Everything Old Is New Again         

I haven't worked on this blog since 2013, apparently. I'm surprised it's still up and accessible -- to me, anyway.

I may restart this.  Still thinking bout it. 

Save the Republic!

Putin does to Obama what Obama does to all the rest of us

Trying to follow the Syria thing. Brief outline:

A year ago, Obama,  AKA The Comrade, announced that he wouldn't involve the USA in Syria unless Syria used chemical weapons -- which have been banned internationally since WWI.

A week or so ago, videos and all kinds of stuff -- including a UN inspection -- indicated that Syrian dictator Assad has used chemical weapons on those fighting a civil war against his regime. NOTE: Among the forces aligned against Assad are groups from al-Qaeda and al Nusra (or something like that), whose aims are similar to al-Qaeda.

So the Comrade announced that he was going to bomb Syria to punish Assad for using chemical weapons. This was to be a small and surgical strike, and would not involve the US sending in ground forces or anything like that. And the USA otherwise would stay out of Syria's civil war.

Yeah, it's hard to not laugh. Like the US could just fire a couple hundred missiles from ships at sea (that we could do), and then just sail away (not bloody likely). I mean, the Japanese just dropped a few bombs on Pearl Harbor and then flew away. But as I recall, that wasn't the end of the conflict.

Personally, me and 63% of other Americans, going by the latest polls, don't want to do anything about Syria. Yeah, gee, it's a shame Assad is a murderous psychopath, but me and 63% of other Americans just can't see doing anything that would help al-Qaeda and al Nusra. We're just so unforgiving. Just because they blow up my buildings, kill 3,000 civilians, and cling to the concept of "pushing Israel into the sea" with the relentless bloody-mindedness of a pit bull attached to a mailman's ankle -- I and 63% of other Americans, just don't want to support al-Qaeda or al Nusra in any way.

Of course, there's Egypt and Libya, too, where the US feebly "led from behind" to topple murderous psychopaths in power -- only to see them replaced by different murderous psychopaths who, in addition to being power-mad, also want to destroy the USA and Israel.

So anyway, poor Comrade with his size 10 or thereabouts golf shoe in his mouth, threatening to bomb Syria and myself and 63% of the US population saying, "Hey, buster, I don't think so." We've got our own red line.

Even congress recognized the difference in opinion between the White House and the general population -- something they seem to find very difficult to do. They threatened to impeach the Comrade if he tried any such thing on an "authority" that is clearly not granted to him by the Constitution or even the War Powers Act. So the Comrade, with a sheepish smile, said he'd go ahead and allow Congress to vote on it (allow????) in order to make sure the country is solidly behind him. Which me and 63% of the population is not.

So Secretary of State "Give 'em Hell" John Kerry spouts off to somebody yesterday that the only way the US would call off the strike on Syria is if Syria gave up its chemical weapons -- which they wouldn't, he said.

 Bodybuilder and sportsman Vladimir Putin, the prime minister? president? of Russia, stepped up and said, "Why not ask Syria to give up its chemical weapons and get a multinational force -- apparently the UN -- take possession of Syria's chemical weapons and destroy them?"

Sounds like a plan. Except I do believe the US and others had made similar proposals in the UN Security Council, and Russia had always vetoed them. But now Putin says Russia will support them.

The UN Security Council was supposed to meet today to vote on this. About an hour before the meeting was to take place, the Russians submitted their proposal, which said, yeah, the UN or someone would clean out Syria's inventory of chemical weapons, when the US promises not to strike Syria.

While I might go along with that last bit in this situation, it also represents the USA abandoning a sovereign right. And I can't go along with that. And no country in its right mind would go along with that.

So Putin just did to Obama what Obama has been doing to the USA since he took office. That is, suggest what seems to be a reasonable proposal, and then attach it to provisions and covenants that no one in their right mind would agree to.

And the end result? If the USA refuses Putin's proposal, Obama looks like a bloodthirsty warmonger unwilling to compromise, and Putin looks like a dejected hero.

