Obama Turns On Freedom Around the Globe
by Bob McEwen
For more than twenty years American foreign policy has been guided by a freedom agenda: the notion that our security interests are best protected by advancing the cause of freedom around the world. Ronald Reagan championed it when he won the cold war, George H.W. Bush when he fought the first gulf war, and Bill Clinton when he committed America to defending human rights in the Balkans. Now, here comes President Barack Obama. who has effectively turned America’s back on the cause of freedom around the globe.
Right now, freedom hangs in the balance in Honduras. President Manuel Zelaya has been sent packing because of his attempted power grab and efforts to subvert the constitution. The Honduran constitution limits him to just one 4-year term. (This restriction is seen as so important that in Honduras even the Honduran congress and the President acting together cannot discard it.) Nevertheless, this Hugo Chavez wannabe began an unconstitutional and illegal referendum that would allow him to rule indefinitely. The Honduran Supreme Court, Attorney General, and Congress, however, all proceeded to follow their constitution. Accordingly, he was expelled and replaced by the proper successor of his own political party. Evidence now reveals the extent that Zelaya has been supported in his power grab by Chavez of Venezuela and neighboring Nicaragua who are placing hundreds of supporters into Honduras to foment trouble.
What has been President Obama’s response? On which side does the United States now stand? Mr. Obama has sided with Zelaya, even echoing his words that the Honduran effort to faithfully follow their constitution amounts to “a coup.” The Obama Administration even co-sponsored a resolution in the United Nations condemning Honduras and calling for Zelaya's reinstatement. Little surprise that Hugo Chavez has gleefully declared that Obama’s move will “deliver a major blow” to the people and government of Honduras.
Alone, this might be seen as a poor decision. But it is part of a troubling pattern of behavior that speaks to something deeper at work.
When Iranians took the streets in recent weeks to declare their rejection of the unfair and rigged elections in their country, President Obama dithered and sat mute for days preferring to play the role of neutral observer rather than the advocate for freedom. Only after world public opinion soundly came out against the mullahs in Iran did Obama feel safe to condemn their brutal suppression of protestors.
In June, when the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) offered its annual Democracy Award to five leaders of Cuba’s pro-democracy movement, the White House was curiously silent. The NED asked the White House for a presidential meeting with dissident Bertha Atunez, who headed the Cuban Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights. Previous Presidents Bush and Clinton had met with NED award winners. But this time they were ignored by the White House. No doubt this was because the Obama Administration seeks to curry favor with Cuba’s dictators. The normally pro-Obama Washington Post editorial page was quick to conclude that the White House was saying, “Message to Mr. Chavez and the Castro brothers: We can work with you. Message to Cuba’s democratic opposition: We don’t have time for you.” Only after the Washington Post contacted the White House to explain their silence did they proceed to issue a bland statement.
Obama’s rhetoric in support of democracy is slippery and elusive. During his June speech in Cairo, Egypt Obama offered a relativistic definition of democracy, saying he was committed to governments that “reflect the will of the people.” Dictators everywhere recognize that as their phrase. Tyrants such as the Castro brothers in Cuba always claim this is exactly what they do. During an April meeting of the Organization of American States, Obama tried to warm relations with Chavez. He pushed us further down the road of abandoning a freedom agenda when he explained that he wanted to avoid discussions about democracy and “break free from some of the stale debates and old ideologies that have dominated and distorted the debate in this hemisphere for far too long.” His Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added, “Let’s put ideology aside. That is so yesterday.” The world must wonder, do Americans now believe that championing civil liberties are just stale debates?
President Obama apparently believes that by warming up to autocrats in Iran, Russia, and Venezuela he can change them and their regimes. No doubt he’s putting great faith in his ability to charm and communicate. But he is deluding himself if he believes that these tyrants are simply misguided democrats that will succumb to his persuasion. The cold war did not end because we magically conjoled communist elites to see things our way. The cold war ended because we enabled “people power” and then democratic values triumphed.
The President needs to worry less about getting along with tyrants and instead concern himself more with the security of the American people. He will do that best by standing up for democratic values.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Sotomayor and La Raza
Sotomayor's Ties to La Raza
by Tom Tancredo
Last week, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy spoke out against critics of Sonia Sotomayor as playing “racial politics.” According to Leahy, "You have one leader of the Republican party call her the equivalent of the head of the Ku Klux Klan… That's what comes across. It comes across that if you belong to a group that tries to help Hispanics... somehow you're suspicious.”
Usually confirmation hearings are supposed to be about getting specifics about the nominee. But Leahy chose to make vague accusations against unnamed critics of the nominee while defending an unnamed organization. It was apparent to DC insiders that the “group that tries to help” Hispanics is the National Council for La Raza (The Race) and the “Republican Leader” is me.
It isn’t surprising that he didn’t want to use our names. After all it’s difficult to defend someone belonging to a group called “The Race” by accusing her opponents of playing racial politics. The last thing the Democrats want is for the American people to know about the National Council of La Raza, their radical agenda and Sotomayor’s association with the group.
Sotomayor is a member of La Raza and her comments about “Wise Latinas” being superior to white men appeared in the La Raza Law Journal. The National Council of La Raza bills itself as “the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States” who works through “its network of nearly 300 affiliated community-based organizations.”
Among these affiliates are several chapters of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán) who La Raza helps fund. Aztlán is what radical “Mechistas”—as they refer to themselves on La Raza’s website—call the American Southwest, which they claim still belongs to Mexico. Their slogan is "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada" meaning “For the Race everything, outside the Race nothing.” One chapter says on La Raza’s site that their mission is “empowerment of our gente and the liberation of Aztlán.”
La Raza receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to set up charter schools like the Aztlán Academy of Tucson where they fly the Mexican Flag, but not the American Flag and teach students “Aztec Math.”
In 1994, La Raza gave their “Chicano of the Year” Award to Jose Angel Guitierrez who once said, “We have got to eliminate the Gringo, and what I mean by that is that if the worse comes to the worst, we have got to kill him" and that “our devil has pale skin and blue eyes.”
Of special importance when considering a Supreme Court nominee is La Raza’s position on a variety of policy and legal issues. They support driver’s licenses, in state tuition and amnesty for illegal aliens. They say that virtually all enforcement of our immigration laws on the state level is unconstitutional. They filed amicus briefs in favor of racial preferences and in favor of benefits for illegal aliens. They led the legal attack against Hazelton, PA for their official English and anti-illegal alien measures.
At the very least, Sotomayor should explain where she stands on these issues.
While questioning her connections to radical left wing groups is off limits, attacking conservatives for belonging to mainstream organizations like the Federalist Society is fair game for the Democrats.
When Larry Thompson was up for Deputy Attorney General in 2001, Leahy questioned his role with the organization. Sen. Richard Durbin denounced the group as a “far right” group who he implied might want to bring back the Dred Scott decision upholding slavery.
The Federalist Society is nothing but a debating and social organization for conservative and libertarian law students and attorneys. In contrast to La Raza, it takes no position on legal cases or policy.
If membership in the Federalist Society is a problem for the Democrats, imagine how they would react if Samuel Alito or John Roberts belonged to a group called “The National Council of the White Race” who honored a man who once said “We have got to eliminate Latinos, and what I mean by that is that if the worse comes to the worst, we have got to kill him," as “white man of the year.” They wouldn’t pass the bar, much less become Supreme Court justices. But when a Hispanic or Black holds these views, we need to celebrate him for his diversity.
