Saturday, May 17, 2008

McCain too 'military'

The Des Moines Register reported Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, "and he has a hard time thinking beyond that," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.
And Sen. Harkin hates the military, and has a hard time thinking beyond that
"I think he's trapped in that," Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. "Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military,
he retired from the Navy 27 years ago
and I think that can be pretty dangerous." Harkin said that "it's one thing to have been drafted and served,
John Hinderaker blogged So it's OK to serve in the military, but only if you're drafted. Given that we now have an all-volunteer military, that standard will rule out everyone currently serving.
but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up."

A McCain spokesman said Harkin's remarks were offensive and showed that Democrats are out of touch with Americans' values.


Ed Morrissey blogged So let’s get this straight. Anyone who serves in the military is at least a little suspect, but those who volunteer should be considered warmongers, especially if they follow their father and grandfather into the service of their country. It’s one thing to have been drafted — that excuses someone from their association with the military — but to have actually volunteered? Quelle horror!... This also comes from the same party that celebrated Kerry’s military experience while denigrating George Bush’s National Guard service. According to Harkin today, Bush would be a better candidate — right?

Cassy Fiano blogged And gosh, what a horrible way to be raised, in a military family! Imagine -- being raised with values like courage, integrity, honor, valor, selflessness, and sacrifice. How awful! Of course, Senator Harkin is a liberal, so he probably doesn't understand those kinds of things.

Gateway Pundit blogged Senator Harkin is one of several Democratic senators who protested his country at war in Vietnam and Iraq.

Read More...

Friday, May 16, 2008

No guns allowed

WHAS11 reported Guns are not barred from the state-owned south wing of the Fairgrounds Convention Center and John McCain's campaign folks said it was fine with them if NRA members with valid concealed carry permits brought guns into his speech. But since our story last week, the Secret Service has stepped in.
That is reasonable. They are charged with protecting their assignment.
But NRA members who walk through the doors will be greeted by metal detectors, they won't be allowed to carry in weapons, even if they have a valid concealed carry permit. According to an NRA spokesperson, Secret Service members have stepped in and said while firearms will still be allowed in the convention center, they will not be allowed in the Celebration of American Values Forum. NRA members WHAS11 talked to say they're not upset with guns being barred from an NRA event.
am not surprised. They understand reality. I am just surprisd that WHAS11 does not. Or rather that they think they can stir up an issue on this reasonable restriction.

Read More...

Thursday, May 15, 2008

US lists polar bear as threatened species

Yahoo! News The Interior Department declared the polar bear a threatened species Wednesday
Even though their numbers are increasing and they are not endangered.
because of the loss of Arctic sea ice but also cautioned the decision should not be viewed as a path to address global warming.
Which isn't happening.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses,
The bear population across the Arctic from Alaska to Greenland doubled from about 12,000 to 25,000 since 1960
meaning, he said, that the polar bear is a species likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future. But Kempthorne said it would be "wholly inappropriate" to use the protection of the bear to reduce greenhouse gases, or to broadly address climate change.... Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called it "a lifeline for our last remaining polar bears" but said the bear's survival won't be assured without limits on oil development in the same Arctic waters where the bears are found.
Unfortunately all Sen Kennedy will limit is US oil development, not other countries, so this is yet another case of the Democrats making us MORE dependent on foreign oil, even our own oil developed by other countries.

Read More...

Political treason???

Philadelphia Daily News said President Bush went on foreign soil today, and committed what I consider an act of political treason:

