My friends on the left are constantly putting down Fox News, and sometimes (not often) they have a valid point. I Just hope they were watching Bill O’Reilly Wednesday evening. O’Reilly was discussing a comment made by Chris Matthews at MSNBC. These are Matthews comments from Wednesday morning:
"Lets not forget, and I’ll be brutal, the reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits..."
So how did Bill O’Reilly, a member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (VRWC) at the evil Mothership respond to this allegation: “NBC is a very powerful network, and we have said for years that this network is not fair and it has an agenda a mile long, and now I think their own people are admitting it. Now Mr. Matthews has ever right to say what he wants to say because he is not a reporter, he is a commentator, as I am. But it’s rough, it’s rough business what these people are doing over there. We don’t do that here. We would never say that Senator Clinton got her job because her husband “messed around”. I mean that is, that is a personal attack, and it is questionable whether a network should allow that or not. Senator Clinton, whether you like her or not, is a sitting senator who earned her position by winning the election in New York. And for somebody to denigrate her like that is stunning.”
Look, Matthews worked for four Democratic politicians. He worked in the Senate for five years on the staffs of Senators Frank Moss and Edmund Muskie before himself campaigning (and failing) for a seat in the House of Representatives. He was a presidential speechwriting for four years during the Carter administration, and later worked six years as a top aide to long-time Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. In other words, we are not talking about a member of the VRWC here.
In a related story (related due to the fact that it involves the media and a candidate), Lee Cowan, the NBC News correspondent covering Barrack Obama said this about covering Obama: “You know I think from a reporters point of view it’s almost hard to remain objective because it’s infectious”
To which NBC News Anchor Brian Williams, speaking on MSNBC, responded: “I interviewed Lee Cowan, our reporter who covers Obama while I was out yesterday, we posted the interview on the web, and Lee says to me “It’s hard to stay objective covering this guy” and it was very courageous for Lee to say that to be honest.”
Courageous? Look, I’ll be the first to admit that Obama is a very infectious man, but basically what this reporter is telling us is that he (the reporter) is no longer objective. If this was a Republican candidate he’d be yanked by the network in a minute, and here the Network anchor is calling this guy courageous. Huh? And okay, I’ll be the first to admit that “Infectious” is probably not an adjective we’ll be hearing regarding the Republican field anytime soon.
On another “Media” note, I spent some time in the car on Wednesday, which means I spent time listening to talk radio, mainly Air America. There was a great deal of discussion regarding the Iranian speedboats that approached and potentially threatened US warships in the Straight of Hormuz, and both the commentators and the callers spent more time blaming the incident on the US, and giving Iran a pass.
While this bother bothered and amazed me, imagine my shock when I found similar comments on the blog of my good friend Chris. Yes, Chris is a liberal, and yes, liberals have shown themselves to let their hatred of George Bush cloud common sense, but I’ve always felt Chris was to smart for that. Yet here he is, questioning the US Navy, and giving credence to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an organization that was labeled a terrorist organization by the US Congress by a vote of 76 to 22. I realize that Chris’s candidate – Barack Obama – did not vote for the resolution, but he did not vote against it either.
Could this be a staged event by the Bush administration in order to drum up support for attacking Iran? Sure it could be. Could Bill Clinton be the Zodiac Killer? Well, they never found the guy, so he could be…. But why would your mind go there? Look, if this turns out to be a staged event – which I highly doubt – I’ll be screaming at the top of my lungs along with Chris calling for Bush’s impeachment. But if it WASN'T a staged event, I doubt that those on the left will be screaming they were wrong.
Of course Chris’s response was that there is a history of George Bush lying to get us into war. I asked Chris for the proof that Bush knowingly misled us. Chris’s response: “Why don't you show me some proof that there wasn't bad intelligence. The burden of proof is on your side”. Wow. Guilty until proven innocent. Ladies and gentleman, I give you the American Left.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
In Memory Of John Vincent Coulter
My friend Chris has on occasion accused me of saying certain things just to rile up my liberal readers (okay, reader). That’s not really my style, but one person who I think you could safely accuse of that is Ann Coulter. I put Ann in the same category as Rush – intelligent, informative, but with a little bit of a wild streak and someone who perhaps takes a little too much pleasure in pushing the envelope.
Yeah, sometimes she goes too far, but to often she is dead on and damn funny in her observations. Today dear readers I am risking breaking a few dozen copyright laws and reprinting Ann’s most recent posting from Human Events. Ann lost her father last Friday, and I was just too touched by this post to not share it with you. As you know if you have been reading my posts, last week was the sixth anniversary of my own fathers passing, and he has been on my mind a lot these last few weeks.
This post is a little longer than my already too long average post, so I hope you will bear with me. And to Ann, I thank you for sharing this bit of your life with us:
The longest baby ever born at the Albany, N.Y., hospital, at least as of May 5, 1926, who grew up to be my strapping father, passed away last Friday morning.
As Mother and I stood at Daddy's casket Monday morning, Mother repeated his joke to him, which he said on every wedding anniversary until a few years ago when Lewy bodies dementia prevented him from saying much at all: "54 years, married to the wrong woman." And we laughed.
John Vincent Coulter was of the old school, a man of few words, the un-Oprah, no crying or wearing your heart on your sleeve, and reacting to moments of great sentiment with a joke. Or as we used to call them: men.
When he was moping around the house once, missing my brother who had just gone back to college, he said, "Well, if you had cancer long enough, you'd miss it."
He'd indicate his feelings about my skirt length by saying, "You look nice, Hart, but you forgot to put on your skirt."
Of course, he did show strong emotion when The New York Post would run a photo of Teddy Kennedy saying the rosary. I can still see the look of disgust. I saw that face in "How To Read People Like a Book" and it was NOT a good chapter.
Your parents are your whole world when you are a child. You only recognize what is unique about them when you get older and see how the rest of the world diverges from your standard of normality.
So it took me awhile to realize that by telling my friends that Father was an ex-FBI agent and a union-buster whose hobbies included rebuilding Volkswagens and shooting squirrels in our backyard, I was painting the image of a rough Eliot Ness type, rather than the cheerful, funny raconteur they would meet.
Besides being very funny, Father had an absolutely straight moral compass without ever being preachy or judgmental or even telling us in words. He just was good.
He would return to a store if he was given too much change -- and this was a man who was so "thrifty," as we Scots like to say, he told us he wanted to be buried in two cardboard boxes from the A&P rather than pay for a coffin.
When I was bombarded with arguments for baby-killing as a kid, I asked Father about the old chestnut involving a poverty-stricken, unwed teenage girl who gets pregnant. (This was before they added the "impregnated by her own father" part.) Father just said, "I don't care. If it's a life, it's a life." I'm still waiting to hear an effective counterargument.
Father hated puffery, pomposity, snobbery, fake friendliness, fake anything. Like Kitty's father in "Anna Karenina," he could detect a substanceless suitor in a heartbeat. (They were probably the same ones who looked nervous when I told them Father was ex-FBI and liked to shoot squirrels in the backyard.)
He hated unions because of their corrupt leadership, ripping off the members for their own aggrandizement. But he had more respect for genuine working men than anyone I've ever known. He was, in short, the molecular opposite of John Edwards.
Father didn't care what popular opinion was: There was right and wrong. I don't recall his ever specifically talking about J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy, but we knew he thought the popular histories were bunk. That's why "Treason" was dedicated to him, the last book of mine he was able to read.
When Father returned from the war, he used the G.I. Bill to complete college and law school in three years. In order to get to law school quickly, he chose the easiest college major -- a major that so impressed him, he told my oldest brother that if he ever took one single course in sociology, Father would cut off his tuition payments.
As a young FBI agent fresh out of law school, one of Father's first assignments was to investigate job applicants at a uranium enrichment plant, the only suitable land for which was apparently located on some property owned by the then-vice president, Alben Barkley, in Paducah, Ky.
One day, a group of FBI agents saw the beautiful Nell Husbands Martin at lunch with her mother. They asked the waitress for her name and flipped a coin to see who could ask her out first. Father lost the coin toss, so he paid off the other agents. And that's how Nell became my mother.
Mother swore she'd never marry a drinker, a smoker or a Catholic, and she got all three, reforming Father on all but the Catholicism. Even in foreign countries where none of us spoke the language, Father went to Mass every Sunday until the very end.
Of course, toward the end, he probably didn't even remember he was a Catholic. But on the bright side, he didn't remember that Teddy Kennedy was a Catholic, either.
Father spent most of his nine-year FBI career as a Red hunter in New York City.
He never talked much about his FBI days. I learned that he worked on the Rudolf Abel case -- the highest-ranking Soviet spy ever captured in U.S. history -- during one of my brother's eulogies on Monday. But when Father read a paper I wrote at Cornell defending McCarthy and came across the name William Remington, he told me that had been his case.
Father mostly had contempt for Soviet spies. In addition to damaging information, such as military plans and nuclear secrets, the spies also collected massive amounts of utterly useless information on things like U.S. agricultural production. These were people who looked at a flush toilet like it was a spaceship.
He told me Soviet spies reveled in the whole cloak-and-dagger aspect of espionage. One spy gave weirdly specific details to a contact before their first meeting: He would have the New York Herald Tribune folded three times, tucked under his left elbow at a particular angle.
When the spy walked into the hotel lobby for the rendezvous, Father nearly fell off his chair when the man with the Herald Tribune folded under his elbow just so ... was also wearing a full-length fur coat. But he couldn't have told his contact: "I'll be the only white man in North America wearing a full-length fur coat."
In the early 1980s, as vice president and labor lawyer for Phelps Dodge copper company, Father broke a strike against the company, which culminated in the largest union decertification ever -- at that time and perhaps still. President Reagan had broken the air traffic controllers' strike in 1981. But unions recognized that it was the breaking of the Phelps Dodge strike a few years later that landed the greater blow, as described in the book "Copper Crucible."
