Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Justice Department's Race Hustling Division.



From Jason Riley at the WSJ, discussing the nexus between the Justice Dept., race hustlers and suits brought against police departments for "patterns and practices" of discrimination:

Attorney General Holder accuses Americans of being afraid to talk honestly about race relations, then uses his office to scapegoat police departments for black pathology. The conversation that Mr. Holder wants to have about race assumes facts not in evidence. It is also the wrong message to send to the young black men responsible for so much violent crime. These lawsuits make excuses for behavior that ought to be condemned and distract from a much more consequential debate about black cultural attitudes toward work, marriage, parenting and the rule of law. What ails these black communities are the Michael Browns, not the Darren Wilsons. And Mr. Holder’s war on cops won’t change that.

Amen. The Justice Dept. under Obama has become a political arm of the left. When I think back on all the flack Alberto Gonzalez took for hiring a few conservatives, and then look at the uber-radicals that Holder has packed the Justice Department with -- and in particular the Office of Civil Rights (a misnomer) -- it boggles the mind.







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Tuesday, August 27, 2013

99 Years Old Fannie Gumbinger -- Will Obama Mention Her In His Speech On MLK Wednesday?



Fannie Gumbinger was a 99 year old woman living in Poughkeepsie, NY. She had lived through WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. What she couldn't live through was meeting a member of the feral black underclass. She was murdered on Friday by Javon Tyrek Rogers, a 20 year old black who made his living by burglary.



How morally bankrupt must one's culture be in order to allow one to murder a 99 year old woman. The American Thinker has a post on The Faces Of Evil, covering some of the more notable members of the feral black underclass that have committed outrageous acts of violence. The article then concludes:

§ Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.

§ The best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percent of the population that is black and Hispanic.

§ Blacks are 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites then vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit a robbery.

§ The death toll from murder in Chicago over the last decade exceeds the death toll of our soldiers in Afghanistan since the beginning of that war. [Handgun purchases are not allowed in Chicago.]

§ Nearly 3/4 of black children are born out of wedlock. Generations of children are being raise without fathers.

§ Academic achievement for black students is appallingly low, despite a large amount of money being spent to provide that group with educational opportunities.

Now consider the fact that decent black people are the people who are most harmed by this violent subculture. They are the closest to the problem and suffer the most from it. But we all suffer from this growing cancer and ignoring the problem is simply one way to commit national suicide.

This problem is not about skin color. The real problem is bad values. There is nothing about having melanin in your skin that will protect you from the natural consequences of destructive values. Violent, hostile, uneducated, misogynistic men who do not care for their children will not be successful... anywhere, ever. And no civilization can survive the degradation of its women. Thug culture celebrates the degradation of women.

The many problems facing blacks in America don't spring from even a residue of white racism. MLK Jr.'s speech fifty years ago called on America to act with moral clarity on the issue of race. He was right, and he has largely succeeded. The problems facing blacks in America today are internal. Will anyone in the civil rights movement of today actually start addressing the real problems?

The short answer to that is no. Perhaps the most telling part of the memorial to MLK Jr. held last week, with people like Congressman John Lewis, Rev. Al and MLK III as the key speakers, was that it was largely paid for by teachers unions, the single greatest enemy of blacks today. Unless and until some blacks at the grass roots level figure out that they are being cynically manipulated for money and power, nothing in their world will change. Meanwhile, the Reverends Al and Jessee will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Update: And, on cue, the Reverend Jackson sticks up his head, not to talk about the problems in the black community, nor to talk about Fannie Gumbinger or Chris Lane, but to make the claim that the real thing for blacks to be afraid of is The Tea Party:

Jesse Jackson has no doubt that on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Republican opposition to President Obama’s policies is motivated by racial animus reminiscent of the Civil War-era South. “The tea party is the resurrection of the Confederacy, it’s the Fort Sumter tea party,” Jackson told Politico’s Glenn Thrush.

Fight. Hey, if your black in America, Jesse has your back. And your back will stay planted right where it is so long as you keep buying the poison he is selling you.







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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Oh Breitbart, Where Are You? We Need A New Race Narrative In The U.S.

Justice demands that the killing of Trevon Martin, precisely like any other killing, be fully investigated.   Justice likewise demands that if the facts warrant, his killer, the "white Hispanic" (and registered Democrat) George Zimmerman, should be prosecuted, but, equally, that if the facts don't show Zimmerman's conduct to be culpable, that Zimmerman should not suffer any legal consequence. For all of the facts known to date, Sister Toldjah has an exceptional roll up.