The Democrats support of Sotomayor and La Raza shows us what Obama’s “post racial” America really looks like. Designated minority victim groups are free to promote their anti-white racist agenda, while any whites who fight back are playing “racial politics.”
by Tom Tancredo
Last week, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy spoke out against critics of Sonia Sotomayor as playing “racial politics.” According to Leahy, "You have one leader of the Republican party call her the equivalent of the head of the Ku Klux Klan… That's what comes across. It comes across that if you belong to a group that tries to help Hispanics... somehow you're suspicious.”
Usually confirmation hearings are supposed to be about getting specifics about the nominee. But Leahy chose to make vague accusations against unnamed critics of the nominee while defending an unnamed organization. It was apparent to DC insiders that the “group that tries to help” Hispanics is the National Council for La Raza (The Race) and the “Republican Leader” is me.
It isn’t surprising that he didn’t want to use our names. After all it’s difficult to defend someone belonging to a group called “The Race” by accusing her opponents of playing racial politics. The last thing the Democrats want is for the American people to know about the National Council of La Raza, their radical agenda and Sotomayor’s association with the group.
Sotomayor is a member of La Raza and her comments about “Wise Latinas” being superior to white men appeared in the La Raza Law Journal. The National Council of La Raza bills itself as “the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States” who works through “its network of nearly 300 affiliated community-based organizations.”
Among these affiliates are several chapters of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán) who La Raza helps fund. Aztlán is what radical “Mechistas”—as they refer to themselves on La Raza’s website—call the American Southwest, which they claim still belongs to Mexico. Their slogan is "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada" meaning “For the Race everything, outside the Race nothing.” One chapter says on La Raza’s site that their mission is “empowerment of our gente and the liberation of Aztlán.”
La Raza receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to set up charter schools like the Aztlán Academy of Tucson where they fly the Mexican Flag, but not the American Flag and teach students “Aztec Math.”
In 1994, La Raza gave their “Chicano of the Year” Award to Jose Angel Guitierrez who once said, “We have got to eliminate the Gringo, and what I mean by that is that if the worse comes to the worst, we have got to kill him" and that “our devil has pale skin and blue eyes.”
Of special importance when considering a Supreme Court nominee is La Raza’s position on a variety of policy and legal issues. They support driver’s licenses, in state tuition and amnesty for illegal aliens. They say that virtually all enforcement of our immigration laws on the state level is unconstitutional. They filed amicus briefs in favor of racial preferences and in favor of benefits for illegal aliens. They led the legal attack against Hazelton, PA for their official English and anti-illegal alien measures.
At the very least, Sotomayor should explain where she stands on these issues.
While questioning her connections to radical left wing groups is off limits, attacking conservatives for belonging to mainstream organizations like the Federalist Society is fair game for the Democrats.
When Larry Thompson was up for Deputy Attorney General in 2001, Leahy questioned his role with the organization. Sen. Richard Durbin denounced the group as a “far right” group who he implied might want to bring back the Dred Scott decision upholding slavery.
The Federalist Society is nothing but a debating and social organization for conservative and libertarian law students and attorneys. In contrast to La Raza, it takes no position on legal cases or policy.
If membership in the Federalist Society is a problem for the Democrats, imagine how they would react if Samuel Alito or John Roberts belonged to a group called “The National Council of the White Race” who honored a man who once said “We have got to eliminate Latinos, and what I mean by that is that if the worse comes to the worst, we have got to kill him," as “white man of the year.” They wouldn’t pass the bar, much less become Supreme Court justices. But when a Hispanic or Black holds these views, we need to celebrate him for his diversity.
The Democrats support of Sotomayor and La Raza shows us what Obama’s “post racial” America really looks like. Designated minority victim groups are free to promote their anti-white racist agenda, while any whites who fight back are playing “racial politics.”
Obama and Dodd
Dodd and Obama: Corrupt Birds of a Feather
by Michelle Malkin
Everything you need to know about false Hope and Change can be found in one picture: the image of President Obama embracing embattled Sen. Chris Dodd.
The troubled Democrat is in deep over his sweetheart Countrywide home-loan deals, corporate bailout cash and crony associations. New revelations by Countrywide whistleblower Robert Feinberg confirm what more and more of Dodd's constituents in Connecticut are coming to realize: He's a lying weasel.
Dodd denied knowledge of the special treatment the subprime mortgage company had given him and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad on home loans. (Dodd's were worth more than $800,000.) Feinberg flatly contradicted him in secret testimony on the Hill this week.
Connecticut voters are not smiling about Dodd's hypocritical bashing of lobbyists on the airwaves while he parties with them behind closed doors. And as they scrimp through the recession, they haven't forgotten about Dodd's dozy Irish cottage deal with convicted insider trader Edward Downe Jr. (who received a Clinton pardon with Dodd's generous help). Sandra Harris, an unaffiliated voter from West Hartford, Conn., told the Hartford Courant: "I've lost respect for him. … It's time for a change." A Quinnipiac poll now shows that 60 percent of key independent voters disapprove of Dodd.
But Dodd's cratering numbers and mounting ethics scandal aren't just about Dodd. Damaged birds of a feather flock together. Even before these latest disclosures, Dodd's approval ratings had dropped to their lowest levels ever. Yet, Obama -- agent of the "new politics," erstwhile Breath of Fresh Air, guarantor of all that is good and clean in Washington -- declared his support for Dodd's 2010 re-election campaign bid.
"I can't say it any clearer: I will be helping Chris Dodd because he deserves the help," Obama announced in April. "He just has an extraordinary record of accomplishment, and I think the people of Connecticut will come to recognize that."
Obama progressives should cringe at their president's bear hug of one of the most ethically compromised politicians on Capitol Hill. The Beltway swamp is teeming with Democratic corruption scandals -- Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha's earmark factory and tax-subsidized airports and radars to nowhere; New York Rep. Charlie Rangel's rent-controlled apartment scams and tax scandals; California Rep. Maxine Waters' business ties to a minority-owned bank that received $12 million in TARP money under smelly circumstances, for starters. But Dodd's career epitomizes the most fetid aspects of Washington's culture of corruption. It's a textbook case of nepotism, self-dealing, back scratching, corporate lobbying, government favors and entrenched incumbency.
When he launched his presidential bid in February 2007, Obama inspired millions and rallied the world with his pledge to "build a more hopeful America." He told a cheering crowd in Springfield, Ill., land of Lincoln, that he recognized "that there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement. I know that I have not spent a long time learning the ways of Washington, but I have been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington have to change."
Two years later, Obama declared his support for an entrenched U.S. senator drowning in the decrepit old politics of pay-for-play.
Two years later, at a "historic" and "unprecedented" record pace, Obama presided over a heap of botched nominations, crony appointments, lobbyist paybacks, union and left-wing activist payoffs, and abandoned promises to make government more transparent and accountable to ordinary Americans.
"Washington is broken," Obama lamented on the campaign trail. Yet, under President Obama, the business of Washington is booming. The collapse of the Era of HopeNChangeyness demonstrates the first and last law of political physics: As government grows, corruption flows. Massive new federal spending plus tens of thousands of pages of new regulations plus unprecedented new powers over taxpayers and the economy ensure limitless new opportunities for sleaze, favor trading, deal cutting and influence peddling.
