Category: Politics

The European Socialist Slide

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

Americans have watched as Europe has teetered on the brink of economic chaos, reminiscent of a Buddhist monk preparing to set himself on fire.

It appears that the match has been lit.

French socialist Francois Hollande has won a clear victory in the country’s presidential election.

Mr Hollande – who got an estimated 52% of votes in Sunday’s run-off – said the French had chosen “change”.

Admitting defeat, centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy wished “good luck” to Mr Hollande.

Analysts say the vote has wide implications for the whole eurozone. Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in member countries.

Shortly after polls closed at 20:00 (18:00 GMT), French media published projections based on partial results giving Mr Hollande a lead of almost four points. Turnout was about 80%.

Jubilant Hollande supporters gathered on Place de la Bastille in Paris – a traditional rallying point of the Left – to celebrate.

People drank champagne and chanted: “Sarko, it’s over!”

Mr Hollande – the first socialist to win the French presidency since Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s – gave his victory speech in his stronghold of Tulle in central France.

He said was “proud to have been capable of giving people hope again”.

He said he would push ahead with his pledge to refocus EU fiscal efforts from austerity to “growth”.

“Europe is watching us, austerity can no longer be the only option,” he said.

Mr Hollande has called for a renegotiation of a hard-won European treaty on budget discipline championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy.

Meanwhile, in Greece…

Greece’s former finance minister and Socialist party leader called for a broad coalition government of pro-European parties, ruling out a two-party government with his conservative rivals after his party received a drubbing in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Official projected results showed Evangelos Venizelos’ PASOK party plunging to third place with 13.6 percent and 42 seats in the 300-member parliament. The conservative New Democracy was projected in the lead with 19.18 percent and 109 seats, far below the 151 needed to form a government. The margin of error was 0.5 percentage point.

“A coalition government of the old two-party system would not have sufficient legitimacy or sufficient domestic and international credibility if it would gather a slim majority,” Venizelos said. “A government of national unity with the participation by all the parties that favor a European course, regardless of their positions toward the loan agreements, would have meaning.”

If borne out by final results, the outcome is devastating for PASOK, which won a landslide victory in 2009 with more than 43 percent of the vote.

Voters outraged by Greece’s protracted financial crisis and the austerity measures imposed in return for international bailouts punished both main parties, turning to smaller anti-bailout groups instead. The leftist Syriza, which was projected in second place with 16.3 percent and 50 seats, has been strongly opposed to Greece’s bailout agreements.

“For us in PASOK, today is particularly painful,” Venizelos said. “We knew the price would be heavy and we had undertaken for a long time to bear it.”

Things aren’t  so peachy-keen in Germany, either:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition lost power in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, first estimates showed Sunday, after a vote that could presage national elections next year.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) scored 30.6 percent, according to ARD public television, with her junior partners at the national level, the Free Democrats (FDP), winning 8.3 percent – not enough to retain power in the northern state.

However, the opposition – combining the centre-left Social Democrats and ecologist Greens – also failed to gain sufficient support to form a government, with 29.9 percent and 13.6 percent respectively.

This left as a strong possibility a so-called “grand coalition” between the CDU and SPD, which many believe could be the final result of the national elections due in September or October 2013.

The big winners on the night were the Pirates, an upstart party that has shaken up the staid world of German politics with a campaign based on more transparency in the political process and internet freedom.

For the third consecutive regional election, they breached the five-percent mark needed to enter the state parliament, winning 8.2 percent of the vote.

But for the FDP, although they lost more than six percent compared to the last election in 2009, it was a better-than-expected result, given that they are polling nationally at around three percent.

Turnout was low, with around 60 percent of the 2.2 million registered voters casting their ballot, compared to more than two-thirds in 2009.

The socialist Left party failed to clear the five-percent hurdle, scoring around 2.4 percent. A party representing the state’s small Danish minority also fell below the threshold, with 4.5 percent.

The parties will now engage in days of horse-trading before the final make-up of the state parliament is determined.