I know what treason is, and I have seen many Democrats do it, but what is "political treason."
Comparing the candidate of the U.S. opposition party to appeasers of Nazi Germany
Obama is worse than they were.
in the very nation that was carved out from the horrific calamity of the Holocaust. Bush's bizarre and beyond-appropriate detour into American presidential politics took place in the middle of what should have been an occasion for joy: A speech to Israeli's Knesset to honor that nation's 60th birthday. But here's what he said:
In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
As a believer in free speech, I think Bush has a right to say what he wants, but as a President of the United States who swore to uphold the Constitution, his freedom also carries an awesome and solemn responsibility, and what this president said today is a serious breach of that high moral standard.
Where does the Constitution say that te President of the United States cannot say something that might offend somone who might become a nominee in an upcoming election.
Of course, there are differences of opinion on how America should handle Iran, and that's why we're having an election here at home, to sort these issues out -- hopefully with respect and not with emotional and inaccurate appeals. Not only is the president's comment a gross misrepresentation of Barack Obama's stance on the issue,
Who definitely said exactly that, but who now sometimes lies he said it. Are you going to believe some video tape or the Obamamessiah.
but ironically, it comes just a day after his own Secretary of State, Robert Gates, said of Iran: "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them." Is Gates a Nazi appeaser-type, too?
No he is like Teddy Roosevelt who wanted to speak softly but carry a big stick. He just wants to find the big stick first.
And Bush has been hardly consistent on this point, either. Look at his own dealings with oil-rich Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, linked to deadly terror attacks like Pan Am Flight 103.
Who paid each person $8 million and was balking at paying even more,
But what Bush did in Israel this morning goes well beyond the accepted confines of American political debate, When the president speaks to a foreign parliament on behalf of our country, his message needs to be clear and unambiguous.
It was; that is what you don't like.
Our democracy may look messy to outsiders, and we may have our disagreements with some sharp elbows thrown around, but at the end of the day we are not Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives.
Democrats should remember that the next time they go overseas and speak against a Republican President and America.

Read More...

If Clinton Wants VP, Obama Can't Stop Her

Bob Beckel wrote on RealClearPolitics Does Hillary Clinton want to be the Democrats vice presidential candidate? Probably.
She is a fool if she does, but she may not be willing to wait as junior senator from New York.
Could she get on the ticket by dropping out before the last states vote on June 3rd? Definitely not. Does Barack Obama want her on the ticket? Absolutely not.
Certainly his wife does not want Hillary.
Can he stop her if she wants it? Probably not. Why not? Super delegates are why not.
Actually te super delegates want both of them so much she might even get the presidential nod if she guaranteed them she would pick Obama. But I don't see why either one would want to be the other's VP

Read More...

McCain reaches for GI Bill compromise

Politico.com reported With Memorial Day around the corner, Sen. John McCain and his allies are reaching out to Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb in the hope of finding a compromise
McCain is always looking to compromise with Dems. Has Obama ever risked trying to compromise with Republicans?
on a GI Bill that would eliminate a potential embarrassment for the Arizona Republican’s presidential campaign.... the leadership confirmed Tuesday that a new option calls for imposing a 0.5 percent surtax on households earning more than $1 million.
And a surtax on single indiciduals making $500,000. A tax against millionaires is reaching down to sub millionaires.
... “Each of us supports increasing education benefits for our nation’s veterans, and we believe this must be accomplished as quickly as possible,” reads the letter, signed by McCain, Graham and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). The three Republicans go on to say that they have “never disagreed with the overall intent” of the Webb bill but would like more attention to problems of recruitment and retention as well as “in-service education of career servicemen and women.”
Something I support. I prefer the one that gives them some after 3 years, and more after 6, and for carrear soldiers even lets the benefit pay for education of their children.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has raised questions, as well, about whether the Webb bill will hurt retention by encouraging young soldiers and Marines to leave after their first enlistment.
Which is what the Dems want.
Warner indicated that some changes might be made to address these fears, but he also argues that the improved benefits will be a great recruitment tool that will attract brighter volunteers into the service.
Where a lot of time must be spent giving them the training the others had who just left to go to school.

Read More...

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

They don't like Hillary

Dana Milbank wrote on washingtonpost.com This Is an Ex-Candidate - It's Day 7 of the Clinton Campaign Death Watch -- a full week since the official arbiter of the Democratic primary, Tim Russert, declared the campaign over and Barack Obama the nominee.
Since when is Tim Russert in charge of the nominating process for the Democratic Party?
Hillary Clinton's advisers continue to insist that the candidate's prospects are very much alive, but the press isn't buying it.

