Blog — October, 2008

Last week the Pennsylvania GOP sued Acorn, charging that "allowing unqualified individuals to (vote) undermine(s) the voters' confidence in the electoral process." ACORN responded with an accusation of—wait for it—racism, and other Democrat supporters are also using that same red herring counterattack technique: "The shrill Republican witch-hunt to demonize ACORN signaled the launch of their insidious endgame strategy. The current charges against ACORN are frivolous distractions..." Say that in a Maoist accent if you can...

His claim that the mere act of calling out wholesale electoral fraud is insidious, racist behaviour is not atypical.

Remember Steven Pinker's warning that section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act "could outlaw any criticism of a practice that is statistically more common in some groups than others, such as slavery, polygamy, child abuse, ritual torture, gay-bashing, and so on"? The voter fraud in this U.S. election (not in previous ones) is statistically more common on the black/Obama side. Therefore, criticism of it is being framed as "racist," by the very same "persecuted minorities" who have their fingers in it. Racist practices are hateful and must be stopped! That's what the CHRC is here for! And with a couple more Obama-appointed SCOTUS judges in the USA, interpreting a "living Constitution" in terms of "fairness," you Yankees will be in the same "hate speech" mess as we are before you know it. (We have ACORN in Canada too, though they don't seem to be involved in electoral fraud as much as down south.)

So Pinker, as usual, was absolutely right. And the mouthy Dr. Dawg is a total fucking idiot. If I ever need to take an Intro Anthropology class, I now know what prof to avoid....

Ezra Levant is also right:

There are petty tyrants in every walk of life. But we can avoid or ignore them—or fight them. Not so when they have the power of the state behind them.

Let me give you my own example. If some unknown, untalented, untrained, inexperienced literary critic like Pardeep Gundara had criticized the Western Standard magazine that I published, I could have ignored him (which I would have done). But Gundara ... suddenly had the power of the state behind him to weigh and measure our magazine's efforts, as the Alberta HRC censor assigned to adjudicate my case.

Nobody gives a damn what Gundara says, when he says it on his own. At least I don't, and I was the publisher. But when he says his bit as a petty tyrant of the state, people have to listen to him. Or at least I did. That, no doubt, gives him great pleasure, and a feeling of great power, power that he surely lacks in every other aspect of his life. He couldn't earn my respect for his laughable literary and political views. So what—he could extract obedience from me, by virtue of his position in the Alberta government....

[H]uman beings are no different today, in Canada, than they were fifty years ago in the Soviet Union or seventy years ago in Nazi Germany....

I believe that many of the people who work for Canada's human rights commissions, in a different place or time, would have been attracted to the Communist Party or the National Socialist Party, working to ensure political hygiene in the Motherland or Fatherland.

And, The Riots Next Time? Racial Violence Looms If Barack Obama Loses—Or Wins:

In the ["Barack Youth"] video, about a dozen black teenagers dressed in military fatigues parade and chant about how Barack Obama has inspired them to be the next architect, doctor and so on. [With, of course, not the slightest comprehension of how much work and intelligence is actually required to be even minimally competent in those fields: they honestly think that the only reason whites and Jews succeed where blacks fail is because of favoritism, and for us having "our people" in power. And how have Asians and East Indians succeeded in North America? Aye, there's the rub. But really, that's not something that even goes through a sub-85-IQ head, meaning that half the black population in North America won't have even put that much thought into it.]

It is clear from the stony stares of these boys that Obama does not so much inspire their admiration as reinforce their anger. How do you expect they will react if Obama loses the election?

White liberals have convinced themselves that Barack Obama is one of them, or nearly so, because of his articulate English and elite education. What would an Ivy League educated, half-white man from Hawaii have in common with incendiary black leaders like Louis Farrakhan?

Quite a bit, actually. Obama's spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a good friend of Louis Farrakhan and even accompanied him to Libya to meet with General Muammar Gaddaffi in 1984. And in 1995, Barack Obama himself flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C. to attend Farrakhan's [sexist] Million Man March....

The unsettling truth is that Barack Obama is not some bridge between black and white, but a man who is obsessed with the perceived injustice of growing up black in a white-run world. In Dreams from My Father, Obama writes of how, as a teenager, he would closet himself in his room and absorb the works of black [racist] radicals like W.E.B. DuBois and Malcolm X, withdrawing "into a smaller and smaller coil of rage."

Indeed, the one idea Obama most identified with then was Malcolm X's wish that "the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged."

It does not seem to matter to Barack Obama that ... he has never personally experienced any of the injustices we typically associate with black Americans.

Clearly, Barack Obama has far more in common with the angry young black men who are devoted to his candidacy than most Americans realize....

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatima Ali, a fervent Obama supporter, recently wrote that "If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring [black-perpetrated] crime, homelessness—and hopelessness."

But what about Alex Haley, and his epochal book, Roots?

After a trial, Haley settled out-of-court for $650,000, having been accused of plagiarizing more than 80 passages from The African by Harold Courlander. Haley claimed that the appropriation of Courlander's passages had been unintentional....

In his report submitted to the court in this lawsuit, Professor of English and expert witness on plagiarism, Michael Wood of Columbia University, stated: "The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. The copying is significant and extensive"....

After a five-week trial in federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case, with Haley making a financial settlement and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book Roots."

During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated, "Copying there is, period." In a later interview with BBC Television, Judge Ward stated, "Alex Haley perpetrated a hoax on the public."

During the trial, Alex Haley had maintained that he had not read The African before writing Roots. Shortly after the trial, however, Joseph Bruchac, an instructor of black literature at Skidmore College, came forward to swear in an affidavit that in 1970 or 1971 (five or six years before the publication of Roots) he had discussed The African with Haley and had, in fact, given his "own personal copy of The African to Mr. Haley"....

In addition, the veracity of those aspects of Roots which Haley claimed to be true has also been challenged.

But hey, even if he stole a good chunk of the book, at least he didn't get Bill Ayers to rewrite the rough draft....

So, "Happy Obamaween."

P.S. Obama's Thug Lawyers Intimidating Student Journalists Who Exposed Voter Fraud. And "Dem Playbook Shows Dirty Tactics". And The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama's Khalidi Bash Tape:

Let's try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.

Now let's say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.

So, Demand The LA Times Release The Obama Video. And, "Lawyers who supervise voting rights are Obama donors":

[H]as it really become somehow out of bounds to ask if attempting to steal an election through voter fraud is motivated by politics?

Because from where I'm sitting, that's just crazy talk.

Oh, and remember what I was saying about a backlash against Obama's blatant racial favoritism, etc.? Neo-Nazi Assassination Plot Discovered.

A couple of fantastically insightful posts, on the Protein Wisdom blog: "Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber" (see his commentary) and It's good to be the king.... And one from Bernie Planck: Give a Muslim an Inch:

The peoples of Malaysia before the 15th century could practice whatever they wanted, Buddhism, Hinduism, or their native Animism. Then one day they let in one Muslim and so today, if you are a native Malay, by Law you must be Muslim, there is no choice [Article 160 of the Constitution of Malaysia] if you want to remain a Malay citizen. Malays who convert out of Islam are no longer considered Malay under the law and lose their favored Bumiputra privileges....

Let one Muslim in and in a matter of years your country turns out to be 99.98% to 100% Muslim.

And Melanie Phillips hits many of the documented problems with Obamanation intimidation, and the mainstream media's deliberate ignorance of the same:

The sacrifice of truth to power.

And, turns out Obama was already yakkin' about "redistribution" back in 2001.

And a practical test of the redistribution of wealth. And Shame, Cubed. And Furious Spinning from the Left on Obama's Racially-Motivated Redistributive Change:

[T]his story is not about simple redistribution from the haves to the have-nots, which is the norm from Democrats and therefore unsurprising. Obama's redistribution is in the context of the civil rights movement. In other words, from everyone else to blacks, based on nothing so much except skin color.

Many people will need to be gently reminded: this is not about helping the poor. Many, many, Democrats and independents (and Republicans) aren't bothered by a little redistribution to alleviate poverty. I think for many it is considered a public good, something that, of course, governments should provide. So when this is couched in those terms, people will think "no big deal, we already do this."

They can spin, but they can't hide.

