to get away with saying these types of things - especially since they are so blatantly untrue.

Parting question: If Dr. Jeremiah Wright considers Jews like Jesus "Negroes" - then why does he support Islamic minister Louis Farakhan who openly believes that Jews (just like Jesus) are the scourge of the planet?"

3/13/2008 06:35:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

A video showing St Barry Shuck'n and Jiv'n in response to that SOB would be something to see!
...but we won't.

I love the way he portrays Barry as just another Po Black Man raised by a single mom, just like Barry wants us to believe.

"Rich" White Grandparents, and Punahoe School conveniently "forgotten."
---
(they only raised him, afterall.
...but they don't fit the narative.)

3/13/2008 06:51:00 AM  
Blogger buck smith said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/13/2008 07:14:00 AM  
Blogger buck smith said...

Obama's pastor is off the hook. I guess what's funniest is that he gets a church full of people that pay him to go on like that. He is of so totally in the style of Swaggart, et al. I would love to have the music mixer skills to do a blasphemous remix of his rantings.

3/13/2008 07:20:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/13/2008 07:40:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

...or him and Swaggart doin some "Night Moves"!

3/13/2008 07:43:00 AM  
Blogger David M said...

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 03/13/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

3/13/2008 07:47:00 AM  
Blogger section9 said...

The Clintons were quite successful in papering over the McGovern ascendancy of the Left as it came out of the streets and came to control FDR's old Democratic Party. What Obama represents is a much more frank and open representation of Leftist politics. However, it must mask its control of the Party as it goes forward against McCain.

It cannot be other than what it is, no matter how much the Andrew Sullivan's of this world wish it to be otherwise. Eventually a man of the Left is what he is and this becomes a Left vs. Right contest. In that environment, John McCain wins this election.

3/13/2008 08:03:00 AM  
Blogger El Baboso said...

Paul Krugman cracks me up!

3/13/2008 08:09:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

El Baboso,
You should share!
I can't bear to read him.

3/13/2008 08:11:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

LAT: Race Emerging As Major Campaign Issue

One of the black Clinton backers in Congress, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II of Missouri, said in a recent interview that he feared a "backlash" if whites see African Americans pressuring one another to vote based on race.

"If conservative Democrats and conservative Republicans and independents start saying, 'Well, all these black people are being beaten up because they won't support Barack Obama because he's black,' " Cleaver said, " 'maybe we ought to support a candidate because he's white.' I mean what's the difference?"

3/13/2008 08:54:00 AM  
Blogger Fred said...

Wretchard,

Agreed. There is a lot of unfinished business afoot in this nation. However, I'm not sure that either political defeat or, if they win the election, administration failure and crisis, would cure these people of their religious faith in socialism, pacifism, and transnational progressivism. I left the Left in 1986-87 because I finally attended to the thick stack in my inbox called "cognizant dissonance." If these people do not pay attention to the evidence of history, who's to say that they would learn from a failed experiment in real time?

My thinking is that the vast majority in the middle muddle would get the lesson and act accordingly. But, the hard core Leftists mostly will never change. I know these people; defections from their ranks are few and far between.

I was a sophomore in college in the Fall of 1980. Most of my fellow students voted for Reagan (I voted for Carter), so they got the lesson.

But you do raise an interesting and vexing issue: how do you slay this beast and bury it for good?

3/13/2008 09:15:00 AM  
Blogger always right said...

I bet the International Red Cross is stirring a big storm for the hostage treatment? Have they seen them yet?

And we made a big fuss over waterboarding. It is afterwards that the fingers were sent. So where is the logic then?

3/13/2008 09:55:00 AM  
Blogger New Life KC Events said...

I agree that the democratic party seems to be totally broken, my question is how will the republicans differenciate themselves. Will they look "sane."

There are two powerful factors at work to keep americans from seeing how broken the process is, the first is a complicit media, the second is the gullibity of a media "american idol" oriented public.

3/13/2008 10:17:00 AM  
Blogger Nomenklatura said...

All it took to unleash this conflict in the Democratic Party was the perception about a year ago that they could not possibly lose the Presidency. From the moment that took hold, the only enemies the various party factions had to worry about were each other.

This is turning 2008 into a replay of 1968:

- By 1968 the media appeared to have successfully tied 'the establishment' (everyone in both parties except leftist Democrats) to the continuation of an unpopular war, which the media insisted had been lost.

- The Democratic Party "quickly split into four factions, each of which distrusted the other three". The factions were (a) the large unions and big city party machines, (b) students, intellectuals and anti-war activists, (c) African Americans and (d) conservative Southern Democrats. Only the last has been replaced today by a grouping of urban limousine liberals and environmental enthusiasts.

- In the Democratic primaries McGovern fought Robert Kennedy bitterly for the nomination, with McGovern more anti-war, but Kennedy backed by the unions and more charismatic (this year Obama relocates the charisma on the side of the anti-war, students and intellectuals). The conflict between them imploded though after Kennedy was assassinated, and the nomination went to a decidedly uncharismatic union/party machine candidate, Hubert Humphrey (a role played this year by Hillary Clinton).

- On the Republican side, the nomination went to a politician with a reputation for personal toughness who despite the media's portrayal of him was not ideologically a free market Republican at all (he gave us for instance price controls and the EPA), Richard Nixon.

Nixon won the election, though only just, and was later brought down by a toxic mix of his own instabilities and unremitting hostility from the bureaucracy and the media.

Comparing 2008 to 1968 in terms of their differences:

- This time the war has swung around unexpectedly. It's not popular but it looks like it hasn't been lost. This may be fatal this year to the Democrats, in their fratricidal disarray, all by itself.

- You can make an argument, as Wretchard does here, that the Democratic Party's leftist ideology has collapsed, and that it has become just a tool for personal and factional ambition. In this respect though Lyndon Johnson looks no different from the Clintons. He had his 'Great Society' programs, behind which lay a mass of personal corruption, and Hillary has health care. They are both socially disastrous developments, emulating costly European models. 40 years on, I don't see much of a difference.

At least the 1968 campaign put a permanent end to Johnson's political career, and we can still hope that this year's may do the same to the Clintons.

3/13/2008 10:19:00 AM  
Blogger Storm-Rider said...

The problems with the leftists/socialists who have taken control of the Democratic party is that they do not believe in the Declaration of Independence, and they are therefore un-American.

Leftists/Socialists do not believe that all people are created equal. They are mostly atheists, and they believe that Godless evolution has rendered some people - often some groups of people - superior to others. Like Plato they believe in the idea of philosopher kings - they, of course qualify for that position - not the lowly and inferior traditional American.

Leftists/Socialists do not believe that we are endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They don't believe in a Creator, and they logically then believe that our sacred human rights are not God-given - human rights are actually privileges granted by government. The problem here is, of course, those leftist/socialist government privileges can be rescinded by legislation, or by executive order, or by judicial activism.

Leftists/Socialists reject the idea that just government power derives from the consent of the people. If anything has become clear in the last 40 years, it is that these people will rule in spite of, and over the will of the people - whom they actually despise as evolved pond-scum.

3/13/2008 11:52:00 AM  
Blogger joe buz said...

What Sorm-rider said and as someone pointed out to Ash. The left dont like themselves and this hate tends to be projected towards many things "American".

3/13/2008 12:11:00 PM  
Blogger PeterBoston said...

Sigh!

I miss the word Commie.

3/13/2008 12:19:00 PM  
Blogger Fred said...

peterboston,

We can't use the word "Commie" because they repackaged themselves, starting in the sixties, and have successfully labeled those who call them "Commies." Because they now control the narrative, they dictate the terminology.

3/13/2008 12:34:00 PM  
Blogger Jrod said...

Support Obama and you're misogynistic. Support Hillary and you're racist. I guess the only answer is to secretly vote for Nader, or stay home, then yell fraud when the GOP wins.

The real victim in this drama unfolding is poor Krugman's goatee. It's probably tired of being massaged and yanked in alternating fits of anger and angst.

3/13/2008 12:44:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

Today everyone in politics has to have a hyphen. Hillary was going to be the first woman President; Obama the first real black President; Bill Richardson the first Hispanic President; Eliot Spitzer was in line to be the first Jewish President; if David Paterson does he might be in line to be the first blind President. Nobody wants to become the American President. There's no such thing any more in a nation now reduced to a collection, in the same sense as programmers understand the word collection.

Doubtless there were people lined up to be the first lesbian, gay, Chinese, Japanese, Jamaican, HIV-positive and whatever else Presidents. Not that there might be anything wrong with these individuals as individuals. But they weren't supposed to run as individuals with a resume of accomplishment. They were supposed to run as categories. Sops to a special interest.

The problem with the politics of infinite subdivision is that it inevitably fractures the party which manufactures the categories itself. Eventually the Party itself becomes a pile of sticks that can't be shifted without everything falling to the ground.

Eventually there will be so many sensitivities to pander to it will be impossible to say anything about anything. And this is where we are rapidly going. Pretty soon the ideal public facility will have footbaths, directions to Mecca, ramps for the disabled, seeing-eye dogs, instructions in Spanish and an ATM which doesn't require a card to make a withdrawal. And best of all, nobody will be able to discuss how the facility came be designed in this way.

Denver's going to be fun.

3/13/2008 01:04:00 PM  
Blogger dueler88 said...

