Poor People Suck, Part III...

...the Halloween Edition.

I usually hate Halloween. As a kid, I guess I found it pretty cool -- free candy! -- but as the years passed and I got older, I found the whole idea of dressing up in costumes, partying until I puked, and putting on an extra 15 pounds of Butterfinger fat something not worth the time and effort.

And then there's all the stupid little chores that go with celebrating Halloween -- carving Jack-o-Lanterns, putting up macabre decorations, and the subsequent cleanup after both -- that make this holiday a royal pain in the posterior. I feel the same way about Christmas, on a certain level; I hate putting up Christmas trees, and decorating them, and getting up on ladders to staple strings of lights to the house. I cannot stand life-sized plastic Santas (with reindeer) that light up and have this creepy, Made-in-China sound box that makes Santa's Ho-Ho-Ho! sound like your grandfather suddenly remembering he has a hernia.

Although I must say, I DO enjoy dressing up as Santa for the little kids in my family, and for my cousin's friends, which I have done for many years. Go figure.

Poor People Suck, Part I...

I was reminded of this truism again yesterday after a trip on a New York City bus.

I needed to get to the Staten Island Ferry yesterday to keep an appointment in Manhattan. The fastest way, actually the ONLY way that doesn't involve calling a taxi, from my home is to take the S61 bus down Victory Boulevard to Bay Street, and thus, to the Ferry. During rush hour, this can take upwards of 40 minutes, but since it was 10:30 a.m. the trip should have been significantly faster for the lighter traffic and relative lack of commuters.

It was not to be...

Profile This...

The Scene: A local coffee shop, this past Thursday morning.

Your favorite Lunatic has just sat down to read the menu, knowing full well that no matter what is on it he will order his "usual" -- two over easy, sausage and bacon, home fries, wheat toast, orange juice and coffee -- when he becomes aware of a conversation at another table not 5 feet away.

"Becomes aware" is a polite way to put it. Actually, the two young men engaged in this conversation (it was more like a monologue with one man haranguing the other who could do little more than shake his head, occasionally mutter "word!", "I heard that!" or "I feel you, Brother!") were speaking loud enough to wake the dead.

It became apparent, from both the tone of the conversation and it's subject matter, that this was done on purpose -- that is to say, that the subject was being brought up loudly and obnoxiously so that others in the coffee shop would be made to feel uncomfortable.

That's because the two men speaking were black, and the majority of the clientele was white.

What Rachel Jeantel Means to America...

The misshapen lump of flesh to the left is one Rachel Jeantel, who, according to most media reports, is the 'star' witness in the murder case against George Zimmerman, the man accused of having stalked and murdered a young black kid in Florida.

The Trayvon Martin Case has caused a great deal of  tumultuous debate in America, most of it of the stupid sort. What else could one expect? For the case is a microcosm, in many ways, of just what is wrong with many aspects of modern life in this country. Racial hatred, an irresponsible press, opportunistic 'Civil Rights' figures, ready-to-jump-on-bandwagons politicians, overeager prosecutors, a vastly misinformed citizenry, a legal system which creaks under the weight of it's own obsession with minutiae...

And then there's Miss Jeantel.

Things I Wish I Could Say Out Loud, Part One...

Ah, how one longs for the good old days, when seemingly no subject was considered taboo, and one could voice one's opinion without having half the room you're in cringe and go "ewwww!'.

I was thinking of this not too long ago, after the death of actress Jean Stapleton was announced. For those of  you who were born into the permanently puckered rectum version of this world (that would be post-Clinton Administration), Ms. Stapleton gained lasting fame and American-icon status as Edith Bunker, the long-suffering, dingbat-but-possessed-of-a-simple-wisdom bride of one Archie Bunker on television's All in the Family.

For those of you who believe television history began and ended with the first episode of Survivor, All in the Family was a situation comedy that aired in the early 1970's and ran into the 1980's which was, to put it mildly, grossly politically incorrect by today's anal-retentive standards. Which means that no one could even think of making All in the Family in this day-and-age. Anyone who tried would be shot outside the television producer's office for even suggesting it.

Obama "Used Up All The White Guilt..."

Social Darwinism is on the way. It is inevitable, and it's going to be messy, because apparently one side in this coming Survival-of-the-Fittest fight is totally unprepared, and unwilling, to pull it's own weight.

Probably because it has been conditioned to operate in an environment that will no longer exist once the truth of the national finances is finally told, and the unavoidable austerity measures kick in.

If this article is even halfway true, the African-American community is truly fucked when the Federal Budget cutting begins, because it's apparent that without a lavishly-funded, supported by guilt, 'System' to both decry and exploit simultaneously, many black folks left to their own devices are probably going to starve or die of rickets.

With any luck, Je$$e Jackson will be first.

H/T The Big Feed Blog

Something To Keep Y'All Busy...

I will be quite busy for the next few days, and shall not be stopping in to blog. I know...it's sad, ain't it? There's a few familial obligations to attend to this weekend, and a whole lot of 'networking' to be done at a few so-called Job Fairs, which are more like cattle calls for gray-haired, middle-aged male PhD's and MBA's who are apparently so desperate for a job that they'll sink to selling Green Energy door-to-door.

