A small reflection on science education

As I mentioned on my personal blog, my son was recently awarded the degree of Bachelor of Science with first-class honours in mathematics. I of course attended the graduation ceremony, which was for science graduates only. Such ceremonies are in general rather tedious, though we did have one good speech and some excellent music. So I amused myself while I was sitting there by speculating on the ethnicity of each graduand as he or she came forward. I was considerably assisted in that by my interest in onomastics. Names tell you a lot. The University of Queensland has a good international standing so the one undisputable fact was that the graduands came from all corners of the globe, Africa excepted. Though there was, I think, one African there. So what was the dominant ethnicity of those graduating with bachelor's degrees? Were they white Anglo/Celts like my son and myself? Far from it. The days of WASP domination of anything are now long gone and white Anglo/Celts were far from a majority among those graduating. The most prominent ethnicity was far and away Han Chinese -- comprising about 50% of the graduands, at a rough estimate.

So the 21st century will definitely be the century of China. That the sort of people who invented modern science are no longer much interested in it does bespeak decadence to me. Fortunately the population of Australia is at the present about 10% East Asian so they will help keep us afloat long after we would otherwise have sunken into drug and alcohol fueled decay. My son won't be "The last of the Mohicans" but he will be one of the few. (The Mohicans didn't die out anyway pace James Fenimore Cooper)

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Some good thoughts on police matters from Casey Lartigue -- a light-skinned black man

His basic point is that politeness pays

The black president of the United States stupidly commented on the arrest of a black Harvard professor in his own home by a white police officer. Some random thoughts and memories:

* I'm sure most people are still trying to figure out who Prof. Gates is. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote: "Journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord Jones is dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive."

* Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Gates' arrest was "every black man's nightmare." Perhaps. But having a criminal in my house is even more of a nightmare. Also, having the president of the United States talk off the cuff about me about something he doesn't know is pretty bad. And getting shot by a cop after I escalated a situation would also be worse than getting arrested.

Anyway, I have had my own dealings with the police over the years:

* Back when I was a college student many many moons ago, one of my brothers and I got stopped by police in Brookline, MA. I remember it clearly: we were returning from a meeting with other students. Less than an hour later we were waiting for a police officer to get a description of armed suspects. We were let go without incident after the officer heard on his radio that they were looking for two dark-skinned blacks. The cop even waved to us a few minutes later when he saw us. I wrote about it in the Harvard Crimson, generating several angry calls from other black Harvard students. I remember one woman in particular was distressed by the article, telling me repeatedly that my article "wasn't helpful."

* Shortly after my family arrived in Massachusetts back in 1985, one day we stopped at a bookstore so my father could check on a book. We were parked on the street....a few minutes later, a cop walked up to the car, talking to my mother... The cop said that someone had called 911 reporting that some black people were parked in front of the bank. As I recall, he said it was his duty to check it out, that he would say he had, and that was the end of it. I suppose we could have gone Gates-crazy on him, saying we had every right to be parked there, etc., that as black people we shouldn't be questioned about where we park legally (or not, I really don't recall that).

* I wrote a few years ago about helping to stop a white guy from beating up his white girlfriend or wife. I remember at one moment hoping the police would show up so they could do their duty...but also being scared to death they would show up at another moment as we (five, maybe six black men) were manhandling that one skinny white guy with his white girlfriend bruised, beaten and crying a short distance away. We would have been shot on sight, then asked questions if we had survived. What bothered us the most that night is that the cop initially treated us like we had done something wrong and the folks at the hotel weren't much better.

* Parenthetically, a Washington Post columnist (inaccurately) wrote about the rescue in front of the Mayflower Hotel a short time later. Every time I've been part of an organization or activity that has been written about in the newspaper I've wondered how they could get so many facts wrong. As Erwin Knol wrote: "Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge."

* A few years ago I had to rush home when the alarm system went off at my home in Centreville, VA. As I approached my home, I called the police and ADT (the alarm system) to let them know I was almost home and would be going inside to check on the alarm...I didn't want to get shot while I was turning off the alarm in my home... I really should not have had to call to make sure I would not get shot in my own home, I know. But I did call. I'm more concerned with my safety than I am with making a political or public policy point.

* Two days before I left America earlier this month I was pulled over by a cop in Falls Church, VA. I had gone through a stop-sign trap leading off the main road onto a service road. I guess I should have gone Gates-crazy on him. But it wasn't a good situation for me. Driving a rental. Didn't have the rental car info. I asked for a warning, told him I was leaving the country soon. The cop issued me a warning, wished me well.

* One night when I was out with some other members of the Harvard Crimson, one top editor (who is now somewhat prominent) had a bright idea that we should trash the Harvard Lampoon. Which we did. Very long story kept short, we got caught by some members of the Lampoon. The Cambridge police were called (every Harvard student, regardless of race, prefers dealing with the Harvard rather than Cambridge police), we argued in front of the cops for an hour or so before the business manager of the Crimson agreed to pay for the damages. The cops let us all go after a short lecture.

* I still take my cue from Richard Pryor when it comes to cops..."I'M REACHING INTO MY POCKET FOR MY LICENSE. BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO BE NO MUTHAFUCKING ACCIDENT."

SOURCE

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Obama dangerously wishy-washy on Afghanistan

In the dark days of May 1940, Winston Churchill famously outlined the task before the British people: "You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terrors, victory however long and hard the road may be — for without victory there is no survival."

Contrast that with what the president told ABC News last Thursday: "I'm always worried about using the word victory, because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur."

If the goal of the U.S. in Afghanistan isn't victory, what is the purpose of the blood, toil, tears and sweat of our forces? What is the meaning of the struggle and suffering of their families? According to Vince Lombardi, "If you can accept losing, you can't win."

Now, in fairness to our president, he doesn't seem to be saying that losing is an option. He noted in the same interview that "when you have a nonstate actor, a shadowy operation like al-Qaida, our goal is to make sure they can't attack the United States." Going on, he said the U.S. "will continue to contract the ability of al-Qaida to operate," which the president called "absolutely critical." We agree.

But we are at something of a crossroads in Afghanistan. The toil, tears, sweat — and especially blood — have increased of late. As a result, public displeasure is on the rise in Britain, Canada and Germany, which with their tens of thousands of troops are taking part in the U.S.-led coalition — the kind of coalition, by the way, that liberal Democrats consider absolutely vital before fighting wars against terror states. Our allies could eventually pull out. So at a time like this, the job of the president is to remind them, and the American people, that we are in a world war against a network of evildoers.

Barely two months into this administration, the Pentagon was sent a memo announcing that we were no longer engaged in a global war on terror; this was not a "long war" the American people were faced with. No, the endeavor U.S. servicemen and women were being asked to spill their blood for would from now on be called an "overseas contingency operation." How's that to stir your patriotism?

Imagine the message that al-Qaida, the mullahcracy in Iran and nuclear-armed North Korea take from these choices of language. The U.S. doesn't consider "victory" to be its goal in Afghanistan; the U.S. no longer believes it is engaged in a "war" against the Islamists who killed thousands of Americans on American soil in 2001.

Apparently, "winning" a "war" is passe to our 21st century way of thinking. Using an "overseas contingency operation" to "contract the ability" of "nonstate actors" is the enlightened phrasing. Was the same mind-set behind the president's decision last week to second-guess police officers without knowing the facts? The "good guys vs. bad guys" mentality just isn't nuanced enough.

