Veepstake Nonsense. The moron-pundit class is making ridiculous noises about the possible choices for Veep by both Obama and McCain.
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Let's escape the delusional world of TV pundits and talk common sense. On July 24th, a political commentator, David Knowles of "Political Machine", said plainly that people today vote little differently from their parents. He was speaking about a new book, The American Voter Revisited, an update to a 1960 book by the same name, less the "Revisited".

Just as in 1960, American voters aren't really paying attention. Despite the 24-hour campaign coverage on the teevee and the internets, for the most part, the electorate seems to be set on auto-pilot, as Lewis-Black, detailed in an interview with the University of Michigan Press:

... do socio-economic conditions and, especially, party identification, still largely determine how Americans vote? Are voters still mostly inattentive to politics, with a rather low level of interest in politics, and very little understanding of the liberal-conservative debate raging at the elite level? The answer to these questions, perhaps surprisingly, is "yes." In other words, the typical American voter follows pretty much the same cues as he or she did fifty years ago.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:11 AM

 
Two Deaths. Tony Snow, former press secretary to President Bush (the Younger) died July 12th. I was going to comment but let it pass. Then Randy Pausch died on Friday the 25th. The contrast between the two deaths impelled me to say something.
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Most people will know that Randy Pausch delivered a "Last Lecture" at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University after he found out that a cancerous condition had become terminal. The term "Last Lecture" apparently derives from a practice at that university of encouraging departing faculty to say to students what they would advise if they knew they were dying. In fact, Pausch did know he was dying, so his Last Lecture was more than hypothetical. His death, at 47, left a wife and three young children well provided for, but hurting. It also left the Nation, and more, grieving. Not just because he was a beautiful man who should not have died so much ahead of time, but also because he was generous and wise, and wanted his death to encourage people to pursue their dreams, not just live from day to day without even thinking about what they'd really like to do in the time they have, or actually aspiring to be what they wanted to be before "What do you want to be when you grow up?" became a question too late.
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When we look back on his life, we will be sad, but glad that he lived even as briefly as he did.
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When we look back on the life of RightwingerTony Snow, by contrast, we will remember his perfidy and utter lack of honor, and wish he had died long before he had disgraced himself in lying to the people to make excuses for the inexcusable behavior of the Bush Administration.
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One of his predecessors as White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, served as deputy press secretary to Bush during his first campaign for the White House. Bush chose Ari Fleischer as his initial press secretary, but sent to Texas for McClellan in advance of Fleischer's departure, then elevated McClellan to Press Secretary when Fleischer left. McClellan, who came from a family important in Texas Republican politics, would seem to have come to Washington all dewy-eyed and naively hopeful that a man who had been an admirable Governor could be an equally admirable President, even tho Bush had invaded Iraq before McClellan arrived. Given that timeline, McClellan was not involved in the discussions that preceded the invasion.
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Scott McClellan was an amiable, likable, harmless chubby guy you couldn't imagine being part of a conspiracy of lies to advance a despicable and unjustifiable war. His likability served to dull the sharp points of press questions. He thus lent himself to an Administration that kept the public in the dark about its dark motives. McClellan remained White House spokesman long after he should have accepted that the old Bush was gone and was now just a puppet for a malign conspiracy of Rightwingers in the service of some very ugly causes, like Radical Zionism and plutocracy.
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McClellan had the good grace to at least partly repent his sins, even tho he continues to insist that the Administration did not willfully lie to us.
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Tony Snow didn't go even that far, but died utterly unrepentant about his role in spouting the Bush Administration's lies and deceitful garbage. Tony Snow was inaptly named, unless his middle name was "Yellow" or "Brown". He was more like the soot-coated mounds of snow piled up on the sidewalks of a New York City street during an extended cold snap, or the muddy slush of such snow melted by salt spread by the Department of Sanitation when it couldn't remove the snow physically. He was, in short, a bad man.
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To evaluate the behavior of people like Tony Snow or Scott McClellan, who make excuses for foul crimes they do not themselves commit, we have to evaluate the honorableness or dishonorableness of Government service. Is it possible honorably to serve the Government of the United States when it is dominated by evil people at the top? That depends on what service you render. If you work in the Department of Agriculture to help train farmers in soil conservation or using new seed stocks; or in the National Park Service guiding tourists around Yellowstone; or you help people find low-cost healthcare or housing thru the Department of Health and Human Services, sure. But if what you do advances evil, or enables evil, then no, it is not possible to serve your Government honorably.
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We can clarify the issue here, as in so many other cases, with that old standby, comparison to Hitler. Could a German citizen serve the Hitler Government honorably? Sure, if all he did was build autobahns or something. Or could he? Autobahns were military roads. Hm.
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So if a person enlists in the U.S. Coast Guard to help boaters in distress, but finds himself intercepting people trying to flee Cuba and returning them to Communism, then what was intended to be honorable suddenly becomes dishonorable. And a person who enlists in the military to defend his country but instead invades a country that never attacked us and had no intention of attacking us, and ends up participating in a massive, monstrous crime against humanity that kills at least tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of innocent people, then s/he ends up doing evil.
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Government service is honorable only if that Government is honorable. And the Bush Administration is not honorable. Decent people must be very wary of serving an evil Administration, even if an initial evaluation suggests that the particular job will do no harm. You work on roads and those roads are used to carry military convoys toward yet another illegal and immoral attack, as for instance upon Iran, and you end up participating in evil. You enlist in the Foreign Service to help the U.S. implement aid for Latin America and suddenly find yourself forced to make excuses for Guantanamo, and you are "in on it".
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Tony Snow was "in on it" with the Bush Administration in everything it did during his tenure as Press Secretary (and even before his tenure, if he then had to 'explain' it). He's dead now, at age 53. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Now if only cancer would free us of George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and the neocons who caused us to invade Iraq, we might regain some honor in Government even before President McCain takes office.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,124 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:43 PM