There was massive violence by the strikers, including guns being fired into the homes of the mine employees who returned to work. Every day, Father walked with the strikebreakers through the picket line, (in my mind) brushing egg off his suit lapel.
By 1986 it was over; the mineworkers voted against the union and Phelps Dodge was saved. For any liberals still reading, this is what's known as a "happy ending."
To Mother's lifelong consternation -- until he had dementia and she could get him back by smothering him with hugs and kisses -- Father wasn't demonstrative. But all he wanted was to be with Mother (and to work on his Volkswagens). They traveled the world together, went to DAR conventions together, engaged in Republican politics together and went to the New York Philharmonic together -- for three decades, their subscription seats were on the highest landing, or as we Scots call it, the "Music Lovers" level.
When Mother was in a rehabilitative facility briefly after surgery a few years ago and Father was not supposed to be driving, we were relieved that a snowstorm had knocked out the power to the garage door opener, so Daddy couldn't get to the car. It would just be a week and then Mother would be home.
My brother came home to check on Father the first day of this arrangement to find that he had taken an ax to the side door of the garage, so he could drive to the rehab center and sit with Mother all day.
When she left him for five days last summer to go to a family reunion in Kentucky, at some point, Father, who hadn't been able to speak much anymore, looked up and asked his nurse, "Where is she?"
And last Friday morning at 2 he passed away, in his bedroom with Mother. The police and firemen told my brother that they kept trying to distract Mother to keep her away from the bedroom with Father's body, but she kept padding back into the bedroom to be close to him.
Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. I hope they stop laughing about the Reds long enough to talk to God about smiting some liberals for me.
Yeah, sometimes she goes too far, but to often she is dead on and damn funny in her observations. Today dear readers I am risking breaking a few dozen copyright laws and reprinting Ann’s most recent posting from Human Events. Ann lost her father last Friday, and I was just too touched by this post to not share it with you. As you know if you have been reading my posts, last week was the sixth anniversary of my own fathers passing, and he has been on my mind a lot these last few weeks.
This post is a little longer than my already too long average post, so I hope you will bear with me. And to Ann, I thank you for sharing this bit of your life with us:
The longest baby ever born at the Albany, N.Y., hospital, at least as of May 5, 1926, who grew up to be my strapping father, passed away last Friday morning.
As Mother and I stood at Daddy's casket Monday morning, Mother repeated his joke to him, which he said on every wedding anniversary until a few years ago when Lewy bodies dementia prevented him from saying much at all: "54 years, married to the wrong woman." And we laughed.
John Vincent Coulter was of the old school, a man of few words, the un-Oprah, no crying or wearing your heart on your sleeve, and reacting to moments of great sentiment with a joke. Or as we used to call them: men.
When he was moping around the house once, missing my brother who had just gone back to college, he said, "Well, if you had cancer long enough, you'd miss it."
He'd indicate his feelings about my skirt length by saying, "You look nice, Hart, but you forgot to put on your skirt."
Of course, he did show strong emotion when The New York Post would run a photo of Teddy Kennedy saying the rosary. I can still see the look of disgust. I saw that face in "How To Read People Like a Book" and it was NOT a good chapter.
Your parents are your whole world when you are a child. You only recognize what is unique about them when you get older and see how the rest of the world diverges from your standard of normality.
So it took me awhile to realize that by telling my friends that Father was an ex-FBI agent and a union-buster whose hobbies included rebuilding Volkswagens and shooting squirrels in our backyard, I was painting the image of a rough Eliot Ness type, rather than the cheerful, funny raconteur they would meet.
Besides being very funny, Father had an absolutely straight moral compass without ever being preachy or judgmental or even telling us in words. He just was good.
He would return to a store if he was given too much change -- and this was a man who was so "thrifty," as we Scots like to say, he told us he wanted to be buried in two cardboard boxes from the A&P rather than pay for a coffin.
When I was bombarded with arguments for baby-killing as a kid, I asked Father about the old chestnut involving a poverty-stricken, unwed teenage girl who gets pregnant. (This was before they added the "impregnated by her own father" part.) Father just said, "I don't care. If it's a life, it's a life." I'm still waiting to hear an effective counterargument.
Father hated puffery, pomposity, snobbery, fake friendliness, fake anything. Like Kitty's father in "Anna Karenina," he could detect a substanceless suitor in a heartbeat. (They were probably the same ones who looked nervous when I told them Father was ex-FBI and liked to shoot squirrels in the backyard.)
He hated unions because of their corrupt leadership, ripping off the members for their own aggrandizement. But he had more respect for genuine working men than anyone I've ever known. He was, in short, the molecular opposite of John Edwards.
Father didn't care what popular opinion was: There was right and wrong. I don't recall his ever specifically talking about J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy, but we knew he thought the popular histories were bunk. That's why "Treason" was dedicated to him, the last book of mine he was able to read.
When Father returned from the war, he used the G.I. Bill to complete college and law school in three years. In order to get to law school quickly, he chose the easiest college major -- a major that so impressed him, he told my oldest brother that if he ever took one single course in sociology, Father would cut off his tuition payments.
As a young FBI agent fresh out of law school, one of Father's first assignments was to investigate job applicants at a uranium enrichment plant, the only suitable land for which was apparently located on some property owned by the then-vice president, Alben Barkley, in Paducah, Ky.
One day, a group of FBI agents saw the beautiful Nell Husbands Martin at lunch with her mother. They asked the waitress for her name and flipped a coin to see who could ask her out first. Father lost the coin toss, so he paid off the other agents. And that's how Nell became my mother.
Mother swore she'd never marry a drinker, a smoker or a Catholic, and she got all three, reforming Father on all but the Catholicism. Even in foreign countries where none of us spoke the language, Father went to Mass every Sunday until the very end.
Of course, toward the end, he probably didn't even remember he was a Catholic. But on the bright side, he didn't remember that Teddy Kennedy was a Catholic, either.
Father spent most of his nine-year FBI career as a Red hunter in New York City.
He never talked much about his FBI days. I learned that he worked on the Rudolf Abel case -- the highest-ranking Soviet spy ever captured in U.S. history -- during one of my brother's eulogies on Monday. But when Father read a paper I wrote at Cornell defending McCarthy and came across the name William Remington, he told me that had been his case.
Father mostly had contempt for Soviet spies. In addition to damaging information, such as military plans and nuclear secrets, the spies also collected massive amounts of utterly useless information on things like U.S. agricultural production. These were people who looked at a flush toilet like it was a spaceship.
He told me Soviet spies reveled in the whole cloak-and-dagger aspect of espionage. One spy gave weirdly specific details to a contact before their first meeting: He would have the New York Herald Tribune folded three times, tucked under his left elbow at a particular angle.
When the spy walked into the hotel lobby for the rendezvous, Father nearly fell off his chair when the man with the Herald Tribune folded under his elbow just so ... was also wearing a full-length fur coat. But he couldn't have told his contact: "I'll be the only white man in North America wearing a full-length fur coat."
In the early 1980s, as vice president and labor lawyer for Phelps Dodge copper company, Father broke a strike against the company, which culminated in the largest union decertification ever -- at that time and perhaps still. President Reagan had broken the air traffic controllers' strike in 1981. But unions recognized that it was the breaking of the Phelps Dodge strike a few years later that landed the greater blow, as described in the book "Copper Crucible."
There was massive violence by the strikers, including guns being fired into the homes of the mine employees who returned to work. Every day, Father walked with the strikebreakers through the picket line, (in my mind) brushing egg off his suit lapel.
By 1986 it was over; the mineworkers voted against the union and Phelps Dodge was saved. For any liberals still reading, this is what's known as a "happy ending."
To Mother's lifelong consternation -- until he had dementia and she could get him back by smothering him with hugs and kisses -- Father wasn't demonstrative. But all he wanted was to be with Mother (and to work on his Volkswagens). They traveled the world together, went to DAR conventions together, engaged in Republican politics together and went to the New York Philharmonic together -- for three decades, their subscription seats were on the highest landing, or as we Scots call it, the "Music Lovers" level.
When Mother was in a rehabilitative facility briefly after surgery a few years ago and Father was not supposed to be driving, we were relieved that a snowstorm had knocked out the power to the garage door opener, so Daddy couldn't get to the car. It would just be a week and then Mother would be home.
My brother came home to check on Father the first day of this arrangement to find that he had taken an ax to the side door of the garage, so he could drive to the rehab center and sit with Mother all day.
When she left him for five days last summer to go to a family reunion in Kentucky, at some point, Father, who hadn't been able to speak much anymore, looked up and asked his nurse, "Where is she?"
And last Friday morning at 2 he passed away, in his bedroom with Mother. The police and firemen told my brother that they kept trying to distract Mother to keep her away from the bedroom with Father's body, but she kept padding back into the bedroom to be close to him.
Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. I hope they stop laughing about the Reds long enough to talk to God about smiting some liberals for me.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Call My Travel Agent And Cancel My New Hampshire Vacation
Sad Day. I came home from work today ready to settle in for the night and watch sports, and my favorite sport of late is watch Hillary get her butt kicked. And boy, was she going to get her butt kicked tonight. And then…….
Oh, well. As sad as I am, I can’t even begin to imagine how my friend Chris, the biggest Obama supporter out there, must be feeling tonight. But we still have a long way to go in this race, and coming in three points behind Hillary when you were 20 points behind her six weeks ago is not exactly defeat. I still am pulling for Obama, but you can never count out the Clinton Political Machine.
On one hand I should actually be supporting Hillary for the Democratic nomination. Why? As a conservative Hillary is the one you want to run against, because I do not think she can win a general election. However, ANYTHING is possible, and do we really want to chance that she might win it all? Yikes!
One other thing to keep in mind. Obama won in a state (Iowa) with a black population of 2%, and just came in a tight second in a state where blacks make up less than 3% of the population. So How is Obama going to fare in states with a larger black population. Well, common sense says that the black population will vote for Obama, but don’t forget that in his last election, Bill Clinton received over 93% of the black vote, and a lot of those people are going to stay with Hillary.
