Here are two similar commentaries about a couple of Rice's. Both are in positions of being spokespeople for Presidents under controversial circumstances.
Does one of these mindless parrots look particularly ethnic in some way? A caricaturish way?
No. Just my imagination. Is it my imagination that people that criticize Stacey Dash, Clarence Thomas, and several other black people as "Uncle Toms" and worse somehow don't get excoriated over it?
Hmmm.
Someone else has noticed the "Rice discrepancy" as well. But I suppose it simply requires a memory of political events, and not particularly long-term at that.
Perhaps one of the unspoken justifications for this is that Condoleeza's commander-in-chief was white. Maybe? Check out this frame for "Condi Rice":
And the famous one that cartoonist Danziger claims wasn't racist because it was inspired by Gone With the Wind. Which explains why Condoleeza is portrayed as a black mammie. What about the WMD Iraq controversy was particularly evocative of this aspect of Gone With the Wind? Anyone know?
Danziger sho nuff don't know nuthin' 'bout stereotypes. Maybe Danziger just knew instictively that the media and the NAACP wouldn't give him a hard time about this. Hmm?
Representative Weiner (who eventually became famous for his exposed libertinism following his many Clintonesque denials) is seen here responding to questions about the morality of the estate tax, with all the childishness and petulance he can muster. You have to admire the smug, bored, snotty look on his face he keeps for the whole exchange.
If I do manage to make a significant nest egg for my surviving family, apparently I would have to transfer it to them somehow before I died--but even then, perhaps a gift would be taxed as income (though not quite as roughly taxed), because after my death it is the government's largesse that allows some of it to be given to my loved ones who are, in Weiner's estimation, not entitled to stuff they haven't earned.
Wiener, er, Weiner dismisses this in typical class warfare fashion as money unfairly gained. Its unfair that so much money lands in the lap of your children because they didn't earn it, even though you possibly worked very hard to provide it for them, not to provide it for the government. My wishes don't matter. If my ghost were to appear post-mortem to denounce the government vultures preying on my bank account, Wiener's response to me, apparently, would be "You're dead. What you want doesn't matter any more. You have no rights any more that the federal government needs to honor."
Do my privacy rights disappear after I die? Should my death open a door for the federal government to invade the privacy rights of my family? I'm dead after all and all my privacy rights died with me, right? Or maybe my welfare is wrapped up in theirs? Why is the State obligated to comply with my last will and testament? I am not a person any more. My rights, including my right to contract, died with me. The state has no obligation to honor my wishes. I'm just a dead body to pilfer, a corpse with pockets to raid, a right-less fetus with stem cells ripe for harvesting, a mere opportunity.
But it's obviously important to Wiener to keep the question from being framed within the rights of the deceased. And just as important to the Democratic Party. Inheritance is not just income like any other kind of income, it's actually a lesser sort of income. It's dirty money. You are getting money your parents earned for you, not money you earned for yourself, you capitalist swine. You are living off the dead instead of making money to support the government dependency programs.
Straight from Karl Marx to all socialist doctrines (including those of fascism and progressivism and modern "liberalism"), the hatred of private capital (as long as it doesn't belong to some big Hollywood celebrity) manifests specifically as the hatred of accumulating capital for one's family.
As with many progressive policies, it's the upper middle class that is hit much more squarely on the jaw than the well-established uber-rich (who tend to advocate for progressive policies that keep the up-and-coming middle class from supplanting them). The uber-rich have the inside track on the trusts and tontines and other legal angles that allow their families to avoid the estate tax vultures. It is the middle class that remains vulnerable. I think it was Alfred Jay Nock that said that the very poor and the very rich are alike in this one sense: they have the least "skin in the game" when it comes to Jeffersonian liberty and free markets. And the most to gain from fascism and crony socialism.
Note: Some may argue that I'm conflating estate tax and inheritance tax. If you read about the difference, you might understand why I think these are just legal gymnastics that allows government to double-dip and twice feast on the dead. Government collectors feast before the goods are distributed, and then collectors feast again after the goods are distributed.
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." (Benjamin Franklin)
Eight years ago, you would have thought that liberals worshiped Patrick Henry. I wrote back in October about how left-leaning citizens seemed to love the above quote by Franklin back then. You know, even if I was skeptical of the various Bush-is-evil conspiracy theories, I at least agreed on this point: It's not unpatriotic to question the motives of your President and your Congressmen. In America, it's unpatriotic to try to stifle (instead of merely controvert) dissent and questioning. (Now, it may be unpatriotic to undermine national interests over certain concerns, but that is an argument for another time).
