Category Archives: Democrats

Update 2: The Ethnic Particularism Of Barack Obama

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Race, Racism

“The solutions offered by conservative commentators to Barack Obama’s existential crisis have been conspicuous in their shallowness. Unlike Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Victor Davis Hanson is no fake scholar; Hanson has intellectual heft. Yet he proposed that ‘all Obama would have to do is apologize, quit the church, and begin talking about the issues.’

How about admitting himself to rehab, or, even better, expiating on Oprah? (I read on the Los Angeles Times’ blog that Oprah, wise woman that she is, had long ago quit Trinity United Church of Christ for reasons that evaded Obama, her protégé.)

No, I give Obama credit. His reaction to the nation-wide reaction to Rev. Wright’s fulminating—everywhere on full display—was anything but shallow. It was, however, profoundly disturbing.”

Read the complete column, “The Ethnic Particularism Of Barack Obama,” on Jewcy.com. Join the debate on Jewcy; post your comments here, or, even better, do both.

Update 1: What fun; I’ve been fending off a few attacks on the Jewcy Comments forum, here. Jump in.

Update 2: Well, I learned my lesson and that is never to mix it up with the masses. This was the first time I went ahead and partook in an open forum exchange. Before long, the malignant “Shshshshaun,” with whom I’ve been very generous on this forum over the years, chimed in, began attributing quotations to me that are not mine, assigning views to me that aren’t mine, and lumping me with company I do not keep.
This is the Zeitgeist folks. People cannot tell assertion from argument; fact from fiction. As to manners and ethics; they do not exist. One cannot retain dignity in debate around fulminating hordes.
The funny thing is this non-entity; this repulsive little unmanly maggot—here is one of his first letters to our forum, which one headless chicken on the Jewcy forum has crowned a fine argument—thinks he can, with his limited cerebral agility and reach, damage me intellectually. Who raises these inflated gas bags—and there are many like maggot man roaming the Internet—to believe they are what they’re not?

Lesson learned: stay far from the madding crowds. And stop allowing scum onto Barely a Blog.

Spitzer Also Edited The Harvard Law Review

Business, Constitution, Democrats, Ethics, Justice, Law, Natural Law

(The title of the post is a tad unfair to Obama, I know. But editing The Harvard Law Review is clearly no litmus test for purity of intellect or ethics.)

One thing is for sure, Spitzer did not forge his political and fiscal fortunes by means of voluntary exchanges on the free market. The Spitzer piranha didn’t give law teeth; but used bad law to bite business to the bone.

Daniel Gross of Slate had this to say back in 2004:

Spitzer made maximum hay out of the “New York State’s Martin Act. The 1921 legislation, as Nicholas Thompson noted in this Legal Affairs piece, gives extraordinary powers and discretion to an attorney general fighting financial fraud. He can ‘subpoena any document he wants from anyone doing business in the state,’ make investigations secret or public at his whim, and ‘choose between filing civil or criminal charges whenever he wants.’ Extraordinarily, Thompson notes, ‘people called in for questioning during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. Combined, the act’s powers exceed those given any regulator in any other state.’”

Spitzer embodied abuse of power. As a government goon, he was an extortionist extraordinaire. “He didn’t simply indict. He issued press releases. When Spitzer published a press release detailing a shocking betrayal of trust by” this or the other “of Wall Street’s most trusted names,” the company would lose billions in market value in a matter of days and would quickly settle with the thug.

I know I’ve defended the naturally licit actions of scum such as Scooter Libby against naturally illicit prosecutions. And yes, I support the decriminalization of prostitution (but not its moral elevation). Yes again: I believe Spitzer’s funds are his to move about, and that his transactions were perfectly licit. So call me inconsistent on this count, but this character is so evil, contemptible, and uncontrollable (and nauseatingly hypocritical), I consider it a mitzvah that he has been removed from office and taken DOWN, if by unjust means.

I want to see Spitzer’s name live on in infamy; he ought to ultimately die disgraced, and if we lived under a just legal system, be prosecuted—but for his crimes against innocent members of the business community. Unfortunately—and I guess I’m nothing if not consistent—I’m with Alan Dershowitz on the following count: Spitzer ought not to be prosecuted for his moral failings. Although I’m filled with schadenfreude at the spectacle of Spitzer, there is no case to be made for his prosecution in libertarian law.

More later on Spitzer’s ho—or rather on the manner in which media have infantilized the girl and turned her into a victim.

Updated: Militant Mama Obama

America, Barack Obama, Democrats, Education, Elections 2008, Media, Race

Exhibit #2 in my case against Barack’s bride: “As a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station.” So spoke M. Obama.

Indeed, “Michelle Obama’s gaseous swipe reminds me of the last two black men picked off while pumping gas. Wait a sec, I got my facts topsy-turvy. Two of the D.C Snipers’ 13 victims were murdered in gas stations. Neither was black. The Snipers, on the other hand, were both black. The pattern of racial victimization in the country Mrs. Obama will likely officiate as first lady is unidirectional.”

In “Militant Mama Obama,” I make the case that, “if anything, her charmed life has made Michelle Obama more racially militant.”

Updated: “Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide,” reports Jeffrey Ressner of the Politico.
So the moribund media is catching up with us and reporting on the thesis I mentioned in Militant Mama Obama.

Questionnaires, the kind M. Obama relied on to arrive at her conclusions, are notoriously unreliable and riddled with bias. Methodology aside, this woman is an identity activist through-and-through.

She concluded:

“I hoped that these findings would help me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility.”

In Mama Obama’s view, blacks at Princeton assimilated excessively. Also, in her first sentence above, she ought to have written, “I HAD hoped…”

Mama Obama

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Judaism & Jews, Race

As you can imagine, it wasn’t an easy item to find in mainstream media. I looked all over for Michelle Obama’s bitter slip of the tongue—at MSNBC’s website, the Washington Times’, and others—before finding it buried at the bottom of the New York Times’ page and framed as cat fight initiated by Cindy McCain. Ditto Time. Michelle Obama makes a snide snippy comment, and Time asks the McCain campaign to comment on Cindy McCain’s retort. Apparently, anyone shining light where the media sheds only darkness must answer for it.

Here’s what Mrs. Obama told a Wisconsin audience:

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.”

A good column calls the events and the characters correctly. I hate to keep reminding my readers, but, if I don’t, who will? As Hillel, the Jewish sage, said, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” (Let Obama beat that brilliance) In “Homie Has Some Rings to Kiss,” I did not delude readers about Obama’s militant wife:

“Obama has always seemed a reluctant recruit to racial politics; driven more by expediency and fear—fear of his overbearing wife and the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton.”

Mark Halperin of “The Page” worried that conservative media would begin to scrutinize Michelle Obama if she kept such comments coming. He saw no reason to dissect the sainted one’s vicious remarks.

There is no finessing what Michelle Obama meant. Her comments come from the same bottomless pit from which the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson launch their periodical grievance campaigns; that festering reservoir of racial animus and envy. This is a comment from a woman who’s led a charmed life, yet feels aggrieved and angry.

(An aside: Mama is quite masculine.)