What we really need to see right now is John Edwards drop out of the race and throw his support to Obama. It’s well known that Edwards dislikes the Clinton’s, and it is also fairly safe to assume that Edwards voters would be more likely to support Obama than Clinton, ESPECIALLY if Edwards threw his support to Obama. Look John, short of a Barrack/Hillary sex tape being released, you are not going to win the nomination. If you really want change, like you say you do, than do something about it and support Obama.
Over on the Republican side, congratulations to John McCain. McCann is my number two choice after Fred, and given Fred’s dismal numbers in New Hampshire, he is not long for this campaign. You really have to wonder if Rudy can come back after all but skipping Iowa and New Hampshire. If he does, he will re-write history. Frankly, I think whoever convinced Rudy to use this strategy has their head up their caucus.
But the bottom line is that on both sides of the aisle this has been – and is looking to continue to be – one hell of an election. I received my ballot in the mail today (I always vote absentee), and I’m going to have to hang on until the last possible to fill it out. That is, except for Proposition 223b, those damn greedy orphans…..
Oh, well. As sad as I am, I can’t even begin to imagine how my friend Chris, the biggest Obama supporter out there, must be feeling tonight. But we still have a long way to go in this race, and coming in three points behind Hillary when you were 20 points behind her six weeks ago is not exactly defeat. I still am pulling for Obama, but you can never count out the Clinton Political Machine.
On one hand I should actually be supporting Hillary for the Democratic nomination. Why? As a conservative Hillary is the one you want to run against, because I do not think she can win a general election. However, ANYTHING is possible, and do we really want to chance that she might win it all? Yikes!
One other thing to keep in mind. Obama won in a state (Iowa) with a black population of 2%, and just came in a tight second in a state where blacks make up less than 3% of the population. So How is Obama going to fare in states with a larger black population. Well, common sense says that the black population will vote for Obama, but don’t forget that in his last election, Bill Clinton received over 93% of the black vote, and a lot of those people are going to stay with Hillary.
What we really need to see right now is John Edwards drop out of the race and throw his support to Obama. It’s well known that Edwards dislikes the Clinton’s, and it is also fairly safe to assume that Edwards voters would be more likely to support Obama than Clinton, ESPECIALLY if Edwards threw his support to Obama. Look John, short of a Barrack/Hillary sex tape being released, you are not going to win the nomination. If you really want change, like you say you do, than do something about it and support Obama.
Over on the Republican side, congratulations to John McCain. McCann is my number two choice after Fred, and given Fred’s dismal numbers in New Hampshire, he is not long for this campaign. You really have to wonder if Rudy can come back after all but skipping Iowa and New Hampshire. If he does, he will re-write history. Frankly, I think whoever convinced Rudy to use this strategy has their head up their caucus.
But the bottom line is that on both sides of the aisle this has been – and is looking to continue to be – one hell of an election. I received my ballot in the mail today (I always vote absentee), and I’m going to have to hang on until the last possible to fill it out. That is, except for Proposition 223b, those damn greedy orphans…..
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
An Iowa Dis And An Iowa Doll
Tomorrow is the New Hampshire Primaries, and I am really looking forward to the results. While Obama and Hillary were neck-and-neck going into the Saturday debates, one day later the polls are showing Obama up by anywhere from one point to thirteen points, with an average from Realclearpolitics.com showing Obama up by 7 points. The next primary is Michigan, where Hillary is up by 23 points (really?), followed by Nevada, where Hillary is also up by 20 points.It’s no secret that I don ‘t like Hillary, but given her gracious exit from Iowa, the State I was born in and love, I now have zero respect for her. Clinton’s opening remark in her New Hampshire campaign: “Iowa doesn’t have a good track record in determining who’s going to be the presidential nominee.”
I suppose it’s better than saying “If I don’t win here I’ll go on to the next state and tell them that you don’t know anything”, but lets face it, that’s exactly what she is saying.
I watched a lot of Hillary’s campaigning in Iowa over the last year, and I don’t remember her telling potential Iowa voters about how poor their political judgment was? Honestly, I think the only poor judgment that the Iowa voters showed was letting her come in as high as third.
Lets face it, Hillary Clinton is so transparent and heedless in her attempts at calculation, embodied in that sore loser kiss off to the Iowans she professed such love for up until the day after the election. In this respect she’s taken on the worst traits of her husband, treating voters the way her husband has treated women, only even more clumsily.
And then today Hillary got teary, almost breaking down during a news conference. Why? I’m not going to try to offer an opinion, but the thing that I find most interesting is that the discussion of the event on the Democratic blogs, such as democraticunderground.com, is actually swinging toward Hillary’s actions being calculated or a meltdown. On that website 17% of those voting said “Because she truly felt she had a lot to offer the country and now she won't get that opportunity”, while almost twice as many stated “Because she has a lot of ambition and a big ego and her biggest dream may be crashing down”. And this is from Democrats!
All I know is that Hillary Clinton has been telling us since day one that she is ready to be the President the day she takes office, and that she, and she alone can handle any tough issue that the president may have to deal with. If elected, lets hope that she never has to deal with a crisis worse than coming in second in New Hampshire, as that seems to be where
the bar has been set.One other VERY IMPORTANT item: Some of you may have seen the picture on the right in newspapers or other outlets. It has made it into newspapers as far apart as the Sacramento Bee, and the Miami Herald. This photo was taken last week in Iowa on Caucus Day. I don’t include it here merely because it’s a darn cute baby, but I include it here because the baby in question is 15 month-old Caelan Halsted, who is the daughter of fellow blogger and frequent responder here Jody Halsted of http://www.iowageekonline.com/. Congratulations Jody, does this mean that Caelan is announcing her candidacy for the 2044 election?
Monday, January 7, 2008
A Final Word On Liberal Racism
For the last few days I have been talking about Liberal Racism. As I have discussed over these last few days, Liberal Racism differs from “normal” racism in the fact that this type of racism stems from good intentions, just misguided ones. Most of the liberals who support such things as Affirmative Action and Hate Crime Legislation actually do think that they are doing the right thing. These people DO want to work towards eliminating racism and eliminating the economic disparities between the races. So why can’t they see that their actions are causing more harm than good?
Honestly, I wish I could answer that question. I can speculate – and I will – but I’ll be the first to tell you that all I am doing is expressing an opinion. This is really a mystery to me. At the same time you may ask why I would bother devoting the majority of a weeks worth of posts to the subject of racism. After all, I’m a middle-class white guy, and a conservative one at that, so how much do I really care about minorities. See, that’s part of it right there. I DO care about minorities and the under class in this country, yet because I am a conservative there is this myth out there that we are the enemy of the downtrodden and underprivileged, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Did you know that Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act overwhelmingly, and by much higher percentages in both House and Senate than the Democrats. Indeed, the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law only after overcoming a Democrat filibuster. Did you know that Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation in public schools, was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the three-term Republican governor of California appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, and it was President Eisenhower who sent elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to protect the black students and enforce the Federal court order into Little Rock to make sure that desegregation took hold. Eisenhower’s actions were necessary because Orval Faubus, the DEMOCRATIC Governor of Arkansas used the National Guard to STOP African-Americans from attending Little Rock Central High School.
It was Abraham Lincoln, the nations first Republican President, who ended slavery. Did you know that the two African-American women who were co-founders of the NAACP, Ida Wells and Mary Terrell, were both Republicans. The Environmental Protection Agency was signed into law by Richard Nixon. George Bush I signed into law the Americans with Disability Act. The only former KKK member in the senate is a Democrat.
So is what I am saying that Republicans have always been at the forefront of civil rights while Democrats have always opposed them? Of course not. Both parties have had both moments of shame and moments of glory. Yet somehow the left carries the banner of the party of civil rights. And you know what, that’s fine with me, as long as they do the right thing with that banner, and currently they are not. So far I have posted several commentaries addressing liberal failures with regards to racism, and despite the fact that I have several liberal readers, I have not had one comment that has shown any of my points to be incorrect.
Look, the presidency of George Bush has, for the most part, been a failure. I as a proud conservative can make that observation, and not have my conservatism shaken. Why is it that liberals are so afraid to acknowledge the failures on their end. Standing up and saying “you know what, Affirmative Action IS a bad idea, and we should be using the efforts that we have thrown behind that bad idea and instead direct them towards addressing the poor education system that caused the need for affirmative action in the first place” does not make you a bad liberal. It makes you a smart liberal.
And quit supporting and forgiving those on your side who say one thing and do another. The other day I talked about how Michael Moore claimed he was only going to hire minorities, and yet on his last several projects he has hired only three African Americans out of 134 senior staff positions.
Consider another left-wing icon: Al Franken. Franken once blasted fundamentalist Christian college Bob Jones University as a racist, bigoted and “nutty” school. Lets look at Franken's glowing record of commitment to diversity. At Air America Franken’s two producers and four researchers were white. When Franken wrote Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them he selected 14 Harvard undergrads from a pool of over 700 applications – all white. Likewise all of the researchers on his previous books were white, as were all the senior people on his feature film Stuart Saves His Family, his 2004 documentary Fox vs. Franken, and the entire crew of his Sundance Channel show, The Al Franken Show.
He produced three primetime specials for Saturday Night Live, on which all of his senior people were white. On his film When a Man Loves a Women, all of the producers, the director and all other senior administrative staff were white, as they were for his 1986 picture, One More Saturday Night. His short-lived series Lateline (which he starred in and created) included 25 senior slots – all but one of which were held by whites. During his days at Saturday Night Live Franken hired dozens of writers, none of them black.
Of 112 people we are talking about here, 111 were white. What this means of course is that Al Franken’s staff is actually whiter than Bob Jones University (which manages a one percent black enrollment), a school that Franken labels “Racist”.