Been there, and done that. Oh, and of the two so-called Job Fairs or Job Seminars that I've been to in the past two weeks, they're all selling the same type of job;

You work on a "commission-based system"  (that is, for free) for a company that is a fly-by-night subsidiary of a Fortune 1000 that doesn't want to hire you because you cost too much -- what with Social Security taxes, unemployment insurance and fucking ObamaCare. Hopefully, you manage to sell whatever bullshit product they're pushing -- it's such a good product that the company doesn't dare send out it's professional, full-time-pay salesmen to do it for fear of taking them away from the actual lucrative products they normally sell -- to at least recoup your bus fare this week while you're "getting the hang of the sales' thing", and in the meantime, the "company" is either sold without a word, the government-financing runs out, or it goes into bankruptcy, always unexpectedly.

No wonder 30 million people have given up looking for a job.


Anyways, to help keep you entertained for at least a few minutes, I've collected some bits of news and some links for you.to look over. This is all stuff I normally would have blogged about, but for the time constraints and the busy past week, and soon-to-be busier week to come. Enjoy!

Jammie Wearing Fool has moved. Like an idiot, I did not know this. I used to visit JWF just about every day, but then forgot they existed. Which was a big mistake! Visit them today, and have a look-see, or else something seriously bad might happen to your pet Yorkie in the dead of night. Blogroll, belatedly, updated.

Also, it's good to see that Greasywrench has returned to blogging after a long hiatus. You should visit his site, too, if only because you never can quite tell who it was that accidentally-on-purpose cut your brake lines because you didn't. Grease was once an avid supporter of this diseased rant, and this is where I get to pay him off. Go visit.

It goes without saying that if you're STILL not reading Iowahawk regularly then you deserve a big, sloppy tongue kiss from Nancy Pelosi...post her garlic chicken and fried onion luncheon, and only then, after she's licked her own balls as only your dog can.This week's fare is a rib-ticklin' funny-but-sadly-all-too-true Masterpiece of sarcasm and satire.


The American Spectator goes to the Heart of the Sickness Within the Obama Administration. A must-read for those of you who still haven't grapsed the amateurish depravity, or detected the simple-minded, mile-wide Leftoid Fucktard streak in President Odoofus that causes him to go all gay and shit.

John Derbyshire tells the truth about The Establishment Right (and you know who you are, Rich Lowry, and the rest of the frat-boy wing of the conservative movement!). I did not know Derb was ill, and wish him well. I am a big fan from his days at National Review. Between the trust-fund-prep-school Right and the Godbots, this GOP of ours is gonna be royally screwed up one day.

We finish things off, appropriately enough, with a double dose of Professor Hanson. First on just why California is royally screwed if Obama remains in power (as if that wasn't obvious enough?), and then with a classic explanation of why Barack Obama will lose the rhetorical war -- and the election -- to Mitt Romney.

I know there's more that has happened this week, but I'm kinda swamped. Promise that next week I'll get on some things (like the Obama Administration airbrushing the biographies of other Presidents to make their man look like he has clue-fucking-one), and I'll have something to say about snoring...yes, you read that right: Snoring.

See you next week.

UPDATE: Apologies, but on the John Derbyshire thing: you need to read a few of his columns back (and read this here column that started the whole thing) to get the entire gist of it. Derb apparently was denounced by his former "friends" at National Review for...gasp!...speaking his mind on matters of race. Which lead one reader to wonder (paraphrased) "Why do the people at National Review even bother to grovel on questions of race when they will only be called racists, anyway?"

Niggerhead…

No sooner did I write the words ”Herman Cain does not play the Race Card” then he goes ahead…and plays the Race Card.

President Frequent Flyer Miles Strikes Again...

Can you imagine just what sort of Third-World shithole we'd be living in by now if this guy were actually trying to do the job to the best of his ability?

The best thing about Barack Obama is all the time he spends NOT being President of the United States, in fact often avoiding the job as if it came with a case of full-blown AIDS. Which means the important aspects of the job of President are probably being left to a motley assortment of others: Joe Biden, Lord-knows-how-many-ideologically-driven-Czars, White House aides and advisers, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

If you can find a bigger collection of retards anywhere on Planet Earth, I'll send you $5.

I hate to engage in racist stereotypes, but it needs to be said, I think:

Barack Obama likes picking up the paycheck, he likes the perks that come with the office,. he believes he's entitled to do whatever he can get away with -- but he's one of the laziest people I've ever seen in my life, and his inattention to detail is so pronounced that you begin to suspect that all of his qualifications are fake, begin to remember that the lofty speeches are written by someone else, and that he's probably passed through Life on Affirmative Action. One gets the impression that Barack Obama spends his days in the Oval Office playing X-box and pick-up basketball, and when it's necessary to trot him out in public, he's been told what to say, and since he has the attention span of a flea, he invariably fucks even that up.

"Unengaged" does not even begin to describe Barack Obama.

So far, if he's accomplished anything in nearly 3 years, it has been to reinforce pre-existing and negative racial stereotypes about the work ethic -- or lack thereof -- of black men.

Another vacation? More golf? Really? You know,Mr. President, it is usually customary for someone to actually DO SOMETHING before becoming mentally and physically tired enough to require a vacation. But, I'm a generous guy; I've seen what happens when you're apparently trying your best, and I'm willing to make you a deal:

You can have all the vacation time you want, right up until the election. Play golf every hour of every day. Send Michelle to Portugal, Sri Lanka, Timbuktu, for all I care, with as many servants as she arrogantly thinks she needs and is entitled to (she's forgotten that She's First Lady of the United States, not the Queen of the Universe). Give Air Force One the workout you absolutely know she's just craving. Hell, I'll even pay for your hotel room...oops, I already do...but that's beside the point.