The president's dwindling blind faithful may still cling to the belief that he can work miracles. But no one, not even Barack Obama, can drain a swamp by flooding it.
by Michelle Malkin
Everything you need to know about false Hope and Change can be found in one picture: the image of President Obama embracing embattled Sen. Chris Dodd.
The troubled Democrat is in deep over his sweetheart Countrywide home-loan deals, corporate bailout cash and crony associations. New revelations by Countrywide whistleblower Robert Feinberg confirm what more and more of Dodd's constituents in Connecticut are coming to realize: He's a lying weasel.
Dodd denied knowledge of the special treatment the subprime mortgage company had given him and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad on home loans. (Dodd's were worth more than $800,000.) Feinberg flatly contradicted him in secret testimony on the Hill this week.
Connecticut voters are not smiling about Dodd's hypocritical bashing of lobbyists on the airwaves while he parties with them behind closed doors. And as they scrimp through the recession, they haven't forgotten about Dodd's dozy Irish cottage deal with convicted insider trader Edward Downe Jr. (who received a Clinton pardon with Dodd's generous help). Sandra Harris, an unaffiliated voter from West Hartford, Conn., told the Hartford Courant: "I've lost respect for him. … It's time for a change." A Quinnipiac poll now shows that 60 percent of key independent voters disapprove of Dodd.
But Dodd's cratering numbers and mounting ethics scandal aren't just about Dodd. Damaged birds of a feather flock together. Even before these latest disclosures, Dodd's approval ratings had dropped to their lowest levels ever. Yet, Obama -- agent of the "new politics," erstwhile Breath of Fresh Air, guarantor of all that is good and clean in Washington -- declared his support for Dodd's 2010 re-election campaign bid.
"I can't say it any clearer: I will be helping Chris Dodd because he deserves the help," Obama announced in April. "He just has an extraordinary record of accomplishment, and I think the people of Connecticut will come to recognize that."
Obama progressives should cringe at their president's bear hug of one of the most ethically compromised politicians on Capitol Hill. The Beltway swamp is teeming with Democratic corruption scandals -- Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha's earmark factory and tax-subsidized airports and radars to nowhere; New York Rep. Charlie Rangel's rent-controlled apartment scams and tax scandals; California Rep. Maxine Waters' business ties to a minority-owned bank that received $12 million in TARP money under smelly circumstances, for starters. But Dodd's career epitomizes the most fetid aspects of Washington's culture of corruption. It's a textbook case of nepotism, self-dealing, back scratching, corporate lobbying, government favors and entrenched incumbency.
When he launched his presidential bid in February 2007, Obama inspired millions and rallied the world with his pledge to "build a more hopeful America." He told a cheering crowd in Springfield, Ill., land of Lincoln, that he recognized "that there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement. I know that I have not spent a long time learning the ways of Washington, but I have been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington have to change."
Two years later, Obama declared his support for an entrenched U.S. senator drowning in the decrepit old politics of pay-for-play.
Two years later, at a "historic" and "unprecedented" record pace, Obama presided over a heap of botched nominations, crony appointments, lobbyist paybacks, union and left-wing activist payoffs, and abandoned promises to make government more transparent and accountable to ordinary Americans.
"Washington is broken," Obama lamented on the campaign trail. Yet, under President Obama, the business of Washington is booming. The collapse of the Era of HopeNChangeyness demonstrates the first and last law of political physics: As government grows, corruption flows. Massive new federal spending plus tens of thousands of pages of new regulations plus unprecedented new powers over taxpayers and the economy ensure limitless new opportunities for sleaze, favor trading, deal cutting and influence peddling.
The president's dwindling blind faithful may still cling to the belief that he can work miracles. But no one, not even Barack Obama, can drain a swamp by flooding it.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Africa's climate crisis
Africa’s real climate crisis
by Fiona Kobusingye
Fiona Kobusingye is coordinator of Congress of Racial Equality Uganda and the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now Brigade.
Life in Africa is often nasty, impoverished and short. AIDS kills 2.2 million Africans every year according to WHO (World Health Organization) reports. Lung infections cause 1.4 million deaths, malaria 1 million more, intestinal diseases 700,000. Diseases that could be prevented with simple vaccines kill an additional 600,000 annually, while war, malnutrition and life in filthy slums send countless more parents and children to early graves.
And yet, day after day, Africans are told the biggest threat we face is – global warming.
Conferences, news stories, television programs, class lectures and one-sided “dialogues” repeat the claim endlessly. We’re told using oil and petrol, even burning wood and charcoal, will dangerously overheat our planet, melt ice caps, flood coastal cities, and cause storms, droughts, disease and extinctions.
Over 700 climate scientists and 31,000 other scientists say humans and carbon dioxide have minimal effects on Earth’s temperature and climate, and there is no global warming crisis. But their views and studies are never invited or even tolerated in these “climate crisis” forums, especially at “ministerial dialogues” staged with United Nations money. Al Gore refuses to debate any of these experts, or even permit questions that he hasn’t approved ahead of time.
Instead, Africans are told climate change “threatens humanity more than HIV/AIDS.” More than 2.2 million dead Africans every year?
We are warned that it would be “nearly impossible to adapt to the loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet,” which would raise sea levels by “5 to 15 meters.” That certainly would impact our coastal communities. But how likely is it?
The average annual temperature in Antarctica is minus 50 degrees F! Summer in its Western Peninsula barely lasts two months and gets maybe 10 degrees above freezing for just a few hours a day. Not even Mr. Gore or UN computer models talk about raising Antarctic
temperatures by 85 degrees F year-round. So how is that ice supposed to melt?
Let’s not forget that sea levels have risen 120 meters since the last Ice Age ended. Do the global warming alarmists think cave men fires caused that? Obviously, powerful natural forces caused those ancient glaciers to come and go – and caused the droughts, floods and climate changes that have affected Africa, the Earth and its animals and people for millions of years.
Just consider northern Africa, where green river valleys, hippopotami and happy villages suddenly got turned into the Sahara Desert 4,000 years ago. Scientists don’t know why, but it probably wasn’t Egyptian pharaohs building pyramids and driving chariots.
However, the real problem isn’t questionable or fake science, hysterical claims and worthless computer models that predict global warming disasters. It’s that they’re being used to justify telling Africans that we shouldn’t build coal or natural gas electrical power plants. It’s the almost total absence of electricity keeping us from creating jobs and becoming modern societies. It’s that these policies KILL.
The average African life span is lower than it was in the United States and Europe 100 years ago. But Africans are being told we shouldn’t develop, or have electricity or cars because, now that those countries are rich beyond anything Africans can imagine, they’re worried about global warming.
Al Gore and UN climate boss Yvo de Boer tell us the world needs to go on an energy diet. Well, I have news for them. Africans are already on an energy diet. We’re starving!
Al Gore uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year. And those anti-electricity policies are keeping us impoverished.
Not having electricity means millions of Africans don’t have refrigerators to preserve food and medicine. Outside of wealthy parts of our big cities, people don’t have lights, computers, modern hospitals and schools, air conditioning – or offices, factories and shops to make things and create good jobs.
Not having electricity also means disease and death. It means millions die from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria, TB, cholera, measles and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.
Hypothetical global warming a hundred years from now is worse than this?
Telling Africans they can’t have electricity and economic development – except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels – is immoral. It is a crime against humanity.