The Comrade has done this over and over again to his political opponents -- forcing them to reject things like incredibly stupid budgets and regulations that violate the Constitution. So the Republicans and anyone else who values political freedom must say no, must obstruct. And so the Comrade paints them as "they don't care about the poor," "they don't care about the environment." Etc. etc.

Looks like Vladimir Putin has quite a sense of irony. And apparently he's read Rules for Radicals.

The Obama regime: All fall down

Well, Comrade Obama has suddenly changed gears on the Syria thing. He wanted to fire some Cruise missiles into Syria, or something, after giving them plenty of warning and allowing dictator Assad time to move political prisoners to the tentative targets as a sick kind of "shield." Then Britain refused to back us.

Congress is out on vacation. And individual congress critters have been arguing both ways.

Personally, I'm agin' it. Don't see that we have anything to gain here.

So now the Comrade says, well, maybe we should wait until congress comes back from vacation more than a week from now and let them have a vote on it. Perhaps to absolve himself of any guilt for this crazy idea. Then he went golfing.

So, exhausted and half asleep watching news reports on this last night, I got a sudden revelation about our fearful leader. It's kinda like... well, did you ever see a movie called Six Degrees of Separation? It's about this black guy, played by Wil Smith, who gets involved in the higher levels of Old Money Society mainly by studying their prejudices and mannerisms and copying them, thereby convincing them that he's one of them.

I remember one line where Smith advises another character about how to offer a rich person a beer. He says you ask, "Would you like a bottle of beer?" The Ts in "bottle" a little sharp. It actually sounds almost lyrical, like a line of poetry. And oddly enough, Old Money and their offspring bought all of this, at least for a time.

So Obama finds himself somehow at Columbia, a member of the Ivy League, surrounded by preppies who are very likely bending over backwards to assure themselves and each other that they aren't in the slightest racially prejudiced. Obama plays on that very well. Wonder how many times he asked people if they wanted "a bottle of beer." Apparently he himself wrote about this in one of his books. Black people shouldn't move too quickly, he said, shouldn't dress with their pants dangling precariously about crotch-level, or talk like former slaves from rural Alabama.

And Brain-dead Harry Reid himself noted that Obama is light-skinned and doesn't talk with a black dialect, making him qualified for the presidency -- according to Harry Reid, a thoroughgoing racist, apparently.

And the Comrade positively guzzled the way-left Kool-Aid. One of the Comrade's male role models when he was a kid was Frank Marshall, a marxist propagandist who also photographed and sold pornography -- some of it of Stanley what's-her-face, the Comrade's mother. Ol' Barry knew the drill, having been raised like a "red diaper baby." (See David Horowitz for a definition.. the children of the far-left.)

I don't think Obama ever studied and surely never learned anything beyond the commie-pleasing patter he picked up from earnest-yet-shockingly-naïve professors ensconced in the Ivy League. Another old saying goes, "Those who can't do it themselves, teach." And seems they kind of encouraged young Barry, who moved slowly in their presence, probably adopted a suggestion of a Boston drawl, and wore a belt.

And sure enough, this superficial bullshit has somehow catapulted the Comrade into the White House.

Perhaps in the beginning he did have an agenda. But he can't fail to recognize its failure over the last five years. America is slipping into third-world-nation status, like a stallion sinking inch-by-inch into quicksand. Obamacare is a total disaster.

Worst of all, Obama has no solutions or suggestions for any of this. His cabinet is an Ivory Tower housing nothing but pie-in-the-sky crackpot schemes hatched by an arrogant and untested band of academics. They don't know what the hell they're doing. All they can suggest is "Do more." Like Paul Krugmann, an asshole and buffoon of the first order.

The Comrade's not even a very good politician. He's forged no relationships with the people in congress, except momentarily to exploit them. And they know it now. All the Comrade really knows how to do is give speeches and campaign. Somehow that doesn't provide him with any clues about managing foreign and domestic affairs.

So he goes golfing.

He's an empty face. Corrupt Chicago pols saw him coming and set him up as a huge dupe -- their pathway to the White House. And one by one, they've abandoned him, perhaps realizing that the job requires a bit more than promising everything to everyone and counting on the greed and ignorance of many in the democrat party to carry them along. And voter fraud.

