Warms the Cockles of my Heart

While America seems to be dying all around us, there are still some shining moments of genuine American beauty:


What's so hilarious is the obvious difficulty the open minded, culturally sensitive journalist seems to having understanding that anyone could think differently than her.

Politics before Science

Global Warming is the best example of politics before science. Not creationism, not stem cell research, not even health care- Global Warming wins hands down. Check out the EPAs shenanigans in suppressing their own report. Now I am assuming that their reasons are political, but it seems pretty safe given the content of the report.

Health Care will be the new Sub Prime Lending debacle

This is why I don't want the government running health care. Americans have got to have the shortest memory in modern history. Here we are suffering through a serious recession. A recession that we all remember being exposed- just last year- as primarily a result of unsound lending practices in the housing market. Practices that came from the Feds pet mortgage monsters, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now the same congressman who denied any responsibility for the subsequent housing price implosion is back pushing his old stuff. Like the corner dope pusher who cleared out last week, he's back this week pushing the same junk.

The Federal government is responsible for our recession, primarily it seems through trying to control the housing market and automobile production (think Unions here). Now they are telling us that they can work the same magic with our health care system! Then they wonder why we're not celebrating like the Browns won the Super Bowl. Maybe it's because we know the Browns will win the Super Bowl before the Feds get something this large and important right- never gonna happen.

The Circus couldn't do better

Check out this guy lying about the Health Care Package, Congressman Russ Carnahan, D-Mo.:

Saberi released

Imprisoned Iranian/American journalist Roxana Saberi is going to be released in exchange for 5 terrorists. While we can rejoice that Obama pulled this off, it also feels like he is getting played by the Iranians. These guys have killed hundreds of American soldiers, and they are only part of the price Obama is paying for Saberi's release. This probably why the Iranians think they have already won the nuclear debate with America. Obama is perceived as weak and easily manipulated; an inexperienced and naive leader.

We are losing ground faster than ever before.

Whatever happened to the Bill of Rights?

This is amazing. It is difficult to imagine anything further from the Founding Fathers intention than this: limiting the rights of Christian groups on campuses because of their position on homosexuality. It would be nice to think that this is really an attempt by Leftists to engage a very tricky and difficult question, but one only has to consider that those very same civil rights advocates will quietly lower their eyes when Muslim student groups do the same thing. The hypocrisy is astounding. If Christian student groups were smart they would simply get Muslims involved. It would shut down the multicultists immediately.

Absentee Fathers and Absentee Leaders

As an anti-establishment minority living deep in the heart of establishment America, I have often felt deep sympathy for the president. Not because I agree with him about many things, but because he is a victim. Not in the sense that the establishment thinks of victimhood, but rather in the sense that he is a victim of the low expectations produced by multiculturalism and our hyper racial culture.

You see, minorities have low expectations. We are taught that we are always victims, people without power. Without power we cannot be expected to perform the same way white Americans do, we cannot be expected to achieve the same results. We are taught that responsibility belongs to someone else. This is why black fathers are absent in the home. I have been nagged for years now wondering why absenteeism was not as prevalent in generations prior to the sixties but that as multiculturalism and leftist racial theory spread so too did absenteeism. It's worse in black culture than anywhere, because they have been the focus of leftist cultural theory.

It's not black Americans fault. They are only at fault in giving in to a deceptively attractive theory about their victimhood and responsibility. Sadly, in the past they were victims of racism, today they are victims of racialism. Even worse, President Obama is steeped in that very racialism and multiculturalism that has so deeply damaged black culture. Raised by caucasians, schooled in private schools Obama went through a very obvious identity crisis. The same one many minorities (myself included) go through as a result of our society's obsession with skin color. The president had to consciously find "blackness", because he had been so separated from black America most of his life.

Where did he find it? In college, In Franz Fanon and other hyper racialists. Both his books detail a very clear and focused exploration and acceptance of leftist racial theories. Ironically, Academia is the source of all the worst and most damaging theories to minorities these past 20 years. I can remember the pressure to conform to some "authentic" form of Latino, or Native American culture. "Authentic" as defined, of course, by the leftist establishment. I remember the racial guilt forced on white friends and the rest of the absurdities that president Obama accepted and supported in his understandable quest for identity.