John Aravosis on Americablog is not as kind: Go away you horrible human being - Good God. What is wrong with her? The Clintons and their campaign staff don't give a damn that they are now hurting our electoral chances in the fall against McCain and against the Republicans in Congress. Their campaign isn't happening in some vacuum, and they know it. Our candidates can't fundraise because of her.
Obama seems to be getting all the money he needs, and then some.
Obama can't focus on McCain
He seems to be doing it.
because of her. Obama is wasting money on HER, rather than spending it on McCain, because of her. EMILY's List, and AFSCME, and the American Federation of Teachers and others are wasting their members' money on her now-failed race - money that they could be spending, should be spending, on other real races, races that haven't already lost. She can't win, the math says she lost the nomination,
Obama does not have 2025 delegates, much less what he would have to have if the Democratic party is smart enough to not write off Missouri and Florida.
but she doesn't give a damn. She's going to stay in the race like some spoiled hateful egotistical brat.
I think I would be safe in saying John is not a Hillary Supporter.


It will be interesting to see what happens on May 31

Read More...

Friday, May 09, 2008

Obama's new math

Obama has been in 57 states.

And that is not counting Alaska and Hawaii.

Read More...

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

June 15

Lawrence O'Donnell wrote The Huffington Post A senior campaign official and Clinton confidante has told me that there will be a Democratic nominee by June 15.
I am sure you will. The question is whether it will be the same person selected in August at the Convention. The press has been poshung very hard for Clinton to drop out so Obama can have the nomination, but she just does not know how to quit. She may pretend to suspend her campaign (not stop it), but her stooges will keep throwing mud at Obama hoping something will stick, and she will launch a floor fight at the convention, just like Kennedy did against Carter, and she will have a lot more elected delegates than he had, and just because the super delegates go for Obama by June 15 does not mean they can't change their minds in August.
He could not bring himself to say the words "Hillary will drop out by June 15," but that is clearly what he meant. I kept saying, "So, Hillary will drop out by June 15," and he kept saying, "We will have a nominee by June 15."
So that is obviously what he meant.
He stressed what a reasonable person Hillary is.

Read More...

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

The Empire Strikes Barack

Sister Toldjah said this is quite possibly the best political video of the month, perhaps even the year. Encore, encore!

Read More...

TV License

LGF showed this clip from BBC to show they know where everyone is

This made me aware of something I never knew. In socialist Great Britian it appears everyone with a TV (or digital box, DVD or video recorder, PC, laptop or mobile phone to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV) must have a TV License costing £139.50 for a color set, and £47.00 for black and white. If you have a second home, and it has a tv, you need a second license. If you are blind they only charge you 1/2, and if you are over 75 you can get a free license. If you are 74 they will prorate the license for the number of months until you are 75.

If you prove you are blind, or severely sight impaired you don't have to prove that every year, but you must still renew your license each year. Once you are over 75 the license is free, but you still have to renew it every three years.

I guess they want to encourage people to keep the old folk at home, rather than sending them to a nursing home, because If you're aged 75 or over, you are entitled to a free over 75 TV License for your home, even if you live with younger relatives or friends. And you better stay home. Your free over 75 TV Licence covers your main home address only. If you regularly stay elsewhere, say in a holiday home, this address will not be covered. You will need to apply for a separate TV Licence at the full fee to cover this and any other properties.

Ain't socialism wonderful.

Read More...

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Nuclear Option

The Huffington Post reported Hillary Clinton's campaign has a secret weapon to build its delegate count, but her top strategists say privately that any attempt to deploy it would require a sharp (and by no means inevitable) shift in the political climate within Democratic circles by the end of this month.
I.e. it would tear the party in two.
With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could -- when the committee meets at the end of this month -- try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives. The Obama campaign has declined to give an estimate. Using the Rules and Bylaws Committee to force the seating of two pro-Hillary delegations would provoke a massive outcry from Obama forces.
That is a major understatement.
Such a strategy would, additionally, face at least two other major hurdles, and could only be attempted, according to sources in the Clinton camp, under specific circumstances:
Insanity and what else.
First, this coming Tuesday, Clinton would have to win Indiana and lose North Carolina by a very small margin - or better yet, win the Tar Heel state. She would also have to demonstrate continued strength in the contests before May 31.