I'm reminded of the scene near the end of the Jeremy Piven/David Spade movie "PCU" where each of the groups is jockeying for position to get in to the big party at "The Pit:"

Afrocentrist: I'm a black man. There's no justice for me in America - I should be at the front of the line.
Gay Leader: Yeah, well, I'm gay and subject to ridicule and discrimination wherever I go!
Womynist Leader: Women are oppressed throughout the world, give it a rest!

3/13/2008 02:05:00 PM  
Blogger Pascal said...

The problem with the politics of infinite subdivision is that it inevitably fractures the party which manufactures the categories itself. Eventually the Party itself becomes a pile of sticks that can't be shifted without everything falling to the ground.

Fellow readers: What symbolic device has Wretchard alluded to in the emphasized line above? [Hint: Look on the back of a "Mercury" dime.]

Wretchard: Care to tell us what you think of what the "binding chord" was made? Seems it once was made of stronger stuff. If the Dem party really unravels, care to venture what the statists will next use to bludgeon those who resist "empire" formation?

3/13/2008 02:18:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

Fasces. A bundle of sticks. As in fascine.

I think the big to-do about Jeremiah Wright unfairly implies that Obama alone and in particular embraces the kind of ideology that Wright espouses.

There's nothing Wright said that Ward Churchill didn't say. That Noam Chomsky didn't say. That Michael Moore or Cindy Sheehan wouldn't say. Or that Hillary Clinton wouldn't force from her lips, if it would gain her an iota of political advantage.

Barack Obama isn't the exception to the Democratic Party line. It's hypocrisy and racism -- there I said the word -- to claim it afflicts him and only him. Barack Obama is perfectly mainstream in the Daily Kos. That's the elephant in the room. There's nothing wrong with Obama that isn't wrong with the entire ideology. Hillary Herself says she agrees with Obama 95% of the time. So where's the beef?

But back to the pile of sticks. Once upon a time e pluribus unum meant you forgot the Old Country, laid aside the Old Way to become part of a new community. Today what binds is hate. United in opposition to the United Snakes of Amerika. The Ku Klux Klan of America. United in worship to the god of gayness, blackness and whateverness.

And to bind that fasces, to a be fascist, you must first give people nothing but hate. Cut them off from their neighbors so that the only brotherhood they feel is at moments when Jeremiah Wright humps the pulpit; say Jesus was "black" and crucified by "whites", oblivious, completely oblivious to the possibility that Filipinos, Chinese, Latin Americans, eskimos and whatever, might be asking themselves, 'where do I fit in?'

But don't worry, there's a hatred for them too. Every man will be issued his hate-ticket. It's your token of entrance into the association of the damned.

"We are the people we've been waiting for." It depends on what you've been waiting for.

3/13/2008 02:46:00 PM  
Blogger Nomenklatura said...

It's tempting to describe American history as if today's factionalism is something new, representing a regrettable abandonment of the values a unified nation celebrated in the past.

It's more accurate, though perhaps less uplifting, to describe the US as an ongoing experiment punctuated by a series of extremely close calls. At various points from the very beginning Americans have been split into warring factions supporting very different values which almost either overthrew the constitution or would have propelled it in a very different direction.

To take just one example, consider the Copperheads and the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. It was nothing like the fairy tale of pro-slavery forces in the South versus abolitionist sentiment in the North.

For a start, far from there being a majority for the abolitionist position, the votes were:

- Lincoln (Republican) 1.9 million
- Douglas (Northern Democrat) 1.4 m
- Bell (Constitutional Union) 0.6 m
- Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) 0.8 m

So Lincoln's abolitionist position wasn't even supported by a majority of the voters if we exclude the 0.8 million Southern Democrat votes entirely. The only reason Lincoln won (with 40% of the vote) was because his opposition was split multiple ways.

So how united was the North, which eventually won? Here are the 'Copperheads':

"The Copperheads were a vocal group of Democrats in the North... who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates..." They were also called "Peace Democrats"...

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Copperheads nominally favored the Union and strongly opposed the war, for which they blamed abolitionists, and they demanded immediate peace and resisted draft laws. They wanted Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power, seeing the president as a tyrant who was destroying American republican values with his despotic and arbitrary actions.

Some Copperheads tried to persuade Union soldiers to desert. They talked of helping Confederate prisoners of war seize their camps and escape. They sometimes met with Confederate agents and took money. The Confederacy encouraged their activities whenever possible...

Even in an era of extremely partisan journalism, Copperhead newspapers were remarkable for their angry rhetoric... Through the 1864 election, Wisconsin newspaper editor Marcus M. Pomeroy called Lincoln "fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism" and a "worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero... The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer... And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good."


Does it seem like we've been here before?

At a moments in US history now seen as key in forging our values, we were less united than we are now, and there were many other such times.

This is America. As Benjamin Franklin said: "A Republic, if you can keep it". Nobody said it would be easy.

3/13/2008 03:09:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Jerimiah Wright informs:

"It just came to me, with, within the past few weeks y'all,
why so many folks are hatin on Barack Obama:

He ain't white, he ain't rich, and he ain't privileged,
He doesn't fit the mold!

Giuliani fits the mold:
Rich white men fits the mold.

Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home, Barack was.

Barack knows what it's like to be a black man livin in a country and culture that is controlled
BY RICH, WHITE PEOPLE!
"

---
Michael Gerson on Hewitt says that's why many Black Folk identify with Barry, he comes from a different background than some of the other leaders.

---
Of course it is all a myth, sometimes known as a LIE, since Barry was raised in far more affluent circumstances than was Giuliani, by "rich" white folks!

...and Barry went to an expensive private school, surrounded by rich white folk, rich Japanese folk, rich Filipino folk, rich Hawaiian folk, and so on.

Rudy went to a Catholic School surrounded by poor folk, where he was given a priceless education and life lessons by a less than rich white priest.

3/13/2008 04:15:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Obama is given a free pass not only to not be criticized as yet in the MSM, but to be given the "right" to have a group set up to monitor hateful racist outrages like Ferraro's, in order that such haters can be denounced, in public, and be called upon to apologize.

One of the members of this group is none other than Jeremiah Wright, on sabbatical from his/Barry's church!

One might say Jerry Wright monitoring, condemning, and demanding apology from Ferraro is a rather extreme case of the pot calling the kettle black!

3/13/2008 04:33:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

I was reading an article on a certain type of medical imaging yesterday. The subject was whether improvements in angular resolution would improve diagnosis. The author argued that the limits were not the resolution of the display device but the amount of noise.

Anyone who has a digital camera knows that image megapixel size means nothing if there's too much noise. Try shooting at ISO 3200 with a small sensor.

Today's politics has so much noise we forget there's even a signal. The noise is provided by religion, race, appearance, quality of haircut, etc. The noise so blinding we can't even see the person underneath. We know every detail about Obama, or Clinton or McCain but nothing about them really.

The way to get past the noise is to apply filters. Sometimes I wonder if we couldn't get these three candidates into Searle's Chinese Room. Just to unclutter things. But that wouldn't boost ratings on TV. So we get more noise. Ultimately selecting a president becomes a crap game.

3/13/2008 04:35:00 PM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

The new center is Clinton and Obama.

Hillary or Bill?

3/13/2008 04:37:00 PM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/13/2008 04:37:00 PM  
Blogger Marzouq the Redneck Muslim said...

I have seen over the years that those who accused me of being racist were the real racists.
Sorta like the person who tells you everybody is an a$$ h--e and he turns out to be the a$$ h--e.

I think about Jackson, Sharpton and Farakahn. Notice during interviews they never answer questions but spout some scripted statement. The interviewer, at that point, can not get a word in edgewise. And... idiots eat it up.

This is usually how conversations with Leftists/Socialists go. It seems impossible to have a conversation with types like that. It is so frustrating, seems so hopeless. They don't think, they parrot.

Yes, Denver should be fun. Perhaps more than Chicago in '68! Maybe Niel Young can write a song about it. Maybe he already has.

Salaam eleikum Y'all!

3/13/2008 04:40:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

To amplify Wretchard's remarks, the Democratic Party has decided it's all about what gays, lesbians, Blacks, Latinos, and rich white liberals are united on: a desire to PUNISH average Americans, who are mostly white and middle/working class.

That's doomed to failure. Most Americans feel no connection to, nor guilt over, past racism. If THEY were not racist, did not keep a color line, and neither did their parents, what are they to blame for? They don't feel guilty, they just want to make their next house payment.

I agree with the poster upthread, this all came out in the open when Dems believed they could not possibly lose the Presidency. Instead they seem poised to lose historically. To McCain of all people (a man who's flaws are legion). And yes many similarities to 1968 though McCain ain't Nixon.

And Wretchard is correct. It's not just Obama, or Kucinich, or Hillary, or Richardson, or any of them. It's ALL of them. What kind of Party throws away it's legacy of Truman-FDR-LBJ achievement.

[Contrary to most I consider LBJ a GREAT President, one who tried his best to avoid both nuclear war with the USSR/China, and victory in Vietnam, and achieved at great cost Civil Rights that were deemed a fantasy years before.]

3/13/2008 04:41:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Wretchard,

There was a study done on the accuracy of diagnosis as it related to the amount of time the Doctor took as he was threading the little tube up the patient's digestive tract from the bottom.

