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Archive → August, 2013

Comeuppance 101

If you run for US president on a platform of blaming the incumbent for everything, you just might find yourself in the same position some years later, with far less to show than that “failure” before you had.

Obama’s failure to create even a small international coalition to surgically remove Bashar Assad’s weapons of mass destruction is a result of his mistreatment of America’s key allies (Britain, France, Israel, Poland), his confused messages (pacifism vs. ‘red lines’ etc.), willingness to toss old friends overboard for whatever end…(Mubarak in Egypt), and his arrogant personality.

None of America’s former allies know if they can really trust Obama, and all of America’s avowed enemies believe he is a paper tiger.

Ye reap what ye sow….and more children in Syria will be gassed by Assad as a result. If this is Hope and Change, so be it. Most people call it disaster. It’s an expensive form of Comeuppance 101.

Was today’s MLK event in DC a sham and partisan pep rally?

How odd that none of the following black leaders were invited or present to speak at today’s MLK event on the DC Mall: Clarence Thomas (US Supreme Court), Condoleeza Rice (US NSA), Dr. Ben Carson, Professor Thomas Sowell, Congressman Allen West, Alan Keyes, or sitting US Senator Tim Scott, the only black US Senator…among many other candidates who might have had something to say about MLK and civil rights.

Partisan activist Donna Brazile coordinated the event, but exclaimed surprise that no Republicans spoke much less attended.

Wonder if today’s event was really just a partisan pep rally?

On the other hand, THIS was a genuine human rights rally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr march

On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s nation-changing march, let us look closely into what has been achieved since that time, and what has failed.

On the list of achievements we have the definite growth in black voting and a far-reaching acceptance, even embrace of dark skin color among European-Americans. The Negro saga in America is both a painful story, and also a story of redemption, as blacks have found their way into any and all professions they desire, including baseball, football, tennis, track and field, medicine, technology, theology, law, academia, entertainment, and government.

That said, there is a key failure that King would have never imagined, and that is the self-segregation of much of the black community, and the seeming desire for perpetual victim status contrary to the facts and opportunities presented. Today, despite enormous advances on every front, black unemployment is three times higher than whites.

I say this in the wake of months of debate about Martin and Zimmerman, and newly surfaced and long-suppressed news items about black-on-black violence and nakedly racist black-on-white violence.

The failure of much of the black community is no secret, and people like me are not going to stand by idly and watch it happen, and we will not fear being called “racist” for identifying the problem and proposing solutions. Nor will I become a racist in reaction to someone else’s racism.

Racists believe in racial determinism. Racists believe that skin color is an indication of both physical and mental ability. Like the vast vast vast majority of European-Americans, I reject those goofball notions. I do embrace a color-blind America that rewards citizens for the quantity and quality of their work, and for the content of their character.

My commitment to the success of the black community is to say that good, well-meaning people like me are here to help, to lend a hand, to support you and your local institutions. I will say that the anti-white racism in the black community is both sad, and alarming. But I will not say that America is a racist nation. Racism is a corrosive, destructive, evil thing, and it eats the people who live it.

When I watch MLK’s speeches, I am overcome with feelings of inspiration and love. MLK saw an America that had potential, whose equal opportunity was the signature of a free society that the American dream promised. Call me naive, but I am sticking to my silly ideas of equality and brotherhood. MLK wanted it that way.

Last day of summer…so sad

It is tough to know who enjoys summer time more, me or my kids. Every summer we emphasize time together camping, on day trips to historic sites, beach trips and saltwater fishing, and both day camp and sleepover camp. We spend lots of time together, and by the end of each summer I feel like a big kid.

I admit that it’s hard to say goodbye. But it’s necessary.

Race Relations in America, Justice for Chris Lane, etc.

Guest writer Patrick J. Buchanan says it best about the issue of race in America, in the piece below. Buchanan has plenty of his own baggage, but in this piece he hits the nail on the head. It’s an excellent read, originally published at http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/dead-souls-of-a-cultural-revolution/

Dead Souls of a Cultural Revolution
By Patrick J. Buchanan
August 22, 2013

Last Friday, Christopher Lane, a 22-year-old Australian here on a baseball scholarship, was shot and killed while jogging in Duncan, Okla., population 23,000. He died where he fell.

Police have three suspects, two black and one white. The former said they were bored and decided to shoot Lane for “the fun of it.”

As Lane was white and the shooter black, racism has surfaced as a motive. Thursday came reports that killing a white man may have been an initiation rite for the black teens in joining some offshoot of the Crips or Bloods.

What happened in Oklahoma and the reaction, or lack of reaction to it, tells us much about America in 2013, not much of it good.

Teenagers who can shoot and kill a man out of summertime boredom are moral barbarians, dead souls.

But who created these monsters? Where did they come from? Surely one explanation lies in the fact that the old conscience-forming and character-forming institutions – home, church, school and a moral and healthy culture fortifying basic truths – have collapsed. And the community hardest hit is Black America.

Black mobs routinely terrorize cities across the country, but the media and government are silent. Read the detailed account of rampant racial crime in “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America.”

If we go back to the end of World War II, 90 percent of black families consisted of a mother and father and children raised and disciplined by their parents. The churches to which these families went on Sundays were stronger. Black schools may have been largely segregated, but they were also the transmission belts of patriotism and traditional values rooted in biblical truths and a Christian faith.

Though such schools graduated hardworking, law-abiding and productive citizens, today they would be closed as unconstitutional.

Indeed, all of those character- and conscience-forming institutions of yesterday are in an advanced state of decline today.

Seventy-three percent of black kids are born to single moms. Black kids who make it to 12th grade may often be found reading at seventh-, eighth- or ninth-grade levels. In some cities the black dropout rate can hit as high as 50 percent.