Read More...

Barack has hit boiling point

Telegraph reported Barack Obama is struggling to contain his anger

I thought McCain was supposed to be the one with a temper.
and frustration over the constant barrage of questions about his character and judgment, his wife has revealed. Michelle Obama lifted the lid on the irritation felt by the leading Democrat candidate for the White House at the way anti-American outbursts by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, have dogged his campaign.
If he had any judgment he would have thrown Wright under the bus in his first speech.
He is said to be itching to turn all his fire on John McCain, the Republican candidate, who is benefiting most from Mr Obama's protracted tussle with Hillary Clinton.
Why? Does he believe McCain will not hit him as hard?
Mrs Obama told a rally in Durham, North Carolina, on Friday that only her husband's desire to change US politics had helped him to control his feelings: "Barack is always thinking three steps ahead  what do we need to do to make change."
Or at least fool people into thinking we will.

Read More...

Hillary's Horse

Political Punch reported Tragedy struck the first filly in the Kentucky Derby since 1999, as Eight Belles went down on the track after her second-place finish today, broke two ankles, and was euthanized.
Hillary hopes this does not portend the result of the Democratic Nomination, where the filly came in second to Big Brown. But she really hpoes that the latter point, where the second place winner was euthanized, does not come true.
Showing a sisterhood with the female horse, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., during a trip to Louisville this week had said she was going to bet on Eight Belles to win, place, and show.
That is a good way to bet if you don't know what it will do.
ABC News' Karen Travers reports that Clinton told supporters in Jeffersonville, Ind., earlier this week, "I hope that everybody will go to the derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me. I won't be able to be there this year -- my daughter is going to be there and so she has strict instructions to bet on Eight Belles."

Read More...

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Comical 'Stop' signs


Yahoo! News reported Oak Lawn has removed comical remarks in octagonal shapes it placed under stop signs in an effort to get motorists to obey the law. Mayor Dave Heilmann says the Illinois Department of Transporation determined the signs violated the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. He says had Oak Lawn not removed the signs, the city could have lost federally funded projects.
Did the Federal DoT say so, or does he Illinois department lack sense of humor.
The public safety campaign to cut down on speeding through stop signs began in September. Slogans such as "and smell the roses" and "means that you aren't moving" were placed near 50 stop signs. At the time, Heilmann said he thought the remarks would get motorists to pause, if for nothing else, to read the phrases.
Sounds like a good idea.
Heilmann says IDOT's objection to the signs meant he had to junk $1,700 worth of signs
Isn't that a typo. Shouldn't it be IDIOT

Read More...

Friday, May 02, 2008

Netroots rebel

Politico.com reported The nation's top Democrats are suddenly rushing to appear on the Fox News Channel,

They realized if the wanted to have any chance of winning in November they needed to try tp appeal to conservatives and independents.
which they once had shunned as enemy territory as the nemesis of liberal bloggers. The detente with Fox has provoked a backlash from progressive bloggers, who contend the party's leaders are turning their backs on the base
look at where the base has taken them.
and lending credibility and legitimacy to the network liberals love to hate - in a quest for a few swing votes.

In a span of eight days, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean are all taking their seats with the network that calls itself "fair and balanced" but is widely viewed as skewing conservative.
As opposed to the extreme liberal nature of the rest of the MSM.
With the party's presidential contest reduced to hand-to-hand combat, Democrats are turning to the ratings leader among cable news channels in a clear rebuff to the liberal activists known as the Netroots. Markos Moulitsas, founder of the leading liberal site Daily Kos, told Politicos Michael Calderone: "Democrats are being idiotic by going on that network."
He probably thinks they should just let him and George Sorus pull their strings.
Ari Melber, the Net movement correspondent for The Nation, told Politico by phone that progressive activists and the Netroots are "not happy about it."
Poor babies.
"I don't think that it is tenable to completely neglect or ignore what your base wants," Melber said.