Turned out there was a direct correlation between time spent, and accuracy.

Doubt if the Docs would care for us calling it a crap game, but it does remind us of the chance, however slight, that some truth will get through if the anal exam goes on long enough.

That was the whole rationale of the "Limbaugh Strategery."

3/13/2008 04:48:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Whiskey,

I agree w/Sowell, who describes LBJ's programs as just one more example of the Government stepping in, just as the problem was being resolved, and made solution of the problem, at least by those means, impossible.
(and very often exacerbates the very problems it sets out to resolve)
---
He's filled many pages in his books w/such examples, with explanation.

3/13/2008 04:59:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

nomenklatura, the 1968 race after LBJ withdrew was between Eugene McCarthy and RFK, not George McGovern. McGovern was the candidate in 1972.

3/13/2008 05:11:00 PM  
Blogger El Baboso said...

I suppose that we could always move to a parliamentary system. A lot of small parties, each with a fairly clearly voiced platform run, and then form coalitions after the election to run the government. In the American system, our two parties form coalitions before the election. The main difference being that all of the back room deals take place before the election in the US and after the election in most other democracies.

Assembling a coalition on the fly is always going to require enormous quantities of obfuscation, doublespeak, misdirection and just plain lying. A lot of this used to be done in the infamous smoke-filled rooms at the conventions, but thanks to more transparent election laws, not so much today.

I agree with you, Wretchard, that today's more transparent system is producing bad outcomes. Identity politics is helping to drive this as you point out. Politicians have to now please so many groups and our ability to document all of their weaselly maneuverings is so great that the whole process seems like kabuki theater on acid some days.

A couple of possible solutions:

- Raise the voting age to 30 or more. 21 was picked as an age when (in those days) a man would have seen war, started a family, brought in a few harvests on his own and maybe bought some property. Such a person could be trusted to make a mature decision. Today, most people don't reach that stage of mensch-hood until sometime in their thirties. So much of the chaos we see in today's political world is due to the spoutings of these infantilized, prozac-addled, twenty and thirty somethings in the electorate.

- Re-jigger the two-party system. Incentivize folks to form as many parties as they want. The catch is that through some combination of primaries, caucuses and conventions, they can only run two candidates for president every four years. When you think about it, it really isn't much different from our current system except now all of the deal making is fairly transparent. You no longer have the travesty of a candidate being pro-NAFTA in one state and anti-NAFTA in the other. Instead, Candidate X would accept a pro-NAFTA plank in his platform to get the support of Party Y.

The above proposals are mostly brainstorm fodder, but may have something valuable between them...

3/13/2008 06:02:00 PM  
Blogger eggplant said...

Nomenklatura said...

"To take just one example, consider the Copperheads and the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860."

I believe the 19th century Copperheads are good analogs to 21th century moonbats. The Copperhead movement was in dire straights after the Confederacy lost the Civil War (the Copperhead's backed the wrong side). However it was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that actually ended the Copperheads. The Lincoln assassins may not have called themselves "Copperheads" but their politics was almost equivalent. After Lincoln's death many Copperheads were lynched or arrested and then punished harshly. For many years after Lincoln's death, the United States was effectively a single party state (the Republicans had a political monopoly). The loss of the checks and balances of a two party democracy resulted in significant political corruption, e.g. President Grant's presidency may have been the worst in American history. The United States didn't really recover from this until after Theodore Roosevelt forced the Republican Party to reinvent itself and the Democratic Party had been sufficiently rehabilitated that Woodrow Wilson could be elected President.

There is a significant danger of history repeating itself if the modern day Copperheads cause excessive damage to the Democratic Party.

3/13/2008 06:29:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

""In a statement to ABC News, Obama's press spokesman Bill Burton said,
"Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church.

Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms.

Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees.
But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done.
"
---
When my spiritual mentor David Duke retires, I hope that's how I'll feel about him.

3/13/2008 06:52:00 PM  
Blogger Fred said...

Until the Democrats are made to pay for their intractable adherence to identity politics and victim group coalition building, they are going to keep on doin' it. We here at Wretchard's weblog see how this degrades the political atmosphere and dumbs-down the level of discourse, but they don't quite see it that way.

People and organizations generally do not change until forced to by crisis.

Of course, it does not help things when you have a full-time professional political class who thrive on analyzing the meaningless minutiae. Honestly, so much of the chatter going on now is a lot of noise. I DO pay attention to the Rev. Wright thing, but I was way ahead of the rest of the pack in learning about him, as were probably most of the readers here. It's not anything we were not prepared to hear.

The vacuity of mind-numbing platitudes issuing forth from The Golden Mouth compelled many of us to go in search of this man and his ideas. Thus, we unearthed his pastor, his mother, his wife, etc., and how their Marxism all seem to have contributed to his worldview. We did our spade work (no pun intended)because we wanted to get at the substance - we wanted to understand where this guy is coming from.

And that's the frustrating part of "politics" for someone like me. I want to hear about concrete ideas and policy positions. I do not care to parse bland stump speeches, or to impute insults where parts of statements are ambiguous about any aspect of the p.c. regimen. Honestly, I could care less about what Geraldine Ferraro said.

Is Sen. Joe Lieberman the last of the truly serious minded of Democrats left?

3/13/2008 08:18:00 PM  
Blogger wildiris said...

El Babosa, before you recommend a parliamentary form of government, I suggest you look up Arrow's Theorem, otherwise known as The Dictator Theorem.

Any system of voting that entails more than two parties can be shown mathematically to contain a dictator. That is an individual or small minority of voters that can swing the outcome of the vote by their choices of candidates.

3/13/2008 08:59:00 PM  
Blogger TmjUtah said...

Hillary Clinton continues to maneuver and posture as if she was a relevant political figure when in reality she's even more disconnected from her chosen profession than Dan Rather was by the day he released the fake TANG documents.

The operative difference between those two people is that Clinton's hundreds of millions of dollars, untold thousands of paid or merely beholden henchmen, and labyrinthine back-room connections do ultimately hold the prospect of controlling the fate of nations. Rather just swam in the wake of A Narrative, and did his best to anticipate the eddies in the stream.

Obama watched the Clintons show and learned well; what he didn't count on was the schizophrenic cowardice of media when The Narrative smacks into reality as hard as it has with Teh First Woman Candidate hitting the mat against Teh First (viable) Ethnic Male Candidate (religion not to be mentioned; or middle name).

There's just not much there, there... this contest isn't going to be won on debating points or any conceivable presentation or appeal to objective fitness for the post.

Six weeks to Pennsylvania, and these folks aren't staking positions so much as they are furiously attempting to launch a killing blow that they can halfway sorta kinda deny any knowledge of.


There are NO limits. Both of these pols come from pasts where the inconvenient get hurt.

3/13/2008 09:23:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

Wretchard your analogy about Digital photography is apt, but the argument can be made that analog devices offer superior information capture in especially noisy environments.

In my younger days I often shot highly pushed color film, usually ASA 400, sometimes ASA 800, in various LA nightclubs documenting the independent music scene. I was quite pleased with how the film, even though highly pushed (i.e. "set" and developed at much higher speed than it's listed ASA speed) gave the essential information. This with a cheap Pentax camera, often no flash, JUST using the Stage lighting. The intent and intensity of the performers were IMHO advanced by both the grain and the stark imagery of the performer lit at the microphone and the background dark. You could see him or her captured at that moment.

The same goes true for TV, even a snowy picture over the air is better than no reception at all or the "tiling" effect common to satellite TV and digital broadcast TV with interference.

The analog analogy would be, rather than Obama's thin paper trail, look at personal choices the man makes that reveal values. Does he go to the same church for decades, get married there, have his children baptized there, with a Pastor who says what Wright says ("God Damn America!")? Does he engage in questionable earmarks to his wife's employer immediately after she gets a $200,000 raise? Does he become entangled in a shady real estate deal with a shady operator with ties to Saddam to buy a luxurious house?

Yes. This analog information I would argue is quite useful. It points out corner-cutting and anti-Americanism. Just as McCain's habit of antangonizing to picking deliberate fights with his base reveal a man who seems only happy when fighting for a cause he feels "right" about. Or Hillary's endless triangulating and pandering reveal someone who cares only for power.

3/13/2008 09:42:00 PM  
Blogger Zenster said...

What's really awesome about Hillary and Barack is not their resumes but the lengths to which they are willing to go.

Doesn't this say it all? A pair of empty suits trying to pass off street creds as bona fides.

PeterBoston: It's pretty obvious that neither Hillary nor Obama can punch in the POTUS weight class so all they have to campaign on is gender and race. What makes it difficult is that neither can ever admit it.

It is no small irony or coincidence that by basing their respective personal agendas upon gender and race, these two "issues" have become the sole avenues of attack. When I mentioned "empty suits" above, it really should have been "the Emperor's new clothes". The strong suits that each candidate should be campaigning on are not just "empty", they are wholly absent.

The Liberal abhorrence for race and gender-based attacks have left Obama and Hillary like two naked gladiators, unwilling to honestly grapple and instead, each gingerly swinging and stabbing at the other while desperately trying to stay out of reach. This goes a long way towards explaining the heretofore unprecedented Democratic reliance upon plausible deniability. The only available avenues of attack are political "red light districts" that the candidates themselves dare not be caught cruising in.

