Runaway Slave: The Documentary -- Coming in 2011. I hope it's not too late . . .

"Sometimes you can't tell the difference between now, and 200 years ago."
"You can be free."
"Tyranny is color-blind."
"Don't give up, don't give in. Are you tired yet? Run harder!"

Five Minutes With Andrew Breitbart

Q: Anything else folks should know about this or about Andrew Breitbart?

A: Believe it or not, one of my primary motives on this planet is to stop this racism, and to stop the Democratic Party's use of race that divides us intentionally. Google me and Clarence Thomas. I went from left to right because I watched this tactic happen to him and I aligned myself with black conservatives. Free thinkers recognize the Democratic Party will do or say anything to instill fear into black Democratic voters. . . . Shirley Sherrod in that video said those who disagree with Obamacare are coming from a racist point of view. That is a troubling racist sentiment.

And this is the greatest tragedy--the greatest crime--that the neo-feudalist left has committed against this country with the Sherrod affair--and with so many other instances of rabidly shouting "RAAAAACIST!" as a craven political tactic to shut up and shut down opposing voices. The dirty secret is that the festering pus of lingering racism in the United States is flowing from the left--from the "progressives"--from the very same neo-feudalists who organize intellectual lynch mobs against anyone who really, really took to heart Martin Luther King's words about judging people on the content of their character.

What the neo-feudalist "progressives" do to the "national conversation on race" is obscene. They're the ones who should be shouted down--not the brave few on the Right like Breitbart who stand up to the neo-feudalists.

This is gonna be a long one . . . stuff has been piling up . . .

‘JournoList’ E-mails Show Media Plotting to Kill Stories about Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Daily Caller -- Almost all national journalists for the "mainstream" media are lying to you. On purpose. With reasons they think are good and proper. But the fact remains that they daily--hourly lie to you, in order to advance what they think is the "correct agenda." After all, these people went into journalism to "make a difference in the world." If they have to lie and deceive in order to do it, well, the ends justify the means, don't they?

Video: “Same As It Ever Was”


And, if you're missing the parody, here's the original:

Yeah, it's weird. That's kinda the point.

"My God, what have I done?"

Now, I'll admit I have not actually watched very much of Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show lately (although I ought to, every once in a while, I suppose) but I have, just in the past week or two, been watching Glenn Beck fairly regularly.

One observation is that Beck is very funny. Another is that Beck does his homework.

I have this rather uncomfortable feeling that Beck is pretty much on the nose regarding what's going on in this country. A really uncomfortable feeling.

I also have a feeling that Olbermann isn't anywhere close to being in Beck's league--either in terms of humor, of entertainment, or of accuracy and incisive commentary and trenchant comment on the day's news. An example:


(For a while, when I first heard this, I thought that Olbermann was talking about the demonization of the Tea Parties. But then, "of course," the Tea Partiers and the eeee-villlle right-wing are the villains of Olbermann's piece, even when they're completely, utterly, totally out of power, barely hanging on in a few, isolated media venues. OK. Sure. Right.

But I'll go ahead and DVR Olbermann for a week and (try to) watch him, side by side (or front-to-back?) with Beck. I'm not sure where this will lead . . .

Kinda Hopey-Changy poetry inspired by (actually, extracted directly from, if I am not mistaken) the JournoList propagandist e-mails which are now coming to public attention.

Yes, many leftists seem to be really quite nasty people, when left unsupervised by adults.

Because you care . . . more than they do . . .

Well? All you "blacks can't be racists because blacks don't have power" people. Guess what? People with enhanced skin melanin levels are in positions of power, now. And guess what? Turns out that people with high melanin skin content are just as prone to be bigoted--RACIST--as anybody else.

Turns out that the "racism is power" bullshit was just that--bullshit, intended to obfuscate and confuse the issue, intended to make "whitey" guilty, because everybody knew that the "crackers" would always be the ones with the power.

Oops. A bunch of white folk up and voted for the black man, didn't they?

Quite a few of them did it because they thought that then--then--they might shed just a bit of that horrible guilt that's been laid on them for what happened a century and a half ago, if not longer. They did it because they were supposed to. It was a kind of reparation. An offering of peace between the races.