But justice has taken a back seat as the race hustlers have come out in force, calling for George Zimmerman's blood - the facts, investigation and applicable law be damned. All of the problems of the black community are glossed over as the loudest of voices all claim that the biggest problem blacks suffer from is violent white racism. That is about as far from reality as one can get.

The New Black Panthers - the same group calling for the murder of "cracker babies" - put out a "wanted" poster and has now put a bounty out for Zimmerman's capture. Louis Farrakhan - whom you might remember as the man who motivated the Virginia sniper - has called for "retribution." Spike Lee retweeted Zimmerman's address - though he got it wrong - in a clear invitation to vigilante justice.  Jesse Jackson, who recently commented that "“targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business” in America - has proclaimed that there will be "no peace" until Zimmerman is arrested. MSNBC's resident race hustler, Al Sharpton - the man largely responsible for the Crown Heights riots that ended in the murder of two men by blacks - has made the Martin case his cause celebre, likewise portraying this as a racial incident and calling for Zimmerman's immediate arrest.  According to Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson, that intellectual heavyweight who worried that too many people on Guam might cause it to tip over, Martin was "executed for 'WWB' in a 'GC.' Walking While Black in a Gated Community."  Johnson may be dumber than a tomato, but he knows the language of race hustling.  He has been joined in his obscenities by many other of his fellow black Congressmen and women.

Are you at all surprised that there has not been a single word of criticism from the left - and nowhere near enough from the right - for these outrageous acts, at least several of which amount to a call for a lynching?  On the contrary, the left embraces these scandalous acts, while the right is so used to them that the response is muted.    

Now let's take a look at some of the other race based violence going on in America - most of which is going virtually unreported and unremarked.

Two weeks ago, two 16 year old blacks followed a 13 year old white boy they did not know while he was on his way home from school. At some point, they tossed gas in his face, then lit him on fire while saying "you get what you deserve, white boy."  There was zero mention of it in the national media.  Regardless, to commit this barbaric crime, what kind of hatred must these two blacks have been fed, and who fed it to them?  It turns out that race hatred was being taught to blacks in their Kansas City public school which, as Robert Avrech describes, "teaches and encourages racial constructs that make Nazi Germany look positively multicultural."  Do see his post for the whole stomach churning story.

Though the above described attack was particularly heinous, it is hardly an anomaly. Brutal black race violence is not unusual at all in many places. In Philadelphia, they are seeing "almost weekly racially motivated mob attacks on white people. The media censors all mention of the race and only prints tiny stories calling them “flash mobs.”' This type of black mob racially motivated violence has also appeared in other cities across the U.S. In San Francisco and Oakland, its black mob violence directed at Asians. These are blacks being fed a steady diet of hatred and victimization by the left, and then lashing out.

The above is anecdotal evidence.  Let's review some of the statistics.

- "In 2005, there were more than 645,000 victims of cross-racial violent crimes between blacks and whites in the U.S. In 90% of those crimes, black offenders attacked white victims."

- "Black men are the leading cause of death among young blacks [male and female]”; “1 in 146 black males are at risk of violent death”; and though comprising only 13 percent of the U.S. population, 43 percent of all murder victims are black, compounded by the fact that 93 percent of them are killed by other blacks."

- "There were two and a half times as many white and Hispanic victims of black killers in 2009 as there were black victims of white and Hispanic killers, even though the black population is one-sixth that of whites and Hispanics combined. If Hispanics were removed from the category of “white” killers of blacks, the percentage of blacks killed by Anglo whites would plummet, since a significant percentage of what the FBI calls “white”-on-black killings represent gang warfare between Hispanic and black gangs."

- In "New York City, [b]lacks commit 80 percent of all shootings . . . — as reported by the victims of and witnesses to those shootings — though they are but 23 percent of the population; whites commit 1.4 percent of all shootings, though they are 35 percent of the population. Add Hispanic shootings to the black tally, and you account for 98 percent of all of the city’s gun violence."

- "The life expectancy for black men in prison is higher than the life expectancy for black men outside of prison."

But let's go beyond crime statistics.  One of the single greatest indicators of how a child will turn out - academically, financially, and in virtually all areas of achievement, is whether the child is raised in a single parent household as opposed to a two parent household.  It is also a predictor of violence and criminality.  Today, in the black community, fully "72 percent of Black children are raised in a single parent household."  The much maligned Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s now fifty year old Department of Labor report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," has proven horribly prophetic.

Black poverty is the highest in the nation.  In 2011 it topped 27%, with over 38% of black children being raised in poverty.  There is the direct correlation between education and income, and thus, poverty.  The problems of education in inner city schools are open, obvious, and simply unforgivable.  It is a crisis issue for black America.  For but one example, Detroit, a city that is over 80% black, is America's poorest city, with over 36% of its residents listed as impovrished.  Half of the residents of the city are functionally illiterate.  Yet it is the left, protecting their public sector union piggy banks at all costs, that are the reason for this situation.