Take all the time off you want, Mr. President, because the less you do, the better life gets for everyone else;

The more you're away, the less Washington screws with us.

The more you're away, the less time I have to spend watching you on my television screen while simultaneously trying to hold back a projectile vomit.

The more you're away, the more Presidential even the weakest Republican 2012 candidate looks. You make them all appear infinitely qualified by comparison, and your only hope for re-election is to stay off the idiot box so that people can't make that comparison and become complacent on Election Day, unable to make the choice between Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich.

The more you're away, the less sanctimonious and hypocritical blather I'll have to listen to.

Go on, Mr. Odingbat, take that extra week off...we've earned it.

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't...

I have to admit that even I, someone who normally doesn't care what people might think of me for speaking my mind, am often hesitant to wade into this subject. But it unfortunately will not go away, and the subject requires -- for good or ill -- a deeper dialogue. Really, what it requires more than anything, is a closer scrutiny of some of its more vocal advocates and their underlying motivations -- or at least an examination of their pathology. Someone is going to be offended by this post, but there are larger issues beyond just mere offense in this debate.

Cornell West says Obama isn't Black Enough.

I stopped listening to Cornell West...oh...about five seconds after I first heard him speak some 30-odd years ago. It wasn't worth the effort, because the man is a one-trick pony and his solitary schtick is "White people suck and they owe me" which, you have to admit, is probably great for selling books or getting yourself on television, but as a philosophy or governing principle by which to live your life leaves an awful lot to be desired.

What, pray tell, would Professor West ever do if all this imaginary racism he sees dried up? What would one do with all that free time? Considering that Professor West is dumber than a sack of dog crap and probably too set in his ways to change careers, I can imagine he'd find some new target for all his old stupidity. He’d maybe just find a new target for all of his old nonsense and take up anti-Semitism as a full-time job. Same Full-Strength Bullshit, Brand New Package. I can just see the new-and-improved Cornell West Show already:

"The Jews suck and they owe me".

It worked for Al Sharpton, you know.

And if the inhabitants of Jesse Jackson's Hymietown should ever cough up a few bucks, it'll be on to "Native Americans suck, and they own casinos; someone give me some free poker chips and comp me a t-bone!"

It doesn't seem to matter just who sucks in Professor West's worldview, just as long as someone pays him for either pointing it out, or better yet, just to shut him up and make him go away. I'm sure that according to the Good Professor that Ronald Reagan sucked, so too George Bush (both of them). I'm petty confident that if you searched West's writings and rantings, you'd find that Bill Clinton must have sucked at some time, as well (that's when Monica wasn't sucking, of course -- anyone remember the first First Black President?), Jimmy Carter was probably a Plantation-owning Cracker, LBJ the next best thing to Massah. So why shouldn't Barack Obama, in his own way, suck, as well? The hatred stems not so much from the Man, as it does from West's requirement that Black America must always have an adversary. You would think that with the elevation of Obama to the White House (that name is raaaaacist!) a Brother could get paid to shut up and go away, already!

Because that’s how you score brownie points with a Cornell West: you pay him to go away.

I believe the real underlying motivation behind West's criticism of Obama, not to mention that of a slew of other prominent African-Americans, is the subject of Reparations for Slavery. Professor West, and a great many others, can never come out and say as much because if they did they would subject themselves to increased scrutiny, and a ton of criticism and approbation (which should only be reserved for White People in his little universe) that will ultimately cause them to fail in their quest. The virulent emotional aspects of their arguments will always be overcome by the disinfectant of open debate. If that debate truly begins, the logical and reasonable case for Reparations (are there any?) runs into the foes it cannot defeat: facts, logic, legalities, the Constitution. The Cornell Wests of the world know this to be true in the same way they know that 100 follows 99, but actual success on this front is not the important part; the truly vital component of this debate is that it should continue strictly for it's own sake, because this is how people like Cornell West earn their livings. If the Blue-Eyed Devils ever actually paid up, then Cornell West might have to find himself a real job.

Many subjects in modern American Life are handled in exactly the same fashion. Cornell West has a vested interest in stirring up racial animosity and extorting other people's money in the same way that the Feminists have a vested interest in insisting that a 5' 2" 105-pound woman makes an excellent firefighter, infantryman, or high-steel worker. The Poverty Lobby has an interest in keeping people poor by denigrating the value of work, or by encouraging dependency, otherwise tens of thousands of government workers (an oxymoron) would have to compete for salaries in the private sector, and find themselves at a distinct disadvantage. The money, the fame, the attention, the political clout, comes not from achieving measurable success or proving theory to be correct, but from continuing to excuse and justify failure. Success, then, becomes a matter of how long you can continue to beat the same dead horses and still make a buck out of it.

Remember the heady days of post-election 2008, when your television screens were full of people all hopped up on Hopenchange, and pumped by Yes We Can? Remember the subtexts of the Obama Victory Orgy:

"Barack Obama is gonna pay my mortgage and put gas in my car!"

"Finally, we have someone who will pay attention to the African-American community in the White House!"

