Regarding the incident, at a Morgan Hill high school, in which several students were told they couldn’t wear shirts with the American Flag on Cinco de Mayo, Roger Ebert gives us this Leftish bit of wisdom,
Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July.
For cryin’ out loud! I thought I was making a joke with my, “No word yet on whether any Tea Partiers were involved” comment regarding the arrest of Faisal Shahzad for the attempted bombing in Times Square. Yet here is video of an MSNBC analyst stating that the attempted bombing will strengthen – are you ready? – the Tea Party.
Are liberal analysts really so incapable of thinking?
From the New Mexico Independent, Tea partiers “predisposed to intolerance,” University of Washington study says.
A new study of race and politics released this week by the University of Washington reveals insight into how supporters of the tea party movement—the vast majority of whom are white—view blacks and Hispanics.
I’m wondering if the Left really is as scared of the Tea Partiers as the media paints them out to be. Still, you’ve got to wonder why people-of-color, in the Tea Party movement, are too stupid to see how intolerant the vast majority of whites they mingle with are. Nothing like race baiting.
And seriously, who still falls for the self-defeating tactic of name-calling someone, or group, as “intolerant”?
“We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” – President Obama (HT: HotAir)
I guess telling other people where their paygrades end isn’t above the President’s paygrade.
No, they didn’t.
Actually, the headline reads, Small Riot Breaks Out at Immigration Protest.
The protest was directed towards the signing of SB1070, in Arizona. The controversial Arizona bill clamps down on illegal “immigration” by requiring local police officers to question people about their immigration status if they suspect the person is in this country illegally. Illegal “immigration” advocates fear such a law will result in racial profiling. From the article,
Witnesses say a group protesting against SB1070 began to fight with a man who was for the controversial immigration bill.
Police tried escorting that man away from the scene, fearing for his safety, when they too came under attack by people throwing items, including water bottles.
It appears that the first racial profiling to occur, upon the bill’s signing into law, would be on the part of the protester who, yelling at the man police escorted from the scene, shouted, “F*** you! F***ing racist!” (see video here).
From James Taranto’s column in the Wall St. Journal Online:
Ho Hum, a White Supremacist Rally
"A rally of about 40 white supremacists Saturday on the lawn of Los Angeles City Hall drew hundreds of counter-protesters, sparked brawls in which two people were severely beaten and ended with crowds of demonstrators hurling rocks and bottles at police and departing supremacists," the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The violence came from those who had come to counter the hate:A bare-chested middle-aged man with Nazi insignias tattooed on his chest and back walked into a crowd of hundreds of counter-protesters gathered near 1st and Spring streets.
Surrounded, the man mockingly bobbed his head to the rhythm of demonstrators chanting "Nazi scum." About a dozen protesters suddenly began pelting the man with punches and kicks. He fell and was struck on the back with the wooden handle of a protester’s sign, which snapped in two. Police eventually reached the man and pulled him from the melee, as blood poured from the back of his neck.
Another man was rushed by a mob on Spring Street. He was punched in the face and kicked for about 20 seconds before police made it to the scene. After that beating was broken up, the man began running south on Spring Street, only to be chased down by a protester and slugged in the face. He collapsed and his face slammed to the curb as protesters began pummeling him again.
The bloodied man was then escorted away by police. Both victims were treated and released, police said.
His sign, unclear in its intended meaning, read "Christianity=Paganism=Heathen$" with an arrow pointing at a swastika.
"Gosh, I think he just didn’t have a clear message. I don’t even think he was a Nazi," said one man, looking at the broken pieces of the sign left behind.
The Left insists that these sorts of folks come from the Right, and thus it would be safe to assume, then, that those counter-protesters were mostly from the Left. For those who say that all this sort of physical violence comes solely from the Right (I’m looking at you, Dan) may need to rethink your premise. I think violence from both sides, fringe (relative to both sides) though it may be, is a reality. Many suggest that Limbaugh and Beck are to blame for violence. How about Olberman and Schultz now?
Anyone? Hello? Crickets?
Taranto goes on to make a very salient point about this actual racism vs. the accused racism of Tea Partiers.