Kathy Shaidle:

And of course, Obama frames his socialist policies as the natural outcome of the Black civil rights movement, effectively putting his policies beyond the realm of criticism in polite society.

And something for the "12 and under" crowd, too: Obama Robbing the Cradle for Votes.

And Surprise! Obama Found Palling Around With More Terrorists. And Death Threats Sent to Pollster. You know, for publishing polls showing McCain leading in Ohio and Florida.

And, some good old zydeco, to make a point:

And, more on the Obama campaign's deliberate campaign donation fraud:

AVS is default. It is not an arcane option you can choose. It is the default. To turn it off requires deliberate, intentional action.

And Barack Obama cannot offer any plausible legitimate reason for doing so....

One thing they did get, though, is important: an Obama spokesperson confirming that they do not keep credit card numbers.

This confirms that with AVS also turned off, there is no way for the Obama campaign to know how many times someone has donated, and how much, even if a donor uses the same credit card each time.

Of course, you shouldn't ever have customers'/donors' raw c/c numbers in your database regardless. What you do is store a hashed (i.e., encrypted) version of the number, which is just as unique as the original number, but can't be unencrypted back into a usable number if the database is ever compromised (i.e., hacked). That's how we did it back at Advantex which, believe me, was hardly run by geniuses....

And Palintology will dominate the post-mortems:

It's hard to make a reasoned and fair judgment about the Alaska Governor because she has been the victim of one of the nastiest, most sustained and comprehensive slime-jobs ever performed by a hyper-partisan national and global media....

Palinphobia is so shot through with condescension and ideological incomprehension on the media's part that trying to cut through to the reality of her political message is not easy....

There's still a better story to be told about her record as politician in Alaska, where she has achieved more of substance than Barack Obama has in Washington.

As for the anti-intellectualism she seems to represent, this is a favourite old saw not only of the Left but also of the whole Establishment crowd. There's an unshakeable view among the coastal elites that real wisdom is acquired only by circulating between the ivy-encrusted walls of scholarship and the Manhattan and Hollywood cocktail set.

P.S. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?. And Rashid Khalidi Ranted About the 'Zionist Lobby' on Al Jazeera. And Petty Obama Camp Cuts Off Access For TV Station After They Make Biden Look Like An Idiot. And "A Few Bad Apples" (i.e., 30% of ACORN voter registrations). And From cop-killer to cop-caller. And Joe Biden: We Haven't Paid ACORN "A Single Penny", in which we learn that "Ayers bragged of babysitting Obama's children."

And, Palin allies report rising campaign tension and Palin's 'going rogue,' McCain aide says. Good for her; I wouldn't have lasted half as long "towing the party line" while being given atrociously bad advice and being blatantly mishandled by "PR experts."

Bernie Planck, predictably hitting another nail squarely on the noggin:

I am not surprised that the author [of the moronic, paranoid, socialism=codeword-for-black article] is black. I am sure that comrade Diuguid earns more money than 99% of all blacks outside the US but still feels as if blacks are oppressed in this country. The only people oppressing blacks are other blacks like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, et al.

And you wonder why the none-too-bright blacks think the Jews are out to get them! "How could Sharpton and Jackson be oppressors [or racists]? They're part of the oppressed group! Haven't we learned anything from Karl Marx?!"

But seriously: You tell 'em, Bernie. You're such a mensch. Really.

P.S. Gov't Computers Used to Find Info on Joe the Plumber. And Obama to Cut Military Spending By 25%. And The Blurb That Never Was. And Whatever You Do, Don't Mention Obama's Girlfriend. And Was Biden talking about Obama's plan for unilateral disarmament? And, The modern left. And an interesting Letter To John Perry Barlow From A Pot-Smoking Deadhead Bush Voter ... though if Bush didn't know there were no WMDs in Iraq, he could and should have known. And Is America really going to do this?:

McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else. McCain stands for American exceptionalism, the belief that American values are superior to tyrannies. Obama stands for the expiation of America's original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor.

Obama thinks world conflicts are basically the west's fault, and so it must right the injustices it has inflicted....

McCain understands that an Islamic war of conquest is being waged on a number of diverse fronts which all have to be seen in relation to each other. For Obama, however, the real source of evil in the world is America. The evil represented by Iran and the Islamic jihadists is apparently all America's fault.

Oh, and apparently sex with minors is hunky dory ... as long as you're an unhappily married, middle-aged woman. Who knew?

From Prejudice Revisited, Again:

Dr Caprice Hollins, the Director of Equity, Race & Learning Support for Seattle's public schools, has previously criticized individualism, long-term planning (or "future time orientation") and the speaking of grammatical English as "white values." The expectation among teachers that all students should be responsible individuals and meet certain linguistic and organizational standards is, according to Dr Hollins, a form of "cultural racism."

Admit it: You thought I was way overboard with the idea that blacks won't ever get ahead in this world without (re-)adopting "white values." But really, how far can you get in life without individualism, long-term planning, and being able to speak coherent, middle-class English (among other "white values" like punctuality and responsibility, etc.)?

Blimey....

And, the fantastic Steven Pinker, on Kanada's kangaroo kourts:

It's truly shocking that a supposedly democratic government has arrogated to itself the power to censor speech because some judge or bureaucrat thinks it may "expose a person to contempt." This could outlaw any criticism of a practice that is statistically more common in some groups than others, such as slavery, polygamy, child abuse, ritual torture, gay-bashing, and so on. [Part of the CHRC complaint against Jim Pankiw appears to involve his criticizing of the "sentencing circles" which our aboriginals are the primary or only users of. Regardless, you'd have to be pretty daft, in a world where socialism=black (so you better not criticize socialism!), to not see Pinker's scenario coming true.]

It allows haters to decide who gets to say what—all they have to do is say, "So-and-so's essay made me show contempt," and So-and-so gets fined or jailed. And it opens the door to the government banning speech that upsets anyone, anywhere—as all-important speech is bound to do.

This is an atrocity against the ideal of free speech, and will make Canada a laughing stock among lovers of democracy and enlightenment.

Yes, a laughing stock. Ha-ha. Thanks to our easily offended Jews, feminists, gays ... and hermaphrodites. (Pinker himself is, of course, Jewish; and originally from Montreal.)

In recognition of that accomplishment on the part of those priests and priestesses of PC, here's something from everyone's favorite hairy cunt and feminist asshole, Germaine Greer.

Why, what did you think I meant?

P.S. I Am Bill. And FEC Rules Leave Loopholes For Online Donation Data:

In an Oct. 19 article for the news Web site Newsmax, [Kenneth] Timmerman argued that the FEC database lists up to 37,000 foreign contributors to Obama. These unverified donors made 60,000 contributions, worth a total of up to $63 million, he said.

That's a lotta fried chicken and collard greens.

And, Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions. And Obama's Kenyan Pal—Killer, Despot.

And, omigod, you have to read this: Open Letter to Richard Dawkins. And the Oxford Cheese Ode. In fact, there's this whole motherlode ... or cheeselode ... from James McIntyre.

Blimey, I'm feeling better already, wot? "License my roving hands and let them go."

From Typhoid Mary and Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan:

[A]s the Muslim population increases [in the USA], there will be Muslim schools and eventually Muslim Universities and assimilation will not be possible for future Muslims. There will be fewer and fewer parents teaching their sons American ideals.

As we get stuck with more and more Muslims it will be impossible for young Muslim men to go to places like Iraq and kill fellow-Muslims. When we reach 10% or more Muslims in this country, any person who kills a Muslim for our side will get a fatwa of death against his ass.

Once a critical point is reached, we won't be able to protect ourselves against attack by Muslims because our Congress will be too frightened to even vote to attack another Muslim country no matter how much danger they present.

And Charles Krauthammer, on McCain for President:

The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers....

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism.

And Unserious Voodoo:

So far as I know Palin is not a Young Earther. But if she were, her belief would be no more at odds with science than is Obama's stated belief that Christ is Lord. I suspect those who mock Palin's belief without mocking Obama's do so because in their hearts they imagine that Obama does not actually believe. He just says what he has to say to attain power. And they're ok with that. They mock Palin because they imagine she means what she says.

I do not see how belief in the Resurrection or in the Young Earth theory has much practical bearing on fitness to execute the responsibilities of office. I do think it would be gross dishonesty to claim to believe in Christ, if one does not so believe, merely to gain office. The man who would lie about that would [or at least could] lie about anything.

