Category: Society

  • On Prejudice

    I am not a racist, sexist, bigot. I hate everyone equally on an individual basis, as my default position. Until you prove yourself to be worth liking, I don’t like you. No one can tell a good person from a bad one at sight and trying to is foolish, encouraging others to is asinine. I’m a white guy and there are white people I cannot friggin’ stand, but, at the same time, there are blacks, hispanics and asians that I gladly embrace as brothers. Judging people by their appearance is just about the stupidest thing there is. I’ve always liked the line from Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream speech” about judging people not by the color of their skin, but, by the content of their character, because that is the ONLY correct way to judge people. How so many people have such a hard time grasping this simple concept baffles me.

  • A word about military service

    There’s a general theme running through a lot of the criticism I’ve encountered the last few days, that theme being that some military service has more “moral authority” in the discussion about this war against terror. That the voices of some veterans are more valuable than others.

    I admire people like Lt. Nixon at LT Nixon Rants – even though politically we’re miles apart, he’s able to successfully make a credible argument on the subject of the war without demeaning any veterans. Others, however, are unable to do that. One veteran who had not even served in any war, placed more value on his own opinion than mine because he’d served since I retired (in 1994, if anyone is interested and unable to click the “About” link above).

    I had a run-in with IVAW members yesterday and when I mentioned that I had trouble hearing them because I’d lost most of my hearing in a war, their response both times was “What war were you ever in?” as if only their experience has value.

    And the thing that got me to thinking about it happened back in November when I read Clifton Hicks’ letter to the Veterans for Freedom;

    How come nearly every single one of you people that I’ve seen or read about are Lieutenants and Sergeants? When I look at your little war pictures and read your poorly written bio’s my vision is overflowed with images of lazy, incompetent, cowardly Officers with a handful of brain-dead NCO’s to do their dirty work, as usual. I wonder where you boys all served?

    The implication is; if you aren’t Clifton Hicks, your service doesn’t count. (Ed. Note: Hey, Cliff, m’boy, we were two feet from each other at Winter Soldier, I didn’t say a word to you no matter what I thought of you or your service – that’s the kind of stand up guy I am)

    I had trouble dealing with a lot of the things I had to do in war when I first came back. I found solace in the strangest of places – in Civil War diaries. I discovered that all veterans of all wars have a common experience that others can’t understand. Not psychologists and certainly not some chic with hairy legs.

    Some wars were tougher than others, but the effect that wars have on people is always the same – whether your war was four years of slugging your way across the Pacific or 100 hours of slugging your way across Kuwait.

    Since my awakening, I have surrounded myself with war veterans – from across the spectrum of World War II veterans to veterans of our current war. From paratroopers who jumped into Normandy to meatcutters who went across Germany in the back of a deuce-and-half. From Huey crew chiefs in Vietnam to tunnel rats. Many times I discovered that I have more in common with warriors from previous wars than I do with people whom I’ve known my whole life but never left our hometown.

    Well, what I’m saying, I suppose, is that if these IVAW guys want to attract us to their point-of-view, the last thing they should be doing is demeaning our own experiences and that commonality in the experience of war that we share. Yeah, us older guys are out-of-shape at the moment, but in our day we kicked ass, on and off the battlefield. To judge our accomplishments on something as superficial as our current appearance borders on childishness. And it adds nothing to the discussion.

  • “A fish don’t know he’s wet…”

    There’s a an old song by George Clinton and the Funkadelics, the title of which escapes me at the moment, but one of the lines is “…a fish don’t know he’s wet…” and that’s the feeling I’ve been getting from Michele and Barack Obama for weeks now. They talk a good game when they stay on script (and Barack never leaves the script), but the people around him like his wife and this Reverend Wright fellow just can’t help betraying Obama to us.

    The speech apparently blames us – consumers of the media – for making such a big deal out of the whole thing – but that’s why we accuse him of being the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter. Michele Malkin quotes Obama;

    “These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

    It was delivered rather perfunctorily.

    The crowd claps for the first time for this:

    “And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.”

    Who is retreating? Since the Rodney King trials, every thing that has happened to any Black person has been blamed on white people. It’s not particularly healthy to blame all white people for AIDS and crack. Nor is it constructive to blame people living today for slavery or segregation. Reverend Wright seized on the simple, intellectually vacant platitudes of the Left and used them to build himself a congregation of weak-willed imbeciles looking for excuses for their own poor choices without blaming themselves.

    That’s retreating from reality, that’s retreating from real solutions to problems – if a person is raised in a culture that merely blames everyone around them for their problems, how is that person going to accept his own shortcomings and work to rectify his failings?

    Obama didn’t see anything wrong with what the Reverend Wright said in church because he’d been raised in that poisonous atmosphere, he was accustomed to it, he didn’t know he wet. Because he’s always been told that hating white people isn’t racist for a black man. Playing the victim has always insulated him from criticism.

    From American Pundit;

    “to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

    “Without understanding it’s roots”? How is regurgitating empty conspiracies helpful? How does it narrow the chasm of misunderstanding? These are all just more empty words. Obama still doesn’t see anything wrong with what Wright preached – it’s our fault for not seeing things his way.