Peace offering not accepted, apparently, at least by some.

Now we know. Now we know that if you're walking around judging people by nothing but their skin color, then you are a racist. Regardless of what color skin you happen to have, you are a racist.

Period.

"Power" ain't got nothing to do with it. It's all about simple, tribalist bigotry--"us" versus "them," on the most basic level. It's about getting some for "us," and taking it from "them."

Isn't it, Ms. Sherrod?

The Aristocracy Of The Left -- They want nothing more or less than to re-establish a kind of feudalism--with them as the lords and masters, and you and me as the peasants. That's the game. That's why they're so upset at the Tea Parties. They see it as simply a revolt of the peasants. At some point, they will put it down--probably with the traditional tactics used throughout history with unruly serfs and peasants--all the while loudly claiming that it's all the peasant's fault, and we had it coming, for daring to challenge our "betters." Unless, that is, the peasants can manage to "storm the castle" via the ballot box in the next couple of national elections. If not, it will be a future of either resignation to feudalism, or revolution. Seems to me like voting the bums out is by far the preferable strategy and outcome for everybody concerned--even for the neo-feudalists themselves, who in that scenario will not be at any risk of being lined up against a wall should they actually provoke a popular revolution which and succeeds in overthrowing them in the USA (which is, as always, the "last hope of Man on Earth.")

Everybody's got skin in this game. It's all a matter of understanding what the game actually is.

TARP audit claims Obama admin destroyed “tens of thousands” of jobs in dealer closures -- But, see, this is a good thing, because all of those car dealership employees were probably rich Republican fat-cats who had it coming for being racists, anyway . . .

One of the most irritating of Obama's rhetorical traits is the straw man. The latest one: on the top-of-the-hour radio news, he was talking about extending unemployment benefits, and comparing that (unfavorably) to extending tax cuts "to the richest."

Well, first of all, let's talk about who all that money belongs to in the first place: taxpayers. Now, because of how the federal tax system is set up, most payers of federal taxes are "rich." Or at the very least, they are not the poor.

The poor do not pay federal income taxes.

Now, what Obama wants is to take money from the rich and give it to the unemployed. This is not charity. It is not a virtue to be "charitable" with other people's money. This is--pure and simple--Marxist-style redistribution of wealth. There is no virtue attached to this act. This is plain, blatant, naked political pandering.

If Obama was really serious about extending unemployment benefits, he would ask Congress to end a government program--close some government agency--decide between competing interests. You know, actually make the "hard choices" that all of those Washington politicians claim that they make all the time when all they're actually doing is deciding to take more money from the people who earned it, and give it to people who didn't.

Put your money where your mouth is, Obama. Propose to close some government agency, in order to fund the more-important government work of extending unemployment benefits.

Or, IS EXTENDING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS NOT AS IMPORTANT AS ANYTHING ELSE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOES right now? Because that is exactly, precisely what Obama is saying. If you're one of those current unemployed whose benefits have or are about to run out, how do you NOW feel about Obama's naked political pandering, instead of his actually making tough decisions on your behalf?

This one collects a lot of threads flying around the past couple of days and weaves them into . . . well, I don't exactly know. Probably that I don't trust Obama and the Democrats in Washington (or most of the Republicans there, for that matter) half as far as I could throw them.

I've thought for some time that the liberty community has been marginalized from the various avenues and expressions of political power, to the extent that the tactics that they--we--must apply have a great similarity to those of an insurgency--in this case, a political (no, not yet a military) insurgency against totalitarian, neo-feudalist "progressivism." In 2010, the "progressive" neo-feudalists hold all of the traditional avenues of communications and levers of power. The goal of the insurgency against the neo-feudalists is nothingn less than insure that they do not succeed in (re-)creating their favored, class-stratified society of lords and peasants. The tactic is--should be--to re-take as many of those traditional avenues of communications and levers of power--and to build alternatives to those avenues and levers--so that the neo-feudalists do not succeed. Richard Fernandez goes down a similar intellectual road: Pawn to King Four, Pawn to King Four.

