Skalduggery

Seriously, are you pansies gonna cry?

Here is what I am trying to tell you: the country is not ready for conservatism.  It flirts with it, as it did with the Bush’es and Reagan, but doesn’t fight for it.  It sits in a stupor while some goofball from Chicago openly and consciously kills the constitution.  No, ladies and gentlemen, you are not the men and women your grandparents hoped you would be.  Your old man “didn’t get his seed back”, as my Dad used to say.

Virgil and I spend a fair amount of time talking about whether the real change will come along as catastrophic, or slow-burn.  It could be either, after all.  And somehow, before all this can be resolved, it will be strong folks of character, at the local level, who put it back together.  The question I have for you is, will you take your power back, before they bankrupt you completely and put you into permanent servitude?  I don’t think you will.  But you’ll probably fight like hell for marijuana. The Daily Bayonet

Huge HatTip to the American Digest! Take a trip over to the ‘Bayonet’ and read the whole article… and according to the author it was “calculated to make some o’you pansies cry, so you might as well get started now.” I’m of a mind to write something similar with some of the same kind of old pictures of family. It would be worth doing just for my daughters – because their grandparents and great grandparents were remarkable people. Maybe it’s time we take back our communities to recreate a country.

Cheers all, and

Happy Sunday 😉

The courage to get it right?

Last year, during black history month, Eric Holder, our first black AG, called us “a nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing race. That was the single phrase seized on by many in the media, on both the right and the left, and it was the phrase used to praise or denigrate Holder’s speech and the current state of racial affairs in the United States. The speech itself was lengthy and only somewhat nuanced, but there was a lot more there than most people were willing to discuss – black or white… or any other color for that matter. Let me use a part of the same sentence where the offending phrase was found: I believe that “in too many ways,” Eric Holder was right. Whether you agree with him or not, I’d urge you to listen to the entire speech in context, or of course, read the text of the speech – much faster results.

Part of his point is that while Americans have moved to the point of working, lunching, and attending functions together, on weekends, we pretty much self segregate… and that isn’t good in his view. I am more sanguine about our progress than Holder, but I do believe he is right about our general unwillingness to discuss racial matters in an open and honest manner. Lots of reasons for that little problem, but I’d like to open up this can of worms… because “in too many ways,” not many people are willing to expose themselves to the consequences Holder so blithely suggests we all should risk.

I had several people at work try to dissuade me from heading in this direction (I often bounce some of my more controversial ideas off of several folks I know), but I thought, “Hey, screw it. This blog has had me on the carpet more than once.” And, as some of you know, I have often argued that courage is a thing to value.

Rather than throw a rant on why I think the AG is full of it, I’ll just throw out a few facts, a few statistical certainties, and wait for the charges to fly. Keep in mind here, that I am NOT offering explanations at this point, nor am I making any allegations or interpretations of the facts I’ll be laying out. I’d really like to hear what you have to say – providing you can keep the conversation civil, accurate to the best of your ability (in other words, be prepared to back it up), and really aimed at affording all of us the opportunity to get a better grasp of the realities involved.

In addition to the Bureau of Justice Statistics site, you can also find some of this information at Heather Mac Donald’s Weekly Standard article, Excusing the Oakland Rioters: Looting is not a form of civil rights protest, and the city of New York’s crime statistics.

• Blacks commit nearly 6,000 murders annually (most of whom are black), and whites & Hispanics commit a little more than 5,300 murders a year (most of whom are white or Hispanic). Whites & Hispanics comprise about 81% of the population, while blacks comprise about 13% of the population. Since the US has just over 300,000,000 people, the math is pretty straight forward. Blacks murder almost 154 people per 100,000 of their own population. Whites & Hispanics murder almost 2.2 people per 100,000. The murder rate for blacks is 70 times higher than the murder rate for whites and Hispanics.
• The 73^rd precinct in New York is mostly black, and “the per capita rate of shootings there is 81 times higher than in the mostly white 68^th precinct…”
• The police stop rate of vehicles in the 73^rd precinct is 15 times higher than in the 68^th precinct.
• In New York City, blacks “commit 80 percent of all shootings, whites 1.4 percent, though blacks are 23 percent of the population, and whites 35 percent.”
• At the beginning of 2009, there were nearly 1800 whites on death row and there were just over 1300 blacks on death row (both the white and black numbers include some Hispanics).
• During 2008, there were 20 white and 17 black people executed.