Fred: But you do raise an interesting and vexing issue: how do you slay this beast and bury it for good?

Civil war? Or, perhaps, by allowing the left to unmask itself once the reins of power are in its grasp. By then, though, it'll be too late and untold damage will be done as the dysfunctional Left's political machine thrashes its way towards socialism finally "done right" for once (as if). Scary.

Today's politics has so much noise we forget there's even a signal.

That's because—for the most part—there is no signal. The American electorate is so lacking in historical perspective and political savvy that decisions are no longer being made on an educated basis. The MSM has colluded with concensus-based politicians to shift public awareness away from substance and over to style, just like much of art, literature and music as well.

None of this bodes well.

3/13/2008 09:46:00 PM  
Blogger Derek Kite said...

The natural division of most populations are 1/4 hard left, 1/4 hard right 1/2 middle ranging from soft left to soft right.

In Canada there is a hard left, the NDP (who by the way, the democrats are sounding like more and more) and the liberals that have always campaigned to the right and governed to the left, then the conservatives that are middle to hard right.

The liberals and conservatives constantly fight for the middle. There is a stable 15-18% who vote NDP no matter what. No one has won the federal government with a majority. The Liberals governed for more than a decade on around 40% of the vote. Right now the conservatives are playing a game where they are positioning themselves near the middle, driving the Liberals into competition with the NDP for 1/4 of the votes.

In the US, the two party system has forced coalition politics. Reagan built a right wing coalition. Clinton sqeezed the Republicans by staking the middle ground, attracting the soft right to his side. And won it when the Republicans couldn't satisfy the hard right and lost due to a 3rd party candidate.

The Democrats have a 48% coalition. That is when they run down the center like Clinton.

What is very odd about the Democrats is how they aren't trying to build their coalition wider, but in fact are narrowing it, and now effectively splitting the narrowing slice into two pieces. I think they went into the campaign with the intention of widening, and probably would have if one candidate had dominated early. They probably could have gained a bit of the younger evangelical voters with health care promises. Not anymore. What is happening now is going to chop off voters from whoever loses.

McCain is moderate enough on domestic issues to gather those who stray.

Derek

3/13/2008 09:51:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

"...away from substance and over to style, just like much of art, literature and music as well"

...or "fashion" --which serves the legimate purpose of clearing out the old clutter to make room for the new. In this political case, that 'old clutter' may be such things as chunks of Constitution, treaties with allied nations, and free-trade agreements--not to mention such mundanes as unfashionable traditions, customs, and the, y'know, social compact.

3/13/2008 10:28:00 PM  
Blogger geoffb said...

"But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

I heard that Rev. Wright is not retired but on a "sabbitical" working for the Obama campaign.

3/13/2008 10:58:00 PM  
Blogger John Hawkins said...

Eggplant said:

The loss of the checks and balances of a two party democracy resulted in significant political corruption... There is a significant danger of history repeating itself if the modern day Copperheads cause excessive damage to the Democratic Party.

I think there is a difference this time. The Republicans during Reconstruction were a young party, full of beans from their victory in the Civil War. Today, the Republican coalition (as the Talk Radio assault on McCain demonstrated) is barely holding together. In fact, I think the only thing holding Republicans together is fear of Democrats.

If the Democratic Party were to implode (no, wait, make that "explode". It won't collapse under it's own weight, it will fly apart under the centrifual forces of identity politics), if the DP were to explode and cease to be an electoral force, I think the GOP would very quickly fracture as well, and two new parties (perhaps going by the same names, perhaps not) would reform.

In any event, I don't think we'd have a prolonged period of single-party rule. I think the current constellation of party politics is straining on both sides, forced by short-term concerns to avoid long-term fixes.

Of course, in the long run, you first have to survive the short run.

3/13/2008 11:08:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

The Audacity of Hope got it's inspiration from a Jeremiah Sermon by the same name.

Then their were the uplifting speeches, lifted from Duval.

Now, it turns out the "We're not Red States and Blue States" came from a Robin William's movie in which he accidentally becomes President!

3/14/2008 12:47:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Lazare Ponticelli, France’s Last Veteran of World War I, Is Dead at 110

3/14/2008 12:48:00 AM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

Obama in 2006 gave 22,000 to Rev. Wright's church as a charitable donation.

Hard to distance himself now from "Goddamn America."

3/14/2008 12:53:00 AM  
Blogger Sparks fly said...

Perhaps someone else has said it. I havn't read every posting. But just in case it has been overlooked let me add a heads-up.

There is a poker trick where two in cahoots get a sucker between them and keep raising the other back. The sucker keeps anteing-up and afterwards the two split the pot because the sucker eventually folds his hand thinking at least one of the other two must have a great hand.

Hillary and Obama doing "terrible" things to one another "raising" the ante gets all the attention and McCain dissapears between now and the convention. It's the same thing. Don't fall for it.

Instead talk about McCain and what he thinks about something that makes him look good and keeps him in the media game to the very end.

He knows what's going on and his family is long lived. He is in great shape. He appreciates the military and they respect him.

That's what's going on.

I personally preferred Thompson. But McCain with a lot of conservative congressmen to keep watch on him sounds like the best available tack to take for me.

3/14/2008 12:56:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

McCain is in the catbird seat as long as this goes on:
There is such a thing as exhaustion, and the longer McCain remains in the sidelights to this main event, the better.
Many are starting to see these two as far removed from perfect.
The longer this goes on, the better.

3/14/2008 07:06:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Those Patriotic, America Loving Hispanics are at it again.

If this wasn't Dhimmi Nation, these folks would be shamed out of the public square.
---
Mr. Zammer is caught up in a Congressional standoff over immigration overhaul that is punishing employers who play by the rules and that, advocates of change say, could cost small companies billions in lost business.

In an effort to win support for a comprehensive immigration overhaul, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its allies have blocked voting on legislation that would allow employers to rehire foreign seasonal nonagricultural workers independent of a 1991 quota.

As a result, the government is limited to issuing the 66,000 seasonal work visas set when the visa program, known as H-2B, became law — 33,000 for winter workers and 33,000 for summer workers. Last year, more than 120,000 foreign workers entered the country on H-2B visas.

For Cape Cod, the impact has been devastating. Employers will receive only 15 of the 5,000 visas they had requested, according to the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s just ruthless for the Hispanic caucus to do this, use it as a bargaining chip,” said Mr. Zammer, whose foreign workers — mostly from Jamaica and Eastern Europe — normally make up 25 percent of his staff. “We’re working at finding new people. We have to. But it’s extremely difficult, because you end up stealing from other people who are also trying to get help.”

3/14/2008 07:07:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Crazy like a Fox? You sure?

I think the Democrats are coreless. Is that a word?

http://tinyurl.com/2o5ref

3/14/2008 07:18:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

"Barack Obama is perfectly mainstream in the Daily Kos."

..
The Daily Kos crowd is not the mainstream of Democratic voters. The Daily Kos crowd was fairly quickly and fairly easily marginalized in the Democratic primaries, because despite all the hype and propaganda their numbers just weren't there.

3/14/2008 08:19:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Obama's True Beliefs [Mona Charen]

Derb: I am coming to believe that Barack Obama is one of the greatest con artists we've seen. His entire campaign has been about "coming together," a post-racial consensus, etc. Any mention of his middle name was immediately condemned as ignorant fear-mongering. He has played the role of racial unifier with great skill and finesse.

But there is a great deal of evidence out there that he is anything but. The Reverend Wright is exhibit A. Mrs. Obama is Exhibit B. But there's lots more. Here is a piece by John Batchelor about some of Obama's other connections.
For example:

William Ayers is the second Chicago figure to consider in the political profile of Mr. Obama. William C. Ayers, known as Bill Ayers, is notorious as a terrorist bomber from the 1970s who, on September 11, 2001, in the New York Times was quoted as finding "a certain eloquence in bombs." Now, at 62, Mr. Ayers, a former aide to the current Mayor Richard M. Daley, is an established professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Importantly, Mr. Ayers and his wife, the equally notorious Weatherman terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a crucial meet-the-candidate event in their Hyde Park neighborhood home in 1995 when Mr. Obama, also a Hyde Park resident, was sounded out by vital citizens, among them the retiring state senator Alice Palmer for the 13th District.

Obama's book is strewn with hints of his far left sympathies, as when he tells an African cousin who complains about the hardships of life in Kenya that things are no better in America. Or when he suggests that the lives of poor black young men in the inner city are blighted by white racism. He never says it explicitly, but it's there.

He has been very friendly with Rashid Khaladi, the fierce anti-Israel professor who took Edward Said's post at Columbia.

My own theory, FWIW, is that Obama acquired his far left views at least in part to make himself as authentically black as he could to compensate for having a white mother. His mother, of course, was very left herself. But looking the way he does, and having been raised among only white people (mother and maternal grandparents) he felt the need to better identify with his black heritage. That struggle is what the book is all about.

One can have sympathy for his psychological predicament.
But that sympathy certainly does not extend to electing him president of a country that I sincerely believe he does not love.

3/14/2008 08:20:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

There is not much difference between Obama sucking up Jeremiah Wright's anti-American screeds and sitting in on his local imam's Friday anti-American, anti-civilization screeds. With Wright Obama gets the public veneer of being a Christian.

