Strive for Excellence

This story makes me exceedingly happy.

Today, Strive Asset Management (“Strive”) launches with the mission of restoring the voices of everyday citizens in the American economy by leading companies to focus on excellence over politics. Strive is led by co-founder and Executive Chairman Vivek Ramaswamy and has raised over $20 million from some of America’s most prominent venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Strive aims to solve a fiduciary problem created by the three largest U.S. asset managers — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — which control over $20 trillion in assets, exceeding the total U.S. gross domestic product. These “Big 3” firms bear a fiduciary duty to advance the best interests of their clients. Yet in the name of “stakeholder capitalism,” they use their clients’ funds to exercise decisive influence over nearly every U.S. public company to advance political ideologies that many of their clients disagree with. They engage in coordinated efforts to enact a uniform social agenda across corporate America resulting in higher gas prices and other consumer harms, which Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich recently called “the biggest antitrust violation in history.”

The fact that it is happening in my home state of Ohio is simply an added bonus. I will be transferring my Vanguard accounts to Strive Asset Management as soon as possible.

"Republicans are Racists"

Mark Shea thinks that if you are a Republican, you are probably a racist. Here is how he just phrased it on his Facebook page:

Mark Shea: "Know what you call a Republican who says 'Not every Republican is a racist' and who stays mum about all the racist Republicans in his party and does not rebuke or attack them on a daily basis? A racist."

"On a daily basis", people. Let's go! You have your marching orders, just try not to goose-step.
So what is being asserted is that registering as a Republican obligates one to be an activist of sorts who, not only "rebukes" and "attacks" Republican racists, but does so on a daily basis. The assertion also assumes either that every Republican knows a Republican racist, or that we really need to dredge up this guy's name all the time. Letting alone the fact that historically the Democrats have been the slave-holders and comprise the majority of the white southern Jim Crow/segregation mafia, this is simply crazy talk. Surely there are many weaknesses which characterize the Democrats, but I would laugh at anyone who made this assertion about them or any political party.

I don't know any racist Republicans personally, but under Mark Shea's definition, every Republican I know is racist. Because the only people I know going around telling the faults of others on a daily basis are liberal Democrats. Q.E.D.

Looking at something else in the news currently, no one expects Democrats to call out #MeToo offenders like Bill Clinton for their sins on a daily basis, or they too should be considered philanderers. No serious person would say that actors and other Hollywood personnel must call out sex offenders like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey or Bill Cosby on a daily basis or else then they too are sex offenders. That would be a mixture of moral equivalency and guilt by association that any honest partisan would have to admit was unfair.

I'm not sure why Mark Shea has gone so crazy in his political beliefs over the last two or three years. Perhaps he has breathed too long the illogic of what people are calling the New Pro-life Movement, but is really just a reheat of the "seamless garment" left-overs from the nineties. This theory states that for a person to be truly pro-life he or she is compelled to accept and promote a number of other policy positions commonly associated with the left. You must be opposed to the death penalty, object to strong border security, and favor a so-called "single-payer" health-care system among other socialistic causes to be part of the New, True, Blue Pro-life belief system, otherwise you are just a "cafeteria pro-lifer" of sorts in the mind of these New Puritans.

Where did this absurd idea come from? Many believe is was mainly constructed to give Catholics an excuse to vote Democrat. You could basically answer the people who said "Don't vote for Democrats; they're not pro-life," with "Basically no one is pro-life, because, you know, the death penalty and health-care and torture and stuff." Don't snort; it works. But wherever it came from, what it leads to is the sort of of totalistic necessitarian thinking that the left loves to impose on the other side, but never on itself. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.... You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules," wrote Saul Alinsky. Yes, he wrote "enemy" and "kill" not "opponent" and "defeat". Thinking on the left is fundamentalist and apocalyptic with language to match.

Shea's preferred word for pro-lifers and others who don't buy into his left-leaning politics is Christianist, a term coined by the extremely paranoid Andrew Sullivan who was preaching back in 2009 that because gays were being persecuted in Uganda they would soon be herded into gas chambers by religious zealots in America. Now we have gay marriage. So... that didn't happen.

