The Left Reaps The Racial Whirlwind In Ferguson

Last night, during the latest protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over alleged racism, two police officers were shot. This from Fox:

The gunman who shot two Missouri police officers early Thursday at a protest outside the Ferguson police headquarters remained at large, and a top law enforcement official said it was only "by God's grace" that the two cops - one of whom was hit in the face - are expected to survive. . .

The police officers, one a member of Belmar's force and the other from another county police department, were part of a 25-man police line at the embattled headquarters, where Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson had announced his resignation hours earlier. Witnesses reported hearing as many as four shots and seeing the flash of a muzzle about 125 yards away from the police . . .

'This is what they wanted to happen'- Ferguson police officer reportedly said after the shooting . . .

The police officers, both men, were not named, but authorities said one is a 32-year-old from suburban Webster Groves and the other was described as a 41-year-old officer from St. Louis County. The Webster Groves officer was hit in the the cheek and the bullet stopped behind his ear, Belmar said. Doctors are deciding how to best remove the bullet.

The St. Louis County officer suffered a gunshot wound to his shoulder, and the bullet exited his middle back, Belmar said. Both were taken to a local hospital. Their injuries were described as "very serious," but not life-threatening.

The protest began at about 5:30 p.m., after Jackson stepped down. His resignation came after months of controversy and a grand jury decision and a separate Justice Department report that cleared a white former Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, of civil rights charges in the shooting of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson last summer. Wilson has since resigned. A separate Justice Department report found a profit-driven court system and widespread racial bias in the city police department. . . .

This is the racial whirlwind -- lives ruined, people injured, possibly killed, the nation left with an ever widening racial divide while real race based societal problems are ingnored. And its a very safe bet that whoever shot the officers was one of the many inflamed by the overt and blatant race hustling of Eric Holder, the DOJ, Al Sharpton and others.

This travesty began on 9 August 2014 of last year, when white Ferguson PD Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed the black "gentle giant," Michael Brown, who was in the process of attacking the officer. Within days, Al Sharpton was on the ground in Ferguson to get his piece of the racial spoils, Eric Holder announced that the DOJ would be doing a civil rights investigation, and a cadre of professional agitators from "groups like the ANSWER Coalition, the New Black Panthers, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Organization for Black Struggle and the Soros-linked U.S. Human Rights Network" descended on Ferguson to play this incident for all the racial gold it was worth. One time civil rights hero, now a traitor to Rev. Martin Luther King's noble cause, Rep. John Lewis was busy leading the Congressional Black Caucus in a "hands up, don't shoot" display, alleging that Brown was executed by the cracker racist cop while he was meekly trying to surrender. And last week, at his speech on the 50th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march in Selma, President Obama pointed to alleged racism in the Ferguson Police Department as proof that racism still casts a "long shadow" on our evil country.

For the race hustlers in and out of government, America must always be portrayed as 1950's Selma, else they lose their power. And God forbid that blacks, who for half a century have voted 90% as a block for the left, begin to question whether they are being misled by their political masters and overseers.

The trigger for last night's protest, and presumably its violence, were DOJ reports issued last week. One, an investigation of the Darren Wilson - Michael Brown incident, wholly and completely exonerated Officer Wilson. The DOJ found, just like the Grand Jury, that all credible evidence supported Officer Wilson's account of the incident. There was no question of wrongdoing, let alone racial bias evident in the altercation from start to fatal finish.

The second DOJ report issued last week, (copy here), claiming that the Ferguson PD was riddled with racism, was nothing more or less than pure bullshit. The only evidence of racism that the DOJ produced, besides noting a few non-pc jokes that were passed to some people in the department, was statistical -- the so called "disparate impact" theory so beloved of the left because it allows them to claim and prosecute for racism without having to show any actual, you know, racism. The "data" from Ferguson PD arrests and citations showed that blacks were being stopped, cited, searched and arrested at more frequent intervals than whites relative to their population in Ferguson. At no point did the DOJ make any effort to drill down to each individual incident to determine if there was racism animating the officers' decisions. (They did show that some officers, race unknown, acted like horse's asses on occasion, but that is as much a surprise as observing that water is wet).

In truth, given that, according to DOJ statistics, blacks commit crimes in far higher number relative to their population than whites, it would be a surprise in any city in America if blacks were not being stopped, cited, searched and arrested at more frequent intervals than whites relative to their population. The numbers tells us nothing other than there is a problem. Whether racism lies at the heart of it requires a whole other level of analysis. But the left, and the DOJ today is a left wing snake pit, is happy to use disparate impact theory alone to claim racism. As Thomas Sowell opined this past week, the disparate impact theory is a left wing racket.

The other Justice Department report, . . . -- "Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department" -- was a complete contrast [to the fact based report exonerating Officer Wilson]. Sweeping assumptions take the place of facts, and misleading statistics are thrown around recklessly. This second report is worth reading, just to get a sense of the contrast with the first.

According to the second report, law enforcement in Ferguson has a "disparate impact" on blacks and is "motivated" by "discriminatory intent."

"Disparate impact" statistics have for decades been used, in many different contexts, to claim that discrimination was the reason why different groups are not equally represented as employees or in desirable positions or -- as in this case -- in undesirable positions as people arrested or fined.

Like many other uses of "disparate impact" statistics, the Justice Department's evidence against the Ferguson police department consists of numbers showing that the percentage of people stopped by police or fined in court is larger than the percentage of blacks in the local population.

The implicit assumption is that such statistics about particular outcomes would normally reflect the percentage of people in the population. But, no matter how plausible this might seem on the surface, it is seldom found in real life, and those who use that standard are seldom, if ever, asked to produce hard evidence that it is factually correct, as distinct from politically correct. . . .

The Supreme Court ruled several years ago that the disparate impact theory alone could not be used to prove racism in the employment context. Since then, the DOJ has been at great pains to keep the Supreme Court from ruling on the disparate impact theory in any other context. It is the single best weapon in their arsenal for making out charges of racism, whether any exists or not in a given situation. In this case, the DOJ's use of disparate impact to smear the Ferguson PD was nothing more than race hustling at its worst.

But, the report served its purpose. Ever since the thug Michael Brown was killed, the race hustlers have been demanding the sacrifice of Officer Wilson and the Ferguson PD on the alter of racial grievances. Well, they've gotten a goodly portion of it. Officer Wilson, wholly exonerated of any wrongdoing by a grand jury and a DOJ investigation, has had his life ruined and has left the Ferguson PD. The police chief of the Ferguson PD has resigned in the wake of DOJ report finding racism rampant in the Ferguson PD. And last night, two innocent police officers were gunned down in yet another race baiting protest. So, Al, Eric and crew, are you satisfied yet?

The left have sown the wind with their race baiting. Last night, they reaped the whirlwind.