"Barack Obama will heal the racial divide in this country"

"Barack Obama is gonna spread the wealth around."

Until, of course, he does no such thing, and the folks who made some of these comments, or wrote the Tingle-up-the-leg-inducing speeches, realize that the Reality of Obama is nothing like the Promise of Obama.
Really, how do you 'heal the racial divide' when you're called 'unauthentically black' by the likes of Cornell West? Doesn't that tell you that even people who make their living railing against the evils of racism truly have no desire to see it ever go away?

Let's put this on the table: I dislike Barack Obama. I don't dislike him because I think he's a bad man, I just think he conned his way into Office and had nary a clue, nor workable solutions, for the problems this country faces. He didn't create the mess we're in, but he hasn't done much more than to ensure that which was knee deep has at least now reached our collective waistline. The first indications that Barack Obama was not prepared for this job (and let's be fair: who the hell is under such circumstances?) were his practice of announcing broad policy goals and then leaving others (lots of others) to hammer out the often-competing-and-contradictory details -- that's how we got a 2,000 page healthcare bill that no one, still, has read -- and all the time he spent in his first two years avoiding the job as if it came with a case of full-blown AIDS. Obama can do (often bad) ideas, he just lousy at execution (unless you’re Osama Bin Laden).

That's how you get Stimulus that hasn't stimulated anything, and for which the only thing 'shovel ready' was the Stimulus Plan itself. Obama’s policies are how you got nationalized banks and automobile companies, and a 9-plus–percent-and-persistent unemployment rate. You get $5 trillion in new debt in just two years, and a Federal Reserve that’s just printing cash like Monopoly Money. A devalued dollar, falling exports; the only thing that’s rising these days seems to be people’s bile. Not to mention that we seem to have a President who's always someplace else when there's an oil spill or plague of tornados, who doesn't do the Presidential Inspection-and-Sympathy Tour in the Aftermat. He, rightfully, deserves some criticism.

But not of this kind, nor this vicious. And the criticism from some quarters has little to do with real problems or solutions, and everything to do with who gets what, and when the hell is it coming? Cornell West can't say this, but you just KNOW he's thinking it every time he opens his piehole.

Barack Obama is caught in a classic "Damned if you Do and Damned if You Don't" dilemma. The expression comes from the days of the Salem Witch trials, when a bunch of insane religious zealots (sorry, that’s redundant) started killing each other because God told them to, I guess. It's funny how God keeps telling people to kill each other despite all that crap about "Thou shall not kill...", but that's beside the point. One of the ways one could supposedly tell whether the accused was truly a witch was to bind her up in a burlap sack, suitably stuffed with stones, and then toss her into a pond. If she floated, she was a witch, and therefore, to be burned at the stake or hung. If she didn't, well, you get the idea...

President Frequent-Flyer-Miles is in sort of the same shoes. If he openly espouses a program of Reparations (a popular idea for some in the dingbat wing of the Civil Rights Peanut Gallery), then he's unelectable in 2012, or probably ever again, and then truly cements his place in History as an even worse President than Jimmy Carter. If Obama plots a more moderate, deliberate, incremental course, then he's a traitor to his race (the Black one, not the White One, curiously enough), a foot-dragger who alienates the voters he needs to stay in power, who will then stay home in huge numbers two Novembers from now.

One could make the argument that Obama has already begun the process of paying Reparations, but for political purposes he just can't call it Reparations.Then again, some people are too dumb to notice that which is right in front of their nose unless it itches or causes them physical pain. Reparations are where you find them, though you sometimes have to look a little harder than you normally would. The reason why Obama's Reparations-in-Effect-Without-the-Name are so hard to discern is because the policies often have secondary political motivations that can't be openly discussed without giving the game away, and since President Obama seems to have so little personal, hands-on time invested in his own ‘policies’, he probably doesn't even realize it himself.

Cash for Clunkers? A form of Reparations, with the added benefit that the secondary market in used car parts is destroyed, thus forcing people to buy government-owned GM's new 'green vehicles' when they can't keep Old Paint on the road any longer. Good for ‘The Poor’ who may have never owned a New Car before in their lives (amazing, our ‘Poor’ have privately-owned automobiles, even if they are secondhand ones!) and keeps the Watermelon Environmentalists (Green on the Outside, Red on the Inside) happy…or at least quiet, since most environMENTALists can never be happy short of every human being on Planet Earth dying.

Tax credit for first-time home buyers in a down housing market with a glut of inventory and impossible credit requirements? Reparations -- with the added benefit that millions that missed the days of easy-credit, no-money-down, no-points, government-insured home loans get one last bite at the apple...before they eventually default, too (which makes them eligible for the next program, see below). By then, it's hoped, the problem – millions of more people with upside-down mortgages, demanding relief -- will have been dumped back into some Republican's lap, and the Democrats have a campaign issue for 2016.

Mortgage renegotiation schemes that are intended to wear the banks out with legal fees until they just give the damned house away because it's cheaper than paying lawyers? Reparations. And by the way, if you signed a contract without first reading it, obtaining professional legal advice, or without realizing that something is fishy when a bank wants to give you $250,000 to buy more house than you can afford when you only make $40,000 a year, you aren't a 'victim of predatory lenders', you're a fucking idiot.