Meanwhile, China and India are building new coal-fired power plants every week, so that they can lift their people out of poverty. So even if Africa remains impoverished – and the US and Europe switched to windmills and nuclear power – global carbon dioxide levels would continue increasing for decades.
Even worse, the global warming crusaders don’t stop at telling us we can’t have electricity. They also campaign against biotechnology. As American, Brazilian and South African farmers will tell you, biotech seeds increase crop yields, reduce pesticide use, feed more people and help farmers earn more money. New varieties are being developed that can resist droughts – the kind Africa has always experienced, and the ones some claim will increase due to global warming.
Environmental radicals even oppose insecticides and the powerful spatial insect repellant DDT, which Uganda’s Health Ministry is using along with bed nets and modern ACT drugs to eliminate malaria. They claim global warming will make malaria worse. That’s ridiculous, because the disease was once found all over Europe, the United States and even Siberia.
Uganda and Africa need to stop worrying about what the West, the UN and Al Gore say. We need to focus on our own needs, resources and opportunities.
We don’t need more aid – especially the kind that goes mostly to corrupt officials who put the money in private bank accounts, hold global warming propaganda conferences and keep their own people poor. We don’t need rich countries promising climate change assistance (maybe, sometime, ten years from now), if we promise not to develop.
We need to stop acting like ignorant savages, who thought solar eclipses meant the gods were angry with them, and asked witch doctors to bring the sun back. We need to stop listening to global warming witch doctors, who get rich telling us to keep living “indigenous,” impoverished lives.
We need trade, manufacturing, electricity and transportation fuels to power modern industrial economies. We need to do what China and India are doing – develop – and trade more with them.
That is how we will get the jobs, prosperity, health and environmental quality we deserve.
by Fiona Kobusingye
Fiona Kobusingye is coordinator of Congress of Racial Equality Uganda and the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now Brigade.
Life in Africa is often nasty, impoverished and short. AIDS kills 2.2 million Africans every year according to WHO (World Health Organization) reports. Lung infections cause 1.4 million deaths, malaria 1 million more, intestinal diseases 700,000. Diseases that could be prevented with simple vaccines kill an additional 600,000 annually, while war, malnutrition and life in filthy slums send countless more parents and children to early graves.
And yet, day after day, Africans are told the biggest threat we face is – global warming.
Conferences, news stories, television programs, class lectures and one-sided “dialogues” repeat the claim endlessly. We’re told using oil and petrol, even burning wood and charcoal, will dangerously overheat our planet, melt ice caps, flood coastal cities, and cause storms, droughts, disease and extinctions.
Over 700 climate scientists and 31,000 other scientists say humans and carbon dioxide have minimal effects on Earth’s temperature and climate, and there is no global warming crisis. But their views and studies are never invited or even tolerated in these “climate crisis” forums, especially at “ministerial dialogues” staged with United Nations money. Al Gore refuses to debate any of these experts, or even permit questions that he hasn’t approved ahead of time.
Instead, Africans are told climate change “threatens humanity more than HIV/AIDS.” More than 2.2 million dead Africans every year?
We are warned that it would be “nearly impossible to adapt to the loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet,” which would raise sea levels by “5 to 15 meters.” That certainly would impact our coastal communities. But how likely is it?
The average annual temperature in Antarctica is minus 50 degrees F! Summer in its Western Peninsula barely lasts two months and gets maybe 10 degrees above freezing for just a few hours a day. Not even Mr. Gore or UN computer models talk about raising Antarctic
temperatures by 85 degrees F year-round. So how is that ice supposed to melt?
Let’s not forget that sea levels have risen 120 meters since the last Ice Age ended. Do the global warming alarmists think cave men fires caused that? Obviously, powerful natural forces caused those ancient glaciers to come and go – and caused the droughts, floods and climate changes that have affected Africa, the Earth and its animals and people for millions of years.
Just consider northern Africa, where green river valleys, hippopotami and happy villages suddenly got turned into the Sahara Desert 4,000 years ago. Scientists don’t know why, but it probably wasn’t Egyptian pharaohs building pyramids and driving chariots.
However, the real problem isn’t questionable or fake science, hysterical claims and worthless computer models that predict global warming disasters. It’s that they’re being used to justify telling Africans that we shouldn’t build coal or natural gas electrical power plants. It’s the almost total absence of electricity keeping us from creating jobs and becoming modern societies. It’s that these policies KILL.
The average African life span is lower than it was in the United States and Europe 100 years ago. But Africans are being told we shouldn’t develop, or have electricity or cars because, now that those countries are rich beyond anything Africans can imagine, they’re worried about global warming.
Al Gore and UN climate boss Yvo de Boer tell us the world needs to go on an energy diet. Well, I have news for them. Africans are already on an energy diet. We’re starving!
Al Gore uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year. And those anti-electricity policies are keeping us impoverished.
Not having electricity means millions of Africans don’t have refrigerators to preserve food and medicine. Outside of wealthy parts of our big cities, people don’t have lights, computers, modern hospitals and schools, air conditioning – or offices, factories and shops to make things and create good jobs.
Not having electricity also means disease and death. It means millions die from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria, TB, cholera, measles and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.
Hypothetical global warming a hundred years from now is worse than this?
Telling Africans they can’t have electricity and economic development – except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels – is immoral. It is a crime against humanity.
Meanwhile, China and India are building new coal-fired power plants every week, so that they can lift their people out of poverty. So even if Africa remains impoverished – and the US and Europe switched to windmills and nuclear power – global carbon dioxide levels would continue increasing for decades.
Even worse, the global warming crusaders don’t stop at telling us we can’t have electricity. They also campaign against biotechnology. As American, Brazilian and South African farmers will tell you, biotech seeds increase crop yields, reduce pesticide use, feed more people and help farmers earn more money. New varieties are being developed that can resist droughts – the kind Africa has always experienced, and the ones some claim will increase due to global warming.
Environmental radicals even oppose insecticides and the powerful spatial insect repellant DDT, which Uganda’s Health Ministry is using along with bed nets and modern ACT drugs to eliminate malaria. They claim global warming will make malaria worse. That’s ridiculous, because the disease was once found all over Europe, the United States and even Siberia.
Uganda and Africa need to stop worrying about what the West, the UN and Al Gore say. We need to focus on our own needs, resources and opportunities.
We don’t need more aid – especially the kind that goes mostly to corrupt officials who put the money in private bank accounts, hold global warming propaganda conferences and keep their own people poor. We don’t need rich countries promising climate change assistance (maybe, sometime, ten years from now), if we promise not to develop.
We need to stop acting like ignorant savages, who thought solar eclipses meant the gods were angry with them, and asked witch doctors to bring the sun back. We need to stop listening to global warming witch doctors, who get rich telling us to keep living “indigenous,” impoverished lives.
We need trade, manufacturing, electricity and transportation fuels to power modern industrial economies. We need to do what China and India are doing – develop – and trade more with them.
That is how we will get the jobs, prosperity, health and environmental quality we deserve.
Obama's foreign policy
The Obama Doctrine on its Deathbed
by Michael Gerson
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration lacks a foreign policy ideology as a matter of ideology. Speaking recently at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted, "rigid ideologies and old formulas don't apply." The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- tempered by pragmatism, proud of its ad hockery and willing to consider everything on a case-by-case basis.
