A courageous man.
It's just honesty. He admits that black people have access to services that white people do not. I do not begrudge him personally for any of this, though, because he is courageously promoting truth-telling.
LOL... "I'm handsome."
City Journal's Myron Magnet points out that Obama had a chance to use his good fortune as the first black President to correct the impression that in the United STates blacks will always be an underclass of victims. It is so sad that he chose instead to stoke resentment among hate groups, even inviting representatives of one of them to the White House.
It seemed to me that Obama had a unique opportunity to speak about values and virtues to this minority of African Americans—to tell them that his own life exemplified how in twenty-first century America you could get an education, work hard, get married, be an attentive husband and father, and maybe even become president of the United States. How disappointing that he chose the other tack, stoking grievance and resentment over supposed victimization by all authority, whether from teachers, cops, or potential employers. He and his attorneys general went sniffing out evidences of racism everywhere, and demonizing the police. Even after five officers were assassinated by an enraged black murderer in Dallas, he said, inaccurately, falsely, and callously: “There are legitimate issues that have been raised, and there’s data and evidence to back up the concerns that are being expressed by these [Black Lives Matter] protesters. And if police organizations and departments acknowledge that there’s a problem and there’s an issue, then that, too, is going to contribute to real solutions. And, as I said yesterday, that is what’s going to ultimately help make the job of being a cop a lot safer. It is in the interest of police officers that their communities trust them and that the kind of rancor and suspicion that exists right now is alleviated.”
As an apt followup to my post about what Black Lives Matter is really all about, this is a short exchange between a journalist who is too limp-wristed to condemn a hateful ideology and a Sheriff, David Clarke, who is not.
If you are a mouse or a 21st century American I have some advice for you: learn to identify traps, then don't take the bait.
While driving down the road, several of my sons and I were watching some 20-somethings put up Black Lives Matter yard-signs in a neighborhood around West 150th Street in Cleveland. My oldest son stated it best. "Everyone believes that black people count just as much as whites, except for racists. So when someone says to you 'Black lives matter' what they really mean to say to you is 'You're a racist.' It's just an accusation."
He's right obviously. It's the same leftist abuse of language which infects the pathetic chant of the Occupy Movement "We. Are. The Ninety-nine Percent!!" But they're not; they are a tiny sliver of the American populace. They may speak for somewhere between 5% and 15% of the victicrat population, but that's probably generous of me.
Unfortunately some people who aren't anywhere near the fringe left have taken the rhetorical bait. The group Blue Lives Matter is one which I heartily support, but Oh! how I wish they hadn't named themselves that. Once you realize that saying "Black Lives Matter" is really a challenge which could be phrased as the question, "Are you going to support us or the police?", then saying "Blue Lives Matter" can be interpret as answering "No, I don't support you; I support the Police." It is a way to inadvertently perpetuate the perception that the police are out to get anyone who is black. That perception is a win for BLM and left's booming victim industry.
The latest abuse of this comes from the Charles Sheldon-style Protestant Socialist contingent in the form of WWJD-ing the rhetoric. The first place I saw this was a Facebook placard which simply appropriated the voice of Christ saying things like "Jesus didn't say all lives matter, He said leper's lives matter. Jesus didn't say all lives matter, He said the poor's lives matter." And on and on. The truth is that Our Lord didn't speak in hashtags and soundbites at all, and that is the best counterpoint here. One could point out the many times that Jesus used universal language (ever hear of John 3:16?) but I'd be wary of taking the bait.
The other place I saw something similar was a Patheos article which I won't even link to. It actually uses the Beatitudes in an attempt to make a similar point. It has a cartoon of Christ saying "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and a listener objecting "No, Jesus! Blessed are we ALL!" So the message is that anyone who says "All lives matter" is telling Jesus to shut up. One could point out that none of the Beatitudes mention race, but again, I think that getting into a theological discussion on this is getting into pearls/swine territory and we know how that ends. It's best to stay in one piece.
The voice of the Satanic mob. "What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? NOW!"
Here's the petition asking Bill DeBlasio to resign as Mayor. I don't see why you have to be from New York to sign it. As long as you believe in the restoration of order you should want this man to step down and go teach at a university or do basket-weaving seminars.
Chris Johnson explains why a white Bosnian guy was killed by juveniles with hammers who just so happened to be black and Hispanic: lack of hammer control laws.