Another possibility for the decline in his reasoning ability and increased shrillness is that less people are listening to him than previously used to. He might feel like he has been left behind in the sphere of wordsmith intellectualism and has not become as successful as others. Recently he penned a piece attacking Catholic think-tanker Austin Ruse accusing him of all manner of things, justly or unjustly—I'm not really interested. But he threw in what Ruse's annual salary is along with the accusations. That seems to me to be telling of what ails the run-of-the-mill Patheos blogger.

And really it is well that he is criticizing successful Catholics and using the Sullivaneque word Christianist in his writings, because they have become so wild-eyed, so self-righteous and so bombastic with regard to his co-religionists that it only seems like a matter of time before he hires a private priest and retreats to a Catholic bunker. That would seem to be the prescription if things are really as bad as he says. Yet I often ask myself if he really believes his own allegations. Whatever the reason that Mr. Shea is so unhinged toward conservatives, his vitriol— in which one can detect the resounding echo of the pronounced verdict "deplorable"—is one of the reasons why people voted for Trump and why Jordan Peterson is so popular right now. We've had enough of the "repent and roll-over" rhetoric. If you are going to criticize me, I want to hear something solid.

Reverse engineering the narrative of Ahmed's clock

Obviously, it's a clock

Instead of saying much myself about what appears to be a very clever passive-aggressive hoax designed to bring sympathy to North Texas Muslims in general and fame and hard cash to the Mohamed family central to the whole thing in particular, I'm just going to put up a series of links that highlight anomalies in the Ahmed narrative either not or under reported elsewhere.

Gina Cassini has put the two main elements together, that the clock was not an invention but rather a reassembly of old clock parts in an aluminum pencil case, a setup that - odd for a clock - concealed the digital clock face. In other words, a jumble of electronic parts in a closed box: of course, "It's a clock".

The other element was the early reaching out for legal aid.

CNN reveals that Ahmed has already scored close to $10,000 out of a goal of $100,000 from his ordeal. If Ahmed makes his goal, a scholarship to MIT will be moot.

Running a story on Sarah Palin, extensive pictures at the British Daily Mail reveal the pre-designed-in Muslim angle to the affair.

Here's a YouTube video of Bill Maher's show including, among others, North Texas billionaire Mark Cuban

Taken together, the entire collection of facts of the case suggest a brilliant passive-aggressive ploy which sucked in as its accelerant everyone from local publisher Wick Allison's lily-white empire to the President of the United States.

Credit in this affair should be extended to both the local high school and police department, who simply did their jobs as detailed and didn't backpedal or otherwise allow themselves to be Ahmed like the rest of the media. Even the the Islamic Association of North Texas, which operates the Mohamed family mosque, put out a statement saying

"We're not pointing a finger at the school district or the police department," Hamideh said. "Under the current climate that exists in this country, you can't really blame them because when they see something like that, they have to react."

So Keith, you now ask, where should I be placing my future wagers?

I'd say

100% that the liberals double down and dig in on this

50%/50% whether or not the Mohamed's try to squeeze some lawsuit money out of the affair

Pretty sure that anything substantial in the way of the offers (Facebook, Twitter, MIT, etc.) will quietly fade away with the news cycle.

100% that we now have a new verb: to be/have been Ahmed.

UPDATE (as they say): 

50%/50% whether the family really wants any more close inspection of Ahmed's clock, or of any other facts of the case for that matter:

Officer James McLellan said Thursday the family is free now to recover the clock that was seized as evidence, but the family has not kept appointments for meetings to do so.
 :
Irving Independent School District Communications Director Lesley Weaver said there is more information, but it cannot be released without a privacy waiver from the family. “All they have to do is sign a release form and we’ll be able to give a different perspective of what happened that day in the classroom and the hours following,” she said.
:
Mohamed family members declined to discuss a privacy waiver. They were still considering possible legal representation over the incident and national television interview requests Thursday.

  
UPDATE 2:

More of the Mohamed Family's Zany Sense of Humor: "Twin Towers Transportation Corp."

Incidentally, I pulled this last link from the site of Rod "#IStandWithAhmed" Dreher, founder of the Benedict Option, my prime candidate for sockpuppet Benny, founder of the now abandoned fake Catholic, pro-Benedict Option newsletter The Benedict Post, and all around beloved Moses who will lead us all into the Benedict Option land of Safe Spaces, but not until the Easter Bunny appears to him in a dream wearing a hijab and pointing the way.