But a secure base does not have to be defined by geography. It can be built on human terrain and augmented, subject to some constraints, as a meme in cyberspace. Therefore a conservative strategist who is concerned that Charles Krauthammer’s dire prognosis will happen cannot go far wrong building up a widespread, grassroots organization with extensions into the online world. This is separate and distinct from building up the ordinary party machinery. In that way even if the traditional political forms of conservatism are scattered, defeated or machined out of existence in 2010 and 2012 there may survive a core of opposition that can organize a series of coalitions against the men who would be permanent leaders. But more importantly it will remove the temptation to go for the whole hog. By strengthening the grassroots on terms not bound to the party affiliation but independent of the leftist infrastructure, conservatism can create a defense in depth. This has a stabilizing effect. The further complete and total victory is placed from the grasp of even the most ambitious activists of the Democratic Party the less likely they are to persuade their more moderate colleagues to roll the dice. And that’s good. Because all realistic worry about one side completely dominating the other can be effectively dismissed to the probable benefit of everyone. Politics was never meant to be winner-take-all.

Now, it's my fervent hope that the political insurgency stays 100% completely peaceful--fought through votes, words, and persuasion. But, honestly, I don't think that decision is in entirely the hands of liberty-community of insurgents--I think it's in the hands of the neo-feudalist "progressives" in power, who intend to just keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and pushing in full knowledge that at some point, somebody, somewhere, will push back. That will then give them an excuse to really crack down--on people like me who want everybody in this country to pursue their dreams to the best of their abilities without government or anybody else really getting in the way any more than is absolutely necessary. In these days, thoughts like mine qualify as dangerous, fringe radicalism, I'm afraid. And, I'm not the only one who's starting to think rather dark thoughts, actually. See America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution -- which begins thus:

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public's understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the "ruling class." And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.

Essential reading for anyone who cares about what happens to this country, what happens to this world, or what happens to themselves.

The main, pre-eminent reason why I'm registered Republican is not that I think Republicans are wonderful and amazing--I don't, and they're not. But I think they're somewhat better than Democrats, who are a toxic and dangerous combination of utterly clueless about economics and utterly arrogant about being Right About Everything All Of The Time despite overwhelming objective evidence in the real world to the contrary. When Democrat policies fail, it is inevitably because We Have Not Tried Hard Enough. But as Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a good definition of insanity. The Republicans are the Stupid Party. The Democrats are the Insane Party.

I think the "progressives" (aka the "ruling class" aka the "neo-feudalists") that dominate the Democratic Party but are also entrenched as the "moderate" wing of the Republican Party, are courting a popular rebellion right now. An actual, real, live, bullets-flying-in-the-air and angry crowds throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police kind of popular rebellion. And they have absolutely no clue how close they are to it, right now. There are an awful lot of people all over this country who have Just About Had Enough of the "ruling class." If that "ruling class" doesn't pull their collective heads out of their collective asses, then the people will at some point do it for them. The former will be much the preferable road to go down--for everyone. I am not advocating this--far from it--in fact the very thought that it could get this bad scares the hell out of me.

An armed revolt is never, never, NEVER the first, second, third, fourth, or even fifth option to bring a "ruling class" into alignment with the larger population. But that larger population is starting to find its options being limited by that "ruling class." This is an exceptionally stupid thing for the "ruling class" to do, but that's what they're hell-bent on doing right now. The people of this country are much, much angrier than the "ruling class" seems to want to realize. That situation is extremely unstable and untenable. It will change. The change will begin--peacefully--this November, when the "ruling class" begins to be expunged from Congress.

One of my fears is that the "ruling class," in an attempt to hold onto power and further disenfranchise the greater population, will choose to affect the November elections with massive vote fraud and voter intimidation. If that should happen--if that sort of thing should even be widely suspected by the people, then we will have turned the corner into an even more dangerous phase, and it will truly be time to begin to batten down the hatches for what could be a very, very ugly few years in this country. I do not predict. I do not advocate. I'm just afraid of the continuing, persistent stupidity of the "ruling class."

Related: What To Do?
You Say You Want A Revolution?