And via David Thompson, Insatiable Delusions:

"Radical" academics aren't driven to greater extremes and grander, more lurid claims because society is becoming more sexist, racist or whatever. The caricatures they become are a result of their own narcissism and a need to be oppositional, or be seen as oppositional. As mainstream society in general becomes less fixated by race, gender, sexuality, etc, so peddlers of grievance and victimhood must search out—or invent—something to oppose. Overstatement and escalation are all but inevitable.

It's the same outside of academia, though: black racists and feminist leaders, for their own job security, have to keep screaming about discrimination against them and their in-group, even if the unfairness doesn't really exist, outside of their own fevered, scattered minds. Same thing for the official thought police: if they can't find a "speech-offender under every bed," they'll be out of a job. And yes, scum that our species is, these fuckers will sell the future of entire countries out, just for a fat paycheque; which they'll proceed to blow, not on "bread for their starving children," but on shit they don't even need.

And Daphne Patai, on Want to Teach Here? Then Tell Us Your Politics:

Potential faculty are thus being pressured to adopt and embrace—or merely pretend to do so—the requisite "attitude" toward minorities, political activism, and social issues, and to provide evidence that they have acted on these supposed commitments. And, scarier still, these questions by implication are presented as legitimate requirements for employment, though they have nothing to do with either education or intellectual and scholarly accomplishments. And, even worse, the questions are designed to weed out the merely formal assenters from authentic true believers.

Ah, and Ezra Levant enlarges on the effects of the Canadian Human Rights Commission on Great White [Racist!] North politics:

If Pankiw can be prosecuted for spreading "discrimination," every MP is at risk. Not a day goes by when MPs [i.e., Members of Parliament] don't offend one group or another. We allow it; we expect it; in fact, we give MPs more freedom than any other Canadians, even exempting their debates from defamation law, on the liberal theory that all ideas should be heard, and in the clash of views, the truth will emerge and the country will be better off. It's called parliamentary privilege, and it goes back centuries. It's one of our ancient civil rights, designed to protect the people's representatives from political interference from the King.

Whether or not Pankiw "wins" his trial is irrelevant. He's already lost, and so have we. The message is loud and clear: The CHRC has ended parliamentary immunity.

P.S. Obama Hindered by 'Sudden Drop' in Fundraising. And Remember Those 1.3 Million New Voters? Uh, Never Mind. And An Army of Press Secretaries. And America on the precipice. And What's $5.3 million divided by $150,000?

Oh, and it turns out that not only have neo-Nazis infiltrated the anti-Islam movement in Europe, but also Muslims with close terrorist connections are leading anti-war rallies in Canada.

Whose side are you on? "You're either with us, or you're against us."

From "Hatin' Palin":

If as Joe Biden suggests the U.S. is likely to be tested by a foreign enemy next year, who of the following would you rather have dealing with it in the Oval Office: Nancy (of Damascus) Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Joe (the U.S. drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon) Biden, Mike Huckabee, Geraldine Ferraro, Tom DeLay, Jimmy Carter or Sarah Palin?

My pick? Gov. Palin, surely the most grounded, common-sense person on that list of prime-time politicians....

It seems only yesterday that the most critical skill in presidential politics was being able to connect to people in places like Bronko's bar or Saddleback Church. When Gov. Palin showed she excelled at that, the goal posts suddenly moved and the new game was being able to talk the talk in London, Paris, Tehran or Moscow. She looks about a half-step behind Sen. Obama on that learning curve.

Because, lest we forget, Barack The Inexperienced is also learning it all as he goes along.

And Diuguid's Decoder Ring:

Over the years I have known many people in my life who are quick to interpret ANY perceived slight from white folks as a form of racism. Deal with a white bank teller with a bad attitude? Racism. White person cuts in front of you on the highway? Racism. Deal with a disgruntled customer representative that is being short with you on the phone? Racism. Don't say "hi" to you? Racism. Get pulled over for speeding by a white cop? Racism....

I wish we could use the same over-analysis of whites to figure issues like "why do certain individuals stay in poverty even after providing them with a slew of opportunities to move ahead"....

Is Obama a Socialist? I come to believe that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Not only has he proudly associated himself with Socialists, but many of his policies are firmly rooted in that ideology. There is no difference between his "spread the wealth" comment and Karl Marx' now famous quote: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

A wise and courageous man, there, who just happens to be black, just like I happen to be white and male (and therefore a member of the only group which you can still openly discriminate against, and get away with it).

And, from Boortz's To The Undecided Voter:

I cannot fault a black American for voting for Obama. It may turn out to be a negative vote insofar as their dreams and goals are concerned. It may not work out all that well for their children, especially if they're ambitions and talented....

[L]et's consider the next four years under President Obama. He is certainly going to introduce ideas and pursue policies that are pure poison to many Americans; especially achievement-oriented self-sufficient citizens. Whenever anyone dares to utter a word in opposition to any Obama position or initiative you can be sure that there is going to be someone waiting close by to start screaming "racist!" By the end of Obama's first year in the White House virtually every white American will have been called a racist for one reason or another....

If Barack Obama was applying for a security clearance as a government employee, [his associations with Ayers, Wright and Rezko, et al.] would disqualify him. We are, my friends, about to have a president who doesn't qualify for a security clearance. Pretty pathetic. If Barack Obama becomes president, he would not even qualify to be his own bodyguard....

There's a quote that's been floating around since I began my talk radio career. This quote is most often attributed to someone named Alexander Tyler writing in 1787 about the fall of the Athenian Republic...:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

Wait, there's more:

[T]he very people that Barack Obama wants to nail with these tax increases are the people who create most of the jobs in our economy; America's small business owners....

Fact is 70% of all jobs in our economy come from America's small business owners. The Small Business Administration recently reported that 80% of all new jobs are being created by these small business owners. These are people who report all of their business income on their personal income tax returns. As such, they are squarely in the crosshairs for The Chosen One's tax increases....

If the small business owner(s) who employs you has his taxes increased by Barack Obama he is going to look for a way to replace that money. So where does he go to replace his income lost to Barack's tax increases? The best way would be to cut expenses. Well guess what? You're an expense! Will it be your job that is cut to compensate for the increased taxes? Maybe you'll be lucky and just have to forego your next raise. Maybe there would just be a cut in your pay or a reduction in benefits....

Let me tell you what is going to happen as soon as Barack Obama is elected. Employers are going to look at the so-called Employee Free Choice Act [which will eliminate the secret ballot in union recognition elections, making it easy for union organizers to intimidate employees into signing up] and they're going to be very afraid. They know what a union can do to their business and their profitability. Just look at our auto industry. So employers are going to immediately start working to minimize the damage. How do you do that? Well, automation is one way. Go ahead and buy that machinery you need to automate much of your workplace. That will allow you to get rid of these employees before they can unionize. You might also want to consider the possibility of moving some of those jobs overseas where union intimidation might not be such a negative factor in your business operations.

When Obama gets his unionization by intimidation thing in place—and he most certainly will—jobs are going to be lost and businesses will fail. This is the price Obama is willing to pay to pay back the unions who have supported him....

It is quite possible that Barack Obama will get to make one, maybe two Supreme Court appointments before he's through in Washington. It is also possible that he will have a filibuster-proof Senate to help him ram those choices through....

If Barack Obama gets those two nominations, and if the Democrat Senate rubber-stamps them, then we are going to have a Supreme Court making decisions based on their liberal definition of "fairness" with some consideration to foreign court decisions tossed in. This is perhaps Obama's greatest opportunity to do permanent damage to our Republic; permanent and irreparable damage.

And, Ayers Republished His Revolutionary Manifesto in 2006. 'Cause truly revolutionary ideas never really go out of style....

And Obama's (white) grandmother, "Toot," is sadly ill in Hawaii, leading the Compassionate Royal Wealth-Spreader to make an "exhausting journey across the Pacific" to see her ... after an inexplicable three-day delay.

"Grandma Toot." She's the one who introduced the teenaged Barack to cocaine, right?

Now I man don't
Toot with no coke
De only ting for me
Is de Custard pie!