We all know the story. Europeans are responsible for the world's evil. Imperialism, slavery, and oppression. The rest of us are powerless victims. The problem is that we have become powerless in too many ways. We abrogate responsibility for our lives, actions, and decisions. It's all the white man's fault, racism, etc. So we lack those fundamental character building experiences that made past black Americans so noble and dignified. Suffering can produce dignity and strength or it can produce brittle decay. Just compare Louis Armstrong and 50 Cent. It all depends on the attitude and mentality of the sufferer. Fighting against the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" has always refined men and brought out the best in us, regardless of race, creed, or class. This is why the Iranian protesters resonate so deeply in us. The Founding Fathers were right about certain universal human needs, and we are drawn to the courage and heroism of our Iranian friends, because they refuse victimhood and have shown us the better angels of our nature. Their suffering has produced courage long lacking in American youth and culture. It has produced clear minded leadership in the face of unimaginable evil and impossible odds.

So where is our leader? The same place he was when Russia invaded Georgia: confused and sidelined, because his formative years were insulated by years of well intentioned racialism. He never had the chance to develop the requisite character to stand with the Iranian people. Academia also insulated him from the other way of developing his character, because academia has been deconstructing nobility and dignity as virtues since the sixties. Sophisticated postmoderns have mocked our traditional understanding of "virtue" and consciously attempted to undermine all judeo-christian, western ethics, leaving us with little more than cynicism. Remeber how our intellectuals mocked former president Bush's naive "axis of evil"? Youth especially are deeply sceptical of anything smacking of universal truth. Global Warming gets them more animated than images of their fellow man heroically resisting a brutal and evil regime. And Obama is their president. So it seems the president does not have the intellectual, ethical, or cultural foundation to "see" real challenges, much less lead us through them. He has failed so far on every major challenge, and I would guess that most Americans feel as unled as I do.

President Obama is an absentee leader, a victim of the well intentioned racialism of the left wing establishment. By removing all challenges and barriers for him the left has left his character unprepared for the real challenges of life just as they have done to so many black males who abrogate their responsibilities as fathers. It is no coincidence that black Americans have the highest absentee rate, while being ground zero for the forces of multiculturalism. It is no coincidence that our first black president is an absentee leader.

It is a tragedy, because while I disagree with the president, I want him to succeed and lead us, even if it is not where I want to be led. Moreover, I believe he actually has somewhere inside of him many nascent qualities so many great leaders had. But he has never been through the fire needed to develop those qualities. The sick and twisted reality is that his fawning and adoring media are- again- insulating him from the very experiences he needs. By turning everything he does into some kind of genius, some great triumph too sublime for us commoners to comprehend, they keep him from developing the character and virtue he needs to meet the challenges America now faces. They cement his absentee role all the more, and insulate him from that greatest teacher Failure.

Government Efficiency

I recently got back from a short vacation to Estes Park CO. On the way up there we had to take route co-66, which had road work being performed on it for a couple of miles at least. Get this- I stopped counting the number of people holding "Slow" signs at 10. Think about that. 10 people whose entire job is holding a sign for 8 hours.

How much do you think that costs Colorado taxpayers? The irony is that the entire stretch of road had large cones and safety tape. Why do you need 10 people holding signs when those signs could simply be mounted in the cones? Let's say the average hourly wage for them is $20/hr. 10 people working 8 hours gives us 80 hours times $20 for a grand total of $1600 in government salary that produced absolutely nothing for the entire day. The government will of course say that "safety" is a product, but couldn't that product be achieved much more efficiently? On that one stretch of road wre spending 8k a week, 32k a month. Multiply that out times the number of other public works project being done and you are looking at probably a loss in the hundreds of thousands.

These people are producing nothing and getting paid more than anyone else in the industry to do it. We the people are losing on every side, because they could be doing something else, moved to another project, working on this one, creating real results. So we lose on the front end and the back end. Any politician worth the name reformer would get on this, but even the republicans have become somewhat accustomed to massive amounts of waste- at our expense.

The Real Reason not to buy GM

Amid all of the reasons pundits and critics have been offering for not buying GM the most obvious reason has been omitted and overlooked. The reason for this is simple: most of them are fairly well off and don't know what its like for the rest of us. None of them however have been as succinct and clear as a blue collar restaurant manager I overheard last week. She was probably in her fifties and had lived a pretty rough life judging by her looks and language. But while she was sitting there talking to some elderly customers who were obviously regulars she made the simple and most profound statement about GM I have heard to date.

She simply said, "I don't wanna buy one of them things now, because I'd be paying for it twice, and you sure as hell know they aint gonna give you a 60% discount on the price even though we're paying for the damn thing." With that simple observation she really hit the heart of the matter and identified the common man's real problem with buying a Chevy. In the most simple sense we are getting screwed because we are already paying for 60% of the car before it ever hits the lot. I can just see the campaign adds now... My taxes are now going to 60% of every Chevy going even though I will never benefit from em.

Video Games will take over the world

Here are some interesting comments from Nintendo COO Reggie Fils-Aime: The video games industry is not just at the center of the entertainment industry, but is driving the entertainment industry, not only economically, but from a cultural impact standpoint.