Update: Via Instapundit, "IN FERGUSON? IN AMERICA. 'The most-effective left-wing activist in Ferguson has got to be Eric Holder’s Justice Department:'"

. . . In a press conference, Holder decried last year’s riots, claiming that “violence is never justified,” before going on brazenly to justify the violence: “[S]een in this context—amid a highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings, and spurred by illegal and misguided practices—it is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg.”

Holder’s claim is that while Darren Wilson didn’t murder Michael Brown, in a way, the entire system did. This type of racial grievance-fueling is like a shot of straight adrenaline to the agitators of Anonymous and their fellow travelers on the professional far left. One can’t help but marvel at the outgoing attorney general’s chutzpah as he condemns Wednesday’s shooting as a “cowardly” and “senseless” act. Senseless? For anyone who’s spent the last eight months watching Holder’s cynical manipulation of the protests in Ferguson, Wednesday’s shooting made all the sense in the world.

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Orwellian Speech Codes & Cultural Marxism

I recently read an anti-harassment policy in place at an ivory tower institution across the pond. It is hardly unique - there are countless such policies in place at institutions on this side of the pond.

By its terms, the anti-harassment policy defines “harassment" as "unwanted conduct" touching upon to a "relevant protected characteristic, which has the . . . effect of violating an individual’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual." There is a laundry list of "protected characteristics," essentially anything to do with a favored victim class of the left. The list includes race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and gay marriage.

Amazingly, the standard for determining harassment is a subjective one: "It is not the intention of the harasser, but the conduct itself and the impact on the recipient(s) that determine what constitutes bullying and harassment." Thus it doesn't matter how a reasonable person would respond to certain speech or conduct, nor does it matter whether the speech was non-discriminatory and legitimate. Driving that point home, the policy does not contain an exemption for expressing facts nor opinions grounded on fact.

Because of the subjective standard and lack of any exemptions, this is not a policy designed to reasonably protect against harassment or actual discrimination. It is a wholly unreasonable weapon to be used by those pursuing a left wing agenda to stifle any speech they don't like. It is cultural marxism, where any criticism of a victim class or a person in a victim class, no matter how justified by fact, is in effect criminalized and subject to official sanction by the institution. There are countless examples of such policies being used to punish legitimate speech (see here, here and here)

To put it into perspective, what would happen if I said that FBI crime statistics show that half of all homicides in the U.S. where the criminal is identified have been committed by black men, even though blacks as a whole represent only 13% of the population. And what if I further inferred that this is evidence that the culture of lower socio-economic blacks is severely violent and dysfuntional. Or what if I pointed out that in the UK, most of the gang rapes are committed by Muslim men whose religion (or at least certain sects, such as Wahhabi and Deobandi) sanctions the rape of non-Muslim women and casts them as third class citizens. Thus there is a real problem with Islamic religion and "civilized society" as we in the Western World define that term.

Nothing that I have said in the paragraph above is in any way discriminatory. My merely stating those truths does not mean that I believe in the inherent inferiority of blacks or Muslim culture. And the fact that a black or a Muslim or a person of the left may not want to hear those truths does not mean that raising them is unreasonable (which should always be the baseline standard for harassment). Those truths are legitimate societal problems that at some point need to be faced. Yet I would probably be savaged and brought up on harassment charges were I employed by an institution with a pc speech code. Should I be?

Leaving aside the First Amendment which is peculiar to the U.S., in any institution where the standard for official sanction is "reasonable cause," the argument must be that there is an implied right to speak fact and opinion with an objective basis in fact as a complete defense to charges of harassment or discrimination. If that standard applies, then - and only then - will such anti-harassment policies as the ones I've described begin to come close to their purported purpose - to protect employees from actual harassment and discrimination. Otherwise, such codes, with their subjective standards, are merely a political and cultural weapon to force new left wing moral absolutes on employees.

Update: An interesting exchange on O'Reilly last night, where left of center Kirsten Powers that the left is less tolerant of any dissenting views. Another guest on the show, "Kate Obenshain, agreed with Powers, saying that when conservatives on college campuses openly disagree with liberal orthodoxy, they are charged with “violating the campus speech codes.”

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How Should We Respond To Charges Of Blasphemy Against Islam

Six months after declaring that all churches in the Arabian peninsula should be destroyed, Saudi Arabia’s top cleric called at the weekend for a global ban on insults targeting all religious “prophets and messengers,” a category that, from a Muslim perspective, includes Jesus Christ.

Leading Sunni Clerics Demand Global Ban on Insults to Islam, CNS News, 17 Sep. 2012

“We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker said, holding up a handwritten sign in English that read “Shut Up America.”

Cultural Clash Fuels Muslims Angry at Online Video, NYT, 16 Sep. 2012

Allow me to respond to your contentions, Grand Mufti and Mr. Ali.

Your religion is unique in many ways - one of which is that adopts a false Christianity as part of its founding narrative. Islam claims that Jesus is a "prophet" of its religion while ignoring his teachings and denying his divinity. In the Dome of the Rock Mosque, built atop the most holy site in the Jewish faith, there is an inscription now 1,300 years old:

The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is only an apostle of God, and his Word which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not Three. It will be better for you. God is only one God. Far be it from his glory that he should have a son.

Now, that is blasphemy in its purest sense. It irks me, but I ignore it, thinking only that you are misguided. But if you and your fellow Muslims in the Middle East, on the other hand, are prepared to do violence because someone in the U.S. said something not nice about Mohammed - well, you can pack it where the sun doesn't shine. And if you act violently, expect an appropriate response in return, bearing in mind that our tolerance level for your infantile, hypocritical and outrageous acts is not infinite. At some point, your violence will beget a response of overwhelming force.

As to Jesus, while the Koran claims to adopt him as part of Islamic faith, yet the Koran adopts none of his teachings. Perhaps most importantly, Jesus commanded us to follow the Golden Rule. Mohammed acknowledged no Golden Rule. To the contrary:

Islam does not enjoin believers to do unto infidels as you would have infidels do unto you. On the contrary! Islam tells its followers to subdue infidels; to kill them; to, at best, reduce them to dhimmitude.

And as to the Dome of the Rock, let's talk about the detestable Muslim habit of attempting to wipe out symbols and buildings of other faiths - an act directed by the Koran, verse 018:021. The Dome of the Rock was built on the holiest Jewish site, the Temple Mount, 1,300 years ago. It wasn't until 800 years ago that Muslims justified this on the claim, apparently made out of thin air, that this was a site also intrinsically holy to Muslims because of Mohammed's night ride. Everywhere Islam conquered, they built mosques on top of the holy sites of Christianity, with Constantinople and Cordoba being the two most famous of thousands of examples. Unfortunately, this is not merely historical - it continues to this day, from destroying ancient historic Buhddist statues in Afghanistan to the destruction of Churches in Nigeria, Egypt the West Bank - and let's not forget Jordan's industrial scale destruction of Jewish holy sites after they captured the Jewish Quarter in Jerulsalem.