Why anybody would think that a race hustling Chicago ward boss could be elected POTUS is a mystery.

3/14/2008 08:38:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Barry's Reverend Jeremiah Wrong.

3/14/2008 08:53:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Limbaugh just referenced someone that articulated my view:

Barry joined the Church to establish his Black Street Creds.

3/14/2008 09:17:00 AM  
Blogger Benj said...

"History and history in the making" Hmmm. Pretty clear that most Clubbers (with Wretchard leading the way here) know zip about the history of "Identity politics." THe Republicans - party of Lincoln - did not HAVE to identify themselves as the party of white people as the 60s turned. But their key strategists chose to do just that. You wanna talk Identity politics? Please remember Nixon's Southern Strategy or Reagan kicking off his campaign in Philadelphia MISSISSIPI where black civil rights workers were murdered in the 60s. (The thought of that should make you, ah, wretch!!) And let's get something else into the mix here. Back in the 70s there was a best-selling book, "THe Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics". Sorta the "Liberal Fascism" of its moment. It was by a Catholic ethnic "thinker" named Michael Novak who currently is a defender of Hillary Clinton. (I'm guessing he was a REagan democrat but not absolutely sure about that, though I know he was an AEI guy and a neo-con - a Wattenberg Type.) Novak's RISE was a celebration of the emergence of white ethnic pride in the 70s and a rejection of hegemonic Anglo WASP culture - This (MAFIA!) moment was a direct response to black folks attempting to move into (racist - yup that's the word) white urban neighborhoods and to "Black is Beautiful" (WHICH STILL STANDS AS A GREAT CULTURAL AFFIRMATION AGAINST 400 YEARS OF HORROR THAT LEFT SELF-HATING BLACK MIDDLE CLASS FOLKS AFRAID TO IDENTIFY WITH THE MUSICAL AVATARS THAT THE WORLD RIGHTLY IDENTIFIES AS THe HErOES OF AMERICAN CULTURE! PS Sowell fans - Soul music will live forever, Thomas Sowell's passing thoughts on the Scene will be gone with the wind.) Long before the identity politics of, say, blacks or gays, which (SORRY WRETCH have VERY litle to do with Fasc(s) but everything to do with need for solidarity in the face of, ah, soul-killing repression) - apologists for white backlash polluted the idea of "cultural diversity." This goes back to before Wretch's time in America. (Which doesn't seem to have been that extensive anyway so he probably should be a little less SURE of himself when he pronounces on contemporary American history...) Hey ya'll I remember when mob guys were sponsoring ITALIAN power rallies in the 70's as Wallace was getting big votes in the South. THAT'S THE REAL ORIGIN OF IDENTITY POLITICS!!!

So here's the deal - the old unitary world marked by WASP ascendancy went down a while ago. The movements for black and gay rights helped turn that world upside down. But it's CRAZY to blame black folks or Barack Obama for the "category" thinking of America's various ethnic and social groups. OBama is the ONLY one who's got the imagination to get us past Identity-based politics precisely because he understands from within how/why some Americans still NEED to group-think in order to bear the weight of the past.

Here's another book suggestion - Go check out "HOW THE IRISH BECAME WHITE" - fine book about Irish assimilation in the U.S. - Here's a quote to think on: "In antebellum America, a citizen...was distinguished by three main privileges: he could sell himself piecemeal; he could vote; and he could ...engage in mob attacks against black people."

AND here's some Lincoln since somebody in this Thread invoked the Man after trashing O's speeches...Suck on what Lincoln had to say about slavery and about how DEEP it went into our history - Then add-on another 100 years of segregation and see if you can still pretend to yourself that YOU (or your people)have done enough to erase the stain on our country...And yo - O is damn right to insist that you and me and everybody in this country - including mofos who just arrived - owe those inner city kids!! Their ancestors BUILT this country!!

ANd ONE MORE TIME - Obama understands why his wife and Wright et al feel the way they do. But - and this is why he's a Black Swan of a candidate - Out of time, out ot the blue, an exception that promises to prove the rule of democracy - he ALSO sees America as the Best Hope of the world because he's had the classic immigrant/exile experience. He CHOSE to live in America as a high school kid, rather than head back to Indonesia with his mom. So, in a very real way, his experience is different from typical African-Americans. He's lived the double-truth and he can tell. It's on uks to try to hear it. Obama loves this country (a helluva lot MORE than Wretchard does!!) Which don't mean O looks away from sins commited against the skin he's in...His life, his extraordinary imagination and his extraordinary capacity for forbearance give him/us a shot at making our country live up to its promise.

Seems like the right time to segue to Lincoln:

Slavery is no small affair and cannot be down away at once. It is part of our national life. It began in colonial times. In one way or another it has shaped nearly everything that enters into what we call government. It is as much northern as southern. It si not merely a local or geographical institutioin. It belongs to our politics , to our industries, to our commerce , and to our religion. Every portion of our territory in some form or anothe rhas contriubted to the growth and the increase of slavery.It has been nearly 200 years coming up to its present proportions. It is worng, a great evil indeed, but the south is no more responsible for the wrong done tothe African race than is the North!

3/14/2008 10:55:00 AM  
Blogger watimebeing said...

Plausibility lies withing the realm of possible, and does not have to be probable. Plausible does not have to be true, or even rational. Just possible enough to give one an alibi.

Plausible deniability is that aspect of human response that tells you someone did "it", you know it they know it, everyone else in the room knows it, yet they look you in the eye and say, "I didn't do it".

Messages sent include, Beware, it could happen again, Don't touch it, or it will happen again and It never happened see, so don't let it happen to you.

Layers upon layers of the stuff abound in the history of the Soviet Union and Ottoman empire. Why am I not surprised to see it displayed in this context.

3/14/2008 11:12:00 AM  
Blogger Martin said...

as a resident of Obama's old Illinois senate district, I find all this a hoot.

He's just another pol, smoother than most, more calculating than most, probably smarter than many if not most, but: he did a real estate deal with Rezko when everyone knew Rezko was gonna be indicted--what does that say about his judgment, other than he's arrogant and maybe he has brass balls (not a bad thing in a President, Bush coulda used a pair). He belongs to a church that no one dare criticize for fear of being called racist, where the Rev is the biggest racist in the room; his wife gets $300K+ for a job that shouldn't tip past $100k, and she's all weird about it. He's a Saul Alinsky-trained community organizer. Emil Jones (look him up) built him a resume to run on in 2003-4; he's the farthest left in the US Senate... oh it just goes on and on.

Wretchard asks what do we really know about any of the candidates... well, a big part of the problem is the media---first, the Teddy White school of Presidential campaign reportage, covering the process and the "inside baseball" staff but not the issues, and second, since 1972 the Dems have known they cannot be honest about their intentions, which often fail electorally and are then pursued through judges making up law, and the media knows that as well and covers for them.

"The truth is out there" but you have to work to find it and you have to be very careful in how you interpret what you find. And, unless you have some close knowledge of big-city US politics in the last 3 decades, you will have a lot of trouble understanding Obama.

3/14/2008 11:15:00 AM  
Blogger Charles said...

Benj said...
..................
Hmm the world is changing a lot. Maybe faster than you can compute.

These are links to wanted for murder posters in a bunch of major american cities. Do you see many whites there. In fact, do you see many American blacks there.(except for philadelphia.)

Pictures of top 10 most wanted in LA. Up until recent stories about crime in LA posted by the LA Times--the pictures included the nationality of the murderers. They were all foreign nationals and mostly Mexican.

Wanted for Murder in New York City.

Chicago wanted for Murder


Philadelphia wanted for murder


San Francisco wanted for Murder

New Orleans wanted for Murder

3/14/2008 11:27:00 AM  
Blogger Charles said...

Here's the wanted for murder list from Washington DC

3/14/2008 11:32:00 AM  
Blogger watimebeing said...

Benj ...,

"AND here's some Lincoln since somebody in this Thread invoked the Man after trashing O's speeches...Suck on what Lincoln had to say about slavery and about how DEEP it went into our history - Then add-on another 100 years of segregation and see if you can still pretend to yourself that YOU (or your people)have done enough to erase the stain on our country..."

The blood of southern sons, and northern sons of black, white, brown, yellow and red skinned mothers, the sons of German and Irish and Dutch and English and yes African and Asian Mothers too, the blood, shed to settle the dispute about whether or not one human being could claim ownership of the very essence of another human being in this nation, the same blood that consecrates the ground of every battle field and every place of internment, the blood of those sons, paid for your freedom and mine.

How can someone make a greater claim than that? What was the line from "SAVING PRIVATE RYAN"? You know the question the Old Ryan asked in the Cemetery in Normandy? It wasn't this statement, I am sure.

"And yo - O is damn right to insist that you and me and everybody in this country - including mofos who just arrived - owe those inner city kids!! Their ancestors BUILT this country!!"


Benj, where in all of O's writings and statements of belief do you find any evidence of any of this...,
"- he ALSO sees America as the Best Hope of the world because he's had the classic immigrant/exile experience. He CHOSE to live in America as a high school kid, rather than head back to Indonesia with his mom. So, in a very real way, his experience is different from typical African-Americans. He's lived the double-truth and he can tell. It's on uks to try to hear it. Obama loves this country (a helluva lot MORE than Wretchard does!!) Which don't mean O looks away from sins commited against the skin he's in...His life, his extraordinary imagination and his extraordinary capacity for forbearance give him/us a shot at making our country live up to its promise."

please give me hope that there is more than smoke and mirrors to support your claims.