Let's all be educated

Speaking of conflation, Brian Williams's new favorite word, here's the text from an email I received from Act! for America. Act! is a great organization for educating people (who want to be educated) about Islamic jihad and it's prevalence in the world.

At ACT for America it is no secret that we have not been in agreement with President Obama’s national security policies, but have always been respectful of the office which he holds.

Unfortunately, President Obama has not always been respectful of others and perhaps the worst example of disrespect came on Thursday at, of all events, the National Prayer Breakfast.

It was in that setting that President Obama delivered remarks comparing the actions of the Islamic State to things done “in the name of Jesus Christ.” Among those things according to President Obama: slavery.

He then cited the Crusades.

Not only were his remarks inappropriate for the occasion and insulting to peace loving Christians everywhere, they were historically inaccurate.

In terms of slavery, while it is true that Christians owned slaves, slavery is not an integral part of Christian doctrine. Jesus did not own slaves. The same cannot be said of Islam. Mohammed owned many slaves and even shared concubines with his warriors. There are today forty different words in Arabic to describe slaves; that’s how prominent slavery has been in the Islamic world. The slave trade in Africa was largely run by Muslims. And when Western nations finally abolished the evil practice of slavery, that slave trade in Africa persisted without them. Remember, Saudi Arabia, the site of Islam’s holiest sites, did not outlaw slavery until the 1960s. Moreover, slavery is still practiced today in parts of Islamic Africa, notably Sudan.

But Obama’s biggest dose of disinformation came in the form of his remarks on the Crusades.

There is a myth that the Crusades were nothing but an aggressive series of wars in which Christendom attacked the Muslim world and committed atrocities.

The reality is somewhat different.

The Crusades actually began after centuries of Islamic jihad invading, pillaging and conquering Christian lands in present-day North Africa and parts of Europe.

After 400 years of systematic genocide of Christians at the hands of Islamic jihadists, Pope Urban II, acting on a plea from the Byzantine emperor whose people had been attacked by Muslim hoards, finally called on “Christ’s heralds” to sound the call for help for the Christians in the east and free the Holy Land.

So, the first Crusade was a defensive action in response to Islamic jihad.

This is an historical fact that our president unfortunately left out of his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast.

So this is good to note about Islam and slavery, emphasis mine. There was never an Islamic movement to speak of to abolish slavery like there has been in Christianity. In America we fought a bloody war over slavery, but in Islam they are for the most part fine with it.

Better commentary on the Charlie Hebdo massacre

Since I often have offered the opinions of William Donohue as my own on a wide range of topics, I've been planning to post for some time with regard to how much I disagreed with his press release two weeks ago in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Donohue mentions how important it is to be "unequivocal", then he coughs this up:

Stephane Charbonnier, the paper’s publisher, was killed today in the slaughter. It is too bad that he didn’t understand the role he played in his tragic death. In 2012, when asked why he insults Muslims, he said, “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.” Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive. Muhammad isn’t sacred to me, either, but it would never occur to me to deliberately insult Muslims by trashing him.

This is pure victim-blaming, and the only explanation I'll offer cannot be an excuse for a man as bright as Donohue. He had waged battles against Charlie Hebdo and other publications which insulted religion in the past and he seems to have felt a certain justice had been served by their murders. This is not unlike the phenomenon of Jodi Arias supporters who go too far in their empathy for someone suffering at the hands of a sex-abusing reprobate. But Arias didn't get a restraining order against Travis Alexander, she murdered him. If a sensible man educates himself on what we know about the type of person Alexander was, he wouldn't want him near any of his female friends or relatives. But he was murdered; it's not about him anymore. It's about a crime which is worse.

What troubles me even more is that this characterization of an anger which is supposedly righteous and yet leads to murder misses out entirely on the nature of Islamic jihad and the threat it poses. The men who perpetrated this violence were soldiers. If there was a miraculous religious conversion at Charlie Hebdo two months ago and everyone repented and disbanded the paper, is it sensible to think that these jihadists would not have perpetrated any terrorist attack ever? They would have just waited until another target was acquired; that's what soldiers do. Look at the Boston Marathon bombing — jihadists didn't need an insult to their religion to target a foot race. Is it insulting to Muhammad to watch a soccer game? Should kids who watch a soccer game be publicly executed? Some Islamists think that's a wonderful idea, obviously, and so in a country without any "satirical" magazines that's as good a target as any for the jihad. And we could list more.