So there are huge problems in the black community.  But among those problems, violent racism directed at blacks is at or near the bottom of the list.  And indeed, racism itself of any kind directed at blacks is so absent from our country today that the race hustlers have felt compelled to invent the ludicrous construct of "color blind racism."  Yet no one would know that if they just listen to the rouge's gallery of race hustlers listed at the top of this post.  All of them want to pretend that its 1950 and Bull Conor, that infamous southern Democrat, is using the dogs and the hoses on blacks.  The left teach blacks to feel victimized by whites, to nurse and, indeed, be defined by hatred of whites, and to blame all their troubles on whites.  Not a single one of these "black leaders" is doing a damn thing about the true problems of the black community.  And of course, they are aided and abetted by the left as a whole.  To the left, anything that supports the black victim narrative is acceptable, no matter how unmoored from reality, no matter how obscene and noxious.

Racism has no place in America.  That holds equally true for reverse racism - it too is every bit as repugnant and likewise, has no place in America.  Yet the left has created two standards in America.  They have set a high bar for anyone not a left wing black, all of whom are held to rigid standards of political correctness, and no standards whatsoever for left wing blacks.  The right has acquiesced in this for years.  No more.  Everyone in our country needs to start holding all the race hustlers and their leftist enablers to account.

The acts of the New Black Panthers are illegal and we should be demanding that they be investigated.  (I know, fat chance with Eric Holder, but the demand should be made all the same.)  The same with Spike Lee - who should also face civil action from the people actually living at the address he tweeted.  Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam need to be denounced and treated just as were the KKK - whom they resemble in mirror image.  Moreover, we should be demanding that Nation of Islam "prison ministry" should be shut down in every state.  Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton need to be challenged vociferously for their ridiculous claims about white racism and, equally, about just what have they done to advance the plight of blacks.  It is no secret they have done far more for their bank accounts than their community.  After that, they should be shunned and their appearances protested at every opportunity.  They need to be treated like the vile race hustlers they are.

And just to ask, if the state concludes, as they well may, that Zimmerman acted legally, do you think that there will be violence from black mobs stirred up by these race hustlers?  I think it is inevitable.  And every one of these race hustlers need to be held to account for it. Update: Apparently, a "flash mob" of black high school students found not merely time to rally for Martin, but then also to raid a Walgreens. Because, you know, nothing says racial justice like ransacking and robbing a store. The race hustlers need to be billed.

Race hustling and reverse racism need to go the way racism itself in America.  It is long past time we need to start disrupting the race narrative with actual facts.  For the benefit of every single person in this nation, it is long past time that we start holding the black left to the same standards of conduct as everyone else.  Is there any doubt that if Breitbart were alive, he would be leading the charge on this.  He left us far too soon.  It is left up to us.






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Thursday, August 12, 2010

Obama Bucks

MOB RUSH FOR FED AID DRAWS RIOT POLICE
DRUDGE REPORT

Vocal Minority has some pointed commentary.

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Sunday, August 8, 2010

Tea Party Blacks Face A Sceptical Press

Several black conservative members of the Tea Party movement recently held a press conference to introduce themselves and to opine that the Tea Party movement is not animated by race. The press was a bit aggressive, with much attention paid to the Congressional Black Caucus charges of racial animus dating back to the weekend of the healthcare vote. The speakers make several good points, the two most important being that there is no place in the press, including the black press, for demonizing those with whom they disagree, and that our nation will be a far stronger nation when we stop thinking in terms of black and white.



(H/T Vocal Minority)

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Friday, April 16, 2010

"These Are My People . . . Americans"

The gap between the MSM and race baiting industry and reality is a wide one indeed. Kathy Kelly interviews a tea party protester in the video below.



(H/T Hot Air)

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Friday, January 22, 2010

Obama & Post-Racial America


There has been some news to note on the issue of race in America. The first, from Fox, is that the tea party movement may perhaps be a bit more diverse than the far left wants to admit:

Though the tea party movement has attracted criticism for its supposed lack of diversity, minority activists who are involved say the movement has little to do with race, and that it is attracting a more diverse crowd every day.

. . . [Lloyd] Marcus, a black conservative who is now involved in the growing tea party movement, attributes the problems of his childhood neighborhood, his extended family and the black community in general to a "cradle-to-grave government dependency" that in the case of his cousins enabled an idle life of crime and drug abuse.