However, the election will have little impact on the make-up of the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament where Germany’s 16 states are represented, and Merkel’s personal popularity remains high.

Back on April 24th, Robin Wells reported on the effect of what was happening in European Politics on the markets, for guardian.co.uk:

When markets contemplate that it’s likely that another austerity-skeptic, François Hollande, will win the presidency in France, then the pattern becomes impossible to ignore: the “core” eurozone countries are fragmenting. While it would be foolish to make predictions, what is probable is that Germany’s political isolation within the eurozone will deepen, leaving German taxpayers unwilling to continue backstopping the whole system.

Unthinkable as it seems, the logical conclusion is that the eurozone cannot continue to exist, at least in its present form. Markets, which hate unquantifiable uncertainty, are sensing this. We are likely to be in for an extended period of gut-wrenching turbulence.

What are the implications for the US, economically and politically? Direct links between the US and eurozone economies are fairly minor: we don’t export that much to them, they don’t import that much from us, and US banks have had an extended time to cut their exposure to eurozone risk. Yet the collateral damage could still prove significant.

When the stock markets fall, consumer and business confidence falls, leading to cutbacks in spending – bad news for an American economy that is still mired in recession. In addition, crisis in Europe makes for a stronger US dollar, as investors flee to safer abodes. Again, bad for the economy as a stronger dollars hurts US exports.

The reality of the eurozone’s troubles should lend support to President Barack Obama’s campaign against GOP presidential nominee presumptive Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans. It provides a demonstration that austerity is self-defeating, that fiscal stimulus is needed in a deeply depressed economy, that recovery from a financial crisis is a slow and halting process, and that by grasping the nettle immediately, the Obama administration has succeeded in stabilizing its financial sector – while the Europeans have made a hash of it.

Ms. Wells’ thoughts about our economic plight are way off…unless she calls the Obama Administration embracing of European Socialist-style Big Government, spending like there’s no tomorrow, and keeping unemployment at over 8% “stabilizing the financial sector”.

It is imperative that America not follow Europe’s example, this November 6th.

One Nation, Under God

On By kingsjesterIn Politics11 Comments

Here are a few quotes from American Presidents, expressing their love and reverence for the Almighty.

That is, all except one.

You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.

…While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.

…The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger. The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

…I now make it my earnest prayer that God would… most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of the mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion.

– GEORGE WASHINGTON

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.

The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.

I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.

I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.

– THOMAS JEFFERSON

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

-ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were. . . . the general principles of Christianity.

– JOHN ADAMS

[T]he teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally….impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teaching were removed.

-TEDDY ROOSEVELT

America was born a Christian nation – America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.

– WOODROW WILSON

American life is builded, and can alone survive, upon . . . [the] fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago.

-HERBERT HOOVER

This is a Christian Nation. –

– HARRY TRUMAN

Let us remember that as a Christian nation . . . we have a charge and a destiny.

– RICHARD NIXON

We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

– BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

In a unrelated matter, or is it related?  I certainly believe so.

Per Breitbart.com –

Barack Obama launched his campaign in unspectacular fashion today at Ohio State University, the largest college in the crucial swing state. A photo posted to twitter by Mitt Romney’s campaign spokesman Ryan Williams reveals sparse attendance. The above image, according to Williams, was taken during the President’s first official campaign speech.

During the speech, Obama ripped into the presumptive GOP nominee and discussed nation building at home, but the most newsworthy item of the day was not the talking points Obama delivered: it was the crowd… or lack thereof. According to ABC News, the Obama campaign had expected an “overflow” of people. Instead, the arena looked half-empty. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Obama organizers even had people move from the seats to the floor of the gym in order to project a larger crowd on television.

According to the Toledo Blade, the venue for Obama’s rally seats 20,000 but “there were a lot of empty seats.” Comparatively, Obama drew a crowd of 35,000 at Ohio State when he campaigned for former Governor Ted Strickland in 2010.