Seems like the right time to segue to Lincoln: Your quote seems reasonable enough, I like this one better

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."


What more can you ask?

3/14/2008 12:05:00 PM  
Blogger joe buz said...

charles, its all good, I'm sure Rev Wright hates them too!

3/14/2008 12:15:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Obama is a double fraud. He takes the benefits of victimhood but he will not brook any conversation about race. A pox upon him.

We need to have a Conversation about race, not run from it. History is history. We don't live in history, we live in today. Calling up ghosts from the past is nothing but a thin plea for the victim's pity.

If Americans who happen to be all or part Black feel that they are aggrieved today because of any form of institutional racism the matter must be addressed in the open. I doubt very much the case could be made, or that a reasonable person would even try to make it. Wright, Sharpton, Jackson et al keep as many people as they can poor and stupid so they can be their savior. I suspect that Obama is playing the same insidious game.

3/14/2008 01:16:00 PM  
Blogger Benj said...

Dear WADEUSAF: Thanks for your serious post - Always figured one reason why our country is the last best hope is because we fought a war costing hundreds of thousands of lives to END slavery. Makes us a little different (worthier even?) than other liberal democracies...Unfortunately - slavery ended, but then came Jim Crow...Can you imagine what it must have been like for Black folks to have an 8 or 10 year window of freedom, which they'd struck and fought for!! (Read W.E.B. DuBois' "Souls of Black Folks" OR the "General Strike" chapter in his "Black Reconstruction") Only to have the whip come down again. (Also - a little worried re your invocation of Southern Sons. Maybe we need to cotton on to the fact that the Confederates' announced policy was to shoot any African American prisoner. [THat policy was post-Gettysburg Address because Afro Am troops weren't yet a presence - Linc's Second Inaugural has a slightly different tone than Getts - the forbearance comes with a little more steele, no?] And then there's Bedford Forest going on on to lead the KKK after the war's over. Since the next Poster in the thread complained re Wright's "hatred" even of Civil Warriors - might consider that rebs didn't deserve a whole lot more consecrating than did Nazis. (And no, I don't think it was right for Bonzo to have gone to Bitburg.)

On to Saving Private Ryan - I didn't quite feel that movie from the begining because Spielberg did an auteur-ish turn in the opening scenes, connecting the assault on Normandy with his movie about resistance to the Slave Trade (Amistad). (One scene "quotes" another.) That sort of self-referential awareness put me off - But - I take your point that my invocation of our common obligations to "inner-city kids" was not very eloquent. Certainly not as good as Ryan's - "Have I been a good man?" But - Since O is our topic here - He's rather more eloquent then SPR's characters. O has repeatedly (and I believe memorably) linked traditions of American heroism and suffering that our politics tend to de-link - i.e. - The "children" - young adults actually - who made the Civil Rights Movement GO and the heroes of the greatest gen that beat down fascism in WWII. He's also INSISTEd that his anti-war fans honor McCain's service and suffering in Viet Nam. It's probably right to link his sensibility on this front up with a good liberal like Speilberg's. But I'll admit I think Obama's speeches are more daring than S.'s movies...I'm guessing you didn't see this earlier post of mine so cut and pasting below - PS If you're in the airforce - God Bless You! Just so you know - I started reading this blog because I supported the War in Iraq. Still do - Closer to McCain's position there than to Obama's - but I believe O is somebody who has the capacity to change our country/world dramatically. I want demos in Iraq - and I'll vote for McCain over Hillary in a hot second - but it's even more important to fully realize America's own promise...

Folks who are buying Wretchard's view of Mr. OBama's (lack of) patriotism, might consider what the man said when he had his first shot to speak to a National audience. Check his words and I think it will be apparent O has a much deeper sense of the unities of American experience than Wretchard. Which isn't all that suprising given that O lives right here in the USA and has committed his life to public service in this country

Here's some excerpts from his talk beginning with the passages in which he introducted himself to America...

Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that's shown as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before him.

While studying here my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas.

Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor, my grandfather signed up for duty, joined Patton's army, marched across Europe. Back home my grandmother raised a baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the GI Bill, bought a house through FHA and later moved west, all the way to Hawaii, in search of opportunity.

And they too had big dreams for their daughter, a common dream born of two continents.

My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or "blessed," believing that in a tolerant America, your name is no barrier to success.
They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren't rich, because in a generous America you don't have to be rich to achieve your potential.
They're both passed away now. And yet I know that, on this night, they look down on me with great pride.
And I stand here today grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents' dreams live on in my two precious daughters.
I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy; our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.... that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
That is the true genius of America, a faith... a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution; and that our votes will be counted -- or at least, most of the time. ...

You know, a while back, I met a young man named Seamus (ph) in a VFW hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid, 6'2", 6'3", clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he'd joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week.

And as I listened to him explain why he had enlisted -- the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service -- I thought, this young man was all that any of us might ever hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Seamus (ph) as well as he's serving us?
I thought of the 900 men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors who won't be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I had met who were struggling to get by without a loved one's full income or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.

When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they are going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return and to never, ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace and earn the respect of the world...


If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child.

If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent.

If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief -- it is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work.

It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: "E pluribus unum," out of many, one.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.
Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people…;


PS - I also mentioned in an earlier post - which was contested by Wretchard - that Obama ends hte Audacity of Hope with himself running past the Linc Memorial - "My heart is filled iwth love for this country." - It's a love that means you don't give up on the Wrights of this world. Especially when they've done more their/our people than you or I have...

3/14/2008 01:31:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Charles,
The LA County DA was on the Kevin James show last nite. Overall crime in the area is said to be quite low, he attributes this to record incarceration rates.

But one type of crime is way up, and it is not hate crime, or racial violence, but GANG Crime, and the word is out on GANG crime, from ex-GANG member Tony Villar to Chief Bratton, to the LA Times that GANG Crime is almost Never a Race Related Hate Crime.

(Sometime recently, they broke GANG Crime out as a separate statistic so they could crow about low crime rates while sweeping GANG Crime under the rug, with their willing accomplices in the press.)

(even the poor father of the Black A-Student Football Star gunned down by "Hispanics" was mouthing that line at his son's funeral. Very Sad.)

Hundreds of millions are spent on addressing GANG problems, on things like counseling and basketball courts, but both Villar and Bratton back Special Order 40, which effectively makes LA a sanctuary city, meaning that repeat offenders that have been deported several times can live comfortably in LA, at least until the next time they are caught committing a crime and are deported again.

Thus thousands of criminals that could be caught on immigration violations live free from fear that LAPD will ever ask them about their immigration status.

(the LA County DA now circumvents this by working directly with the Feds and was responsible for getting a cop killer back from Mexico, [he had been deported several times] and into jail for life, but political Whore Bratton was caught on You Tube telling legal residents if they didn't like Special Order 40, they could leave)

3/14/2008 01:45:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

One "Gang Control Program" paid a guy a Million Dollars.
Turned out he used it to buy guns for gang members!

3/14/2008 01:46:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

"Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. "
---
Which is EXACTLY Jeremiah Wrights stock in trade, yet somehow your twisted "logic" gives him a free pass.

"It's a love that means you don't give up on the Wrights of this world. Especially when they've done more their/our people than you or I have..."
---
So you lump the racist Wright in with all other blacks based on skin color, and then give him a free pass on his racist, divisive, behavior?

3/14/2008 01:59:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

"The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats"
---
Source:
A Robin William's movie, in which he accidentally becomes president!

3/14/2008 02:02:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

benj,
Another turning point for the GOP wrt blacks occurred when MLK's father, a lifetime Republican, tried to get their help getting MLK out of jail and was ignored. He switched to Democrat after that, but now the Dems support all the policies that exacerbate black problems.

3/14/2008 02:10:00 PM  
Blogger Benj said...

Doug - Look - think of it this way. Had you or, ah, White America ever heard of Wright before yesterday? He's not talking to white people - and most of his jabs are directed at middle class black folks who buy into the atomizing, materialistic version of the Dream, stepping off from the hood and hightailing it to suburbia. Wright is not Rove or Atwater or or Harry... (Damn can't remember his name - the Nixon op who devised the Southern strategy) OR - and this is really to the point LANNY DAVIS - the Clinton's lawyer. Lanny stuck it to one of the young brothers - Jameel S.(?) - who's been distinguishing himself as a sharp and canny defender of Obama on CNN's chat shows - Lawyer Lanny asked him a couple nights back - BEFORE his interlocutor had even opened his mouth - "Why are you so angry?" - Jameel, unlike Rev Wright, is pretty much ALWAYS supremely calm and collected. He knows he's talking to America in a hot medium so he takes it light though he's not playing. He generally handles things elegantly. But. Teh Clinton op's attempt to turn him into the into Angry Black Man stunned him for a moment. I hope you feel for him - and Obama too. It's not about giving anyone "passes" - After what we've done to our Black brothers and sisters - it's on us to support somebody who can bring them along. You're just trashing your own country if you pretend to yourself that this is simple.

