Headlines

Rosenstein: Justice Department is not going to be extorted

Pelosi confident: Will be speaker again'

GOP plotting another Obamacare repeal

South Korea says it wants U.S.  troops to stay, regardless of any treaty with North Korea

Trump trade adviser: All countries exempted from steel tariffs will face quotas

65% of public school 8th graders not proficient in reading ... 67% not proficient in math ...

Condoleezza Rice to Donald Trump: Let the experts handle North Korea details

Facebook begins to rank news organizations ... Conservative voices eliminated ...

Seizure of Trump's medical records 'standard operating procedure' White House says

Mueller warns: may subpoena Trump

Macron: Violence, terror society's fault, 'not linked' to immigration

Kayne West sparks new outrage by calling slavery 'choice' ...

Random Act of Reason

There are very few things that President Obummer does or says that I agree with ... this is how he has acquired the descriptive moniker I have hung on him. Sometimes he is so wide of the mark that I think that he was born, not in Kenya, but on some other planet. How he could have been a college instructor on the Constitution for all those years (seven?) and have so little respect for it ... is one of the reasons I am forced to think his space pod must have landed in Hawaii.

However, every once in a while this man-child does screw his twisted brain back into a random act of reason. Such was the case this past weekend when he reprimanded the lefty students and nutty professors at Rutgers University in a commencement speech for their denying this same honor to Condoleezza Rice a while back ... see: Daily Caller Article ... for some additional details and a video.

Of course, Obummer being Obummer, he was obliged before he finished to take some oblique political swipes at Donald Trump. But, in the portion remembering the First Amendment and colleges suppressing objectionable speech, he was so rational and eloquent that he just might not be invited back. (If he would stop using his favorite term "folks" quite so much.)

Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown

Despite four or five multi-million dollar vacations or junkets per year ... at the taxpayer expense, Michelle Obama apparently has suffered greatly as our first lady. She recently spoke at the graduation ceremony at Tuskegee University and bemoaned the travails she has had to tolerate as the first black woman in the White House ... and before  ... see: Christian Science Monitor Video. She earlier had been mistaken for "help" at a party ... she has had many sleepless nights as first lady ... she has been called President Obama's "Baby Mama" ... she has been depicted on a magazine cover as a terrorist ... but she then told the rapt audience, "to succumb to feelings of despair and anger means that in the end, we lose."

The above video of this address has gone viral with both good and bad results. The quote above was a good message ... but, what is it with many black people who still play the victims of oppression? This was the bad part that went out to these graduates and to blacks across the nation. There are, of course, many blacks who don't play the victim game ... Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell, and many others ... but when our pouty first lady dons sackcloth and ashes to a group of college graduates, it does nothing but perpetuate such destructive self pity and demands for special treatment.

This "we vs. them" meme is why we have rioting in Baltimore and cops around the country being targeted. Michelle Obama, you really ought to know better.

Hell Hath No Fury …

like how liberals feel toward black conservatives. Here are but a few of this genre. For a more complete list see: Ranker's List of Black Conservatives.

Justice Clarence Thomas

Representative Mia Love

Senator Tim Scott

Doctor Ben Carson

Lieutenant Colonel Alan West

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Regent Ward Connerly

Professor Walter E. Williams

Governor Bobby Jindal

Representative J.C. Watts

Professor Thomas Sowell

CEO Herman Cain

Ambassador Alan Keyes

RNC Chairman Michael Steele

Be a Clown

 

In the proud tradition of mocking our President, a rodeo clown at the Missouri state fair donned an Obama mask while he was doing his rodeo-clown antics … see: CS Monitor story.  The consequences have been Orwellian and, to me, frightening – this unnamed clown has been banned for life from the fair, the rodeo announcer and Rodeo President have resigned, and the rodeo clowns there have be asked to take sensitivity training … see: Washington Times story.  I say Orwellian because we all have seen many Nixon masks, George W. Bush masks, Ronald Reagan masks, etc. worn by past protesters of Presidential policies … most of which were well within Constitutional boundaries (both the past policies and the protests).  I even recall seeing political cartoons of Abraham Lincoln depicting him as a monkey.