As I said earlier, at this point I’m not trying to explain these numbers, nor will I offer any interpretations of the meaning in these numbers. I’ve got questions about these and other numbers. Why are these kinds of numbers rarely if ever mentioned when discussing race in America? Especially on the “big three” news stations, PBS, NPR, CNN when their prolific little series on race air on national television? For the elites that are concerned with the brutality of the police and their unnecessary taking of black lives, why are they not equally concerned with the unnecessary taking of black lives in the inner city? Why don’t these victims get the same care and concern from our nation’s elite, the media, and the professoriate? Especially when they are so obviously more numerous?? Why doesn’t the unnecessary taking of white lives by the police rate the same air time and outrage?

Finally, in closing this post, remember, please keep the comments and email civil, and as important, let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt about our honesty and earnestness in seeking out the truth. I’ll be using the replies to guide some of my follow up posts – posts aimed more at our nation’s intellectuals than at everyday Americans.

Cheers – all of you!

I can’t really take credit for this, but I ran across it floating around on Facebook. A great hat tip to Bonnie Pharr and her friend Betty Johnson. My apologies for the small liberties I’ve taken with your wonderful writing – call it poetic license 😀

I do not like this Uncle Sam.
I do not like his health care scam.
I do not like when Congress steals.
I do not like their secret deals.

I do not like this speaker Nan.
I do not like this “YES WE CAN.”
I do not like their spending sprees.
Because I know that nothing’s free.

I do not like their smug replies
When I complain about their lies.
I do not like this kind of hope-
I do not like it NOPE NOPE NOPE!

Short, sweet, and fun. I’ll be back later with something a little more serious…

Cheers!

UPDATE: Hat Tip to Jeff – if you’ve read the comments, you’ll notice an earlier mention of our country’s budget woes. In fact, the worst since WWII! Here’s Jeff’s short hand explanation:

To give you some perspective on this story… this is like a family with an income of $23,800 a year having $130,000 in debt. On top of that, they’re spending $38,800 a year, that’s $15,000 in the hole. Oh yeah, you start paying on another $9,400 for health care next year…

Riots in 1965 and 1992

In the latest Left Exposed, Sonja takes us on a walk down Memory Lane…at least the parts that weren’t destroyed in the fiery wakes of the 1965 & 1992 Los Angeles riots, which destroyed, not just homes and businesses, but the notion that liberal politics could lift black neighborhoods to economic prosperity.  As Sonja poignantly notes, liberalism did just the opposite.

Click the image at right and take a visit through an interesting bit of Sonja’s personal history – and why she’s worried about future possibilities. I’ve written often, and some might say heatedly, about who is actually responsible for the continuing racial divide, i.e., who continues to pick the scabs and fan the flames… Here’s a calm and piercing look at this issue. Take a look at the video and tell me what you think! But please, do it before this video gets shifted to the archives out of the reach of non-subscribers.

A solicited guest column by Jeff Begley:

The Outdated, Outmoded, Old... Oh, never mind!

Revised Constitutional Preamble

The Bill of Wrongs

Amendment 1 – Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression.

Congress shall make laws disrespecting established religions, and prohibiting the free exercise thereof in public areas; and abridging the freedom of speech by calling certain speech “hate speech”, and of the press through the hilariously named “fairness doctrine”; but not the right of the people peaceably to assemble for these assemblies will simply be handled through media outlets and labeled violent, racist extremists in order to dismiss them rather than address them.

Amendment 2 – Right to Bear Arms.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall be infringed.  We will also hedge on the definition of the word militia, ignore the original intent of the founders, and make certain that once liberal hegemony is established it will be impossible to disrupt through force of arms.

Amendment 3 – Quartering of Soldiers.

Soldiers shall, in time of peace-keeping, be figuratively drawn and quartered for any mistakes made in front of a journalist.  We shall also attempt to quarter soldier pay, benefits, and at least put a dent in any honor once felt in serving the nation by claiming people only join as a last resort.

Amendment 4 – Search and Seizure.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable or even reasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause as defined by the current administration, supported by oath or affirmation of a federal judge appointed by a Democratic president, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.  Under no circumstances shall the possibility of the person being an illegal, er, undocumented… um – insufficiently-naturalized citizen be broached.

Amendment 5 – Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings.

Amendment 5 shall be phased out to make room for the implementation of an adult day-school for the reeducation of those with a diminished capacity to follow laws.  These poor souls simply need dignity and love.  Kumbaya.

Amendment 6 – Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses.

In all criminal prosecutions, if we must, the accused shall enjoy the right to a supportive and closed trial  so as not to impinge upon their sense of dignity, by an racially diverse jury with as few privileged, bigoted white people on it as possible, of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed unless we want to move it for political posturing.  It should be noted that, as in the case of the 5^th Amendment, trials are to be avoided as much as possible due to self-esteem issues they appear to cause in the accused.

Amendment 7 – Trial by Media in Civil Cases.