3/14/2008 02:48:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Lanny is a piece of work.

As Fred notes, some of us noticed Wright some time ago.
I'll give it further thought, but I find defending Wright or Barry's embrace of him pretty difficult to rationalize.
...this from someone who was called a Nigger Lover by a few in High School in the '50s because my dad rented to a Black Family.
Didn't concern me much at the time, but I had yet to learn much about Jim Crow.

3/14/2008 03:13:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

The Obama Files

What you need to measure about Barack Obama, a likely potent adversary for the presidency, is that while he is a politically junior and consciously liberal-voting member of the U.S. Senate, he is actually a veteran Chicago politician with a fertile record of surprising associations in controversial events well apart from his work in legislatures.

Some few of these associations from his years in Chicago law work and urban development, and from his career in the Springfield, Illinois senate, speak to the quality of his judgment and to the strength of his character. Four associations in particular go the heart of the inquiry ahead in order to ask and answer the fundamental questions about who is Barack Obama.

3/14/2008 03:24:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

Benj you are part of the problem. Part of the Blame America first crowd. Racialist. And Angry Black Nationalist.

There is no excuse for Wright's comments. No excuse for Obama giving 22K for them. No excuse for Obama getting Married by Wright. No excuse for his kids being baptized by them. No excuse for his kids being instructed by him.

Obama believes in "God Damn America" and KKK of A and America created AIDS and America is rich because it keeps people poor in Africa and Zionism = Nazism and America is responsible for Apartheid and Rwanda and every other ill on the planet.

He is a lunatic angry black nationalist who believes in lunatic conspiracy theories to avoid discussing the obvious ills of black separatism, racism, fears of inter-marriage and absorption into the white mainstream, and loss of separate cultural and racial identity.

He's a Hate Whitey lunatic like Farrakhan, with a smoother line. But that's all he is. He's Ron Paul writ large. Even more odious since most Blacks buy his racialist conspiracy line. His idiot-stupid conspiracy theories are mainstream among Blacks.

3/14/2008 05:06:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

King Tut
Bush would be impeached if he comported himself with that cute look.

Rev. Wright leaves Obama campaign...

FLASHBACK October 08, 2007: As Obama Talks Religion, Questions Surround His Controversial Pastor...

3/14/2008 06:43:00 PM  
Blogger buck smith said...

People like Wright are such poseurs: they think it is so bad here, but they stay! He's a crybaby.

3/14/2008 08:08:00 PM  
Blogger watimebeing said...

Benj,

I am my brother's keeper. Me, not Government.

We are all Ryan. Who need to be good men? From many, unity. From many good men... I do not care who started the current version of identity politics, (the first could have been the ancient Israelites for all we know) It should not matter beyond explaining why it should not be pursued.

In the Reverend Wright's Twenty years of shepherding the flock, 'O's political stock has risen steadily. Why does liberation theology mixed with pleasant populist platitudes seem so alluring? A siren's song, especially with a bluesy tune and rhythmic beat promising immediate gratification, without immediate investment of ones own sweat. It is just a temporary easement of pain at the price of prolonging suffering.

And yet you insist that Wright is just tweaking the nose of those you call Toms, as though there is something they've forgotten or neglected. Despite the forbearance and suffering, the deprivation and hard work to be good men, to make a life away from the victim-hood. And THEY don't get WHAT?

SO in his relating his parents history, his nice talk about the hope of opening a business without paying a bribe, he has his second face, slick con man, on display. I am supposed to believe that his taking the easy way to the top is better somehow, than the black man, or any man, who persevered, against the odds, and found a way to be a good man. IS that what you're selling?

"O's" actions give the lie to his words. What has "O" to offer in the way of example? What has "O" to show to my children or others kids, trying to raise good men. I have seen it before, and heard it too.

No, thank you.

3/14/2008 08:46:00 PM  
Blogger Charles said...

Blogger Doug said...

But one type of crime is way up, and it is not hate crime, or racial violence, but GANG Crime, and the word is out on GANG crime, from ex-GANG member Tony Villar to Chief Bratton, to the LA Times that GANG Crime is almost Never a Race Related Hate Crime.
/////////
Not true.

There are currently no exact numbers on the number of Americans killed by illegals. Part of the reason is that the government deliberately obscures the number. I talked on the phone with the head of statistics for the US Bureau of Prisons. He said his office wasn't allowed to publish the number of illegal alien murderers. Rather they were forced to put legal and non legal residents in the same category. I talked to ICE. They put out detailed numbers on illegal child molestors. However, they put out nothing on illegal murderers.

Part of the reason for the silence on the matter is that there is evidence to suggest that most Americans being killed by illegals are black--as is the suggestion in this LA Times Article. Also this article from the LA Times. And here. This makes intuitive sense. We see stories regularly of drug gang killings in Mexico but we don't see those same stories in the USA. The reason we don't see those stories is not because its not happening. Rather we don't see the stories about illegals killing blacks because that kind of story is terribly politically incorrect. The populations being displaced in downtown sanctuary cities especially are American blacks. That means that their criminal elements would be pushed aside by Mexican gangs as well. That's also the story that the wanted for murder posters in all the major cities seems to suggest.

Nevertheless, the pattern of non reporting is starting to break. Discovery Channel has a series called Gangland that mentions ethnic cleasing of blacks by Mexican gangs

3/14/2008 09:22:00 PM  
Blogger Benj said...

Teachable moment ya'll- Obama's campaign is FORCING this country to face up to things that are, to use O's word, "real." Though nothing he said tonight was worthy of this passage in his MLK speech in South Carolina:

"Unfortunately, all too often when we talk about unity in this country, we've come to believe that it can be purchased on the cheap. We've come to believe that racial reconciliation can come easily - that it's just a matter of a few ignorant people trapped in the prejudices of the past, and that if the demagogues and those who exploit our racial divisions will simply go away, then all our problems would be solved. All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price."

For anyone who cares about American history and history in the making - this was a pretty amazing eve. Never thought I'd see David F-ing Gergen invoking Fredric Douglass's great 4th of July Speech - "What to the slave is the 4th of July?" That speech is one of the great pieces of American writing/oratory. It's almost up there with Shakespeare as a talented (sorry Whiskey!)black nationalist writer once noted...Everyone who's not a fantast knows most black folks see American history differently than white people. But let's get it Out there! BTW - I'm not a black nationalist - My African-American 4-year old will grow up loving America (if I have anything to do with it). At some point, though, I'll have to ease him into the shameful sides of our common past. Can't pretend I'm looking forward to getting all up in the founder's, ah, follies with slavery. Or the various prevarications of my people through the American centuries. I know the truth will set us all free...But if anyone has a good idea about how to approach American history w/o disillusioning a young African American - tell me - I'll need all the help I can get.

As you may be able to imagine, I was kinda hoping O. would give me an assist here in upcming years!! But I can't pretend he was good enough tonight. Not upfront in his interview with Cooper. Too many excuses. He should talk straighter re Wright's Afrocentrism. Say it's not his pov but he understands where Wright is coming from and why that defensiveness is necessary for some folks in his community.

Afrocentric Christers have invented a way to handle race-based rage/frustration that won't kill anyone. (You know how many brothers die of high blood pressure!!) O needed to provide more explanations -less talk re his minister "retiring"...

Obama also made the past sound - slavery, segregation, Jim Crow - TOO far gone. He did better on that score in that speech I quoted above at MLK's Church -..I think this whole thing should give him an opportunity to dig into the subject of race - Time for him to do some more close imagining. He needs to PUSH the Wrights of the world to think harder about where we're at. Just as he needs to push white folks to face up to the weight of the past in the present. I think he's up to it but we'll see...

Doug - Doubt that H.E. piece was dispositive. Look - if you read about how GOP legislators came to respect Obama and about his very real legislative successes in the State Senate (cut and pasting a passage about that at the bottom of this post - the 4 big deals cited over 10 years seem like pretty small potatos.

Re that cat who says - what's the fuss about O's promise - he's just another Chicago Pol. You may turn out to be right. But O's book(s) suggest he can get his mind around America. McCain can think too - but his life-experience simply doesn't allow him to convert as much American culture into conscious awareness. If that all sounds a little too aesthetic - - what the hey - we're talking about(with any luck) the art of politics...

Wade - Don't words matter? You asked for evidence of Obama's feeling for his country. I think that's evident in what he said in first speech to the Nation. Why don't you tell me why you love your country and we'll compare? For real! Do you think it's possible that O's talk might have more resonance than, well, yours (or mine)? - Oh yeah - Just so we're all clear - he's NOT all talk either...Here's a graph about...

His most important achievement as a State Senator was the bill he got through the Illinois legislature which mandated all police interrogations and confessions be videotaped. The idea was to stop cops from beating confessions out of suspects. Charles Peters recently offered an account of how Obama got his “heart and soul” bill passed over the initial objections of the law enforcement establishment, Illinois’s Governor, Republicans who were “automatically tough on crime,” Democrats who were scared to seem “soft on crime,” and anti-death penalty advocates who worried that Obama’s bill “by preventing the execution of innocents would deprive them of their best argument.” When the police lobby proposed to limit the videotaping to confessions, Obama held out “knowing that the beatings were most likely to occur during questioning.” He not only prevailed, he was so persuasive “that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0.” And then Obama talked the Governor into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.