 
'Elitist'? How About Idiotic? Barack Obama made an amazingly dense error in promenading thru Europe as tho already elected President. The arrogance and presumptuousness of that tour was glossed over by the media, which fawned over Obama as looking 'presidential'. Actually, he looked like a pretentious, "uppity n(asterisk)r". To associate himself with Europeans when trying to be elected President of the United States is a HUGE misstep, an astonishing misunderstanding of what ordinary people in this country (and not just The Heartland) feel about Europe. Those of us who don't hate Europe outrite have very serious reservations about a subcontinent that three times in the 20th Century forced the United States to intervene to stop Europeans from killing each other: World War I, World War II, and Bosnia.
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Most Americans descend from people who LEFT Europe for very good reasons: Europe was viciously unfair, and some of our ancestors had little choice but to leave or suffer very badly. In the case of many Irish emigrés (I am 1/4 Irish), they could leave for America or stay in Ireland and literally starve to death.
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Others could stay in Europe and live, but as "the little people" oppressed by an unjust social order dominated by the rich and powerful — kings, aristocrats, and landowners — or toss aside everything they were born to and cross an ocean at a time when trans-Atlantic voyages were nothing like today's cruises. Many had to spend hours a day on deck, even in winter weather, just to escape the cramped, extremely unhealthy conditions of steerage, or the miserable little cabins that people one step above abject poverty were able to afford.
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Altho some people feign fondness for "the Old Country", very few ever move 'back'. Some of the original immigrants did return, in their old age. But their children stayed behind, feeling NO connection with Europe. They weren't born there. Most did not speak the language. And few to none saw themselves as anything but Americans.
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Now Barack Obama, a self-identified black man, is cozying up to the ruling classes of Europe, bending over backward in effect to show himself WHITE, without telling anyone, of course, that he is now emphasizing the white half of his heritage. Will this long escape blacks?
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Do blacks really like interracial hookups that produce interracial 'gray' babies? In general, they do not. Many blacks HATE to see or even think about black-white couples. It makes them uneasy and angry. Consider how Obama would fare if he were married to a white woman.
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So, is there a risk that blacks will now wonder exactly how black-identified Barack Obama is? Will they see him as making nice to the Ofay?*
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Obama also kissed Israel's ass big-time, a great big, juicy French kiss with his tongue all the way up Israel's (asterisk)hole. How is that going to go over with blacks who have had decades of bad experiences with Jewish slumlords?
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How about Hispanic Catholics, who do not see themselves as Reform Jews but as Catholics whose culture derives from the country that expelled the Jews in 1492 and went on to become the greatest power on Earth for over 200 years?
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There is in fact no love lost between Hispanics — and other Catholics — and Jews. Obama is clearly trying to curry favor with Radical Right so-called "Christian Zionists". Those same people, however, hate Europe, and many "End Times" preachers see the European Union as the homeland of the Antichrist! Does Obama know that?
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Does Obama understand that his insistence that an Obama Administration would be perfectly prepared to attack Iran if diplomacy fails in what he claims is a nuclear arms program by Iran (even tho the International Atomic Energy Agency has to date found no evidence of any such thing) plays perfectly into the prophecy of John Hagee?
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You see, Christ can't come back to Earth to rule for 1,000 years unless there is first Armageddon, and Israel will produce Armageddon, which is why so-called "Christian Zionists" back Israel in its most warlike behavior. Poor stupid Jews, however, think that the Radical Right of Christendom has now repented its hatred of the Jews for killing Christ, and seem to believe that Christians now realize that they are all really just Jews who have wandered from the one true faith into heresy/blasphemy. What they don't seem to understand about "End Times" prophecy is that all Jews who do not accept Jesus will DIE in the End Times, and go directly to hell. So, Zionists, be careful about the friends you choose. I'd caution Obama to do the same, but I want him to lose, so am offering him no advice that might help him win — as tho it is possible for him to win, which it is not. (As for advice to Zionists, there's no problem with advising them. They won't heed any advice from non-Jews, because they are "God's Chosen People" so listen only to themselves.)
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Does Obama have any chance of winning to his cause any significant number of evangelicals? I don't think so. And for that useless quest, he may be turning off Catholics and members of other mainline denominations. Not smart, especially when "ethnic" white Catholics (Poles, Irish, Italians, etc.) voted overwhelmingly against him in key states like Pennsylvania.
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As for prancing around Europe trying to get his picture taken with European bigwigs, I hope it backfires bigtime, as Americans decide they resent it, and resent him for doing it.
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I am reminded of a black comedienne's remark (approximate quotes here) that, "I've been to Europe. But I came right back." And her further remark that "I've been to Africa too. But I came right back." I feel exactly the same. I've been to Europe — indeed, to three of my ancestral countries. I felt absolutely no connection to any of them, and "I came right back." Yes, I have also been to Africa, tho only Egypt, and yes, I came right back from there too. But since I'm white, I would not be expected to identify with Africa, even tho there are white portions of Africa, since none of my ancestors who came to (what became) the United States was from Africa.
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The Schoonmakers came to the New World long before there was a United States. They arrived in the port of Nieuw Amsterdam (later "New York") and moved up the Hudson within Nieuw Nederland. A few decades later, the British took over. And 112 years after that, the Thirteen States declared themselves independent. My great...grandfather was a private in the Continental Army that, with the aid of France — and, less consequentially, the Netherlands and Spain — threw the British out of here. I have never for an instant forgotten that without France, there would have been no United States. So I have never for an instant indulged the anti-French bigotry that produced, for a while, a stupid "freedom fries" linguistic revolt against France, and I deeply resent the consistent, hackneyed, and unwarranted anti-French remarks by Jay Leno and other TV comedians. (That has very little to do with my having one French great...grandmother, 9 or 10 generations ago.)
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But, tho I have visited France and studied the French language to the point where I can read newspapers and websites (at least with a dictionary), I do not identify with France, nor the Netherlands, nor Germany, nor any of the other European countries from which I derive. I was OFFENDED by Obama's pretentious and presumptuous European grandstanding, his behaving, as many observers have noted, like a President rather than a candidate. Offended. And I am surely not alone.
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So how wise was this outrageous grandstanding? How many Americans of all races did it alienate?
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Blacks may feel trapped into staying with Obama, as the only black face in the 'race'. No one else is trapped.
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Liberals may feel that the U.S. can use the experience of European countries in crafting a universal healthcare program for our own country, but in general we feel that Europe has very little to teach anyone about anything. When I was born, the bulk of Continental Europe outside the Soviet Union was Fascist/Nazi, and the rest was Communist! After "the War" (which still, despite all the other wars we have had, means for most people WWII), East Europe was turned from Nazi domination to Communist domination, not an advance. Spain, Portugal, and, for a while, Greece, were all lowercase-F fascist. That didn't leave much of Europe as part of the "Free World". But Europe has much to teach us? I don't think so.
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Obama's triumphal procession thru Berlin, Paris, and London may appeal to Europhiles, but not to ordinary Americans who, frankly, have very little use for Europe, and find it embarrassing, if not actually humiliating, for a candidate to go to Europe and, especially, Israel to kiss foreign ass. What is the ratio between Europhiles and Europhobes? Between lovers of Israel and haters of the mess that Israel has made for us in that entire part of the world? Between people who want to curry favor with Europe and Israel, and people who don't give a flying f(asterisk) what Europe and Israel think about anything or anyone?
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Obama has made a serious mistake.
____________________

* From the American Heritage Dictionary:

Word History: The commonly seen etymology of ofay—Pig Latin for foe—is of less interest than the more likely story of this word's origins. The word, which is first recorded in the first quarter of the 20th century, must have been in use much longer if it is, as some scholars think, borrowed from an African source. Although this source has not been pinned down, the suggested possibilities are in themselves interesting. One would trace it to the Ibibio word afia, "white or light-colored." Another would have it come from Yoruba ofe, a word that was said in order to protect oneself from danger. The term was then transferred to white people, regarded as a danger to Black people throughout the wretched days of slavery and beyond.