I could raise an entire litany of other examples. There is the Muslim world's glorification of the most animalistic, subhuman acts of terror directed against Jews and Christians. There is the Koran's direction that it is acceptable to rape and enslave non-Muslims. There is the officially sanctioned discrimination against Christians and the few Jews left in every country with an Islamic government. There is the murder of homosexuals and people accused of witchcraft, not to mention the grossly unequal, violent treatment of women.

I consider the vast majority of these things to be a blasphemy against my religion - and indeed, all of these things to be a blasphemy against humanity. Here is reality. Your nations have produced nothing to advance civilization in the past near millenium. Today, the Arab Middle East is a cesspool of poverty, corruption and dysfunction - and that is not the fault of the West, not the fault of the Crusades, not the fault of 'Western imperialism,' and not the fault of America, where if you want to practice your religion in peace, you are perfectly welcome to do so. It is the fault of Islam and an Islamic culture that is, in the words of Churchill, the most "retrograde force" on this earth.

The best thing that I and the world can do for you is to criticize your religion and demand that you reform it to the point that its believers comport with civilized behavior. The best thing that you can do is evolve your culture and religion.

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AIDS & The DOJ

HIV/AIDS is still, ultimately, a death sentence. It is listed as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is our moden black plague. But it is an issue of "civil rights" and "gay rights" for those on the left of our government - and that includes the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ. They can't or won't enforce laws to insure that our ballot boxes remain inviolate, but they can pursue a policy that will surely condemn numerous people to new HIV infections.

South Carolina has a policy in its prisons to test new prisoners for the HIV virus before placing them in the general prison population. If a person is found infected, they are placed in a special facility for the HIV infected where they can immediatly start receiving treatment and councilling. Approximately 50% of those found infected by the initial screening did not know they were infected.

This policy has been virtually foolproof in stopping the spread of HIV through the South Carolina prison population. In humanitarian terms, it is a policy that has insured that the infected get treatment. The policy actually costs South Carolina approximately $2 million per year.

Yet, according to J. Christian Adams, Obama's DOJ is quite willing to place all of South Carolina's prison population - and ultimately the larger population in South Carolina and its environs - in danger in order to vindicate the "civil rights" of those people infected with AIDS. This from Mr. Adams:

. . . South Carolina received a letter from the now-infamous Civil Rights Division that the policy of keeping infected inmates at a designated facility, instead of scattered across the state in the general prison population, may unfairly stigmatize infected prisoners. To the Obama political appointees in the Civil Rights Division, this constitutes discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The Justice Department objects to separate living facilities and specialized medical treatment for the HIV/AIDS prison population. Naturally, DOJ has threatened a lawsuit.

. . . The DOJ is in a lose-lose situation. Even if DOJ wins a lawsuit, sources tell me South Carolina is simply going to cancel all of the special testing, treatment and counseling, thereby saving the state $2 million a year.

Instead, the state will dump infected prisoners into the general population, and nobody will know they have AIDS. Worse, prisoners who come to prison with HIV/AIDS will never know they have the disease and their lives will be shortened because the testing program will end.

Special counseling would end, too. . . .

Justice raises three primary objections to this effective and humane approach. First, it prevents infected prisoners "from participating in activities and jobs of their choosing." Leave it to bureaucrats in Washington to concoct the grievance that prisoners have choices when it comes to activities in the first place.

Second, DOJ claims the South Carolina program is unconstitutional, something the courts have repeatedly rejected. Once again we see the rule of law falling by the wayside when it comes to decisions of this Civil Rights Division. This is the same Civil Rights Division that was sanctioned more than $4 million during the Clinton administration for bringing cases as frivolous as the one against South Carolina prisons.

Third, with all the pragmatism of a sociology lecture at Harvard, DOJ argues that the separation of the HIV/AIDS prisoners "stigmatizes" the prisoners. Ozmint responds, "Prison is a voluntary activity; breaking the law, earning a criminal record, and wearing 'state issue,' all stigmatize. Since one purpose of prison is punishment, this stigmatization is somewhat intentional." How refreshing. . . .

It is one thing to protect the rights of "minorities" from baseless discrimination. But concern about HIV/AIDS is anything but baseless. The Civil Rights division is simply out of control. At a minimum, people in jail have an 8th Amendment Right to be free from "cruel and unusual" punishment which, I am sure most courts would define to include the likelihood of HIV transmission. Adams is right. The Civil Rights Division is out of control. As is virtually the entire Obama administration.

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Discrimination In Univ. Admissions

If you are Asian or poor and white, yet smart enough to get into an ivy league college here in America, you stand a good chance of being subject to discrimination. This from Minding the Campus:

The book is No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, a careful study of admission practices at eight unnamed elite colleges by Princeton sociologist Thomas J. Espenshade and a research associate, Alexandria Walton Radford. Writing here on July 12th in an article headlined, "How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others," Russell K. Nieli of Princeton wrote that the book reported an immense admissions disadvantage to Asians (because admissions officers think there are already too many in the best colleges) and poor whites, who are penalized by favoritism, not only for blacks and Hispanics, but also for whites with middle-class and upper-class backgrounds. None of the criticism that greeted Nieli's article has focused on the anti-Asian bias. All of it has dealt with the slim chances of poor whites at the most selective colleges. . . .

Middle America accepted the concept of equality for all over half a century ago. It is time to start demanding it.

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The UK Through Labour's Looking Glass

Its official. Britain is now a caricature of its once great self.

Once the most powerful nation on earth, Britain strode the globe like a colossus. Britain's legacy to the world has been the most important of the past millennium. The most free and rich nations in our world - from the U.S. to Canada to Australia, India and many others, have all emerged from a period of English colonialism. When the revolutionaries fired the first shots in 1776, what they were fighting for was the rights of free Englishmen. And when our founder's wanted to limit the power of the state, they dusted off the English Bill of Rights, made a few tweaks, and ensconced it as our Bill of Rights.

Yet today, the English Bill of Rights is not but a historical document of no legal worth. The rights of British subjects earned over a millennium of revolt and revolution are circumscribed by a modern Parliament that wields unchecked power. The most insidious restriction of those rights today is the right of a British citizen to be free in their speech. Want to feel the police power of the state, say disparaging things about homosexuality, Islam, . . . or now, vegans. Yes, that's right, vegans are one of only several newly minted victim classes by Labour in their Marxist laboratory that is the UK. This from The Times:

Vegans and teetotallers are to be given the same protection against discrimination as religious groups, under legislation championed by Harriet Harman, the equalities minister.

Members of cults and “new religions” such as Scientology, whose supporters include the film stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta, would also be offered protection, as would atheists.

A code of practice explaining the legal implications of the equality bill states that religions need not be mainstream or well known for their adherents to gain protection. “A belief need not include faith or worship of a god or gods, but must affect how a person lives their life or perceives the world.” . . .