Read More...

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Police smash door

kare11 reported Brooklyn Park police were looking for a meth lab, but they found a fish tank and the chemicals needed to maintain it. And a few hours later, when the city sent a contractor to fix the door the police had smashed open Monday afternoon, it was obvious the city was trying to fix a mistake.
At least they realized they made a mistake, and tried to fix it. Did they apologize for hancuffing the occupants, and promise to be more careful the next time?
... Police were executing a search warrant signed by Hennepin County Judge Ivy Bernhardson, who believed there was probable cause the Adams's home was a meth lab. Berhardson, who was appointed to the bench less than a year ago, did not return KARE 11's phone calls.
Don't expect him to.
"Ohmigod," Adams said as she recalled police breaking down her door and flashing the search warrant. "I just kept saying to them, 'you've got the wrong house.' " Police soon realized that themselves. "From a cursory view, it doesn't look like our officers did anything wrong," said Capt. Greg Roehl.
Except break down the door and harrass two innocent civilians on a false report.
Roehl said the drug task force was acting on a tip from a subcontractor for CenterPoint Energy, who had been in the home Friday to install a hot water heater. "He got hit with a chemical smell that he said made him light headed, feel kind of nauseous," Roehl said.
And did he ask what the source of the odor was?
The smell was vinegar, and maybe pickling lime, which were clearly marked in a bathroom Mr. Adams uses to mix chemicals for his salt water fish tank. "I said, 'I call it his laboratory for his fish tanks,' " Mrs. Adams said, recalling her conversation with the CenterPoint technician. "I'm looking at the fish tank talking to this guy."
So he asked, and got the answer. Did he tell that to the police, or just that it made him lightheaded?
Police say there was no extended investigation, just an interview with the subcontractor.
Who apparently did not tell them all he knew.
"Everything this person told us turned out to be true, with the exception of what the purpose of the lab was," Roehl said.
That is a pretty big exception, isn't it? Is it illegal to have chemicals for a fish tank? Do the police normally break down a door of someone with a fish tank?
... CenterPoint energy maintains the home was "unsafe" and it would have "irresponsible" for the subcontractor not to report it.
The residents were safe, at least until the police broke down their door. The fish were safe. Why was the house "unsafe"?

Read More...

Doom for Obama?

Eric Pianin wrote on WaPo Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.
And continues to pour gasoline on the flame.
... Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
I wonder how the black church in America likes its new spokesman.
... "This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an attack on the black church."
No, only thse churches spouting this foolishness.
He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of African American religious traditions.... Wright seemed aggrieved that his inflammatory quotations were out of the full "context" of his sermons -- yet he repeated many of the same accusations in the context of a half-hour Q&A session this morning.
Showing exactly the context for the statements.
His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming home to roost"? Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you.
We have never flown planes ino buildings, or strapped on suicide belts, or fired rockets not knowing what they would hit, but hoping to hit innocent civilians.
Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."
Which Bible is Wright reading?
His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion.
I don't know which is more of a gutter religion: Islam or the twist that the Nation of Islam applied to it.
He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say
Would that be the UN resolutions creating the state of Israel (Zionism) or the ones sponsored by the Muslims condemning it?
Gaius blogged Yes, Obama has a major problem Wright now. No, it isn't guilt by association, either. It is guilt by failure to disassociate himself from Wright a long time ago. The failure of Obama to realize that Wright was going to be a real liability speaks quite a lot about Obama's judgment - none of it good. Could this, in fact, be the real end of Obama's chances? Very possibly. That popping sound you here is the champaign being opened over at Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Stop the ACLU blogged Barack Obama’s pastor/spiritual advisor/spiritual mentor/campaign advisor evidently believes that his media storm last month was actually beneficial to Obama. So much so, that he couldn’t stay out of the spot light until Obama wrapped up the nomination.

blogged

TIW blogged Folks, Obama HUSSEIN should not only denounce this man as an anti-American-racist-bigoted-liar, but Obama HUSSEIN should demounce Jeremiah Wright for being a disgrace to all humanity. What is really disgusting is that this man has damned thousands of people who have believed that he was a Man of God who was leading them on their way to Heaven, when all the while he was damning their souls to eternal HELL. I’d say, “God Damn Jeremiah Wright,” but God all ready has damned him. So sad.