But let's say that they want to try something just a little more subtle than the baton-wielding-thug approach to stealing the election. What about some kind of October Surprise? Is something really scary coming in October? -- I'm inclined to believe that something quite nasty, financially, might very well happen in October. There is something of a pattern--a previous history--which is a bit ominous . . . the article itself is a bit rocket-sciencey to me, but the implication that October might not be a lot of fun for investors is one that I'm quite receptive to . . . one of the questions that suspicious and cynical people like me insist on asking is: will whatever happens happen in spite of or because of this current government's policies? Are they planning on some kind of October economic disruption? Or is even bigger game than that afoot?

Why Obama Just Might Fight Iran -- Michael Totten, a subtle and astute observer of things Middle Eastern, weighs in . . .

Nuking Westphalia: Obama’s Deep Convictions Point to War With Iran -- Which brings to my mind this dark, wild, conspiracy-theory thought: Is a war with Iran this year's October Surprise to ensure Democrat (or at least, "progressive") control of Congress? Would you put it past Obama and "never let a crisis go to waste" Rahm Emmanuel? Really? Really-really? Governments in trouble throughout history have often turned to external enemies to suppress internal dissent. And what country wears a black hat (or turban?) for Americans--those common Americans who are coming to despise Obama and everything he stands for--more than the mullahs of Iran?

Final thought: In a time of declared war, don't Presidents assume additional "emergency" powers? Do you really think that Obama wouldn't jump at the chance to seize additional power under pretext of "saving the world from a nuclear Iran."

Yeah, I do think he, and the Democrats, could be that cynically power-mad.

Serious Human Beings -- Doctor Zero writes:

We are about to conduct an election about the very philosophy of our government. It is our last chance to avoid the Great Crash which Obama has brought to our doorsteps… but which would have lurked twenty or thirty years in the future even without him. The Obama presidency has begun a fundamental transformation of the relationship between Americans and their government. The groundwork for this transformation was laid over many years, by politicians from both parties. Government bloat has accumulated for decades. The State isn’t really changing all that much under Barack Obama. It’s working to change us.

Without really thinking about it very much, the American people have basically repealed the entire Constitution--at least, they continue to elect both Democrats and Republicans who continually pass laws, enforce those laws, and judge those laws with little or no regard to the actual, easily understood (to a NORMAL person) text of the Constitution. Some people have decided that this is, perhaps, not such a good idea any more. Those people are called, collectively, The Tea Party.

For the NAACP and their allies and apologists: Note the total lack of any kind of racial statement or implication in the above statement. "A Nation of Laws, Not Of Men" mean that the laws--starting with the Constitution, are actually understood and rigorously, aggressively enforced on EVERYBODY.

The Next Great Wave -- Featuring this, which brings into sharp focus the fact that the "progressive" agenda is now, in the 21st Century, actually quite backward-looking. You might almost say . . . "conservative" . . .

The Progressive ideology much of the western world has labored under for a century or so is a product of the industrial revolution. It will die and be replaced by something else as the technological revolution sweeps all before it. Political wonks live in the sort of bubble where they give primacy to politics over everything else, little understanding that politics grow from more basic factors, and those factors are currently being rearranged, rebuilt, newly created or destroyed by forces far more powerful than politics or ideology. Even the oldest ideology of all - religion - sways and teeters in the face of the oncoming storms.

The fact is, if you hold "progressive" political views, you're not anywhere near the cutting edge of political thought. In fact, what you believe is largely a return--not a return to the Progressive days of the late 19th and early 20th century, the days of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but a return to a kind of feudalism last ascendent in European culture after the fall of Rome. Let's call it neo-feudalism. Consider the society of the early European Middle Ages, where those few who, by wisdom and intellect are chosen as the Wise (that would be them) lead the many, the poor, the ignorant. That would be you. The last time around, the few, wise people represented the Catholic Church. Now, they represent "progressive, compassionate policies." But in operation, there is very little difference. The rulers, and the ruled. It is this system against which the American Revolution was a decisive--if momentary--defeat, and ever since, the rulers have been seeking another path to unlimited power. They think they've found it. Are they right?