And consider this gem: Here’s what Franken told the Harvard Crimson when he was working for Saturday Night Live: “I just don’t like homosexuals. If you ask me, they’re all homosexual s in the Pudding (Harvard’s Hasting Pudding Club, the humorous dramatic society). Hey, I was glad when that Pudding homosexual got killed in Philadelphia.” It was in reference to the death of a Harvard Grad in that city.
And yet Franken continues to be accepted by the left, as a matter of fact he is currently campaigning for the Senate seat in the state of Minnesota. Oh well, if he wins at least Robert Byrd will have somebody to sit with in the Senate cafeteria.
And as long as liberals ignore the idiocy in their own party, they will continue to be a also-ran player in really effecting change. We hear the current crop of Democratic candidates shouting how it is time for change, and I couldn’t agree more. How about changing into a party that isn’t afraid to say when the emperor has no clothes, and quit pandering to special interest groups. The stage is yours: Show me that Change is more than a bumper sticker slogan. I want to believe in you, but words will only go so far.
Honestly, I wish I could answer that question. I can speculate – and I will – but I’ll be the first to tell you that all I am doing is expressing an opinion. This is really a mystery to me. At the same time you may ask why I would bother devoting the majority of a weeks worth of posts to the subject of racism. After all, I’m a middle-class white guy, and a conservative one at that, so how much do I really care about minorities. See, that’s part of it right there. I DO care about minorities and the under class in this country, yet because I am a conservative there is this myth out there that we are the enemy of the downtrodden and underprivileged, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Did you know that Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act overwhelmingly, and by much higher percentages in both House and Senate than the Democrats. Indeed, the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law only after overcoming a Democrat filibuster. Did you know that Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation in public schools, was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the three-term Republican governor of California appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, and it was President Eisenhower who sent elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to protect the black students and enforce the Federal court order into Little Rock to make sure that desegregation took hold. Eisenhower’s actions were necessary because Orval Faubus, the DEMOCRATIC Governor of Arkansas used the National Guard to STOP African-Americans from attending Little Rock Central High School.
It was Abraham Lincoln, the nations first Republican President, who ended slavery. Did you know that the two African-American women who were co-founders of the NAACP, Ida Wells and Mary Terrell, were both Republicans. The Environmental Protection Agency was signed into law by Richard Nixon. George Bush I signed into law the Americans with Disability Act. The only former KKK member in the senate is a Democrat.
So is what I am saying that Republicans have always been at the forefront of civil rights while Democrats have always opposed them? Of course not. Both parties have had both moments of shame and moments of glory. Yet somehow the left carries the banner of the party of civil rights. And you know what, that’s fine with me, as long as they do the right thing with that banner, and currently they are not. So far I have posted several commentaries addressing liberal failures with regards to racism, and despite the fact that I have several liberal readers, I have not had one comment that has shown any of my points to be incorrect.
Look, the presidency of George Bush has, for the most part, been a failure. I as a proud conservative can make that observation, and not have my conservatism shaken. Why is it that liberals are so afraid to acknowledge the failures on their end. Standing up and saying “you know what, Affirmative Action IS a bad idea, and we should be using the efforts that we have thrown behind that bad idea and instead direct them towards addressing the poor education system that caused the need for affirmative action in the first place” does not make you a bad liberal. It makes you a smart liberal.
And quit supporting and forgiving those on your side who say one thing and do another. The other day I talked about how Michael Moore claimed he was only going to hire minorities, and yet on his last several projects he has hired only three African Americans out of 134 senior staff positions.
Consider another left-wing icon: Al Franken. Franken once blasted fundamentalist Christian college Bob Jones University as a racist, bigoted and “nutty” school. Lets look at Franken's glowing record of commitment to diversity. At Air America Franken’s two producers and four researchers were white. When Franken wrote Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them he selected 14 Harvard undergrads from a pool of over 700 applications – all white. Likewise all of the researchers on his previous books were white, as were all the senior people on his feature film Stuart Saves His Family, his 2004 documentary Fox vs. Franken, and the entire crew of his Sundance Channel show, The Al Franken Show.
He produced three primetime specials for Saturday Night Live, on which all of his senior people were white. On his film When a Man Loves a Women, all of the producers, the director and all other senior administrative staff were white, as they were for his 1986 picture, One More Saturday Night. His short-lived series Lateline (which he starred in and created) included 25 senior slots – all but one of which were held by whites. During his days at Saturday Night Live Franken hired dozens of writers, none of them black.
Of 112 people we are talking about here, 111 were white. What this means of course is that Al Franken’s staff is actually whiter than Bob Jones University (which manages a one percent black enrollment), a school that Franken labels “Racist”.
And consider this gem: Here’s what Franken told the Harvard Crimson when he was working for Saturday Night Live: “I just don’t like homosexuals. If you ask me, they’re all homosexual s in the Pudding (Harvard’s Hasting Pudding Club, the humorous dramatic society). Hey, I was glad when that Pudding homosexual got killed in Philadelphia.” It was in reference to the death of a Harvard Grad in that city.
And yet Franken continues to be accepted by the left, as a matter of fact he is currently campaigning for the Senate seat in the state of Minnesota. Oh well, if he wins at least Robert Byrd will have somebody to sit with in the Senate cafeteria.
And as long as liberals ignore the idiocy in their own party, they will continue to be a also-ran player in really effecting change. We hear the current crop of Democratic candidates shouting how it is time for change, and I couldn’t agree more. How about changing into a party that isn’t afraid to say when the emperor has no clothes, and quit pandering to special interest groups. The stage is yours: Show me that Change is more than a bumper sticker slogan. I want to believe in you, but words will only go so far.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
I Miss You Dad
Dear Readers, today’s post will be brief, for two reasons. First of all, if you read my post yesterday you know that we have been hit by some powerful storms, and I lost part of my backyard fence yesterday. The good news is I lost less than I could have, and so far all of the trees are still standing. I wish I could say that was the case across the city, but several of my friends and neighbors are dealing with downed trees and power lines, so I guess I can consider myself lucky.
And as we have had a short break between storm systems today, I have spent most of the day dealing with fixing the fence, which means I’m a little too tired to be blogging today. The rains of the second system have already started, so I guess I just have to wait and see if my handyman efforts of today will keep the fence up.
The other reason that I’m not in the right frame of mind for blogging today is because today is January 5th, which happens to be the sixth anniversary of my fathers death. And so in the old man’s honor, I’m going to lay off of politics and picking on liberals, although if he were alive today he would be picking on them too.
I would love to tell you about the extra special relationship that I had with my father, but the truth is we were never that close. Oh, there was never any gun play or anything like that, we just didn’t always see eye-to-eye growing up. By the time I was an adult and was starting a family of my own, and I finally started understanding how smart my dad really was, he was stricken with Alzheimer’s and our final years together were a shadow of what they could have been.
So dear readers, today I am asking you to do me a favor. If you are lucky enough to have your parents still with you, please take the time to call them and tell them that you love them. And if you are a parent yourself, PLEASE do not take the time that you have with your children for granted. It can all be gone in a moment, and you don’t want them wondering “What if” of the time you could have spent.
And as we have had a short break between storm systems today, I have spent most of the day dealing with fixing the fence, which means I’m a little too tired to be blogging today. The rains of the second system have already started, so I guess I just have to wait and see if my handyman efforts of today will keep the fence up.
The other reason that I’m not in the right frame of mind for blogging today is because today is January 5th, which happens to be the sixth anniversary of my fathers death. And so in the old man’s honor, I’m going to lay off of politics and picking on liberals, although if he were alive today he would be picking on them too.
I would love to tell you about the extra special relationship that I had with my father, but the truth is we were never that close. Oh, there was never any gun play or anything like that, we just didn’t always see eye-to-eye growing up. By the time I was an adult and was starting a family of my own, and I finally started understanding how smart my dad really was, he was stricken with Alzheimer’s and our final years together were a shadow of what they could have been.
So dear readers, today I am asking you to do me a favor. If you are lucky enough to have your parents still with you, please take the time to call them and tell them that you love them. And if you are a parent yourself, PLEASE do not take the time that you have with your children for granted. It can all be gone in a moment, and you don’t want them wondering “What if” of the time you could have spent.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Hate, Fox News & Crime (But Not In That Order)
As I sit here putting thought to…. well, not really paper, but “thought to screen” sounds kinda stupid, but we’ll go with that. Anyhow, as I sit here writing today’s post, California is getting pounded by the biggest storm we have seen in a long time. I have already lost a large section of my back fence, and will possibly lose the whole thing. I also have a couple of trees that are worrying me, and if they do go I am hoping it is backwards into the empty lot behind the house, not forward into my new addition. It will probably be a sleepless night. At least I don’t live in the mountains. They are predicting 10 feet of snow for the Mount Shasta area. No, that was not a typo – TEN feet.
But to get my mind off of something I have no control over, I always have my blog. Lately I have been talking about the unintended consequences of liberal policies, policies that are suppose to help minorities, but ultimately hurt them.
Today I’m going to address another well-intentioned liberal policy that I feel, if fully implemented, would cause more harm than good: Hate Crimes. I’ve always kind of been on the fence with regards to hate crimes, whether or not they are a good thing. Actually, that sounds real bad, of course HATE CRIMES are a bad thing (any crime is a bad thing), what I am talking about is hate crime legislation.
Like I said, I’ve been on the fence regarding hate crime legislation, and what finally pushed me against it was a quote from the father of one of the Columbine victims. When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed several students at Columbine High School they had written of their hatred for blacks and athletes. When asked if he felt that the killers – had they lived – should have been charged with a hate crime, one father of a white student who was NOT an athlete (and therefore was not a “targeted” student) said to the reporter “Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me these boys deserve less punishment for killing my son?” How do you look that father in the eye and tell him his son deserves less justice?
And please, don’t get me wrong, hate crimes are heinous. When those three rednecks in Texas chained James Byrd to their truck and dragged him until he was dead, well all I can say is there is a special place in hell for those types of people. And yes, they deserve to be sentenced to the fullest extent of the law. But if Byrd had been white, or his murderers had been black, should those men have received a lighter sentence. The law already allows for a range in sentencing, and so-called hate crimes can already be dealt with more harshly.
