by La Shawn on July 31, 2004
in Lunacy
“The Kerry-Edwards ticket is perhaps the wealthiest team to ever run for the White House. Do blacks really need these guys, with their $2,000 suits and $300 haircuts, telling them that they need government to solve all their problems, decide where and how to educate their kids and provide for their health care,” writes Star Parker.
Oh, to be nationally syndicated! I love writing, any sort of writing: blog, columns, journal. But it would be nice to have a national audience. Star’s column was recently syndicated, and in her latest she comments on Al Sharpton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. In “Sharpton A Good Fit For Democrats”:
My particular concern is the destructive and wrong message that Sharpton delivered to all African-Americans in inner cities around our country who listened to his address. What did he tell them? That government doesn’t care about your personal life, your moral life or how you conduct yourselves as citizens and as people. But it is the government’s job to “guarantee” that food is in your refrigerator.
This is exactly what a community that is being torn apart by AIDS, illegitimacy, abortion, crime and 50 percent school dropouts needed to hear. Particularly from someone who calls himself a minister.
Sharpton then went on to infer that without political intervention, Clarence Thomas would never have gotten through law school. Another beautiful message to black children. You’ll never make it on your own. You’re a basket case without government. Don’t even believe that that black man who is a justice on the United States Supreme Court is there because of his brains and talent.
Is it any wonder that we have problems in the black community? In the Al Sharpton view of the world, blacks who are making it in our country today fall into two categories: those who are making it because government makes it possible for them to make it, and those who are making it because they have sold out and have been bought off by the white establishment.
The idea that a black man or woman has innate ability and can make it under any circumstances with faith, values and hard work is either incomprehensible to Al Sharpton or an idea that he perceives too incompatible with his career path to be given any credence.
I find Sharpton’s rise to the national stage embarrassing. That’s all I have to say for now. If you feel compelled to read his speech, here it is .
See also:
“The Worse of Al Sharpton”
“Massacre at Freddy’s in Harlem”
DeWayne Wickham
Is that news to you? I thought it was common knowledge, especially in the Executive branch (Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, etc). I would guess that blacks are overrepresented in all government jobs. I experienced it firsthand after a nightmarish visit to the DMV today. If you want to know what hell will be like, visit your local DMV. 
Well, I stumbled across (clumsy) that bit of information in my research of the legislative history and background of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Could “affirmative action” be the reason that blacks are overrepresented in government jobs (rhetorical)?
Columnist Paul Craig Roberts wants to know, too. He wrote a piece titled, “Whatever Happened to Civil Rights?” As you read the article, you can almost feel his contempt for skin color entitlements (I don’t like them either, Paul). Roberts writes:
The 1964 Civil Rights Act has been illegally enforced for 37 years. The result is a massive system of race and gender discrimination against white males in order to achieve proportional representation of racial minorities and women.
Now comes an astonishing report from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: “Annual Report to Congress, Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program, Fiscal Year 2000,” released in April 2002.
This report to Congress makes brutally clear that despite the “equal opportunity” name of the program, the purpose of the federal program is to make certain there is no equal opportunity for whites in federal employment.
The report uses tables and bar charts to make unmistakably clear that federal discrimination against whites goes far beyond merely achieving proportional representation for blacks. In all 22 independent federal agencies and in 16 of 17 federal executive departments, blacks are massively over represented.
In the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (sic) blacks comprise 46.4 percent of the employees. The “affirmative action” or racial quota target for proportional representation (percent in Relevant Civilian Labor Force) for the EEOC is 6.4 percent black employees. Blacks are thus over represented in EEOC employment by 625 percent!
The latest release of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) report he cites is here (PDF). The report focuses on “underrepresentation” even in the face of the higher percentages of certain minority employees. That, and not underrepresentation, is the issue. Why are these numbers so high?
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by La Shawn on July 30, 2004
in Faith
WorldNetDaily wrote about Katie Couric’s “Dateline” interview with Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington (!), co-stars in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Streep, as unbelieving liberals tend to do when the media are around, took a swipe at President Bush’s faith (I blogged about something similar yesterday). Streep said:
“Through the shock and awe I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president’s personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad….
“It was a question about, when you put Jesus on the campaign bus to stump for you, you have to really listen to what he says,” explained Streep. “Because he says, ‘If a man smite thee on the cheek, let — you turn the other, that he may smite also.’ And he says, ‘He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword,’ and he says, ‘Love thine enemy.’ Jesus could have raised an army against the people that persecuted Him. He didn’t. So, that’s what I was pointing out in my speech. And I couldn’t really imagine Jesus — like, I couldn’t imagine how Jesus would vote. Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Would the Prince of Peace vote for a war president?