Me, I blame Missouri’s inexcusably-nonexistent hammer control laws. There are no database checks, no waiting periods, nothing. If any of you ever wanted to buy a hammer, all you’d have to do is to fly into Missouri, visit a hardware store and take your hammer home with you. And since Missouri also doesn’t have any concealed hammer carry laws, you can carry your hammer anywhere around here that you care to go.
You have a bunch of black kids and a Hispanic kid who just happened to have hammers on them and who just happened to beat a white Bosnian to death with those hammers which they just happened to have on them. Yeah, I can’t see any racial motivation whatsoever in this attack. Racist.
It's OK to lie about what happened at a crime scene because, you know, white people. They're scum; down with 'em! If your lie ends up starting the avalanche whereby your entire town is destroyed... oh well, I guess.
Riots broke out in Missouri this past week in large part based on the eyewitness testimony of Dorian Johnson, who saw his friend Michael Brown shot and killed by local police. According to USA Today, Johnson claims Brown was fleeing and the officer shot him in the back.
According to Johnson, the officer pursued Brown and fired another shot. which struck Brown in the back. He said Brown turned and faced the officer with his hands raised.
However, this testimony contradicts the autopsy report by New York City’s former chief medical examiner, Dr. Michael Baden. Dr. Baden told The New York Times the autopsy found that Brown was struck 6 times — four shots in the right arms and two in the head. The final bullet hit Brown in the top of the head indicating his head was bent forward.
Baden said, “It can be because he’s giving up, or because he’s charging forward at the officer.”
Whoa! I told you these Ferguson protestors aren't going to crawl back under their rocks if Wilson isn't indicted. They are not going to let a crisis go to waste, that's for sure. Conn Carroll from Townhall.com seems to agree with me. Excerpt:
"This is not a black and white thing," Ferguson activist Angela Whitman told CNN after The New York Times story Friday, "this is about what's right and wrong. St. Louis is in trouble, because if this is what Darren Wilson said, and they believe him, St. Louis is going to burn."
Whitman's let it burn attitude seemed to be the prevailing sentiment among Brown supporters this Sunday when they harassed people outside a St. Louis Rams game, holding the American flag upside down, while punching and spitting on passers by.
Will the violence at the next Rams game be worse or better now that it is becoming clearer Wilson will not be indicted? If it does get worse, it is hard to see how more leaks could possibly prevent a full blown riot.
I must confess that I have no interest in this Ferguson story. It's the same-old race-baiting thing that happened with Zimmerman/Martin but with one idiot instead of two idiots.
But Kevin Jackson has written something worth reading. I agree with him, and have for a long time, that most of the racism in this country is black racism. Black racism is enabled by political correctness which believes that racism can only be present in whites. Or, possibly, any racism shown by the member of a minority is justified somehow.
At any rate, this racism is so irrational that it actually makes black people believe that any black is better than any white, and that the best result for them is to have more blacks in charge.
Cities are replete with black folks in charge of other black folks: Black aldermen, black city councilmen, majority black school boards (maybe one token white), black mayors, and the real shot-callers known as the Congressional Black Caucus.
Add to this a black president and a black attorney general, and you have a cornucopia of black power, all of which has led to devastation in the black community. And how is the life of Michael Brown celebrated in the black community? Looting.
You'd think by now black Liberals would have had enough of black leadership, because all they need to do is look at the evidence.
Obama has run the nation into the ground; and as I wrote a while back, if you want a recipe for failure in a municipality, elect a black Liberal.
When will black people select who is best for the job, regardless of color?
While in prison the second time, my friend learned to read. He was taught to read by an old white lady, and she taught him to read from the Bible.
He explained to me that this woman was his first real interaction with a white person, as he had robbed all the others. He described the care in which she took to make sure that he learned how to read properly.
He said that learning to read from the Bible taught him lessons beyond putting words together, lessons he would apply the next time he was released.
He's out of prison and a solid citizen, because of an old white woman.
My friend says this old white lady made the most impact in his life to date. Up to the point of meeting this old lady, my friend thought of white people as evil. He learned upon reflection that many of his black "friends" were not friends at all. They were enablers of his self-destruction and catalysts to his destruction.
Navarrette's piece asks the same rhetorical question which every other sensible person is asking about the Chris Lane murder, but he rightly focuses the blame toward the media itself. The laugh line is great...
Meanwhile, where is President Obama's awkward statement that, if he had a friend from Australia, he might look like Chris Lane?
What is the media supposed to do about all this? There's a debate over when to mention race and when to leave it out. The longstanding rule in journalism is that we shouldn't mention the race of someone accused of committing a crime unless it is relevant to the story.
