Lowery Divides Us

The Race Business is alive and well. I was at work, watching the markets dive during the installation ceremonies for Obama, so I did not hear Lowery’s speech (I will not honor it with the appellation “benediction”).

I was beginning to be persuaded by people whose thoughts I admire like David Horowitz who said:

...as conservatives who have been through the culture wars -- we need to get past the mixed feelings we will inevitably have as the nation marks its progress in moving away from the racial divisions and divisiveness of the past. These feelings come not from resistance to the change, but from the knowledge that this celebration should have taken place decades ago and that its delay was not least because our opponents saw political advantage in playing the race card against us and making us its slandered targets.

Despite repeated messages from the black spokesmen that told us they would continue to play the race card … after all, if they can’t do their jobs, they will be unemployed; I saw a glimmer of hope that the corner may have been turned.

How disappointing to have that dream shattered during the inauguration by this brutal reminder:

Lowery on ME and every other white man or woman:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around...when yellow will be mellow... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.

This is the Black Leadership way. Their reason for being. Their rice bowl. The “when did you stop beating your wife” moment.

And shook me back to reality.

Are Boston firemen scamming the system?

Via Boston Globe:

Between 2003 and 2006, the city paid $43.5 million to hundreds of firefighters on injury leave - all of it tax-free. Among the recipients: 132 firefighters who collected more than $100,000 each during that period. Of those, 20 received between $200,000 and $337,000, according to a Globe analysis of city payroll records.
...
Taken together, nearly 20 percent of the department's payroll goes to fund injured leave and overtime pay.
...
Injured-leave pay is full wages, tax-free. Disability pensions are 72 percent of pay, also tax-free.
...
Fire Commissioner Roderick L. Fraser, who took the post 13 months ago, said he was astonished to learn recently about what he describes as an abuse of the system - that scores of men remained on injured leave status for two, three, or four years before department officials and then the Boston Retirement Board processed their disability retirement applications.

...

Despite claiming he is "permanently disabled," firefighter Albert Arroyo is a bodybuilder.

Thanks to the economic slump, cities will no longer be able to afford this abuse.

Where's the Hope and Change?

I can't figure it out. The Hope and Change President is -according to the AP - all about the old virtues...

New president cites old virtues, familiar comforts

Is this the change we have been waiting for?

US markets tank on Obama inauguration day.

via Bloomberg:

U.S. stocks sank, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst Inauguration Day decline, as speculation banks must raise more capital sent financial shares to an almost 14-year low.
...
The Dow’s 4 percent slide was the most on an Inauguration Day in the measure’s 112-year history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

Looks like Hope and Change are not enough.

Now tell the oceans to recede, Barry.

Thumb sucker by Howard Kurtz, soon to be unemployed.

That Shrinking Feeling: Time, Newsweek Narrow Their Focus

The rival editors are turning out weeklies that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal. They are pursuing a more elite audience, in print and on the Web, abandoning the old Henry Luce notion of catering to the masses. It is nothing less than a survival strategy.

Having become the official media voice of the Democrat party, Time and Newsweek are trying to find a formula that will keep them in business.

Most of the magazines that do this are charity cases underwritten by wealthy patrons, not magazines that depend on mass readership.

For Another View: David Horowitz: Celebration today, vigilance tomorrow

With this I agree in part:

...as conservatives who have been through the culture wars -- we need to get past the mixed feelings we will inevitably have as the nation marks its progress in moving away from the racial divisions and divisiveness of the past. These feelings come not from resistance to the change, but from the knowledge that this celebration should have taken place decades ago and that its delay was not least because our opponents saw political advantage in playing the race card against us and making us its slandered targets.

If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it. If Americans now have accepted an African American to lead their country in war and peace that is in part because an hysterically maligned Republican made two African Americans his secretaries of state. And if, after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts, race has continued to be a divisive factor in our politics over the last 40 years that is because the generation of Sharpton and Jackson and their liberal supporters have made it so. What conservatives need to recognize in getting past these feelings (and therefore to celebrate) is that because of this political reality, it is only they themselves who could end it.