...Obama’s successes in the Illinois Legislature (where he passed other significant legislation) indicate Obama’s campaign claim that he has the capacity to bridge partisan differences is not a shuck...


Good Night!

3/14/2008 10:42:00 PM  
Blogger Zenster said...

Benj: Teachable moment ya'll- Obama's campaign is FORCING this country to face up to things that are, to use O's word, "real."

Puhleeeze. Obama has about as much to do with "real" as French cuisine does with tacos. Both are familiar with the concept but refuse to have anything to do with it.

Repeat: Obama (like Hillary), is an empty suit who is barely qualified to clean the Oval Ofiice, much less sit in it. Even if he had no part of Reverend Wright, Obama's complete lack of genuine political experience makes him a danger to America. Factor in his potential sympathies for Muslims during a time when America is at war with Islam and this whole shitpot of a candidacy skitters right over the event horizon like a greased pig.

Anyone who takes Obama at face value is worse than a fool. As Whiskey_199 has already noted (in as many words), Obama is Sharpton-lite. The notion of this greenhorn being responsible for a superpower's destiny goes beyond absurd.

3/14/2008 11:19:00 PM  
Blogger 9-of-Diamonds said...

"middle class black folks who buy into the atomizing, materialistic version of the Dream, stepping off from the hood and hightailing it to suburbia."

Nice. The good old "not black enough" ploy. Gotta watch out for those race traitors, don't we?

I have an idea. Maybe they can start talking like Amos 'n Andy or pull off a couple of drive-bys to re-earn their blackness. I'm pretty sure you can use guns & bad grammar just as easily in the suburbs as the "hood".

Not sure why people think this benj character's black. In all likelihood it's about as black as David Duke and twice as ignorant. Just another self-hating privileged caucasoid with the usual white do-gooder missionary complex.

3/15/2008 12:49:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Great Work, Charles.
It's amazing how many folks don't WANT to know what's going on.
I keep trying to convince Trish that this country won't be a very nice place for her kids at this rate, but she acts like it's no big deal.
Just a semi-genocide, of sorts, with the ultimate goal of reconquista, which has already occured, in fact, in Los Angeles.

3/15/2008 04:31:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Benj,
I see the Dem/NEA Complex, and modern/pop "Black" Culture being the two biggest destructive elements in young black lives.
(those that escape the Hispanic Ethnic Purges).
Couldn't expect Barry to take on the NEA, the Dems biggest donors and suppliers of manpower, but what do you have to say about the monopoly prisons of mandated public schools w/o a chance of school choice?
...or the Fact that studying and applying oneself is considered selling out and going white by "Black" culture?
Isn't the complete silence by black politicians regarding Hispanic/illegal hate crimes contributing to needless death and mayhem?

3/15/2008 04:48:00 AM  
Blogger Pascal said...

Yes, Doug, it's not great in L.A., but I just do not see it as quite a part of Mexico yet.

Perhaps I'm too much in it to notice.

What's your measure of reconquista being a fait accompli here? Rigged elections? A mayor who acts like he knows he won't be called to account? Surely you've got more than this.

3/15/2008 12:09:00 PM  
Blogger Storm-Rider said...

benj,

You and Obama, and the rest of the American socialists just can't stop blaming currently living Americans for slavery - which no longer exists.

You are obsessed with this, and you use the past history of slavery, and the color of one's skin today as a political tool. You and the rest of your socialist friends are committing a great immorality - it is immoral to condemn the child for his father’s sin, much less the great-great grandchildren.

It is a cardinal feature of socialism to see people in groups, not as individuals. This explains your incessant references to people's skin color, and the grouping of people based upon skin color or ethnicity.

Your own words reveal this pathological view of man based upon grouping men based upon such grouping:

1. “So here's the deal - the old unitary world marked by WASP ascendancy went down a while ago. The movements for black and gay rights helped turn that world upside down.”

The so-called "WASP" world is not turned upside down. White people, whether Protestant Christian or Catholic, or whatever, for the most part wish to live under American liberty with their neighbors regardless of skin color, and pursue happiness through their family life and creative labor - no advantage or special privileges expected or asked for - special privileges based on skin color or any other grouping is immoral, and it violates both the Declaration of Independence and the Biblical teaching of all men created in the image of God.

2. “And yo - O is damn right to insist that you and me and everybody in this country - including mofos who just arrived - owe those inner city kids!! Their ancestors BUILT this country!!”

Our ancestors, both black and white, and whatever other color built this country. We owe all people the promise of equality of opportunity, life, liberty and freedom to pursue happiness through creative labor, and it doesn’t matter what color their skin is.

3. “Which don't mean O looks away from sins committed against the skin he's in...”

Stop it! What sin was committed against him because of his skin color? If there is prejudice in America it is spread among all people, not just people of one color or another, but prejudice based upon skin color is not part of American government - other than that of affirmative action programs which places some people with white skin at a competitive disadvantage.

4. “Slavery is no small affair and cannot be down away at once. It is part of our national life.... Every portion of our territory in some form or another has contributed to the growth and the increase of slavery. It has been nearly 200 years coming up to its present proportions.”

You may be suffering from paranoid delusions, and you may well need psychiatric help. There is no slavery in America.

5. “After what we've done to our Black brothers and sisters - it's on us to support somebody who can bring them along.”

The current Black leadership
in America is not bringing them along - they are the worst enemies of the Black man, because they preach racial hatred of white people, and they promote group identity rather than the ideal of the American melting pot where all men are created equal before the law. Black leaders betray the Black man because they foist an identity of group victimhood rather than identity as a free individual who can pursue happiness through his liberty and creative pursuit of happiness.

6. “Obama also made the past sound - slavery, segregation, Jim Crow - TOO far gone.... Just as he needs to push white folks to face up to the weight of the past in the present.”

It is immoral to condemn the child of a sinner. The sins of the previous generations have been either forgiven or paid in blood and suffering. Shouldn't Mr. Obama be viewing Americans based upon the content of their character rather than the color of their skin? Shouldn't he be looking at Americans as individuals created equal before God and the law, and not viewing Americans as simply members of this or that group. Grouping people based upon skin color is of it's self an act of prejudice.

As I see it the Declaration of Independence stated the moral vision of America: All men are created equal before the law and in opportunity. We are endowed by God (not the state) with the essential human rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The role of government is to secure those rights and to govern only through the consent of the governed.

The Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement were, in fact, the culmination of the American Revolution as those struggles restored to the American slaves their liberty and equality before the law. Please, let’s move on as brothers under liberty and lets pursue happiness by loving our neighbors and our families, and by working creatively.

Brotherhood! Brotherhood! Brotherhood!

3/15/2008 09:50:00 PM  
Blogger Towering Barbarian said...

Actually, I would argue that what is happening between our good Mr. Barack Hussein Obama and our good Mrs. Bill Clinton is nothing more than the Democratic Party undergoing the climax of 2nd stage "Injelititis" as decribed by C. Northcote Parkinson. The ideology of identity politics, however much at length its advocates may claim otherwise, is never anything more than that. ^_^

John Hawkins,
"If the Democratic Party were to implode (no, wait, make that "explode". It won't collapse under it's own weight, it will fly apart under the centrifual forces of identity politics), if the DP were to explode and cease to be an electoral force, I think the GOP would very quickly fracture as well, and two new parties (perhaps going by the same names, perhaps not) would reform."

Probably right. I'd argue that the best parallel for what will happen to the Dummycrats and the Republicans is what happened to the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans of Thomas Jefferson. The Federalists, already a party of the way down, played with treason at the Hartford Convention during the War of 1812 and thus turned a slow slide into obscurity into a *rapid* slide into obscurity because nobody wanted much to do with them after that and they ended up as a strictly New England party before they faded away. Meanwhile, after about 8 years or so, The Democratic-Republicans split up between Jackson and John Quincy Adams in 1820 and ended up as the Democrats and the Whigs respectively. The only way the current crop of Dummycrats is if they get some brains before it's too late and find a way to make themselves pro-America before it's too late. But the fact that they drove away both Zeke Miller and Joe Leiberman would seem to indicate that they are so wrapped up in identity politics that this is no longer a direction in which they can go. Sucks to be them! :P

3/16/2008 02:36:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Pascal,
I plan on coming up with a list sometime.
If you don't see it here in a month, please remind me.

3/16/2008 04:39:00 PM  
Blogger Pascal said...

LOL

Thanks for the warning, Doug, but I really wasn't holding my breath awaiting you to substantiate your stretch.

Where Wretchard constantly pleases us with rhetorical flourish, attempts to imitate him are to be expected. It's been called the sincerest form of flattery.

3/17/2008 09:34:00 AM  
Blogger Pascal said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/20/2008 02:13:00 PM  
Blogger Pascal said...

Wretchard,

I have only just now answered one of my own questions for you. You had laid the groundwork for my thinking on this long ago, and that quote is a significant part of this latest post.

Metamorphosis is about how the fasces goes from representing the defense of common interests who choose their leader, to one where the leader replaces, one by one, those who represent the individual interests with men of his liking.

Is there a hard and fast reason why the state the fasces represents must remain so after this metamorphosis, or merely a difficult one?

Oh, by the way. For some reason my blogger posts still do not link to your posts, hence this extra comment.

3/20/2008 02:20:00 PM  

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