That doesn't make any sense. To transfer a word AGAINST something dangerous TO the thing that is thought dangerous is contrary to common sense. Applying Ochum's razor (the simplest explanation is usually the correct one), it seems most reasonable to assign "ofay" to an attempt by some black speakers to obscure the sense "foe" from whitey by putting this one word into Pig Latin. A whole phrase in Pig Latin would allow "ofays" to decipher "ofay", but throwing one Pig Latin word into a conversation in ordinary English would not.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,124 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:17 PM

 
Wipeout in the Making? I have said all along that, absent some astounding misstep of the most enormous moment, Barack Obama cannot possibly be elected President in 2008, because this country is simply not ready for a black President. I have complained that media know full well that he cannot be elected, but they keep talking nonsense to keep an audience watching their commercials or reading their print advertisements. The discussion really needs to be what, if anything, Obama can do to salvage any chance whatsoever of winning the White House.
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Now comes a New York Times/CBS News poll that shows that there is a substantial racial divide in this country that makes his being elected very difficult. The AOL version of the story includes its own polls. After a full day of responses, the results in the first poll, "Do you think America is ready for a black president?" were 59% NO, 41% yes. Second poll, "Are you personally ready for a black president?", 53% YES, 47% no. Here we have a perfect example of the so-called "Bradley effect", in which people disown racial motivations as regards themselves, but ascribe racism to OTHER people. Bizarrely, the "Bradley effect" is now said to have been named for a phenomenon that occurred when L.A. mayor Tom Bradley ran for governor of California. The reality, which I remember because I'm old enuf to know what actually happened, is that when the same Tom Bradley first ran for mayor of Los Angeles, in 1969 against the incumbent, a white man named Sam Yorty, he was projected to win by a big margin, but actually LOST. As I recall, it wasn't even close, as did not even call for a recount. Bizarrely, that election is NOT used as proof of race affecting what people are willing to say to pollsters, tho it was the first time I noticed that people plainly LIED to pollsters to say they would vote for a black man when in fact they had no such intention.
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The third AOL poll question was "How big a role do you think race will play in the outcome of the presidential election?", to which 68% said "Major", 28% said "Minor", and a piddling 4% said "None at all".
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The fourth AOL question was "What's your race?", to which 77% said white, 9% said black, 6% said "Other", 5% said Hispanic, and 3%, Asian. The number of respondents to these straw polls (not 'scientifically' randomized) averaged 400,000.
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The last of AOL's five Internet polls (this one alone controlled by a fill-in box where respondents were required to copy graphic letters and numbers, to prevent automated voting) showed 68% for McCain, 32% for Obama, with an electoral map in which every single state, without so much as a single exception, is RED. For some reason, the number of voters in that straw poll was only about 292,000. Still, even with the graphic-verification protection to results, EVERY SINGLE STATE OF THE UNION went for McCain. Every, single, one.
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Will the media ignore that? Answer: yes. I watched large parts of the various evening newschannel political talkshows, from Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC to the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel and Larry King Live on CNN, and saw not one word of acknowledgment of any such poll involving hundreds of thousands of Americans. Did I simply miss the discussion that did occur? Did everyone on the staff of every political talk show on MSNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Channel somehow MISS the AOL polls? I heard some discussion of the takeoff for those polls, the New York Times/CBS poll, but not the AOL Internet poll, not even the one controlled by the need to type in graphic characters.
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Did they give no credence to those results? Or did they refuse to show them out of the understanding that the people know full well that all this talk of a "hotly contested Presidential race" is media hype, and if they admitted that BaLack Obama hasn't a snowball's chance in hell they would either have nothing at all to talk about or would have to speak to the ugly realities of "Race in America, 2008", and ask hard-hitting questions about how on Earth BaLack Obama is going to overcome anti-black racism to win the White House?
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On the wider issue of race relations in the Nation:

The [NYT/CBS] poll also found a deep black-white divide on broader racial questions. For example, 55 percent of whites believed race relations in the U.S. were good; only 29 percent of blacks did. And 53 percent of whites said members of both races had equal chances of getting ahead in society. Just 30 percent of blacks said they believed that.