If you haven’t heard about this until now, you’re not alone. Blogger William Jacobson points out that the media hardly noticed:
Outside of the local media and a handful of blogs, the event received scarce attention. None of the usual suspects bothered to cover or comment on it. Firedoglake and Huffington Post covered it, but we saw none of the hyperventilated commentary and lecturing that is directed at Tea Parties.
How curious. Tea Party events which are not white supremacist events are met with derision and abuse, while a real white supremacist rally is met mostly with silence.
There is a lesson here. The attacks on the Tea Parties have nothing to do with stamping out white supremacy and everything to do with shaping the political dialogue to stamp out legitimate opposition to Obama administration policies.
[…]
But Saturday’s tumult is a timely reminder that in 2010, as in 1999 [the date of a Klan rally in LA]–and, for that matter, in 1977, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that neo-Nazis had a right to march in Skokie, Ill.–white supremacy is a fringe ideology that appeals only to a minuscule number of weirdos.
The people who claim to be alarmed by the "racism" of the tea-party movement know this as well as we do–which is why they respond to a display of actual racism as nonchalantly as we do. They desperately attack the tea-party movement for the same reason we cheer it: because it is made up of ordinary Americans anxious and unhappy about the ever-expanding power of government over their lives.
A mass movement of Americans concerned about preserving their freedom is a threat to the political agenda of the left. A gathering of a few dozen actual white supremacists is a threat only to whatever shred of dignity the supremacists may retain.
Sorry for the long quotes, but this is a point that Taranto has been making for some time (which is why I highly suggest getting the daily e-mail of his column), and this particular incident highlights precisely the the disingenuousness of it’s being used as a political football by the Left. It’s the race card they play; a game to stifle dissent (such dissent formerly being the highest form of patriotism).
We are post-racial only to the point that charges of racism aren’t used as some political ploy. Actual racism is very much on the decline, as President Obama’s election highlighted brightly. It shows that the Tea Party’s detractors have very little in their corner. They’re reduced to name-calling.
Jim Finnegan, writing in the Naples (Florida) News, was responding to some folks who had commented on his original article on the Catholic Church priest child abuse cases. Apparently, some folks read his words and though he was saying something directly opposite to them. In his follow-up, he first had to give the obligatory disclaimers that he’s not excusing anyone, but he quoted some information that puts this all in perspective.
Charol Shakeshaft, a researcher of a little remembered 2004 study for the U.S. Department of Eduction [sic] on the physical sexual abuse of students in schools, pointed out " the physical sexual abuse of students in schools, is likely more than 100 times the abuse of Priests." I am sure this is easy to Google for the entire study should you wish.
Shakeshaft also pointed out that "nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometimes durin [sic] their school career." Creditable accounts of Priestly abuse occured [sic] from but 1.7% of the total Priests in the U.S. Thankfully, Shakeshaft’s study is now being revisited by news commentators seeking to restore some sense of proportion to the media’s aggressive coverage of the Catholic Church.
While Priestly sex abuse can never be mitigated by these figures, they do point out the gross imbalance, and bring question to the motives of the news media that are pouring resources into digging up decades old dirt on the Church. Sadly,the nerative [sic] that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by empirical measure now the safest environment for young people in America today
Aside from Finnegan’s need for a spell checker, this does point out a stark double standard in play, by both liberals and the media (apologies for the repetition). Just going by numbers, you’d think there would be more coverage about abuse in schools, which (if you don’t homeschool) have a mandatory attendance requirement, vs. church, which is entirely voluntary. Not to mention the fact that the school abuse continues while…
The facts show that Priestly sex abuse is a phenomenon that spiked in the mid 1960’s into the 1980’s. This at the time that the "anything goes" sexual revolution began. These are the old cases that the media has chosen to resurrect in their recent attacks on the Church.
Again, none of this should be construed as excusing anyone of these horrible deeds. But a little perspective is in order, and the media, since it goes against "the narrative", is simply not providing it.
When windows are broken at the headquarters of a Democratic politician, it makes the news. Racial epithets allegedly yelled at Congressmen (for which no actual evidence exists currently) get days of coverage. But when Republican political operatives, leaving a Republican fundraiser, get beaten outside it and have bones broken, the MSM heaves a sigh of boredom and virtually ignore it.