The thing is, the Comrade apparently doesn't have any real convictions. Hate to say it, he's more like the stereotypical shoeshine boy, a carefree pickaninny tap dancing and smiling up at passersby, trying to please them for spare change. He imagines that's how white people see him, he plays to that and he takes advantage of that.

But he doesn't seem to have anything else to offer.

Nothing, just "Would you like a bottle of beer?"

Obama evil or simply incompetent?

Just read a blog that was forwarded to me. The blog is apparently from the New Yorker magazine, written by a guy named Borowitz or Boroski or something like that. I want to think the whole thing is satire -- but it's really good satire.

The headline for the blog goes something like: "Obama says attack on Syria has no objective whatsoever."

Just like a little story on Fox yesterday reported that Madeline Albright, Secretary of State under "Can't Keep It Zipped" Bill Clinton, gave the go-ahead to attack the island of Grenada only after she'd been assured that the USA had no interests there.

The British have refused to join us in attacking Syria. Apparently only the French remain somewhat interested, but they've never been entirely reliable. However, do believe it was the French who first received and then publicized that video of dozens of dead bodies in Syria -- the result of Syrian dictator Assad gassing them indiscriminately. So maybe the French remain sympathetic to visiting some sort of punishment on Assad for his willy-nilly and illegal use of chemical weapons.

I don't think we should get involved. I've said it several times, we don't have a dog in this fight. Assad is a vicious psychopath determined to continue to rule his people with an iron hand, even if he has to kill all of them. (Apparently he doesn't see the irony in that.) The opposing "rebel" forces don't look a whole lot better since they include recruits from Al-Qaeda groups and maybe even Hamas -- not sure I read that report right, it was in teeny-tiny print.

There's no one I personally care to defend in Syria, really. Should we help to topple Assad only to help create the jihadist caliphate? Should we arm the rebels so that they can launch attacks on us a few more years down the road?

Military analyst Ralph Peters noted that both sides are our enemies and they're killing each other. So why should we interfere? I tend to agree.

But Obama said the US would not get involved unless Assad used chemical weapons. So now to assuage his own ego, he wants to entangle the US in yet another endless, pointless war in the Middle East.

Of course, engaging in Syria does assure that the US military will be kept overseas, and the conflict will continue to bleed US resources while achieving absolutely no useful purpose. The Comrade has promised to remove all US troops from Afghanistan, so perhaps he needs to find another black hole to throw them into.

Draining the US of its resources and crippling the military seem to be among of Obama's chief aims as president.

So is the Comrade only monumentally ignorant and incompetent? Or is he truly vile, relentless in seeking out and implementing ways to destroy the USA?

Don't listen to what he says. Watch what he does.

PC as a political weapon

Haven't been blogging lately. The nation's going to hell in a hand basket, what more can I say?

However, came across something on Michelle Malkin's Twitchy site surrounding a video that apparently was posted by Russell Simmons, who's a black media mogul -- involved in all kinds of entrepreneurial communications things, including the music and cell phones industries. He's also a very likable guy.

Anyway, apparently he posted something called "Harriet Tubman's Sex Tapes" on YouTube. All about Harriet Tubman, forced by her master to have sex, turning around the situation and using it to compel her master to let her run the underground railroad. Russell Simmons said he thought it was funny.

A lot of other people were not amused. Though I never saw the video -- Simmons took it down by popular demand -- I think the concept is kind of disgusting. Rape was a very real thing in the days of slavery, and some black women slaves did use it to extract favors from ol' massa. The Garden District in New Orleans was well known as the area where white plantation owners housed their black concubines -- and the concubines's mixed race kids, as well. Or a woman field hand might regard sex with the massa as a way to get lighter duty inside the house. A sad and sorry way to improve your situation.

Anyway you look at this, it's pretty hard to put a positive spin on it.

At any rate, Simmons apologized for his insensitivity and took the video down. That wasn't good enough for some folks. One "Twit" posted something about how "the damage is already done."