If you really want a better life for the poor, but are voting for Democrats, you are on the wrong side. Period.

The truth on domestic violence just isn’t sexy enough -- Including this gem of a final paragraph, which could well apply to most "issues of the day" raised by Old Media:

Why do these myths persist? Because they make great copy and because there is something mesmerizing about a statistic that freezes journalistic brains, especially when the statistics bolster common cultural biases or trends. And one especially pejorative but persisting cultural trend is the impunity with which all men can be demonized. The moral of these hoaxes is to view statistics that paint a negative picture of unusually high numbers of men with deep suspicion.

Emphasis mine. What you hear from the Old Media is, more often than not, a carefully selected subset of what happened, presented in an astonishingly slanted, biased way to favor one set of policy prescriptions (generally "progressive") and breathlessly presented with a desperate "the sky is falling!" breathlessness. (Sometimes it's not even necessary for something to happen--it's enough for somebody, somewhere to say that something happened--like for instance Congressmen being verbally abused or intentionally spit on, on the Capitol Steps) . . .

The Charge of Racism: It’s Time to Bury the Divisive Politics of the Past -- This was part of what "Hope and Change" was all about, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

I am saddened by the NAACP’s claim that patriotic Americans who stand up for the United States of America’s Constitutional rights are somehow “racists.” The charge that Tea Party Americans judge people by the color of their skin is false, appalling, and is a regressive and diversionary tactic to change the subject at hand.

President Reagan called America’s past racism “a legacy of evil” against which we have seen the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights. He condemned any sort of racism, as all good and decent people do today. He also called it a “point of pride for all Americans” that as a nation, we have successfully struggled to overcome this evil. Reagan rightly declared that “there is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country,” and he warned that we must never go back to the racism of our past.
. . .
On this subject, I can recommend the statement issued by a man I was proud to endorse, Tim Scott, the GOP candidate from South Carolina’s First Congressional District. Tim, poised to become the first African-American Republican Congressman from the former Confederacy since Reconstruction, is himself a sign of a hopeful, truly post-racial future for our country. It gives added meaning to his warning that “the NAACP is making a grave mistake in stereotyping a diverse group of Americans who care deeply about their country and who contribute their time, energy and resources to make a difference.”

The only purpose of such an unfair accusation of racism is to dissuade good Americans from joining the Tea Party movement or listening to the common sense message of Tea Party Americans who simply want government to abide by our Constitution, live within its means, and not borrow and spend away our children’s futures. Red and yellow, black and white, this message is precious in all our sights. All decent Americans abhor racism. No one wants to be associated with any organization that is in any way racist in sentiment or origin. I certainly don’t want to be. Thankfully, the Tea Party movement is not racist or motivated by racism. It is motivated by love of country and all that is good and honest about our proud and diverse nation.

Like President Reagan, Tea Party Americans believe that “the glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past.” Isn’t it time we put aside the divisive politics of the past once and for all and celebrate the fact that neither race nor gender is any longer a barrier to achieving success in America – even in achieving the highest office in the land?

Why is it that Sarah Palin consistently--consistently makes more sense, and sounds more unifying and--dare I say--Presidential--than the current occupant of that office, who seems to be daily shrinking in stature as the cold, implacable force of reality continues to impose itself on his lofty dreams of Hope and Change?

There are those on the right who are--with some justification--outraged by the broad-brush dismissal of the Tea Party movement of the NAACP as "racist." (And no, don't try to quibble that the NAACP was accusing "some elements" of racism. This was intended to smear the entire pro-liberty, small-government movement, and in many circles it has done so.)

I can think of few strategies that would be more effective in creating actual racism among white Americans than falsely accusing them of racism. How would you feel if, in some public meeting, someone in the corner stood up and accused you of something both false and vile--and many in the room actually believed the accusation? A natural human reaction is anger--anger at the person accusing you. From there, it is a short step from being angry at an individual to being angry at the group to which the individual belongs. The urge to form tribal groups is very strong in human beings, and this tribal urge is the source of so much hatred, envy, anger, tragedy and misery in the world. And no person--no one-- on this Earth, regardless of skin melanin content or political views, is immune to this tribal urge.