This is nuts. Labour has once again taken the failed theory of multiculturalism and doubled down on it. A vegan diet now classifies as a religion? There is damn good reason to criticize those who eat a vegan diet. The simple fact is, on a pure vegan diet, you can't get enough B-12, thus inviting health problems. It is not a natural diet - rather, it is by definition an unhealthy and unsafe diet. The people that eat vegan - and scream from the rooftops that everyone else needs to start doing it also - are bonkers. And those who believe in abstinence from alcohol are now placed on equal footing with Christianity? Spare me.

If you are not living in the UK or are not following all of this closely, it is difficult to understand just how insidious all of this is. The practical reality of legal protection as a victim group under UK law is to give those newly minted victims carte blanche to push their avant garde life style into all four corners of British society on one hand, while the protection is used as huge cudgel to beat British society into silent submission on the other. If one of the Queen's reckless subjects has the temerity to object, they stand a real chance of inviting all sorts of negative consequences. Follow the link here to get a feel for those negative consequences. This is a cycle we see over and over again, with favored victim classes of the UK's left being held beyond not merely legitimate criticism, but lawful criticism.

If you are a white male in Britain, you are under attack from the Labour government. If you have a problem with radical homosexual agenda being pushed in state schools, better not say anything or you too will feel the discrimination. If you challenge the insane open doors immigration policy in the public sphere, you are treated as a pariah. And of course, if you are a Christian in Britain, you are under attack from the Labour government. That last is important because this latest decision of the Labour government is not merely multiculturalism taken to insane heights, it is also part of Labour's century old war on Christianity. Labour is raising every avant garde lifestyle choice to be the equal under the law with actual religion, thus calling the fundamental worth of Christianity into question. The PC culture of Britain is insane. It's Alice through the looking glass across the pond.

This once great country is now gone so far off the rails that, from an ocean away, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recognize the UK as a Western democracy. It is certainly moving into the sphere of soft totalitarianism. Moreover, with the vast majority of power transferred from Parliament to the EU, the fact is that it really no longer is a functioning democracy. The people of Britain can still vote, but their Parliament no longer has all that much to do. That of course came about after Labour refused to hold a promised referendum on the issue of transferring Britain's sovereignty to the EU. It was despicable - as is the current Tory position, that they will treat this Labour coup as a fait accompli. One wonders if the great ship of British state can ever be righted?

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An ACORN In The White House: Obama Putting Social Engineering Back Into The Economy

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

- - Edmund Burke

Can you say SUBPRIME CRISIS - THE SEQUEL. On Christmas Eve, Team Obama announced that it was uncapping government guarantees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, giving those institutions a blank check with our tax dollars and seemingly preparing the way for these institutions to again play major roles in driving our housing market. Now, our "post-racial" President is about to reinject race-based social engineering into the front and center of our financial system. This coming just a year and a half after the precise same practice, coupled with the government directed machinations of Fannie and Freddie, brought our economy to its knees. I've spent tons of pixels on this blog discussing the origins of our financial meltdown. The exceptional video below explains some of the basics in 3 minutes.



(H/T Hot Air)

Democrats' social engineering is the "but for" cause of our financial meltdown. As I have written previously, in summing up a very detailed post:

During the period 1977-2000, most of the elements of our current fiscal crisis were put in place. President Clinton turned a little known law from the Carter-era, the Community Reinvestment Act, into a tool of massive socialist engineering. Color-blind lending standards were eviscerated and new standards were enforced by the police powers of the government and through the enlistment of community organizers and their ilk. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were made the engines of the new social engineering, creating an ever-expanding market for mortgages founded upon the new "innovative" lending standards. All attempts by Republicans to attack this cancer failed. The left delegitimized and beat back every attempt to reform the CRA by recasting such efforts as racist.

As to [contributing factors, possibly] the most important but as of yet underreported aspect of the crisis, is how rating agencies of the era vastly underrated the risk of the toxic mortgage backed securities coming out of Fannie Mae. The repeal of Glass-Steagall actually strengthened some of the [defenses]. Credit Default Swaps, which developed unregulated during the Clinton era . . . [were] unable to withstand the widescale failure of the underlying mortgages, [particularly after the recent imposition of mark to market accounting rules.]

. . . [The] goal of "affordable housing" was laudable. Looking at this in retrospect, there were and are two ways to approach this issue - one from a capitalist and market based approach and one from a socialist and redistributionist approach. The former would have been a series of programs to repair credit and to assist individuals with amassing savings for a down payment. The latter, well, that was what the left was able to enact.

Yet today, Democrats are in the midst of trying to wipe not merely their responsibility for our financial meltdown from the historical record, but to claim that the fault lies completely with deregulation and derivatives. This is not merely an exercise in assigning blame, for what our graduate of Acorn in the White House wants to do is double down on the social engineering. This from the NY Times:

The Justice Department is beginning a major campaign against banks and mortgage brokers suspected of discriminating against minority applicants in lending, opening a new front in the Obama administration’s response to the foreclosure crisis.

Tom Perez, the assistant attorney general for the department’s Civil Rights Division, is expected to announce Thursday in New York that the administration is creating a new unit that will focus exclusively on unfair lending practices.

“We are looking at any and every practice in the industry,” Mr. Perez said in a recent interview.

As part of an expansion of the Civil Rights Division approved by Congress last year, the Justice Department is hiring at least four lawyers and an economist for the new unit, while about half a dozen current staff members will transfer into it.

Mr. Perez plans to formally announce the new unit at the “Wall Street Project” conference organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. He characterized the effort as a major turnaround, and criticized the previous administration as failing to scrutinize lending practices amid the subprime mortgage boom.

While past lending discrimination cases primarily focused on “redlining” — a bank’s refusal to lend to qualified borrowers in minority areas — the new push will instead center on a more recent phenomenon critics have called “reverse redlining.”

In reverse redlining, a mortgage brokerage or bank systematically singles out minority neighborhoods for loans with inferior terms like high up-front fees, high interest rates and lax underwriting practices. Because the original lender would typically resell such a loan after collecting its fees, it did not care about the risk of foreclosure.

It is a rarely used theory, and it carries political risks. Some critics have contended that government rules pushing banks to lend to minority and low-income borrowers contributed to the financial meltdown. The campaign could rekindle that debate.

“They encourage lenders to make risky loans for reasons such as diversity, and then when lenders have a problem because they made too many risky loans, they condemn them for that,” said Ernest Istook, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma. . . .

Under federal civil rights laws, a lending practice is illegal if it has a disparate impact on minority borrowers, and the Obama administration is signaling that it intends to make the enforcing of fair lending laws a signature policy push in 2010. . . .

Neither racism nor reverse racism have any place in America. Actual cases of improper discrimination need to be dealt with by an iron fist. But the disparate impact theory, that is a different beast entirely. What it means is that, even if a bank can show that every lending decision it made was based on commercially reasonable, colorblind lending standards and that its decisions were made without any reference to the race of the applicant, the bank can still be fined and subject to other penalties if, statistically, it did not make enough loans to low income individuals or in low income areas. This is the same legal theory that the Supreme Court all but completely struck down in Ricci v. Destefano several months ago. That case dealt with limitations on the disparate impact theory in employment decisions. Disparate impact is also the same legal theory that our government relied on to cause the subprime crisis in the first place. In light of Ricci, this is something that cries out for a court challenge on Constitutional grounds.