—Dread Zeppelin, "Black Dog"

P.S. Biden: Obama Ready for Armageddon Showdown He Will Provoke. And Biden Clarifies Earlier Remarks on His Dread of an Obama Administration. And As long as the Palin family's wardrobe budget is on the table, how about Obama's iffy donations? And, Hippie apes make war as well as love, study finds:

Despite their reputation as lovers, not fighters, of the primate world, bonobos actually hunt and kill monkeys, German researchers said Monday.

Their findings, the first direct evidence of monkey hunting by the so-called "hippie" apes, show that such behavior is not linked to male dominance as females rule bonobo society and also go on hunts.

From Bernie Planck's The Arab Contribution to Civilization: Nothing Lately:

The real problem with the lack of Arab invention and discovery is that so much of he modern world's inventions, discoveries, art, entertainment, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, economics, are, to use their dirty word: Jewish. Perhaps this is why they hate the Jews so much. Not because Jews took 1/167th of Arab land away, but because they make Arabs with 167 times as much land look so impotent and ignorant.

Yes, I should add that to the existing "tall poppy syndrome writ large" list. It's also a good rejoinder to people who point to the natural wealth of America, etc., as being to credit for the "white man's" accomplishments here (with the implication being that, had any other group been so imperialistic, colonial and ruthless, they too could have ruled the world). 'Cause the Jews didn't get to where they are in the world via their land! No, they got there via brains and hard work, in spite of being truly persecuted and discriminated against by just about every other group they came into contact with. No affirmative action for them!

And, from Planck's Tax Cuts Should Favor the Rich:

People who are poor tend to have too many kids, fill up too many classrooms, consume too much emergency health services, commit most of the crimes, and rarely if ever pay income taxes [not to mention having proportionately low IQs: smart people tend not to be poor—present company excepted].

Now is it fair that those whose contribute the least and burden the state the most pay nothing in taxes? Is it fair that those who burden the state least and contribute the most (by their enormous consumption which sustains businesses and generates jobs) should pay the most in taxes?

Is it fair that people who pay nothing in income taxes can vote for more and more oppressive taxes on the wealthy so that they can get more and more in government handouts and services?....

The progressive tax system has failed. Taxing corporations more than every other country in the world except for Japan has certainly killed us as an industrial nation. Any state that allows Unionism damages its economic health. Look at what unions have done to Michigan: it's an industrial basket case. Meanwhile, states that spit on unions have vibrant auto industries.

I really like the way that man thinks. And it's not that I've ever been rich enough to care about how much I pay in taxes: it's just a question of fairness and meritocracy, and of recognizing that human nature is such that if we don't have to work for what we get in the world—i.e., if there's no incentive to work—we simply won't. (Anyone who doubts that truly doesn't know shit about human psychology.)

And then there's this interesting interview with Kate McMillan—one of the group of six who's being sued for speaking her mind about goat-fuckers and whatnot here in "Yes We Can-ada":

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > I actually host a Carnival of the Newbies from time to time, and as part of the last one, several bloggers offered their tips. This was mine: Push the envelope, even if it means being wrong from time to time....

What do you like doing in your spare time? > People who know me would laugh out loud at that question. My lifestyle is a loose arrangement of doing what I like in my "spare time," including working. It's all spare time....

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I think I can safely say it wouldn't change my life in any major way. I already do pretty much as I please—though I could do it more comfortably if I were to enjoy a financial windfall.

It really is the only way to live: Doing work that matters, and that you'd be doing even if you weren't getting paid for it, without having to answer to any Pointy-Haired Boss—napping at 2 in the afternoon if you feel like it, and then equally working at 2 am while the rest of the world slumbers. Long live us free spirits! (Kate's a very talented artist.)

Plus, having all this "spare time" allows me to read things like William Ayers' forgotten communist manifesto: Prairie Fire:

Ayers was not simply protesting "against" the Vietnam War. Firstly, he wasn't against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn't against the war, he was against our side in the war. This is spelled out in great detail in Prairie Fire. Secondly, and more significantly, the Vietnam War was only one of many issues cited by the Weather Underground as the justifications for their violent acts.... Ayers and the Weather Underground enumerated dozens of different grievances as the rationales for their bombings—their overarching goal being to inspire a violent mass uprising against the United States government in order to establish a communist "dictatorship of the proletariat," in Ayers' own words.

Ayers and his co-authors freely brag about their bombings and other violent and illegal acts, and even provide a detailed list, most likely typed up by Ayers himself, of the crimes they had committed up to that point. Ayers ... may have escaped conviction due to a legal technicality (the prosecutors failed to get a warrant during some of their surveillance of the Weather Underground), but this in no way means that Ayers was factually innocent of the crimes. As has been widely reported, after the case against him was dropped, Ayers described himself as "guilty as hell, free as a bird."

Just because Ayers tries to appear respectable now doesn't mean that he wasn't a violent revolutionary in the past. In fact, as the text of Prairie Fire shows, Ayers was one of the most extreme extremists in American political history. And ... Ayers is just as politically radical now as he was back then. He has never renounced the political views he professed in the 1960s and 1970s. The only difference is that now he no longer commits violence to achieve his goals. After his stint as the leader of the Weather Underground, he shifted to a different tactic: to spread his ideology under the aegis of academia. But the goal remains the same: to turn America into a communist nation. Ayers' contemporary writings contain many of the same ideas (and even the same phrases) found in Prairie Fire, just toned down to make them more palatable in polite society.

And Bill Ayers' definition of "socialism"?

Socialism is the total opposite of capitalism/imperialism. It is the rejection of empire and white supremacy. Socialism is the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eradication of the social system based on profit. Socialism means control of the productive forces for the good of the whole community instead of the few who live on hilltops and in mansions. Socialism means priorities based on human need instead of corporate greed. Socialism creates the conditions for a decent and creative quality of life for all.

All of which leads to the following conclusions:

[T]his country and its foundational principles are at a crossroads. And it is simply willful blindness to believe that Ayers and co. have changed their radical stripes—or that Barack Obama wasn't recruited, nurtured, trained, packaged, and marketed by Ayers and his fellow travelers—many of whom were active in the New Party, just as before that they were active members of the New Left.

Remember, these are people who spent years studying the inglorious defeat of their beloved "movement" of the late '60s (culminating in the 1972 reelection of Nixon), concluding not that communism or anti-Americanism is wrong, but rather that the way forward for their agenda was to undermine our institutions and the very epistemological paradigm under which we operate, and—by way of Alinsky—to consolidate power by cultivating a bright "clean," articulate, "progressive" candidate with the proper identity politics credentials to act as their national Trojan Horse.

We are only a few weeks away from potentially electing the chosen candidate of Bill Ayers, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and the remainder of the moldering radicals whose last political efforts will be in the service of the glorious cause—the handpicked protege of a man who at one point plotted, along with his fellow WU members, the elimination of 25 million stubborn capitalists who refused their proper re-education.

For us here in Canada, it would be a shame for the USA to be the first "domino" to fall. We sorta rely on you guys for protection from the rest of the world, y'know?

Meaning that if you are so foolish as to throw your country down the toilet, we can't help fix it.

Maybe call several hundred million plumbers....

P.S. Who is John Galt? And One International Crisis, Coming Up. And Ayers' New Book: America is a White Supremacist Nation. And Kirchick: Left-Wing Hatred Out of Control for Years. And Study: Coverage of McCain Much More Negative [i.e., more than 3x] Than That of Obama. Big surprise, there. Even Dan Rather gets it. As does Kirsten Powers. Who'da thunk it?

And, other Arab "contributions" to civilization: 25 Years Later, America Fails Lessons of Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing.

Bernie at Planck's Constant, on taxes:

I've written before that high corporate taxes have caused me to move some of my operations overseas because the business tax environment is much kinder. So it is citizens of other countries that get employed, make money, pay their bills and buy their groceries. High taxes, instead of helping the country, penalizes it. If taxes were lower, I would hire more Americans, pay more rent in America, and spread the money I am making among more Americans. With lower taxes, fewer Americans would need welfare, food stamps, and other services. They would have the money to pay for what they needed and without the indignity of getting handouts. And with less handouts, it is easier to lower taxes even more.

Those who ridicule trickle down economics obviously have not thought about no-trickle economics. Tax me enough and the money you tried to steal from me gets spent in other countries....