But even lacking an ideology, the administration does have a doctrine. The defining principle of President Obama's foreign policy is engagement with America's adversaries. Much of the president's public diplomacy has been designed to clear a path for such talks -- expressing respect for legitimate grievances, apologizing for past wrongs and offering dialogue without preconditions.
Six months on, how fares the Obama doctrine? Concerning North Korea and Iran, the doctrine is on its deathbed.
North Korea responded to administration outreach by testing a nuclear weapon, firing missiles toward allies, resuming plutonium reprocessing and threatening the United States with a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation." During congressional testimony, Clinton admitted, "At this point (it) seems implausible, if not impossible, the North Koreans will return to the six-party talks and begin to disable their nuclear capacity again."
The Iranian regime's reaction to engagement was to cut the ribbon on a nuclear enrichment facility, add centrifuges, conduct a fraudulent election and kill and imprison a variety of political opponents. Regarding administration overtures, Clinton recently told the BBC, "We haven't had any response. We've certainly reached out and made it clear that's what we'd be willing to do ... but I don't think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now."
The problem is not engagement itself -- which was, after all, attempted in various forms by the previous administration. The difficulty is that the Obama foreign policy team has often argued that the reason for tension and conflict with nations such as North Korea and Iran is a lack of adequate American engagement -- which is absurd, and has raised absurdly high expectations.
During the 2008 campaign, for example, Obama adviser P.J. Crowley (now State Department spokesman) argued, "Hard-liners on both sides have dominated that relationship and made it very difficult for the United States and Iran to come together and have a serious conversation."
But can the lack of a serious conversation with Iran -- or with North Korea -- now credibly be blamed on the previous administration? Obama's diplomatic hand has been extended for a while now. Fists remain clenched. This is not because some magical diplomatic words remain unspoken. It is because of the nature of oppressive regimes themselves.
Such regimes are often internally preoccupied. Precisely because they lack genuine legitimacy, they spend large amounts of time and effort maintaining their fragile authority, consolidating power and managing undemocratic transitions.
North Korea confronts a succession crisis. Iran deals with growing dissent and clerical division. Both tend to make calculations based on internal power struggles, not some rational calculation of their external image and interests. They are so inwardly focused that they do not have, as Clinton said, "any capacity" to respond to engagement. It is questionable in these cases if we currently have any serious negotiating partners at all.
And the inherent instability of oppressive regimes also leads them to tighten control by invoking threats from abroad -- particularly from the United States. Because anti-Americanism is a central commitment of North Korean and Iranian ideologies, any softening of this resentment requires a kind of voluntary regime change. Pyongyang and Tehran would need to find a new source of legitimacy -- a new prop for their power -- other than hatred for America. Not easy or likely.
The Obama administration's public campaign of engaging enemies is headed toward an entirely unintended consequence. Eventually it will raise expectations for action. As the extended hand is slapped again and again, the goals of North Korea and Iran will be fully revealed and the cost to American credibility will rise.
Already the administration has given Iran a September deadline to respond to the offer of talks and has threatened "crippling action" if Iran achieves nuclear capabilities. Congress is preparing sanctions on Iranian refined petroleum, which would escalate tensions significantly.
This is the paradox of the Obama doctrine. By attempting to engage North Korea and Iran so visibly, Obama is dramatically exposing the limits of engagement -- and building the case for confrontation.
by Michael Gerson
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration lacks a foreign policy ideology as a matter of ideology. Speaking recently at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted, "rigid ideologies and old formulas don't apply." The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- tempered by pragmatism, proud of its ad hockery and willing to consider everything on a case-by-case basis.
But even lacking an ideology, the administration does have a doctrine. The defining principle of President Obama's foreign policy is engagement with America's adversaries. Much of the president's public diplomacy has been designed to clear a path for such talks -- expressing respect for legitimate grievances, apologizing for past wrongs and offering dialogue without preconditions.
Six months on, how fares the Obama doctrine? Concerning North Korea and Iran, the doctrine is on its deathbed.
North Korea responded to administration outreach by testing a nuclear weapon, firing missiles toward allies, resuming plutonium reprocessing and threatening the United States with a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation." During congressional testimony, Clinton admitted, "At this point (it) seems implausible, if not impossible, the North Koreans will return to the six-party talks and begin to disable their nuclear capacity again."
The Iranian regime's reaction to engagement was to cut the ribbon on a nuclear enrichment facility, add centrifuges, conduct a fraudulent election and kill and imprison a variety of political opponents. Regarding administration overtures, Clinton recently told the BBC, "We haven't had any response. We've certainly reached out and made it clear that's what we'd be willing to do ... but I don't think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now."
The problem is not engagement itself -- which was, after all, attempted in various forms by the previous administration. The difficulty is that the Obama foreign policy team has often argued that the reason for tension and conflict with nations such as North Korea and Iran is a lack of adequate American engagement -- which is absurd, and has raised absurdly high expectations.
During the 2008 campaign, for example, Obama adviser P.J. Crowley (now State Department spokesman) argued, "Hard-liners on both sides have dominated that relationship and made it very difficult for the United States and Iran to come together and have a serious conversation."
But can the lack of a serious conversation with Iran -- or with North Korea -- now credibly be blamed on the previous administration? Obama's diplomatic hand has been extended for a while now. Fists remain clenched. This is not because some magical diplomatic words remain unspoken. It is because of the nature of oppressive regimes themselves.
Such regimes are often internally preoccupied. Precisely because they lack genuine legitimacy, they spend large amounts of time and effort maintaining their fragile authority, consolidating power and managing undemocratic transitions.
North Korea confronts a succession crisis. Iran deals with growing dissent and clerical division. Both tend to make calculations based on internal power struggles, not some rational calculation of their external image and interests. They are so inwardly focused that they do not have, as Clinton said, "any capacity" to respond to engagement. It is questionable in these cases if we currently have any serious negotiating partners at all.
And the inherent instability of oppressive regimes also leads them to tighten control by invoking threats from abroad -- particularly from the United States. Because anti-Americanism is a central commitment of North Korean and Iranian ideologies, any softening of this resentment requires a kind of voluntary regime change. Pyongyang and Tehran would need to find a new source of legitimacy -- a new prop for their power -- other than hatred for America. Not easy or likely.
The Obama administration's public campaign of engaging enemies is headed toward an entirely unintended consequence. Eventually it will raise expectations for action. As the extended hand is slapped again and again, the goals of North Korea and Iran will be fully revealed and the cost to American credibility will rise.
Already the administration has given Iran a September deadline to respond to the offer of talks and has threatened "crippling action" if Iran achieves nuclear capabilities. Congress is preparing sanctions on Iranian refined petroleum, which would escalate tensions significantly.
This is the paradox of the Obama doctrine. By attempting to engage North Korea and Iran so visibly, Obama is dramatically exposing the limits of engagement -- and building the case for confrontation.
Thugocracy
Bully Boys: A Brief History of White House Thuggery
by Michelle Malkin
Six months into the Obama administration, it should now be clear to all Americans: Hope and Change came to the White House wrapped in brass knuckles.
Ask the Congressional Budget Office. Last week, President Obama spilled the beans on the "Today Show" that he had met with CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf -- just as the number crunchers were casting ruinous doubt on White House cost-saving claims.
Yes, question the timing.
The CBO is supposed to be a neutral scorekeeper -- not a water boy for the White House. But when the meeting failed to stop the CBO from issuing more analysis undercutting the health care savings claims, Obama's budget director Peter Orszag played the heavy.