That made me wonder, what damage? Has Harriet Tubman's reputation been ruined? Did the video prompt some extremely impressionable black woman to sell herself into slavery so that she, too, could try to manipulate her master?

What damage is done by harsh or insensitive or even insulting words?

When I was a kid and other kids called me names -- an apparently inevitable episode in every kid's life -- my mother told me to bear in mind: "Sticks and stones might break my bones, but names will never hurt me." I somehow associated that with the idea of being strong and self-motivated, and trusting my own judgment of myself rather than letting others define me.

Maybe naïve? It seems the democrats have seized upon some pretty convoluted "spin" to -- poof! -- magically turn shocking negatives into at least palatable neutrals. And some people buy it.

I'm a writer. I understand the power of words. You define an issue by the terms you choose to describe it and by the fact that you choose to address it all, and this lends to the issue your own point of view. There's no escaping that. That's why "objective journalism" is, for me, an oxymoron. The only way to be fair is to present the issues from all sides, from a range of perspectives.

And just because you attach one or another label to something doesn't change the nature of what the thing is. I could call tomatoes "feathers," but they'd still be tomatoes.

And I don't think Harriet Tubman's reputation has been tarnished by Russell Simmons' video. In fact, the whole thing blew back on him, didn't it? Judging by the outrage he inspired, I'd guess that he, not Harriet, has lost a few fans over this matter.

Anyway, just a thought. It's the difference between "Death panels" and "bureaucrats defining who gets health care and who doesn't." Oops. Not a good example. Or Hillary Clinton as "Our next 'historic' president" as opposed to "The Secretary of State who abandoned US representatives under terrorist attack."

Sorry. I guess my bias is showing.

Rule by law, not by man

I don't have time for this, but I just want to mention one thing in regard to the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin thing.

Those people who are requesting calm acceptance of the verdict, or peaceful protests for those who must protest, call upon the phrase, "Rule by law, not by man." But what the hell does that mean?

You don't have to look too far to find examples of "rule by man" in the United States. Prime example:

When slavery was legal in the United States, it was based on the notion that slaves weren't quite human, therefore, they didn't have any rights under the law. They couldn't vote, sit on juries, or otherwise partake of the citizen experience. They weren't protected by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights any more than the family dog would have been protected.

So what happened when slaves committed crimes -- or were even accused of committing crimes? I mean, they weren't fully human under the law, had no rights, so the usual constitutional procedures didn't apply to them.

In some cases - really capitol cases, involving serious felonies like murder -- the slaves may or may not be tried, but certainly they were executed. Here's a good case, of Denmark Vesey, a free black man who had a cabinetry business in Charleston, South Carolina, in the late 1700s -- but after the USA had won its independence. He was a free man, had never been a slave as far as I can tell. But he befriended many of the black slaves in the area and eventually planned a slave rebellion. He had gone so far as to recruit a real "army" of slaves from local plantations, and had apparently stored up some number of weapons they could use for the rebellion.

Alas, the night before the attack was to begin, one slave in Vesey's army went wimp and confessed all to his master. The arms, such as they were, and if they did really exist, were discovered. Other slaves who had agreed to take part in the rebellions were either fingered or confessed. So what was the outcome?

Vesey was tried -- he was a free black man, not a slave. He was found guilty and hanged with three or four slaves who had been fingered or confessed to being key leaders in implementing the scheme.

All the other slaves -- and there were hundreds of them -- were given over to their masters, for the masters to figure out what to do with them. To punish them or not, and how to punish them.

Vesey's outcome was "rule by law." He was a free man, after all, though it's pretty doubtful that, at the time, and he being a black man, he was regarded as deserving of all the rights of a white man. He was found guilty of inciting an insurrection and hanged. The outcome here was similar to what a few white people also suffered for "inciting an insurrection" in the slave South. Many Quakers among them, who tried passing out anti-slavery leaflets and even smuggled slaves out of the South. As a matter of fact, years later, South Carolina accused Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party of "inciting an insurrection." But that was the law in South Carolina.