If those who pay no taxes keep on voting for more and more benefits and higher and higher burdens on those who do pay taxes, this country will be left with non-tax paying parasites asking for benefits which cannot be supplied since there will be no one left to pay the taxes for them.

Which is exactly how liberal democracies die. Observe:

Barack Obama says he plans to cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers. That sounds terrific, but there are three problems. One, it is meant to draw attention from the real core of the Obama tax plan: proposed increases in every major federal tax. Two, the structure of the cuts will create perverse incentives. And three, many of the people receiving "tax cuts" don't pay taxes to begin with, meaning they'll be in effect getting welfare....

Obama argues that only higher-income workers and rich corporations will suffer these tax increases, and they can afford it. But tax and economic policy is not about who "can afford it." Increasing these marginal tax rates greatly harms the economy—when more of the money earned goes to the government, there's less incentive for "the rich" to work, save, invest, and create and expand businesses. This affects people trying to start businesses with investment money from wealthy folks. Not to mention people looking for jobs, which usually come from businesspeople with money....

Obama's tax increases will not produce nearly enough revenue to finance all his lavish spending proposals, as shown by a brilliant new paper from Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute.

I take this as being the paper in question:

Many studies find that an increase in marginal tax rates on capital gains or high incomes causes income reported from those sources to drop significantly. Economists call this "the elasticity of taxable income."

If the tax rate on dividends is increased, investors will shift many of their dividendpaying stocks into tax-exempt pension funds or sell them to tax-exempt domestic and foreign investors and hold more tax-exempt bonds. If the tax rate on capital gains is increased, investors will hold fewer shares in taxable accounts and avoid selling winning stocks unless they have offsetting losses. If the highest individual income is raised far above the corporate tax rate, thousands of professionals and businesses currently filing as partnerships, Subchapter S corporations, and LLCs will reincorporate to shelter income under the corporate income tax.

Because of such well-documented responses, income tax data provide incorrect information about income distribution when tax rates change. A large body of evidence finds large and sustained increases in reported income among high-income taxpayers in the wake of major reductions in tax rates on salaries (1988) or capital gains (1997) or both (2003). It follows that we could expect sustained reductions in reported income among high-income taxpayers if there were major increases in marginal tax rates on high individual incomes and/or capital gains. Such defensive moves by targeted taxpayers would indeed appear to reduce before-tax top incomes reported on individual tax returns. But it also means the higher tax rates would be largely or entirely ineffective in reducing after-tax income or in raising additional revenue.

Observe further:

[I]f you have been following this so far, you have learned that people who pay no income tax will get an income tax refund. You have also learned that this check will represent relief for the payroll taxes these people do pay. And you have been assured that this rebate check won't actually come out of payroll taxes, lest we harm Social Security.

You have to admire the audacity. With one touch of the Obama magic, what otherwise would be described as taking money from Peter to pay Paul is now transformed into Paul's tax relief....

"It's interesting that Mr. Obama calls his plan 'Making Work Pay,'" says Mr. [Andrew] Biggs, "because the incentives are just the opposite. By expanding benefits for people whose benefits exceed their taxes, you're increasing their disincentive for work. And you're doing the same at the top of the income scale, where you are raising their taxes so you can distribute the revenue to others."

Even more interesting is what Mr. Obama's "tax cuts" do to Social Security financing. As Mr. Biggs notes, had Mr. Obama proposed to pay for payroll tax relief out of, well, payroll taxes, his plan would never have a chance in Congress. Most members would look at a plan that defunded a trust fund that seniors are counting on for their retirement as political suicide.

And that leads us to the heart of this problem. If the government is going to give tax cuts to 44% of American based on their Social Security taxes—without actually refunding to them the money they are paying into Social Security—Mr. Obama will have to get the funds elsewhere. And this is where "general revenues" turns out to be a more agreeable way of saying "Other People's Money."

And from Left-wing and a prayer:

Barack the Spreader wants to spread Joe the Plumber's wealth around. In fact, every American does that for himself every day of the week, every time he swings by Joe the Butcher, Joe the Baker, Joe the Candlestick Maker, Jolene the Waitress, Jolene the New York Gubernatorial Prostitute, whatever. The question is whether 300 million Americans spreading their wealth around can do it more effectively than Barack and Barney taking it unto themselves to spread it around.

I don't find that hard to answer. If you disagree—if you believe in socialist redistribution from the dynamic sector of the economy to the sclerotic, incompetent and corrupt—then fine: lots of folks in European welfare states and African basket-case dictatorships do as well.

From How many will pay no federal income taxes in the next administration?

We need to seriously consider Steve Forbes' flat tax plan soon if we don't want to turn the US into a welfare state. Our tax policies will drive capital out of our markets and into other arenas for investment if the capital class winds up funding all of the federal government, and the electorate continues to demand services for which they don't pay. These graphs show a disaster ahead even if we didn't already face two with Medicare and Social Security, which largely have the same origin.

Oh, and it turns out that "socialist" is a codeword for "black." And "wealth spender" is code for "pickpocket" ... which is also code for "black." Or "half-black." Or maybe for "uppity nigger." Or "Messiah." The text is not clear.

Hey, if they're going to call you a racist no matter what, why not tell the truth?

Well, now we're getting somewhere!

P.S. Obama Supporters Attack Sarah Palin's Motorcade. No doubt it's all whitey's fault....

And If I were black I would be offended. And Koranic toilet paper. Right where the "religion of peas (and corn)" belongs. And Palin Runs with Biden's Test Warning. And Speaking of Obama's clothes....

And, Effective Interactions With African-American Males 101. For college credit ... my niggaz.

And, in the latest episode of You Can't Say That In Canada (Thursdays at 9, right after Warman of the Mounted): Censoring Pankiw's Pamphlets. 'Cause really, the Injuns don't go for the firewater, commit crimes, or benefit from special race-based privileges any more than us racist, white settlers do. Or, if they do, we mustn't hurt their aboriginal feelings by pointing it out. Even if you're a politician addressing the issues you're supposed to address as part of your job. "Outrageous slings and arrows" have no place in Canuckistan. And yet—

Here's a Statistics Canada study that shows that while Aboriginals make up only 9% of Saskatchewan's population, they were 52% of the province's criminal accused.

Oops. That's the kinda thing that gets the CHRC on the warpath....

From Silly kangaroo! Don't you know the rules? Convict first, then censor! in which Mr. Levant's reply to Kangaroo is censored by Baby Roo before Kanga can read it:

[H]ere's where Dagenais becomes a symbol of everything that's wrong with the CHRC and its censorship fetish: she blacked out portions of my defence before passing it on to the commissioners. Seriously—she censored what I wrote in my own defence, before she passed it along to the people who will sit in judgment of me. She's only allowing me to say things in my defence that she approves in advance....

Silly kangaroo, don't you know the rules? You're not supposed to censor me until after the show trial. Remember: convict first, then censor!

And, For Want of a Nail:

I do not feel threatened by Islamic terrorists since most people, except Michael Moore and idiots like him, realize that they are indeed a danger to our country and our Government rightly is on the lookout for them. The problem is with moderate Muslims who, although they currently do not pose any physical danger to our republic, nonetheless are a greater threat precisely because of their seeming innocuousness. They will slowly but surely force mature, respectful, and polite citizens of this land to remove, change, and modify every thing that makes this country what it is.

P.S. The Real Threat Posed by Bill Ayers. And Liberal Colin Powell Was Advising Barack Obama Since June 2007:

Both Bushes—father and son—also engaged in the Powell treatment, giving this lefty a lot of power over military and foreign policy for no good reason other than, frankly, affirmative action. There are plenty of smart, accomplished black men in the military, the policy analysis arena, and government—conservatives—who'd have been far better.

But rather than reward conservatives who put them in office, both Bushes rewarded liberalism by choosing Powell—a promoter of Arafat and a man who has worked especially against Bush, the son, despite the prominent positions the current Prez gave him. (I'd love to see Independent Conservative, La Shawn Barber, Thomas Sowell, or Larry Elder in a power position in this or any Administration. Then, America would be in much better shape. They're far better than anyone currently in the Bush cabinet.)

And Powell repeatedly plays the race card. As SecState, for example, he told MTV that the Bush's picked him because he has light skin and looks white. If a white person had said that, they'd have instantly been forced to turn in a resignation. But not Colin Powell.