The truth is that eschewing plain language in favor of this kind of muddled babble sends a message of weakness to our enemies around the world. And it downplays what is at stake at a time when the American people and our allies are in dire need of some unvarnished, old-fashioned, Churchillian truth telling.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Obama's accidental gift on race: "Less than a month after being confirmed as the nation's attorney General, Eric H. Holder Jr. called out the American people as "essentially a nation of cowards" for refusing to talk openly about race. So, thank you, professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and President Obama, for starting the long-awaited national discussion on black and white identity - while averting our attention from the cockamamie scheme to nationalize health care. And kudos to the professor and the president for choosing Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department as the representative of the Caucasian-American side of this difficult and much-needed historic debate. Sgt. Crowley waged a swift and effective public relations campaign that quashed the racism meme that Mr. Gates was recklessly pushing. Of course, the attorney general is essentially right in his assessment. Much of America is petrified to bring up race, especially in public forums - the media, in particular. But for exactly the opposite reasons Mr. Holder, the Obama administration and the brain trust of modern liberalism assert. Americans, especially nonblacks, are deeply fearful that the dynamic is predicated on an un-American premise: presumed guilt. Innocence, under the extra-constitutional reign of political correctness, liberalism's brand of soft Shariah law, must be proved ex post facto. Think not? Ask the Duke lacrosse team... The mainstream media choose to flaunt story lines that make white America appear guilty of continued institutional racism, while black racism against whites is ignored. Sgt. Crowley, a proud and defiant public professional, played the moment perfectly and stopped his own assassination by media. Talk about a postmodern hero... Now that the facts of the case show that his friend the professor was the man doing the racial profiling, the president wants to end the discussion. Now we see what the attorney general meant when he spoke of cowards."

Indian moon mission succeeds: "While the world has been gripped by nostalgia for the Apollo 11 landing - the culmination of the first manned mission to the moon, which took place 40 years ago this week - India has quietly been completing its own lunar mission. The sub-continental nation launched its voyage to the stars on October 22 last year, becoming the fifth to do so, after the USA, Russia, China and Japan. On November 14 its unmanned probe landed and began sending back signals to Earth via satellite. The Indian space rocket is called Chandrayaan-1, which means “moon craft” in Sanskrit, and is currently in lunar orbit, taking 3D lunar images as part of its two-year mission to find out more about the moon’s geological, mineral and chemical composition."

India launches nuclear sub : “India formally unveiled its first home-built nuclear submarine on Sunday, joining a select band of five nations that have the capability to build the sophisticated weapons system. As the country’s electronic news media waxed jingoistic about the development, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stressed that New Delhi had no aggressive designs nor meant to threaten anyone. India, he said, merely sought ‘an external environment in its region and beyond that was conducive for its peaceful development and the protection of its value systems.’ Only the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China have the capability to launch nuclear weapons from submarines. Sunday’s launch also moves India closer to the nuclear triad, or the capability to deliver nuclear weapons from platforms based on land, air and sea.”

In defense of organ-legging : “Writing in the New York Post, Brian Kates and William Sherman build on a Brooklyn rabbi’s arrest on ‘organ trafficking’ charges to bemoan the fact that American patients wait three years for a kidney, ‘driv[ing] many to the underground market,’ where they may pay in excess of $100,000 to a ‘broker’ to procure the organ for them. This procurement process may involve bringing a poor donor from the Third World to the US, or require the patient to travel in the other direction. What the authors don’t mention is why it takes three years for a transplant patient to get a kidney in the United States. And that reason is? If you guessed ‘government,’ you guessed right.” [See also Sally Satel on this]

Affirmative actions and related collectivisms: "For collectivists individuals don’t matter, groups do. For some it is the entire human race that is of sole concern, for others it is members of a given race or nation or ethnic or some other smaller group. Collectivists have an explicit doctrine about this, no one need to be guessing. Individuals are figments of our social imagination. They exist no more than do cells in our bodies exist as independent, sovereign entities. Sovereignty, the right of self-government, belongs only to the group. You and I and the rest of individuals are parts or elements, just as ants are in an ant colony or bees in a bee hive. The colony or the hive matters. This is why collectivists always fret about society or community. For them these are not what people individually choose to be part of, no way. These are what all ‘individuals’ literally belong to.”

Myth #1 Health Care Costs Are Soaring: "No, they are not. The amount we spend on health care has indeed risen, in absolute terms, after inflation, and as a percentage of our incomes and GDP. That does not mean costs are soaring. You cannot judge the “cost” of something by simply what you spend. You must also judge what you get. I’m reasonably certain the cost of 1950s level health care has dropped in real terms over the last 60 years (and you can probably have a barber from the year 1500 bleed you for almost nothing nowadays). Of course, with 1950s health care, lots of things will kill you that 2009 health care would prevent. Also, your quality of life, in many instances, would be far worse, but you will have a little bit more change in your pocket as the price will be lower. Want to take the deal? Health care today is a combination of stuff that has existed for a while and a set of entirely new things that look like (and really are) miracles from the lens of even a few years ago. We spend more on health care because it’s better. Say it with me again, slowly—this is a good thing, not a bad thing. . . ."

Bureaucracy drives up health care plan's costs: "The health care reform plan proposed by House Democrats would create at least a dozen new federal programs, boards and task forces, contributing to the proposal's hefty price tag that has drawn criticism from Congress' official scorekeeper. Democrats say the bureaucratic infrastructure is necessary to administer the expansion of health care benefits to the tens of millions of uninsured Americans while creating more competition for private insurers to drive down out-of-control costs. The health care reform bill, which is expected to cost roughly $1 trillion over 10 years, would create a public health insurance plan and a health insurance "exchange," a clearinghouse where consumers will be able to shop for public or private coverage. The programs will require a massive undertaking by the federal government that analysts say likely will take years to fully implement. Much of the concern on Capitol Hill, both among Senate Democrats and Blue Dog Democrats in the House, centers on the proposals' cost. In its preliminary review of the House's version, the Congressional Budget Office said the bill would raise the federal deficit by $239 billion over 10 years. The figure has been disputed by Democrats, who say the CBO can't fully judge the bill's cost-cutting measures. But the office's top official made headlines when he said neither the House nor Senate bills addressed the costs of health care, the primary reason President Obama has taken on the politically dangerous endeavor." [See more on this on my SOCIALIZED MEDICINE blog]

New Mexican truck rules a defeat for unions: "A plan containing guidelines on getting Mexican trucks back on U.S. highways has gone through bureaucratic review, the first step toward ending Mexican tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. goods. Implementing the plan would quell growing dissent among U.S. businesses that are hurt by Mexico's tariffs and that continue to besiege Washington with claims that doing nothing will result in job losses. The tariffs were imposed as retaliation for legislation enacted in March that took Mexican trucks off American highways, despite the North American Free Trade Agreement's program to let them into the United States.

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Obama's support for an offensive black racist has dented him

After Jeremiah Wright, I suppose he thought he could get away with it. But he is President now and needs to live up to his own hype. He is failing. And the controversy is still sizzling. The article below is one of two on the subject in the current issue of "The Times" of London. I was going to write no more on this subject but since it is still sizzling I think I should record some of that sizzle

They are calling it bar-stool diplomacy – a novel attempt by President Barack Obama to cool a heated racial controversy by inviting the offended parties to settle their differences over a beer at the White House. Yet the president’s efforts to limit the fallout from a row over the arrest last week of Henry Louis Gates Jr, a black Harvard professor, may serve to extend a furore that has shaken the White House and raised questions about Obama’s vaunted leadership skills.

The row showed no sign of diminishing yesterday as Massachusetts media pressed for the release of police tapes that could shed new light on the angry exchanges between Gates and Sergeant James Crowley, a white officer who arrived at the professor’s Cambridge home to investigate a report of a break-in.

The incident led to a rare breakdown of Obama’s previously impressive political judgment. Having spent much of the past two years steering clear of racial controversy and nurturing an image of so-called “postracial” conciliation, the president plunged unexpectedly into the Gates affair. He declared on Wednesday, when it was still far from clear what had happened, that the Massachusetts police had “acted stupidly” by arresting Gates, whom Obama described as a personal friend.

By Friday evening, Obama was back-pedalling furiously and his invitation to Gates and Crowley to join him for a beer was interpreted as an acknowledgment by the president that he had spoken too hastily in “maligning” the police. “I could have calibrated those words differently,” he said. Yet the move also ensured that a story he desperately wants to go away will continue to overshadow his domestic political agenda. No beer-drinkers are likely to make as many headlines as the president, the professor and the policeman. Gates said yesterday that he would accept the invitation and would meet Crowley.