ObamaCare? Reparations, with the bonus that it will probably kill enough (elderly) people at the upper end so as to fund itself at the lower, and make democratic party voters for life out of millions of illegal immigrants when Amnesty (disguised as Comprehensive Immigration reform) finally passes. If you think the entry-level job market is tough for African-American males now, just wait until 12-15 million illegal border-crossers can now work legally while continuing to undercut wages, and get taxpayer-funded open-heart surgery, to boot.

"Investments" in Education? Reparations. Because after all, everyone deserves a worthless grammar school education, and then a High School Diploma you can’t even read, followed by a free bachelor's degree in Gender Studies, Ebonics, Lesbian Latina Dwarf Literature, Medieval Plumbing, Gay Astrophysics, Holistic Basket Weaving, Conflict Resolution, Environmentally-safe Gun Repair, and World Peace from only the finest Community Colleges, as these are the real jobs of the 21st Century, and it keeps the Teacher's Unions, College Professors, and Professional Grievance Mongers who are the Democratic party elite happy, too.

Green Energy Jobs? Reparations -- only in a more subtle form: the idea is to dispose of excess wealth, resources, and labor without actually increasing anyone's standard of living. If we can't all be made equally rich, we'll at least all be made equally poor. One might as well bake millions of loaves of bread and then run them over with a steam roller, catch herring by the billions only to dump them back into the sea, or build one million skyscrapers and then set fire to them, for all the good Green Energy does.

And every Obama Policy seems to have this duality about it. It’s why the man can never explain just what any particular policy is supposed to achieve, and why every few weeks he has to go to some staged event before a hand-picked crowd (probably all given free drinks beforehand) to pound his Bully Pulpit over, and over, and over, and over; Obama talking to autoworkers in Peoria. Obama talking to firefighters in Cleveland. Obama talking to teachers in East Woody-Buttfuck. The speech is always the same one; only the Potemkin Village ever changes.

The problem for people like West is that such policies don't put cash directly into someone's hand -- definitely not his -- so that they are made obvious, and they often have benefits for other groups which either cannot be avoided, or which were deliberately intended for political purposes. West's beef is that he believes that having achieved the highest office in the land, a Black President should be A BLACK PRESIDENT, and screw everyone else, and that Barack Obama should cease to be that which he is: a politician.

And when Obama doesn't come through in the manner in which the Cornell Wests expect -- Obama doesn't sign checks, he doesn't rail against the "injustice and inequality of the system" even when it isn't there, he doesn't attack the "White Power Structure" directly and forcefully, he isn't acting overtly "Black" enough to suit West's tastes -- then there must be something wrong. And, naturally, because people like West still live in the 1950's and haven't realized this is the 21st century where reality reigns supreme and the romantic notions of class and race struggle have largely been thrown back onto the dustheap of history where they belong, it must be because Barack Obama is a either a puppet of Wall Street, or a self-hating House Negro.

West’s rhetoric is straight out of the 50’s and 60’s, maybe because that’s where his head is too. Well, at least that’s where his head is when it isn’t firmly-and-smugly lodged up his own ass.

The Pot calls the Kettle Un-Black -- for lack of a check -- and then demands to be taken seriously? And that's before we even get into West's seriously-flawed and antiquated brand of politics (we'll leave that discussion for another day, perhaps?).

The problem with Barack Obama, from West's pint of view, is that he isn't handing out money on street corners while we still have some left to hand out, and the hand outs that are being given aren't being given directly and solely to African-American recipients in an openly brazen fashion . There's no "In Your Face!" factor like you would expect a real and open program of Reparations to contain.

No Cash and No Flash.

I'm quite possibly being a bit harsh on the Professor, and maybe simplifying what to him (because he's a doofus) is a subtly more complex question, I may be ascribing motivations to him that I can only tenuously prove, at best, but I don't think I'm being unfair. I figure that when a man starts throwing out insults and making arguments that can't stand up to the least bit of scrutiny then there must be questions of money, prestige, or influence, at stake. I learned this in my first week on Wall Street. The first rule of Management is "Never be in the room when a decision is made", and the second one was always "When it doesn't make any sense, find out who's getting/not getting paid."

As to the question of Reparations; no one is getting any from me, if I can help it. My family came here at the turn of the last century -- after Abolition and Reconstruction -- we didn't come here on the Mayflower, we never owned a plantation, we never owned a slave, thank you very much. I don't believe in the silly leftist idea that guilt spans both generations and racial lines. So far as I'm concerned, I owe no one anything. The Past is the Past, and if you're still angry at having once had to sit at the back of the bus, then I cordially invite you to come to the front ...and stand with the rest of us.

I distrust the words and question the motivations of people like Cornell West who have milked these often-painful issues like a prized dairy cow to make themselves rich, famous and influential without improving the lives of anyone they claim to be helping in any measurable way. Cornell West is a load of hot air with a PhD.

The Lunatic Branches Out...

I have recently been asked to become a guest blogger over at the Insane Asylum. I thank Mr.Chap for this opportunity to display my mental defects to a bigger slice of Amereica, and to a brand-spankin' new audience, vis-a-vis, an African-American audience.

The first installment -- a discussion on the topic of Hate Crimes Legislation -- was posted this morning.

So, scoot on over to the Insane Asylum and look for a new (we hope regular) feature entitled "Affirmative Reaction", where this clueless White Boy dares to boldly go where no Man has gone before, and asks all the Politically Incorrect questions that his unfiltered stupidity brings to mind on the differences in perception on all topics racial.