I heard left-leaning friends and acquaintances railing back then against the Patriot Act: Why, the European nations live with terrorism in their borders; why can't we? Oh, because we're afraaaaaid, that's why! We'll give up our freedoms for a little security in a heartbeat, us scaredy-cats. I can't believe Americans would give up their liberty out of fear.
Better to live with a terrorist attack now and then in our borders than grant the federal government power that they might be tempted to abuse. That's what many, many liberals were loudly voicing. But that was before 2008. Now we have a liberal President, and there is the tendency of most left-leaning citizens to not believe that the 2nd Amendment does anything to help preserve our rights from despots (let alone be useful in preventing more mundane crimes).
Before 2008, it might have had a more sobering effect on right-leaning citizens if they had thought "How might a liberal President use this power;" whereas left-leaning citizens should similarly fear Executive power if only because a Republican might eventually have those powers at his disposal. Both would do well to realize that it's not simply a man gaining power, but an Office.
And now that very little time has been wasted since the deaths of many Connecticut children for President Obama to advocate for policy change with regard to the Bill of Rights, I ask, "Where did all the liberal patriots go?"
Here's one liberal who isn't caught in the "Only Federal-Level Gun Ban Can Save Us" haze:
I was not, and am not, under the illusion that a handgun would have necessarily provided a definitive solution to the problem posed by Colin Ferguson. But my instinct was that if someone is shooting at you, it is generally better to shoot back than to cower and pray. Would a civilian firing back at Ferguson have wounded or killed innocent people? Quite possibly yes. Is that a risk potential victims quaking under train seats or classroom desks might accept? Quite possibly yes. Especially when you consider the massacres that have been prevented or interrupted by armed civilians before the police arrived. ~ Jeffrey Goldberg, article in The Atlantic
Here's another:
In no other country, at no other time, has such a right existed. It is not the right to hunt. It is not the right to shoot at soda cans in an empty field. It is not even the right to shoot at a home invader in the middle of the night. It is the right of revolution. Let me say that again: It is the right of revolution. ~ Kaili Joy Gray, article in The Daily Kos
Gray gets it. The 2nd Amendment was meant to guarantee a balance of power with "the people," to give them a fighting chance to "alter or abolish" (in the words of The Declaration) a government that no longer protected their freedoms and had its own standing army to resist being "altered." A disarmed public can't even be a militia (oh, how feared is that word!). They would be sitting ducks for despotism.
Well, those are two. Where are all the other liberal patriots?
If the liberal patriots were still around, some might receive Obama's "give up your rights for the children's" speech with a measure of suspicion and skepticism. Even though, unlike Alan Gopnik, Obama alludes to the actual purpose of the Second Amendment (rather than the "satisfaction gun owners take from their guns"): "Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children, year after year after year, is somehow the price of our freedom?" Here is the antiquated (or so it seems to liberals) worry about despotism (so 18th century) weighed against the very real danger to our children. Are you willing to sacrifice your children for some outdated concept? Is this old trope of Progressivism what is meant by "the politics are too hard"?
If the liberal patriots were still around, some might be suspicious when the President says that "keeping our children safe . . . is something we can only do together, with . . . the help of a nation." It requires national (read: federal) gun policy to prevent/lessen massacres? Why? ("What does God need with a starship?")
If the liberal patriots were still around, they might be getting suspicious when religion is invoked to bring about radical policy change: "That is how as a society we will be judged." While the New Testament records some harsh words about those who harm children, the New Testament doesn't specifically link it to judgments on societies. If Obama is going to wax Biblical, he could make a better argument that a society will be judged by repentance and its acceptance of Jesus' message of salvation. I wonder why he's making a theological argument at all. Weren't our liberal patriots super-skeptical of theological arguments once upon a time?
Like the freedom to never go hungry or sick or jobless as long as the federal government has the key to your neighbor's pantry (and bank vault), the freedom from attacks by maniacs awaits you. All it takes is giving up essential liberty even when "the politics are too hard." Then you will be "free" to be safe.
(*Note: I have since been informed that Jeffrey Goldberg may not be an example of a leftist, even though the article citing this quote described him as such. So, my count actually falls from two to one liberal patriot.)
Like the recent Connecticut school massacre, Kehoe's mass murder started with a home killing. This is also similar to the Pearl High School spree, in which Luke Woodman stabbed and bludgeoned his mother (in contrast to the apparent irony being advertised for Nancy Lanza as a "gun enthusiast and the first victim"--not-so-subtly implying that if only she hadn't kept guns around...) before starting his spree at the local high school.
Uncharacteristic of these other sprees, Woodman was apprehended by the assistant principal Joel Myrick who, contrary to law, armed himself and held Woodman at gunpoint. Woodman was on his way to continue his lesson to society at the nearby junior high school when he was intercepted. (The police hadn't had time to respond--they might not have even been called yet.)