Denzel Washington (!) challenged her statement, but that’s not what I want to focus on. People who don’t read the Bible quote it out of context quite frequently. Through a few Sunday school classes they may have taken or “God talk” they may have picked up here and there, they come to their own conclusions about Christ instead of letting the Bible speak for itself.
I blogged about this subject back in May on the old blog in a post titled, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” There’s no point reinventing the microchip, so I’ll “rerun” the post:
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by La Shawn on July 29, 2004
in General
Heard anything about Samuel “Sandy” Berger lately? Not only will he not go to jail, but nobody even cares that he stuffed his pants with classified documents.
I told you so. I’m a skeptic, but Cal Thomas seems to think Berger is in some kind of trouble:
Whether this story has legs will depend on what happens next. If, as in department stores, there was a camera in the secure room of the Archives, and if there are pictures of Berger emulating actress Winona Ryder in her clothes-stuffing role three years ago, one can imagine the campaign commercial possibilities.
Bed.
by La Shawn on July 29, 2004
in Lunacy
It’s a shame when a man can’t stay away from weed for millions of dollars. Sad indeed. To add to his woes, he has to deal with this:
Because of penalty clauses included when Williams’ contract was reworked two years ago, the team could try to recoup $5.3 million in incentive money, said sources familiar with the terms who requested anonymity. The Dolphins also could seek $3.3 million of the $8.8 million signing bonus Williams received when he joined the New Orleans Saints in 1999, the sources said.
I’m low maintenance. Give me an extra $10,000 a year (after taxes), and I’d become a vegetarian.
by La Shawn on July 29, 2004
in Lunacy
Check out this story (registration req., slow loading):
About 6:30 p.m. July 16, [Stephanie] Willett was eating a PayDay candy bar while riding the escalator from 11th Street NW into the Metro Center Station. Metro Transit Police Officer Cherrail Curry-Hagler was riding up.
The police officer warned Willett to finish the candy before entering the station because eating or drinking in the Metro system is illegal.
Willett nodded, kept chewing the peanut-and-caramel bar and stuffed the last bit into her mouth before throwing the wrapper into the trash can near the station manager’s kiosk, according to both Willett and Curry-Hagler.
Curry-Hagler turned around and followed Willett into the station. Moments after making a remark to the officer, Willett said, she was searched, handcuffed and arrested for chewing the last bite of her candy bar after she passed through the fare gates. She was released several hours later after paying a $10 fine, pending a hearing.
District of Columbia at its finest. What a laughingstock the nation’s capital is. On top of this silliness, Marion Barry, a crack cocaine convict and former D.C. mayor, is running for a seat on the D.C. Council. You know what’s sad? He’s favored to win!
Maybe now is a good time to go back to South Carolina.
Tom Junod, a writer for Esquire magazine, has written a compelling (and long) essay about George Bush titled, “The Case For George Bush.” 
Obviously a liberal, Junod examines what he believes about Bush and why.
The gist of the piece is that Bush’s style, which Junod doesn’t like, doesn’t (or shouldn’t) obscure Bush’s substance — his moral pronouncement that Islamofascism is “an unequivocal evil” and that we are “morally superior to it.”
I recommend this essay for both sides of the political landscape, but especially for liberals, who really believe that appeasement politics (and the approval of the French) is the way to defeat people who don’t care if they die trying to kill you.
I admit that I am partisan. I am a conservative who believes that conservatism is better for America socially, financially, morally and politically. I’ll go to my grave believing it with every fiber in my being, from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. Consequently, I’m drawn to articles that highlight positive aspects of Bush’s policies. At the same time, I’m not repelled by negative criticism; the criticism has to be placed in a rational context. Junod’s article does just that. He writes:
George W. Bush is an a**hole, isn’t he? Moreover, he’s the first president who seems merely that, at least in my lifetime. From Kennedy to Clinton, there is not a single president who would have been capable of striking such a pose after concluding a speech about a war in which hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis are being killed. There is not a single president for whom such a pose would seem entirely characteristic — not a single president who might be tempted to confuse a beefcakey photo opportunity with an expression of national purpose. He has always struck me as a small man, or at least as a man too small for the task at hand, and therefore a man doomed to address the discrepancy between his soul and his situation with displays of political muscle that succeed only in drawing attention to his diminution. He not only has led us into war, he seems to get off on war, and it’s the greedy pleasure he so clearly gets from flexing his biceps or from squaring his shoulders and setting his jaw or from landing a plane on an aircraft carrier — the greedy pleasure the war president finds in playacting his own attitudes of belligerence — that permitted me the greedy pleasure of hating him.