By contrast, "rule by man" is what happened to all the other slaves who had been identified as taking part in the plan to rise up, and who had been returned to their masters. Their masters decided what to do with them. I've never seen any documentation that records what happened to them. The whole thing was regarded as their masters' private business and nobody else's -- though slave owners were fully expected to keep their slaves under control -- very seriously. A few cases exist where white slaves owners suffered some pretty dire consequences from their neighbors if they were too kind to their slaves.

So what were the usual punishments for disobedient and/or "uppity," and/or "criminal," and/or runaway, and/or simply "lazy" slaves? They were subject to a pretty wide variety of punishments, limited only by their master's imagination and willingness to inflict pain (though usually the master himself did not deliver the punishment. Often he got other slaves to do it.) Whippings were pretty common. A few old barns on old plantations in the slave South had "whipping posts," a convenient and customary place to tie up the slave for whipping. Cutting off fingers, ears, hobbling with irons, stockading -- all possibilities that have been used at one or another time or place.

In one horrendous case, recorded among the accounts in the 1930s WPA Writers' Project, a former slave told the story of the overseer on a plantation raping the wife of a slave. When the husband objected to his wife's rape, the overseer nailed the man's ear to a board first, and then cut it off.

A French woman, Martineau, attributed with establishing the study of sociology, toured the USA in the 1850s. While in the South, noted the social attitudes toward slaves and slavery. Interesting reading. One case she mentioned involved a slave who was apparently a notorious thief and rabble-rouser, being burned alive on the main street of one southern town. Martineau didn't state whether this was common or uncommon, but infers that it was a standard punishment used for certain types of behavior -- and apparently in cases where the slave was expendable. And burning alive seems to have been something the KKK also practiced, along with lynching.

All of this is entirely "rule by man." No interference from the legal system at all for the treatment of slaves.

There were few rules that defined unacceptable slave behavior. It was one of those "you know it when you see it," kind of things. Entirely up to the slave owners and his neighbors. Same for the punishments. The master decided. It was all up to him.

So when people take to the streets and riot, protesting the results of a fair trial -- a verdict that they feel is all wrong.... Well, would you prefer "rule by man?" Think about it.

Justice relies on facts. It isn't always a balm to console your emotions. Life doesn't always happen the way we want it to. Individuals are rarely as "good" as we wish they were, or as "bad" as we believe they might be. Justice can only be determined by the facts in evidence.

Grow up.

Land of the free, home of the brave?

In past years, I've tried to include some quotes, speeches, etc., about the USA that would be inspiring, or at least serve as a reminder of what the USA stands for.

But this year, I don't know.

It's just things like various levels and branches of government dictating what you can eat for lunch and how much health insurance you MUST have. How much personal income is "enough" for you. What you "should" study in college, and what you can use for energy and how much of it you "should" consume. It's things like that that make me question -- is this freedom?

Do we have freedom anymore?

I don't think so. I think it's almost beyond recovery, too. This kind of slavery is normal now. It's what we expect. And it's "for our own good."

It's the schemers and manipulators who've suppressed our freedoms. And I'm not talking about welfare cheats or fraudulent government contractors. I'm talking about politicians on every level.

The fact that we have a democratic system gives liars and con artists and psychopathic control freaks a marketing tool; they always say -- and may themselves believe -- that they do all they do for us. For the elderly, the children, the widows and orphans. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

And how much of the funding they raise for taxation ends up in their own pockets, or in the private accounts of friends and supporters?

Very few politicians are in that business anymore to preserve and protect American ideals and the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. If we consider Pazzo Pelosi, Brain-dead Harry Reid, and anyone in the Executive Branch, you have to wonder if they have even a casual familiarity with the US Constitution. Instead, they go to Washington to "bring home the bacon." And I'm convinced many of them are simply power mad, or afflicted with some kind of Munchausen's Disease, where you cause pain so that later you can rush in and "heroically" rescue the victims -- by exercising more power over them and extracting more money from them. More regulation, less personal freedom.

Crazy.

Sad.

And people vote for this. Edward Gibbon in The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire:

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

So go eat your hot dogs and apple pie and look at the fireworks. And just forget about everything else. It isn't there anymore, anyway,