I am outraged by what the NAACP has done. But after the first flush of anger, my sentiment after even a moment's consideration changed to sorrow--which I posted yesterday. I deeply regret that there are so many in the black communities of this country who believe--because that's what they're told, over and over and over and over again--that a major reason they can't get ahead in life is an overwhelming, pervasive racism within the white communities of this country.

I have lived in several of those majority-white communities. I know some level of racism exists, but it is not rampant, and it is generally rather vigorously opposed--by other whites in the community when it occurs. But racism exists in every community. The attempts by minorities to place a veneer of "power-wielding" over the simple concept of racism demeans and diminishes the serious and ultimately undesirable, if not self-destructive nature of the tribal impulse.

Over the past forty years, race has become a marginal issue--or not an issue at all--for most whites. It is difficult (given the subculture in which they live) for blacks to believe, but most white people go through their entire day without once giving a second thought to the race of the people they deal with--blacks, Asians, whatever. The main reason race in this country remains as big an issue as it is, is there is a prominent and vocal segment of the minority black community who along with their other leftist allies and enablers, insist on ripping open the old wounds--loudly claiming all the while that they're doing it to speed the healing process between the races.

The reason why it is impossible to hold a serious conversation with blacks about the problems of tribalism (Or, according to Attorney General Holder, why we are a "Nation of Cowards") is exactly, precisely, because many blacks insist that it is impossible for a black person to be racist--and some of those same people insist that it is impossible for a white person to not be racist.

This of course is mere sophistry. (That's a word that means "bullshit" but sounds a lot more erudite and polite.) And it is dangerous, perilous sophistry for a minority to engage in, because it presumes that the target population will react with equanimity, calm, and grace to the continued slanders and insinuations--if not actively agree with them, bow their collective heads, and vow to be better.

This is a hand that has now been quite overplayed. Where the accusation of "racist" does not evoke a positive "giggle factor" among those that blacks and their leftist allies accuse, it simply makes people angry. The word "racist" has simply become as unproductive in discussion of racial issues as the word "nigger" has become--and for many of the same reasons. It is no longer a descriptive term. It is merely an epithet.

If the NAACP, the President, other prominent black individuals and organizations, and their leftist allies persist in these reckless characterizations of widespread, rampant white racism in the political right, they will re-ignite the tribal instinct of white Americans that has--to a great extent--been suppressed since the early 1960's.

Do they really, really want to go there? I don't. I want a world where we have better things to do than worry about how much melanin people have in their skin.

I was a young boy when Martin Luther King gave his speech where he implored people to judge others by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I listened, and I thought that was a good idea. I didn't care how much melanin he had in his skin, I cared about the quality of ideas in his head.

It seems that all too many leftists and blacks have decided that skin color should be more important than character.

Only the most naive person would dare to say that racism does not exist, and only a fool would say that racism is a good thing. Racism is a terrible waste of people's time--people's energy--people's lives. We have better things to do than to engage in racism, and we have better things to do than accuse people (if not directly, than by association) of racism.

Moving forward on this issue requires a general agreement on several points:
1: Anyone can succumb to tribal prejudice--call it "racism" if you want, but we all know what it is, and there is no amount of melanin in your skin which can make you immune to it;
2: It's a bad thing to judge people merely by their appearance;
3: It will be a better world if we judge people by what they do, not what they look like.

There. That wasn't hard, was it?

UPDATE: Edited for clarity and coherence.

I note, with more sadness than anger, the myopic resolution of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at their national convention just down the road in Kansas City, tagging the Tea Party movement with the once-dreaded RAAAAACIST! label.

This is what happens when you actually uncritically believe what people tell you, just because what you've been told feeds your prejudices, fits with your own preconceptions, and bolsters your own self-image and sense of entitlement and righteousness, without regard to the actual truth of what you have been told, and without regard to whether or not that self-image and those senses are true or warranted.

I feel sorry for those in the NAACP who voted for this.

