Sniper Fire

I had some fun with photoshop...click it to enlarge

Post Racial?

The consequence, which you can already feel, is an inchoate resentment among many white voters who are damned if they will be called bigots by a man who associates with Jeremiah Wright. So here we go with all that again. And this is the fresh, clean, new post-racial politics?

Now, by way of which vent or orifice is this venom creeping back into our national bloodstream? Where is hatred and tribalism and ignorance most commonly incubated, and from which platform is it most commonly yelled? If you answered "the churches" and "the pulpits," you got both answers right. The Ku Klux Klan (originally a Protestant identity movement, as many people prefer to forget) and the Nation of Islam (a black sectarian mutation of Quranic teaching) may be weak these days, but bigotry of all sorts is freely available, and openly inculcated into children, by any otherwise unemployable dirtbag who can perform the easy feat of putting Reverend in front of his name.

Christopher Hitchens, at Slate.com. Full article is here.

And on a lighter note...

Ignorance is Bliss

“We need change, that’s what I believe in,” a young woman named Melissa tells me.

“What about all the stuff with his pastor?” I ask.

“The what?”

“You know — the news about the controversial things his pastor said.”

“I haven’t heard much about it,” Melissa says. “That’s not a good question for me.”

“I don’t know much about it,” says a young man named Nick. “I’ve just been hearing about it from people who aren’t supporters, so I don’t have any idea.”

Others seem to have stronger opinions. “I don’t think everybody who goes to one church has the exact same views as everyone else who goes to that church,” a young man named Paul tells me. “He doesn’t have any control over what his former pastor said.”

By the way, I ask, what was your reaction when you saw those video clips of Rev. Wright’s sermons?

“I didn’t see what he said,” Paul answers. “What did he say?”

The full story is here

Just Words

"Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain't! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty."

-Jeremiah Wright, seen here with Bill Clinton, September 11, 1998.

In Summary

Hedging Defeat

In some ways, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates

-Barack Obama

So, if he loses, it is because he never had a chance as a black man in white-supremacist America? Obama sounds more and more like his Pastor all the time. He says many of the same things, but does it much more civilly. But underneath the pretty words is still a trend of blaming the rest of the world, blaming "conventional candidates" and blaming a perceived rampant racism for his impending defeat.

Glorify the Prostitute

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt told The AP last Friday that he e-mailed Dupre offering her $1 million to appear nude in his magazine, but didn't sound optimistic that she would settle for that amount. Flynt suggested that by the time Dupre starts talking, she may be too big a media phenomenon for a simple magazine spread.

"She is no doubt going to do a book. There will probably be a movie," he said. "I think she is going to have so many offers coming in that it will probably be wishful thinking just to get in the door."

Elliot Spitzer was publicly crucified, and rightly so. But the girl he paid for sex is being offered millions of dollars for... well, basically the same thing that she provided Spitzer. How is it that she is not also being punished? Her activity was just as illegal as the former Governor's. She will be featured in smut magazines, movies, and web sites, pulling in royalty fees along the way. This is the best thing that has ever happened to this girl.

The double standard is appalling. We all applaud and reward this girl for taking her clothes off and performing sexual acts for money, but publicly lynch the men who pay her that money.

Don't Cry For Me

The candidate's wife, Michelle Obama, sat in the front row during the speech. She was very emotional and could be seen crying backstage after the speech was over, given the subject matter of her husband's oratory.

Was she crying because she was moved, or because she recognized that this was the beginning of the end for Obama and his entitlement to the Presidency?

Don't Blame Wright, Blame History!

From Obama's near indistinguishable (from his others) speech today:

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

Don't you uneducated, non-elite, unwashed masses get it! He is a product of racist America, a victim of discrimination and segregation! Forgive him, for he knows not what he spews!

Oh, those crazy "uncles!"

The Altitude of Change

Thomas Sowell, in The Vision of the Anointed (a great read!) describes the way many of the anointed will speak when "arguing" their points. He wrote "...another technique for arguing without actually using any arguments is to bury the specifics of one's policy preferences in a vast generality, so diffuse that no one can effectively oppose it."

This was written in 1995. And yet, this tactic of speaking at 30,000 feet is alive and well among the anointed. It is particularly well demonstrated by Obama. His words are sanctimonious, pious, and very, very serious. His elevated speeches cause his goose-pimpled listeners to cry out in unison "yes we can!"

Thomas Sowell continues,

"... a common practice among the anointed is to declare themselves emphatically, piously, and defiantly in favor of 'change.' Thus, those who oppose their particular changes are depicted as against change in general. It is as if opponents of the equation 2+2=7 were depicted as being against mathematics."

And Obama enlightens us with this excellent example, given in a speech on March 4th 2008:

John McCain and Senator Clinton echo each other in dismissing this call for change. They say it is eloquent but empty; speeches and not solutions. And yet, they should know that it's a call that did not begin with my words. It began with words that were spoken on the floors of factories in Ohio and across the deep plains of Texas; words that came from classrooms in South Carolina and living rooms in the state of Iowa; from first-time voters and life-long cynics; from Democrats and Republicans alike.

He then goes on, as he always does, citing examples that may or may not be true. But are so vague and elevated that nobody can criticize them. They are simply meaningless anecdotes. Which frankly, are becoming tiresome. Especially since each time he uses them, he becomes more and more righteous about it. But I digress, on with the cotton candy...

They should know that there's nothing empty about the call for affordable health care that came from the young student who told me she gets three hours of sleep because she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't pay her sister's medical bills.