According to Wikipedia, before the police arrived Principal Myrick demanded that Woodman explain why he had killed the kids. Woodman replied that the world had wronged him. Before the school shootings, Woodman reportedly sent a message to a fellow student explaining: "I did this to show society, push us and we will push back. ... All throughout my life, I was ridiculed, always beaten, always hated. Can you, society, truly blame me for what I do?"
What I would like Americans to ask themselves is why in the history of America, a history filled with adolescents and social outcasts who had access to household firearms and knew how to use them, we have had relatively few incidents (compared to the last half century) of killing sprees targeting the public, bystanders, co-workers that did nothing wrong, people at restaurants... until after the 1960s.
Is the fascination with removing a convenient means of killing (which is also a necessary means of keeping democracy for all and a necessary means of self-defense for many) a canard to keep society from self-reflecting on what has changed to predispose people to blame "society" and take?
We have, for one, a culture that has more and more entertained the idea (and encouraged youth to entertain it) that people that lash out in violence need special understanding, that one man's terrorist is another's freedom-fighter and people that blow up buses of schoolchildren are obviously just reacting to great injustice that has been served to them. It is a culture that increasingly rejects personal responsibility and diffuses blame around. We also have more and more children not being raised according to their parents values but rather being raised by television, movies, video games, and the philosophical tidbits of their educators. We've had repeated attempts to redefine the way society and family work. We have people simultaneously laughing at those who try to protect abortion survivors from neglect and protect prenatal infants from brain evacuation and curettage, calling it liberty, while acting outraged at teenagers that kill their newborns and demanding life sentences for them. Why are our teenagers so confused about the sanctity of life? It boggles the mind.
After a number of killing sprees in China accomplished with knives (there is serious gun control in collectivist states), "[s]ome analysts have suggested that an increase in psychiatric illnesses brought about by rapid social change is behind the attacks." Well, China has gone through several generations now of the government experimenting with the family structure and promoting social loyalties over family loyalties and otherwise redefining things according to the whims of "central planners." Why would that affect kids' minds?
You know, bullying is nothing new. In general, it has possibly gotten worse in the last several decades with the decline of public schools, but insecure children have long targeted other children for anything: being overweight, wearing funny clothes, being effeminate, shy, etc. For many, many, many decades, bullied children didn't take their dad's guns to school and start shooting. If there were any fantasies like those in The Basketball Diaries, they stayed as fantasies. Taking Andrew Kehoe's claim at face value, why is society making more terrible criminals out of teenagers? Gun availability isn't the variable that has changed.
There was a time, for that matter, when Lizzy Borden's rampage and the events in In Cold Blood were relative anomalies and much more shocking than they are now. What has changed since then?
What you will probably hear in answer to this question (in the rare event it is entertained publicly), that societal changes are too sweeping and complex to analyze and there's no way to roll back the clock to the 1950s (and that would mean bringing back the bad things of that time), we really have no choice but to "just get rid of the guns." It is The Answer.
"For years they spent a lot of money saying, 'There's no other way! There's no other way!' They said it so many times, people actually started believing it."
Since our President has made a tearful entreaty for change in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy, and since there doesn't seem to be much that is remotely conservative about the positions he takes, I think it is fair game to question where he's coming from.
This statement on its own bothers me:
"I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do."
Actually, Mr. President, parents in America are experiencing some deep sympathy and mostly fear--fear that the unthinkable could happen to them as well. Some parents who have been through the unthinkable tragedy already are re-experiencing their pain. But there are parents in Connecticut right now whose grief actually is overwhelming them, suffocating them, and your natural sympathy (and that of most of the rest of us as well) is not even close to that. We don't have overwhelming grief! Those parents do! We are in shock, in fear, and have a secondhand hurt and horror at the thought of what it must be like for those devastated parents. But our grief isn't crippling us like it is them. Not even close. That grief is so paralyzing, it is painful to look at. But you can look away. You can be distracted. Those parents can't. You have no idea, Mr. President, and I truly hope you never do.
For those who have seen the movie Broadcast News, and for those who haven't, I rewatched that press conference a few times looking closely at Obama's eyes. Obama wipes the underpart of his eyes which is the natural reaction when your eyes have welled up and then overflowed. If the eye has not yet overflowed, you have to make near-contact with the eye to check the impending tear, and there is a trail. There is no glossy smear under his eye after he wipes, there is no visible welling in his eyes leading up to wiping. To me, it really looks suspicious as an conscious attempt to get people to stop thinking about the issue and emote on the issue instead. It just doesn't look real. I'm not saying the Obama doesn't feel bad about this massacre; I just don't think he's as emotionally moved as he leads us to believe. He's warming up the audience for "we have got to do something about this."