In cases where political opponents disagree, no civil discourse shall be initiated.  Instead, agreeable media outlets shall be engaged in order to impugn the character of said opponents in order to dismiss them as some sort of crackpot, whichever is considered the lowliest type at that particular time.  If the term “racist” can be used without fear of reprisal, it shall.

Amendment 8 – Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

Being that punishment is considered mean by those being punished and the term unusual is vague, we shall pretend to rehabilitate those poor, misguided souls who asserted their wills over the wills of others.  Only if a crime personally affects us shall we even consider punishment as an option because, hey, it’s us and not you that are suffering at that point.

Amendment 9 – Construction of Constitution.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall be construed as the absolute limits of rights retained by the people.  If the people need more rights, we will determine what they are and grant them.  Maybe.  Ok, not really.

Amendment 10 – Powers of the States and People.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people… LOL!  Okay, we were really just yanking your chain here.  Gotcha!  Seriously, the central government shall retain all the power.  States are for hillbillies clinging to their bibles and guns.

So, I was watching Bill Whittle and his cronies doing their most recent Trifecta – Regurgitation Radio: Talking Points for the Obama Nation and it described a nauseatingly weird website called My Barack Obama dot Com.  After throwing up a little in my mouth, this song came to mind… Happy Saturday!

The Cult of Personality!

Happy Saturday! Muahahahah.

This post was initially headed in the direction of parsing a little history around the word intellectual. It just didn’t come together as a single post, and I am not great at separating a long post into constituent parts – so the beginning of my posts on men of letters as they were once called, will begin next week. On the other hand, during the course of my research (actually, I was avoiding the work and watching PJTV’s Bill Whittle), I ran across a video by a guy over at PJTV that gave a graduation commencement address that is unlikely to be heard. You might have heard of this guy; his name is Bill Whittle.

My generation was pampered beyond good sense, we were molly coddled and told a pack of lies – all with good intentions – “yes, you’re a special, unique, creative little soul…” and as a consequence, I wonder if we have failed our own children by placing notions of self-esteem above both common sense and reality. Have we done our children a disservice? Bill Whittle’s recent serving of Afterburner: Graduation Nation, really hits the mark. It’s another installment that is worth the ten minutes it takes to watch it, and it strikes at least tangentially on my topic of intellectuals…

Part of what has motivated me to write a series on intellectuals is in response to current “experts,” both within and without our current administration, speaking ex cathedra on matters us common folk simply wouldn’t understand. Online, print, and video articles seem to have taken up this topic with a certain verve. I’ve also just about finished a couple of books that have seriously sparked my interest and curiosity. The first is Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, and Technicians by Tevi Troy. The second is by an author whom I greatly admire, Thomas Sowell, and his newest book is Intellectuals and Society.

I often find it depressing that many will use “quotable quotes” from books or movies without understanding both the author’s intent and the context of quotation. I have been guilty of this on too many occasions, and I understand the desire. For example, in keeping with the subject on both counts, a common Thomas Jefferson quote used throughout the media from blogs to movies is: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” This is from a letter written to William Smith while Jefferson was in Paris, dated November 13, 1787. A more complete quote that reveals some of the context is illuminating:

What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Link to the letter

Changes the tenor of the quote just a little bit, hey? I was honored by my oldest daughter when she called one day and said, “Dad, you’ve got to watch The Rock! You’re the Ed Harris character. Get it. Watch it.” So I got it. I watched it. And was flattered beyond measure – and yet hoped that I was more like the Michael Biehn or Sean Connery character. Now I’m not so sure, and I think my daughter had a better insight into her old man than, well, the old man did. Ed Harris uses Jefferson’s line (only a part) in protest of lying and uncaring government. He and Sean Connery’s characters were thinkers, men of letters, intellectuals. Where have our intellectuals gone wrong? As a teaser for what’s to come, I’ll share something out of Thomas Sowell’s preface to his book:

Distinguished professors, gifted poets, and influential journalists summoned their talents to convince all who would listen that modern tyrants were liberators and that their unconscionable crimes were noble, when seen in the proper perspective. Whoever takes it upon himself to write an honest intellectual history of the twentieth-century Europe will need a strong stomach.

But he will need something more. He will need to overcome his disgust long enough to ponder the roots of this strange and puzzling phenomenon. ~Professor M. Lilla, Columbia University, in his book The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics

Certainly the defense of both Mao and Lenin by our last few crops of intellectuals is confusing… considering that together they have killed their millions, in fact, more than all of America’s war casualties on both sides. A strong stomach indeed.

So family, friends, and readers all, remember, though I gave up religion for lent, I still find wonderful verses in the bible – as I still read it. Remember I Corinthians 9:24-27:

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

Remember to watch the video! Click a picture or the link at the top of the post.