Why is the "sister" not paying her own medical bills? And how is it that this student can afford college in such dire circumstances?

There's nothing empty about the call for help that came from the mother in San Antonio who saw her mortgage double in two weeks and didn't know where her two-year olds would sleep at night when they were kicked out of their home.

Such is the pitfall of ARMs. How can Obama help people's bad financial choices?

There's nothing empty about the call for change that came from the elderly woman who wants it so badly that she sent me an envelope with a money order for $3.01 and a simple verse of scripture tucked inside.

And does anyone find it ironic that some elderly woman "called for change" by sending Obama an envelope full of ...change?

Classic.

Dream Team to Include Pelosi?

Full Story Here.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it’s “impossible” that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would run together on a single ticket. “I do think we will have a dream team. It just won’t be those two names,” Pelosi said during her weekly Capitol Hill press conference. “I don’t think it’s politically feasible.”

It almost sounds like Nancy Pelosi is saying it's impossible, because she herself will be Obama's running mate. Indeed, that would be a dream team! For radical Islamic terrorists.

Preacher Man

"In the internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. I have been victimized by these lies. Fortunately, the American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit for."

— Barack Obama, MSNBC Debate, January 15, 2008

Fortunately, in this internet age truth will also be spread all over the place. Like the truth behind the anti-Americanism, racism, and bigoty of Barack Obama's Pastor. This is a man that is very close to Obama. The Preacher is a heavy supporter of the Senator, and a long time friend and mentor. He is the Pastor that performed the Obama's wedding.

He has spent his career trumping up the victimhood of American citizens. It is a doctrine that Obama loves to preach as well. American poverty and suffering is the fault of the Government, and the exploitation of rich, white businessmen. There is no personal responsibility in the doctrine of this preacher, nor in the doctrine of Obama.

The question that needs to be answered is wether or not this Preacher is saying what Obama is thinking.

Napoleon Dynamite and the Democratic Primary

Napoleon Dynamite is a great film. Very funny, very original. But who ever knew it would predict the state of the 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries?

In that film there is a student election between Summer and Pedro.

Summer is well established, she is popular, she has the well liked class jock as her boyfriend. All the pretty girls hang out with her. She makes all sorts of promises that have little to do with actually being student body president.

Well, I'd never thought I would make it here today. I would be a great class president because I promise to put two new pop machines in the cafeteria. And I'm also gonna get a glitter Bonnie bell dispenser for all the girls' bathrooms. Oh, we're gonna get new cheerleading uniforms. Anyway I think I'd be a great class president. Who wants to eat chimmychangas all year long? Not me. See, with me it will be summer all year long.

Pedro is a newcomer. Not too many know who he is when he signs up for the election. He is a minority. People say that he has no chance against the populist Summer. But people underestimated the hope Pedro would instill in the hopeless, in the downtrodden, in the picked on and nerdy. Pedro makes promises that are vague and yet, appealing. "Vote for me and all of your wildest dreams will come true!"

In the end Pedro wins the election, powered by the nerds, the rejects and yes, the minorities at the school. It didn't hurt either that he had the help of some of his friends involved in organized crime. Summer is left pouting and complaining. Will Hillary be left pouting this November, when the Presidency she is entitled to is "stolen" away from her by some upstart Senator who has the audacity to hope? A Senator that proclaimed,

“In the end, ... that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?”

Ah, Barack. You do love your hope. Hope for this, hope for that, hope for change, hope for the poor woman who has nothing, and the rich man with everything. Wait, scratch that last one. Rich people are a plague on society.

Rather than politics of cynicism or hope, it is time we recognize the politics of reality. We are a nation that leads the world in social, economic, and military progress. We are not, as a nation, running for Student Body President of the world. We do not care if we are popular, and if there are new pop machines in the lunch room. We did not rise to power playing the part of populists, and we will not remain in power doing so either.

The politics of hope are the politics of a man with no experience, no concrete plan for moving America forward, and no foundation in reality. People can swoon and sway in orgasmic displays of idiocy when Barack blows his nose. They can preach about change and hope and pretty flowers. What will it gain them? I would guess that if Barack Obama is elected President it would leave his supporters gasping for air in a four year state of euphoric nothingness. A bliss of inaction and cliche.

As for the rest of us? I guess we will be left... hoping for change. Damn it!

Hang Together

"We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately"


-Benjamin Franklin


Benjamin Franklin's words are very relevant today. We sit once again at the crossroads of political change in America. Every four, or eight years we are saddled with the burden, and opportunity to elect a new President. The process drags on for months. Candidates are plenty in the early going, but one by one, they are eliminated as money and resources dry up.

This year has been unique. History, in one way or another will be made in November. But that is a secondary issue. The real question is not what sort of history will be made, but what sort of future will be set in motion.

The two remaining Democratic candidates are engulfed in a war of tunnel vision, each so focused on the other that they have lost sight of the bigger picture, and what really is at stake today in our Nation. The in-fighting will continue all the way to Denver. The party will be divided heading into November, with fresh wounds still bleeding after one or the other is eliminated.

As conservatives it is time to hang together. Or certainly will we all hang separately. A democratic presidency will do wonders in undoing progress in Iraq, progress within the Supreme Court, freedom of speech and American individual liberty in general. Both Obama and Clinton are eager to magnify a culture of dependency in America.

The America that our Founding Fathers created is not a country of victims. It is a land of opportunity, innovation, and responsibility.

If we shirk that responsibility now, then gentlemen (and ladies), let's hope we are allowed to hang together...