That rule seems half-baked. Why wouldn't a suspect's race be "relevant" -- especially when that suspect is still at large and the police need the public's help in locating him? It's a human characteristic. Would we leave out of a story any mention of one's gender or age, so we're not accused of sexism or ageism?
Self-censorship isn't the answer. When a horrendous crime like this happens, we need more information not less.
Besides, once we sanitize the news, or manipulate it to serve an agenda, it's no longer news. It's public relations.
Or worse. Think of it as nanny journalism. Too many people in my profession have strayed from the mission of reporting what happened -- or in my field of opinion writing, telling you what we think about what happened -- to massaging what happened in order to advance some greater societal good. And when journalists -- either on our own, or at the direction of the people we work for -- impersonate social workers, we ask for trouble.
We also surrender our credibility. And once that's gone, why should anyone listen to anything we say ever again?
A Commissioner in North Caroline says "No white males." Hispanic males are OK. What about White Hispanics? Unclear. I'm guessing it's a down vote.
Ooooooh, so angry. You can feel it right below the surface. She probably had a crush on a white guy once. Poor baby.
Here's an idea just in case you have to make a 911 call because you are being attacked. If you carry around Pantone color gauges like this one you can just give the 911 operator the Pantone color code for your attacker's skin color. That way when the media replays the 911 tape it will sound sort of like this: "Skin color is PANTONE 18-1142, or maybe closer to 18-1140." That way you can identify the perps coloration in a precise manner without using any language which could be construed to be racial or racist in any way.
Juan Williams starts off his sensible piece about the Trayvon Martin over-reaction like this:
The shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida has sparked national outrage, with civil rights leaders from San Francisco to Baltimore leading protests calling for a new investigation and the arrest of the shooter.
But what about all the other young black murder victims? Nationally, nearly half of all murder victims are black. And the overwhelming majority of those black people are killed by other black people. Where is the march for them?
Where is the march against the drug dealers who prey on young black people? Where is the march against bad schools, with their 50% dropout rate for black teenaged boys? Those failed schools are certainly guilty of creating the shameful 40% unemployment rate for black teens.
The race-baiters argue this case deserves special attention because it fits the mold of white-on-black violence that fills the history books. Some have drawn a comparison to the murder of Emmett Till, a black boy who was killed in 1955 by white racists for whistling at a white woman.
The Martin case is very different from the Emmett Till case, in which a white segregationist Mississippi society approved of the murder of a black child. Black America needs to get out of the rut of replaying racial injustices of the past.
Dennis Prager delivers devastating clarity on the continued race card playing by the left, especially the NAACP. Here's a taste:
One year and eight months after the president's election, one can say with certitude that the election of a black has done nothing to change the dominant story (because the Left dominates our stories) about American racism. It is as central to the liberal/Left depiction of America now as it has been since the civil rights era.
But there is one very big difference. The vast majority of non-blacks no longer cower before the charge of racism. You can see it in the anger and ferocity of various tea parties' responses to the false accusation of the NAACP. Before the election of Obama, an NAACP attack on one's anti-racist credentials might have been debilitating. No more.
It seems quite possible that the NAACP has now lost whatever moral clout it had among Americans. It is now seen by more and more Americans as what in fact it became some time ago―an abuser of its civil rights moral cachet.
Therefore, if the NAACP's preoccupation with white racism reflects the thinking of most or even many blacks, it means that there is nothing white America can do to undo the ongoing perception of endemic racism in this country―a perception that is now considerably more destructive to blacks than to American society as a whole.
Earlier this week our post-racial president himself embraced race with the sole intent of influencing an election. Obama left out middle aged, white, male voters calling on "young people, African Americans, Latinos and women," to vote for Democrats in November.
"Post-racial" my butt!
In case President Obama's current CTO, Aneesh Chopra, doesn't work out, I think I found a possible replacement on the Fail Blog of all places.
see more Fail Blog
Rakim from Oakland explains why "computers are racist" and doesn't just call white people to account for it, but blames the Chinese as well. His rhetoric is simple and easy to understand. He should run for office.
Sowell is right; Obama is not "post-racist", whatever that means. He's just a race-baiter with more self-control and cleverness than Jackson and Sharpton. He wears a mask of rhetoric as Sowell points out in his conclusion.
An 18th century philosopher said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act I am forced to take it off." Barack Obama's mask slipped for a moment last week but he quickly recovered, with the help of the media. But we should never forget what we saw.