Orszag warned the CBO in a public letter that it risked feeding the perception that it was "exaggerating costs and underestimating savings." Message: Leave the number fudging to the boss. Capiche?
Obama issued an even more explicit order to unleash the hounds on Blue Dog Democrats during his health care press conference. "Keep up the heat" translated into Organizing for America/Democratic National Committee attack ads on moderate Democrats who have revolted against Obamacare's high costs and expansive government powers over medical decisions.
Looks like there won't be a health care beer summit anytime soon.
The CBO and the Blue Dogs got off easy compared to inspectors general targeted by Team Obama goons. Former AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin was slimed as mentally incompetent ("confused" and "disoriented") after blowing the whistle on several cases of community service tax fraud, including the case of Obama crony Kevin Johnson. Johnson is the NBA star turned Sacramento mayor who ran a federally funded nonprofit group employing AmeriCorps volunteers, who were exploited to perform campaign work for Johnson and to provide personal services (car washes, errands) to Johnson and his staff.
Walpin filed suit last week to get his job back -- and to defend the integrity and independence of inspectors general system-wide. But he faces hardball tactics from both the West Wing and the East Wing, where first lady Michelle Obama has been intimately involved in personnel decisions at AmeriCorps, according to youth service program insiders.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, top Obama officials muzzled veteran researcher Alan Carlin, who dared to question the conventional wisdom on global warming. The economist with a physics degree was trashed as a non-scientist know-nothing.
Obama Treasury officials forced banks to take TARP bailout money they didn't want and obstructed banks that wanted to pay back TARP money from doing so. The administration strong-armed Chrysler creditors and Chrysler dealers using politicized tactics that united both House Democrats and Republicans, who passed an amendment last week reversing Obama on the closure of nearly 800 Chrysler dealerships and more than 2,000 GM dealerships.
At the Justice Department, Obama lawyers are now blocking a House inquiry into the suspicious decision to dismiss default judgments against radical New Black Panther Party activists who intimidated voters and poll workers on Election Day in Philadelphia. The DOJ is preventing Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., from meeting with the trial team in the case. Wolf has been pressing for answers on what communications Attorney General Eric Holder and his deputies conducted with third-party interest groups and other political appointees about the case. So far: radio silence.
In the mafia culture, bully boys depend on a code of silence and allegiance -- omerta -- not only among their brethren, but also from the victims. The victims of Obama thugocracy are no longer cooperating. Perhaps it won't be long until some of the enforcers start to sing, too.
by Michelle Malkin
Six months into the Obama administration, it should now be clear to all Americans: Hope and Change came to the White House wrapped in brass knuckles.
Ask the Congressional Budget Office. Last week, President Obama spilled the beans on the "Today Show" that he had met with CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf -- just as the number crunchers were casting ruinous doubt on White House cost-saving claims.
Yes, question the timing.
The CBO is supposed to be a neutral scorekeeper -- not a water boy for the White House. But when the meeting failed to stop the CBO from issuing more analysis undercutting the health care savings claims, Obama's budget director Peter Orszag played the heavy.
Orszag warned the CBO in a public letter that it risked feeding the perception that it was "exaggerating costs and underestimating savings." Message: Leave the number fudging to the boss. Capiche?
Obama issued an even more explicit order to unleash the hounds on Blue Dog Democrats during his health care press conference. "Keep up the heat" translated into Organizing for America/Democratic National Committee attack ads on moderate Democrats who have revolted against Obamacare's high costs and expansive government powers over medical decisions.
Looks like there won't be a health care beer summit anytime soon.
The CBO and the Blue Dogs got off easy compared to inspectors general targeted by Team Obama goons. Former AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin was slimed as mentally incompetent ("confused" and "disoriented") after blowing the whistle on several cases of community service tax fraud, including the case of Obama crony Kevin Johnson. Johnson is the NBA star turned Sacramento mayor who ran a federally funded nonprofit group employing AmeriCorps volunteers, who were exploited to perform campaign work for Johnson and to provide personal services (car washes, errands) to Johnson and his staff.
Walpin filed suit last week to get his job back -- and to defend the integrity and independence of inspectors general system-wide. But he faces hardball tactics from both the West Wing and the East Wing, where first lady Michelle Obama has been intimately involved in personnel decisions at AmeriCorps, according to youth service program insiders.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, top Obama officials muzzled veteran researcher Alan Carlin, who dared to question the conventional wisdom on global warming. The economist with a physics degree was trashed as a non-scientist know-nothing.
Obama Treasury officials forced banks to take TARP bailout money they didn't want and obstructed banks that wanted to pay back TARP money from doing so. The administration strong-armed Chrysler creditors and Chrysler dealers using politicized tactics that united both House Democrats and Republicans, who passed an amendment last week reversing Obama on the closure of nearly 800 Chrysler dealerships and more than 2,000 GM dealerships.
At the Justice Department, Obama lawyers are now blocking a House inquiry into the suspicious decision to dismiss default judgments against radical New Black Panther Party activists who intimidated voters and poll workers on Election Day in Philadelphia. The DOJ is preventing Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., from meeting with the trial team in the case. Wolf has been pressing for answers on what communications Attorney General Eric Holder and his deputies conducted with third-party interest groups and other political appointees about the case. So far: radio silence.
In the mafia culture, bully boys depend on a code of silence and allegiance -- omerta -- not only among their brethren, but also from the victims. The victims of Obama thugocracy are no longer cooperating. Perhaps it won't be long until some of the enforcers start to sing, too.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
obama and race
How Our Post-Racial President Uses Race Card As Both Sword And Shield
By LARRY ELDER Posted Tuesday, July 28, 2009 4:20 PM PT Oops, President Obama did it again. He thoughtlessly, carelessly and offensively whipped out the race card.
Some people — not just black — voted for Obama because of his race. Many expected an Obama election to (a) improve "race relations" and (b) make a profound statement about America's inclusiveness.
Obama's election would show how close we've come to Dr. Martin Luther King's vision of a society that judges people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. He seemed so uplifting.
A biracial candidate (white mom, black dad), he refreshingly responded to Steve Kroft's "60 Minutes" question about whether his race hurt his bid for the presidency. "I think if I don't win this race," Obama replied, "it will be because of other factors. It's gonna be because I have not shown to the American people a vision for where the country needs to go that they can embrace." Well done.
On the 40th anniversary of "Blood Sunday" — a watershed civil rights march — Obama spoke optimistically about the great distance America has traveled, with but a small distance to go:
"There's still some battles that need to be fought, some rivers that need to be crossed . . . The previous generation — the Moses generation — pointed the way. They took us 90% of the way there, but we still got that 10%, in order to cross over to the other side." Excellent.
After all, polls showed that black former Secretary of State Colin Powell could have won the 1996 election assuming he secured his party's nomination. Back in 1958, when Gallup first posed the question "Would you vote for a well-qualified candidate who happened to be black?," 53% of Americans said no. By 2006, that number had fallen to 3% in a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll, or about one-third the number who believe Elvis still lives. But now, out comes the race card.
Friend Of Skip
During Obama's press conference, he answered a question about the arrest of the black professor and director of Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Henry Gates.
Question: "Recently Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you and what does it say about race relations in America?"
Obama: "Well, I should say at the outset that Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don't know all the facts. What's been reported, though, is that the guy forgot his keys, jimmied his way to get into the house, there was a report called into the police station that there might be a burglary taking place — so far, so good, right?
