Category Archives: Barack Obama

Alien In More Than One Way (Part II)

Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Constitution, Media, Propaganda, Reason

In Part I of this post, I ventured that the president was an alien on so many levels, and that I failed to see why the formality of his birth was more central than the insanity and un-American nature of his thinking.
The saga continued today, with Orly Taitz, leader and lead attorney for the “Birthers,” being “grilled”—or shall I say shouted down—by David Shyster and the brassy, breast-bearing Tamron Hall—two dye-hard, MSNBC Obama heads.

Taitz tried to state her case, but was bellowed at by these blowhards. Now, as I stated, I am uninterested in this initiative. However, two issues caught my attention:

With my knack for detecting bogus arguments, it appeared to me that Taitz—who for all I know may well be lying—did at least present arguments. An argument can be logically sound while being untrue. Her attack dogs did not; they just shouted and offered arguments from authority. This raises alarm bells for me; tweaks my interest.

The Birthers’ lawyer claimed that the Obama birth certificate was a culmination of a report to the press by parents or relatives, and was not stamped by a hospital. If this is true, then Taitz is correct: it is possible that the certificate was a misrepresentation of Obama’s place of birth. Of course, her contention may be untrue. But she presents a case that could be investigated.

Her other, perfectly coherent, contention can easily be verified by a constitutional scholar. Taitz claims that to confer presidential eligibility on their child, both Obama’s parents would have to be American. Obama’s father was neither a citizen nor was he born in the US.

And who would object to a request for the release of the following heavily guarded documents, unless Obama’s scholarly articles were devoted to an application of Critical Race Theory?:

Obama’s Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago.

I’d sure like to read his legal articles, if any.

Tamron and Shyster offered Ann Coulter in defense of their positions: the Queen Bee had called Birthers “crackpots.” Argument from authority is no argument at all. See what I’m saying?

To their taunts to Taitz that Coulter was surely not a member of “mainstream media,” Dr. Taitz ought to have replied: “Oh yes she is.” Whatever one thinks of the “Birthers,” and I don’t think about them much at all, one thing is indisputable: Ann Coulter is a mainstream Republican.

“The secret to becoming a successful right-wing columnist,” quipped Canadian conservative Kevin Michael Grace, “is to echo the mob while complimenting yourself on your daring. That’s all there is to Ann Coulter’s craft, the rest is exploitation of the sexual masochism of the American male—he just can’t get enough of the kitten with claws.”

Updated: Class Act

Barack Obama, Education, Race, Racism

“It was a goodly slice of humble pie the president ate there, but it was a class act. To ask more would be churlish”: The intellectually honest Pat Buchanan on the manner in which “Obama [had] picked up the phone, called Crowley, regretted his choice of words about him and the Cambridge P.D., walked into the press room and told the nation Crowley was a ‘good guy,’ he himself had misspoken, that he and the sergeant had talked about getting together for a beer.”

“…if Obama’s racial reflexes served him badly Wednesday night, his political instincts served him well him on Friday. For he must have sensed that this confrontation was shaping up as three powerful black men coming down hard on a white cop with a stellar record who had only done his conscientious duty. …

The president’s decision to go before the White House press corps also suggests Obama is acutely aware of the political peril here.

For while his black support is rock solid, his white support is soft. And Americans will usually side with an Irish cop over a Harvard don, especially when the professor is pulling rank and the cop is right.

“‘This isn’t about me,’ says Gates. Sorry, professor, it is about you. You have shown the country why William F. Buckley won laughter all over America when he wittily observed that, rather than be governed by the Harvard faculty, he would prefer to be governed by the first 300 names in the Cambridge telephone directory.”

Update (July 31): Understand distinctions, please. To point out that the manner in which Obama handled his error was classy is not to support the man and his wicked ideology, or the visceral, revealing, racist reaction from which he backed down. Pat’s intellectual honesty, which, I hope I exhibit regularly too, is to commend the president on being diplomatic, backing down and, yes: humbling himself. Think objectively you GOPers out there: Bush, a rude impudent bastard, would never have mustered the good manners and humility to do as Obama has done.
That Obama operates from Gates’ mindset is so obvious. I’ve written enough on his racism, prior to his election, while Bill O’Reilly et al. never so much as touched the topic. But to say that Obama’s mama taught him better manners than did Bush’s mom is true too.

Alien In More Than One Way (Part I)

Barack Obama, Constitution, Law

I don’t understand the fetish with Obama’s alleged elusive birth certificate. The President is an alien on so many levels, I fail to see why the formality of his birth is more central than the insanity and un-American nature of his thinking (which can be said of many other of his fellow pols, although BO is, admittedly, an extreme case).

Besides, isn’t BO American by virtue of his mother being an American? Mother Obama was a natural-born American, so baby BO is as well. The whole thing is a little loopy.

Update III: Badass In America (Fighting Race Baiters)

Barack Obama, Crime, Education, Intellectualism, libertarianism, Media, Race, Racism

While out on a run one day, our alarm system was triggered. Not the full foghorn, mind you, but a sensor, which went off at the security company’s headquarters. As we were entering the home, two police officers were walking down the driveway and up the stairs. They were extremely polite, but stern. They told us they had received a report of an alarm going off at this address. Were we the owners of the abode, they wanted to know. “Yes,” we replied. They asked to see ID. We complied. Then they left. We were impressed with their professionalism and glad for the vigilance.