Tear me up in the comments 😀

Cheers all

Stephen Kruiser gets down and nasty with with current events. He hits all my favorites… Nancy Pelosi, Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman, and sooo much more! Really, take a trip to PJTV and spend 15 minutes watching a decidedly sharp bit of fun with the left. And hey, I always like it when someone else does the work… Click the picture, Click the picture!!

Cheers

I answer, that it is assuming very much more. There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action: and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right. ~J.S. Mill in “On Liberty”

I am a huge fan of John Stuart Mill –  despite the fact that he pretty much loathed conservatives. Classical liberals are the kind I like –  the ones that believed truth was ultimately subversive. But here, Mill is responding to the contention that it is essentially proper to “forbid bad men to pervert society by the propagation of opinions which we regard as false and pernicious.” He defended free speech because he believed that truth would ultimately prevail, and that the market place of ideas is necessary because absolute certainty can rarely be found. Building that market place is a hard thing to do, maintaining that market place in the face of political ideology is a fearsome chore.

Why am I entertaining an entry like this? I’m hoping it’s close to a self-evident truth –  ask yourself why our current administration is so rabidly opposed to using words like terrorist, radical Islam, Jihadist, etc. Or for that matter, why policy wonks, politicians, and university administrators and department heads would tie research funds (any funding for that matter) to ideological purity? What in the world happened to Karl Popper’s notion of empirical falsification? Why are social scientists so loathe to actually seek contradictory evidence to a pet theory? I would suggest that it’s simply a matter of the left wanting to squelch honest debate and reasonable inquiry.

From a Spanish language newspaper, La Vanguardia, Woody Allen said, “it would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.” Ok, that’s a nut case movie director… How about MSNBC’s Chris Matthews? You know, the guy that just won’t get off of Obama’s leg? “Why doesn’t the president go in there, nationalize an industry and get the job done for the people?” asks Matthews on Monday’s  Hardball. I don’t even feel like chasing down the New York Times editorial that suggested we should be more like China…

Why am I entertaining an entry like this? Because an online buddy sent me a flier that concerned the education of government workers about race. Why are blacks “over-represented” in prisons? Is the use of the death penalty discriminating against blacks? Is it possible that some test scores for advancing firemen actually reflected preparation for the test rather than discrimination against people of color? Is the received wisdom actually true? Or has the truth been squelched for the purpose of not permitting its refutation? Perhaps.

…the logic of validation in the social sciences is identical to that of the other sciences.

But you wouldn’t know this from social sciences as it is, by and large, practiced today… and while there is no doubt some good work being done in each of the social sciences, the general state of attempts to understand human behavior has degenerated to the point that it is far from clear that we are better off for their existence.

There are many reasons for this, but primary is the massive infusion of political ideology into the social sciences. Nearly all of the essays included here concern issues for which ideological desire has replaced curiosity as the prime mover.  ~Steven Goldberg in “Fads and Fallacies in the Social Sciences”

White Devil

Think about some of these and prepare to challenge your own assumptions about the received wisdom you walk around with each day. Let us see if the facts are worth finding. Let us see if we can search out the truth for the purpose of action. And to challenge some of the received wisdom of the day, here’s another video from Zonation over at PJTV concerning Blanco Diablo: Fear & Loathing & Hatred & Racism in Arizona. As usual, PJTV won’t let me embed their video, but take a trip over and watch Zo –  it’s a great bit of mockumentary.

And speaking of those white devils, there was a great article in The Weekly Standard a bit ago about “The Critical Trio” –  the chuckle heads from the Frankfort School –  that were pretty much opposed to “tolerance, democracy, and free speech.” I’ll close this bit of rant with his most excellent closing:

It is, perhaps, even more striking to observe the degree to which the group’s key thesis—the notion that the freedoms and prosperity offered by the United States and other advanced industrial societies are meaningless because they lack spiritual depth or, as Marcuse put it, are “one-dimensional”—has been taken up not by scholars eager to publish books about “late capitalism” but by true believers determined to destroy what some of them call “the Great Satan.”~James Seaton in “The Weekly Standard“

This is a video found by my buddy Dan, with many thanks! Though I’ve got the album (CD to those younger than I), I didn’t know about this beautiful tribute with slides to a wonderful song. So for today’s post, please take the time to watch a quiet song honoring our fallen citizen soldiers, and perhaps it’ll jerk a few tears from you as it did me. While you’re at it, drop on by for a look at my online buddy Tom’s entries at Responsibility – Freedom Demands It… the second has another video that is well worth the time it takes to watch it.

Strength, Honor, Courage

~The Skald