". . . But so far, so good. They're reporting — the police are doing what they should. There's a call, they go investigate what happens. My understanding is at that point Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in, I'm sure there's some exchange of words, but my understanding is, is that Professor Gates then shows his ID to show that this is his house. And at that point, he gets arrested for disorderly conduct — charges which are later dropped.
"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact . . . ."
In other words, the president decided, without any corroborating evidence, that the officer victimized Gates and committed an act of "racial profiling." Obama said nothing about Gates' racially charged verbal abuse of an officer simply trying to do his job and protect Gates' home, a home which — by Gates own admission — had been a target of a previous attempted break-in.
This is, in fact, why Gates used his shoulder to push open his front door, prompting a neighbor to call the police because she suspected someone was trying to break in.
Damage Control
Obama later gave a semi-apology and said he didn't intend to "malign" the Cambridge Police department. He called the incident a "teachable" moment. Indeed it was. But for whom — America or Obama?
Here's what the leader of the free world — a lawyer, a former constitutional law teacher, a man whom actor Sean Penn during last year's Academy Awards referred to as "elegant" — should have said:
"I know Professor Gates. He is a friend of mine, so I am biased. I don't know all the facts. But I know that the police responded to call from a neighbor who thought someone was breaking into his house. An officer arrived and ultimately he arrested Gates at the professor's own home.
"What led up to it, what kind of words were exchanged, the record of the officer, the local law on disorderly conduct, among other factors, are all relevant. And I simply do not know enough to comment.
"But all too often an exchange between a black citizen and a white police generates knee-jerk accusations of racism and racial profiling. The police perform a difficult job, and they, too, wish to return home every day to their loved ones.
"We should appreciate and congratulate them — recognizing that there are some bad apples in every profession — for their willingness to do a difficult and dangerous job. Beyond this, until I know more, I'm not prepared to comment."
In full damage-control mode, the president invited Gates and Sgt. Crowley to the White House to resolve the "Cambridge Conflict." After his irresponsible "Cambridge Police acted stupidly" comment, Obama now says that "two good people" merely engaged in a "misunderstanding."
If the police audiotapes show both sides equally at fault in escalating the incident into an arrest, fair enough. Bring them both down for a can-we-get-along photo-op beer-drinking session.
But what if the yet-to-be-released tapes reveal that one of the participants committed an unwarranted, "yo mamma"-based provocation, that the parties were not equally at fault, and that Crowley legally used his discretion — even if he could have walked away — in making the arrest? Why reward the miscreant by giving him a sit-down with the president?
That would have been a home run with the possibility of actually improving police-citizen relations. But here's the problem. The media and the Democratic Party love to exploit and exaggerate the "tension" between blacks and whites.
Left To Die
Never mind that some of the attention-grabbing blacks-are-oppressed stories turn out bogus — the Duke lacrosse team "rape" scandal, the Al Sharpton-driven Tawana Brawley "sexual assault" story, the discredited black-churches-targeted-for-arson story, the Jena Six hyperventilation, and, of course, the mother of all "racism" stories — the double-homicide trial of O.J. Simpson.
Democrats gleefully exploit "racial divisions" when it suits them, because it protects and cultivates that monolithic black vote.
Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton once condemned the then-Republican-controlled Congress before a predominantly black audience: "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about."
Then-Senate candidate, now Sen. Clair McCaskill, a Democrat, said, "George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black."
DNC Chairman Howard Dean referred to the GOP as the "white party" and calls Republicans racist: "The Republicans are all about suppressing votes. Two voting machines if you live in a black district, 10 voting machines if you live in a white district."
Once, during a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, Dean said: "You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room? . . . Only if they had the hotel staff in here."
But now the media's knee-jerk pursuit of the whites-oppressing-blacks Gates-Cambridge story pulls their guy "off message," jeopardizing his pursuit of ObamaCare. Thus the president's press secretary calls the media's frenzy over the Gates-Cambridge affair an "obsession."
We've seen this before with Obama. And the picture grows clearer and clearer. Use the race card both as shield and sword, when necessary, then give uplifting speeches about the need to "come together." Follow this with the obligatory "how far we've come," but couple it with "how far we have to go."
Rather than apologize for his 20-year attendance at a church with a racist pastor, Obama first defended him as a product of his generation; then criticized the pastor's view of race relations as "static," as if things haven't improved; then treated the country to a lecture on the history of race relations; then dumped the preacher. Yeah, Sen. Obama, but why did you belong to a church whose leader refers to America as "the United States of KKK"?
Obama's assumption that Gates' arrest reflects a history of race relations that "still haunts us" comes straight out of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's playbook: Cry racism, facts to follow. The Obama-loving press doesn't notice, doesn't care or feels America, given its past, deserves it.
Focus On Color
GOP opponent John McCain, reflecting his party's near-pathological fear of being labeled bigoted, helpfully played along by instructing his staff to take Wright "off the table." McCain removed an explosive red meat (pardon the expression) issue lest someone call him . . . RACIST! Even Obama called Wright's views a "legitimate issue"!
During the campaign, Obama got away with calling his grandmother "a typical white person." He survived after demeaning people in Middle America and small towns who "cling to guns or religion." (Blacks live in Middle America and small towns too, but somehow one suspects they weren't the target.)
He selected, as the nation's first black attorney general, former Clinton Deputy AG Eric Holder. Holder then called America, as to matters of race, "a nation of cowards"?!
Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. In speeches over the last 10 years, she asserted that a "wise Latina" would make a better judge than a "white male." As an appellate judge, she agreed to throw out a New Haven, Conn., firefighters' promotion test because whites performed better than blacks. But few commented on Sotomayor's reasoning.
Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when the court sided 5-4 with the firefighters, wrote the dissent. Never mind that Ginsburg's reasoning was as different from Sotomayor's as Keith Olbermann is from Dick Cheney.
Ginsburg wrote that before calling the test unfair, the lower court needs to determine whether the exam truly tests knowledge necessary to the job. If the test requires a candidate recite from "Hamlet," and whites do better than blacks, that's bad. But Sotomayor only cared about the result. Whites did well. Blacks did not. End of story. Throw it out.
Even my Obama-supporting brother — who rose, as many do in this country of opportunity, from entry level to management at a major corporation — shook his head and said, "He just goes back and forth, doesn't he?" Obama's view of society increasingly looks less like one that is colorblind, but rather is color-coordinated.
Or, to paraphrase the United Negro College Fund, a race card is a terrible thing to waste.
By LARRY ELDER Posted Tuesday, July 28, 2009 4:20 PM PT Oops, President Obama did it again. He thoughtlessly, carelessly and offensively whipped out the race card.
Some people — not just black — voted for Obama because of his race. Many expected an Obama election to (a) improve "race relations" and (b) make a profound statement about America's inclusiveness.
Obama's election would show how close we've come to Dr. Martin Luther King's vision of a society that judges people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. He seemed so uplifting.
A biracial candidate (white mom, black dad), he refreshingly responded to Steve Kroft's "60 Minutes" question about whether his race hurt his bid for the presidency. "I think if I don't win this race," Obama replied, "it will be because of other factors. It's gonna be because I have not shown to the American people a vision for where the country needs to go that they can embrace." Well done.