The official Barack Obama Tumblr boasts a figure from ThinkProgress that 14,000 attended the event–70% of the stadium’s seating capacity.

To hold a campaign event in a room that you can’t fill is a mistake; to promise the media a more-than-capacity crowd then fall this far short of that promise is utter incompetence. In 2008, Obama ran a near-flawless campaign, buoyed by enthusiasm and effective organizing. But it’s not 2008 any more, and on day one of the 2012 campaign, Team Obama has already made an embarrassing blunder.

Yes, they have…they overestimated the crowd and underestimated the American people and the Solid Rock upon which this nation was built.

However, God always has a way of getting your attention.

A Tale of Two Julias

On By kingsjesterIn Entertainment, Politics3 Comments

It was the best of women.  It was the worst of women.

Let’s compare a couple of famous “Julias”, shall we?

Julia, a half-hour comedy premiering on NBC in September 1968, was an example of American network television’s attempt to address race issues during a period of heightened activism and turmoil over the position of African-Americans in U.S. society. The series was the first to star a black performer in the leading role since Beulah, Amos ‘n’ Andy, and The Nat “King” Cole Show all left the air in the early and mid-1950s. By the mid-1960s, a number of prime-time series began featuring blacks in supporting roles, but industry fears of mostly southern racial sensibilities discouraged any bold action by the networks to more fully represent African-Americans in entertainment television. Series creator, Hal Kanter, a Hollywood liberal and broadcasting veteran whose credits included writing for the Beulah radio show in the 1940s, initiated Julia’s challenge to what remained of television’s colour bar. Kanter had attended a luncheon organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and been inspired enough to propose the project to NBC. The network agreed to run the show, but programmers did not expect it to do well since it was scheduled opposite the hugely popular Red Skelton Show. The show proved to be a surprise hit, however, jumping into the top ten list of most watched programs during its first year, and continuing to be moderately successful during its remaining two seasons on the air.

The series revolved around the lives of Julia Baker, (Diahann Carroll) a widowed black nurse and her young son, Corey (Marc Copage). Julia’s husband had been killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, and the series began with the now fatherless Baker family moving into an integrated apartment building in Los Angeles while Julia secured employment at the medical offices of Astrospace Industries. She worked with a gruff but lovable elderly white physician, Dr. Chegley (Lloyd Nolan), and a homely but spirited white nurse, Hannah Yarby. Julia’s closest friends were her white neighbors, the Waggedorns–Marie, a scatter-brained housewife; Len, a police officer; and Earl J. Waggedorn, their son and Corey’s pal. While Julia lived in an almost exclusively white environment, she managed to find a series of impeccably refined African-American boyfriends. Paul Winfield played one of her more long-standing romantic partners. Performed with elegance and dignity by Carroll, Julia represented a completely assimilated–and thoroughly non-stereotyped–African-American image to prime-time viewers.

This week, desperate to show how wonderful a socialist society under “The Lightbringer” would be, the Obama Administration, last week, presented for our edification and illumination,the fictional, err, I mean compressed, life story of a young lady named Julia.

Rich Lowry, writing for nationalreview.com, summarizes it:

Julia begins her interaction with the welfare state as a little tot through the pre-kindergarten program Head Start. She then proceeds through all of life’s important phases, not Shakespeare’s progression from “mewling and puking” infant to “second childishness and mere oblivion,” but the Health and Human Services and Education Departments version: a Pell grant (age 18), surgery on insurance coverage guaranteed by Obamacare (22), a job where she can sue her employers for more pay thanks to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (23), free contraception (27), a Small Business Administration loan (42) and, finally, Medicare (65) and Social Security (67). (In a sci-fi touch, these entitlements are presumed to be blissfully unchanged sometime off in the 2070s.)

No doubt, the creators of Julia — imagine a dour and featureless version of Dora the Explorer who grows old through the years — weren’t seeking to make a major philosophical statement. But they inadvertently captured something important about the progressive vision.