Left wing blogs spring into action and report that the brutal attack was not politically motivated. So, that explains the (lack of) media coverage?
To steal Limbaugh’s phrase, Andrew Breibart and company don’t need to be balanced by equal time. They are equal time. As Frank Ross says in his article:
Here we have a beautiful 26-year-old woman who has pins and screws keeping her leg together. We have her boyfriend with a broken jaw and nose. At what point does the media become a willing accomplice, through its silence and utter lack of curiosity, in these crimes?
When indeed?
It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them.
Guess what, Mr. President? We LIKE it (and we do not like the alternative).
I was on Spring Break vacation with the family last week, so other than my post-dated blog posts, I didn’t write much … well, anything. But I did surf the web and kept track of some articles I wanted to highlight when I came back. Here they are, in mostly chronological order of when I found them.
Amnesty International decided that jihad was not antithetical to human rights so long as it’s "defensive".
The bump in polling numbers after passing health care "reform" was supposed to go to Democrats. Instead, while it’s just a measure of emotion at this point in time, you’d think that all the promises of the bill would give Democrats a few higher point. Instead, they’re at an 18-year low. It’s quite possible that people are only now understanding what they supported all along, because the "free" stuff isn’t materializing right now.
What was the point of the resurrection on Easter? Don Sensing has (had) some thoughts.
The Tea Party’s ideas are much more mainstream than the MSM would like you to believe. And Tea Partiers are much more diverse that the MSM realized. Turns out, they did some actual journalism and found out the real story. Imagine that. Has the liberal slant of the press become a problem of corruption, especially with, first, the willful ignoring of the Tea Party story, and second, the willful misreporting of it?
Toyota cars have killed 52 people, and got a recall for it. Gardasil, a cervical cancer vaccine, has had 49 "unexplained deaths" reported by the CDC and it’s still required in some states.
Changing the names to protect the guilty, the words "Islam" and "jihad" are now banned from the national security strategy document. When the next terror attack Islamic jihadists happens, it’ll be interesting to find out how they describe it.
Cows have been exonerated of helping to cause global warming. No, really.
Rep. Bart Stupak’s reversal of his principles is having the proper effect; he’s decided not to seek re-election. Likely, he couldn’t get re-elected anyway, after betraying his constituents, but let this be a lesson about trusting "conservative" Democrats too much.
And finally, media scrutiny of church vs. state (click for a larger picture):
Oh, that liberal media.
Tea partiers mostly white, conservative, male, pro-life, poll says
So says the New Mexico Independent.
From the post,
According to a recent Gallup poll, tea partiers are mostly white (79 percent), conservative (70 percent) and male (55 percent). While 68 percent of tea party supporters have not graduated from college, 55 percent—make more than $50,000 per year.
And yet, Timothy Johnson, a black tea partier, states,
“Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,”
That was from the article, Black conservative tea party backers take heat.
Do you think liberals on staff at the New Mexico Independent will note how black tea partiers are called Uncle Tom, Oreos, and traitors?
The health care mandate is defended as Constitutional because it’s just a tax.
It gives people a choice: they can buy health insurance or they can pay a tax roughly equal to the cost of health insurance, which is used to subsidize the government’s health care program and families who wish to purchase health insurance….
Two questions.
So, are the above two measures Constitutional? If they are not, why is the healthcare measure Constitutional while these are not?
That’s the conclusion of a study (if you wish to call it that) highlighted by CNN.
Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.
Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.
The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning — on the order of 6 to 11 points — and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people’s behaviors come to be.
The thing is, here’s how they define their terms.
The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines "liberal" in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.
"Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with," he said.
But even using their (extremely flawed) definition, conservatives are more likely to give to charity, and do charity themselves, than liberals. We’ve covered that topic before, a long time ago, in regards to giving for those victims of the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami in 2006; clearly people who are "genetically nonrelated". And Rev. Don Sensing, for whom the hat tip goes (including the title of this post), makes one (of many) points against this study’s presuppositions and conclusions.