So once again, I think that William Donohue has done a very poor job of picking the bad guy here, and I'm wondering if it might be a good time for good old Bill to take a senior advisory role at the Catholic League. You don't have to hang a Je suis Charlie sign around your neck to get your priorities straight in a response. A better Catholic response was offered yesterday by George Weigel who wisely waited a few weeks before pointing out the vulnerabilities of Europe's secularism which are epitomized by Charlie Hebdo. Excerpt:

If all that Europe can say in condemning the despicable murders of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists and editors is “We are all Charlie Hebdo,” then what Europe is saying is, in effect, “We are all nihilists.” And how, pray, is nihilism—nothingness raised to a first principle, skepticism taken to the last extreme—supposed to defeat conviction, however warped that conviction is? If all that Europe can say to murderous jihadism is “Why can’t we all just get along?” its fecklessness will make it an even softer target for the kind of lethal fanaticism that recently turned Paris into a war zone.

There’s another aspect to this tangled and bloody business that’s worth noting, and that is the high price that Europe, and France in particular, is paying for culturally engrained (and sometimes legally enforced) political correctness. Virtually proscribing public discussion of the threat to European civility and order posed by Islamist maniacs has made dealing with that threat far more difficult: for citizens, for the security services, and for the public authorities. In the years since 9/11, the French public square has been dominated by the jihadists and the xenophobes; and in that volatile social environment, something very bad was going to happen. Now that it has, perhaps steps can be taken to bring the adults—and the real issues—back into the discussion.

Unfortunately I'm not sure that William Donohue is one of the "adults" on this topic any more than those infected with nihilism and/or political correctness. One of the secondary effects of the murders is to send the popularity of Charlie Hebdo soaring and selling more copies than ever before. So if the true purpose of these jihadists was to silence those who attach their religion, they are miserable failures. But if their purpose is to "[C]ast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve... (Qur'an 8:12)" then they are a success. Yes, many Muslims have already voiced this opinion; the them what these jihadists did in the name of Islam was fully justified.

Political Correctness is not correct; Muhammad was not a prophet

Dennis Prager has mentioned this on his show many times, and I'm glad it is in print now. Catholics like Ross Douthat have been saying and writing "The Prophet Muhammad" for years now, and it was irksome for me to hear Michael Medved, who is Jewish, refer to the founder of Islam as a prophet the other day. Excerpt:

When Jesus is mentioned, the media never refer to him as "Christ, the Lord" or as "the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Just "Jesus." In fact, "A.D." ("anno Domini" -- "year of our Lord") has been completely dropped by the very academics and media who always write "The Prophet Muhammad."

When the media discuss Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormon Church), they don't refer to him as "the Prophet Joseph Smith." Why not? Is there a single difference between his title and roles in Mormonism and Muhammad's in Islam?

And Jews refer to Moses as "Moshe Rabbeinu," Moses our Teacher. Why don't the media?

This was not the case in the past. When I studied Islam and Arabic in college, professors referred to the founder of Islam as "Muhammad." And virtually none of the great biographies of Muhammad -- even among those recommended on Muslim websites -- have the words "the Prophet Muhammad" in their title.

There is only one possible reason and that is Political Correctness -- Western elites bending over backwards on behalf of Muslims and Islam in ways they never would for another religion.

The reason that Islam gets special treatment is that Islam breeds fear of one kind or another in anyone treating with it. It is a religion almost entirely spread by the sword since it doesn't really offer anything different than other religions to anyone without a penchant for superiority or violence. To those brought up in the religion there is a fear of leaving, to those outside the religion... well, need we said anything more than no-go zones?

A Resource on the Inherent Violence of Islam

I found a good list of violent verses from the Qur'an the other day which is well to study. I decided to post the list on a page here. It is a good resource to use when making the case that Islam contains enough inherently violent teachings to fuel the radical Muslims or Islamic extremists—however you wish to name them—with religious authority on which to base their violent acts.