And then take a good look at everything else on offer at the Insane Asylum, because it's a pretty cool and interesting place all on it's own which deserves more than just a casual visit. You'll be glad that you did.

...And Since We're Talking About Diversity Training...

A few readers want to know just what kind of vile human being I must be in real life to have had so many experiences with Diversity Training (see: passing mention in previous post). They figure I must be the worst sort of racist/sexist beast, and openly wonder how it is that I've ever kept a job if how I write is how I behave in real life.

To begin with, I have been "sent" to Diversity Training four (4) times.

The first time, it was "required" by management as part of a company-wide policy, itself the result of a series of lawsuits. One of those lawsuits was brought about by members of my own staff, who contended that working in our department subjected them to a "hostile working environment" in which minorities were denied access to higher-skilled (and thus higher-paying) jobs, subjected to racist/sexist humor, and otherwise made to feel "uncomfortable". These complaints were directed mostly at higher management, not me, personally, and were presented as a form of "institutional racism" that direct supervisors (like me) were powerless to overcome, even by direct action. Never mind that the plaintiffs were all, almost to a man, routinely late for work, unprofessional, and on the lower end of the competency scale.

The argument was that it was the COMPANY itself that was racist, not the individuals who worked for it (it's difficult to pin anything on an individual in a court of law without evidence, and only hearsay on your side, you see, so you have to attack The Institution), and that the "racist" policies and tendencies of this inanimate, unconscious, ambiguous, amorphous entity have become part of the overall "culture". So, I was sentenced -- along with the 16,000 or so other people who worked there -- to mandatory Diversity Training. It was a 16-hours-over-two-days tour-de-force of absolute bullshit, where the overriding theme was that "You White-Christian-Male-Straight-Guys are the absolute worst excuses for human beings ever documented...but you don't mean to be, really."

If you've never disliked people before, listen to that kind of crap for two days and then you most certainly will be disgusted by just about everyone.

The Second Time, was when I made the mistake of responding to a vile tirade of a female co-worker by getting just as obnoxious as she did. This particular person was infamous for her foul language and off-color humor and peculiarly-sexual comments, especially about how nice my ass looked to her, and what she'd like to do with me if she ever got me alone. She didn't even make any of that a secret; she would often yell it across several rows of cubicles to me, and everyone got a chuckle out of it (especially the gay guys). It was never a problem between us to trade in these heated-one-day/good-natured-the-next/naughty-all-the-time exchanges, but there was always a healthy respect; a recognition that there were, indeed, boundaries that should not be crossed.

Until she came at me one day like a menstrual banshee for some piece of work important to one of her projects that I was going to be, unavoidably, late with. Then the good-natured-foul-mouthed ribbing became a dressing down of my inadequacies as a human being. To which I replied:

"Take it easy, Jean...Don't get your tits in a knot."

Now the woman who openly remarked about my bodily features and sexual desirability was suddenly mortally offended by my reference to hers. In my defense, though, she did have an awesome rack. Anyways, off to an 8-hour "refresher" course in Diversity for me. I only stayed employed because Jean was known to use the foulest, coarsest language, and to comment frequently and loudly on the looks of the men in the office. That cost me a bonus that year, too.

The third experience was another "mandatory" situation; I would have to complete the Diversity Course as a requirement of employment. It didn't matter that I had two previous "Training" sessions; they didn't count so far as XYZ Corp was concerned because it wasn't their Diversity Course. I spent more time in that classroom than I did working there, because it wasn't long after that my contract was cancelled when the project I was hired to work on was no longer considered necessary. That particular session was a laugh riot, because there were several Hispanic employees in the room complaining that they couldn't get promotions because they weren't native English-speakers.

The "instructor" in that cluster-fuck, herself Hispanic, would sometimes have to switch to Spanish in order to explain a concept to someone who couldn't understand it in English. You can't make this shit up.

My final experience with Diversity Training came when I had a black male employee complain to me that he was not considered for a job (I had hired another person, a black woman, no less), and that he felt that in not giving him the job, I was a racist, showing a definite bias against black men (who made up about half of my staff, at that time. None of them got the job, nor complained about it, either). He called me a racist about 17 times during this exchange, and my temper had finally gotten the best of me, so that I blurted out:

"You didn't not get that job because you're black; I didn't give it to you because you're a fucking retard!"

Well, you can't make that kind of remark, even if it happens to be true, so off to Diversity Training for me once again. Once more into the fray of whining people who don't realize just how fucking ridiculous they sound with their petty, and often-unprovable, accusations. Accusations they only make because they're a) encouraged to do so, and b) know they can get away with the worst exaggerations or baseless claims, and c) hope to extort something for nothing by making them.

We Fought A Civil War For This?

The batshit-insane rantings of the professional victim class. I would say more, but really -- do I need to?

(H/T FiveFeetofFury)

Heh, I like the source website, too.

It's Called "The Truth"...

...and you don't get to sue anyone over it.

You also shouldn't try to protect your children from it.

Of School Buses and Dimwits...

There's a lot of stuff going on here on Staten Island involving school buses. The Department of Education (that's three lies for the price of one) is refusing to provide school bus service for 7th and 8th graders here on the island, a service that has been around for years.