To Marcus, President Obama's policies perpetuate that dependency. That's why, he says, it baffles him and other black conservatives when the tea party movement is dismissed as somehow anti-black, as a rowdy bunch of ignorant, white protesters who have it in for the nation's first black president.

"This is the nicest angry mob I've ever seen," Marcus said.

Marcus is one of a number of black conservatives who have joined up with, and helped lead, the conservative tea party movement since its inception. Though the movement has attracted criticism for its supposed lack of diversity -- MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently called the groups "monochromatic" and "all white" -- those minority activists who are involved say the movement has little to do with race, and that it is attracting a more diverse crowd every day.

"I think a lot of black people are waking up from their Obama night-of-the-living-dead fog," Marcus said. "They were walking around like zombies going Obama, Obama, Obama."

He and other black conservatives connected with one of the hundreds of tea party groups across America were largely active in conservative and Republican causes before the movement's start in early 2009. They spoke and wrote about the need for smaller government, lower spending and lower taxes and warned that Obama's candidacy would pose a threat to those values.

But in the tea party movement they found a group that not only reflected their views but provided a platform. . . .

Well, at least in that regard, Obama is having a positive effect on race relations. A recent poll suggests that, beyond the mere fact of his election, Obama has had no further positive impact on race relations in America. This from the Washington Post:

Soaring expectations about the effect of the first black president on U.S. race relations have collided with a more mundane reality, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

On the eve of President Obama's inauguration a year ago, nearly six in 10 Americans said his presidency would advance cross-racial ties. Now, about four in 10 say it has done so.

The falloff has been highest among African Americans. Last January, three-quarters of blacks said they expected Obama's presidency to help. In the new poll, 51 percent of African Americans say he has helped, a wider gap between expectations and performance than among whites.

Although most of all those polled view Obama's election as a mark of progress for all African Americans, three in 10 say it is not indicative of broader change. About two-thirds see Obama's election as a sign of progress for all blacks in the United States, a figure unchanged from last year, but about half say his time in office has not made much difference in race relations. One in eight say it has hurt relations. . . .

The truth is that America largely exists in a post-racial society irrespective of Obama. That said, Obama is a product of the far left, a group whose raison d'etre is identity politics. Thus there was never a chance that Obama would act to move us forward on race relations. And indeed, Obama's acts as President in the arena of race have, if anything, moved America backwards, reinforcing the status of blacks as societal victims unable to achieve without special help. A few months ago, he signed a color-centric hate crimes bill into law. And recently, he announced his intent to reintroduce race into the center of our financial system.

What will be interesting to see in the future is how much the mere election of Obama erodes support for the far left's toxic, marxist brand of identity politics. How much and for how many on the left has the election of Obama erased their liberal guilt for the original sin of slavery in America? For the far left, it is a sin that must be held up as unerasable since it is the entire basis for their political power. That is a reality distorting position - a cognitive dissonance - that cannot forever withstand the push in this country towards true equality.

As much as I wish it were otherwise, there will always be some sort of proactive racism in America - practiced by some small minority of people of every race - (just as there will apparently always be short white guys of questionable intelligence who can't jump). We can minimize it by using public opinion to condemn it and by using our laws to severely punish it in appropriate cases and venues. But the simple fact is that we will not move any closer to improving race relations in America than where we are today until the far left is broken and the scourge of identity politics is consigned to the dustbin of history.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Howard Fineman & More Racial Rewriting Of History


There is little more grotesque in its complete ignorance of history than listening to a left wing ideologue wax disingenuously on race in America. Today, its Howard Fineman telling us why Harry Reid - whom I defended below - should be forgiven for his "light skinned, negro dialect" comments on Obama:

Republicans don’t want to engage in a long, drawn-out discussion of who’s more committed to equality in this society, and who has done more politically for the African-American community in the last, oh, say, 40 years or so, because that’s an argument and a discussion Republicans are going to really look bad in, and they don’t want to continue it. Yes, Harry Reid made a very unfortunate remark, and, yes, it’s troublesome, but if you attempt to put the Republican party next to the Democratic party, it’s not only African-Americans who are going to look with the Democratic party with favor on questions of race relations but everybody else in the society pretty much, too.

What an utterly scurrilous man. Republicans would love a dialogue on race and equality. I personally have been screaming about it for years. The far left that controlls all aspects of the Democrat Party today is committed to anything but equality. To the contrary, what they practice is a form of paternalistic racism and what they seek is to use permanent victim class status to achieve political power. It is time once again to trot out a piece I wrote a year ago on the history of race and equality in America, updated with some information pointed out by a reader, O' Bloody Hell.

. . . Here are some facts, some of which you might not be aware:

- The Republican Party - the party of Abraham Lincoln - was borne in 1854 out of opposition to slavery.