Continuing to foment racial hatred and class envy is not a path to civic peace, prosperity, and order. Yet through hateful and divisive actions such as this, it is the path that the NAACP continues to walk.

The people whom the NAACP purport to represent would be far, far better off--both now and into the future--to join with the Tea Party movement of individual freedom, liberty, and responsibility under a government of limited and enumerated powers.

Which makes me wonder what the leaders of the NAACP really want. Of course, I suspect I already know that answer. Which makes me even more sad--sad for their victims, who they have convinced are their beneficiaries.

Why, after each big government social program, does the lot of the urban black population always seem to be somehow just a little bit worse than it was before? Why don't those who supposedly benefit from these programs begin to ask that question?

UPDATE: It comes to my attention that the current president of the NAACP is a gentleman with the name of Jealous.

You can't make this stuff up.

Seen at NRO:



There is so much about this world that "progressives" simply don't understand. It actually does make me sad that they so single-mindedly seek such salvation in political power. I'm not smart enough (believe it or not!) to know where salvation comes from, or even if it's possible, but I do know from studying humanity's painful, tragic history that salvation has not, will not, can not come from government power.

It's something that each person must somehow find for themselves.

Want Economic Stimulus? Don’t Build a Sports Stadium! -- It's hard to decide what's the bigger scam: public 'light rail' mass transit, new stadiums, health care "reform," "stimulus," or "green industries." Each of them has just about as much objective scientific support behind them--i.e. very, very little--to suggest that they will actually do what their proponents say they will do. All represent the triumph of Hoping Real Hard over actual reality.

Two words shoot all of these down when these Good Ideas come into contact with the Real World: Opportunity Cost.

Lack of jobs increasingly blamed on uncertainty created by Obama’s policies

Rasmussen: Investor confidence hits 2010 low -- Nobody--especially smaller businesses--are going to do much of anything until they have an idea how much more the Democrats are going to try to hurt them via taxes and regulations. Which may mean no significant recovery until Palin defeats Obama in November, 2012.

Video: New Black Panther Party President Admits Voter Intimidation -- Evidence:


Racists. And not with five A's, either. The real thing, this time. Imagine a white supremicist movement leader standing up and talking like this. Try to imagine it. Then try to imaging that guy and his organization NOT getting the legal cluebat upside the head.

Are You an "Internal" or an "External?" And Which is Mitch Daniels? -- Is this like being an "innie" or an "outie?" I'm an internal, I guess. And an innie, thank you very much.

La Nina to form in July as storm, drought fears flare -- What do we need to make the Great Depression II? Stupid government economic policies causing economic bubbles? Check! Even stupider government policies delaying the economic recovery? Check! A return of the Dust Bowl? On the way? Gee. All we'll need to get out of this is a world war. Oh, wait, the government debt is already where it was at the END of World War II. Oopsie. Hey, here's an idea! Let's RAISE TAXES! Yeah, that always improves the lives of regular people. Heck, they'd rather have all that free time than have to waste time at a job anyway! It's like we're doing them a favor by making it impossible for them to find a job! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Green Economics and the Void of Desire

Consider the purchasing and investment decisions of our three hundred million citizens as a widely dispersed intelligence of tremendous complexity. Resources are allocated through a vast number of individual decisions, made with impressive speed. Each citizen becomes one element of a mighty network. It is capable of intuition, as sophisticated communications allow consumers to react to trends and opportunities in a cascade of email, website postings, phone calls, and casual conversation. It is creative, because it’s not restrained by ideology or central directives. People adopt new technologies with astounding speed. With apologies to Alvin Toffler, the only “future shock” nowadays is felt by manufacturers, as the best high-tech products go from the expensive indulgences of trendy nerds to household items in a matter of months.

Obama-style command economics are a far more primitive form of intelligence. They are directed by small groups of people wearing ideological blinders. Politically unacceptable alternatives are ruled nonexistent. Command economies move with glacial speed, receiving corrective input only once every couple of years at the ballot box. They are wasteful, as vast resources are allocated to pay off valuable constituencies, or absorbed by a useless political class through graft.