Obama is President. His children have been (unfortunately) potential targets since he took office--it's an unfortunate problem with that job. They are constantly protected and they have to be. He fears as parents do (although our children are much less protected). But I've lived firsthand watching the day-to-day grief of parents that have lived through the unthinkable, and what I just saw is not someone who is remotely sharing in that grief.
When I wipe my eyes, as I have had to do several times since I started this post, it is a messy affair. One wipe smears the saltiness around producing wetness and salty irritation and I end up having to press my hand into my eyes to clear the mess.
But only the wise can see The Emperor's New Tears.
We complain about free speech zones. The whole country is supposed to be a free speech zone, after all. It says so right in the First Amendment. But when it comes further restrictions on the manufacture, sale, or possession of firearms, liberals are not even silent; they are vociferously in favor of such restrictions. Suddenly, overly broad restrictions are "reasonable." The Chicago and Washington D.C. bans on handguns -- all handguns -- is reasonable, even though the Supreme Court has now said otherwise.
Notice Chicago and Washington D.C. are pointed out as examples of total gun control. Guess which cities are especially notorious for violent crimes--even crimes involving guns. You may have heard a lot about D.C. but hasn't Chicago come a long way since Prohibition? Our President says,
[F]rankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s, they’re using cheap handguns.”
Of course, Obama's pledge that "new gun legislation will not be on the political agenda this [election] year" expires on December 31. ("Vote for me--I won't try to take away your 2nd Amendment rights for at least a few months.")
Having had a gun-related death in my family, I have experienced the grief and witnessed firsthand the shattering, paralyzing grief of parents. It's horrific. And, in that context, I can say that I don't appreciate the ambulance-chasing Michael Moores that are waiting in the wings to turn the grief of family members into political fodder. I sure wouldn't have appreciated Bob Costas throwing in his 2¢ (even if someone had 1½¢ to give him back in change) on our personal tragedy.
Now, when Obama declared (or suggested, rather) a very reluctant truce on his attacks on gun rights, I was sure that Nov. 6th was the expiration date for that truce. He has a history of saying whatever will get him elected. Whether you knew he never meant what he said about marriage, individual mandates, CSPAN, debt ceilings, etc. or simply have a media-induced case of Obamnesia, that history is there.
It's been less than two months. Obama is tearing up on television and talking about renewing the gun "discussion": “seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence, because frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s, they’re using cheap handguns.” Yes, in spite of Chicago practically being a liberal's ideal gun-free zone, criminals still manage to get weapons and kill unarmed citizens before the police can answer the 911 call. And wait, the killings were accomplished with 9mm pistols, so is Obama's segue into cheap handguns mean that ordinary citizens should not be allowed to own cheap handguns for fear that they will walk into a school?
Remember that at Columbine Harris and Klebold were trying to outdo the Bath School Disaster of 1927. With bombs. Fortunately, they were not as good at terrorism as Andrew Kehoe, so they resorted to shooting several when what they really wanted a truly enormous death toll. A bit more practice with their home bombs and they might have pulled off what J.D. failed to do in Heathers. Most rampagers probably have less narcissism involved in their killing, but remember that Andrew Kehoe seemed to be making a statement that society was to blame for his troubles: "Criminals are made." Was Kehoe made a criminal by the school he blew up?
As one might imagine, China doesn't like its ordinary citizens to have guns. (They might have had a revolution long ago.) So their rampages are mostly accomplished with "melee weapons."
On a related note: Remember how CNN showed Obama tromping around the Hurricane Sandy devastation (and buried the disturbing follow-up), while interviewing a member of the E Street Band for political commentary on why Romney's nod to the 10th Amendment was all wrong? (Message: After Romney throws your grandma off a cliff and counts his money as your wife dies of cancer, he'll make sure that your city gets no adequate help after a disaster, because he's rich and doesn't care.) That sure wasn't politicizing a tragedy to plug a candidate, nope.
What if this school shooting had happened the week before November 6th, and CNN had shown Obama tearing up over the senselessness and then had George Clooney being interviewed as body bags are shown being wheeled off the campus:
"Mr. Clooney, what do you think of gun control legislation in light of recent events?"
"Well, I have to say that anyone that isn't willing to rethink the 2nd Amendment must not be as sick of these senseless tragedies as I am, Bob..."
And then, we could have had Chris Matthews say after the subsequent Obama win, "I'm so glad we had that shooting last week..." Yes, what are a few lives considering the fabulous opportunity they afford to politicize the event and gain a political victory?
Think of all the lives that could be saved by restricting vehicle ownership and vehicle operation. Especially in the 18 to 25 age group. Why don't we do something about that? The 2nd Amendment at least is about guaranteeing our right to democratic government. Isn't vehicle operation just a luxury entitlement compared to that?