A similar thing happened to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. But he was not as pleased with the boys in blue as Sean and I were.

The case of Gates was catapulted to the headlines, first by the “Black In America” cable channel, CNN. Then by the mother ship docked at the White House. “Obama,” reports Fox News, “who is friends with the professor and documentary filmmaker, told reporters at a Wednesday night press conference that … ‘the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.'”

The fact that Gates was in the home is no proof he owned or resided in that home. More material: Obama was anything but impartial. His was the full-throated reaction of the president of Black America. Obama was ready with a bag of tricks that would have done the Sharpton-Jackson race baiters proud.

But back to Gates. He and his cabby had forced the front door, and it appears that Gates refused to produce an ID or any other information, calling Sgt. James Crowley a racist for requesting identification.

“According to the report, Gates then yelled, ‘This is what happens to black men in America.’ When Crowley tried to calm him down, Gates shouted, ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.'” And, “Ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside.”

Classy.

At this stage, I think the officer ought to have walked away. Just done the gentlemanly thing and bowed out. But when Gates followed Crowley out cussing, pulling rank and threatening him, the officer cuffed the professor for disorderly conduct. At this point, the officer, who so far had done his duty, lost it and gave in to oneupmanship.

Before commenting, do read the Disorderly Conduct Report, written by both Sergeant James Crowley and Officer James Figueroa (courtesy of “The Smoking Gun”).

Update I (July 24): THE AFRICAN ARISTOTLE. Soft sobriquets such as “PC” and “elitist” don’t come close to capturing the essence of Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr.

Let me do the honors. Gates is a man who has risen to the pinnacle of a society he hates. His stature he owes to the creation of bogus fields of specialty by a stupid, self-immolating WASP society. Described as “scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual,” among other effusions, Gates’ scholarship is in … drum roll … the “study of black culture,” a BS pursuit created to appease; to allow the intellectually undeserving to delude themselves and others that they’ve scaled considerable intellectual heights.

I’m appalled that no one has been remotely critical of the treatment this man is receiving as the crème de la crème of American intelligentsia; a man whose Wikipedia entry perfectly seriously lauds his skills at combining of “literary techniques of deconstruction with native African literary traditions.” Jacques Derrida at least was an educated deconstructionist. Ditto Michel Foucault.

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, of the “Black In America” lamentations, had a frothing fit when trying to express her outrage at the treatment of this African Aristotle. O’Brien boasted about taking classes at Harvard with Gates the intellectual giant, and struggled to find the words with which to do justice to his towering achievements, not least of which is his gritty, terribly original role as an “outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon.” What you can’t best, you can at least trash.

Update II (July 25): Steve Sailer on Obama’s ingrained racism. Sailer also brings up a point I’ve hammered again and again on this blog and in my columns: The importance of Ricci, the white firefighter, refusing to go gently into the good night.

Obama’s comments at his news conference on the “stupidity” of the Cambridge Police Department were, despite all his lawyerly stipulations, a textbook example of racial prejudice in action. He had prejudged these specific events based on his deeply held views on the general racial situation in America.

As in Ricci, we see the value of civil servant unions in standing up to racialized politicians. Crowley’s cop union stood shoulder to shoulder with him and helped him face down the Governor and the President. Government employee unions are expensive, but they do have an interest in standing up for civil service rules in fighting the new racial spoils system perpetrated under the guise of “civil rights.”

Another lesson is that as the Establishment has ratcheted up Racism into the worst sin imaginable in the history of the world, it has not correspondingly ratcheted up the seriousness of the consequences of falsely accusing somebody of “racism.” It was clear from even Dr. Gates’s self-serving account that his accusations of racism against Officer Crowley were the product not of evidence but of his understandably tired, overexcited brain intersecting with his business interests as a prestige media race man. Crowley refused to buckle under to extraordinary pressure, going all the way up to the President, thus setting a new standard for how to respond to false charges.

It’s time to pressure Obama to publicly call on his friend Skip Gates to withdraw his charges of racism against Officer Crowley on the grounds that the epidemic of false charges of racism must be halted.

Now, that would be a Teachable Moment!

Update III (July 27): FIGHTING THE RACE BAITERS. On MSNBC, Eugene Robinson, the mediocre, mundane mind that has landed a lucrative post at the Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize, smirked over the allegation that Gates had cussed. “He’s a superstar, one of the best-known and most highly acclaimed faculty members at the nation’s most prestigious university.” Such people don’t cuss. “C’mon,” Robinson jocularly intimated; Sgt. James Crowley is likely the liar.

Look, I hope you get that this fracas is never about the non-aggression principle: The libertarian law is the easy part; the no-brainer. As the libertarian law goes, Crowley was in the wrong. But there’s more to society than the skeletal non-aggression axiom. The real achievement here is Crowley’s; the Sgt. got the race hucksters to back down, and that includes The President of Black America. Is the WASP fed up to the back teeth? Will he fight for his rights? That’s to be seen.