And The comprehensive argument against Barack Obama. (Do skip over the abortion part, which was the weakest possible way of starting the piece, oy.)

And US intelligence: Iran will be able to build first nuclear bomb by February:

The most obvious interpretation of [Biden's] ramble is that an Iran-Israel confrontation is coming, and that if Obama is president, America will sit it out with, at best, words that do nothing to support Israel or deter Iran.

Victor Davis Hanson:

It's easy to say, as Obama says, it's a game-changer if Iran were to get a nuclear device. What does that mean, a game-changer? That's intolerable. What he's not telling you is that if I choose to make sure that they don't have a nuclear device, then that means that basically the United States is going to have to impose an embargo or a Naval blockade [because the Europeans will still try to profit to the 11th hour] or even a military strike. I, Barack Obama, [will] be hated by people in Berlin. There's no more Victory Column great extravaganzas for me. There's no more fawning interviews with Der Spiegel. It's going to be hatred from those people. I'm going to be a unilateralist pre-empter, and I'm going to do that, and all the people in the Muslim world and the Arab world that love me and fawn over me are going to hate me as worse than you know what. Okay, I'm willing to do that for a principle. Do you think he's going to be willing to do that, or John McCain?

And that, you see is why an effete, race-card-playing metrosexual versus a nuclear Iran and the soft jihad in America itself is such a bad idea.

John Derbyshire:

The mental map that I formed in my head quite early on in life—after reading Wittfogel's ORIENTAL DESPOTISM in the mid-1970s, I think, though reading a lot of Chinese history contributed too—is of a world divided into civilization and barbarism. There is a civilized zone, and a barbarous hinterland. I want to see the civilized zone defended, every damn inch. Israel is a civilized country; the Arabs are barbarous. There is nothing dogmatically biological about this, and I do think that civilized peoples can slip into barbarism, and vice versa. The Vikings were very barbarous; but they developed into the pale, hygienic Scandinavians of our own time. The Hungarians did the same thing very quickly, in a couple of generations, from the terrifying Magyar horde to the Christian kingdom of Stephen. The present state of the world is what we have to deal with, though, and I want the ramparts defended. It doesn't mean hating anyone. If the Arabs "got" civilization tomorrow, I'd be the first to rejoice. Don't see any sign of it, though.

The paleo response is that it is no skin off our nose what happens in the Levant, that we should mind our own business and look strictly to our own national interests. I am quite strongly sympathetic to that, as an instinctive nationalist, but I think it bespeaks civilizational overconfidence, and my sympathy is over-ridden by my affection for Western civilization at large. Civilization is, according to me, a very fragile thing, needing constant maintenance and unblinking, vigilant defense at every boundary. If forced to retreat to the borders of the USA, it would not survive.

Speaking of which: Neighbour "carried head on bus". In London, no less. "Animals" is far too polite of a word for such fecal barbarians.

"Step away from the severed head ... Mohammed."

Oh, and for anyone who thinks that open-source software is preferable (i.e., less buggy, etc.) to Microsoft products, I've got two words for you: Firefox 3. I've been trying to use this inadequately QA'd piece of crap for the past month or two, and it just won't stop crashing.

From Sony Corporation Caves After one Muslim Complaint:

[T]he threat to Western Civilization is not from violent radical Muslims but from peaceful moderate Muslims. It is not the radical Muslim who asks for accommodations to their religion. The radicals are easy to fight because the average American realizes they are dangerous. Moderate Muslims, because they do not swing scimitars in the air, do not seem as if they are a danger to Western Civilization, however the assumption is mistaken.

More insidious than Osama Bin Laden is Mohammed Bin Ordinary. Because of political correctness, because of misplaced tolerance of those who think differently than we do, because of fears of being called racists, bigots and Islamophobes, because of these reasons we allow moderate Muslims in our midst.

It is moderate Muslims who ask us not to insult their religion because it is a blasphemy worthy of death. It is moderate Muslims who ask us not to criticize the culture they come from; who are we to condemn Honor Killings, stonings, vaginal mutilations?

And By Law, Groups Like ACORN Will Get Money When You Take Out A Mortgage. And ACORN'S White Horse:

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is complaining to the Justice Department about the attention being focused on the determined effort by ACORN, Obama's wholly owned vote-fraud division, to steal the 2008 election. Adding ignorance to gall, the campaign demands that what it calls a "Special Prosecutor" must investigate not ACORN but—you guessed it—the McCain campaign and the Bush administration....

ACORN is not just carrying out voter fraud in the here and now. Over the years ... several [of] its operatives have been convicted for these activities. And how could it be otherwise? What voters need to understand is that ACORN is a revolutionary Leftist organization. It was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke, a former member of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)—the Communist organization from which Bill Ayers' Weatherman terrorist group split off in the late Sixties. It is adherent to the radical principles of Saul Alinsky, of whom Obama is a disciple....

Under the aforementioned heading of "direct action," ACORN has made fraud, extortion, harassment, and menacing core parts of its modus operandi. As a matter of principle, ACORN believes that the established bourgeois American order is racist, materialist, imperialist and illegitimate. ACORN no more cares about election laws than about other laws it decides must be circumvented in the service of the higher purpose it reveres: "Change."

And "New" Nation of Islam, Farrakhan are Same Ole/Same Ole:

Since last week, a number of people have been sending the story of how there are an alleged "new and improved" (and supposed more tolerant) Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan.

To quote one of the most anti-Semitic and pro-Farrakhan rap groups—Public Enemy—Don't Believe the Hype....

Calypso Louie still holds the same racist, bigoted, anti-White, anti-Semitic—and frankly, anti-American—views he's always held. He's just not announcing them to the world. But he won't take them back or apologize for them. And he still believes them....

It's the same old racist, separatist, supremacy crap we've been hearing from Farrakhan since he transformed himself from Calypso singer and dancer to the nation's looniest black racist.

That's interesting about Public Enemy, because a week and a half ago I happened to get a ride home from Mississauga with ... no, not with Public Enemy's Chuck D. It was just with a local rapper who has worked with Chuck D. The front-man for The Dope Poet Society, as it happens, who's currently doing a Ph.D. in political science at the U of Toronto, and will be transferring to Northwestern (where Bill Ayers' "Dig it!" squeeze Bernardine Dohrn currently "teaches"), because they have a better African-American library (plus more prestige than the U of T, even though the latter is the best university in Canada).

So I'm thinkin', as smart as politically concerned as that affable and interesting hip-hoppin' guy was—he was the one who told me about therealnews.com, as we drove past the building where its content is produced—it's unlikely that he was unaware of the anti-Semitic and pro-Farrakhan sentiment of Chuck D's work.

But again, as Woody Allen would say, "It's from the Left, so it's okay."

Anyway, being a "radical" these days isn't quite what it used to be: At ProfessorD.us's instigation, we actually stopped for breakfast at McDonald's. Generally, I don't believe in supporting those "multinational, anti-union corporate pigs," but he seemed to be really hungry. (It was the first time I had eaten there in half a dozen years, though more for nutritional than political reasons, since I really didn't care about politics [and immigration laws, etc.] until it started directly affecting me as a disadvantaged minority [i.e., a white male]. The yogurt/fruit parfait is actually surprisingly edible.)

As I said to him: "Saving the world on one Egg McMuffin a day."

As anecdotes go, it's not as quite bad as when a young and unknown Meat Loaf gave a ride to a straggly, hippie hitchhiker, in the hills around L.A. ... only to realize later, after the Tate murders, that the man he had driven home was Charles Manson.

And, Powell/Obama: Race rules. Get used to it:

Some ... welcome the prospect of an Obama Presidency, anticipating that the abrasive ethnic favoritism inevitable in such an Administration will finally enlighten the traditional American people. This will make things awkward for what appears to be currently the dominant intellectual force in the current GOP leadership. The Democrats, by so openly appealing to ethnocentrism, could well be unleashing forces lethal to themselves.

Yes, but it's not just the Democratic Party or the Republican leadership that's going to suffer from the backlash at Obama's blatant racial favoritism: It's race-relations between American whites and blacks in general, when the white population gets appropriately and very justifiably "mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore" about all the money, guns, and First Amendment rights which Barack-in-the-Hood will be trying to take away from them, to "give to the poor."