This is merely Obama's latest existential attack on an economy already gravely ill and with no signs of recovery in sight. It falls perfectly in line with his attempts to socially engineer our economy through health care and cap and trade. But as bad as the latter two portend to be, we know beyond doubt just how much damage the former has already caused. Moreover, Obama is simply too much the ideologue to learn the lessons of history. 2012 just can't come soon enough. In the meantime, it would seem the best way to combat this latest assault lays with our courts and with our elected representatives.

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Orwell and The Left's Ever Changing Dictionary

We see the attempts by the Left to redefine words all of the time. Our current batch of little Orwellians in office play this game constantly. For example, only a few weeks ago, the Left took to labeling Dede Scozafaza as a "moderate" for the purpose of attacking the "far right wing" - i.e., people who believe in fiscal conservatism and strong national defense. Their aim was to redefine language and, thus, recalibrate what is considered the norm in American politics. To call Scozafaza moderate would, I guess, put Lenin a bit left of center. I and others have blogged on this practice many times before. For example, see here.

George Orwell wrote the book on this practice. Actually, he wrote, wrote several books that include the practice, and not to mention at least one famous article on the topic, "Politics and the English Language." Mark Falcoff picks up the meme in an interesting article at NRO:

. . .[Orwell's] major concern, however, was not merely with literary niceties but with the moral consequences of linguistic obfuscation.

He put the point thus: “The decline of language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.” He was particularly irritated with the way political words were used “in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition.” Far too many political articles, he wrote, consisted “largely of euphemisms, question begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.” Such usages were “deliberately intended to deceive.”

Well, here we are more than six decades later, and how much worse the situation has become, particularly in the American press. In recent times, I have begun to make a list of political terms in common usage that are, in fact, private definitions, as Orwell calls them. Perhaps many readers of this journal could add to it. Here are just a few.

. . . “Civil-rights leader.” A half-century ago, when many states in this country denied black people the right to vote or sit where they wished on buses or dine in restaurants of their choice, this term had some real meaning. People risked their lives and well-being to challenge laws that were unfair. However, since the passage of so much legislation in the last 50 years — not just the Civil Rights Act but also the Voting Rights Act — as well as the various forms of “affirmative action” and court-ordered reapportionments of congressional districts to ensure maximum black representation, it is difficult to see what possible dictionary definition “civil-rights leader” could have except “black agitator,” “shakedown artist,” or “poverty pimp.” Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights leader; Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson — to take just two of many tawdry examples — are merely cruel caricatures of the same. Too bad the media can’t see the difference.. . .

“Progressive.” Here is a term that at least those of us over 50 learned at school to identify with Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, or perhaps William Jennings Bryan. Lately, however, it has become a euphemism for liberalism, left-liberalism, or plain old leftism. Even bomb-throwing Communists or self-described revolutionaries (for example, Angela Davis or Van Jones) are no longer characterized as “Reds” or even “Marxists”; they are merely lumped into the category of harmless “progressives.” To be sure, most people on the left end of our political spectrum could best be characterized as liberal (in the American rather than the European, or classical, sense). That’s what they used to be called. Why has the word “liberal” suddenly disappeared? The answer is simple. Thanks to real-life experience, many people have understandably come to associate the word “liberal” with high taxes, a permissive attitude towards crime and criminals, and social engineering of the most obnoxious sort (school busing, racial preferences, etc.). To force the medicine down one final time, it needs to be rebottled under yet another new label. . . .

There is much more to read. You can find the entire article here.

I would make one additions to the list of Mr. Falcoff's - its the term "discrimination." To be able to discriminate is a necessary survival mechanism of everyday life. We must be able to discriminate between things which are good and those which are bad. Yet the word has become a font of all evil under the pc talk of today, used as shorthand to define the practice of racism. The Left, having effectively made discrimination a modern sin, has carried forward this logic to its extreme under the banner of multiculturalism, where no value judgment are allowed to be made about competing cultures lest it be discriminatory. That doesn't seem to be working out too well for the UK.

Instapundit has a video that makes this point perfectly. Please watch it.

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Ricci - The Rest Of The Story

The Supreme Court, in deciding the case of Ricci v. Destefano yesterday, held that, while employers have a duty to make their hiring criteria racially neutral, once they have done that, they can't use race as a basis to disregard merit. This decision . . .

. . . should significantly impact those class of claims where no actual racism is shown but claims of racisim are made on the basis of statistics;

. . . will make it harder for plaintiffs to prevail in "disparate impact" claims and should significantly curb the practice of employers caving to the demands of race baiters;

. . . may well have an important effect in areas outside of employer-employee law where such statistical evaluations of race are used, such as in college admissions and, of critical importance, under the Community Reinvestment Act;

. . . marks a step towards answering whether and to what extent affirmative action is Constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.

. . . looks bad for Sotomayor but will not by itself derail her nomination.

. . . the little publicized facts of Ricci are that vile race baiting and blatant reverse discrimination were the driving forces behind the City's decision to throw out the test results in that case. The claim of potential liability for disparate impact was a pretext.

************************************************************

The Ricci case was brought by some white and Hispanic firefighters from New Haven, Connecticut under Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause. The firefighters had passed a promotion test that the City refused to certify because no blacks had scored high enough to also be promoted.

The penultimate issue is whether using race as a discrimating factor is constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court did not reach that issue, limiting its holding to Title VII law. But as Justice Scalia noted, the case marks a step towards "the evil day" when the Court will have to answer that question.

Title VII allows two ways to prove discrimination. One is actual discrimination against a specific individual. In the legalese of Title VII, that is called "disparate treatment."

The second way is to prove discrimination under Title VII is statistically. If the overall process of hiring and promoting results in minorities being underrepresented, then it raises what is called a "disparate impact" claim. Once a plaintiff statistically shows a disparate impacat, then the employer has to show that the criteria it used was racially neutral and business related. If the employer can show this, then the plaintiff can only prevail if he or she shows that there was an equally viable test or criteria that would not have resulted in the disparate impact.

On the facts of Ricci, it was clear that New Haven took great care to insure that the hiring process would be racially neutral and carefully tailored to question on the most important topics relating to fire fighting duties. The people that were hired to design the test came to New Haven, engaged in extensive interviews and ride alongs, and when they developed the questions, they oversampled minorities to insure that the questions would not inadvertently favor whites. As to the boards for the oral exams, the people that sat on the boards were fire dept. senior personel from outside New Haven, two thirds of whom were minorities.

In short, the City had adopted a hiring criteria that resulted in situation where a minority plaintiff could bring suit and prove a prima facie case of disparate impact because no minorities scored high enough to be promoted. However, to toss the test based simply on this fact would be an unlawful act of racism / "disparate treatment" against those people who passed the test. And that was precisely what the Supreme Court said an employer cannot do. An employer can now only lawfully throw out tests and start over if they can show "a strong basis in evidence that the test was deficient . . ."