Robbie Cooper blogged guess who is providing Jeremiah Wright’s “security”? Yep. His former Muslim brothers from the Nation of Islam. Other than from Obama or his campaign staff, I can’t imagine who the hell Wright needs security from…

Badger blogged I’ll bet you Barack Obama just stood there shaking his head in disbelief, asking why no one would shut him up, as he watched this speech given my his spiritual leader and mentor.

Dave Lucas blogged I don't recall if I saw it on a blog or in an op-ed piece, but yesterday I read where Jeremiah is beginning to have a really negative effect on Barack, and that the Main Stream Media is beginning to line up behind Clinton. I also read where many voters in the early primaries that Obama won now say Hillary would get their vote. This is changing the political landscape heading toward the Democratic convention. What next?

Ed Morrissey blogged Wright has to be kidding if he thinks that people can’t find Farrakhan’s public speeches on Jews and see for themselves his rampant anti-Semitism. And Team Obama has to wonder when Wright will stop shooting his mouth off in public.

Pamela Geller blogged "Pastor" Wright At Press Club Buries Obama, Keeps Digging

Read More...

Monday, April 28, 2008

Black Brains and White Brains

American Digest reported It would seem there is a profound difference between the black brain and other brains after all. At least according to Reverend Wright. According to this shining exemplar of Barack Obama and the deep scholarship of black liberation theology, black people are right-brained and white people are left-brained.
What about mixed race people like Wright (and Obama). Do they not think with either side of their brains, and is that why Wright keeps saying such stupid things, and why Obama can only say Hope and Change?
Asian people don't make the discussion since that would be, well, unfortunate.
Oops.
If you're like me you've probably been wandering about the world babbling something about racial equality in America that affirms, "There are no differences except differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference." You could also say, "All men are created equal." How left-brained of you.

Now comes Reverend James Wright to set us all straight. He notes in passing that the right-brain of black people is somehow descended from the griots of Africa. The griots were people who could remember long, very long, poems; proto-rappers if you will. White people had something like that too, but then they invented ... writing. Or was it the Asians? I forget since, alas, my griot genes are slim to none.
He also said black students learn differently. Would that not be justification for segragated schools?
Michelle Malkin blogged Jeremiah Wright, racial phrenologist

DavidL blogged Wright violated the PC taboo and attributed racial difference to something other than white antiblack discrimination. The danger is is one were to agree with Wright, he is apt to called a racist. Not only has Wright propped legs under The Bell Curve, he has questioned the premise of Brown v. Board of Eduction, that black children can’t learned unless mixed with whites.

Anne Leary blogged The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a profoundly racist man. Hey Rev. Wright--is God white or black? Or some other color?

TRO blogged Now sit back and imagine for a moment. What would the response be, by blacks and the liberal elite media, if a white person were giving this speech about the innate differences between blacks and whites? Come on, you don’t have to imagine very hard, do you? It’s happened before in our history. Racist whites used that excuse to segregate schools and diners and bathrooms not too long ago if you remember.

186 blogged Thank you Reverend Wright for loosing the election for Barack Obama!

Ed Morrissey blogged This sounds oddly similar to claims made in The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein, a book that created a firestorm of controversy with claims that race made a difference in IQ scores, among other claims. The two authors got reviled as racist enablers and their work became denigrated among a wide swath of researchers for seriously overreaching the science on which they relied for their conclusions.

Jake Tapper blogged The bulk of his remarks addressed, however, different groups seeing each other as deficient. He acted out the differences between marching bands at predominantly black and predominantly white colleges.