    The Backyard Conservative writes;

    He says that these “snippets of sermons” are “caricatures” of the Rev. Wright and not the man he knows.

    He says to us that it’s wrong to condemn this anger.

    It’s wrong to condemn this anti-white, anti-American anger?

    That makes me mad.

    There’s nothing to understand about an intellectually vacant man who preys on weak-willed people and turns them hate-filled robots – like Obama – who don’t even recognize that they’re hate-filled robots.

    From Plumb Bob Blog a simple statement of fact;

    He characterizes the entire American experience as “Democracy, sure, but stained by racism.” To me, this explains better than anything else that he could say that he thinks PRECISELY like the Reverend Wright. There’s not the slightest recognition of just how violently different the American experiment in government was from what went before it, the vast ocean of human potential unleashed by the recognition of a divine ordination of self-government. To state the American experiment purely in racial terms is to echo the Reverend Wright. Once he started that way, not a single thing he could say would convince me that he didn’t sit there in Wright’s church the whole 20 years saying “Amen” in his soul, if not with his mouth. Barack Obama is a racist.

    Curt at Flopping Aces wrote;

    Well, there ya go. It was a remarkable speech……remarkably middle of the road that is. Obama tries to be all things to all people here, on all sides. It contains a bit of distancing from Wrights remarks, a bit of condemnation. He also embraces some of Wrights comments and explains some of them.

    The Gateway Pundit;

    The fact that Obama twisted his pastor’s offensive and outrageous remarks and made it into a race issue was clever. It doesn’t excuse his pastor or excuse the fact that he sat with the America-hating racist for 20 years, though.
    And, the fact that he plays it off like “all of us are at fault” is insulting.

    Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs;

    Obama believes he can get away with vaguely calling Wright’s statements “fierce criticism of US policy,” and I don’t think that’s going to fly with the majority of Americans.

    Atlas Shrugs;

    It is painfully clear to me that Obama believes that half of America agrees with G-d damn America Jeremiah Wright and he intends to exploit that hate and play on these terrible, imagine fears. I do not believe he is right. But he is going down the hate mongering ship. Separatism, not inclusion. What unites us is we are Americans, and frankly he just doesn’t get it.

    And that’s what escapes everyone these days – even as recently as the 1980s we all pretty much got along as an American culture – there were minuscule divisions, certainly, but nothing on the order that race-baiters and class warfare pimps have created these days. There’s no more shame about personal conduct (watch an hour of “Cops” on Saturday night), there’s no pride in being an honest person (you’re a sucker).

    From my favorite blog for a ration of common sense, Bloodthirsty Liberal;

    My quarrel is not with the Reverend, who merely says what many seem to think and more than a few want to hear (certainly his parishioners did). My quarrel is with the Senator, who seems to think his pastor’s hateful words were no different from a rabbi’s praising apricot hamentashen over poppy.

    Barack Obama may be able to separate his meshugenah minister’s world view from his own, but I can’t. I heard too much, too often, expressed too loudly and too angrily for me to believe the Senator’s claim he never heard it himself. Either he did, or he didn’t. Either he found the comments unobjectionable, or he “strongly disagreed”. Either that’s the end of the story, or there’s context.

    But in the world of victimization, it pays to have a racist lunatic on your team. From Moonbattery;

    How’s this for horrifying:

    Since it became public knowledge that Obama’s close advisor Jeremiah Wright is a race-baiting maniac who noisily denounces America in the most inflammatory terms conceivable, black support for Obama has actually risen in the key Keystone State:

    Black voters back Sen. Obama 76 – 18 percent, compared to 69 – 23 percent Feb. 27.

    Obama just played to the popular culture hoping that the good old days of last week come back. Back in the days when everyone was scared to criticize him – when he was insulated from criticism by the levels of melanin in his skin.

  • Obama; our nanny-in-chief

    Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill. participates in an MTV roundtable with Iraq war veterans, Monday, March 17, 2008, at Whistles Pub in Scranton, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

    Barak Obama says that our troops can walk around with hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a loaded weapon, be responsible for millions of dollars worth of equipment, drive around the countryside in 26-ton vehicles, be responsible for the lives of several other humans and make daily life-and-death decisions. But have a beer? Nope, sorry. (Associated Press link);

    Democrat Barack Obama on Monday promised Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans help with their grievances — save one. “I know it drives you nuts. But I’m not going to lower the drinking age,” the presidential candidate said.

    Army veteran Ernest Johnson, 23, of Connecticut, said one of the things that peeved him before he turned 21 was that he couldn’t come home and drink a beer — even though he was old enough to serve in the armed services and die for his country.

    Obama told Johnson he sympathized, but that setting the legal drinking age at 21 had helped reduce drunken driving incidents and should remain.

    For one thing, drinking ages are set by States not by the federal government (currently, the feds entice the States to have a 21-year-old minimum age with federal $$$). Secondly, why is it that Republicans are accused of trying to legislate behavior when it Democrats who cling to regulations as the solution to all of society’s problems. Smoking, drinking, abortion, and lately, the size of our cars and the foods we eat.