Within hours of Obama’s televised press conference on Wednesday night it was clear the Gates incident did not exactly fit the shameful mould of thuggish white cop picking on an innocent black man.... The fact that Gates was hauled away from his own home despite having provided proof that he lived there fuelled the complaints of “racial profiling” – supposed police discrimination against blacks.

It then emerged that Crowley, 42, knew a great deal about police treatment of black suspects – he had been hand-picked by his African-American chief of police to teach a local academy course on avoiding discrimination.

Obama’s discomfort increased when Sergeant Leon Lashley, a black Cambridge officer who was at the scene, said he supported Crowley’s actions “100%”. Lashley added: “I was there. He did nothing wrong. There’s nothing rogue about him. He was doing his job.”

As police unions around the country took umbrage at Obama’s “stupid” remark, it was not just white conservatives who were happy to bash the president. Bill Cosby, the black entertainer who has criticised African-Americans for a “victim” mentality, said he was “shocked” by the president’s willingness to jump into the dispute. “If I’m president of the United States . . . I’m keeping my mouth shut,” added Cosby.

Crowley told a local radio station: “I think he’s way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts.”

By Friday evening, Obama was back in character as the smooth and charming diplomat as he joked about Crowley’s problems with overwhelming media attention. “He wanted to find out if there was a way of getting the press off his lawn,” the president said. “I informed him that I can’t get the press off my lawn.”

Behind the humour lay an awkward reality for Obama. His approval ratings have been slipping steadily as Americans worry about his interventionist policies. In a Rasmussen poll released on Friday, he fell below 50% for the first time, and an ugly argument about race is not going to help him recover.

SOURCE

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Is Henry Gates a crook who had good reason to fear the police?

Just an excerpt from a much bigger story below

Henry Louis Gates, Jr controls a tax-exempt, non-profit charity, Inkwell Foundation, Inc, that managed to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct support in one year, yet only gave out $27,500 in grants, the bulk of which went to Gates' employees and Harvard colleagues. Also, as recently as September 2008, the Boston Globe reported that Gates' charity was not in compliance with the law for failing to register the proper paperwork, despite the charity existing since 2005. The charge at the time was that it was "bogus," as you'll see below. In fact, the state Attorney General's office told the Globe the charity was likely either inactive, or dissolved. Yet, documents below show the charity is healthy, wealthy and active.

Is it possible that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was acting strange when law enforcement showed up at his door because he didn't want the story below to come out? It may take a tax lawyer to answer that question, but based on this research, it can't be ruled out. We know the press has questioned Gates about the charity in the past and gotten no response.

Acting on a tip and with an item at Instapundit in mind (much more at this link), I was curious when Joseph Culligan of Web of Deception emailed with a tip as to the home's ownership. It seems Harvard does own the home in which Gates lives. But it's also the address for his charity, see below.

Third, Harvard sent someone from the University maintenance department over to secure Gates’ house and/or fix the broken lock on his front door. How many people have an employer who’ll send maintenance staff over to fix up or watch over their house?

Scroll all the way to the bottom at this link for the actual documents, including the real estate information. Gates uses Harvard (12 Quincy St.) as his home address on the charity paperwork, as opposed to the same one as his charity, which is where he actually lives and was at when the recent police incident took place. It would seem to be incorrect. A wiki has this Inkwell below as it's center item and reports that a Globe reporter has accused it of being a "bogus" charity.

More HERE (See the original for links)

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Community Organizer-in-Chief

Voters in last November's election never really got a clear sense of just what candidate Barack Obama did during his years as a "community organizer." The phrase carries with it some vague suggestion of volunteers working selflessly to represent the downtrodden, the powerless in the community, as they seek to climb out from under the yoke of domineering and exploitative authority. Wikipedia gives us some sense of that notion:

"Unlike other forms of more consensual "community building," community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless."

An Internet search for a definition of community organizing turned up someone named Mike Miller at something described as the Organize Training Center. Mr. Miller's take on community organizing comes extraordinarily close to the principles that Barak Obama, former community organizer, is applying to his role as the nation's new president. There is a remarkable carry-over from his earlier role to his present one:

Organizing does two central things to seek to rectify the problem of power imbalance—it builds a permanent base of people power so that dominant financial and institutional power can be challenged and held accountable to values of greater social, environmental and economic justice . . .

When viewed in this context, many of the Obama policies that defy logic begin to make perfect sense, even proposals and programs that on their face appear to be in perfect conflict with the common good—as well as common sense.

Some of these would, of course, include: degrading our health care system down to Canadian and British standards; turning on the money spigot in the form of an ill-conceived "stimulus" that will neither create jobs nor improve the economy; follow the forever-futile policy of trying to spend our way out of a recession; nationalizing bankrupt car companies on behalf of union interests, thereby preserving failed business models to the tune of tens of billions of dollars; supporting the despicable "card check" legislation that will foster retribution and, inevitably, violence against workers who would be deprived of the secret ballot; raising taxes to astronomical levels—on individuals, corporations, small businesses—in the teeth of a severe recession, a course that risks turning a crisis into a catastrophe; and touring the globe while busily ingratiating himself with every two-bit despot, dictator, and enemy of democracy he can find by repeatedly apologizing for America's past failings and transgressions.

I could go on but it would be pointless. Each of these policies, as well as others, is incompatible with even the barest degree of fiscal responsibility, job creation, personal liberty, and America's stature on the international stage. They stand as a perfect contrary indicator to traditional American values like individual choice and freedom from an intrusive government that stands in the way as an obstacle to individual achievement and its rewards. One can only conclude that since each and every one of them are so wrong-headed and patently antithetical to the well-being of the nation, there must be another agenda at work having nothing to do with setting the country on the road to recovery.

Another policy I failed to mention perhaps can give us some insight into the true agenda at work here. Part of the president's tax proposal provides euphemistically-dubbed "tax credits" to the roughly 60% of the populace that does not actually pay income taxes. This would create the perverse situation in which having no obligation to pay anything under the tax code becomes a profitable enterprise, leaving the non-payer with a net gain. The source of these credits, of course, is the 40% that enjoys no such immunity under the tax code.

Now we know what candidate Obama meant when he told Joe the Plumber that as good Americans we should "share the wealth." What he really meant was that government should act as an intermediary through which wealth is simply redistributed. Thus, a campaign comment that many interpreted to signify the candidate's belief that all Americans should share in the opportunity to achieve prosperity really had a darker meaning: that government's proper role is to expropriate by fiat the assets of one group of Americans and transfer them to a different group.

Go back for a moment and re-read the quotations on the function of the community organizer and it becomes evident that Mr. Obama is still acting in that role. He is working to build a "community" in which the influence of the "powerful" is diminished and that of the "powerless" is enhanced. "Solutions" like wealth redistribution and lowest-common-denominator health care serve to achieve that outcome. Hence the "dominant"—corporations, financial institutions, rich people—should be challenged and held accountable to values of greater social, environmental and economic justice. Scrutinized in that context, then, policies that don't meet the standards of rationality when viewed through the prism of their purported purpose—such as economic measures designed to address economic problems—take on new meaning as vehicles aimed at "fixing" what Mr. Obama thinks is the real problem with the country—the problem of power imbalance.

Perhaps Americans will in time despair of their flirtation with social and economic collectivism. If they do, however, this administration's legacy will not be simply that it pursued policies that the country eventually rejected. It will be remembered instead for its most egregious act—exploiting and exacerbating a genuine national crisis in the interests of pursuing a radical social and economic agenda.

Perhaps more than any of its 43 predecessors, the Obama administration provides a perfect illustration of Ronald Reagan's observation that government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem.

SOURCE

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Ignoramus in chief?