I think the thing that bothers me the most about “hate crime legislation” is that what we are basically talking about here is a “Thought Crime”. Too many shades of Big Brother for me. And who’s to say what is and what isn’t a hate crime? Sure, if I bust into a black church screaming “Kill all of the #%&*($@”, it’s pretty obvious what my motivation was. But what if I bust into a school, and I shoot the first five people I see – and those five people happen to be black (or Asian, or Hispanic, or…..). Is THIS a hate crime? Sure, I killed a group of a single ethnic group, but did I kill them because of their race, or because of their proximity. And regardless of the case, does one group deserve less justice then the other.
Remember Rodney King? Kind of hard not to. Do you know why the cops got off on the first trial? Because they were charged with attempted murder, instead of assault. The prosecution could not prove that the cops were trying to murder King, and they had to rightfully find them not guilty. On an assault charge, they would have rightfully been able to return a guilty verdict, and 58 people who were subsequently murdered in the riots would be alive today. Add into the mix what was in the perp’s mind at the time of a crime, and proving guilt gets much, much harder, which ultimately means those who commit the most heinous of crimes have a better chance of going free.
And supposedly the hate crime legislation is aimed at “helping” minorities. Consider this: Americans commit about 1.7 million interracial crimes each year, of which about 1.2 million involve blacks and whites. Nearly 90 percent of these crimes involve a black perpetrator and a white victim. Granted, not all of these interracial crimes are hate crimes, but isn’t it likely that more blacks will be jailed for hate crimes? Another example of how the liberal agenda punishes minorities – intentionally or not.
I think Larry Elder, the African American talk show host, put it best when he said “If I’m standind at an ATM machine and a Ku Klux Klansman hits me in the back of the head with a brick, the operative word is not “Klansman”, it is “Brick.”
In other news, congratulations to Fox News. According to a new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) at George Mason University, Fox News has the “Most Balanced Election Coverage on TV.” The study also found that Fox NewsChannel's evening news show provided more balanced coverage than its counterparts on the broadcast networks.
On a related note, congratulation to George Mason University for joining the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.” Oh, I know you have data and proof to back up your findings, but good luck getting anyone on the left to look at it, let alone take it seriously. Just as it is easier to shout “Racist” than deal with the actual causes of minority disparity, It’s easier to shout “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” than look at facts (cause lets face it, looking at facts takes a long time).
Have a good weekend my friends, I now have an ark I need to go build.
Election Study Finds Media Hit Hillary Hardest Obama, Huckabee Fare Best; FOX Is Most Balanced (not a typo) TV election news has been hardest on Hillary Clinton this fall, while Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee have been the biggest media favorites,
But to get my mind off of something I have no control over, I always have my blog. Lately I have been talking about the unintended consequences of liberal policies, policies that are suppose to help minorities, but ultimately hurt them.
Today I’m going to address another well-intentioned liberal policy that I feel, if fully implemented, would cause more harm than good: Hate Crimes. I’ve always kind of been on the fence with regards to hate crimes, whether or not they are a good thing. Actually, that sounds real bad, of course HATE CRIMES are a bad thing (any crime is a bad thing), what I am talking about is hate crime legislation.
Like I said, I’ve been on the fence regarding hate crime legislation, and what finally pushed me against it was a quote from the father of one of the Columbine victims. When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed several students at Columbine High School they had written of their hatred for blacks and athletes. When asked if he felt that the killers – had they lived – should have been charged with a hate crime, one father of a white student who was NOT an athlete (and therefore was not a “targeted” student) said to the reporter “Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me these boys deserve less punishment for killing my son?” How do you look that father in the eye and tell him his son deserves less justice?
And please, don’t get me wrong, hate crimes are heinous. When those three rednecks in Texas chained James Byrd to their truck and dragged him until he was dead, well all I can say is there is a special place in hell for those types of people. And yes, they deserve to be sentenced to the fullest extent of the law. But if Byrd had been white, or his murderers had been black, should those men have received a lighter sentence. The law already allows for a range in sentencing, and so-called hate crimes can already be dealt with more harshly.
I think the thing that bothers me the most about “hate crime legislation” is that what we are basically talking about here is a “Thought Crime”. Too many shades of Big Brother for me. And who’s to say what is and what isn’t a hate crime? Sure, if I bust into a black church screaming “Kill all of the #%&*($@”, it’s pretty obvious what my motivation was. But what if I bust into a school, and I shoot the first five people I see – and those five people happen to be black (or Asian, or Hispanic, or…..). Is THIS a hate crime? Sure, I killed a group of a single ethnic group, but did I kill them because of their race, or because of their proximity. And regardless of the case, does one group deserve less justice then the other.
Remember Rodney King? Kind of hard not to. Do you know why the cops got off on the first trial? Because they were charged with attempted murder, instead of assault. The prosecution could not prove that the cops were trying to murder King, and they had to rightfully find them not guilty. On an assault charge, they would have rightfully been able to return a guilty verdict, and 58 people who were subsequently murdered in the riots would be alive today. Add into the mix what was in the perp’s mind at the time of a crime, and proving guilt gets much, much harder, which ultimately means those who commit the most heinous of crimes have a better chance of going free.
And supposedly the hate crime legislation is aimed at “helping” minorities. Consider this: Americans commit about 1.7 million interracial crimes each year, of which about 1.2 million involve blacks and whites. Nearly 90 percent of these crimes involve a black perpetrator and a white victim. Granted, not all of these interracial crimes are hate crimes, but isn’t it likely that more blacks will be jailed for hate crimes? Another example of how the liberal agenda punishes minorities – intentionally or not.
I think Larry Elder, the African American talk show host, put it best when he said “If I’m standind at an ATM machine and a Ku Klux Klansman hits me in the back of the head with a brick, the operative word is not “Klansman”, it is “Brick.”
In other news, congratulations to Fox News. According to a new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) at George Mason University, Fox News has the “Most Balanced Election Coverage on TV.” The study also found that Fox NewsChannel's evening news show provided more balanced coverage than its counterparts on the broadcast networks.
On a related note, congratulation to George Mason University for joining the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.” Oh, I know you have data and proof to back up your findings, but good luck getting anyone on the left to look at it, let alone take it seriously. Just as it is easier to shout “Racist” than deal with the actual causes of minority disparity, It’s easier to shout “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” than look at facts (cause lets face it, looking at facts takes a long time).
Have a good weekend my friends, I now have an ark I need to go build.
Election Study Finds Media Hit Hillary Hardest Obama, Huckabee Fare Best; FOX Is Most Balanced (not a typo) TV election news has been hardest on Hillary Clinton this fall, while Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee have been the biggest media favorites,
Friday, January 4, 2008
Caucus Day Racism
Well, as expected I am already getting some flack from my series on racism. Of course, no one has yet actually attacked my data, just the idea that liberals may be more racist than conservatives. And you know what, even that comment isn’t fair, a fairer statement would be that the liberal agenda is more damaging to minorities than a conservative agenda. I truly feel that most liberals do care about minorities – maybe even more than most conservatives (although I think conservatives care a lot more about the poor and minorities than liberals will ever give them credit for) – But for whatever reason, the liberal agenda is all about band-aids and not addressing the real issues.
Just a real quick recap of affirmative action: first, I feel it suggests that certain people are too inferior to compete in an open field. Secondly, when someone is hired or given admission to a certain school based on race – when their grades or experience would otherwise keep them out – you are setting that person up for failure. Every time? No, but often. Minorities who are accepted through affirmative action when their grades are less than what would normally be required have a high drop out rate. So I can let you into Harvard, and you’ll probably drop out, or I can let you into Ohio State, where the chance of dropping out are less than half. Is a Harvard education a better education? Maybe, maybe not. But almost all employers are going to more impressed with an Ohio State graduation than a Harvard drop out.
One other thing that bothers me regarding race and the left is the lack of acknowledgement of the accomplishments that minorities have made. Are Blacks and Hispanics on an equal footing with White America economically? Not yet, but they have made incredible strides. But when was the last time that a so-called member of the “Black Leadership” stand up and declare that we are heading in the right direction with regard to racism.
For example, in 1958 4% of Americans approved of interracial marriages. Today that number is over 85%. Progress, right? In 1958 35% of Americans said they would vote for a black president. By 1997 that number was up to 93%, and today as I sit here my fellow Iowans – A state that is 97% white – have voted a black man as their number one choice for president. Again, this sounds like progress to me.
Yet last year CBS announced that in it’s upcoming season of Survivor they would be dividing up the tribes by race (White, Black, Hispanic and Asian), and an African-American commentator from the New York Times stated that “This will set back race relations by 50 years.” Really? Survivor divides up the tribes by race, and because of this blacks will have to go back to riding in the back of the bus, and we’re going to see “colored” water fountains start popping up. And the absurd thing about this comment – as if the comment itself weren’t absurd enough – is that this comment was made before the show ever hit the air, BEFORE we knew what the outcome of the tribe experiment was. What if the black team had proved to be the far superior team? Why would that have been cause for a rift in race relations?
Imagine if you will that you are a 350 pound man, and you decide to go on a diet, with your goal weight being 175 pounds, meaning that you are going to LOSE 175 pounds. Suppose that you lose 100 pounds, and those nearest and dearest to you do not comment on your success. As a matter of fact, if they do comment at all, it is to bitch about the 75 pounds you have yet to lose. And lets say you lose 30 more, with 45 to go, and still no “congratulations” or “I’m really proud of you.” How easy is it going to be to lose that last 45? Oh, you can still do it, BUT don’t you think losing that final 45 would be a lot easier with encouragement and acknowledgement of your previous achievements? Think about it.
Are you aware that a Time-CNN poll showed that 89 percent of black teens found little or no racism in their own lives. Interestingly, white teens were more likely than blacks to consider racism a major problem. Maybe the victicrat mentality is dying after all.