- The party of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan was, as Jeffrey Lord points out in an article at the WSJ, the Democratic Party. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) is the only living member of the Senate who was once a member of the KKK.

- The 13th (abolishing slavery), 14th (due process for all citizens) and 15th (voting rights cannot be restriced on the basis of race) Amendments to the Constitution were enacted by Republicans over Democratic opposition.

- The NAACP was founded in 1909 by three white Republicans who opposed the racist practices of the Democratic Party and the lynching of blacks by Democrats.

- The 1940 Republican Party Platform included the following:

We pledge that our American citizens of Negro descent shall be given a square deal in the economic and political life of this nation. Discrimination in the civil service, the army, navy, and all other branches of the Government must cease. To enjoy the full benefits of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness universal suffrage must be made effective for the Negro citizen. Mob violence shocks the conscience of the nation and legislation to curb this evil should be enacted.

- In fairness, it was the Democrat Harry Truman who, by Executive Order 9981 issued in 1948, desegregated the military. That was a truly major development. My own belief is that the military has been the single greatest driving force of integration in this land for over half a century.

- It was Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former Republican Governor of California appointed to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower, also a Republican, who managed to convince the other eight justices to agree to a unanimous decision in the seminal case of Brown v. Board of Education. That case was brought by the NAACP. The Court held segregation in schools unconstitutional. The fact that it was a unanimous decision that overturned precedent made it clear that no aspect of segregation would henceforth be considered constitutional.

- Republican President Ike Eisenhower played additional important roles in furthering equality in America. He "proposed to Congress the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and signed those acts into law. They constituted the first significant civil rights acts since the 1870s." Moreover, when the Democratic Governor of Arkansas refused to integrate schools in what became known as the "Little Rock Nine" incident, "Eisenhower placed the Arkansas National Guard under Federal control and sent Army troops to escort nine black students into an all-white public school."

- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by JFK - but it was passed with massive Republican support (over 80%) in Congress and over fierce opposition from Democrats who made repeated attempts at filibuster. Indeed, 80% of the vote opposing the Civil Rights Act came from Democrats. Women were added to the Act as a protected class by a Democrat who thought it would be a poison pill, killing the legislation. To the contrary, the Congress passed the Act without any attempt to remove the provision.

- Martin Luther King Jr. was the most well known and pivotal Civil Rights activist ever produced in America. His most famous speech, "I Had A Dream," was an eloquent and stirring call for equality. Rev. King was a Republican.

- "Bull" Connor was a Democrat.

. . . Nothing that I say here is to suggest that racism and sexism could not be found in the Republican party or among conservatives at any point in American history. But if you take any period in history and draw a line at the midpoint of racist and sexist attitudes, you would find far more Republicans than Democrats on the lesser side of that line. And you would find a much greater willingness on the part of Republicans, relative to the time, to effectuate equality. That was as true in 1865 as in 1965 - and in 2008.

Sometime about 1968, the far left movement emerged as a major wing of the Democratic Party. This far left wing hijacked the civil rights movement and made it, ostensibly, the raison d'etre of their wing. Gradually, the far left has grown until it is now the dominant force in Democratic politics. . . .

The far left fundamentally altered the nature of the Civil Rights movement when they claimed it as their own. They imprinted the movement with identity politics, grossly distorting the movement's goal of a level playing field for all Americans and creating in its stead a Marxist world of permanent victimized classes entitled to special treatment. The far left has been the driver of reverse racism and sexism for the past half century. That is why it is no surprise that, with the emergence of a far left candidate for the highest office in the nation, Rev. Jeremiah Wright should also arise at his side and into the public eye preaching a vile racism and separatism most Americans thought long dead in this country. Nor is it any surprise that the MSM, many of whom are of the far left, should collectively yawn at Obama's twenty year association with Wright. Wright is anything but an anamoly. To the contrary, he is a progeny of the politics of the far left.

The far left did not merely hijack the civil rights movement, they also wrote over a century of American history, turning it on its head. That is why Bob Herbert [Howard Fineman], quoted above, is able to wax so eloquently while spouting the most horrendous of deceits. The far left managed to paint the conservative movement and the Republican Party as the prime repositories of racism and sexism. The far left has long held themselves out as the true party of equality. They have done so falsely as, by its very nature, identity politics cements inequality. Beyond that truism, the far left has for decades played the race and gender cards to counter any criticism of their policies, to forestall any reasoned debate and to demonize those who stand opposed to them. They continue to do so through this very day.