Now we have a President who is shredding the Constitution with his extra-legal changes to Obamacare, his non-recess appointments of key governmental positions, his immigration law over-rides, and his numerous other circumventions of our founding charter … and we, the people, cannot protest these actions?  What is going on here?  Even Harry Reid can go on the radio and slyly ask if Congressional resistance to Obama’s actions is because he is African-American … see: The Blaze story.  This is not just playing the race card … the American people are now playing 52-pick-up with the entire race deck.

Many, including myself, believe that the legacy of white-guilt has had a great deal to do with electing Barack Obama twice to the White House.  And now this slavery stigma seems to be allowing him to slip the consequences of what, for any other President, would be anathema … and even (gasp!) impeachment.  Obama can sail the ship of state onto the reef and a too-large part of the American public will declare this good seamanship.  To me, his foreign and domestic policies have both been unmitigated disasters.  Yet there are some reading this blog posting who, seeing this criticism, will label me a crypto-racist.  This is an unfortunate consequence of what Condoleezza Rice has called our nation’s “birth defect,” slavery.  Will we never erase this stain?  Must we let Obama and his sleazy coat-tail riders destroy our nation in order to save it?

I cannot answer this question … perhaps if we were to send in the clowns?

Do No Harm

I have been of the opinion that Condoleezza Rice was a fairly ineffectual Secretary of State ... certainly when compared to the likes of Jim Baker under George Bush, 41  Although I admire this woman greatly ... for no other reason than her profound revelation that "slavery was America's birth defect" ... I thought her tenure under George Bush, 43 was marked by little real progress in international affairs.  That is, until I see what a real bull-in-a-china-shop Secretary of State like Hillary Clinton can do.  She has clearly set back the United States's position in the world ... something on the magnitude of what our National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, did under President Carter.  Admittedly, Hillary has not done this on her own.  She has had a willing co-conspirator in her boss, The Barry.  But nevertheless, Ms. Clinton has made such a dog's breakfast of our foreign policy that I have been forced to rethink my evaluation of Ms. Rice in this role.

I have concluded that Secretaries of State should behave a lot like doctors and, at the very least, "do no harm."  And I believe that Condoleezza Rice left her post at Foggy Bottom without degrading our position in the world one iota ... no mean feat.  So, my belated hazzahs to Condi.

A Civil Action

Joshua Chamberlain

Nathan Forrest

Today is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, that wrenching spasm in the early maturation of our great nation (see: 150th Anniversary).  I have been rewatching Ken Burns' PBS series on this war and I can truly say, I have been (once again) greatly moved.  The only criticism I could level at this fine documentary is that it conveniently glosses over the religious tenor of this conflict.  Clearly, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, is, among many other things, an indication of the intensity of religious overtones to this war ... overtones which Ken Burns left on the cutting room floor.  Apparently, political correctness trumps historic accuracy.

Condoleezza Rice recently brilliantly said that slavery was the United States' birth defect. The Civil War, it was hoped by most abolitionists, would correct this malformity.  Unfortunately, it didn't, but it was a bloody good start.  In fact, Abraham Lincoln, bemoaning the length and the cost in human lives (600,00+} of the Civil War, came to believe that this carnage would continue until there had been established a parity with the suffering of Africans under the American slavery system.

The above pictures represent two of the luminaries of this great strife that were highlighted by Ken Burns: Joshua Chamberlain, the Northern hero of Gettysburg who dramatically repulsed the Southern's attack on Little Round Top and helped turn the tide of battle.  Please see and read: Joshua Chamberlain  to understand why he was the General who oversaw Lee's surrender at Appomattox.  The other is Nathan Bedford Forrest, a brilliant Rebel military tactician (and butcher) whose heroics are almost beyond belief. Also see and read:  Nathan Bedford Forrest to understand why he is an important Southern hero on a par with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

And please take a few moments today to reflect on the huge losses that were suffered on both sides in this bitter internecine war ... bigger than all the deaths in all the American wars that have been fought since.

Afterthought: I am 72 years old, yet I still seem to remember seeing at least one Civil War veteran marching in a late 1940's July 4th parade in my hometown in Western Pennsylvania.  Funny how these events get compressed across the ages.