    Is it any wonder that Obama gets almost perfect liberal ratings when he clings to such idiot nannyisms.

  • Busy week planned

    If you don’t normally read this blog on weekends, you’re going to miss a lot of stuff this weekend. Today I’ll be attending Winter Soldier II with my buddy Thus Spake Ortner from The Sniper. We’ll be live-blogging today’s theater while sitting back-to-back starting at about 9 Am until the whole thing ends tonight. In a conversation with one of the event organizers last night I was told some of the other folks who’d planned on covering the event dropped out because of the drama in the earlier part of the week as covered by Michele Malkin. I was assured that we’ll have a security detail assigned to us and that our safety is guaranteed, though.

    Other bloggers to watch today are my buddy Robin at Chickenhawk Express and Denis Keohane at Obiter Dictum, who has done a fabulous job prepping the rest of us on background of Winter Soldier I and the IVAW testimony up until this point. Another blog to watch for the latest is Blackfive.

    I’ll do my best to get photos and videos of the counterprotesters from Gathering of Eagles and Eagles UP who plan on being outside the National Labor College on New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Springs, Maryland (where Winter Soldier II is being conducted) to let Americans know that there are some of us who are still fairly rational.

    Tomorrow, I’ll be at the rally for the troops on the National Mall to be sponsored by Gathering of Eagles, Eagles Up and several other organizations who’ve come into DC last night to counter IVAW’s presence and I’ll have narrative, pictures and videos of that event up sometime late Saturday. I also hope to meet some of the readers of this blog who’ve emailed me that they’ll be there.

    Wednesday, is ANSWER’s “Day of Action” here in DC starting at about 7:30 AM (they say). ANSWER plans to block recruiting stations, traffic, and just generally pester people trying to make a living in the K Street area all to mark the five year anniversary of the invasion of Hussein’s Iraq. As usual, I’ll be there and document as much of it as I can and that’ll probably be up Wednesday afternoon.

    So you’ll want to keep one eye on this blog over the next week (mostly because the Left has trouble telling time and starting events when they’re scheduled). I’ll cover as much of the action as one guy can and it’ll all be here on the blog.

  • So what?

    OK, Spitzer’s gone (on Monday) – that’s all we needed was to get rid of the hypocrit and now we can move on. Well, apparently not. Now that our bloodhound media has discovered pictures, websites and My Space links (provided by bloggers, I’m sure) we’re bombarded on every website, every print media, every news program with this girl’s picture. Why?

    On top of that, Tuesday we were treated to “expert” guests in legitimate news media like Heidi Fleiss who does an interview with Newsweek and Fox News. Newsweek for pete’s sake!

    The local Fox station here in DC interviewed the “DC Madam” you can see the worthless interview here with the lead in; “The “DC Madam” Deborah Palfrey weighed in, spilling the insider secrets in a Fox 5 Exclusive. Fox 5’s Tom Fitzgerald has details.” So?

    Was she in the room with Spitzer and this slut (yes, dear, you’re a slut – you may feel like a star right now – but you’re a slut, just like Heidi Fleiss and Deborah Palfrey)? What possible information could she have that sheds light on the case? Why are we subjected to this regurgitation of old news – and recycling of old (skanky) newsmakers? Because Drudge told us it’s important? How dare the media try to act like bloggers?

    I saw her picture yesterday – although she’s a comely lass, she ain’t worth $4300 and a governorship (and possibly a marriage and fatherhood). I don’t think I’d pay $50 for four hours and give up my job for her.

    The only interest I had in the whole dust up was that we wipe that smarmy smile off of Spitzer’s mug. Having accomplished that, I think we’re done here.

  • Cinco mas

    Five more Cuban soccer players defected to the United States last night (Miami Herald link);

    Not even their families knew that team captain Yenier Bermudez, goalkeeper Jose Manuel Miranda, defender Erlys Garcia Baro, midfielder Yordany Alvarez and defender Loanni Prieto planned to defect. But after Tuesday night’s game, they bolted from a Tampa hotel, slipped into the waiting car of a mutual friend and headed east.

    They bought a cellphone, contacted a lawyer, and celebrated their newfound freedom with a nice Cuban meal.

    ”We’re fine, calm, feeling hopeful about our new lives,” Bermudez told The Miami Herald by phone Wednesday night. “Of course, we’re nervous because we’re young, have no family here, and we don’t yet know the way of life here, but we hope the Cuban and American communities will help us get started.”

    So apparently Cubans aren’t as entralled with the prospect of a more open Cuba under Raul Castro then they were with Fidel.

    ”I watched their game against the U.S. on TV, and I thought the Cuban team played very well,” [Luiz Muzzi, general manager of Miami FC] said. “We were kind of scouting that game because anytime a Cuban team comes to the United States, there’s a chance someone might defect.”

    You mean it’s never a surprise that someone would want to escape a life of the grand riches, the free health care and the free schooling they get in Cuba?

    Welcome, guys. I think that makes about 25 defectors this year. Haven’t they heard how much better Cuba will be now that Raul is in charge?