For example, Obama has attempted repeatedly to play the race card so as to delegitimize criticism of his policies. And today we have the Governor of New York calling the McCain camp racist for belittling the executive experience one could expect to be gleaned from the position of "community organizer." Apparently, according to Gov. David Patterson, "repeated use of the words 'community organizer' is Republican code for 'black'." What Gov. Patterson is doing is the well worn trick of taking any criticism of something pertaining to one of the victim class and recasting it as an illegitimate attack on the victim class itself. These tactics, which the left has used with incredible effectiveness in the past, have done incalculable harm to our nation over the decades. . . .

Mr. Fineman, it is not that the right does not want to debate this issue. The truth is you and your ilk will never willingly engage in such a debate. I can assure you, any number of us on the right would jump at the opportunity to have such a debate. The right has the facts, you have labels and a rewrite of history that will not stand up to the least of scrutiny. You are not the heirs to MLK, and little to anything for which the left has stood for over the past several decades can be called equality.

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Friday, August 1, 2008

Obama Plays The Racist Orphan Card On McCain


There is a rather well known apocryphal story about a boy on trial for murdering his parents who then begs the court for mercy because he is an orphan. That is a perfect analogy for Obama and his MSM enablers today. After repeatedly using claims of racism as a means to deflect any criticism (see here), Obama now complains about being called to account of it by the McCain camp:

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Sunlen Miller Report: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told NPR's "All Things Considered" on Friday that he finds it "troublesome" how the McCain campaign has amplified its allegation that he played the "race card."

Obama added that the "eagerness with which they’ve done it indicates they think they can exploit this politically."

While Obama complained about the way in which the McCain campaign has amplified a "race card" charge that he considers "ridiculous," he indicated that "in no ways" has the McCain campaign "targeted race issues." . . .


Read the entire article. This is just insane.

Updates:

Obama Camp admits McCain Camp has never directly or indirectly made race an issue (updated with thoughts from VDH).

Previously

McCain Camp declares war against the NYT editorial board over their assertions of racism.

Obama plays the race card again - and the NYT claims McCain is inserting race into the campaign.


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Obama & McCain Through The NYT Looking Glass


This is a neat trick. Obama refuses to meet McCain in any head to head debates over the issues - even ducking a debate set up before military families. When McCain criticizes Obama, Obama responds by accusing McCain of ignoring the issues and equates any criticism of himself with racism. The NYT then insinuates itself into this drama, charging McCain with "going negative" and of inappropriately injecting race into the general election campaign. This is Obama and the political world through a "looking glass" every bit as reality distorting as that dreamed up by Lewis Carrol to amuse children with flights of fantasy.

McCain was right to call out Obama for using the spectre of racism as a wholly inappropriate mechanism to defend against valid criticism. What McCain is failing to do is to attack Obama mercislessly for ducking debates on the issues.
__________________________________________________________

The NYT ignores the fact that Obama, with unmistakable clarity, preemptively injected race and racisim into the general election campaign in June as a bar to any criticism:

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.

. . . Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid.

“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Apparently, the googling abilitites of the current crop of NYT writers does not extend back that far into the distant past. At any rate, Obama repeated the same thing near verbatim yesterday.

In the wake of Obama's "we are the world" tour, McCain's team had put together an ad designed to show Obama as an empty suit, as vapid and vaccuous as many other media created celebrities and, specifically, Paris Hilton and Britany Spears. I didn't particularly think it was a good ad, but the underlying message could not be more accurate.

This led Obama to charge that, one, McCain is refusing to debate the issues, and two, that McCain is doing nothing more than to "scare" voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” In other words, to criticize Obama is the equivalent of racism.

McCain called Obama on the racism allegation this time, to which this article appears in today's NYT:

Senator John McCain’s campaign accused Senator Barack Obama on Thursday of playing “the race card,” citing his remarks that Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

The exchange injected racial politics front and center into the general election campaign for the first time, after it became a subtext in the primary between Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It came as the McCain campaign was intensifying its attacks, trying to throw its Democratic opponent off course before the conventions.

“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, charged in a statement with which Mr. McCain later said he agreed. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

In leveling the charge, Mr. Davis was referring to comments that Mr. Obama made Wednesday in Missouri when he reacted to the increasingly negative tone and negative advertisements from the McCain campaign, including one that likens Mr. Obama’s celebrity status to that of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

“So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Mr. Obama said in Springfield, Mo., echoing earlier remarks. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.”

With his rejoinder about playing “the race card,” Mr. Davis effectively assured that race would once again become an unavoidable issue as voters face an election in which, for the first time, one of the major parties’ nominees is African-American.

And with its criticism, the McCain campaign was ensuring that Mr. Obama’s race — he is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas — would again be a factor in coverage of the presidential race. On Thursday, it took the spotlight from Mr. Obama when he had sought to attack Mr. McCain on energy issues.