The general consensus is that this will make it harder to prove "disparate impact" claims. Further, it should significantly curb the practice of employers caving to the demands of race baiters when they have acted reasonably and without discriminatory intent - which actually is what went on Ricci. I cover those facts in detail at the end of this post.

The decision should also impact outside of employer-employee arena, in areas such as college admissions. Additionally, it might well have an impact on banks and mortgage lenders under the Community Reinvestment Act - that piece of ill advised legislation at the very center of our economic meltdown. The CRA now includes provisions that use statistical analysis to punish banks who have not made "sufficient" loans to minorities, irrespective of whether neutral lending criteria was followed in each and every loan decision. Obama has proposed vastly expanding the CRA under his proposal for massive regulation of our financial sector. But I see no reason that the Ricci decision would not also apply in the banking context.

As to Justice Sotomayor, this Ed Whelan at NRO

Judge Sotomayor thought it appropriate to use an unpublished summary order to dispose of the claims of the New Haven firefighters in Ricci v. DeStefano. Today the Supreme Court issued 93 pages of opinions in the case that Sotomayor acted to bury.

Further, although there is a sharp 5-4 divide among the justices, not a single justice thought that Judge Sotomayor acted correctly in granting summary judgment for the City of New Haven.

All of that is true, but the bottom line is that this was a split decision and trying to make the fine point that there is a significant difference between Sotomayor's handling of the case and the position of the four dissenters will likely be lost in the spin.

Justice Ginsburg wrote a dissent in essence arguing for the good to be had from practicing reverse discrimination in the future to atone for original sins of our forebearers. Richard Epstein does a good job of fisking her stroll down memory lane.

On a final note, the facts of this case are far more objectionable than I have ever seen in the MSM stories covering it. The City threw out the test not simply out of fear of being sued disparate impact. Reverse racism played a predominant and ugly role. Justice Alito tells us the rest of the story in his concurring opinion.

This story is, I think, truly typical of the split in the African American community. You see on one side the majority of the african american community who take no substantial part in identity politics. On the other side are those for whom identity politics defines everything. Thus, in this case, the vast majority of African Americans who were involved in the hiring process thought it fair and that the results should be certified. Where you get the vile reverse racism is from a race baiting community organizer/Rev. Wright style preacher and a left wing Mayor who feeds the preacher in return for votes.

Here are the facts from Justic Alito's opinion minus the citations:

. . . “[A] jury could rationally infer that city officials worked behind the scenes to sabotage the promotional examinations because they knew that, were the exams certified, theMayor would incur the wrath of [Rev. Boise] Kimber and other influential leaders of New Haven’s African-American community.”

This admission finds ample support in the record. Reverend Boise Kimber . . . is a politically powerful New Haven pastor and a self-professed “‘kingmaker.’” On one occasion, “[i]n front of TV cameras, he threatened a race riot duringthe murder trial of the black man arrested for killing white Yalie Christian Prince. He continues to call whites racist if they question his actions.”

Reverend Kimber’s personal ties with seven-term New Haven Mayor John DeStefano (Mayor) stretch back more than a decade. In 1996, for example, Mayor DeStefano testified for Rev. Kimber as a character witness when Rev. Kimber — then the manager of a funeral home — was prosecuted and convicted for stealing prepaid funeral expenses from an elderly woman and then lying about the matter under oath. “Reverend Kimber has played a leadership role in all of Mayor DeStefano’s political campaigns, [and] is considered a valuable political supporter and vote-getter.” According to the Mayor’s former campaign manager (who is currently his executive assistant), Rev. Kimber is an invaluable political asset because “[h]e’s very good at organizing people and putting together field operations, as a result of his ties to labor, his prominence in the religious community and his long-standing commitment to roots.”

In 2002, the Mayor picked Rev. Kimber to serve as the Chairman of the New Haven Board of Fire Commissioners (BFC), “despite the fact that he had no experience in the profession, fire administration, [or] municipal management.” In that capacity, Rev. Kimber told fire fighters that certain new recruits would not be hired because “‘they just have too many vowels in their name[s].’” After protests about this comment, Rev. Kimber stepped down as chairman of the BFC, but he remained on the BFC and retained “a direct line to the mayor.”

Almost immediately after the test results were revealed in “early January” 2004, Rev. Kimber called the City’s Chief Administrative Officer, Karen Dubois-Walton, who “acts ‘on behalf of the Mayor.’” Dubois Walton and Rev. Kimber met privately in her office because he wanted “to express his opinion” about the test results and “to have some influence” over the City’s response. . . . Rev. Kimber adamantly opposed certification of the test results . . .

On January 12, 2004, Tina Burgett (the director of theCity’s Department of Human Resources) sent an e-mail toDubois-Walton to coordinate the City’s response to the test results. Burgett wanted to clarify that the City’s executive officials would meet “sans the Chief, and that once we had a better fix on the next steps we would meet with theMayor (possibly) and then the two Chiefs.” The “two Chiefs” are Fire Chief William Grant (who is white) and Assistant Fire Chief Ronald Dumas (who is African-American). Both chiefs believed that the test results should be certified.

Petitioners allege, and the record suggests, that the Mayor and his staff colluded “sans the Chief[s]” because “the defendants did not want Grant’s or Dumas’ views to be publicly known; accordingly both men were prevented by the Mayor and his staff from making any statements regarding the matter.” The next day, on January 13, 2004, Chad Legel, who had designed the tests, flew from Chicago to New Haven to meet with Dubois-Walton, Burgett, and Thomas Ude, the City’s corporate counsel. “Legel outlined the merits of the examination and why city officials should be confident in the validity of the results.” But according to Legel, Dubois-Walton was “argumentative”and apparently had already made up her mind that the tests were “‘discriminatory.’” Again according to Legel, “[a] theme” of the meeting was “the political and racial overtones of what was going on in the City.” “Legel came away from the January 13, 2004 meeting with the impression that defendants were already leaning toward discarding the examination results.”

On January 22, 2004, the Civil Service Board (CSB orBoard) convened its first public meeting. Almost immediately, Rev. Kimber began to exert political pressure on the CSB. He began a loud, minutes-long outburst that required the CSB Chairman to shout him down and hold him out of order three times. Reverend Kimber protested the public meeting, arguing that he and the other fire commissioners should first be allowed to meet with the CSB in private.

Four days after the CSB’s first meeting, Mayor DeStefano’s executive aide sent an e-mail to Dubois-Walton, Burgett, and Ude. The message clearly indicated that the Mayor had made up his mind to oppose certification of the test results but nevertheless wanted to conceal that fact from the public:

“I wanted to make sure we are all on the same pagefor this meeting tomorrow. . . . [L]et’s remember, that these folks are not against certification yet. So we can’t go in and tell them that is our position; we have to deliberate and arrive there as the fairest and most cogent outcome.”