In that this blog is read by people outside as well as inside the United States, let me advise that the word "nigger" (no, not rap's "nigga") is one of the most frequently uttered epithets, and when not uttered, perhaps the single most often thought epithet in the Nation, as white people see blacks misbehaving in public or see reports about black crime. Decades of attempting to conceal the race of criminals and suspects from published reports, even to the point of avoiding race entirely in "descriptions" that are supposedly intended to help catch wanted persons, have failed to disconnect the black race from crime in the public mind. The immediate assumption of most people, of all races, is that the 'perpetrator' (that most-favored word among police) of many categories of street crime is black or, much less often, Hispanic. And most people are usually right.
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Black comedians have commented on that. "Oh, lord, it's one of us", think decent black people when they hear a news report of one of those typically black crimes, then wait for the pictures of the stunned neighbors.
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Every now and then, we guess wrong. For instance, in the DC-area sniper case years ago, blacks and whites were both inclined to suspect some deranged white nut, so were stunned when it turned out to be a pair of blacks, an older, malignant 'mentor' and a young protege. That was a shocker.
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There are 'white' crimes too, like embezzlement or running a methamphetamine lab. In a very large proportion of the crimes reported, the audience, of all races, guesses right as to the race of the perpetrator. White-collar crime tends also to be white-race crime. Violent street crimes involving guns, black. Muggings involving knives, black or Hispanic. Low-level drug-pushing, mainly black, but Hispanic in Latin neighborhoods. Mid-level drug distribution, black or Hispanic. High-level drug distribution, white.
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When it comes to the ordinary irritants of urban life, white people in many U.S. cities are constantly offended by blacks. In many parts of NYC, for instance, once you step out your front door, you are likely to be panhandled by blacks, offered drugs by blacks, solicited by black prostitutes. Blacks sit on the steps of subway stations, making it hard for people just to get up or down the stairs. Blacks block subway doors, so you can't get in or out without pushing past someone who won't move, either at all or by more than two inches, even if you say "Excuse me" or "Getting off". Blacks mosey across streets, at nite, wearing dark clothing and a headset, with their back to traffic, as tho they are daring you to hit them. Little do they know how hard it is for a driver to see any pedestrian in dark clothing at nite (and, especially, at nite in the rain). They may well find that their arrogance produces their death or maiming. And then the driver, not just the family of the idiot killed or maimed, is traumatized. And don't think the driver and his family and friends don't know who's responsible.
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Dozens of times a day, white people, Latinos, and Asians in the great cities of the United States are hassled and irritated by passive-aggressive and outrite-aggressive blacks with a chip on their shoulder, and they resent it. You may not hear the chorus of "Nigger!", but it's there. Picture a comic book panel with thought-balloons all saying "Nigger!"
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For their part, the blacks with a chip on the shoulder assume no responsibility for the hatred they engender. No, it's not that whites, Orientals, and others are driven to rage by the outrageous behavior of blacks. No, they were just raised to be racists, and it's all whitey's fault (or Koreans' fault, or ...). Never mind that some immigrants travel more than 10,000 miles, from countries in which they had no preconceptions of blacks whatsoever, because they never saw a black person in their home country, but within six months of arriving come to be wary of / fear / hate blacks.
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A white employer hires blacks because s/he feels s/he has to, and then the black employees do shoddy work, take overlong breaks, call in 'sick' much more often than employees of any other ethnicity, give their fellow employees and supervisors a hard time, and threaten legal action if they're fired or even disciplined!
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This is why whites feel that blacks are treated (at least) fairly, and have the same opportunities as anybody else, because it really is not the intent of most employers nor fellow-employees to discriminate. They are willing to grant the benefit of the doubt to a new hire. But lurking in their mind is the suspicion that a large proportion of blacks are not going to be conscientious, are not going to do their fair share, and white, Asian, or Latino employees are going to have to make up the difference.
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Black failure in school has nothing to do with the schools. At a Federal judge's order, Kansas City spent $2 billion over 12 years to improve the largely-black public schools, and got NOTHING to show for it, NO appreciable improvement in test scores nor dropout rates. Nothing. The old saying, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" holds for leading kids to the well of knowledge.
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The Nation at large spends $2 billion each YEAR to incarcerate common criminals, most of whom are black, even tho the Nation is 80% white. Local taxes are high in large part to fund schools that blacks disrupt and drop out of, and white people are blamed for black failure. It's never blacks themselves, oh no. And that fuels white rage.
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Obama needs, for his own reasons, to pretend that he can win if he just does things right. I'm pretty sure that if he really believes he can win, he is delusional. Perhaps he's using drugs again. He admits, after all, having used marijuana and cocaine for some two years in his youth, and drug counselors often speak of people who 'once' had a drug problem not as "former addicts" but "recovering addicts", who never win a permanent, undeniable victory, but merely manage to stay away from drugs another day, one day at a time, in perpetuity, till death.
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What Obama, uniquely, can do is be a Super-Cosby, telling blacks that white society is perfectly willing to give blacks an even break — his nomination proves that — but that when people hold out the hand of friendship and opportunity, and it is slapped down, hard, it isn't soon again extended.
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It is Obama's obligation to wake blacks, "his own people" (tho he is equally white in ancestry), to their SELF-destructive behavior and tell them that society has three doors they can go thru. One is the Golden Door of opportunity; the second, the door to a life of unending failure; the third, the door to a prison cell, or the death chamber. Whites, Orientals, South Asians, Hispanics, and immigrants from all over the world who accept absolutely no blame for slavery because they played absolutely no part in it, are running out of patience. We have, to our mind, "bent over backwards" to give blacks every chance to succeed, and if they don't, "It's all you", and we are almost ready to break the back of black resistance to conformity to the moral standards of polite society. Play by the rules and you'll have a rich and fulfilling life. Break the rules and we will crush you.
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If Obama can get that message across to "his people", his failed attempt at the Presidency will have achieved something of value. If he goes easy on "his people" for fear of being condemned for "talking down to black people", he will have squandered a unique opportunity to do enormous service to blacks, here and abroad, and to the Nation. And don't think white, Asian, and Latino rage at blacks does not affect U.S. attitudes toward Africa, and the Nation's utter disinclination to spend much treasure, nor lose even one American life, to end genocide in Darfur, brutal dictatorship in Zimbabwe, or any of a plethora of horrible conditions across The Dark Continent. When the next Ethiopian famine arrives, don't be surprised if Americans sit on their hands and let Ethiopians starve because we have HAD IT with American blacks.
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Are the multitudinous misdeeds of a criminally-inclined black underclass in the United States the doing of the people of Africa? Of course not. But sub-Saharan Africans are black, and racial disdain or hatred learned from long years of reacting to black abuses in the United States don't distinguish between blacks in Africa and blacks in the United States. "Why should we save Africans from their own stupidity? Look at all we've done for blacks here. Do they appreciate it? No. Why do anything for people who don't appreciate it?"
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Comedian Chris Rock (who is black, in case you don't know) made a famous distinction between black people and "niggers":

You can’t have anything valuable in your house. Niggers will break in and take it all! Everything white people don’t like about black people, black people really don’t like about black people. It’s like our own personal civil war. On one side, there’s black people. On the other, you’ve got niggers. The niggers have got to go. I love black people, but I hate niggers. I am tired of niggers. Tired, tired, tired.”