You remember what the "old, senile crazy woman" Doris Lessing said back in February, right? (Yeah, crazy like that other "racist," Geraldine Ferraro.) It's only about Obama's skin color if he makes it about that ... which is exactly what he's been doing. Otherwise, his "spread-the-wealth-around" socialism is already more than enough for even a former hippie-leftist like myself to have no use for the man or his policies, regardless of his race. I can only imagine how the "gun-clinging" rednecks in backwoods Texas must feel.

And, while I haven't been able to find any online/searchable versions of Obama's Audacity of Hope, this can apparently be found on page 261 of the paperback version:

In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging.

I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

Just the sort of attitude you want to have at the head of a country for the next four years, eh?

P.S. The sprawling skyscraper where Barack Obama and William Ayers worked together for years but never laid eyes on each other. And Kurtz on Obama and the New Party. And Biden: Elect Obama and We'll Have an International Crisis. And Shots Allegedly Fired at McCain Campaign Bus. Not that it's newsworthy (and likely to show up at butterfliesandwheels.com) or nothing'.... Nor will this. (In fairness, I also saw a story about McCain-supporters slashing the tires of Obama-supporters at a rally recently, but can't find the URL for that.)

Oh, and if you respect Garrison Keillor, you should read the latter third of this. It summarizes a lot of the blatant double standards (indulged in by Keillor, et al.) in the media coverage of The One and Joe the Dumber, vs. McCain and Palin. As does Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? .

From Crossing Paths Daily: Obama and Ayers Shared an Office (Update: For Three Years):

"Mr. LaBolt said [Obama and Ayers] first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood."

I'm going to suggest that two guys working in the same building for a period of years probably crossed paths pretty often. For all we know, they had lunch together on a daily basis....

According to this letter dated 1995, Obama's office was on the 3rd floor....

And according to this memo dated 1996, [Ayers'] Small Schools Workshop was also on the 3rd floor....

Do you think maybe Obama and Bill Ayers ran into each other once in a while?

And Soros-Funded Pair Running Obama Transition Team. And Obama Gave Bill Ayers' Book a Rave Review. And They are sweeping Obama's socialist answer to Joe Wurzelbacher's question under the rug. And The story hasn't changed; we're just too dumb to get it straight. And Letter to the Republican Party from a concerned PUMA...:

As PUMAs we worked our butt off to ensure Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party's Primary, against all odds, including being outspent 4:1, the MSM being in Obama's corner, charges of racism and blatant displays of sexism by Obama and his surrogates, and last but not least, electoral fraud perpetuated by ACORN. Folks, indeed the more things change the more they stay the same, nothing has changed, except John McCain has taken the place of Hillary Clinton....

Obama is a man whose political ideology is more in line with that of Daniel Arap Moi, a founding father of Kenya who thrived on the cult of personality, than it is in line with that of our founding father, George Washington, a man who put it all on the line so that our country would truly be greater than any one man.

P.S. Theodore Dalrymple's essays, archived at City Journal. Well worth reading, especially if you're still under the delusion that more-than-bare-minimum government programs for the underclass solve more problems than they create.

Hmm. Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?

Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write Dreams From My Father, he had written very close to nothing. Then, five years later, this untested 33 year-old produced what Time Magazine has called—with a straight face—"the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."

The public is asked to believe Obama wrote Dreams From My Father on his own, almost as though he were some sort of literary idiot savant. I do not buy this canard for a minute, not at all. Writing is as much a craft as, say, golf. To put this in perspective, imagine if a friend played a few rounds in the high 90s and then a few years later, without further practice, made the PGA Tour. It doesn't happen.

More recently, the same debunker has suggested:

My suspicion is that Ayers saw the potential in Obama, and chose to mold it. The calculation in Dreams is palpable. Nothing about the book would deny a black Democrat the White House....

At the end of the day, the observer is left with only two conclusions: either Barack Obama experienced a quantum surge in his writing skills almost overnight; or someone made a major contribution to the rewriting of his book.

The dispassionate observer has to choose the latter—the former has no precedent. If he can endure the consequences, he concedes that that contributor had to be Bill Ayers.

In 1981, Obama wrote and published the following cringe-inducing poem:

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance...

The above is, on inspection, clearly the work of someone who possesses no creative-writing ability at all, and who lacks even the potential to produce anything of value in that discipline: You can't get from penning something as awful as the above, as an adult, to being a real writer, much less a world-class one. And BHO's clunky (prose) style had not improved at all by 1990.

For reference, this is the first "keeper" song I ever wrote, in my early twenties ... around the same age as when Obama (b. 1961) wrote and published the above "figgy ape" poem:

RED-HAIRED GIRL

In my eyes, red-haired girl
You are surrounded by adjectives
Words like cute, breathtaking, beautiful
Radiant, unapproachable
Words that you find in a big dictionary
When you're checking the spelling
Of "contemporary"
Words that reflect what I see in your eyes
That can damn with faint praise
But can never describe

And your life, red-haired girl
Is a page, of thirty-one lines
Filled with poetry, big words that rhyme
And are spoke to the wind
With a penny and wish
And my life, red-haired girl
Is a noun, and it stands all alone
Near the margin of doubt
Lacking the power of action

Oh, red-haired girl
Emerald eyes to die for
Flowing like a river
To the place it wants to be
My heart goes out to you
Like a cookie to the sea

And your life, red-haired girl
Is a page, empty page in a notebook
That I, that I would delight just to write on
In pencil, I think
'Cause then it would work to erase
All the stumbling words, the mistakes
Reminders that you are the grace that you are
And I am just what I am

Oh, red-haired girl
Emerald eyes to die for
Running 'cross the flowered fields
To the Emerald City
Is where you hold my heart
And there you hold the key
Is where you hold my heart

It took me another decade and a half of practice after that 'til I could honestly say I knew how to write prose. (Exhibit A, from a few years after the above song.) Yet I still haven't written a sentence, in any context, to compare with these jaw-dropping beauties, credited to the 1995 Obama:

Winter came and the city turned monochrome-black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds.

You can see from the lyrics in the song above that I already knew how to use many a literary device, even well prior to learning how to write engaging prose. There's no indication at all, however, of Barack "Apes and Figs" Obama possessing the same skills on either count, prior to their sudden appearance, out of the blue, in 1995.

P.S. "I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me". And PC Effect, Not Bradley Effect, May Haunt Obama:

There is a plethora of legitimate reasons for rejecting Barack Obama as president. That we must either endorse his candidacy or admit to being malignant racists is a risible notion....

A defining characteristic of the fashion by which the media attempts to mislead and indoctrinate our people is through omission of fact. Should whites fail to embrace Senator Obama it proves their underlying racism, but if blacks back him near unanimously—as they overwhelmingly did in the Democratic primaries of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi—it proves that they ... supported a Democratic candidate....

And You down with JTP? Yeah, you know me!:

According to Rand Simberg, the Obama camp is actually complaining that McCain didn't—and this is real, they're actually saying this—that McCain didn't vet Joe Wurzelbacher.

And Sink Traps of Shame. And I Am Joe:

Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

Puts classical liberals like Ophelia Benson in a bit of a bind, doesn't it? You know, for enthusiastically supporting freedom of speech and citizen participation ... but then simultaneously posting links that attempt to discredit Joe, when all he did was dare to question the Integral Socialist Messiah.(She gives no mention of disapproval of the content at those linked pages, which one may reasonably take as being an implicit approval of the same and an assertion of relevance.)

Joe's lack of a plumbing license, and the opinion of the local union about that, isn't even remotely newsworthy. Yet she posts the link in her News section, as if it was some significant contribution to the debate. While simultaneously posting links to other pieces about how nasty the Republicans have supposedly been during this election, and de facto excusing every piece of shit which her own side has thrown at Sarah Palin (not to mention throwing a few pieces herself). I would have expected better, from her. But as always, when you threaten a person's most deeply held (if utterly unsupportable) beliefs....

Anyway, back to eternal victims who the world just won't stop picking on: And the week's biggest victim of a hostile media is:

If you vote for this narcissist, then you'd better be prepared for at least 4 years of agreeing with every single thing he says and does. Keep your mouth shut, racist. Or he'll get his guys to shut it for you.

"Racist"? Hey, that's me!! And a sexist and a scoundwel, and a wobber, and a wapist ... and a pickpocket.