Julia’s central relationship is to the state. It is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist, and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or free. She apparently doesn’t worry about paying taxes. It doesn’t enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences. She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can.

Back in October of 2009, 35,000 people were waiting in line outside of Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan when trouble ensued. These people were so desperate for help with mortgage and utility bills that threats were made, fights broke out, and people were nearly trampled.

Ken Rogulski was there, reporting on WJR in Michigan. He decided to interview two people there in line for Obama cash.

ROGULSKI: Why are you here?

WOMAN #1: To get some money.

ROGULSKI: What kind of money?

WOMAN #1: Obama money.

ROGULSKI: Where’s it coming from?

WOMAN #1: Obama.

ROGULSKI: And where did Obama get it?

WOMAN #1: I don’t know, his stash. I don’t know. (laughter) I don’t know where he got it from, but he givin’ it to us, to help us.

WOMAN #2: And we love him.

WOMAN #1: We love him. That’s why we voted for him!

WOMEN: (chanting) Obama! Obama! Obama! (laughing)

I wonder if they were “Julia’s” Aunts?

In the span of 24 years, we have gone from a Julia who was a successful, self-sufficient, hard-working, single, American mom, to a “Julia” who is a leech, living off the money of American taxpayers, and doesn’t know what the words “self-sufficient” mean.

We have to boot the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC out on his derriere on November 6th, 2012.

It will be a far, far better thing we do than we have ever done before.

More Chens Than a Chinese Phonebook

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

– John F. Kennedy

Obama’s “Smart Power!” Foreign Policy is looking like anything but, in his handling of the case of a blind gentleman from China who wants to defect to America.

Thehill.com has the story.

The Chinese dissident at the center of a political firestorm called a hearing Thursday and told lawmakers he wants to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng called a hearing set up to explore his efforts to leave China and escape persecution—apparently from a Chinese hospital room.

“I want to meet with Secretary Clinton,” he said on the phone. “I hope I can get more help from her. I also want to thank her face to face.”

Chen added that he is most concerned with his family, and said, “I really want to know what’s going on with them.”

“I want to thank all of you for your care and your love,” he added, through a translation by Pastor Bob Fu, Founder and President, ChinaAid Association. Fu was a witness at Thursday’s hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Chen is at the center of a diplomatic row between the U.S. and China that has become a political liability for President Obama.

Chen was under house arrest for several months for protesting China’s one-child policy, but escaped to the U.S. Embassy, where he stayed for several days.

The U.S. and China appeared to reach a deal Wednesday that allowed Chen to remain in China, where he said he wished to stay.

But after Chen was released to a Chinese hospital to have his injuries treated, the dissident said he did not want to stay in China and requested political asylum in the U.S.

Administration officials insisted they did not pressure Chen to stay in China and that he decided on his own initially that he wanted to remain in his country.

But the about-face has led to criticism from Republicans that U.S. officials never should have allowed him to leave the U.S. embassy.

Speaking of the Republicans, the unofficial/official Republican Nominee for President was not shy about voicing his opinion concerning this fiasco:

Mitt Romney condemned the Obama administration’s handling of blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, calling the episode “a dark day for freedom” and “a day of shame” for President Obama if, he couched, reports are true that American officials communicated threats to Chen’s family.

At the same time Romney was speaking about the Chen story, about which there are conflicting reports, CNN was reporting that Chen told the network that he blamed a “misunderstanding” with the U.S. government for impressions that the Americans abandoned him and expressed “deep gratitude” to American officials.

Several times on Thursday, Romney couched his comments with disclaimers like “if the reports are true,” but the takeaway was clearly intended that the incident is a black eye for President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

“Just in the last day or two we’ve heard some disturbing things from across the world that suggest that, potentially, if the reports are true, some very troubling developments there,” Romney said. “Where an individual, Mr. Chen, has sought freedom in a bastion of freedom, an embassy of the United States of America. Aren’t we proud of the fact that people seeking freedom come to our embassy to find it?”