Many non-black Americans make something of the same distinction, except many Americans don't know much about blacks, given the de facto geographic and socioeconomic segregation of much of the Nation. There are entire states from which blacks are almost wholly absent, and people go thru their entire day, and most of their life, seeing nothing but white faces. Conversely, in many areas, mainly but not exclusively urban, blacks see almost no white faces. Formal, legal desegregation was devastating to the black entrepreneurial class, when small black stores by the tens of thousands were wiped out by competition from large, white-owned stores whose economies of scale permitted them to offer a wider range of merchandise at lower prices. The fact that the Nation is still segregated, albeit nonlegally and non-formally, hasn't changed that. Small, black businesses have a hard time competing with larger, white businesses, and even some of the stores in the heart of black neighborhoods, which locals might resort to, given time constraints, such as a convenience store at the corner, are owned and operated by immigrants, not blacks. The response to these challenges has, for the most part, not been to try harder and work smarter, but to bitch and moan, resent and act out, often violently, in robberies, looting, and arson, or just to give up and leave the real world for the "sweet release'' of drug-induced euphoria, where problems disappear — as long as the drugs last. Never mind that drugs solve nothing but actually make everything worse. It is so much easier to resolve anxieties by taking a drug than it is to work your way out of debt and hopelessness, that for many it's no contest as to which way to go: work hard and perhaps fail anyway, or just accept failure and escape into drugs?
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BaLack Obama is, again, uniquely qualified by his own life history, to help lead blacks away from that self-confuting and irrational choice. But how does he, how does anyone do that, in the miserable economy of 2008, when crushing debt at usurious interest rates, high unemployment in the 'hood, and offshore outsourcing of everything that can be moved out of the United States combine to make working your way out of poverty and into the good life thru conscientious study and honest labor seem like a dirty joke?
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That's the challenge. Obama may think he can meet that challenge only by becoming President. But since he's not GOING to be elected President, he must find other ways to meet that challenge — unless his run for the Presidency is an exercise in egotism, not a crusade for principles.
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So let him be the Black President of the United States: that is, the President of the Black United States. The Man who stands up to The Man and shows black kids whose future is now very iffy that, tho it is audacious to hope, it's not foolish. Hope is not for chumps. Nine to five is not for fools. A steady paycheck is not the only point to education, but it's a good point. And the easiest way to get ahead is not to go backward. Just as "a penny saved is a penny earned", a teenage pregnancy not incurred is a future, well-cared-for baby earned. A term in prison saved is a lifetime without a record earned. A drug addiction avoided is a lifetime of hiding the past or losing jobs at the interview saved. You may start at a low point, by why dig yourself a hole? Blacks made this mess themselves. They will have to clean it up themselves.
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Whitey can't do it, because whitey didn't do it. Whitey didn't skip school or pay no attention in class; whitey didn't take the drugs that cost black youth years of their lives, nor do any of the other things to blacks that make so many of their lives bad, and nearly hopeless. Whitey didn't make blacks fail, and whitey can't make blacks succeed. Blame may feel good, but it doesn't achieve a thing.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,121 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Useless Science, Moronic 'Improvements'. My cat Mirabella had four kittens last week. Two have already died, killed by a severe flea infestation. I had gotten the house almost flea-free over the winter, but when the weather turned warmer, I opened the windows and several cats got out thru holes they ripped in the useless vinyl screens that are put in vinyl windows nowadays or thru surprisingly narrow openings in the part of the window not protected by the useless half-screens that are put into the combination windows that have come into vogue in recent years. You can have a screen at either the top or the bottom of the window, but not both. What idiot came up with that idea?
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We used to have metal mesh in screens that covered the entire window. We could open each window top and bottom and still keep insects out and cats in. But some idiot came up with a 'new, improved' window design that incorporated a half-height screen, rendering the once-recommended opening for maximal heat reduction (open top to let warmer air out, open bottom to let cooler air in) hugely inadvisable. And then they replaced steel screening with vinyl mesh that cats can just rip thru with some adamant clawing and pulling. Shouldn't things get better over time? Why are windows worse in design now than 100 years ago? Because of these serious design defects, my cats got out into weeds filled with fleas, and brought them back into the house.
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How do you kill a houseful of fleas? Basically, you don't, except over months of constant vacuuming and mopping up of eggs and larvae, unless it is possible for you to evacuate the entire house, including pets, even fish from aquariums; cover all fabric surfaces, like livingroom and bedroom furniture, and "bomb" the entire residence with multiple cans of aerosol spray that fills the entire space with poison, then leave it to work, for hours. If you have several cats and noplace to take them, or aquariums full of fish, you can't do that. And cleaning up afterward and getting rid of the smell is a formidable task.
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Flea collars, flea powder, and flea shampoo cannot be used on kittens less than 12 weeks old, because in itself it will kill them. So there is absolutely nothing you can do to save tiny kittens from fleas. This is 2008, yet we don't have a kitten-safe flea shampoo. Our useless science and technology are entirely misdirected, away from things that benefit people and animals to, instead, things that destroy people, animals, and everything else. We have spent trillions of dollars on "defense" that should have gone to eradicating fleas, cockroaches, tsetse flies, mosquitos, parasites, and disease organisms that cause vast devastation around the planet, including our own homes in the heartland of the United States.
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If our science, technology, and governments were all working on doing useful things like causing the extinction of harmful species, developing convenient and extremely inexpensive long-term contraception, eradicating disease, and improving agriculture, maybe we wouldn't need so much "defense", because people would feel safe and secure, and not want to kill each other. But no. Trillions for 'defense', all around this planet, scarcely more than a cent to eliminate the causes of war.
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A report on one of the news channels tonite spoke of international assistance to the United Arab Emirates to develop peaceful nuclear power. Why, the reportress asked, would an oil-rich country need nuclear power? That's the question everyone is asking about Iran's nuclear program, and why Iran's activity is so suspicious, after all. But it's OK when Abu Dhabi does it.
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She answered that altho the UAE's oil reserves are expected to last for more than a century more, ultimately they will run out, and the UAE, like everybody else, must be prepared to replace oil and gas in their economy. The UAE assertedly needs to use a lot of its present fuel consumption just to power desalinization plants to distill potable water from the sea. And nuclear power has the added advantage of not contributing "greenhouse gases" to worsen "global warming". Why doesn't Iran argue all that?
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Perhaps because it's a load of crap.
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You don't spend billions now in preparation for an eventuality 100 years from now, when the technology will likely be completely different, and vastly better, in 100 years to solve the problems of that time, which might in fact not be what we think today they will be.
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Today's base reality — which will not likely change in 100 or 150 years — is that the UAE is in a DESERT, bombarded endlessly, for well over 325 days a year, by sunlite. During much of the year, the sun beats down on the UAE with enormous heat as well as lite, so two different types of solar converter can be used with ease, all employing existing technologies that can provide more power than the UAE could ever use. Solar arrays on an infinitesimal portion of the UAE's surface area would power everything, even electric cars. (And speaking of electric cars, if we can power electric lite-rail cars (latter-day trolleys) and subways within cities, why can't we power private electric cars within cities? Picture a thin superstructure akin to a car radio antenna to connect each car with overhead power lines, or something else to draw power from a "third-rail" kind of power source on the ground, with protections for pedestrians and pets built into the design.)
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Heck, solar arrays on rooftops and sun-facing sides of buildings in desert cities could at once reduce the amount of heat that reaches the buildings and power the air-conditioners needed to make life tolerable.
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A Wall Street Journal blog pointed out less than two months ago that Abu Dhabi is doing massive work on thin-film solar power. So why would it need nuclear power? It's absurd, and suspicious. Nuclear power produces deadly toxic wastes that need to be kept buried for generations, if not millennia. Solar power is utterly clean. Nuclear wastes can be used by terrorists for "dirty bombs". Terrorists can't use solar power's wastes, because solar power produces no wastes. There is no conceivable justification for the United Arab Emirates to be developing nuclear power. None. So why is it doing it, and why isn't the international community alarmed?
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Here in the United States, even in areas cold for months at a time, a simple, complete rethinking of the basic premises behind current energy patterns could produce a drastic restructuring.
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The UAE is a country of superfluous wealth. For all practical purposes, money is not a problem. It can afford the enormous expense of nuclear power plants, or of creating vast desert arrays of solar collectors or lining all its rooftops with solar panels. In fact, Abu Dhabi is building a $350 million solar-power plant and an entire new "carbon-neutral" municipality, Masdar City, which is planned to have 50,000 people using no fossil fuel.
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Let us think about what we (the United States), an extremely rich country, could do if money were not an issue. Once you take money out of the equation, all kinds of things become possible. So let us, for this purpose, take money out of the equation and think of energy druthers.
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Moving Energy, Long and Short Distances. This planet, not just Abu Dhabi, is awash in energy, in amounts far greater than human beings could ever use. Most of it comes from 93 million miles away, in the form of sunlite. The problem is that the distribution of that energy is uneven across the face of the planet and across the calendar. Nature/physics moves some of it around from where there's too much to where there's too little, in the form of ocean currents and air currents (more commonly called "winds"). The Gulf Stream is the most famous of ocean currents because without it, much of Northern Europe would be almost uninhabitable for being too cold. London is at the about the same latitude (51°32' N) as Labrador City, Canada (52°57').
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In like fashion, people move energy around too. The most obvious long-distance movement of energy is the transport of oil from oil-producing countries or regions to oil-consuming countries and regions even within oil-producing countries, which regions do not themselves produce oil. There is also long-distance shipping of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), a fuel that many ports are wary of permitting because of its hugely explosive potential. The managers of major ports can easily visualize a latter-day Halifax explosion. (By the way, why are oil refineries still flaring off 'waste' gas? Can't that be captured and used in energy production, if not for distant use, then at least within the refinery, as to fuel a generator to run the lites?)
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We also move electric power over long distances by means of dedicated high-voltage lines and interconnected local power grids that form massive national or even transnational grids. The power that comes out of any given wall outlet may come from hundreds or even, arguably, thousands of miles away.
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With any transport of energy, there is some loss, either of the particular energy in motion, as due to resistance within wires or a drop in voltage over distance, or in the net amount of energy moved given that an oil tanker, for instance, needs to be powered by some energy source simply to move from point A to point B.
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The more local the energy source, the less potential loss. Multiply that energy saving by hundreds of millions of homes, offices, stores, schools, hospitals, and other large consumers of energy, across the Nation and across the First World, if not even the entire world, and it surely amounts to an enormous figure.
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Local Energy Sources. Solar power includes wind, wave, and hydroelectric power.
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The basic reason large volumes of air move is that differential heating in one part of the atmosphere as against another produces different densities (air pressures), and air flows from places of high pressure to other places, of lower pressure. That is solar power.
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Wave power is primarily the result of winds, which means waves are also a form of solar power.
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Hydroelectricity derives from rainfall at a higher ground level that produces runoff that moves, by gravity, to a lower level past turbines. The water gets to that higher altitude by evaporation, by the sun. So hydroelectric power is also solar power. Altho major hydroelectric power plants may be distant from major cities (some of New York City's power comes from the James Bay area of Quebec), minor plants can be very close in. The City of Paterson, in the most crowded part, North Jersey, of the most densely populated State in the Union, New Jersey, employs hydro power at the Great Falls of the Passaic River, without destroying the scenic beauty of the site.