Drugs are readily available. And among black males ages 18 to 29, in urban areas, often a third are in prison or jail, or on probation or parole, or walking around with a criminal record.

Where do the kids get their ideas of right and wrong, good and evil? In homes where the father is absent and the TV is always on. From radios tuned in to rap and hip-hop. From films where Hollywood values prevail and the shooting never stops. From street gangs that sometimes form the only families these kids have ever known.

Still, crime has fallen since 1990, we are told.

And so it has. But that is only because the baby boomers, the largest population cohort in our history, passed out of the high-crime age group a quarter of a century ago, and because the jail and prison population in America has tripled.

What kind of leadership do we see today in Black America?

What can be said for an NAACP that was lately demanding a Justice Department investigation of a rodeo clown running around a bull ring in rural Missouri in an Obama mask, but cannot find its voice to address a black-on-white atrocity in Middle America?

When Trayvon Martin was shot to death in a murky incident in Sanford, Fla., Jesse Jackson rushed there to declare: “Blacks are under attack. … Killing us is big business.” Trayvon was “shot down in cold blood by a vigilante … murdered and martyred.”

After Chris Lane’s cold-blooded murder, Jesse tweeted: This sort of thing is to be “frowned upon.”

If I had a son, said President Obama, he would have looked like Trayvon; 35 years ago, I could have been Trayvon. Can the president not find his voice to speak to the parents of Chris Lane?

Since Lyndon Johnson took office, 50 years ago, we have spent trillions on his programs for health care, housing, education, food stamps, welfare and civil rights. Are we living in that Great Society we were promised?

In that same decade, we were told that the social, cultural and moral revolution bursting forth on the campuses would rid us of the repressive old-time morality and Old Time Religion, and lead to a more equal, just, humane and better America, a beacon to mankind.

Yet, are not the killers of Chris Lane who shot him for the fun of it the “do-your-own-thing!” children of that cultural revolution?

The death of Trayvon was said to be reflective of the real America, a country where black folks live in constant fear of white vigilantes and white racist cops. What nonsense.

In the real America, interracial violence is overwhelmingly black-on-white. Even if the media will not report it, everybody knows it.

And journalists will not dig into the numbers that prove it, for the truth would undermine their ideology and contradict the narrative that governs and gives meaning to their lives.

For liberals, America is always “Mississippi Burning.” It just has to be that way.

Your dog sniffed my crotch

It was bound to happen. Two lovely days on a wilderness trail with my young son ended as we rounded the trailhead and aimed for our truck 100 yards ahead.

Two recently arrived hikers were actively calling for a dog, and they asked us if we had seen it.

“No,” I said, and I quickly added that I’d appreciate the dog being leashed when it finally arrived.

As usual, the dog’s owner went into a description of his dog’s fine qualities, its gentle disposition, etc. and then out of nowhere, she appeared. And she made a beeline for me, barking aggressively right up to my knees.

Having been attacked by dogs, my reaction was not “Oh, your dog is so cuddly poofy sweetums wonderful.” Rather, I prepared to give the vicious beast a face full of heavy hiking boot. Thankfully, the owner intervened, but in a minute, the dog was off and running around, again. My small and vulnerable son was not yet into the truck, because I was still trying to get the keys out of the extra large pack.

And it all followed an online debate pitting clueless dog owners against dog lovers who prefer not to have their crotches sniffed by unleashed dogs on wilderness trails, far from help.

No surprise that I described my concerns to the owner, a nice young guy named Garrett, and followed it up with an email to the district ranger, asking that the state either require dogs to be leashed in that region, or banned altogether.

Folks, your dog may walk on water. He may fetch your slippers, keep you warm, and make you feel loved. That’s great. But he doesn’t have the right to run up to me and smell my crotch, any more than someone could do that to you. It’s so undignified, threatening, and uncomfortable. What’s truly sad is that it’s not the dog at fault, but its owner, who has put it in a no-win situation. A leash is just a few bucks, and can turn a potentially disastrous day into a happy day for everyone.

Words worth repeating

http://newslanc.com/2013/08/18/parties-at-center-of-attorney-general-investigation-of-harrisburg-incinerator-deeply-involved-in-lcswma-deal/

Nevin Mindlin for Mayor files appeal

In a show of strength and commitment, Nevin Mindlin filed an appeal today, challenging last week’s politicized court holding that threw him off the ballot.
If there’s one thing Harrisburg needs now, it’s a strong leader like Mindlin.

Taxpayer funded holiday

Obama’s pet dog was airlifted into Martha’s Vineyard to join the family on their multimillion dollar taxpayer funded holiday there. Obama ate the hell out of tons of fried food, including oysters and clams. The Middle East is in melt down and Obama had time for a ten minute press event before returning to play more golf. Everything about this guy is BS. At my expense. At your expense. And yet, his followers maintain a messianic love for him that requires rodeo clowns to lose their jobs because Obama is so untouchable.

I can’t think of another time the nation was so badly divided, except in the lead-up to the civil war. Abolitionists and slave owners really hated each other, and each maintained mutually exclusive views that ultimately could only be resolved through force.

Go ahead and play golf, you dolt. Go to sleep, go to sleep.

In Eric Papenfuse’s own nutty words

http://www.midtownscholar.com/home/billayersfeb5th.pdf 
You don’t see that any group asked Midtown Scholar to host domestic terrorist Bill Ayers in this announcement.
 
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2010/01/why_i_invited_bill_ayers_to_co.html 

Papenfuse says he invited domestic terrorist Bill Ayers because we cannot improve our school system until we encourage students to become poets, artists and naysayers rather than graduates qualified to work for business.
 
Anybody but this guy for mayor.