One last thing for today. Lets look at how a prominent liberal attacks racism in America. Today’s liberal” Michael Moore. Several years ago Moore complained that only 5% of journalists were black, and that there were practically no blacks in senior positions in Hollywood. In 1998, Moore proposed initiating what he called a “very strong affirmative action policy regarding gender and race, but especially regarding class.” He said he wanted to hire minorities “who come from the working class, who do not have a college education, and through those people we will reach a wider audience than the converted.” In Stupid White Men he proclaimed his plans to “hire only black people.”
Now you have to admire Moore for that. Talking the talk is one thing, but walking the walk shows true commitment. Lets see how he did:
Fahrenheit 9/11: Fourteen producers, Three editors, a production manager, a production coordinator, three cameramen, two people who wrote the music: 24 people, all white.
Bowling for Columbine: Fourteen producers, Two executives in charge of production, a cameramen, and a music composer: 18 people, 17 white.
The Big One (his 1997 documentary about workers rights): Five producers, Two Directors of Photography, two musical composers, a Production Manager and an Editor: All white.
Canadian Bacon (his 1995 feature film): Ten producers, two musical composers ,
Two editors, and the Director of Photography: All white.
I could go on, but to save time lets add in the senior people on Pets or Meat: The return to Flint (his follow up to Roger and Me); Roger and Me; TV Nation, and The Awful Truth, a TV show that ran for several seasons. Also, add in his staff from his book Dude, Where’s My Country.
In short, of the 134 producers, editors, cinematographers, composers, and production coordinators Moore hired, only three were black. Remember those black 5% of journalists? That’s almost twice the percentage of Moore’s black hires.
One other thing. Michael Moore lives in an upscale community in Northern Michigan called Central Lake. The number of African Americans living in Central Lake: Zero.
Now you know what? I don’t care if Moore hired all blacks, all whites, all Norwegians, all Gays, or all black/white Norwegian gays. Also, I could care less where he lives, BUT if you are going to stand on a pedestal and preach about how America is evil and racist, then be part of the solution, NOT part of the problem.
In closing, congratulations to Barrack Obama and Mike Huckabee for their wins in the Iowa Primaries, and thank you to the people of Iowa for voting Hillary third (although sixth would have been better). See you tomorrow….
Just a real quick recap of affirmative action: first, I feel it suggests that certain people are too inferior to compete in an open field. Secondly, when someone is hired or given admission to a certain school based on race – when their grades or experience would otherwise keep them out – you are setting that person up for failure. Every time? No, but often. Minorities who are accepted through affirmative action when their grades are less than what would normally be required have a high drop out rate. So I can let you into Harvard, and you’ll probably drop out, or I can let you into Ohio State, where the chance of dropping out are less than half. Is a Harvard education a better education? Maybe, maybe not. But almost all employers are going to more impressed with an Ohio State graduation than a Harvard drop out.
One other thing that bothers me regarding race and the left is the lack of acknowledgement of the accomplishments that minorities have made. Are Blacks and Hispanics on an equal footing with White America economically? Not yet, but they have made incredible strides. But when was the last time that a so-called member of the “Black Leadership” stand up and declare that we are heading in the right direction with regard to racism.
For example, in 1958 4% of Americans approved of interracial marriages. Today that number is over 85%. Progress, right? In 1958 35% of Americans said they would vote for a black president. By 1997 that number was up to 93%, and today as I sit here my fellow Iowans – A state that is 97% white – have voted a black man as their number one choice for president. Again, this sounds like progress to me.
Yet last year CBS announced that in it’s upcoming season of Survivor they would be dividing up the tribes by race (White, Black, Hispanic and Asian), and an African-American commentator from the New York Times stated that “This will set back race relations by 50 years.” Really? Survivor divides up the tribes by race, and because of this blacks will have to go back to riding in the back of the bus, and we’re going to see “colored” water fountains start popping up. And the absurd thing about this comment – as if the comment itself weren’t absurd enough – is that this comment was made before the show ever hit the air, BEFORE we knew what the outcome of the tribe experiment was. What if the black team had proved to be the far superior team? Why would that have been cause for a rift in race relations?
Imagine if you will that you are a 350 pound man, and you decide to go on a diet, with your goal weight being 175 pounds, meaning that you are going to LOSE 175 pounds. Suppose that you lose 100 pounds, and those nearest and dearest to you do not comment on your success. As a matter of fact, if they do comment at all, it is to bitch about the 75 pounds you have yet to lose. And lets say you lose 30 more, with 45 to go, and still no “congratulations” or “I’m really proud of you.” How easy is it going to be to lose that last 45? Oh, you can still do it, BUT don’t you think losing that final 45 would be a lot easier with encouragement and acknowledgement of your previous achievements? Think about it.
Are you aware that a Time-CNN poll showed that 89 percent of black teens found little or no racism in their own lives. Interestingly, white teens were more likely than blacks to consider racism a major problem. Maybe the victicrat mentality is dying after all.
One last thing for today. Lets look at how a prominent liberal attacks racism in America. Today’s liberal” Michael Moore. Several years ago Moore complained that only 5% of journalists were black, and that there were practically no blacks in senior positions in Hollywood. In 1998, Moore proposed initiating what he called a “very strong affirmative action policy regarding gender and race, but especially regarding class.” He said he wanted to hire minorities “who come from the working class, who do not have a college education, and through those people we will reach a wider audience than the converted.” In Stupid White Men he proclaimed his plans to “hire only black people.”
Now you have to admire Moore for that. Talking the talk is one thing, but walking the walk shows true commitment. Lets see how he did:
Fahrenheit 9/11: Fourteen producers, Three editors, a production manager, a production coordinator, three cameramen, two people who wrote the music: 24 people, all white.
Bowling for Columbine: Fourteen producers, Two executives in charge of production, a cameramen, and a music composer: 18 people, 17 white.
The Big One (his 1997 documentary about workers rights): Five producers, Two Directors of Photography, two musical composers, a Production Manager and an Editor: All white.
Canadian Bacon (his 1995 feature film): Ten producers, two musical composers ,
Two editors, and the Director of Photography: All white.
I could go on, but to save time lets add in the senior people on Pets or Meat: The return to Flint (his follow up to Roger and Me); Roger and Me; TV Nation, and The Awful Truth, a TV show that ran for several seasons. Also, add in his staff from his book Dude, Where’s My Country.
In short, of the 134 producers, editors, cinematographers, composers, and production coordinators Moore hired, only three were black. Remember those black 5% of journalists? That’s almost twice the percentage of Moore’s black hires.
One other thing. Michael Moore lives in an upscale community in Northern Michigan called Central Lake. The number of African Americans living in Central Lake: Zero.
Now you know what? I don’t care if Moore hired all blacks, all whites, all Norwegians, all Gays, or all black/white Norwegian gays. Also, I could care less where he lives, BUT if you are going to stand on a pedestal and preach about how America is evil and racist, then be part of the solution, NOT part of the problem.
In closing, congratulations to Barrack Obama and Mike Huckabee for their wins in the Iowa Primaries, and thank you to the people of Iowa for voting Hillary third (although sixth would have been better). See you tomorrow….
Thursday, January 3, 2008
The Most Racist Group In America Exposed
Before I start my post, let me please ask those of you who are reading this in Iowa to PLEASE make sure that you take part in Thursdays Caucus. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, because I don’t think anyone should TELL you who to vote for. I can give you my opinions (but I won’t – other than stay away from Hillary), but the bottom line is you have a terrific opportunity to help set the tone for the rest of us. Use it wisely.
Okay, yesterday I started a conversation on racism, and at the end of the post I stated that in fact you can be a racist simply by association with a group. Earlier I had argued that this was not the case, given that my liberal friends believe that the mere fact that I am a white male, I am a racist. Frankly, I think that having negative attitudes toward another race – any race – is what makes you racist. And acting on those negative attitudes just makes it worse.
But in all my research on the subject, I have come to change my mind. Yes, being a member of a specific group CAN make you a racist. That group? Liberals.
But liberals are the champions of the lower class and minorities, aren’t they? Well, you may remember that yesterday that racism basically exists on two planes: ignorance and hate, and liberal racism stems from ignorance. Not the kind of ignorance we associate with being uneducated, but the kind of ignorance associated with the inability to truly see the fruits of your actions.
Some may consider what I am about to discuss as not being racist, because there is no (conscious) intent to do harm, but if the end result is harm, what difference do the intentions make. You know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
Lets start with a biggie: Affirmative Action. Now I know that the intention behind affirmative action is to “level the playing field” and make up for past injustices, but that’s just not what we are getting. And before I go further, let me acknowledge that there have been injustices done on minorities in the past, horrible, horrible injustices. But replacing those injustices with a new injustice is no answer. And no, I’m not complaining about “reverse discrimination”, rather I am complaining about the injustice done to the very minorities that affirmative action is meant to help.
What affirmative action – whether it be race or gender based – is, is unfair. It suggests that certain people are too inferior to compete in an open field, and it continues the misguided notion that the government should make people whole because of racial and sexual discrimination done to previous generations.
The real problem with affirmative action is my opinion is that it ignores the real issues facing minorities today. If I am a good – not great – student of minority descent, the reason that I am not eligible to get into a top-notch university is possibly because I attend
ed a poor-performance school and didn’t get the proper opportunities. And perhaps it’s because I had the opportunities but didn’t take them. Rarely however is the reason racism. But by taking a liberal point of view that these issues are racism related, that allows the left to ignore the real causes of lower performance in certain minorities, mainly the poor performance of the public school system – especially in the inner cities – and skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birth rates. But in order to address the REAL issues, the left would have to take on the education unions, and considering that they are one of the lefts largest political donors, don’t expect any improvement here anytime soon. And why should there be, when shouting “Racist” is so much easier.