Then I read the text of the speech he gave and was thrown from one kind of certaint — the comfortable kind — into another. He was speaking, as he always does, of the moral underpinnings of our mission in Iraq. He was comparing, as he always does, the challenge that we face, in the evil of global terrorism, to the challenge our fathers and grandfathers faced, in the evil of fascism. He was insisting, as he always does, that the evil of global terrorism is exactly that, an evil — one of almost transcendent dimension that quite simply must be met, lest we be remembered for not meeting it . . . lest we allow it to be our judge. I agreed with most of what he said, as I often do when he’s defining matters of principle. No, more than that, I thought that he was defining principles that desperately needed defining, with a clarity that those of my own political stripe demonstrate only when they’re decrying either his policies or his character. He was making a moral proposition upon which he was basing his entire presidency — or said he was basing his entire presidency — and I found myself in the strange position of buying into the proposition without buying into the presidency, of buying into the words while rejecting, utterly, the man who spoke them.
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by La Shawn on July 28, 2004
in General
Shay has written a good post about socialism over at her blog, Crispus. She comments on an article written by a black socialist and a post by Cobb, who also offers commentary on the article, “A Reply to Bill Cosby: Only Socialism Can Save Black Youth.” Ron “Slim” Washington, of Black Telephone Workers for Justice, writes:
The class conscious black worker recognizes that the current and historical anti-social and negative aspects of black culture in general and black youth culture in particular is a result of capitalist exploitation and national oppression. The system is the principal cause of our misery and how we respond to that misery. No matter how repulsive and negative the anti social behavior may appear, they can only be resolved by the destruction of the system causing the behavior, that is, the capitalist system itself. Any other view is hopelessly utopian and ultimately serves to throw dust in our eyes as to what our principal task must be.
Righteously indignant, Shay responds:
It’s crap to read that racism and capitalism go hand in hand, when many of the world’s most racist societies are socialist. The Arab world’s silence on genocide in Sudan comes to mind. Nor are the Eurosocialist countries — with their tight immigration controls — nearly as racially diverse as America (which rankles them even more — we “inferior” mutt Americans outdo their “superior” stock on economics and power). Let’s not forget that Nazism, genocidal racism, was the German National Socialist Party.
In response to the same section, Cobb writes:
OK so there it is. Youth automatically rebel against The System. True enough, but they rebel against any and every system. This adolescent rebellion is not world historical and its impulse is not born of wisdom but confusion. This is why youth only lead youth, not adults.
And so much more. Go check them out.
by La Shawn on July 28, 2004
in General
“No, I did not hear Barack Obama’s speech because I was not watching the Democratic Convention,” I said to the third person of the morning who asked me that question.
What in the world did he say that was so important? I decided to read the much-hailed speech of the U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois to find out what all the hype is about. If Jack Ryan hadn’t been so freaky, no one would even know who Barack Obama was.
After reading some background on Obama’s “American story” as the son of an interracial couple, a fatherless childhood, his implication that “Bush lied” and his praise of John Kerry, I don’t get it. USAToday gushes:
Barack Obama, the U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois, spoke of how “my story is part of the larger American story” and how his parents gave him a first name that means ” ‘blessed,’ believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success….”
Obama drew roars of approval from the convention floor, declaring that people don’t expect government to solve all their problems but sometimes do need help: “They sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.”
So what’s new?
We all want our kids to have a decent shot in life. The question is who is responsible for giving it to them? As I continued reading the speech, I found myself agreeing with some of it. Sounding as though he were reading a speech written by a conservative, Obama said:
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by La Shawn on July 28, 2004
in General
Don’t forget to update your blogrolls with my new URL, fellow bloggers. Many of you still have the old Blog*Spot URL. I’m trying to regain my top 200 spot in the TLLC Ecosystem. I’m back to Large Mammal status (all is vanity!), but I’m ranked at #478. At the old blog, I peaked at #143 (143 out of 13,000 registered sites). Not bad.
Let me know if I neglected to add you to my blogroll, especially if you were on the old one. I had a mishap with Blogrolling and the WordPress link manager and ended up with duplicate links. I may have deleted both of yours.
This week’s Christian Carnival is up at Jeremiah’s blog. Carnival of the Vanities is also up.
According to the Washington Post (registration req.), the Democrats don’t have a message and don’t care. They’re content to let “anti-GOP sentiment run its course.” The Post cites a poll that purportedly shows “most Americans feel the nation is on the wrong track.”