Addressed also within these verses are the moderate Muslims or non-violent Muslims as we might call them, the ones who will not engage in Jihad or Holy War. The Qur'an anticipates their existence, and it doesn't speak very highly of them. At best, they are "not equal" to the Jihahis, and as the last verse here shows, they will receive a "grievous penalty" in the afterlife.

Qur'an (2:216) - "Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not."

Qur'an (4:95) - "Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons...."

Qur'an (9:38-39) - "O ye who believe! what is the matter with you, that, when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling heavily to the earth? Do ye prefer the life of this world to the Hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the Hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place."

Thinking people should all admit that there is something very violent about Islam as it acts in the world which sets itself apart from all other religious belief systems. But to those infected with political correctness this admission doesn't seem fair. Haven't there been examples of adherents of other religions using their beliefs to justify violence? Yes, but much fewer cases and their actions are always disavowed easily by coreligionists using the true tenets of their religion. Quantity is itself a quality, and this should never be forgotten in the argument.

It should also be remembered that those people taking a politically-correct view of Islam like Ben Affleck are themselves victims of Islam's strategy of deceit. Mohammed's famous quote "War is deceit" cannot be denied in the context of carrying out Jihad, and it is not hard to find sources to confirm this, for example: How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War, and this link about Islam's general teachings on lying. So we should attempt to patiently correct these victims so they will see the true nature of Islam as deceitful and violent.

We need a travel ban

This NR article states well why we need a travel ban to help prevent the spread of Ebola in the United States. Excerpt:

The ban should, of course, apply to a traveler’s country of origin, preventing persons from West Africa from entering the United States via other countries. Such a ban would, in theory, have prevented entry to Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, who arrived from Liberia via Belgium. Furthermore, it would have protected the two hospital workers who contracted the disease through their interactions with Duncan.

No, the ban would not work perfectly. But an inability to eliminate all risk whatsoever should not disqualify efforts that would reduce it, and restrictions would substantially curtail travel from high-risk nations and minimize the risk of Ebola-infected patients reaching American shores.

The situation in Dallas makes clear that it is easier to protect Americans from the disease by keeping it abroad than by addressing it when it arrives. Screening procedures failed, because prior to boarding in Liberia, Duncan lied about his contact with the disease. When Duncan told staff at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital that he had just returned from Liberia, they took no notice and sent him home with a fever of 103 degrees. The two hospital workers now suffering Ebola were the victims of minor missteps in following safety guidelines. Even with American health standards and procedures, treating and containing the virus affords ample opportunities for accidental transmission. The U.S. can reduce that risk by instituting travel restrictions that will minimize Americans’ contact with the virus and keep the treatment process, as much as possible, abroad.

No, the ban would not work perfectly. But an inability to eliminate all risk whatsoever should not disqualify efforts that would reduce it.... It's hard to imagine how our leaders can trade this common sense fact for the blather they have been feeding us. But I suspect political correctness and false accusations of racism.

Do black people break the law more than white people?

Wait! Don't answer that question out loud. You might get in trouble.

Heather MacDonald asks a bunch of controversial questions which shouldn't be controversial in this article. We're also told that it is a good idea to ask questions, even though they might be rhetorical questions, about problems in our society. Don't you think? Liberals also like to question authority, they usually think "questioning the official statement" is a positive thing. Maybe they're right. I certainly like the questions that MacDonald asks with regard to the official preconceptions which we are told to have about Ferguson. Excerpt:

Example: Ferguson issues fines for traffic violations; 20 percent of its municipal budget comes from such receipts. If people with outstanding fines or summons don’t appear in court, a warrant for their arrest is issued. Conclusion: this is a racist system. The city is deliberately financing its operations on the backs of the black poor. The only reason that blacks are subject to fines and warrants, according to the media, is that they are being hounded by a racist police force. “A mostly white police force has targeted blacks for a disproportionate number of stops and searches,” declared Time on September 1. What is the evidence for such “targeting?” Time provides none. Might blacks be getting traffic fines for the same reason that whites get traffic fines—because they broke the law? The possibility is never contemplated. The most frequently summonsed traffic offense is driving without insurance, according to the New York Times’s “exposé” of Ferguson’s traffic-fine system. Perhaps the Times’s editors would be blasé about being hit by an uninsured driver, but most drivers would be grateful that the insurance requirement is being enforced. Might poor blacks have a higher rate of driving without insurance than other drivers? Not relevant to know, apparently.