This week President Obama has caught a lot of flack for stating "I don't know all the facts", but then proceeding to provide unwarranted and inflammatory conjecture anyhow. Although that statement was concerned with a very specific incident, one might argue that this is a phrase that he might want to utter before speaking on major policy topics like economics and health care. For it seems that like many who emerge from liberal academic echo chambers, he is chock full of intellect, but lamentably short on actual knowledge.

The President has thus far admitted his ignorance as to what was specifically contained in the House health care but urged its rapid passage in order to do great things such as save the planet and not ruin the upcoming Congressional vacation. And Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard calls Obama the "Know-Nothing-in-Chief" for his seeming total void of knowledge free-market economic theories:

There's no evidence Obama has even a sketchy grasp of economics. Is President Obama an economic illiterate? Harsh as that sounds, there's growing evidence he understands little about economics and even less about economic growth or job creation. Yet, as we saw at last week's presidential press conference, he's undeterred from holding forth, with seeming confidence, on economic issues.

Obama professes to believe in free market economics. But no one expects his policies to reflect the unfettered capitalism of a Milton Friedman. That's too much to ask. Demonstrating a passing acquaintance with free market ideas and how they might be used to fight the recession--that's not too much to ask. But the president talks as if free market solutions are nonexistent...

Getting back to the topic of health care, fairly intelligent and experienced men state that the President doesn't even do a good job faking that he knows what he is talking about.

Glenn Reynolds speaking on the Hugh Hewitt show said "Obama is an idiot when he talks about medical things...", as well as saying some of the President's prescriptions doled out when taking on the subject are like "...prescribing a laxative for lung cancer. This guy is making health care policy, and he's clueless."

On the same show, Charles Krauthammer (a former board certified doctor) said this:

"The real problem with Obama is he’s extremely intelligent, but he’s even more arrogant. And he trusts his own intelligence to get him through anything, even with a lack of knowledge. And it is amazingly arrogant. He’s standing up there, and he’s saying that there are doctors out there who will rip out a kid’s tonsils in order to make some money, without even knowing what are the indications for a tonsillectomy, and what’s not. He sort of made it up as he went along. You’re right. He operates on what he thinks he only needs, a minimal level of knowledge..."

Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for the President, his ignorance of a range of ideas on major policy issues may well be the undoing of his proposals. Much of this is due to the repeated public display of this ignorance in his self-induced hyper-exposure. If he were to keep from the spotlight, and only appear when escorted by a phalanx of teleprompters, he could limit the damage. But it may already have been done. But perhaps he is willing to sacrifice these things on the altars of vanity and narcissism.

Unfortunately it would not be a surprise if President Obama had spent all those years in academe becoming an intellectual, rather than a learned man.

Post above recycled from Charlie Foxtrot

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Obama's non-apology



President Barack Obama backed down on Friday from a statement that police had "acted stupidly" in arresting a black scholar in a racially charged case that was rapidly becoming a distraction for Obama. The president made a surprise appearance in the White House press briefing room shortly after he spoke by phone to Cambridge, Massachusetts, police Sgt. James Crowley, who had arrested Henry Louis Gates, a prominent scholar of African-American studies at Harvard, last week.

"Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically," Obama said. "And I could have calibrated those words differently." Crowley suggested Obama invite him and Gates, to the White House for a peace-making beer, and a plan was in the works to do so, Obama said. Obama later called Gates, had a positive discussion, told him about his phone call with Crowley and invited him to join Crowley at the White House in the near future, the White House said.

Obama said he hoped the event would end up being a "teachable moment, where all of us instead of pumping up the volume spend a little more time listening to each other" and improve race relations "instead of flinging accusations." "Lord knows we need it right now -- because over the last two days as we've discussed this issue, I don't know if you've noticed, but nobody has been paying much attention to health care," he said.

At a news conference on Wednesday night, Obama weighed in on the case, saying the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police had "acted stupidly." Obama pointed out that blacks and members of other minority groups tend to be stopped more frequently by U.S. police officers than whites. Until Friday, Obama and the White House had defended Obama's remarks. The police union stoked tensions further, firing back at Obama. "President Obama said that the actions of the Cambridge Police Department were stupid and linked the event to a history of racial profiling in America," Sgt. Dennis O'Connor, president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association, said at a news conference in Cambridge. "The facts of this case suggest that the president used the right adjective but directed it at the wrong party," he said.

With the incident threatening to escalate, Obama chose to engage in some damage control. He did not say he had apologized to Crowley, but his words were regretful. Obama said his impression of Crowley was that he was an "outstanding police officer and a good man, and that was confirmed in the phone conversation. And I told him that."... Obama said he continued to believe that there was an overreaction in arresting Gates and that he also believed that Gates "probably overreacted as well."

SOURCE

The following video has been suggested as the new Obama model for the Cambridge police force

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Obama, Gates and Crowley

Obama has chosen to attach his own credibility to this matter so I think I can reasonably put up two further comments on it:

I heard on the radio this morning that there were nine break-ins in Gates's Cambridge neighborhood in the first quarter of 2009 alone. Officer James Crowley had good reason to believe that this might have been another. There might even have been a break-in attempt at Gates's house during the time he was away, as Gates himself indicates in an interview. (Why is there so much crime in the neighborhood around Harvard?)

It is clear from reading the police report that Gates behaved boorishly and belligerently from the first moment he saw the white policeman. Officer Crowley, perplexed at Gates's behavior, called into headquarters that he was in the house with what appeared to be the resident, but that the resident was behaving in an excited manner that surprised and confused him. And Gates initially refused to present identification, but then did. He continued yelling at Crowley and calling him a racist throughout the incident. It is almost as if Gates was determined to foment the incident into something he could use later. If there is any racism here, it is Gates's automatic antagonism toward a white policeman.

The police report contains a supplemental narrative by a second policeman on the scene, Officer Carlos Figueroa, who completely corroborates Crowley's account and adds the detail that Gates was actually shouting to the gathering of about seven people outside the house who had been attracted by the ruckus, "this is what happens to black men in America," almost as if he were trying to incite them. It is this ongoing disruptive behavior, which continued after Crowley warned him to stop, that prompted his arrest.

The policemen could not be making all this up. The details in Crowley's and Figueroa's reports about Gates's arrogance and claims of privilege and so on .... all that is not something the policemen could just fabricate. In addition, there were a number of witnesses who saw a lot of what happened and can corroborate it. Here is some of Figueroa's account:

"As I stepped in [into Gates's house], I heard Sgt. Crowley ask for the gentleman's information which he stated "NO I WILL NOT!" The gentleman was shouting out to the Sgt. that the Sgt. was a racist and yelled that "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO BLACK MEN IN America!" As the Sgt. was trying to calm the gentleman, the gentleman shouted "You don't know who your messing with!"

I stepped out to the gather the information from the reporting person, WHALEN, LUCIA. Ms. Whalen stated to me that she saw a man wedging his shoulder into the front door as to pry the door open. As I returned to the residence, a group of onlookers were now on scene. The Sgt., along with the gentleman, were now on the porch of __ Ware Street and again he was shouting, now to the onlookers (about seven), "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO BLACK MEN IN AMERICA!". The gentleman refused to listen to as to why the Cambridge Police were there. While on the porch, the gentleman refused to be cooperative and continued shouting that the Sgt. is racist police officer.

Gates also said that he couldn't have been yelling because he had a throat problem, but witnesses heard him yelling, and there is a photo in which he is clearly yelling. He is either not telling the truth or blinded to his own faults.

Now we have the president of the United States adding fuel to the fire without, by his own admission, even knowing the facts \emdash two astronomically high-status blacks piling on an ordinary white policeman doing his job. Perhaps Gates deliberately made an incident out of this because he fears white-liberal guilt has been declining since the election of Obama. Perhaps he hopes to re-ignite those feelings (without which he feels discomfort at all the unearned privileges of his life). Certainly there is something odd about his practically instantaneous pronouncements that he is going to use his arrest to preach about racism and make documentaries about racial profiling and so forth. And his interview ends with his mocking any thought of a "post-racial" America and rehearsing some of the sorry statistics about black men in prison, as if they had anything to do with his own shameful and uncontrolled behavior.