You already know what I think of polls, but even a left-leaning paper like the Post knows that people won’t necessarily vote for John Kerry because they’re dissatisfied with President Bush. I’m often dissatisfied with him, but remember what I said yesterday about Kerry and water in a desert?
The Post says:
Briefing reporters, Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Calif.) said he and other Democratic campaign strategists feel they have an almost 50-50 chance of gaining the 11 seats they need to claim the House majority on Nov. 2. Matsui, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, cited a recent poll showing 56 percent of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track (while 41 percent answered “right track”).
Pressed on whether Democrats need a sharper, clearer campaign message, Matsui said: “It would not be in anyone’s interest in our party to present a message or a theme in June, July or even August. We want to wait a while.”
And here’s a shocker:
It’s official: The Democratic National Convention is not a reality-show hit.
Just-released Nielsen numbers show that television ratings for Monday night, despite the heavily touted Bill Clinton speech, were down 10 percent from the first night of the Democratic gathering in Los Angeles four years ago.
All of Clinton’s fans were probably too tired to watch the convention after struggling through his 957-page book. I was going to read it and make fun of it, but I don’t have the resolve. Check out this review.
By the way, I’m a weasel!
by La Shawn on July 27, 2004
in General
Thanks to Townhall.com linking to the transcript of a speech given at Conservative University 2004, I’ve received many new visitors today. Welcome to my weblog, my favorite hobby. Take a look around, relax and join in on the discussions if you like.
This is driving me crazy so I have to get it out. Pardon the typos (4!) in the transcript. It was for my eyes only as I prepared and read it, so I didn’t proofread it carefully. A copy was requested and in my haste to send it, I neglected to do my usual scrutinizing.
Now that I gave you my excuse, I hope you come again!
I’ve heard/seen all sorts of epithets for black conservatives, but porch ni***er is a new one. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Mike Seate was castigated for committing the crime of publicly criticizing blacks in a column titled, “Brothers, Don’t Go Messing Downtown.” In the column he wrote:
There are few times when I can recall actually being embarrassed to be black. One was when political writer Ward Connerly embarked on a campaign to end affirmative action (ah, the selflessness). Another came a few years later, when XFL running back Rod Smart jogged onto the field in the short-lived football league’s opening game wearing a grammatically challenged shirt reading “He Hate Me.”
Those infractions were relatively easy to recover from. But not shooting people in downtown Pittsburgh. That’s a screw-up this city and I might never fully get over.
If you brothers hadn’t noticed, Downtown isn’t exactly looking like floss city these days. Bums use abandoned storefronts for bedrooms, toilets and everything else. We lose new stores faster than shoplifters lose security guards. If y’all hadn’t noticed, a good bit of the city’s economic decline is your fault.
Yup. We have met the enemy, and he’s wearing corn rows, a Lakers jersey and a 9mm Glock shoved into his waistband. We can’t blame this one on the white man, an unfair economic system, or 400 years of slavery and oppression. This is our mess.
That’s some bold talk, Mike. Embarrassed by your brothers and sisters for their unruly and uncivilized behavior? And in the presence of whites who might be reading your column? And you say the enemies of black America are blacks killing other blacks and not rich, white Republicans from Texas?
How refreshing!
In today’s column, Seate writes:
People, don’t blame the messenger. Neither Bill Cosby nor I ever shot anyone Downtown. While I can’t speak for Mr. Cosby, I have not intentionally influenced black kids to drop out of school, dress like gangsters, carry guns or hang out on street corners instead of educating themselves and seeking jobs.
According to our critics, any crime or anti-social act committed by a black man is not his responsibility: “Africans were a peaceful people until the evil white man came and stole us away and remade our minds in his savage image,” one reader railed. “If we kill or rob, it’s not our fault. We’re only reacting to what the white man has taught us.”
If black people are this uncomfortable about staring our problems in the face or even discussing them, we’re in big trouble.
Excuses and scapegoats will always be easier than painful self-examination. Even Fat Albert could tell you that.
“Self-examination? What about white racists doing a little self-examination,” I can almost hear liberals whine.
Just a few minutes ago, I got an e-mail from a race preferences proponent who shared what he considered evidence of racism. An employer instructed a receptionist to mark job applications by race. Based on this episode, the e-mailer implied that applications filled out by blacks and Hispanics went in the garbage, though he couldn’t say so because he has no proof. For all he knew, the employer was marking applications to make sure he stuck to his race quota so he wouldn’t get sued.