The Educrats claim this is a cost-savings measure; local parents call it "bullshit". The parents do so because the DOE won't answer their questions, won't provide any information, and after two lawsuits, even the judge is beginning to ask just what the fuck the DOE is talking about.

Now, I don't have any kids (that I know of -- wink, wink) attending public school here in New Yorkistan. So, this shouldn't matter to me. But, it does, mostly because my nephew is one of the kids affected (more on this in a second), and because, well, any opportunity to piss on City Government and Mayor Doomberg is just too good to pass up.

My nephew is 11, going on 12. The school he attends is something like 3 miles (as the crow flies) from his house. Without a school bus, Mikey is forced to take a round-about route to get there: he walks 5 blocks (that's half-a mile) to the local train station, and after taking the train for 3 stops, walks another 5 or 6 blocks to school (taking the City bus is an adventure: The "Long" route requires 2 buses, and the "Short" route, 3. Suffice to say, you could walk the 3 miles on one leg and get there faster than if you took the City bus). Both ends of that walk require him to cross streets that simply were not designed for the traffic they now carry (most streets in this borough follow the same path as they did in Revolutionary War times), and the average Staten Island driver resembles a kamikaze pilot on speed -- with the added benefit that most can be counted upon to be texting, yacking on the cell phone, shaving, putting their makeup on, or wiping up the Starbuck's spill in their lap, anything other than paying attention to the road.

I would hazard to guess that your average Staten Island driver learned to operate a motor vehicle at a Demolition Derby school, and presumes that it is his/her God-given right to do 80 in a 35 zone -- in reverse and blindfolded -- if they goddamned well please. Crossing a street on this island is like taking your life into your own hands; these assholes all ride around in SUVs and actually try to panic pedestrians into crossing before the light changes, or they have to suffer the inconvenience of waiting another 3 minutes to make that all-important left turn that only takes them to the next red light.

Pedestrians? You get points for hitting those, right? Red lights? Those only apply to everyone else on the road. Turning lanes? What the hell is a turning lane? Even the sidewalks are often unsafe, as it's not unknown for drivers stuck behind one another on narrow roads to turn them into impromptu, personal express lanes. Provided there even IS a sidewalk -- in some neighborhoods, sidewalks are like woolly mammoths; no one's ever seen one, but you remember someone once told you they existed.

This is life in the Forgotten Borough of New Yorkistan, c. 2010.

The DOE isn't interested in saving money, but they can't go out and say what their real concern is.

Staten Island's White Middleschoolers get bus service, but the rest of the kids in the city --The Diversity -- does not.

Typically, this is because the Diversity lives in places where there is adequate public transportation, and where there's also more schools. This isn't the case on Staten Island, so it's not unusual for a Middleschooler to have to have a commute that rivals his parent's.

When the DOE Dingbat said, "Times are tough..." that is bureaucratic crapspeak for "Bend over and take it, Whitey". The fact that none of the DOE doofuses involved in this fiasco can tell you exactly why they're doing this, or how they arrived at the decision to do it, tells you all you need to know:

It's all about race.

When it doesn't make sense, when no one can offer a logical explanation, when someone cites cost when the agency in question wastes more money keeping hundred of teachers in Rubber Rooms, often for a decade or more, you can rest assured that we're not talking about a policy based upon logic or economy.

Someone must have gotten her panties in a bunch to discover that somewhere in New York City, white kids were getting chauffeured to school, and it rankled. Why, that's not fair to all the kids who have to walk three blocks to go to school! It's yet another example of institutional racism!

And so now a couple thousand schoolkids will have to dodge traffic, along streets that might not have sidewalks, prowled by idiots who know where the accelerator is, but treat the brake pedal as an afterthought, to get to a school that's further away from home than most of their parent's jobs. And some of them are going to get KILLED doing it. I can promise you that, because people being struck by cars is the second-leading cause of death on this island (right after Mob-Style execution).

If you want to know just how much about race it is, read some of the comments to this article left by the dimwit Libtards who signed in to tease the White Guys, and actually accuse those who oppose the removal of service of being racists!

Black Biases are "Nuanced and Complex"...

Stanley Crouch tries to explain away black homophobia and racism.

Points for effort, Stanley, really. Floyd Mayweather is a complete fucktard and there's no "nuance" to any of that, at all. And Mayweather's stupidity isn't just limited to garden-variety homophobia: he made use of every ethnic sterotype typically attributed to Asians in that attack on Manny. The idea that boxers and rappers are"expected" to behave or think in a certain way is a pretty fucking lame one which does not absolve Mayweather of the sin of stupidity, nor excuse the real problems of Black Racism in modern America.

And really nice try at comparing the often virulent and obnoxious racism of blacks to that which is supposedly prevalent amongst republicans and Tea Partiers. This is why REAL racism never goes away -- despite all the protests and paeans of "Civil Rights leaders", and overpaid hack newspaper columnists -- you can easily condemn it when it comes from Whites, but bend over backwards to excuse it when it originates with Blacks.

Today's racism doesn't come from White America; it's coming from you.

This article is a regurgitation of the usual pablum one usually hears in "Diversity Training";

White racism - bad. Black racism - well, that's a whole 'nuther can o' worms. And understandable -- if you spend several hours wading through therapeutic bullshit.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm a superior being, or that I don't often use racist terms or racist-sounding speech, but let's get real; if you want to see who's really responsible for racism today, take a look in the mirror, Stanley -- and all the psychobabble in the world can't explain it away.