On February 5, 2004, the CSB convened its second public meeting. Reverend Kimber again testified and threatened the CSB with political recriminations if they voted to certify the test results:

“I look at this [Board] tonight. I look at three whites
and one Hispanic and no blacks. . . . I would hope that you would not put yourself in this type of position, a political ramification that may come back upon you as
you sit on this [Board] and decide the future of a department and the future of those who are being promoted.

One of the CSB members “t[ook] great offense” because he believed that Rev. Kimber “consider[ed] [him] a bigot because [his] face is white.” The offended CSB member eventually voted not to certify the test results.

One of Rev. Kimber’s “friends and allies,” Lieutenant Gary Tinney, also exacerbated racial tensions before the CSB. After some firefighters applauded in support of certifying the test results, “Lt. Tinney exclaimed, ‘Listen to the Klansmen behind us.’” Id., at 225a. Tinney also has strong ties to the Mayor’s office. After learning that he had not scored well enough on the captain’s exam to earn a promotion, Tinney called Dubois-Walton and arranged a meeting in her office. Tinney alleged that the white firefighters had cheated on their exams — an accusation that Dubois-Walton conveyed to the Board without first conducting an investigation into its veracity. The allegation turned out to be baseless.

Dubois-Walton never retracted the cheating allegation, but she and other executive officials testified several times before the CSB. In accordance with directions from the Mayor’s office to make the CSB meetings appear deliberative, executive officials remained publicly uncommitted about certification — while simultaneously “work[ing] as a team” behind closed doors with the secretary of the CSB to devise a political message that would convince the CSB to vote against certification. At the public CSB meeting on March 11, 2004, for example, Corporation Counsel Ude bristled at one board member’s suggestion that City officials were recommending against certifying the test results. . . . But within days of making that public statement, Ude privately told other members of the Mayor’s team “the ONLY way we get to adecision not to certify is” to focus on something other than “a big discussion re: adverse impact” law.

As part of its effort to deflect attention from the specifics of the test, the City relied heavily on the testimony of Dr.Christopher Hornick, who is one of Chad Legel’s competitors in the test-development business. Hornick never “stud[ied] the test [that Legel developed] at length or in detail,” but Hornick did review and rely upon literature sent to him by Burgett to criticize Legel’s test. For example, Hornick “noted in the literature that [Burgett] sent that the test was not customized to the New Haven Fire Department.” The Chairman of the CSB immediately corrected Hornick. . . . Hornick also relied on newspaper accounts — again, sent to him by Burgett — pertaining to the controversy surrounding the certification decision. Although Hornick again admitted that he had no knowledge about the actual test that Legel had developed and that the City had administered, the City repeatedly relied upon Hornick as a testing “guru” and, in the CSB Chairman’s words, “the City ke[pt]quoting him as a person that we should rely upon more than anybody else [to conclude that there] is a better way — a better mousetrap.” Dubois-Walton later admitted that the City rewarded Hornick for his testimony by hiring him to develop and administer an alternative test.

At some point prior to the CSB’s public meeting on March 18, 2004, the Mayor decided to use his executive authority to disregard the test results — even if the CSB ultimately voted to certify them. Accordingly, on the evening of March 17th, Dubois-Walton sent an e-mail to the Mayor, the Mayor’s executive assistant, Burgett, and attorney Ude, attaching two alternative press releases. The first would be issued if the CSB voted not to certify the test results; the second would be issued (and would explain the Mayor’s invocationof his executive authority) if the CSB voted to certify the test results. Half an hour after Dubois-Walton circulated the alternative drafts, Burgett replied: “[W]ell, that seems to say it all. Let’s hope draft #2 hits the shredder tomorrow nite.”

Soon after the CSB voted against certification, Mayor DeStefano appeared at a dinner event and “took credit for the scu[tt]ling of the examination results.”

Those are some ugly facts indeed, but are hardly unique. To the contrary, this fact pattern is often seen with the race baiting crowd, from Al Sharpton, to Jeremiah Wright to Jesse Jackson, etc. They have suffered a significant blow as a result of Ricci. They only bad thing about this decision is that it was a 5-4 split. Should we lose any of the conservative justices, instead of equal protection of the laws, we will have reverse discrimination ensconced as Constitutional law. God please save the Court . . . at least through 2012.

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Another Word On The BNP

I've posted on the EU election here, noting the fact that the BNP won two seats and my thoughts on that outcome. Brits At Their Best has a post on the election that also includes a discussion of the reasons for the BNP's growing popularity. They quote Andrew Stuttaford from the The Corner, who writes:

The relative success (it won two seats) of the. . .British National Party. . .in the U.K. slice of the EU elections is best seen primarily as the product of five factors: (a) the largely accurate perception that the Blair-Brown governments were enablers of mass immigration; (b) not-unconnected fears over the rise of militant Islam within the U.K.; (c) dislike of the EU; (d) the economic crisis; (e) globalization (on economics & trade policy the party is quite some way to the left) and; (f) the widespread perception, flowing in no small part from points a-e, that no parliamentary party is prepared to stick up for the interests of the white working class, a perception that explains the BNP's recent success in finding support amongst former Labour voters. Throw in the the way that the expenses scandal now roiling parliament has discredited much of the existing political class, and there you have it . . .

I would add that the new "Equality" legislation being considered by Parliament in effect would institutionalize reverse racism against white male workers in the UK. As the Daily Times describes it, "[e]mployers will be given legal powers to discriminate in favour of women and black job candidates under a controversial equality shake-up." Its not surprising that there is finally a back lash being felt to all of this. It's long overdue.

I can't see the BNP winning an electoral majority in the UK in the foreseeable future. But I can see their growing popularity marking a real change to the terms of the debate. And in the UK, where for example even minor criticism of such things as immigration has been enough to get one labled a racist and ridden out of politics on a rail, that is a good thing indeed.

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Obama's Cairo Address: Nukes, Iran & Weakness Writ Large

I understand those who protest that some countries have [nuclear] weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. And that's why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.

President Barack Obama, Address in Cairo, June 4, 2009

How many things are suicidally wrong with those statements? One, those statements come perilously close to Obama announcing that he will not use force to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. If we have no right to decide who is able to get a nuclear arsenal, then obviously, in Obamaworld, we have no right to use force to stop such an eventuality. That is troubling indeed, as a nuclear armed Iran presents a danger to the West and to Israel that easily eclipses the threat from the Soviets and China during the Cold War. If you do not know why, Bernard Lewis explains it here.

Two, this is moral equivalency and multiculturalism taken to the very suicidal end of logic and into the realm of fantasy. Every nation is the equal of every other nation, end of discussion? Is there to be no discrimination based on facts and history?