On the 40th anniversary of "Blood Sunday" — a watershed civil rights march — Obama spoke optimistically about the great distance America has traveled, with but a small distance to go:
"There's still some battles that need to be fought, some rivers that need to be crossed . . . The previous generation — the Moses generation — pointed the way. They took us 90% of the way there, but we still got that 10%, in order to cross over to the other side." Excellent.
After all, polls showed that black former Secretary of State Colin Powell could have won the 1996 election assuming he secured his party's nomination. Back in 1958, when Gallup first posed the question "Would you vote for a well-qualified candidate who happened to be black?," 53% of Americans said no. By 2006, that number had fallen to 3% in a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll, or about one-third the number who believe Elvis still lives. But now, out comes the race card.
Friend Of Skip
During Obama's press conference, he answered a question about the arrest of the black professor and director of Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Henry Gates.
Question: "Recently Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you and what does it say about race relations in America?"
Obama: "Well, I should say at the outset that Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don't know all the facts. What's been reported, though, is that the guy forgot his keys, jimmied his way to get into the house, there was a report called into the police station that there might be a burglary taking place — so far, so good, right?
". . . But so far, so good. They're reporting — the police are doing what they should. There's a call, they go investigate what happens. My understanding is at that point Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in, I'm sure there's some exchange of words, but my understanding is, is that Professor Gates then shows his ID to show that this is his house. And at that point, he gets arrested for disorderly conduct — charges which are later dropped.
"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact . . . ."
In other words, the president decided, without any corroborating evidence, that the officer victimized Gates and committed an act of "racial profiling." Obama said nothing about Gates' racially charged verbal abuse of an officer simply trying to do his job and protect Gates' home, a home which — by Gates own admission — had been a target of a previous attempted break-in.
This is, in fact, why Gates used his shoulder to push open his front door, prompting a neighbor to call the police because she suspected someone was trying to break in.
Damage Control
Obama later gave a semi-apology and said he didn't intend to "malign" the Cambridge Police department. He called the incident a "teachable" moment. Indeed it was. But for whom — America or Obama?
Here's what the leader of the free world — a lawyer, a former constitutional law teacher, a man whom actor Sean Penn during last year's Academy Awards referred to as "elegant" — should have said:
"I know Professor Gates. He is a friend of mine, so I am biased. I don't know all the facts. But I know that the police responded to call from a neighbor who thought someone was breaking into his house. An officer arrived and ultimately he arrested Gates at the professor's own home.
"What led up to it, what kind of words were exchanged, the record of the officer, the local law on disorderly conduct, among other factors, are all relevant. And I simply do not know enough to comment.
"But all too often an exchange between a black citizen and a white police generates knee-jerk accusations of racism and racial profiling. The police perform a difficult job, and they, too, wish to return home every day to their loved ones.
"We should appreciate and congratulate them — recognizing that there are some bad apples in every profession — for their willingness to do a difficult and dangerous job. Beyond this, until I know more, I'm not prepared to comment."
In full damage-control mode, the president invited Gates and Sgt. Crowley to the White House to resolve the "Cambridge Conflict." After his irresponsible "Cambridge Police acted stupidly" comment, Obama now says that "two good people" merely engaged in a "misunderstanding."
If the police audiotapes show both sides equally at fault in escalating the incident into an arrest, fair enough. Bring them both down for a can-we-get-along photo-op beer-drinking session.
But what if the yet-to-be-released tapes reveal that one of the participants committed an unwarranted, "yo mamma"-based provocation, that the parties were not equally at fault, and that Crowley legally used his discretion — even if he could have walked away — in making the arrest? Why reward the miscreant by giving him a sit-down with the president?
That would have been a home run with the possibility of actually improving police-citizen relations. But here's the problem. The media and the Democratic Party love to exploit and exaggerate the "tension" between blacks and whites.
Left To Die
Never mind that some of the attention-grabbing blacks-are-oppressed stories turn out bogus — the Duke lacrosse team "rape" scandal, the Al Sharpton-driven Tawana Brawley "sexual assault" story, the discredited black-churches-targeted-for-arson story, the Jena Six hyperventilation, and, of course, the mother of all "racism" stories — the double-homicide trial of O.J. Simpson.
Democrats gleefully exploit "racial divisions" when it suits them, because it protects and cultivates that monolithic black vote.
Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton once condemned the then-Republican-controlled Congress before a predominantly black audience: "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about."
Then-Senate candidate, now Sen. Clair McCaskill, a Democrat, said, "George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black."
DNC Chairman Howard Dean referred to the GOP as the "white party" and calls Republicans racist: "The Republicans are all about suppressing votes. Two voting machines if you live in a black district, 10 voting machines if you live in a white district."
Once, during a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, Dean said: "You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room? . . . Only if they had the hotel staff in here."
But now the media's knee-jerk pursuit of the whites-oppressing-blacks Gates-Cambridge story pulls their guy "off message," jeopardizing his pursuit of ObamaCare. Thus the president's press secretary calls the media's frenzy over the Gates-Cambridge affair an "obsession."
We've seen this before with Obama. And the picture grows clearer and clearer. Use the race card both as shield and sword, when necessary, then give uplifting speeches about the need to "come together." Follow this with the obligatory "how far we've come," but couple it with "how far we have to go."
Rather than apologize for his 20-year attendance at a church with a racist pastor, Obama first defended him as a product of his generation; then criticized the pastor's view of race relations as "static," as if things haven't improved; then treated the country to a lecture on the history of race relations; then dumped the preacher. Yeah, Sen. Obama, but why did you belong to a church whose leader refers to America as "the United States of KKK"?
Obama's assumption that Gates' arrest reflects a history of race relations that "still haunts us" comes straight out of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's playbook: Cry racism, facts to follow. The Obama-loving press doesn't notice, doesn't care or feels America, given its past, deserves it.
Focus On Color
GOP opponent John McCain, reflecting his party's near-pathological fear of being labeled bigoted, helpfully played along by instructing his staff to take Wright "off the table." McCain removed an explosive red meat (pardon the expression) issue lest someone call him . . . RACIST! Even Obama called Wright's views a "legitimate issue"!
During the campaign, Obama got away with calling his grandmother "a typical white person." He survived after demeaning people in Middle America and small towns who "cling to guns or religion." (Blacks live in Middle America and small towns too, but somehow one suspects they weren't the target.)
He selected, as the nation's first black attorney general, former Clinton Deputy AG Eric Holder. Holder then called America, as to matters of race, "a nation of cowards"?!
Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. In speeches over the last 10 years, she asserted that a "wise Latina" would make a better judge than a "white male." As an appellate judge, she agreed to throw out a New Haven, Conn., firefighters' promotion test because whites performed better than blacks. But few commented on Sotomayor's reasoning.
Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when the court sided 5-4 with the firefighters, wrote the dissent. Never mind that Ginsburg's reasoning was as different from Sotomayor's as Keith Olbermann is from Dick Cheney.
Ginsburg wrote that before calling the test unfair, the lower court needs to determine whether the exam truly tests knowledge necessary to the job. If the test requires a candidate recite from "Hamlet," and whites do better than blacks, that's bad. But Sotomayor only cared about the result. Whites did well. Blacks did not. End of story. Throw it out.
Even my Obama-supporting brother — who rose, as many do in this country of opportunity, from entry level to management at a major corporation — shook his head and said, "He just goes back and forth, doesn't he?" Obama's view of society increasingly looks less like one that is colorblind, but rather is color-coordinated.
Or, to paraphrase the United Negro College Fund, a race card is a terrible thing to waste.
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