Biofuels are also solar power stored in biomass. Whether it be wood burned in stoves for heating, or waste wood and paper used in electric generating stations; or corn or switchgrass converted into ethanol; or corn and other plant oils used to power diesel engines, all biofuels are solar power. Petroleum, coal, and peat are all biofuels, albeit of ancient provenance. Complaints that the production of biofuels requires a high input of energy are rendered nonsense if the energy to power the conversion is simple, locally produced solar power, in any of its forms. You don't have to burn fossil fuels to create biofuels at all.

The sun is not the only astronomical source of energy. The moon's gravity produces tides, and tides contain energy that can be harnessed for human use. The Earth produces internal heat that, in a few places, comes close enuf to the surface to be used by people for heating as such and for the production of electricity. Indeed, there are many places in the world where geothermal energy is not particularly close to the surface, but temporary drilling can produce a permanent heat source.
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There is so much energy from natural sources that do not require complex chemical processes to break down and reconfigure one thing into another, that it is little less than astonishing that we have to date preferred to derive much of our energy from chemical conversions. Sometimes the conversion is as simple as burning wood in a fireplace or Franklin stove for heat or paraffin in candles for lite. Sometimes it's as complicated as refining crude oil into gasoline and jet fuel. Even worse, extracting oil from some sources (shale, oil sands) is itself complicated and energy-intensive, as is mining coal (which is also, in tunnel mines, extremely dangerous to workers' lives and health).

Given how complicated, energy-intensive, and capital-intensive our present major sources of energy are, why have we not seen that we're doing everything wrong?
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It should not have taken an oil-price spike or concerns about pollution / "greenhouse gases" to get us to look at energy from Square One, but let us indeed take advantage of this opportunity, the first in our lifetime, to reexamine all our assumptions.

Energy policy, like charity, should begin at home. Let's look at our houses and grounds to see how much energy we can derive from them, without going hundreds or thousands of miles afar. The typical house in the temperate zone differs little in essence from the most primitive hut or tent built by our prehistoric ancestors, as regards energy usage. Permanent houses are in fact less flexible than the structures of nomads. In the temperate zone, we have to build houses for the worst weather, be it cold or hot, not the best. In cold weather, we have to close the house up to keep in heat. When warm weather comes around, we can open windows. When outdoor temperatures get higher, we can use fans to move air around to maintain comfort. But when it gets really hot outside, modern people have to close the house up again, against the heat, and turn on air conditioning. Let's think about that, all of it.
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Are our houses built of the right substances? Why are windows and, in lesser measure, doors, the only features of the ordinary house adaptable to changes in weather? Why do we have shingles that do not collect heat in the winter but do collect it in summer? Can't we make our buildings of more useful and energy-dynamic materials?
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Hidden Subsidies, Open Subsidy. All the costs of extracting, refining, and transporting the major forms of energy are tax-deductible business expenses to energy corporations. Government taxes only profits (if those). Why aren't all the costs of buying, installing, and maintaining solar collectors, electric-generation windmills, and other energy-generating technologies for an individual house, school, etc., not equally tax-deductible? Think of it: every sun-facing surface — roof and sides of every house, office building, store, school, barn, etc., lined in solar collectors; every yard or rooftop in windy areas host to wind turbines; and every cent paid by the property-owner, tax deductible. That's "energy independence", right there — independence from the multinational, transnational, universally-disloyal energy companies not least.
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Here are some other surfaces we could use, very, very locally. We could cover roadways in translucent/semi-transparent solar panels that take only some of the energy, perhaps some of the wavelengths, and let others pass, as to use what is now, for energy-producing purposes, waste space, for energy generation, without placing cars in unending visual tunnels. Or we might cover waste space with a grid of strip solar panels alternating with open air to let lite and air thru, in a pattern that would not induce road hypnosis. We could cover with solar panels, solid or strip, like venetian blinds when partway open, sidewalks, tops of parking decks, roofs of all structures, blank areas of sun-facing walls of all structures, plus playgrounds, basketball courts, tennis courts, parking lots (which could reduce if not entirely eliminate the problem of roasting temperatures inside parked cars, as even to save the lives of some kids left by stupid parents in parked cars).
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This is just the barest beginning of the kind of rethinking we need to do about the forms that new approaches to energy might take. We could, of course, create huge wind farms in North Dakota and along the shores of the Great Lakes, or vast solar arrays in the deserts of Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico to power cities hundreds of miles distant. But why bother with all the transmission towers we might have to build if we can just generate much of our power literally in our backyard? And when I say "literally", I never mean "figuratively". So here, I mean literally in our backyard, my personal yard (or front yard, or the roof of my house).
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Perhaps efficient solar collectors or windmills on the typical-sized garage roof could provide electricity enuf to charge an electric car's battery, if not overnite (direct solar power won't work overnite, of course, but wind, secondhand solar, might), then during the day. (I don't have a garage. The prior owners of my property had one many years ago, but it fell into disrepair and was demolished.) Electric cars stored in large parking structures during the workday could be recharged by solar panels on the roof and every sunward surface, horizontal or vertical, of the garage and adjoining roadways.
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Solar and wind power can create, locally, the hydrogen to power cars, buses, and trucks, thru electrolysis. We wouldn't need to send out fleets of hydrogen tanker trucks to hydrogen refueling stations (with all the potential of catastrophic explosions if such trucks become involved in accidents, akin to the risks of LNG, as above). We could turn water into hydrogen and oxygen with the power of solar panels or windmills in our own neighborhood. The hydrogen could be used as fuel, the oxygen, pumped into tanks for hospitals or let loose to enrich the air and oxidize into harmlessness various pollutants, like carbon monoxide. And when that locally produced hydrogen is burned to power a car, the waste product is pure water!
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In temperate climates with lots of cloudy weather, much less of this could be done, which might still mean that much of it could be done, except that solar collectors would have to cover larger local areas. In desert areas, much more energy could be produced from smaller areas, and the surplus could be fed into a local, regional, or national power grid.
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The Long and the Short of It. In short, think short distance. The closer to where we use energy we can produce that energy, the better. And the less conversion we need to do, the more net energy we reap. In many cases, we can use solar collectors on the exterior of our house (or school, factory, office building, whatever), even in cold weather, to heat the interior either directly or by using electricity generated on the surfaces of the building to power heating equipment, or at least lites. In cooler weather, incandescent lites could be used to reduce the heating needed from other energy sources.
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Even owners of small lots in wet areas with long growing seasons might be able to grow some types of fast-growing trees, switchgrass, and other plants to provide enuf wood and other biomass to feed an efficient fireplace for a month, if not the entire winter. The ash could be used as fertilizer for the next year's crop.
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City tree services could use the deadwood they trim from street and park trees to heat government offices or public housing. Composting plants in localities or consolidated county-wide operations might produce enuf waste gas to power a small gas-fired generation station. Maybe it would heat only 10% of city or county office space. Same with solar, wind, wave, and other locally produced energy sources. But you put enuf of these little sources together, and you make a huge difference.
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But that would make sense. So we won't do it, any more than we will find a way to save kittens from lethal flea infestations, or tropical countries from diseases carried by airborne insects or waterborne microbes and parasites, by finding a way to make noxious species go extinct. No, we'll restrict mass extinction to harmless or even beautiful species, and let the fleas, tsetse flies, mosquitos, tapeworms, heartworms, and other killers of people and animals live on and on forever. Or will we?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,118 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:34 AM