Perhaps, in the same sense that only Nixon could have gone to China, only Obama could marginalize the race hustlers on the Left.

Horowitz is hopeful, I am less so.

Bush's Real Sin Was Winning in Iraq

William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal editorial page:

In a few hours, George W. Bush will walk out of the Oval Office for the last time as president. As he leaves, he carries with him the near-universal opprobrium of the permanent class that inhabits our nation's capital. Yet perhaps the most important reason for this unpopularity is the one least commented on.


APHere's a hint: It's not because of his failures. To the contrary, Mr. Bush's disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.
...
it's easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago -- and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn't he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- the man who will be sworn in as vice president today -- didn't limit himself to his own opinion. Days before the president announced the surge, Joe Biden suggested to the Washington Post he knew the president's people had also concluded the war was lost. They were, he said, just trying to "keep it from totally collapsing" until they could "hand it off to the next guy."

...

...our new president will learn that when you make a mistake, the keepers of the Beltway's received orthodoxies will make you pay dearly.

But it will not even be close to the price you pay for ignoring their advice and succeeding.

The Dis-Membered States of America

The kids who editorialize in the Virginian Pilot now want us to unite in support of their candidate for President. In Washington, a new day dawns

It is a day when a good man leaves office and an enigma appears. A pretty face spouting empty promises to make everything new and fresh again. And the Pilot asks for something it was not willing to give.

It is a moment of historic resonance that all Americans, regardless of how they voted on Election Day, should both celebrate and hold in solemn regard. It is a moment - one in a precious, steady stream of moments - that draws us closer to our nation's preamble, to our aspiration "to form a more perfect union."

I wish I could join them, but I will not. My conscience will not let me. This nation has been torn apart by the the people at the Pilot, the rest of the MSM and Hollywood. The wounds are too deep and scars too many.

The well has been poisoned and we will not drink from it.

There will be no union until this generation passes away.

Pravda was a beacon of journalistic truth and technical prowess compared with the Virginian Pilot

Mayor Admits to Homosexual Relationship with Intern

Another in a "guess the party affiliation" series.

PORTLAND, Ore. - More than a year after denying it, newly sworn-in Mayor Sam Adams admitted on Monday to lying about a sexual relationship he had with a teenager for several months during the summer of 2005.

In a phone interview with KATU, Adams apologized for not being honest to the public about his relationship with Beau Breedlove, whom he said was 18 at the time they had sex.

"I want to publicly acknowledge a mistake I made, and I want to apologize for it," said Adams, who was in Washington D.C. for Tuesday's inauguration.

Note that the story was first printed in a weekly, not a daily paper.

The statement came after the Willamette Week newspaper broke the story about Adams' untruthfulness Monday afternoon

It's the old "I was only mentoring" story:

At the time, he said he simply acted as a mentor to Breedlove, pictured above.

So what did he say at the time?

He told KATU then that suggesting anything else about the relationship was an attempt at political assassination.

At the time, he also wrote an "Open Letter to Portlanders" to respond to the controversy, calling it simply "ugly politicking."

So how did the relationship develop? It's the old story, boy meets boy, boy waits for boy to turn 18, boy gets boy.

In the phone interview with KATU, Adams gave a candid account of how the two met, saying Breedlove was a legislative intern working at the Capitol in Salem who looked like a professional rather than a teenager. The two had lunch in 2005, during which Adams learned Breedlove was two months shy of his 18th birthday.

Adams said he told the teen he did not date underage people. They stayed in contact and later in the summer went on a few dates once Breedlove was 18, Adams said.

"Looked like a professional?"

But it's all right because he said he was sorry.

"I want to apologize to the people of Portland for my dishonesty," he said. "I should have been truthful from the beginning."

He added that he had asked Breedlove, who is now 21, to lie about the relationship and that was a mistake. Adams said he never told his colleagues, staff, friends or even family about the sex. He added that he remains friends with Breedlove.

"I just hope people will accept my apology and take a whole view of my public service career," Adams said.

His whole public service career includes lying and having sex with an intern. In certain circles that's a resume enhancement. "Make a better mayor having learned from his mistake?"