. . . The remarks put Mr. Obama’s campaign, which has tried to keep him from being pigeonholed or defined by race, in a delicate position. He did not address the matter himself on Thursday, and his campaign gingerly tried to tamp down the issue, saying he did not believe that Mr. McCain had tried to use race as an issue.

“This is a race about big challenges — a slumping economy, a broken foreign policy and an energy crisis for everyone but the oil companies,” said Robert Gibbs, a campaign spokesman. “Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they’re using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign. And those are the issues he’ll continue to talk about.”

. . . [The] McCain campaign has adopted a far more aggressive, negative posture toward Mr. Obama in recent days, trying to define him as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency. But until this week, the McCain campaign had not invoked race.

Mr. Obama has been the victim of some racist and racially tinged attacks this year, particularly during the primaries.

Underground e-mail campaigns have spread the false rumor that he is Muslim and questioned his patriotism by falsely charging that he does not put his hand over his heart when the Pledge of Allegiance is recited. A button spotted outside the Texas Republican convention asked, “If Obama Is President ... Will We Still Call It the White House?”

But Mr. McCain has condemned racist campaigning and has denounced Republican groups that tried to make an issue of inflammatory statements made by Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and one of his own supporters who referred to Mr. Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama” at a McCain rally.

Mr. Obama has been more explicit about the role of race in attacks against him in the past, but he is rarely specific about who is behind them. “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run,” he said in June. “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. ‘He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’ ” . . .

Read the entire article. This is actually nowhere near as over the top as the NYT editors go in attacking McCain as racist in their blog. Hot Air covers that insane story.

This talk of racism is a sideshow. There is no way Obama or the NYT can possibly make that charge stick against McCain. Even the NYT acknowledges McCain's refusal to tolerate what he considered cheap shots against Mr. Obama. What is not a sideshow is that Obama is ducking McCain, refusing open debates. There are no two ways about it. McCain needs to start highlighting that in literally every ad he runs. Obama's refusal to debate McCain should become a centerpiece of McCain's strategy against Obama. It gives substance to the negatives and highlights just how much of a vaccuous and vapid celebrity Mr. Obama really is, irrespective of his skin coloring.

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Friday, March 14, 2008

The Entertainment Value of Identity Politics

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it seem the person most enjoying the Democratic political contest for the presidential nomination is Charles Krauthammer





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Of all the pundits taking glee in the fact that identity politics is coming home to roost with a vengance on the Democratic side of the house, seemingly the one most appreciative of the spectacle is Charles Krauthammer. This is not surprising, really, since Mr. Krauthammer has been regularly bludgeoned by the left over identity politics issues. To define "identity politics," it is a Marxian construct whereby the identity of an individual as part of a "victimized" group is more important than the substance of their discrete acts. That means that any criticism of an act is treated as an attack on identity, as in "race card" or "gender card."

It is a very toxic and distorting brand of politics. And we are being treated to the spectacle of the race and gender cards being tossed about inside the Democratic tent as the race for the Democratic nomination becomes ever more cut-throat.

As Mr. Krauthammer notes in his piece in today's Washington Post, there are three possible grounds for discriminating between political candidates - issues, personality or identity. Within the current Democratic race, there is little difference on the issues between Hillary and Obama. Obama is hard left, and Hillary has joined him on that perch ever since her more centrist views came effectively under attack earlier in the campaign. And in a contest of personality, that playing field is so tilted in favor of the likable Obama over the screeching Hillary, she stands no chance in that type of a race. Thus, the Clintons have embraced their last hope, identity politics - an area that Obama is also using very much to his advantage, even as he claims to transcend such identity politics. This from Mr. Krauthammer:

The pillars of American liberalism -- the Democratic Party, the universities and the mass media -- are obsessed with biological markers, most particularly race and gender. They have insisted, moreover, that pedagogy and culture and politics be just as seized with the primacy of these distinctions and with the resulting "privileging" that allegedly haunts every aspect of our social relations.

They have gotten their wish. This primary campaign represents the full flowering of identity politics. It's not a pretty picture. Geraldine Ferraro says Obama is where he is only because he's black. Professor Orlando Patterson says the 3 a.m. phone call ad is not about a foreign policy crisis but a subliminal Klan-like appeal to the fear of "black men lurking in the bushes around white society."

Good grief. The optimist will say that when this is over, we will look back on the Clinton-Obama contest, and its looming ugly endgame, as the low point of identity politics and the beginning of a turning away. The pessimist will just vote Republican.

Read the entire article.