Gates's own account appears to be unreliable. He remarks in his interview that the 911 call said that two big black men were trying to break in and he called that "the worst racial profiling I've ever heard of in my life," and he laughs about it because he is only 5'7''. Now, the police report doesn't mention two big black men, just two black males with backpacks. But if the word "big" was spoken during the 911, it might well have been by the citizen who called in the report, not the policemen. Yet Gates is trying to maintain that he is grateful for the neighborly vigilance of the woman who called 911, and that it's only the police he despises.

SOURCE

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And one last comment on the Gates/Crowley episode

DailyKenn has a lot of links on this matter and, like me, is not afraid to call something how he sees it. Below is his own succinct comment on the Gates matter, a comment in which I suspect much truth, despite certain linguistic improprieties:

Prof. Gates; why uppity Negroes are uppity

Short answer: to compensate for feelings of inferiority . . .

When Sergeant James M. Crowley stepped up to Henry Louis Gates Jr.\rquote s home last week, he was met with a seemingly arrogant, obnoxious and ungrateful black man.

Gates' "loud and tumultuous behavior" toward officer Crowley is not unique. Blacks often display irrational arrogance when interacting with whites. The question is: Why?

The answer: While some blacks possess a choleric temperament and innately display belligerent behavior, others manufacture arrogance as a means to compensate for feelings of inferiority.

On the surface it appears that such behavior is anti-white racist hatred. In reality, the subject isn't displaying hatred for the "victim's" whiteness but is displaying hatred for himself for being black.

In the Gates episode it is apparent that racial profiling occurred twice. Both occasions were on the part of Prof. Gates, not Officer Crowley. Gates' belligerent behavior revealed racial profiling of a white officer. It also displayed racial profiling of himself.

Gates' attitude served another purpose: It got him off the hook as charges against him were dropped.

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ELSEWHERE

Obama has a history with the Cambridge police Dept.: "According to the Somerville Times in 2007, as a Harvard Law School student, Obama got 17 parking tickets during 1989-1991 from the Cambridge Police Department that he left unpaid until just weeks before he announced his bid for the presidency. "In other words, as a practicing lawyer in Chicago, he allowed these tickets and penalties to remain unpaid; as an Illinois state senator he allowed these tickets and fines to remain unpaid; and as a United States senator he allowed these almost-two-decade-old signs of his disdain for the law to remain unpaid," commented John LeBoutillier on Newsmax.com. The Washington Post said two years ago that the tickets included parking without a proper permit and parking in a bus stop. The Associated Press reported in 2007 that Obama's "healthy stack" of parking tickets was finally paid, including late fees, "two weeks before he officially launched his presidential campaign."

You can’t print production and prosperity: “It’s hard to imagine that the monetary policy talk can get any nuttier, but we’ve likely only just begun. After all, despite the Federal Reserve growing its balance sheet by 140 percent and dropping rates essentially to zero, the bankruptcies just keep on coming. Ex-Fed governor Wayne Angell told Larry Kudlow’s CNBC audience, ‘monetary policy always works!’ Although Angell does stipulate that it takes time before the tromping on the monetary gas pedal will spin the economic tires and spray the prosperity gravel.”

Another taxpayer donation to GM and the auto workers union: "Welcome to the General Motors bailout, part three—or is it four, or five? It’s hard to keep up, but this week the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over the pension liabilities of Delphi, the auto-parts spinoff of GM that has been working its way through Chapter 11 since 2005. As with the previous taxpayer rescues, this one includes a special favor for the United Auto Workers. Under the agreement, the PBGC will assume some $6.2 billion in pension liabilities from Delphi, including both hourly and salaried employees. That’s the second biggest pension bailout in PBGC history, and it takes billions of liabilities off the books for GM. As Delphi’s former parent, GM had agreed to take responsibility for billions of dollars of Delphi’s pension obligations to its hourly employees."

NJ: Five pols, others arrested in corruption case : “An investigation into the sale of black-market kidneys and fake Gucci handbags evolved into a sweeping probe of political corruption in New Jersey, ensnaring more than 40 people Thursday, including three mayors, two state lawmakers and several rabbis. Even for a state with a rich history of graft, the scale of wrongdoing alleged was breathtaking. An FBI official called corruption ‘a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state.’”

How robot drones revolutionized the face of warfare : “Barely an hour’s drive from the casinos of Las Vegas, a group of unassuming buildings have become as important as the trenches were to WWI. The big difference? Today’s warriors are fighting without getting in harm’s way, using drones to attack targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Major Morgan Andrews is one such combatant. He kisses his wife goodbye, drives to Creech, a tiny desert air force base in Nevada, and within minutes could be killing insurgents on the other side of the world.”

Dems to seniors: Drop dead : “As Erick Erickson points out: ‘I think, given that the member of Congress who drafted H.R. 3200 read and take seriously people like Klien, Yglesias, and Singer, we should be very troubled by Section 1233 of H.R. 3200. The section, titled ‘Advanced Care Planning Consultation’ requires senior citizens to meet at least every 5 years with a doctor or nurse practitioner to discuss dying with dignity.’ … Forget all the kind rhetoric about ‘dignity.’ Let’s call it what it is: Geriatric Euthanasia. And let’s be very clear about why we want the old people to die: We’ve sucked all the economic productivity we’re going to get out of them, and it’s more convenient to kill them than it is to assume the financial burden of their care. You can pretty it up with all the flowery language you want, but at the end of the day, it comes down to, ‘You cost too much to keep alive. Just die.’”

Older people are more than “food for worms”: “Such is the strength of cultural miserabilism today that even the most smile-inducing good news stories can swiftly be turned into doom-laden tales about the terrible future humanity faces. This week, a report published by the US Census Bureau revealed something properly startling: some time in the next 10 years the global population of over-65s will outnumber the global population of under-fives for the first time ever. Such a monumental demographic change is a consequence of decades of development and scientific advance, which have allowed people to live longer, healthier, wealthier lives, and to live — in the real meaning of that word: to travel, to have new experiences, to chill out — even after they stop working. Yet rather than being treated as good news, as evidence of the leaps forward made by mankind, the US Census Bureau’s prediction was treated at best as ‘worrying news’, and at worst as ‘bad news.’”

Irony: China reversing one-child policy: "China has taken the first step towards ending its controversial one-child policy by encouraging urban couples in Shanghai to have two children. The easing of restrictions comes in response to concern about economic problems caused by the country's ageing population. Shanghai is actively promoting the two-child policy as China tries to defuse a demographic time bomb caused by a shortage of young workers after 30 years of tough population growth restrictions. The policy shift in the large coastal city marks the first time since 1979 that officials have actively encouraged parents to have more children. If they are both single children themselves, husbands and wives in Shanghai are allowed to have two children. While they have technically been allowed to do so before, the couples are now the target of a city-wide campaign to persuade them to make use of their extra allowance. They will receive home visits and leaflets to promote the benefits of a second child. The city government is worried about the rapidly rising number of elderly people and the resulting burden and drag on the Chinese economy."

Anti-Americanism -- The last acceptable bigotry : “The more intense the statism, the more intense the hatred of America. Those seeking to extort more funding for the CBC, or yet another social services bureaucracy, need only point to America as a horribly atavistic, though still barely civilized society. A victim of too much freedom, usually expressed through the euphemisms of Wall Street, Big Business and the Gun Lobby. Like the biker in a 1950s PSA, the Canadian Left points to America as what Canada might become if it strays from the true path. America the villain, if not exactly the Great Satan, is a necessary prop to Canadian statists.”