Discrimination is the single most basic of survival skills. You see a snake. Do you give it a wide berth or do you ignore it and walk by. To answer that, you take a look at the shape of its head, its markings and its tail. You may not know the type of snake it is, but looking at those things will immediately tell you weather the snake is deadly or just a friendly forest critter. Bottom line, the ability to discriminate is coextensive with the ability to survive. Is this ice thick enough to hold my weight? Is that branch? Is that man friend or foe? Etc., etc.

We expect our President to be able to discriminate who is a danger to us and who is not. So is Obama capable of considering the fact that Iran is the world's central banker of terrorism? Is it impermissible for Obama consider the assessment of Sec. of Def. Gates, that "everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike?" Should Obama ignore the mad mullah's unbroken history of the committing or soliciting the most vile terrorism since 1979? Should Obama ignore that Iran's leadership has repeatedly talked of destroying Israel? In Obamaworld, all of these are apparently impermissible bases on which to discriminate between who can have a nuclear weapon and who we should prevent at all costs from attaining one. If that is true, then our chances of survival as well as Israel's just dropped precipitously.

Next, is there anyone in this world over the age of 12 who thinks that Obama's drive toward a nuclear free world is anything other than the most sophomoric of fantasies. I would expect any child, having reached the developmental stage of a 12 year old, to understand that no matter how much Obama may wish it, he cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

And indeed, a world without nuclear weapons is not a safer one. It does not mean any less will be killed in conflicts. Take a look at Japan in World War II. We killed 100,000 plus Japanese with two atomic bombs. The alternative would have been over a million combined U.S. and Japanese casualties had we not used the bombs. Two, how can we be sure that any supposed disarmament is actually bilateral and not unilateral. We would not last long in this world if the only people who had nuclear weapons hidden away were North Korea and Iran.

As to Iran itself, Obama continued his habit of serial apologetics and moral equivalency. Obama apologized to Iran for the U.S. role in a coup that occurred in 1953. He then made a moral equivalency argument, equating that bad act over half a century ago with the countless acts of terrorism and the countless number of innocent lives lost at the hands of the mad mullahs from 1979 through today. Again, Obama shows that he is unable or unwilling to discriminate or make any sort of value judgment. This is not tact, nor is it diplomacy. It is incredibly dangerous because it ignores reality. It is, in fact, weakness writ large.

Summary - Obama's Cairo Address: What We Needed, What We Got
Part 1 - Obama's Cairo Address: Hiding From The Existential Problems Of The Muslim World
Part 2 - Obama's Cairo Address: A Walk Back From Democracy & Iraq
Part 3 - Obama's Cairo Address: Obama Calls For Women's Rights While Glossing Over Discrimination & Violence
Part 4 - Obama's Cairo Address: Nukes, Iran & Weakness Writ Large
Part 5 - Obama's Cairo Address: Israel & Palestine – A Little Good, A Lot Of Outrageousness
Part 6 - Obama's Cairo Address: Islam's Tradition Of Religious Tolerance?
Part 7 - Obama's Cairo Address: The Dangerous Whitewashing Of History

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To Sullivan & Steinem: Knock it Off With The Groundless Charges of Discrimination

I am not sure when my white male guilt ended. But at this point its long gone. I will happilly speak out against discrimination if I see it. Barring that, trying to tell me that I bear the stigma of original discriminatory sin just pisses me off and gets me defenisve - aggresively so. Enough already with the race and gender cards.

What brought this little rant on? Well, according to the dogma of today's Democrats, my status as a white male makes me the enemy and one who inherently discriminates against African Americans on account of race and women on account of gender. Taking that shibboleth to its logical conclusion, any decision that I might make to vote for a future President of the U.S. that rejects either an African American or a woman is, respectively, racial discrimination (Andrew Sullivan today) or gender discrimination (Gloria Steinem yesterday).

The race card and gender card are simply ludicrous. Whatever may have been the history of America through its first century and a half of existance, America of today elects people of every race, religion, color and gender to public office. Clearly than, to tag Americans as a group with discrimination sounds more than a bit questionable.

That said, I will never vote for Barack Obama for president. That has nothing to do with the color of his skin and everything to do with my belief that he is a hard line liberal whose domestic and foreign policies would damage America, perhaps mortally so given the challenges we face. My opposition to Hillary Clinton is on precisely the same grounds. Find me a Margaret Thatcher or Thomas Sowell, put them in the presidential race, and the chances that they would get my vote are incredibly high. All that said, idiots like Gloria Steinem and Andrew Sullivan playing the discrimination cards are not doing Obama or Clinton any favors whatsoever. It invites a backlash.

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Interesting News From Around The Web 12/14/07

From the USA Today: Congressional Democrats . . . seem lost in a time warp. . . . [T]oo many seem unable or unwilling to admit that President Bush's surge of 30,000 more troops has succeeded beyond their initial predictions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who in the spring declared the war lost, said last week that "the surge hasn't accomplished its goals." Anti-war Democrats remain fixated on tying war funding to a rapid troop withdrawal. Yet pulling the troops out precipitously threatens to squander the progress of recent months . . .

And now that the surge has worked, Cheat Seeking Missles ponders what comes next and looks for answers to Iraq the Model and Christopher Kojm.

Meanwhile, Lebanon continues to suffer from the bloodlust of Iran and Syria. Lebanon remains unable to choose a President against the backdrop of another assassination and in light of the outrageous demands of Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah. The single biggest key to reestablishing peace in the Middle East is the destruction of Iran’s theocracy. It would end the financing of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza strip, it would end the immediate threat of nuclear proliferation, and it would isolate and neutralize Syria.

Our federal prosecutors are having a real problem with making charges of terrorism stick. Joshuapundit is doing a good job of keeping track of the most recent cases and the problems arising out of jurors who take their political beliefs into the jury room. The latest chapter in that tale is the Sears Tower case involving homegrown terrorists.

I love this story on the CIA waterboarding issue from the other day. The headline is "CIA Destroyed Tapes Despite Court Order." Of course, the problem with that assertion is that neither of the Court Orders described in the article could possibly have applied to the waterboarding tapes, something the author very grudgingly admits later in the story.

There is a long post due on the First Amendment – the words of which do not include "separation of Church and State." In the meantime, Rhymes with Right tells us that we have the House voting unanimously in favor of resolutions supporting both Hinduism and Islam, but nine Democrats voting against a similar resolution in support of Christianity. This arises from the same type of virulent, multicultural ethos discussed in this post that is destroying Britain. From the other end of the spectrum, a Muslim is seeking a ban on crosses as offensive. It leaves one near speechless.

Right Wing Nuthouse likes compares Thompson and Huckabee, or as he puts it, Substance versus Stupid. This is a very good post, and I concur completely for all the reasons he states.

According to Charles Krauthammer, "It's two centuries since the passage of the First Amendment, and our presidential candidates still cannot distinguish establishment from free exercise."

Corruption can destroy a democracy. That said, the corruption of Fatah under Yasser Arafat was legendary. And that corruption played a huge role in the election of Hamas by the Palestinians in the last election. Soccer Dad looks at the issue of corruption in the PA now under Abbas. It has not subsided.

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