And the scary thing is, affirmative action is actually hurting the ones it is suppose to be helping. Lets say that affirmative action helps me get into Harvard, when my grades never could have. I am now competing with people that are smarter than me and doing work above my ability. Can I succeed? Sure I can, but in reality I am almost twice as likely to drop out than a student who was accepted on merit.
And to often liberals act like if affirmative action didn’t exist, those that it “helps” would be on the streets. Affirmative action IS NOT the difference between Harvard and McDonalds, it’s the difference between Harvard and UCLA, or Iowa State, or Colorado State. This “but-for-affirmative-action-I’d-be-driving-a-truck” mentality is yet another unintended consequence of preferences. The “beneficiary” demeans and cheapens his own achievement by overestimating the impact of affirmative action on his own life. Without drive, study, and a sense of purpose, all the preferential programs in the world wouldn’t have helped this guy.
And what about the minority individual who didn’t need affirmative action. Suppose she or he applied for and was accepted at an Ivy League school based on their own merit, and graduated at or near the top of their class. Upon entering the corporate world, they quickly rise up the ladder, only to have those who are not personally familiar with them wonder if they are where they are at due to affirmative action. Remove affirmative action, and you remove the doubt.
But affirmative action is just the tip of the liberal racism iceberg. Join me tomorrow for more examples of how “The Man” is keeping minorities down, and why “The Man” is voting democrat.
Okay, yesterday I started a conversation on racism, and at the end of the post I stated that in fact you can be a racist simply by association with a group. Earlier I had argued that this was not the case, given that my liberal friends believe that the mere fact that I am a white male, I am a racist. Frankly, I think that having negative attitudes toward another race – any race – is what makes you racist. And acting on those negative attitudes just makes it worse.
But in all my research on the subject, I have come to change my mind. Yes, being a member of a specific group CAN make you a racist. That group? Liberals.
But liberals are the champions of the lower class and minorities, aren’t they? Well, you may remember that yesterday that racism basically exists on two planes: ignorance and hate, and liberal racism stems from ignorance. Not the kind of ignorance we associate with being uneducated, but the kind of ignorance associated with the inability to truly see the fruits of your actions.
Some may consider what I am about to discuss as not being racist, because there is no (conscious) intent to do harm, but if the end result is harm, what difference do the intentions make. You know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
Lets start with a biggie: Affirmative Action. Now I know that the intention behind affirmative action is to “level the playing field” and make up for past injustices, but that’s just not what we are getting. And before I go further, let me acknowledge that there have been injustices done on minorities in the past, horrible, horrible injustices. But replacing those injustices with a new injustice is no answer. And no, I’m not complaining about “reverse discrimination”, rather I am complaining about the injustice done to the very minorities that affirmative action is meant to help.
What affirmative action – whether it be race or gender based – is, is unfair. It suggests that certain people are too inferior to compete in an open field, and it continues the misguided notion that the government should make people whole because of racial and sexual discrimination done to previous generations.
The real problem with affirmative action is my opinion is that it ignores the real issues facing minorities today. If I am a good – not great – student of minority descent, the reason that I am not eligible to get into a top-notch university is possibly because I attend
ed a poor-performance school and didn’t get the proper opportunities. And perhaps it’s because I had the opportunities but didn’t take them. Rarely however is the reason racism. But by taking a liberal point of view that these issues are racism related, that allows the left to ignore the real causes of lower performance in certain minorities, mainly the poor performance of the public school system – especially in the inner cities – and skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birth rates. But in order to address the REAL issues, the left would have to take on the education unions, and considering that they are one of the lefts largest political donors, don’t expect any improvement here anytime soon. And why should there be, when shouting “Racist” is so much easier.And the scary thing is, affirmative action is actually hurting the ones it is suppose to be helping. Lets say that affirmative action helps me get into Harvard, when my grades never could have. I am now competing with people that are smarter than me and doing work above my ability. Can I succeed? Sure I can, but in reality I am almost twice as likely to drop out than a student who was accepted on merit.
And to often liberals act like if affirmative action didn’t exist, those that it “helps” would be on the streets. Affirmative action IS NOT the difference between Harvard and McDonalds, it’s the difference between Harvard and UCLA, or Iowa State, or Colorado State. This “but-for-affirmative-action-I’d-be-driving-a-truck” mentality is yet another unintended consequence of preferences. The “beneficiary” demeans and cheapens his own achievement by overestimating the impact of affirmative action on his own life. Without drive, study, and a sense of purpose, all the preferential programs in the world wouldn’t have helped this guy.
And what about the minority individual who didn’t need affirmative action. Suppose she or he applied for and was accepted at an Ivy League school based on their own merit, and graduated at or near the top of their class. Upon entering the corporate world, they quickly rise up the ladder, only to have those who are not personally familiar with them wonder if they are where they are at due to affirmative action. Remove affirmative action, and you remove the doubt.
But affirmative action is just the tip of the liberal racism iceberg. Join me tomorrow for more examples of how “The Man” is keeping minorities down, and why “The Man” is voting democrat.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Maybe After I Rid The Worldof Racism, I'll Tackle That Pesky Middle East Thing....
For the last several posts, with the exception of a couple of Christmas posts, I’ve been writing a lot about Hillary in an attempt to get some information about this woman out to the electorate in the early primary states. As we are now less than 48 hours from the Iowa Caucuses, it’s time to sit back and see what is going to happen. Therefore, I’m going to lay off Hillary for the next couple of days, and tackle a lighter issue: Racism.
Three times in my life I have been accused of being a racist. The last two have come in the last couple of months during discussions on race on this and other sites, and they weren’t direct accusations at me per se, but rather accusations that as a white male I am racist due to the mere fact that I am white (compounded by the fact that I’m a male). The funny thing is, I think that that kind of comment is one of the most racist things I have ever heard in my life.
The only time I was every directly accused of being a racist came about 10 or 12 years ago when I was a manager at Kinko’s. I had a coworker – lets call her Sheryl (we’ll call her that because here name was Sheryl) – And Sheryl was a very weak coworker. She was slow, she had attendance issues, and she was basically a poor worker. And when I wrote Sheryl up for her performance issues, she accused me of discriminating against her because she was black. See, I didn’t mention earlier that Sheryl was black, because it doesn’t matter that she was.
To make a long story short, my district manager conducted a full investigation, interviewed every coworker, and they all told him the same thing: Sheryl was a lousy worker. Now if you’re expecting me to go into a rant about how African Americans use the race card to yada, yada, yada, it ain’t gonna happen. This was a situation where one women pulled a stunt, and her actions are the actions of her alone. Heck, it may not have even been a stunt; for all I know Sheryl truly believed she was being discriminated against. However, for that to be the case she would have to have believed that her performance was solid, and it wasn’t. She truly was a poor performer.
I tell you this to clear the air about who I am and what my personal feelings are regarding race. I do not consider myself a racist, but at the same time you have to define what racism is. To me, a racist is someone who makes an assumption about a person because of their race, and then acts on that assumption, usually in a negative way. I mean, assume that you are a young male of Latin ancestry, and a young women wants to get with you because she wants a “hot Latin lover”. Now this women is acting on a stereotype, but I doubt if you were the young man in question that you would be shouting “Racist”.
Some people say that you can’t be a racist unless you are in a position to cause harm. For example, If I’m a boss and I choose to deny someone a promotion because of their race, then I’m a racist, BUT the immigrant that I deny the promotion to can not be a racist because he holds no “power” over me. I think this kind of thinking is B.S.. Sure, the boss racist can cause more harm because of his position, but what if the boss was Latino and the person denied the promotion was white? Is that any different than if the boss were white and the worker Latino? Of course not. Racism basically exists on two planes: ignorance and hate.
So where is all of this going? Well, dear reader, all of this time I have been arguing that someone can’t be a racist simply because they belong to a group of people (white people, republicans, etc….), well, unless that group is the Klan. And as rare as this is for me to say, I’m going to say it anyhow: I was wrooo…., eh hem, I was wrooooo…... Okay, I was not exactly 100% right. I take it back, I was wrong when I said that racism could not come from membership in a particular group.
And what exactly IS that group? Ah dear reader, for that you will have to tune in tomorrow…..
Three times in my life I have been accused of being a racist. The last two have come in the last couple of months during discussions on race on this and other sites, and they weren’t direct accusations at me per se, but rather accusations that as a white male I am racist due to the mere fact that I am white (compounded by the fact that I’m a male). The funny thing is, I think that that kind of comment is one of the most racist things I have ever heard in my life.
The only time I was every directly accused of being a racist came about 10 or 12 years ago when I was a manager at Kinko’s. I had a coworker – lets call her Sheryl (we’ll call her that because here name was Sheryl) – And Sheryl was a very weak coworker. She was slow, she had attendance issues, and she was basically a poor worker. And when I wrote Sheryl up for her performance issues, she accused me of discriminating against her because she was black. See, I didn’t mention earlier that Sheryl was black, because it doesn’t matter that she was.
To make a long story short, my district manager conducted a full investigation, interviewed every coworker, and they all told him the same thing: Sheryl was a lousy worker. Now if you’re expecting me to go into a rant about how African Americans use the race card to yada, yada, yada, it ain’t gonna happen. This was a situation where one women pulled a stunt, and her actions are the actions of her alone. Heck, it may not have even been a stunt; for all I know Sheryl truly believed she was being discriminated against. However, for that to be the case she would have to have believed that her performance was solid, and it wasn’t. She truly was a poor performer.
I tell you this to clear the air about who I am and what my personal feelings are regarding race. I do not consider myself a racist, but at the same time you have to define what racism is. To me, a racist is someone who makes an assumption about a person because of their race, and then acts on that assumption, usually in a negative way. I mean, assume that you are a young male of Latin ancestry, and a young women wants to get with you because she wants a “hot Latin lover”. Now this women is acting on a stereotype, but I doubt if you were the young man in question that you would be shouting “Racist”.