And from Maybe I haven't been looking, but in the media frenzy to destroy Joe the Plumber, here's a quote I haven't seen much since Wednesday:

If we're going to plunge headlong into outright socialism, then I want some of what George Clooney's got. You're a big Obama backer, right, George? Well then, put your money where your wagging, chiseled chin is. It's not fair that you've got so much more than I do. I'll take one of your houses and one of your cast-off girlfriends. Doesn't have to be one of the good ones in either category. Whatever you can spare, genius.

And through it all, We are at war with a rape cult.

From Charles Krauthammer's Who's Playing the Race Card?:

In the name of racial rectitude, McCain has denied himself the use of that perfectly legitimate [Jeremiah Wright] issue. It is simply Orwellian for him to be now so widely vilified as a stoker of racism. What makes it doubly Orwellian is that these charges are being made on behalf of the one presidential candidate who has repeatedly, and indeed quite brilliantly, deployed the race card....

What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

I once believed him.

Yeah, I think there was a time when we all expected Obama to "play fair," attributing a degree of integrity and competence (e.g., in economics) to him that he clearly lacks, in spades. (For me, it was up until a few months ago.) "To be that young again."

The thing that effete little whiners like Obama and his feminist counterparts never manage to understand is that "If you've gonna do the time, you might as well do the crime." That is, if you're going to be called a racist, sexist, right-wingnut or whatever anyway, just for having the temerity to question the wisdom and authority of the feminist/Obama/liberal "cult leaders" ... you might as well not hold back or even try to humor them to begin with. (McCain may or may not figure that out before the election; if he doesn't, a good chunk of the rest of the country will figure it out over the next four years. When I've talked about Obama rolling back race relations in the States by forty or fifty years ... well, you can see what his bullshit and bullying has done to me, and I'm one of the tolerant ones! Or at least, I used to be. So what changed?)

You had already figured out that that's the tack I've been taking, right? You know, where it's actually a matter of pride to be considered a "racist" and a "sexist" (or an "untrustworthy asshole" by the integral-ites) ... simply because that's where telling the truth will invariably get you. Frankly, if the real racists and shameful race-card-players in the world (Jackson, Sharpton, Farrakhan, Obama, etc.) don't consider you to be a racist, and if the real sexists in the world (Steinem, Dworkin, MacKinnon, Rich, etc.) don't regard you as a raging sexist ... you should be ashamed of yourself. Because if your ideas are actually so much in line with theirs that they don't consider you to be "part of the problem," you really must not care that much about truth and reality.

And if anyone's wondering why Sarah Palin's Christian-rapture beliefs, stumbling "gotcha" (Couric, etc.) interviews, and other wrong ideas (re: global warming, abortion, etc.) don't freak me out the way they cause Sam Harris, for example, to shit himself and spit bile: Part of it is that my own Christian mother never finished high school. But that didn't stop her from taking over the family chicken farm after her own missionary father went out west to "convert the heathens," and running it very well, even in a monolithically male, sexist environment. (She actually developed a reputation among the surrounding farmers and vendors of having a "sharp pencil," i.e., they had learned the hard way that, contrary to their Christian-sexist expectations, they couldn't pull stuff over on her.) She also grew up believing in a literal bodily Resurrection from the grave, and it wasn't until the last walk we ever took together that I ever heard any doubt from her about needing to believe in Jesus in order to get to heaven. Yet I can assure you that she would have been a far more sane choice to trust with nuclear codes and the like than any slippery "community organizer."

So I'm familiar with strong, principled, confident, compassionate women who are smart even without having had much formal education, and who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty: That's what I grew up with, to the point of taking it for granted. (Doesn't everyone's mother eviscerate chickens with her own hands, after a pre-marital life of attending operas in Germany, during her own missionary days?) And as much as I look down on the dumbfuck rednecks and construction workers in this world, I also think it would do the likes of Harris (and Obama) good to do an honest day's manual labor now and then.

Maybe they could get on as plumbers' apprentices....

Plus, Harris's tolerance for Terence McKenna's psychedelic-induced "exquisite ravings" is just as crazy, and nearly as potentially dangerous, as are any Christian Rapture expectations. For, if the many-worlds cosmos really was peopled with "self-transforming machine elves" who can communicate with us in altered states of consciousness ... how might those communications from higher beings affect Harris's own decision-making, should he (god forbid) ever be placed in a position of responsibility?

People like Sarah Palin understand the separation of Church and State well enough to not try and force their own religious beliefs onto others in that context. By contrast, to truly embrace integral spirituality is, by its very nature, to attempt to apply it to every aspect of life. Would you want someone with that kind of belief system to be holding an elected office, where he would necessarily have to try to bring his spiritual/religious beliefs into government? I sure wouldn't. The integral dumbfuck Harris, though, probably would. If he's thought it out that far.... (Philosopher? Hah!!)

P.S. Equating Islam with Terrorism Will Lead to Terrorism. And I don't normally do "fisking," but in this case I'll make an exception. And Operation Destroy Joe the Plumber:

This time around, with Joe The Plumber as their target, the MSM is coming out with guns blazing. Maybe they should spend more time telling the bigger story about Wurzelbacher—that he managed to get Obama on the public record as favoring a socialistic redistribution of wealth....

After Wurzelbacher told Katie Couric that Obama's rhetorical tap dance was "almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.," the inevitable cries of "bigotry" followed. (There are now tens of thousands of hits on the Internet for "Joe the Plumber racist.")

See? Why should you even try to please these duplicitous bastards? They've already set it up so that you can't win. Better to be a proud Islamophobe, sexist ... and "racist." (Plus, they're throwing the term around with such abandon that it's rapidly losing its damning quality. Pretty soon, "Bob, how the fuck are you, you racist bastard? How's the house nigger?" will be standard fare at dinner parties.)

Yet, I see that Ophelia Benson, over at butterfliesandwheels.com, is linking to a "Plumbers Disavow Joe: Union plumbers are not impressed by Joe the plumber" article. As if the man's lack of a license (or the opinion of the local union about him) for a simple trade is relevant to anything! They gag and scream about even the slightest provocation from McCain and Palin, while looking straight past the fact that their own side is using every dirty trick in the book, and pretending that their own spewing of unveiled contempt at Palin is in some way justified. "None so blind as socialists who will not see," eh? (Christ, you read leftist analyses of the subprime mortgage crisis, and they're actually trying to sell it as being a failure of the free market and deregulation, when in reality it was excessive affirmative action-like regulation, going back to the late '70s, that created the problem! People without the first fucking clue about what's going on around them, yet they've still got it all explained, stupidly pretending that "every assertion about the merits of deregulation and about the primacy of [free] market forces is now dead.")

Honestly, I wouldn't have imagined that a person like OB could be so sharp and clear on so many other topics, and yet so utterly uninformed about something she spent her twenties reading up on (i.e., socialist politics, and presumably also getting to "know her enemy" on the opposite, conservative side). But then, you look at how the bulk of her postings on the dangers of Islam focus just on how women are getting shafted there, and combine that with the title of her forthcoming book (Does God Hate Women?), and a certain, tired pattern starts to become painfully evident....

I'll always be grateful to OB, and to her site, for having opened my eyes to the dangers of radical (and even moderate) Islam. But I also know, by now, that there are much better sources for information on that same topic, which she totally ignores—for whatever reasons, from simple unawareness of their existence to the fact that they invariably tend to be politically conservative sites, simply because it's mostly the conservatives who seem to have any interest in fighting for their society and culture, while the majority of liberals can't wait to import the people and culture of the Third World, in the name of multiculturalism. (Cf. conservatism is "the set of ideas that men adopt in defense of their social and political institutions when they come under fundamental attack.")

Really, the (complete) extent to which she relies on the mainstream media for her news is downright embarrassing. Not that I was any better until a few months ago; but I've already posted enough links on her comment pages that there's no excuse for her not having learned by now. Granted, those were frequently links to right-wing sites; but even if you want a left-wing take on the news, you can do better than the MSM. Try therealnews.com, for one.

Same thing's happened to Betty Bowers: Gone from fantastic, witty "Christian" barbs directed at The Shrub to simple hate-filled bitching about McCain and Palin, without even trying (and certainly without succeeding) at being funny or even entertaining anymore.

If you ever nee