Consider these data from September 2008:
Last Friday, Sen. Joseph Biden, the Democratic candidate for vice president, released his tax returns for the years 1998 to 2007. The returns revealed that in one year, 1999, Biden and his wife Jill gave $120 to charity out of an adjusted gross income of $210,979. In 2005, out of an adjusted gross income of $321,379, the Bidens gave $380. In nine out of the ten years for which tax returns were released, the Bidens gave less than $400 to charity; in the tenth year, 2007, when Biden was running for president, they gave $995 out of an adjusted gross income of $319,853.
That’s liberal Joe Biden, btw. What about conservative (well, comparatively) John McCain?
In 2007, the Arizona senator reported $405,409 in total income and contributed $105,467, or 26 percent of his total income, to charity.
In 2006, Mr. McCain said he had $358,414 in total income and donated $64,695, or 18 percent of his total income, to charity.
You really should read his whole disassembly of this sham.
I’d like to pose a question to any out there who might support SSM. Allow me a moment to set the question up with some numbers.
The percentage of the population, based on a John Fund essay some years ago which I’m not going to dig up for y’all, offered that if finds that upwards 6% of the population are gay then in Canada, where SSM was legalized, then it was observed that about 6% of that gay population was availing itself of the opportunity to get married. This means that the SSM question affects just under .4% of the population. Conversely 94% of the population is not gay, and a considerably higher proportion of that population does get married. Within that larger set, a certain number of the marriages are “weak”, that is have significant difficulties in staying hitched. Today’s high divorce rate is a symptom of that fact.
Marriage itself is a institution and a practice which involves many things, including the relational aspect between the two individuals, the community, and immediate and extended family (that is kids). The arguments for SSM stress the first as being the primary aspect, i.e., that marriage is primarily a bond between two people in a loving and nurturing relationship. This argument consequentially reduces the emphasis on the other aspects of marriage. For the “weak” marriages above that in turn improves the chance of those marriages breaking up, because if marriage is “about” relationship and the relationship is sour or lost, then there is no point in continuing.
So here’s my question: If SSM were enacted, say federally, it seems quite plausible that the number of SSM marriage partners is roughly commensurate with increase in the number of children from broken families due to a new emphasis on the partner aspect of marriage. So, for argument, grant that these numbers are about the same, that is the number of people in new gay marriages is equal to the number of children abandoned to state care. If that were the case, would legalizing SSM still be the right thing to do?
Just after Barack Obama won the presidency, gun sales rose dramatically, in the fear that he’d be going out rounding up firearms. Well, that round-up didn’t happen, but something else didn’t happen either; a rise in crime.
After all, it has been an article of faith among gun-control advocates that guns cause crime. That catechism was repeated relentlessly after the 2008 Heller ruling, in which the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on gun ownership: "Introducing more handguns into the District will mean more handgun violence," D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty lamented.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin agreed: "There is no question that this decision from the Supreme Court makes it harder for all mayors to keep their city safe," she told NPR. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley called the ruling "very frightening." The New York Times fumed the court had "all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly." The Chicago Tribune issued an equally nuanced and measured response: "Repeal the Second Amendment," it begged.
Yet despite a remarkable uptick in gun sales, during the first six months of 2009 violent crime fell 4.4 percent, property crime fell 6.6 percent, homicides fell 10 percent, and car thefts fell 19 percent.
As Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute recently pointed out, the falling crime rate was particularly precipitous in big cities such as Los Angeles, where homicides fell 17 percent in 2009, and New York, where they fell 19 percent.
If guns caused crime, then we should have expected precisely the opposite to happen — particularly given the related liberal belief, which Mac Donald dissects, that hard economic times drive people to desperate acts. Among others, she quotes a New York Times editorial in late 2008 fretting that "the economic crisis has clearly created the conditions for more crime and more gangs among hopeless, jobless young men in the inner cities." If liberal orthodoxy held true, then the combination of hard times and more guns should have made the past year a record-setting period for bloodshed. It didn’t.
And yet this perfect storm of circumstances, long held by liberals as a reason for crime, not only didn’t happen, but things went precisely in the opposite direction. I’ve been noting this for over seven years now.