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Friday, March 7, 2008

Of Rhetoric & Reality

Charles Krauthammer puts on his psychiatrist's monocole to analyze the appeal of Obama, the reality of his promise of bi-partisanship, and how Clinton has been able to finally put a dent in Obamamania.





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Charles Krauthammer notes that Obama's rhetoric has led to a wide-spread impression that Obama would be the most likely of the candidates to be able to bridge the partisan political divide, uniting both Republicans and Democrats in a post-partisan nirvana:

How did Obama pull that off? By riding one of the great non sequiturs of modern American politics.

It goes like this. Because Obama transcends race, it is therefore assumed that he will transcend everything else -- divisions of region, class, party, generation and ideology.

The premise here is true -- Obama does transcend race; he has not run as a candidate of minority grievance; his vision of America is unmistakably post-racial -- but the conclusion does not necessarily follow. It is merely suggested in Obama's rhetorically brilliant celebration of American unity: "young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian -- who are tired of a politics that divides us." Hence "the choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white. It's about the past versus the future."

The effect of such sweeping invocations of unity is electric, particularly because race is the deepest and most tragic of all American divisions, and this invocation is being delivered by a man who takes us powerfully beyond it. The implication is that he is therefore uniquely qualified to transcend all our other divisions. . . .

This raises an interesting aside. While Krauthammer is arguing on the premise that the majority of Obama supporters see him as transcending race, the reality is that an unseemly element of race has been injecting itself at regular intervals into his campaign.

I have previously raised a concern that Obama was not above allowing the race card to be played against the Clintons earlier in the campaign. And I do not hear him stepping in to stop pressure being brought to bear on African American super delegates to switch to him on the basis of race. Likewise many who support Obama on identity politics grounds see any attack on Obama as a racial attack and are responding accordingly. While Krauthammer may analyze Obama's message as transcending race, I think the reality is that its going to require affirmative action (no joke intended) on the part of all candidates to keep race from becoming a central issue. And if it does, it could well backfire on Obama given that I do not think that McCain, who seems utterly focused on keeping his campaign message on issues, could be plausibly charged with any racial animus.

To continue with Krauhthammer, he notes that Obama's rhetoric does not have a basis in reality. Obama has not even attempted to reach across the partisan divide on any issue of contention. Indeed, as Krauthammer notes, the person Obama pretends to be meets reality in the person of John McCain:

The Obama campaign has sent journalists eight pages of examples of his reaching across the aisle in the Senate. I am not the only one to note, however, that these are small-bore items of almost no controversy -- more help for war veterans, reducing loose nukes in the former Soviet Union, fighting avian flu and the like. Bipartisan support for apple pie is hardly a profile in courage.

On the difficult compromises that required the political courage to challenge one's own political constituency, Obama flinched: the "Gang of 14" compromise on judicial appointments, the immigration compromise to which Obama tried to append union-backed killer amendments and, just last month, the compromise on warrantless eavesdropping that garnered 68 votes in the Senate. But not Obama's.

Who, in fact, supported all of these bipartisan deals, was a central player in two of them and brokered the even more notorious McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform? John McCain, of course.

Yes, John McCain -- intemperate and rough-edged, of sharp elbows and even sharper tongue. Turns out that uniting is not a matter of rhetoric or manner, but of character and courage.

And as Krauthammer notes, it was Clinton's raising questions about Obama's character in her "phone call at the White House at 3 a.m." commercial" that has finally exposed a chink in Obama's heretofore teflon armor:

Ostensibly the ad was about experience. It wasn't. It was about familiarity. After all, as Obama pointed out, what exactly is the experience that prepares Hillary to answer the red phone at 3 a.m.?

She was raising a deeper question: Do you really know who this guy is? After a whirlwind courtship with this elegant man who rode into town just yesterday, are you really prepared to entrust him with your children, the major props in the ad?

After months of fruitlessly shadowboxing an ethereal opponent made up of equal parts hope, rhetoric and enthusiasm, Clinton had finally made contact with the enemy. The doubts she raised created just enough buyer's remorse to persuade Democrats on Tuesday to not yet close the sale on the mysterious stranger.

The only way either Clinton or John McCain can defeat an opponent as dazzlingly new and fresh as Obama is to ask: Do you really know this guy?

Or the corollary: Is he really who he says he is? I'm not talking about scurrilous innuendo about his origins, religion or upbringing. I'm talking about the full-fledged man who presents himself to the country in remarkably grandiose terms as a healer, a conciliator, a uniter. . . .

Read the entire article. I am sure we will see much more of this focus on Obama between now and the Pennsylvania primary. We have already seen Obama lose his composure under tough questioning from the press. Now we will see how he holds up as Clinton mines his most obvious weakness.


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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

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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