Emphasis in original. The simple fact remains that the "progressive" agenda is, in actuality, profoundly regressive, essentially taking us back to a primitive, Dark Ages view of human beings and their relationship to government--a relationship of subjects and rulers--of serfs and lords (and guess which one you're going to be?). It wipes out hundreds of years of long, slow progress towards increasing individual rights, returning us to a neo-feudal--almost tribal--situation where the rights you have come from the group you belong to, instead of being inherent in you by virtue of simply being a human.

Like in so many other things, the very word that the authoritarians use to describe themselves, "progressive," is itself a blatant lie. It is, in fact, The Big Lie. Again. They are not "progressive." They are not "liberal." They are the exact opposite of progressive and liberal.

Health care, welfare, the environment--all are not ends in themselves for the "progressives." They are, for "progressives," noble-sounding rhetorical tools which they cheerfully, cynically use to pry your individual, inherent rights away from you.

You have a choice: do it the "progressive's" way, or go the way of freedom. The goals of the "progressives" and the true liberals may be the same--a better life for everybody. But the true liberals know how to get there--increase the freedom, liberty, individual power, and personal responsibility of every single human being. The "progressives" are flailing in the dark. The Dark Ages dark.

Choose the light. Choose freedom. Choose liberty.

Iowa Federal Court Finds Sheriff Denied Concealed Carry Because of Applicant’s Political Activity, Orders Sheriff to Take a First Amendment Class -- Actually, all law enforcement personnel--and actually, all government employees at any level--should be required to pass an extensive (week-long?) training session and test on the original intent of the United States Constitution and the federal system of government. Taking elected office should be contingent on passing that course with an "A."

I'm serious about that.

How can you have people in your government who don't understand the fundamental concepts of your government? Current experience proves that you can't.

Featured today:

The Care of Time

The destruction of private enterprise and its substitution by government spending creates the danger that too many people will find there’s nothing left but to stay on the needle. Only when it the needle absolutely positively bone dry; bent, corroded and blood encrusted will the alternative be considered. In the meantime there is the terrible momentum of promises, the fatal attraction of hope and change. Will there be enough reserve buoyancy to surface? Or will the Ship of State, like some gigantic version of Illinois, keep racing for the depths?

I've seen the needle, and the damage done.

America, and the world, needs an intervention, I think. Perhaps at this point a divine one is required.

America As Job -- In keeping with this sudden turn to religious references . . . Job as in "the patience of," not as Bite-Me Biden's four letter word. I'm really not a particularly religious person. But then, religious people do not offend me, either. In fact, I'm more often comforted by the existence of serious, thoughtful religious people than intimidated or threatened by them. Radical Islamists excepted, of course.

In a silent way

Readers who get their news from the the mainstream media are remarkably ill informed. Much of what they "know" isn't true and much of what they don't know is important.

If what you know comes from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, or MSNBC, PBS, NPR, or other leftist-dominated media outlets, then you are dreadfully poorly informed. This is simply fact. Get used to it.

And yes, I occasionally listen to outlets like the BBC as well as ABC and the other outlets above. I just don't believe that they report events and issues fully and fairly, because I'm also reliably informed by many other sources. Of course, I spend an average of probably three or four hours a day actively learning what's going on in the world and studying world history to learn how we came to be where we are now. Most people don't have that kind of time to do that.

This is a bit of an "argument from authority" I guess, but I do spend time trying to understand what's going on, and why. I'm not content to simply believe what anyone wants me to believe. I'm a firm believer in what Ronald Reagan said: Trust, but verify. And all too often when I try to verify the accuracy of the news and opinion of Old Media outlets, I find that they are inaccurate at best, disingenuously misleading all too often, and actively deceitful (with what they report, and much more often by what they don't report) with depressing regularity. And so I have concluded that what they say can not be trusted.

Is it really too much to ask for people to come in through the front door--or even through the back door, as most people did where I grew up--rather than coming in through the windows?

In case you're not getting it:
Front door, back door = legal immigration;
Windows = illegal immigration.

Is it really, really too much to ask?

Or, is asking people to come in via a door rather than the windows RAAAAACIST? Let me know, so that the next time I visit you I come into your home in your preferred method.