Britain's Labour Party loses another by-election: "British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party has suffered another embarrassing by-election defeat. It was the first poll triggered by a recent scandal over politicians’ expenses. Labour was pushed into second place by the main opposition Conservatives in the Norwich North constituency in eastern England. The Conservatives overturned Labour's majority of 5549 at the last election in 2005 to take the seat by more than 7000 votes. The sitting lawmaker, Ian Gibson, quit last month after revelations that he claimed nearly £80,000 ($162,000) in second-home expenses on a London flat which he later sold cheaply to his daughter. Mr Brown admitted it was “clearly a disappointing result” but said voters were disenchanted with all main parties in the wake of the expenses furore. Although it comes as little surprise, the defeat shows Mr Brown's government facing a struggle to beat David Cameron's Conservatives -- who are well ahead in opinion polls -- at a general election which must be held within a year. Mr Cameron said the Tory victory showed people had “had enough” of Mr Brown and “want change in our country”. Chloe Smith, the victorious Conservative candidate, is only 27 years old and will be the youngest politicians in the House of Commons. She will take her seat when parliament returns in October from its summer recess, which started this week."

British Fuel scheme “failing the poorest”: “A scheme aimed at improving households’ fuel efficiency and cutting fuel poverty is ‘failing the poorest and most vulnerable,’ MPs have said. Nearly a fifth of the funding for the multi-million pound Warm Front scheme was going to households that were already energy efficient. And £15m was spent on measures that did little to pull households out of fuel poverty, the committee of MPs said.The government is aiming to end fuel poverty in England by 2016.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Home While Black

by Larry Elder (who is black)

Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, retained a lawyer. Why? He claims cops in Cambridge, Mass., racially profiled him. Here's what happened.

Gates, "one of the nation's pre-eminent African-American scholars," writes The Boston Globe, was arrested about 1 p.m. at his home near Harvard Square by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. "The incident," says the Globe, "raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling."

"Friends of Gates," writes the Globe, "said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver's license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours." The Globe posted redacted arrest reports on its Web site. But for reasons unknown, the Globe removed them less than a day later.

The Cambridge Chronicle, however, still posts the reports on its Web site. The Chronicle's article also mentions a few things the Globe omitted -- including that "during the incident, Gates accused Cambridge police officers of racism."

The Chronicle writes: "A witness had called police when she saw a black man, apparently Gates, wedging his shoulder into the door, trying to gain entry, according to the arrest report. ...

"In the arrest report, police said Gates initially refused to step onto his porch when approached by (Cambridge Police Sgt. James) Crowley. He then allegedly opened his door and shouted, 'Why, because I'm a black man in America?'

"As Crowley continued to question Gates, the Harvard professor allegedly told him, 'You don't know who you're messing with.' When Crowley asked to speak with him outside, Gates allegedly said, 'Ya, I'll speak with your momma outside.'"

Crowley says he responded to a call of a possible break-in by a woman on the sidewalk, who said she'd seen a black male "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry." Crowley reported he "could see an older black male standing in the foyer." He continued: "As I stood in plain view of this man, later identified as Gates, I asked if he would step out onto the porch and speak with me. He replied 'no, I will not.' He then demanded to know who I was. I told him that I was 'Sgt. Crowley from the Cambridge Police' and that I was 'investigating a report of a break in progress' at the residence. While I was making this statement, Gates opened the front door and exclaimed 'why, because I'm a black man in America?' I then asked Gates if there was anyone else in the residence. While yelling, he told me that it was none of my business and accused me of being a racist police officer."

Crowley's report, as well as that of another responding officer, describe Gates yelling repeated accusations of racism while asserting that the officer "had no idea who (he) was 'messing' with" and that the officer "had not heard the last of it."

After initially refusing to produce any identification confirming his residence, Gates finally supplied a Harvard ID. By that time, a crowd of officers and passers-by was outside. In front of the house and "in view of the public," Crowley states he twice warned Gates that he was becoming disorderly. But Gates' yelling and "tumultuous behavior" continued, causing "surprise and alarm" in the citizenry outside. Crowley then placed Gates under arrest.

Crowley "asked Gates if he would like an officer to take possession of his house key and secure his front door, which he left wide open." Gates said "the door was unsecurable due to a previous break attempt at the residence." (Emphasis added.)

OK, the cops overreacted. Cops' training involves dealing with verbally abusive citizens. They could have walked away, written a report and allowed the prosecutor to determine whether to file charges. But Gates overreacted, too.

Last week, about 2 p.m., while driving a nice car, I got stopped by a police officer about a block from my home in Los Angeles. The officer asked for license and registration. "Yes, sir," I said, handing him my license. Before I could retrieve the registration, he said, "Mr. Elder, do you still live at this address?" I said I did. He said: "OK. I stopped you because you rolled through a stop sign. Two pedestrians saw you, and they gestured to me, as if saying, 'Are you going to do something about that?' So I felt I had to stop you. I'm not looking for area residents. I'm looking for people who don't live here who might be committing crimes. You're fine."

I did roll through the stop sign. He could have ticketed me. Rather, he responded to my politeness with politeness. Besides, don't we want a proactive police department that, within the law, doesn't just react to crime but also tries to prevent it?

Cops routinely deal with conflict, angry citizens and quite often the worst of the worst -- while going to work every day willing to take a bullet for someone they don't even know. Even Henry You-Don't-Know-Who-You're-Messing-With Gates should understand that. Cops are human beings, too.

SOURCE

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Colorblind test failed

It’s Henry Gates who plays race card

‘I said, are you doing this because I’m a black man in America? Are you doing this because you’re a white police officer and I am a black man?” - Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. recounting a conversation with his arresting officer in Cambridge.

So what if the cop had been black? What if Sgt. James Crowley happened to be one of Cambridge’s 41 black police officers rather than bearing as he does the affliction of whiteness? If a black police sergeant responded to the call of a possible breaking and entering, and asked Gates for some form of identification, what would have happened then?

Gates would have been just as tired after his trip to China - an excuse his defenders use to explain his arrogance and rudeness. And if having a cop show up at your door and ask about your identity is, as Gates claims, intrusive or insulting, it would have been just as intrusive from a black cop as a white one.

The context would have been identical as well: Nine daytime, front-door break-ins reported in the neighborhood in the first quarter of 2009; Gates’ own door damaged by a previous, possible break-in attempt, according to the police report.cw0

Imagine all the facts and all the circumstances identical, but a black police officer instead of a white one. What would have been different? Everything. The tired professor would have found the strength to hand over his ID without significant objection. The officer would have gone on his way. No angry shouts, no (alleged) “yo mama” comments, no screams so loud they attracted the neighbors, or embarrassing photos of a raging Skip Gates on the front of the Herald.

All changed, not because of a different cop, but a different Professor Gates. The Gates who greeted Crowley was a racist. And I know, because the professor said so himself. By his own admission, Gates didn’t just blame the incident on the fact that he is “a black man.” He also added the accusatory question, “Are you doing this because you’re a white police officer?”

Review every account of the Gates arrest, including Gates’ self-serving interviews, and it’s hard to find an action of Crowley’s that can be characterized as inherently racist.

Yes, it’s possible that the arrest itself was a racist act. But it’s also possible that it wasn’t. It may have been a righteous arrest, or the action of an annoyed, flustered cop. Or Crowley may be a power-mad jerk with a badge. All possibilities.

But the only motive for Gates’ behavior, by his own admission, is the cop’s skin color and Gates’ race-based assumptions about him. Once again, the “white cop” charge comes from Gates’ own words, not the police report. And not just white cops, but white witnesses, too. According to an eyewitness quoted in the Herald yesterday, when police asked him for ID, Gates started yelling, “I’m a Harvard professor . . . You believe white women over black men.”

Not that Gates is without compassion. “Crowley should beg my forgiveness,” he told one reporter. “If I decided he was sincere,” Gates assured us, “I would forgive him.” Don’t you just love a rich guy who summers on the Vineyard asking a working-class cop to “beg”? How perfectly Cambridge. Gates’ race-obsessed heart may not be in the right place, but his house certainly is.