The next highest categories of driving infraction are blasting loud music out your car and driving with tinted windows. Attend police-community meetings in poor areas and you will regularly hear complaints about cars with deafening sound systems. Should the police ignore such complaints? Are they ignoring similar complaints in white areas because they want to give whites a pass? Do Ferguson’s white and black drivers blast loud music from their cars at the same rate? We never learn. Tinted windows pose a possibly lethal threat to the police during traffic stops, since they prevent officers from assessing the situation inside the car before approaching. Ignoring this infraction puts officers’ lives at risk. Should the police nevertheless do so? Such is the implication, if doing so would mean fewer fines for black motorists. The New York Times quotes a victim of the racist Ferguson traffic-enforcement system, who was fined for driving without a license. Why was his license suspended—was he driving drunk? Did he hit someone? We will never know. What is the crime rate in the black areas of Ferguson? Also something that the mainstream press is not interested in finding out.

"Do Ferguson’s white and black drivers blast loud music from their cars at the same rate?" If you indignantly say "That's a stupid question," then, well, you've already sort of answered it.

But the most ubiquitous “Ferguson is racist” meme was the most familiar: the police force is too white. Four of Ferguson’s 53 officers are black. This imbalance must be the result of racism and must itself cause racist enforcement activity. How many qualified black applicants to the force applied and were rejected? Not an interesting question, apparently.

But interesting to me and other conservatives. Finding answers to these questions would be real journalism. We might even be able to coin a new term for that: Investigative Journalism. What a concept.

MacDonald's conclusion is chilling: "Whether or not an uncontested account of the incident will ever emerge, it is certain that the media spin on Ferguson itself has been driven by facile and ultimately dangerous preconceptions."

Political Correctness Trumps Science

Wow, just wow. This weirdo is a man. (Click the link if you want to see a pic of him wearing a bikini top.) He is allowed to box actual women and beat them up and break their eye-sockets, ostensibly because political correctness trumps science entirely now, even if it endangers people.

Transgender mixed martial arts (MMA) competitor Fallon Fox is facing new criticisms after breaking the eye socket of his last opponent.

On Saturday, Fox defeated Tamikka Brents by TKO at 2:17 of the first round of their match. In addition to the damaged orbital bone that required seven staples, Brents received a concussion. In a post-fight interview this week, she told Whoa TV that "I've never felt so overpowered ever in my life."

“I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night. I can’t answer whether it’s because [he] was born a man or not, because I’m not a doctor,” she stated. “I can only say, I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life, and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right. ”

I can’t answer whether it’s because [he] was born a man or not, because I’m not a doctor. I'm not a doctor either, but fortunately I don't suffer from political correctness. When these weirdos swarm onto college campi in the coming years, will Title IX cover them and enable them to hurt real women? not to mention outperform them? Sadly, the answer to that appears to be 'yes'. Get the stretchers ready.

Hat tip Director Blue.

Tell Blacks the Truth

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?

Then he gives a great anecdote about a friend who learned differently.

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.

This stuff should be obvious. And it is obvious "upon reflection" as Jackson points out. Of the great people I've known personally most of them are white. Of the jerks I've known most of them are white also. This is because most of the people I've known are white. I've known a few untrustworthy black people among the 20 or 30 that I've known, but it has nothing to do with their race. I don't know why this isn't taught in schools... well, actually I do. Politically correct indoctrination prohibits the reflection and the examination of the evidence.

Dr. Ben Carson exposes the Politically Correct agenda

...and advocates common sense conservatism.



Love how he explains why the European system sucks compared to the American system. He just calling it the way it is.

Also note: God is not progressive. And He doesn't favor a progressive taxation system.

How to Keep Your Job at NPR

I liked this report on "How to Keep Your Job at NPR" from Townhall.com. Not that I'll ever work for NPR, but some of my readers might, who knows.

MCJ on Liberal Theocracy

Mr. Johnson comments on this mess.