Romney continued: “The reports are, if they’re accurate, our administration willingly or unwittingly communicated to Chen an implicit threat to his family. And also probably sped up, or may have sped up, the process of his decision to leave the embassy because they wanted to move on to a series of discussions that Mr. Geithner and our secretary of state are planning on having with China.”

The likely GOP presidential nominee added: “It’s also apparent, according to these reports, if they’re accurate, that our embassy failed to put in place the kind of verifiable measures that would assure the safety of Mr. Chen and his family. If the reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration. We are a place of freedom, here and around the world and we should stand up and defend freedom wherever it is under attack.”

But, according to the Twitter feed of CNN executive producer Ram Ramgopal, Chen offered praise to the Americans who helped him.

“Chen Guangcheng speaks to CNN; says he believes U.S. will help him, expresses “deep gratitude” to American officials in Beijing,” Ramgopal wrote. “Chen also blames a ‘misunderstanding’ for the impression that the U.S. govt. abandoned him in the hospital.”

Romney, who has made a get-tough attitude toward China a central part of his foreign policy, on Sunday released a statement professing concern for Chen’s treatment, but had not previously spoken about the case from the stump.

Good for Mitt.  Well done.

On the subject of freedom, the greatest president in my lifetime, Ronald Wilson Reagan,  said:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

In 1974, in a speech titled, “The Shining City Upon a Hill”, Reagan said:

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, “We will be as a cityupon a hill.The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”

Everyone’s watching, Mr. President.  It’s your move.

Of Lies and Compression

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

Fiction – something invented by the imagination or feigned;specifically: an invented story

President Barack Hussein Obama evidently assisted “Bomber” Bill Ayers in writing a work of fiction when they sat down to compose the supposed memoir “Dreams From My Father”.

Dylan Byars posted the following, yesterday, on politico.com:

One of the more mysterious characters from President Obama’s 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father is the so-called ‘New York girlfriend.’ Obama never referred to her by name, or even by psuedonym, but he describes her appearance, her voice, and her mannerisms in specific detail.

But Obama has now told biographer David Maraniss that the ‘New York girlfriend’ was actually a composite character, based off of multiple girlfriends he had both in New York City and in Chicago.

“During an interview in the Oval Office, Obama acknowledged that, while Genevieve was his New York girlfriend, the description in his memoir was a “compression” of girlfriends, including one who followed Genevieve [Cook] when he lived in Chicago,” Maraniss writes in his new biography, an excerpt of which was published online today by Vanity Fair.

“In Dreams from My Father, Obama chose to emphasize a racial chasm that unavoidably separated him from the woman he described as his New York girlfriend,” Maraniss writes, offering a passage from the book in which they go to see a play by a black playwright:

One night I took her to see a new play by a black playwright. It was a very angry play, but very funny. Typical black American humor. The audience was mostly black, and everybody was laughing and clapping and hollering like they were in church. After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering—nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said—and she said that’s different, and I said it wasn’t, and she said that anger was just a dead end. We had a big fight, right in front of the theater. When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough.

“None of this happened with Genevieve,” Maraniss writes. “She remembered going to the theater only once with Barack, and it was not to see a work by a black playwright. When asked about this decades later, during a White House interview, Obama acknowledged that the scene did not happen with Genevieve. “It is an incident that happened,” he said. But not with her. He would not be more specific, but the likelihood is that it happened later, when he lived in Chicago. “That was not her,” he said. “That was an example of compression I was very sensitive in my book not to write about my girlfriends, partly out of respect for them. So that was a consideration. I thought that [the anecdote involving the reaction of a white girlfriend to the angry black play] was a useful theme to make about sort of the interactions that I had in the relationships with white girlfriends. And so, that occupies, what, two paragraphs in the book? My attitude was it would be dishonest for me not to touch on that at all … so that was an example of sort of editorially how do I figure that out?””