He's absolutely right. By an accident of Fate video games are poised to take over our lives, culture, and society in ways that few revolutions before them have. I am currently writing an article to be published for game developers and designers advocating an even bigger picture than they can imagine. In 10 years video games should replace textbooks. Yes, textbooks, and a host of other things. All because video games have focused on interaction and dynamic environments since their earliest days. Even games like Pong were relatively unpredictable because they incorporated human intelligence into game play, which meant that no two games, even on Pong, were ever the same.

As an educator, it is this aspect of gaming that has captured my imagination. Because a healthy, lively classroom is constantly moving. New questions, new ideas, are always present, and to date no textbook, no DVD, no program has been able to adapt to the dynamic nature of 30 engaged human minds. Until now. Games offer a level of dynamism I have never seen before, and once developers start realizing this its Game Over.

Heroes and Villians

The only real difference between heroes and villains in today's America is their politics. Time Magazine already has a story on the murder of abortion doctor George Tillman asking the question how will the murder affect the abortion debate? My questions is "What?!" How stupid do we have to be? One lunatic kills a guy and he represents just exactly what? Every movement has its extremists and radicals. Che Geuvera personally carried out his own executions of political dissidents. Che personally killed more people than the entire antiabortion movement since Roe V Wade became law, but he gets to be a hero and icon, because the people he shot disagreed with the Left, whereas the eight abortion doctors killed in the past 20 years were represent leftist ideology.

If Scott Roeder was a left wing murderer instead of a right wing murderer, he could reasonably expect to become... a professor, a celebrity author, and quite well off. Just ask Bill Ayers, Mumia abu Jamal, and all those other left wing radicals. Environmental extremists can spike trees in the Pacific Northwest, set up trip lines in the Southwest, firebomb, and more, but they aren't dangerous. Time had to go all the way back to 1996 and 1994 to find more such murder. Hell, an Islamic extremists would feel like he wasn't hitting his stride if he hadn't killed four people by noon prayer, but Islam is a religion of peace. Janet Napolitano wants us to worry about those crazy right wing radicals with Pro Life bumper stickers because eight abortion doctors have been killed in the past 20 years! Does Homeland Security know about this? Well, according to that famous report they do...

Nothing represents the moral and intellectual decay of the Establishment more than this. Muslims and environmentalists, commies and crazies, can kill, kill, kill- BUT it's those law abiding right wingers we really have to worry about. The only difference between psychos is their politics. The blood of their victims still runs red. But the only Red the Establishment wants to stop is the political kind. Thank you Homeland Security and Secretary Napolitano. Yes, this does prove your report correct. In another 10 years we may have another crazy right winger kill another doctor.

Update: what about the muslim convert who attacks an army base the day after?

Obanomics

Evil Establishment Capitalists or Endangered Species?

One of the hilarious side effects of the rush to declare conservatism and republicans extinct is that it highlights more than ever the lie that Leftists and the democrats are anti-establishment. Everyone should be calling the Mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, et al on this obvious disconnect. I mean, if the republicans are dead how can they be the evil, corporate puppet masters pulling the strings from behind the scene?

In their giddy rush to triumphalism establishment leftists have left their flank wide open for a sustained broadside that should significantly alter the cultural landscape and rebrand Left and Right for years to come- provided the Right takes advantage of the opportunity. You can't be on the cusp of cultural insignificance as so many democrats and mainstream pundits have been arguing and evil capitalist puppet masters at the same time. So which is it?

Best article on Obama presidency to date

It's no a surprise that classicist and all around butt kicker Victor Davis Hanson has written the best article on Obama to date.

Conservatives need to communicate fast

Techdirt has another post whose foundational argument is more conservative than the author probably knows. The problem is that conservatives don't know and won't figure out how to communicate fast enough to help the tech community realize that they fit better in the conservative camp than the leftist camp.

The post is about the health care industry and even though the author doesn't explicitly use the fact that Merck helped Elsevier create a fake peer-reviewed journal to argue for socialized medicine the argument is implicit, because the author has leftism built in as a default mechanism. Like PCs forced to run Vista, the tech community doesn't realize that there are other alternatives.

Here are the key sentences:

"Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that you can do when everything is locked up and proprietary, rather than open (emphasis added). There's almost no way to confirm or check the data or information to make sure it's legit, so people tend to assume it is."

The author has no idea that he just made a central conservative argument. Sounds like a post from National Review, right? Wrong, the author has no options for following through on his conservative thought. Instead, the author will default to a leftist interpretation that doesn't fit the author's deepest help notions and beliefs. This is where conservatives should be stepping in- but aren't because they are too busy talking to themselves about how tech savvy they need to be...