There is not one, not one, not one party affiliation label. That is a dead give away.

I Pledge to Ridicule Celebrities Who Refuse to Recognize We Are At War With People Who Want to Kill Them, Too

Here the self-important grandees tell us that we MUST all pull together. Count the number of "I"s.

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I

MySpace Celebrity and Katalyst present The Presidential Pledge


Bullshit.

Excerpt:

This video illustrates that the current celebrity class are not citizens but serfs. They need a leader to put their minds in the right place to do the right thing. They are not heroic individualists seeking to extend America’s promise but conformists who chose to sit out and complain during the tough years in order to ensure their guy got in the next go-around.

The celebrity decadence during the “oppressive” Bush years was world class. The clubs raged. The boutique hotels rocked. The private jet industry at Van Nuys airport flourished. The party never stopped. And only a precious few (Thank you, dearly!!!) stepped up to support the American troops who have been valiantly fighting for Hollywood’s right to do lines off of each others’ buttocks at $10 million Hollywood Hills mansions.

Moore’s nauseating video — which, like Steven Soderbergh’s “Oceans” franchise, grants a pristine look into the modern celebrity’s sense of self-importance — is not a sign of desire to serve the country under Obama. Watch, by March this pledge like New Year’s resolutions will fall by the wayside. It is a sign that the Democrat is in the White House now. It is a sign that they get to sleep again in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Breibart ends with:

Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell.

I agree with part. All of them can go to hell.

Charles Rangel and the Harlem Tax Revolt of ’09. By Evan Coyne Maloney.

Where Hamas Gets Its Money

The $7 billion to $10 billion that the Palestinian Authority has received since 1993 has come from the European Union, the U.N., the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other Arab League countries. France alone has sent more than $3 billion. This influx of cash has done little to advance the development of a viable Palestinian state or of peace in the region. Rather, it has helped to fuel the Palestinian leadership's terrorist agenda, and kept the Palestinian people oppressed and disenfranchised.

This should surprise no one.

The Cost of the Inauguration: A Cold Wind Blows

Over the next few years, we're going to see the traditional DC game of Political Chairs played by Republicans and Democrats, with fervently held opinions and outrages abandoned in favor of new, more convenient opinions and outrages. It's a normal human thing to be captured by convenience, but Washington DC seems especially immune to the idea of categorical imperatives.

Two columns by Media Matters' Eric Boehlert (latest via Steve Benen) capture this "...aaaaand switch!" dynamic quite well. In 2005, Boehlert was outraged at Bush's inauguration.

He wrote, "The D.C. press corps failed to ask hard questions about the inauguration's huge cost and its unprecedented security."
He emphasized a poll that showed Americans would have preferred a smaller inaugural party (did the Washington Post even bother doing one of those this time around?).
He attacked "the costly security overkill" which "clearly plays to Bush's political advantage by keeping terrorist threats at the top of people's minds."
He criticized the media for only reporting confirmed numbers, rather than using the speculative, uncomfirmed numbers that had been named in some places.
He puts "the real cost at closer to $70 million, instead of the media's preferred $40 million."
Flash forward to 2009 and Eric Boehlert is feeling the Change.

Rather than criticizing the huge cost and unprecedented security of the 2009 inauguration, Boehlert attacks the media for using inadequate numbers for the 2005 inauguration, putting Obama's 2009 inauguration in a comparatively bad light.
After spending 2005 criticizing the media for not using the speculative, unconfirmed numbers cited in some places, Boehlert is suddenly aghast that the media is using speculative, unconfirmed (but entirely reasonable) numbers.
The "real cost" of Bush's 2005 inaugural has gone from "closer to $70 million" (Boehlert, 2005) to "$157 million" (Boehlert, 2009).
Not a word about security "overkill".
Mind you, neither of Boehlert's articles is really wrong, per se. You can be outraged about the enormous cost of a party for a politician and outraged about the press' inability to understand the numbers involved.

But the difference between these two articles is certainly instructive about the sincerity of his outrage over unconfirmed numbers, the cost of an inauguration and security overkill.