Some people say that you can’t be a racist unless you are in a position to cause harm. For example, If I’m a boss and I choose to deny someone a promotion because of their race, then I’m a racist, BUT the immigrant that I deny the promotion to can not be a racist because he holds no “power” over me. I think this kind of thinking is B.S.. Sure, the boss racist can cause more harm because of his position, but what if the boss was Latino and the person denied the promotion was white? Is that any different than if the boss were white and the worker Latino? Of course not. Racism basically exists on two planes: ignorance and hate.
So where is all of this going? Well, dear reader, all of this time I have been arguing that someone can’t be a racist simply because they belong to a group of people (white people, republicans, etc….), well, unless that group is the Klan. And as rare as this is for me to say, I’m going to say it anyhow: I was wrooo…., eh hem, I was wrooooo…... Okay, I was not exactly 100% right. I take it back, I was wrong when I said that racism could not come from membership in a particular group.
And what exactly IS that group? Ah dear reader, for that you will have to tune in tomorrow…..
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
14 Questions I’d Ask Hillary After I Hooked Her Up to a Lie Detector
Todays guest post comes from John Hawkins, writing in Townhall.com. I shall return tomorrow, today I will be watching football.
Few politicians in America have as much scandal, sleaze, and controversy surrounding them as Hillary Clinton and perhaps none of them, with the exception of her husband, has been given a bigger free pass.
As Peggy Noonan once said, "People have pointed out (Hillary's) ethical lapses for so long that they seem boring, or impossible to believe. ‘That couldn't be true or she wouldn't be running for president.’ This thought collides with ‘And we already know all this anyway.’ Her campaign uses the latter to squash the latest: ‘old news,’ ‘cash for rehash.’
That is indeed how it works with Hillary Clinton's campaign, but nobody who is running for the presidency in the era of the blogosphere and YouTube should be allowed to skate on the controversial issues.
With that in mind, here are 14 yes or no questions I'd like to ask Hillary after I hooked her up to a polygraph machine, assuming that she hasn't gotten so good at lying that she could beat the machine.
A Culture Of Corruption
1) Your former friend and business partner, James McDougal, claimed that "he and a longtime businessman at McDougal's S&L, Henry Hamilton, 'developed a system to pass money to Clinton.' Did you or your husband ever take payoffs from your friend James McDougal?
2) While you were with the Rose Law Firm, you personally worked on a document that was used to "obfuscate and hide the fraudulent nature" of a piece of the Whitewater land swindle. Did you know that the document you were working on was going to be used for illegal purposes?
3) Your Rose Law Firm billing records were removed from Vince Foster's office after his death. Those records were "(m)issing and under subpoena for two years (and) they turned up in January 1996 in the Clintons' private quarters at the White House." Whoever took those records committed a crime by obstructing justice. Despite the fact that your records were taken and eventually turned up in your private quarters, you have denied taking the records or having anyone take them for you. Is that true?
4) Clinton supporter David Hale claimed that your husband pressured him into making a "fraudulent $300,000 federally backed loan to Susan McDougal, some of which went into Whitewater Development Corp." Did your husband pressure David Hale into making that fraudulent loan?
5) You once turned $1,000 into $100,000 in less than a year in the cattle futures market. The odds that this was done legitimately have been put, in some estimates, as high as 250 million to 1. It has been alleged, and seems likely, that the $100,000 was actually bribe money that was paid to you while the cattle futures market was merely used as cover for the payout. With that in mind, were your cattle futures winnings actually bribe money?
6) During the Clinton Administration, Craig Livingstone, the Director of the White House Office of Personnel Security, improperly looked through the FBI files of hundreds of your political enemies. There are allegations that you got Livingstone hired, that he went through those files on your orders, and that you also read some of those files. Are any of those allegations true?
7) In his report on the Travelgate firings, Independent Counsel Robert Ray said your testimony was "factually false," and said that he didn't go after you for perjury because there was "insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Clinton's statements to this Office or to Congress were knowingly false." Did you commit perjury in your testimony about Travelgate?
8) Your brother, Hugh Rodham, pocketed $400,000 (which was returned) from people who later received pardons from your husband. At the time, you claimed that you had not discussed those pardons with your brother or your husband beforehand. Is that true?
9) You have been tied to a surprising number of shady fundraisers including Peter Paul, Norman Hsu, John Huang, Johnny Chung, and Charlie Trie just to name a few. Were you ever aware that any of these men were engaged in illegal activities that benefited you and your husband before it was brought to your attention by law enforcement authorities or the press?
No Wonder She Kissed Arafat's Wife
10) Former Clinton consultant Dick Morris said that in a dispute over money, you said to him, "That's all you people care about is money." He took that to be a slap at him because he is a Jew. Did you say that to Dick Morris?
11) Former Clinton adviser, Paul Fray, claims that you called him a "Jew Bastard" after Bill lost his congressional bid in 1974. Is that true?
12) Larry Patterson, an Arkansas state trooper who also acted as your bodyguard says that he heard you, "use the term 'Jew Bastard' and call (your) husband a 'Jew Boy' and a 'M—–rF–king Jew.'" Is that true?
Are You "Experienced?"
13) You've been portrayed as an extremely talented lawyer, but isn't it true that you flunked your D.C. Bar Exam, that James McDougal said that he only hired you as a lawyer "because Bill came in whimpering (that) they needed help," and that you only were able to become a partner at the Rose Law Firm because your husband was the Governor of Arkansas?
14) According to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who's certainly no conservative, "Hillary negotiated nothing and was present at no major meetings on foreign policy and national security after 1994. …On domestic policy, Hillary was essentially sidelined after her disastrous 1994 health-care plan." Is that true?
Few politicians in America have as much scandal, sleaze, and controversy surrounding them as Hillary Clinton and perhaps none of them, with the exception of her husband, has been given a bigger free pass.
As Peggy Noonan once said, "People have pointed out (Hillary's) ethical lapses for so long that they seem boring, or impossible to believe. ‘That couldn't be true or she wouldn't be running for president.’ This thought collides with ‘And we already know all this anyway.’ Her campaign uses the latter to squash the latest: ‘old news,’ ‘cash for rehash.’
That is indeed how it works with Hillary Clinton's campaign, but nobody who is running for the presidency in the era of the blogosphere and YouTube should be allowed to skate on the controversial issues.
With that in mind, here are 14 yes or no questions I'd like to ask Hillary after I hooked her up to a polygraph machine, assuming that she hasn't gotten so good at lying that she could beat the machine.
A Culture Of Corruption
1) Your former friend and business partner, James McDougal, claimed that "he and a longtime businessman at McDougal's S&L, Henry Hamilton, 'developed a system to pass money to Clinton.' Did you or your husband ever take payoffs from your friend James McDougal?
2) While you were with the Rose Law Firm, you personally worked on a document that was used to "obfuscate and hide the fraudulent nature" of a piece of the Whitewater land swindle. Did you know that the document you were working on was going to be used for illegal purposes?
3) Your Rose Law Firm billing records were removed from Vince Foster's office after his death. Those records were "(m)issing and under subpoena for two years (and) they turned up in January 1996 in the Clintons' private quarters at the White House." Whoever took those records committed a crime by obstructing justice. Despite the fact that your records were taken and eventually turned up in your private quarters, you have denied taking the records or having anyone take them for you. Is that true?
4) Clinton supporter David Hale claimed that your husband pressured him into making a "fraudulent $300,000 federally backed loan to Susan McDougal, some of which went into Whitewater Development Corp." Did your husband pressure David Hale into making that fraudulent loan?
5) You once turned $1,000 into $100,000 in less than a year in the cattle futures market. The odds that this was done legitimately have been put, in some estimates, as high as 250 million to 1. It has been alleged, and seems likely, that the $100,000 was actually bribe money that was paid to you while the cattle futures market was merely used as cover for the payout. With that in mind, were your cattle futures winnings actually bribe money?
6) During the Clinton Administration, Craig Livingstone, the Director of the White House Office of Personnel Security, improperly looked through the FBI files of hundreds of your political enemies. There are allegations that you got Livingstone hired, that he went through those files on your orders, and that you also read some of those files. Are any of those allegations true?
7) In his report on the Travelgate firings, Independent Counsel Robert Ray said your testimony was "factually false," and said that he didn't go after you for perjury because there was "insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Clinton's statements to this Office or to Congress were knowingly false." Did you commit perjury in your testimony about Travelgate?
8) Your brother, Hugh Rodham, pocketed $400,000 (which was returned) from people who later received pardons from your husband. At the time, you claimed that you had not discussed those pardons with your brother or your husband beforehand. Is that true?
9) You have been tied to a surprising number of shady fundraisers including Peter Paul, Norman Hsu, John Huang, Johnny Chung, and Charlie Trie just to name a few. Were you ever aware that any of these men were engaged in illegal activities that benefited you and your husband before it was brought to your attention by law enforcement authorities or the press?
No Wonder She Kissed Arafat's Wife
10) Former Clinton consultant Dick Morris said that in a dispute over money, you said to him, "That's all you people care about is money." He took that to be a slap at him because he is a Jew. Did you say that to Dick Morris?
11) Former Clinton adviser, Paul Fray, claims that you called him a "Jew Bastard" after Bill lost his congressional bid in 1974. Is that true?
12) Larry Patterson, an Arkansas state trooper who also acted as your bodyguard says that he heard you, "use the term 'Jew Bastard' and call (your) husband a 'Jew Boy' and a 'M—–rF–king Jew.'" Is that true?
Are You "Experienced?"
13) You've been portrayed as an extremely talented lawyer, but isn't it true that you flunked your D.C. Bar Exam, that James McDougal said that he only hired you as a lawyer "because Bill came in whimpering (that) they needed help," and that you only were able to become a partner at the Rose Law Firm because your husband was the Governor of Arkansas?
14) According to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who's certainly no conservative, "Hillary negotiated nothing and was present at no major meetings on foreign policy and national security after 1994. …On domestic policy, Hillary was essentially sidelined after her disastrous 1994 health-care plan." Is that true?
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