 
More Idiocy in the News. Today, in surfing cable news channels (while waiting, impatiently, for my computer to reboot after a McAfee update froze my machine) I heard that some idiot law professor in Arizona has said that John McCain is not eligible to run for President because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Shut up!
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My mother was born in Ancon, in the Panama Canal Zone, to U.S.-citizen parents. There was never any doubt that she was born a U.S. citizen. The Panama Canal Zone, tho regarded technically as residually Panamanian territory, was for all practical purposes a U.S. possession. But it doesn't matter whether a person who is born to U.S. parents is born inside the United States or in a wholly foreign territory. Anyone born to U.S. parents anywhere on Earth is a "natural born citizen" of the United States, as Congress made plain a mere two friggin' years after the ratification of the Constitution:

the Constitution was ratified in 1788. Congress first recognized the citizenship of children born to U.S. parents overseas on March 26, 1790, under the first naturalization law: "And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens."

This is, in short, long-settled law, about which no reasonable doubt exists. John McCain was born of U.S. parents. He could have been born in Outer Mongolia — or on the Moon, or Mars, or at the most distant edge of the Universe — and still have been a U.S. citizen by birth. He was not adopted, so his citizenship was acquired by natural birth. He is thus plainly a "natural born citizen", and thus completely and unquestionably eligible to become President.
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Comics might invoke the second portion of the language of the original Constitution, before amendments:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President[.]

But in any case, John McCain's eligibility is NOT a serious legal question, and all talk of it should be ended. The next President will NOT be a foreigner. NO President will ever be a foreigner, because Americans will never amend the Constitution to allow a naturalized citizen to become President. Nor should we. Retaining one office for native-born Americans is NOT abusive of latecomers. Hear that, Schwarzenegger? You will NEVER be eligible to be President of the United States. Not EVER.
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In some countries, the Supreme Court can issue advisory opinions to guide events, so could settle this issue before the November election. That is not the practice here. Once President McCain takes office, on January 20, 2009, anyone seriously concerned about his eligibility will have to try to find some way to bring the issue before the courts, and it is unlikely any court would entertain any such lawsuit from anyone, not even the defeated challengers, even if Obama, Nader, and Barr were inclined to sue, individually or as a class.
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It's bad enuf that the media waste our time pretending that the United States of 2008 could elect a black man, which cannot happen unless McCain selects a woman, or "nonwhite" man, or nonwhite woman, as his running mate. But to waste our time on a non-issue like McCain's citizenship is intolerable. The people of the United States should tell the Chattering Class to shut the f(asterisk) up.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,118 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:33 PM

 
"Progressive" / "Regressive". I have said here that it is absurd for Democrats to think that a black man is going to be elected President of the United States, in a country in which "Liberal" is a dirty word — much less that a black man and white woman, be it Hillary Clinton or Kathleen Sebelius, would be a "dream team". Indeed, I was thinking last nite that such a "dream team" might produce the greatest electoral catastrophe in American electoral history since the presidential contest in 1852 produced the disappearance of the Whig Party, and might actually end the existence of the Democratic Party if realists cannot take back the reins and restore the party to sanity. But today's post is not really about that. It's about the difference between the words "progressive" and "regressive".
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"Liberal" has indeed become a dirty word in this country, and scores of millions of actual liberals habitually avoid the word "liberal" in favor of "progressive". It's not from shame, exactly, but to avoid raising hackles.
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"Progressive" has legitimate uses, but in politics, they are few, and avoiding "liberal" for "progressive" is unprincipled cowardice unless one is speaking of "the progressive movement". In that sense, the word aligns a person with a long history of reformist movements, be they called Progressives, Populists, Liberals, or anything else. Leftists unashamed of being Leftwing may class Democratic Socialists and even some disreputable, extremist Leftwing organizations as "Progressives", tho most people of the moderate Left avoid such identification, not just as a public-relations matter but also because they reject the notion that liberalism is, for instance, the first stage in an inevitable progression to Communism.
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Liberals wary of being thought "Liberal" do not avoid the word "progressive". Contrast the word "regressive". I do not hear anyone at all proclaiming proudly that s/he is a "Regressive", part of a long, historically heroic "Regressive Movement". Why is that?
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A Google search for "progressive movement politics" produces "about 543,000" webpages. All the top results relate to "progressivism" ("about 572,000" results). Tho "regressive movement politics" produces "about 393,000" pages, many of the top results relate to psychology and other matters than politics, and none speaks proudly of political "regressivism" (that word produces "about 1,770" results, and none of the top results uses the term proudly as a political identification.
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Plainly, Regressives are duly ashamed of being Regressive. Why, then, do they insist on doing things they are ashamed of?
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Liberals / Progressives are proud of the things they stand for: universal healthcare, racial equality, 'progressive' taxation to promote socioeconomic democracy and reduce inequality, promoting universal employment in good jobs with good working conditions and good benefits, and on and on. Regressives, who oppose all those things, do not generally proclaim to the skies their devotion to inequality as a positive good, not just defensible but actually morally admirable, a wonderful thing we should actively pursue. They pretend that socioeconomic inequality provides "incentives" for people to "improve themselves" that they would not have if the distribution of wealth, power, and privilege were more equal. But they stop short of saying that it's a good thing that some people are so poor that they die because they can't afford health insurance. Why not? If that's what you feel, say it, dammit! Say it, and be judged for what you really feel.
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Happily, one of the Nation's worst Regressives, Jesse Helms, died today. Hurray! WaHOOOOO! If it is true that the world changes only in that some people die and others are born, the world changed for the better today. Alas, there is no hell for Helms to burn in. Too bad. Let's just be glad that a very bad man is dead. Sadly, one is left to wonder if this Shakespearian passage applies to Helms's legacy:

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interrèd with their bones.