It's time to pray for global warming, says Flint Journal columnist John Tomlinson

If you're wondering why North America is starting to resemble nuclear winter, then you missed the news.

At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"

I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right.


The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.

Read the whole thing.

Video: Al Arabiya Studio Used As Rocket Launching Site

Via Little Green Footballs

Al Arabiya reporter Hannan al-Masri is live on the air in Gaza when she is told that Hamas has just fired rockets from inside the Al Arabiya studio building, news which apparently strikes her as quite humorous.

Should America Offer Asylum to European and Canadian Jews?

Via Kenneth Anderson:

I wonder if the time has come for the United States to offer political asylum to the Jews of Canada, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe?

Mark J. comments:

Gee, Hitler must be crowing with glee to his Nazi minions down in the Ninth Circle of Hell.

"Europe will soon be Jew-free and, of all people, it was my enemies who'll have driven them out. A Judenrein Europe took 70 more years than I planned, but I have still won! Never doubt your Fuehrer!"

All the while, Christians continue to be bashed here by the Left and other assorted atheists for wishing to aid Israel for biblical reasons.

Mainstream Media Supports Holder, Thinks He's Learned His Lesson.

The take on Eric Holder's participation in pardons of terrorists and tax cheats.

The American Prospect:

I think Mr. Holder's may actually make him a better steward of the Department of Justice because he has learned a hard lesson

NY Times:

I've learned from that experience. I think that, as perverse as this might sound, I will be a better attorney general, should I be confirmed, having had the Mark Rich experience.

The LA Times:

But that error isn't disqualifying if Holder can demonstrate that he has learned a lesson

Imagine another leader in this situation…

“I have the experience; I have the qualifications having already been a global leader. I have learned from my mistakes.” A. Hitler.

Lessons learned:

o Don’t invade Russia.
o Don’t declare war on the US.
o Treat the Jews better.
o Stop while you’re ahead.

Come on, give the guy a break. We all make mistakes.

Global Warming Update: Ice forming around Flight 1549.

Sonar crews looking for an engine that dropped off the US Airways jet that ditched in the Hudson River faced a new challenge Saturday: thickening river ice.

The Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had two survey boats out on the frigid river Saturday hunting for the lost engine.

They planned to be out until sunset, but were wary of ice forming near the shoreline and flowing down river.

The aluminum boats can't work in ice, and the floes can damage the sensitive electronic devices that send out sonar signals.

Can't wait for Hansen's frantic predictions to come true.

James Hansen Preaches: President 'has four years to save Earth'

From the very Left wing Guardian:

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added.

Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns in the near future. "We cannot afford to put off change any longer," said Hansen. "We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."

Unfortunately for Hansen, it's getting colder and ice is increasing,, and - trust me on this - that's NOT a good thing.

Obama hosting pricey party in a dicey economy

You know what “CYA” means don’t you? Since this is a blog and the long arm of the censor does not reach – yet – it means “cover your ass.” And that is what the AP is doing.

Having been criticized by some conservatives for failing to note that Team Obama is planning to spend as much as $150 million for his inauguration parties, and having been the megaphone of choice for Democrats and the Left when Bush was criticized for the cost if his inauguration ($40 million), the AP has written a column about the cost. It’s in CYA mode and will claim, “sure, we covered the criticism.”

The price tag for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration gala is expected to break records, with some estimates reaching as high as $150 million. Despite the bleak economy, however, Democrats who called on President George W. Bush to be frugal four years ago are issuing no such demands now that an inaugural weekend of rock concerts and star-studded parties has begun.

Please don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. These stories were created and amplified by the MSM who went to the usual suspects to get their quotes.

But the criticism isn’t so much about the cost of the “Big O” extravaganza. It’s about the everlasting double standard the press uses.

That is why the MSM’s role as gatekeeper needs to be destroyed. We don’t need a coterie of people telling the rest of is what the debate should be about; what’s permissible to discuss and what’s not.

And that’s why we cheer when the financial world collapses around these gatekeepers. We don’t wish them ill (well some of us do for all the harm they have done), we want them gone.