SOURCE

It seems clear to me from the two reports above that Larry Elder is a pleasant, polite guy and Henry Gates is neither. That is the whole difference behind what the two men experienced. But the race-obsessed American Left cannot allow that, of course. I also had some postings yesterday on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH about the matter -- JR

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WHAT'S NEXT, MR. PRESIDENT -- CARDIGANS?

Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president's approval rating now stands at 57 percent, down 11 points from April. Half of Americans think the recession will last an additional two years or more, 52 percent think Obama is trying to "accomplish too much," and 57 percent think the country is on the "wrong track."

From a lousy cap-and-trade bill awaiting death in the Senate to a health-care reform agenda already weak in the knees to the failure of the stimulus to deliver promised jobs and economic activity, what once looked like a hope-tastic juggernaut is showing all the horsepower of a Chevy Cobalt. "Give it to me!" the president egged on a Michigan audience last week, pledging to "solve problems" and not "gripe" about the economic hand he was dealt.

Despite such bravura, Obama must be furtively reviewing the history of recent Democratic administrations for some kind of road map out of his post-100-days ditch.

So far, he seems to be skipping the chapter on Bill Clinton and his generally free-market economic policies and instead flipping back to the themes and comportment of Jimmy Carter. Like the 39th president, Obama has inherited an awful economy, dizzying budget deficits and a geopolitical situation as promising as Kim Jong Il's health. Like Carter, Obama is smart, moralistic and enamored of alternative energy schemes that were nonstarters back when America's best-known peanut farmer was installing solar panels at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Like Carter, Obama faces as much effective opposition from his own party's left wing as he does from an ardent but diminished GOP.

And perhaps most important, as with Carter, his specific policies are genuinely unpopular. The auto bailout -- which, incidentally, is illegal, springing as it has from a fund specifically earmarked for financial institutions -- has been reviled from the get-go, with opposition consistently polling north of 60 percent. Majorities have said no to bank bailouts and to cap and trade if it would make electricity significantly more expensive.

According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, more than 80 percent are concerned that health-care reform will increase costs or diminish the quality of care. Even as two House committees passed a reform bill last week, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warned that the proposal "significantly expands the federal responsibility for health-care costs" and dramatically raises the cost "curve." This sort of voter and expert feedback can't be comforting to the president.

As writers who inveighed against last year's GOP candidate and called George W. Bush's presidency a "disaster," we're equal-opportunity critics. As taxpayers with children and hence some small, almost certainly unrecoverable stake in this country's future (not to mention that of General Motors, Chrysler and AIG), we write with skin in the game and the fear that our current leader will indeed start busting out the 1970s cardigans… continue reading here.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Obama hold on records raises hypocrisy charge: "After lampooning the Bush administration for secrecy, President Obama used the same legal arguments as his predecessor to block the release of logs showing which industry executives met with the White House to help formulate his health care policy. The new administration abruptly reversed course Wednesday evening after being accused of hypocrisy and released a list of more than a dozen meeting attendees. Among the more than dozen executives identified as weighing in with presidential advisers on health care during February were Richard Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association; Billy Tauzin, the former congressman who heads the drug lobby PhRMA; Angela Braly, chief executive of WellPoint Inc.; and Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net Inc. The episode turned the tables on Mr. Obama, who during the 2008 presidential campaign accused Vice President Dick Cheney of unnecessary secrecy in refusing to identify which energy executives weighed in on energy policy early in the Bush years and who criticized his primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, of doing the same thing during the 1993-94 health care debate."

Obama health-care claims disputed: "Even as President Obama delivered a prime-time sales pitch for his embattled health care reform plan Wednesday, basic facts about coverage, cost and who foots the bills remain in dispute and many of the president's favorite talking points are challenged not only by Republicans but also by independent fact-checkers. For example, Mr. Obama promises that people who are happy with their current health insurance can keep it. That's a claim contradicted by Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan consumer advocacy group at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. The group found that while the government would not require people to change their health insurance, proposals by Senate Democrats would result in some people losing health care benefits from employers, either because it would become too expensive or because workers would be able to get a better deal elsewhere. Such inconsistencies between the rhetoric and the reality cloud much of the health care debate as Mr. Obama retools some of his claims to fend off criticism and adjusts positions he staked out on the campaign trail. [See also many posts on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE about this]

In defence of hedge funds: “Douglas Shaw of Black Rock spoke at a Civitas lunch this week on the topic ‘In Defence of Hedge Funds.’ Good luck to him. The industry is about to be overrun by an EU army of new regulations, which will knock any innovatory stuffing out of them. As investment businesses evolve and grow in the US, Switzerland, the Middle East and Asia, the stunted European hedge funds will look more and more like the evolutionary throwbacks of the Galapagos. I don’t know why hedge funds don’t spend about a thousand times more on PR, because they have a positive story to tell.”

Rasmussen. Just 25% Now Say Stimulus Has Helped The Economy, 31% Say it Hurt: "Confidence in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan proposed by President Obama and passed by Congress in February continues to fall. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 25% of U.S. voters now say the stimulus plan has helped the economy. That’s a six-point drop from a month ago. Thirty-one percent (31%) say the stimulus actually hurt the economy, little changed from a month ago. However, this is the first poll showing that more voters believe the plan hurt rather than helped. A plurality (36%) says the plan has had no impact. Just after Congress passed the plan, 34% said it would help the economy, 32% that it would hurt and 26% predicted no impact."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Amazon attacked for deleting George Orwell

Two books bad ... Amazon deleted 1984 and Animal Farm from its electronic book reader, the Kindle. Outraged customers lose texts they bought. Is this a warning of what our future holds? I am now feeling rather glad that, like most academics, I have a substantial library of REAL books. There are many books printed hundreds of years ago that are still readable. How long will material stored on today's magnetic and optical media remain available and readable? Will we one day need to go to a government-run museum just to read a CD? I have a little story to tell in that connection which I will put at the foot of the news item below:

Online retailer Amazon has been forced to fend off accusations of Big Brother-like behaviour after it erased two George Orwell books from customers' electronic book readers. In an Orwellian move, copies of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four were mysteriously wiped from customer's Kindle devices.

The Kindle is an electronic book reader that lets users download and read texts from Amazon's online catalogue. Online complaints compared Amazon's move to a book shop breaking in to a customer's house to steal back purchased books. One student lost all of the notes he had made while reading one of the books.

The texts were uploaded by a publisher who did not have reproduction rights, Amazon told technology news website CNet, and so they were deleted. "We removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers," a spokesman said. "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances." [But will anybody ever trust them again?]

SOURCE

My story: I recently decided to convert my old Windows computer into a DOS machine -- as a sort of museum for all the old DOS software we used to use a dozen or more years ago. In particular I wanted to create a collection of all the old DOS games that the kids used to play and which they enjoyed so much.

But as soon as I tried, I failed. I had set up DOS machines often in the past so I expected no trouble but this time I failed. I just could not get DOS to boot from the hard drive. Fortunately, my stepson is both himself a computer retailer and also the son of a computer retailer so he remembered a rare switch (/mbr) to the old FDISK command that solved the problem.

But I then found that a lot of my old floppy disks had become corrupt over time so it was important to get the CD drive accessible from DOS as soon as possible. And that was easier said than done. After a couple of hours of hunting around and head-scratching, I finally found a driver file that worked and also figured out the syntax of how to set it up (with driver in CONFIG.SYS and CD command in AUTOEXEC.BAT).

But then there was the problem of getting the sound to work. Modern motherboards have the sound onboard and DOS cannot access that. Fortunately, however, I had an old Soundblaster card left over from a project of a few years ago and we found a slot on the motherboard that would take it. But we have no DOS drivers for it so, at the time of writing, the sound is not yet working. My stepson is however fairly confident that he will be able to find the files we need. But would he be able to find them in (say) 10 years' time?

So the moral of the story is obvious. Stuff that is stored on the routine technology of today can become almost inaccessible in as little as 10 years' time. It makes you think. Technological change does create some risk of wiping out our past.