What’s wrong with this?

In God’s eyes, there is no documented or undocumented, there is no legal or illegal, there are only his children. For evidence, look to the Torah, which mentions the importance of welcoming the foreigner in our midst more than 15 times.

Our inability to welcome the foreigner is creating division among us as brothers and sisters – among God’s children. As a result, people are hopeless, and there is injustice in our land – injustice that in our fear and ignorance we allow to happen.

I believe that God calls us to love all in the face of the fear and the injustice. We are people of faith, and we are called to sing the Lord’s song, and it is a song of hope. I am mindful of this call as our government engages in the debate on the future of immigration reform, which will affect an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. Take out the references to illegal immigrants and rewrite this thing to condemn abortion or homosexual marriage and you will be accused of inserting the Christian religion where it has no business. Imposing your morality, establishing a religion, call it what you will. And Uncle Sam don’t roll like that.

We are told over and over that the United States is not a Christian nation and never was. Fine. That being the case, either keep your reading of Christian principles out of public policy debates or keep your mouth shut when other people cite their reading of Christian principles in support of initiatives you oppose.

And that's why we like Mr. Johnson over here at Est Quod Est.

Why is he still Episcopal? Not that he'd get away from that kind of goofy thinking on immigration policy if he became a Papist. But we are Pro-life at least.

Muslim kids hate Christians, Jews--want to be "martyrs"

The sort of stuff described in this article happened in Lakewood, OH shortly after 9/22/2001. Muslim students cheered while watching a news clip of the towers falling. Excerpt:

The predominantly Muslim youngsters openly praised Islamic extremists in class and described the September 11 terrorists as 'heroes and martyrs'.

One pupil said: 'Don't touch me, you're a Christian' when he brushed against him.

Others said: 'We want to be Islamic bombers when we grow up', and 'The Christians and Jews are our enemies - you too because you're a Christian'.

Mr. Kafouris, a Greek Cypriot, taught for 12 years at Bigland Green Primary School in Tower Hamlets, East London.

According to Ofsted 'almost all' its 465 pupils are from ethnic minorities and a vast proportion do not speak English as a first language.

The teacher claims racial discrimination by the school, its headmistress and her assistant head after they failed to take action about the comments made by pupils to him.

He said there was a change in attitude of the pupils after the atrocities of September 11, 2001. They told him: 'We hate the Christians' and 'We hate the Jews', despite his attempts to stop them.

He said he filled out a Racist Incident Reporting Sheet but claimed headmistress Jill Hankey dismissed his concerns.

In a statement submitted to the Central London Employment Tribunal he said: 'Miss Hankey proceeded to excuse and justify the pupil's behaviour, conduct and remarks to me as if I had no right to be offended by the child's remarks and conduct.

'Amongst Miss Hankey's justifications for the child's remarks, she said, "If the child was older, say 15, I might take it more seriously. He's only nine - he's only
doing it to wind you up".'

We're wound up all right. Profiling of these radical Muslims is starting to make more sense every day; they are the problem regardless of what the politically correct say and think.

Brigitte Gabriel: "Nothing Short of Madness"

Act for America's website.

Stand Up Against Religious Discrimination on Campus

The Aliance Defense Fund has been doing yeoman's work toward the goal of providing equal treatment for religious, especially Christian, students on university campi which, as we know, are overrun with angry, vindictive leftists posing as professors. Here's a quick spot providing sample cases and explaining what it is that they do to resolve them.

This is the great news, as reported on the ADF's very informative website, that "every time a public university’s speech code is challenged in a courtroom – it fails. ADF has been instrumental in several of those cases." In other words, these university's policies vis-à-vis speech codes, speech zones, compelled participation, etc. are all unenforceable and probably unconstitutional.

Of course, this group needs donations to operate. Currently they have a campaign running where some wealthy folks have agreed to match funds up to $2.2 million. I donated to this group, and not just because the dude in the video has the same hairstyle as I have. Maybe I'm weird, but a 100% success rate never fails to impress me.

Obama Revisionism

Here's a thorough fisking of some good ol' par-for-the-course Obama revisionism. It's written by Frank J. Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University.

In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, President Barack Obama claimed: “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing.”