The e-mailer concludes: “I realize affirmative action is not the perfect solution. But until we can wipe out the entrenched racism that is rampant in this country, or until someone can come up with a better solution (I’m all ears) it is a necessary imperfect solution.”
Here’s your answer, so lean in closer. Until people stop blaming others for their failures and accept some good old-fashioned responsibility, we can’t begin to address the problem of “racism.” Dealing with race discrimination, perceived or otherwise, is secondary to individual accountability.
If and when certain people engage in a little self-examination, per Seate’s advice, that’s all the answer you’ll get from me.
by La Shawn on July 27, 2004
in Rants
I don’t like polls, which is why I’ve never written about them before. Even when George Bush is ahead, I don’t get excited.
Random telephone polls are the worst. While Kerry’s suspiciously high numbers make him look good, one thing big media polls can’t fake is his lackluster personality and hollow campaign rhetoric. According to an ABC News/Washington Post, Kerry has lost ground on the big issues:
The critical convention season begins with John Kerry losing momentum at just the hour he’d like to be gaining it: President Bush has clawed back on issues and attributes alike, reclaiming significant ground that Kerry had taken a month ago.
Kerry has lost support against Bush in trust to handle five of six issues tested in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, including terrorism, Iraq, taxes and even health care. And Kerry’s ratings on personal attributes — honesty, strong leadership, consistency, empathy and others — have softened as well.
Big media’s own poll shows that Kerry is a dud. 
There is nothing “dead heat” about Bush and Kerry.
I have some problems with Bush. For instance, I don’t like the way he’s running the war in Iraq or his big government policies or his capitulation to the Democrats on judicial nominees. I think he should be more aggressive in his policies, especially since he has a Republican Congress. He’s not conservative enough for me. But he’s what we’ve got right now, and I wouldn’t vote for John Kerry even if he offered me water in a desert.
I don’t know who ABC is polling, but Kerry shouldn’t be as close as he is. For example, Republicans are traditionally stronger on national defense. In an age of Islamofascism, which is here to stay, who would trust a mealy-mouth liberal to protect America?
In a land of freedom and opportunity, why would anyone allow a man, let alone a rich one, to goad them into believing they can’t make it in America without the government’s help? Every day scientists are finding more and more proof that life growing in the womb is indeed human and precious, yet people calling themselves Christians will vote for a man who thinks women have a “right” to snuff out that life.
Those who want to hold on to socialistic paternalism will be voting for John Kerry. Those of us optimistic about our country and its opportunities will be voting for George Bush.
Socialism has slipped into the mainstream so subtly that we don’t realize a lot of what the government does is not what it’s designed to do. It’s function is not to guarantee low-cost health care and prescription drugs or college tuition. It’s role is to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic and otherwise stay out of our affairs.
Speaking of optimism, ABC grudging admits: “[M]ore see Bush as an optimist (72 percent) than Kerry (55 percent). That makes it a tricky path for Kerry — delineating the nation’s problems, economic and otherwise, without sounding more negative than the public itself.”
Tricky is the right word. For Kerry to win this election, more American soldiers have to be killed and the economy has to tank. More government schools have to fail and Bush hatred has to grow more caustic. That’s the entire Democratic platform.
Liberals must really think people are stupid at heart. If anyone believes that John Kerry’s concerned about their well-being is crazy. Liberals hate being called liberals for a reason. It’s an epithet. Why? Because they know that mainstream America doesn’t share their pessimistic views, and extremism doesn’t win elections.
I am confident George Bush will win in November. Democrats can soft-pedal it in Boston this week all they want. Their efforts will be fruitless.
by La Shawn on July 26, 2004
in Lunacy
I’m not a fan of Eugene Kane’s (registration req.), and if I were a columnist for a big newspaper writing about why liberalism is bad for America, he probably wouldn’t be a fan of mine, either.
In his latest column, “Edwards Might Hold Key To Energizing Black Vote”, Kane ponders whether Edwards’s “comfort” around black people will win them (us?) over. I don’t know about all that, but I suspect Edwards would be very uncomfortable around me.
Unlike most of the black voting bloc, I don’t like condescending “race talk.” I’ll take religious talk, occupational talk, blogger/writer talk and even gender talk, but not skin-color talk. For those who don’t understand why race is divisive and shouldn’t be part of a campaign platform, there aren’t enough words to explain it.
I couldn’t care less what Edwards’s comfort level is. All that matters to me is that he supports child-killing, race discrimination and a host of other issues incompatible with my beliefs. But some people don’t care about such things.
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