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Lawmakers Express Outrage at ‘Potential’ $23.7-Trillion Liability Bank Bailout Law Could Impose on Taxpayers

Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) called it a “brave new world.” Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) called it “one fraud after another.” Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) said the corporate bailout was being run as a “don’t ask, don’t tell program,” and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) made biblical references. A bipartisan group of lawmakers were mystified Tuesday at how what began as the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) could potentially reach a liability of $23.7 trillion for U.S. taxpayers--compared to the U.S. gross domestic product of $14 trillion.

Neil Barofsky, special inspector general of the TARP program, testified Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the same day his office’s TARP quarterly report was released, which showed the potential escalating cost of the program. “Your report really demonstrates that we have entered into a very, very scary territory, a brave new world where Washington decides what happens on Wall Street and Main Street, and hopefully sometime in the future, we can find a way to have an exit strategy,” Bilbray said.

Barofsky was sure to state that the $23.7 trillion figure was “the total potential government support,” a worst case scenario of sorts under the current structure. “The speculation is if every one of these programs is fully subscribed to, that is the total commitment of guarantees,” Barofsky told the panel. Rep. Dan Burton (R-In.) remarked, “If even half of that is correct, we’ve got a big problem.”

Barofsky stressed that the amount currently outstanding is closer to $3 trillion. Of the original $700 billion in TARP funds approved by Congress and President George W. Bush, $643.1 billion have been allotted to 12 different programs, while a total of $441 billion has been spent. The actual bulk comes from loan programs through the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). “But when you add up all of the different programs, including the ones that are paid back, including ones that may have been cancelled, including collateral programs, the total amount of support, which is what we are trying to capture is, does total $23.7 trillion,” Barofsky said.

Documents obtained by FOXNews.com showed that the $23.7 trillion covers total estimated exposure of the government in dealing with the financial crisis and specifically some 50 “initiatives or programs” created by myriad federal agencies in dealing with the crisis, reported The New York Post. However, Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams called the figure “inflated” and said the estimate “does not provide a useful framework for evaluating the potential cost of these programs,” the Associated Press reported.

Issa, the committee’s ranking Republican, said the $23.7 trillion figure was “about 30 times what you would have if you gave away $1 million a year from the birth of Christ until today--just for somebody to try to figure out if that’s true or not.”

More HERE

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Destructive Social "Justice"

There is more than a bit of nastiness in this liberal-progressive urge to smash what others have built and to drag people down to their level.

The Democrat/Socialist Party's plan to nationalize healthcare exemplifies the essence of social justice: an invidious urge to destroy what exists and a faith that social harmony depends upon making everyone equally miserable.

Liberal-progressives estimate that 46 million people, 15% of the population, lack health insurance. In order to provide them insurance, liberal-progressives intend to force each of us to forgo any vestige of individuality and to accept a prison-like regimentation of our healthcare.

When Hillary Clinton was working in 1993 to impose socialized medicine upon us, the Washington Monthly, one of the purest strains of socialism within the liberal-progressive, mainstream media, editorialized forthrightly that a fundamental aim and benefit of Hillary Care would be forcing business leaders to sit for hours in crowded doctors' waiting rooms to receive medical care. There is more than a bit of nastiness in this liberal-progressive urge to smash what others have built and to drag people down to their level.

Why stop at health care? If Lyndon Johnson's equality-in-fact is the aim, the best way to attain it is to put everyone in prison. Everyone then would have tasks assigned by the political state's intellectual czars, along with identical clothing, housing, bedding, food, and drink.

As history shows us, that is the end point toward which all liberal-progressive governments proceed. Most people will not willingly give up what they have worked for all their lives to attain. Force of law, and ultimately of arms, is required to take from some to give to others. Some governments, the United States among them, have not yet traveled too far along that path, but all have the shining example of the Soviet Union to guide them.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

There is an amusing takedown of that puffed-up toad known as Andrew Sullivan here.

Hillary accepts Iranian nuclear status: "The US would extend its “defence umbrella” across the Middle East to defend its allies against a nuclear-armed Iran, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, said yesterday. Mrs Clinton’s comments provoked an anxious reaction from the Israeli Government. Israel’s Minister for Intelligence and Atomic Energy, Dan Meridor, bristled at the implication that Iran’s nuclear status might be regarded as a strategic reality to be offset by other defence capabilities. “I was not thrilled to hear the American statement that they will protect their allies with a nuclear umbrella, as if they have already come to terms with a nuclear Iran,” he told Israeli army radio. “I think that’s a mistake.” Mrs Clinton, speaking at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) in Thailand, said that acquiring nuclear weapons would not make Iran more secure. “We will still hold the door open but we also have made it clear that we’ll take actions, as I’ve said time and time again, crippling action, working to upgrade the defence of our partners in the region,” she said. “We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment . . . that if the US extends a defence umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf, it’s unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer, because they won’t be able to intimidate and dominate as they apparently believe they can once they have a nuclear weapon.”

Pakistan objects to expanded US combat plans in Afghanistan: “Pakistan is objecting to expanded U.S. combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan, creating new fissures with Washington as thousands of new U.S. forces are arriving in the region. Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan, Pakistani intelligence officials said.” [The Paks shouldn't worry. Predator drones will get the Talibs in Pak territory too]

Obama: US on track for 2011 Iraq pullout: “President Barack Obama said Wednesday the United States will stick to its schedule and remove all its troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 even though there will be ‘tough days ahead.’ Standing in the Rose Garden alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Obama said the two nations were in the midst of a ‘full transition’ that would be based on mutual interest and respect.”

Obama's FDA thugs consider ways to short-circuit electronic cigarettes : "“The Food and Drug Administration, recently granted the authority to regulate tobacco as a drug, is taking aim at electronic cigarettes — battery-powered cigarette look-alikes that deliver nicotine and produce a puff of odorless vapor. Tests show that e-cigarettes contain ‘known carcinogens and toxic chemicals,’ including diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze, officials announced Wednesday during a teleconference. The FDA notes that the products have no warning labels.”

Obama is delaying the economic recovery: "Don’t believe the Obama Administration rhetoric about how this economy has just turned out to be so difficult and they are doing the best they can. While the economy is still getting worse, the truth is the recovery is long overdue. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates this recession as starting some time during December, 2007. The longest recession since World War II was 16 months, with the average being 10 months. The current recession has now lasted 19 months. By this reckoning, we should have had a normal cyclical recovery at least 3 months ago.”

Green Baptists preach salvation by breaking car windows: “Who could possibly claim that buying up drivable used cars at prices far in excess of their market value, for the express purpose of destroying them, will be beneficial for the economy or the planet? You guessed it: a combination of economy-saving politicians and earth-saving green activists are peddling the wonders of a new government program popularly known as ‘Cash for Clunkers.’ The Consumer Assistance Recycle and Save Act of 2009 has the two ostensible goals of jump-starting the stalled automobile industry and combating global warming (or climate change, or whatever they’re calling it these days) by replacing old, gas-guzzling smog machines with new, more fuel-efficient, cleaner cars.”

Have government deficits “saved the world?”: “Last week, I wrote about the crudeness of so-called Keynesian economic theory in which one assumes that all assets and capital ‘investment’ are ‘homogeneous’ in character, which means that their only contribution to the economy is from the money that is spent in their creation and continued operation. This view contrasts with the Austrian paradigm, which emphasizes the structure of production within an economy and the unsustainability of capital that is malinvested during a boom. Unfortunately, too many people in high places are prone to believe what on its face is unbelievable: running huge federal deficits somehow is a good thing for the economy.”

Walking away when you can pay: "Some of the promises our government has made in the last few months about ‘helping people keep their homes’ may actually worsen the housing crisis. New proposals ignore the real danger associated with ’strategic default,’ when homeowners decide to stop paying their mortgage, even though they have enough money to make payments. The Obama administration is working to lower monthly mortgage payments, but as a recent study conducted at the University of Chicago points out, it is not necessarily high payments but negative equity in homes that drives default.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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