Mayweather's rant takes all the wind out of the "Black-people-can't-be-racists-because-they-have-no-wealth-or-power" routine, doesn't it? One doesn't need to be rich (although Mayweather probably is), or hold a Senate seat (like Robert Byrd did) to be a racist homophobe, one need only be stupid.

UPDATE: I forgot to add this:

Gay Rights are NOT the "New Civil Right" movement. The cause of Gay Rights is an attempt to have a lifestyle and behaviors, that traditional society finds disgusting and deviant, normalized. The Civil Rights movement was about recognizing the basic humanity of our fellow men, and correcting the wrongs done to African-Americans on the basis of race. The two causes are not comparable.

"Like a Dog..."

It must really suck to be Barack Obama. I mean, how dare anyone demand results, and then offer criticism when there aren't any?

Your weekly dose of Professor Hanson.

Money quote:

Yet Obama’s petulance, I think, more likely derives from a certain surprise — leading to anger — that originates from novel and sudden demands for accountability. Quite simply, no one has dared question Obama before — much less press him for deeds to match his mellifluous words.

Did he really think he could talk his way through four years of the American presidency?

From the "What Did You Expect?" Files...

Attorney convicted of stealing from Federal biofuel subsidy program.

Combine the sleaziness of a lawyer with the scam that is Global Warming, and you're just asking to be ripped-off, aren't you? I mean, in the dictionary, under "attorney" it says "see: State-licensed Thief."

In other news:

Al Sharpton is being audited.

Combine the sleaziness of a prototypical street hustler...err..."Reverend" with a taste for expensive suits and the long-ago-won cause of Civil Rights, and you're you're just asking to be ripped off, aren't you? After all, in the dictionary, under"Civil Rights Leader", it says "see: Rich Asshole Who Does No Productve Work".

The source of the problem, in both cases, is government throwing money away -- on a bewildering array of politically-motivated stupidity -- without thinking about the consequences, or making any effort to make certain that what the taxpayer is funding is actually useful to anyone, besides the jerkoff who picks up the check.

When someone finally does get around to providing some oversight, it's usually too late, and the money has disappeared.

Charlie Rangel's Shameless Gambit...

The Race Card used to be the last resort of those who had no other argument to make. Then it became the only argument you had to make. And now, it's such a weak, reflexive habit that no one actually cares anymore when the idea of America-as-racist-society is tossed into out as a defense...for anything.

The Race Card got O.J. acquitted. The Race Card has been used to justify the greatest wastes of taxpayer dollars imaginable. It has been used to create a system of extra-constitutional rights for African-Americans -- making them almost a federally-protected species --under the guise of Equality. Race has been used as a wedge issue, pitting American against American for as long as anyone can remember. We're jaded; we've heard"racist" shouted from every rooftop, in every New York Times Op-Ed, Al Sharpton uses the word like punctuation, and we don't really care anymore. The very word "Racist" rings hollow; it's been used like a $5 whore...and now the old trollop is starting to show her age.

Congressman Rangel, it must be said, has yet to be charged or convicted of any crime, but judging from the way these things seem to go he can look forward to a very long, very expensive fight to"get his name back"... before he's ultimately convicted of a politically-orchestrated anti-climax. I personally believe he's as guilty as sin of what he's been accused of. I rather doubt anyone will bring serious criminal charges against him (the democrats will never allow that to happen), because politically, it's enough that he just lose his office.

He can then go through the ordeal that democrats put Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay through, if he's lucky.

Gingrich was charged with 84 ethics violations. He was found guilty, by Congress, on exactly ONE of those charges, and that one was referred to the IRS for adjudication. A few YEARS later, the IRS decided that Gingrich was innocent, after all. But the damage had been done, and Newt lost his office, and position as Speaker of the House. That was the point of the whole exercise: the get him out of office.

Tom DeLay was called the sleaziest man in politics by none other than Hillary Clinton, who is America's foremost expert on sleaze, certainly. Democrats had been after DeLay for nearly a decade before Jack Abramoff came along and the Republican Congress was torpedoed by charges of graft and corruption (Nancy Pelosi's infamous "I'll drain the swamp" moment). De Lay was caught up in it all, too, and the "investigation" begun back in 2004/5 finally ended....yesterday. Guess what? DeLay was innocent of all those charges, too.

Go figure.

I'm not saying that Gingrich and DeLay were saints; just that their persecutions were politically- motivated, and went forward without any evidence of actual wrongdoing (although in DeLay's case, let's admit the man walked a very fine line on just about everything). Now Charlie Rangel can look forward to several years of legal expenses and having that's left of his reputation dragged through the mud that he's so-helpfully (but self-destructively) slinging himself.

The only difference between these cases is that Charlie, probably, really is guilty. Crying "Racism!" where there is none is a pretty good indication that Charlie Rangel knows that he can't win on the merits, but hopes to inflame passions in his defense instead.

Sorry Charlie -- this isn't the 60's anymore, and that kind of thing doesn't work.

It's Only Racist When....?

It's a brotha or sistah on the receiving end. Pay attention, Whitey; we don't want to have to explain this to you again.

Quote of the Day: I'm not a racist...I think the White Half of Obama Sucks, Too.