Obama is not much of a “student of history” if he believes this. Almost every advance he attributes to the Muslims was due to someone else.

The non-Muslim Chinese invented the magnetic compass and printing (Gutenberg invented not printing, but movable type). The non-Muslim Hindu Indians invented algebra and the decimal numbering system. The non-Muslim European Christians invented the university.

I can’t address advances in medicine, but I have studied the history of astronomy and physics. The Muslims contributed nothing.

This stuff is important to point out because it's political pandering on the President's part, and there are still people who think somehow Obama is beyond politics and politcal calculations. Obama is not an idiot, but he certainly knows how to leverage the idiocy of the general populace. Check this out from page 2 of Tipler's article:

The reason Muslims never developed fundamental physics is because the leading Muslim theologians declared the idea of fixed physical laws to be heretical. The Qur’an (verse 6:64) states: “The Jews have said, ‘God’s hand is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will.” The standard Muslim interpretation of this passage has been that there cannot be unchanging physical laws because Allah may change the laws at any moment. In 1982, the Institute for Policy Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan, criticized a chemistry textbook by saying: “There is latent poison present in the subheading Energy Causes Changes because it gives the impression that energy is the true cause rather than Allah. Similarly it is unIslamic to teach that mixing hydrogen and oxygen automatically produces water. The Islamic way is this: when atoms of hydrogen approach atoms of oxygen, then by the Will of Allah water is produced.” The implication is clear: next week, Allah may change his mind about water being a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. With this sort of worldview, how could one possibly be a scientist?

The cosmology of the Qur’an is obviously geocentric, and as a consequence, Al-Azhar University, which Obama singles out for praise in his speech, still teaches Ptolemaic astronomy.

There was one truly great “Muslim” physicist, the Nobel Prize winning Pakistani, Mohammed Abdus Salam. I put “Muslim” in quotes, because Salam belonged to the Ahmadi sect of Islam, a sect that accepts modern science. But in 1974, the Pakistani parliament declared the Ahmadi sect heretical, and its members are currently being persecuted in Pakistan. Contemporary Muslim historians generally do not list Salam as an important Muslim scientist. Had he remained in Pakistan, he quite possibly would have been killed.

So some Catholics told Galileo to shut up over 300 years ago and we're still hearing about how unscientific Christianity is. Meanwhile the Muslim's produce one serious scientist in modern times and they disown him, persecute his sect and drive him from his homeland out of fear for his life. Now that's enlightened.

In spouting all this garbage, we're coddling Muslim's by inflating their self-esteem, just like we do with underperforming kids in public schools. This is merely going to perpetuate their envy and disappointment. In effect, here's what Obama's message should sound like: "Continue to be angry and envious of others and please keep festering in your persecution complex. Be proud of your great contributions to the world such as female genital mutilation, fashionable explosive vests and hatred of the Jews, and the fact that we use a few of your words in our language." We need a guy with an Obama voice to do speech impersonations, but I'm not holding my breath for the show-business honeymoon with this guy ending soon.

Andrew Klavan Explains the Perennial Argument of the Left: "Shut up"

Hat tip.

Don't blame me, I voted for Bartlet

Good piece on vouchers in DC and Barack Obama's latest opportunity to really be different.

The most honest, decent, and thoughtful Democratic president of modern times, Jed Bartlet, was surprised to find himself supporting vouchers on an episode of NBC’s “The West Wing.” Bartlet’s staff summoned the mayor of Washington, D.C., to the White House to plot strategy for his veto of a Republican-backed bill to provide vouchers for a few students in D.C. schools–and was stunned to discover that the mayor and the D.C. school board president both supported the program, as indeed Mayor Anthony Williams and School Board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz did in real life. Why? the president asked the mayor. “After six years of us promising to make schools better next year,” the mayor replied, “we’re ready to give vouchers a try….We spend over $13,000 per student — that’s more than anywhere else in the country — and we don’t have a lot to show for it.” (As Andrew Coulson wrote recently in the Washington Post, the real cost is actually much higher than that.)

The piece contains the West Wing clip and ends with the question of whether or not the real congress and President will care about the people enough to keep the voucher program intact. My guess is that the Democrats in congress and Barack Obama will once again play the "let 'em eat cake" card. Vouchers just ain't politically correct.