Sister Toldjah blogged Wright is not just a racist - one who said things in his speech this past weekend that would have a white pastor begging for forgiveness later on a national stage had he made similar remarks about white brains versus black brains - but also one very selfish individual.

Gateway Pundit blogged Oddly enough... This is the same argument used by the KKK in promoting their campaign of hatred.
Not surprisingly, the official website of the KKK (no, this is not a website I frequent!) has plenty of information that echoes what the Rev. Wright told his audience of black leaders last night


Protein Wisdom blogged Even more generally, if a Pat Robertson or a John Hagee gave a widely-publicized speech opining on the relative rhythm and musicality of blacks and whites, or talking about how blacks learn with their right brain, there would be a firestorm of criticism and the establishment media would immediately question John McCain as to whether he would denounce the remarks, etc.

Read More...

An Anatomy of Surrender

Bruce Bawer wrote in City Journal Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission.
And once in the House of Submission it must stay there.
... Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies. Call it a cultural surrender.
Call it suicide.
The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission.... Press acquiescence to Muslim demands and threats is endemic. When the Mohammed cartoons—published in September 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten to defy rising self-censorship after van Gogh’s murder—were answered by worldwide violence, only one major American newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, joined such European dailies as Die Welt and El País in reprinting them as a gesture of free-speech solidarity.
And people turned against tne brave European publishers.
Editors who refused to run the images claimed that their motive was multicultural respect for Islam.
Many bloggers, including myself, ran them.
Critic Christopher Hitchens believed otherwise, writing that he “knew quite a number of the editors concerned and can say for a certainty that the chief motive for ‘restraint’ was simple fear.”... So it goes in this upside-down, not-so-brave new media world: those who, if given the power, would subjugate infidels, oppress women, and execute apostates and homosexuals are “moderate” (a moderate, these days, apparently being anybody who doesn’t have explosives strapped to his body), while those who dare to call a spade a spade are “Islamophobes.”
And in Canada, so called "Human Rights Commissions" will go after anyone that speaks the truth about Islam.
.... Leading liberal intellectuals and academics have shown a striking willingness to betray liberal values when it comes to pacifying Muslims. Back in 2001, Unni Wikan, a distinguished Norwegian cultural anthropologist and Islam expert, responded to the high rate of Muslim-on-infidel rape in Oslo by exhorting women to “realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”
A better solution would be to speak out against multiculturalism, and say anyone that wants to live in this society should adapt themselves to it, not expect this society to adapt itself to what they are used to.
.... If you don’t find the dhimmification of politicians shocking, consider the degree to which law enforcement officers have yielded to Islamist pressure. Last year, when “Undercover Mosque,” an unusually frank exposé on Britain’s Channel 4, showed “moderate” Muslim preachers calling for the beating of wives and daughters and the murder of gays and apostates, police leaped into action—reporting the station to the government communications authority, Ofcom, for stirring up racial hatred. (Ofcom, to its credit, rejected the complaint.)
Good for Ofcom.
The police reaction, as James Forsyth noted in the Spectator, “revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.”
And untreated, cancer will spread until it destroys the organism.
.... In July 2007, a planned TV appeal by British cops to help capture a Muslim rapist was canceled to avoid “racist backlash.” And in August, the Times of London reported that “Asian” men (British code for “Muslims”) in the U.K. were having sex with perhaps hundreds of “white girls as young as twelve”—but that authorities wouldn’t take action for fear of “upsetting race relations.” Typically, neither the Times nor government officials acknowledged that the “Asian” men’s contempt for the “white” girls was a matter not of race but of religion.
And was completely against British law and culture.
... The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they’re incapable of defending it when it’s imperiled—or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled. As for Muslims living in the West, surveys suggest that many of them, though not actively involved in jihad, are prepared to look on passively—and some, approvingly—while their coreligionists drag the Western world into the House of Submission. But we certainly can’t expect them to take a stand for liberty if we don’t stand up for it ourselves.

Neptunuslex bloggedA fundamental truth about winning and losing is that you can’t beat what you won’t fight.

Read More...