Why can't we reverse that?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,113 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:31 PM

 
More Betrayal from Barack. Barack Obama has revealed himself yet again as completely untrustworthy, with his announcement yesterday that he favors using Government money to help religious organizations, in a worsening of the unconstitutional behavior of the Republicans' "faith-based initiatives" scam. I, a militant atheist, am to pay taxes to churches, synagogs, mosques, and temples that do socially useful things? I don't think so.
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There are hosts of seriously underfunded secular organizations doing enormously important work for the social good, at great personal hardship for the people involved. Not one cent of my tax moneys should be given to religious organizations. Not one cent. To make the case most plainly, so that even the stupidest Rightwinger might — might — understand, do you really want money taken from the pockets of Christians and Jews to go to Moslem organizations that feed the homeless in an inner city? Do you really trust the Moslem social-service workers — say, Louis Farrakhan's people — counseling residents of halfway houses for black ex-cons, to avoid all mention of Islam — a militant form of which they may have encountered inside prison? I don't.
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Nor do I trust evangelical Christians to provide social services without even implying that there is a God who is looking after them, cares about them, and will help them turn their lives around, if only they believe and put their faith in Jesus.
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Anyone who expects a whole range of social services to be provided by religious organizations without so much as a mention of God — their particular version of a particular God — is a fool. We're not talking here of, say, a Catholic hospital whose emergency room is religiously neutral. We're talking about soup kitchens and services for the homeless and drug-addicted and alcoholics who are to be told they can turn their life around, but only with the help of Jesus or a "higher power" into which they must place their trust (faith). So in order to get the services they want, they must play the game and listen to the preaching. Obama pretends that he would fund only activities in which there is no preaching, but there is ALWAYS preaching, open or implied, in all social-service agencies run by religious groups. So what Obama really wants is for that preaching to be paid for with my money. NO!
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To make this even clearer, so clear that even evangelicals can understand, if government money can go to the "Grace of God Soup Kitchen", why not to the "There Is No God Soup Kitchen"? If Alcoholics Anonymous can tell people to accept that they have no power over their compulsions but must trust in a higher power, why can't a competing organization say that there is no such thing as a higher power, and only internal strength can save you? How about the "All Religion Is Evil Homeless Shelter"? Should that be getting Federal funds? "God Is a Monster Invented by Con Artists Halfway House"? "Heaven Is a Scam Daycare Center"? "No Afterlife Computer Training Center"? "Religion Is Idiotic Superstition Thrift Store"? "Renounce Religion Vocational Counseling Center"?
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The Religious Right pretends that there are only two choices for Government as regards faith: secularism or acknowledgment of the indispensable position of religion in society. But there's at least a third option: militant Governmental antireligion, comprising zealous Government action to disabuse people of destructive superstitions. Russia went from an official religion, the Russian Orthodox Church, to official antireligion, and the Communists of the Soviet Union destroyed thousands and thousands of churches and killed uncounted priests, monks, and nuns. We can have an American version of the antireligious Russian Revolution if the Religious Right prefers. Back us into a corner and we will fite, with guns and firebombs.
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Ever hear of Lebanon? How about a Lebanon writ large, 3.6 million square miles in extent,* with 300 million people split into hundreds of sects killing each other and burning each other's churches, synagogs, mosques, temples, social-service agencies, and offices to the ground — while fully occupied? Look at Iraq for a sense of what we could have in the Good Old U.S. of A., with entire neighborhoods "cleansed" of people of "the wrong" religion.
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Evangelicals don't want a religiously neutral Government? How about an actively, rabidly antireligious Government? Your side is not the only side that Government can take. And if you wouldn't like Government to side against you, you cannot, as Christians, want Government to side with you but against the nonreligious. It's that pesky "Do unto others" thing. You remember that. Maybe you need to think about that more often. Like every day of your life.
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Speaking of the Golden Rule, Barack Obama was, bizarrely, attacked on Fox News Channel last nite in some newstalk show for undermining (heterosexual) marriage, whereas he has actually sided with the Radical Right against gay marriage. Now what? Obama will defend himself from charges of being soft on gay marriage by taking a very public stance against same-sex marriage, as part of his "move to the center"? 'Marriage is for us, not you.' So it would be alrite if marriage were reserved to homosexuals alone and heterosexuals were not allowed to marry? "As you would have others do to you, so too do to them." Or has that been changed, with the addition of "unless they are homosexual" or "black" or "[fill in group here]"?
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What will it take for Liberals / "Progressives" (the people too ashamed to call themselves "Liberals") to accept that Barack Obama is the wrong man, at the wrong time, to lead the Democratic Left? That he is a man of NO principles? That he will sell out anyone if he feels it will put him into the White House, because it's not about you, it's not about principle: it's about him and his personal ambitions for reasons of deep personal needs and insecurities. He is not the courageous, unflinching leader of a movement. He is just a deeply defective human being who needs attention, who craves validation, who wants to be President for no other reason than that he wants to be President, the exact same reason Bill and Hillary Clinton have wanted to be President. It's never about us. It's always about them. Wake up.
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The same can, of course, be said about John McCain, who didn't make admiral, the way his father and grandfather before him did. He has something to prove. President trumps admiral. That is all.
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So which do we go with, a personally ambitious black man who has no chance in hell of being elected, and shouldn't be elected because he has no integrity? Or a nice old white guy who will work across party lines to achieve something moderately good but not rock the boat too badly? A man who has 3 years' experience at the level of the national Government? Or a man who has 26 years of national experience?
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Until the Vice Presidential candidates are chosen, I cannot know whether I will vote for McCain or just for Congress. In my district and my very-blue state, New Jersey, I could just stay home, since there is no chance of my Democratic Congressman (Donald Payne) being defeated, and almost no chance of our Democratic Senator (Frank Lautenberg) being defeated. I cannot under any circumstance vote for a man so faithless and disloyal to his followers as Barack Obama.
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John McCain is a candidate. He doesn't pretend to be a movement. So unless he chooses a Veep — who could very well succeed to the Presidency, given McCain's age — who is utterly and completely unacceptable to me, this Democrat will be voting McCain on (my brother's birthday,) November 4, 2008. Because McCain is NOT Bush, and everybody knows it.
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* I double-checked the Internet for the United States' area, and found a page that plainly asks, "What is the area of the US in square miles?" and then answers in square KILOMETERS. No square-mile figure is given in answer to the question "What is the area of the US in square miles?" I have another question for WikiAnswers: "What the f(asterisk) is wrong with you?"
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,113 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:35 AM