Broadway Books, a division of Random House’s Crown Publishing Group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UPDATE: In the reissue of “Dreams from My Father,” Obama writes in the introduction that “some of the characters that appear are composites of people I’ve known.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this blog post stated that Obama had acknowledged using composite characters in the reissue. In fact, Obama acknowledged the use of composite characters in the first edition of the book.

Okay.  So, if he acknowledged that he…ummm…compressed, why is it considered an autobiography and not a work of fiction?

Especially, as this article from The American Thinker shows, even Google lists Bill Ayers as the author of the book, not President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).

Google, which sits atop more data than anybody outside the NSA, is presenting Bill Ayers as the author of Barack Obama’s purported first autobiography, Dreams from My Father. Follow this link and see it while you can. If it is gone by the time you read this, a screen shot of the page, and a close-up on the Dreams entry are provided for posterity.

Google knows so much about us already that privacy activists are alarmed. What data are its algorithms sifting through to come to the conclusion that yes, the stylistic parallels to Ayers’ other books are formidable and Barry never showed any sign of an ability to write this way before or after, and yes, Christopher Anderson’s friendly biography includes the information that Obama found himself deeply in debt and “hopelessly blocked.” At “Michelle’s urging,” Obama “sought advice from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”

So the company that supposedly knows more about us than we know ourselves also knows who wrote Dreams from My Father.

I thought that the only compression that “Bomber” Bill Ayers was familiar with was how to compress explosives into an innocent-looking container.

So, was Obama compressing when he called Ayers “just another guy in the neighborhood”?

Or, did Congressman Joe Wilson hit the proverbial nail on the head during that State of the Union speech in 2009, which now seems so long ago?

The Afghanistan Agreement…Thank You, Neville Chamberlain

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

Last night, at 6:30 p.m. Central, the 44th president of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, gave a 15 minute address concerning the “end of the war” in Afghanistan.

The speech was given at Bagram Air Force Base, in front of a phony backdrop consisting of the machines of war, while our Brightest and Best were barred from the area.

And, with good reason.  Their CIC sounded more like he was repeating “Peace in Our Time” than the end to a successful military campaign.

He announced a five-step plan to end our military involvement in Afghanistan:

First, we’ve begun a transition to Afghan responsibility for security. Already, nearly half of the Afghan people live in places where Afghan security forces are moving into the lead. This month, at a NATO Summit in Chicago, our coalition will set a goal for Afghan forces to be in the lead for combat operations across the country next year. International troops will continue to train, advise and assist the Afghans, and fight alongside them when needed. But we will shift into a support role as Afghans step forward.

As we do, our troops will be coming home. Last year, we removed 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Another 23,000 will leave by the end of the summer. After that, reductions will continue at a steady pace, with more and more of our troops coming home. And as our coalition agreed, by the end of 2014 the Afghans will be fully responsible for the security of their country.

Second, we are training Afghan security forces to get the job done. Those forces have surged, and will peak at 352,000 this year. The Afghans will sustain that level for three years, and then reduce the size of their military. And in Chicago, we will endorse a proposal to support a strong and sustainable long-term Afghan force.

Third, we’re building an enduring partnership. The agreement we signed today sends a clear message to the Afghan people: As you stand up, you will not stand alone. It establishes the basis for our cooperation over the next decade, including shared commitments to combat terrorism and strengthen democratic institutions. It supports Afghan efforts to advance development and dignity for their people. And it includes Afghan commitments to transparency and accountability, and to protect the human rights of all Afghans — men and women, boys and girls.

Within this framework, we’ll work with the Afghans to determine what support they need to accomplish two narrow security missions beyond 2014 — counter-terrorism and continued training. But we will not build permanent bases in this country, nor will we be patrolling its cities and mountains. That will be the job of the Afghan people.

Fourth, we’re pursuing a negotiated peace. In coordination with the Afghan government, my administration has been in direct discussions with the Taliban. We’ve made it clear that they can be a part of this future if they break with al Qaeda, renounce violence and abide by Afghan laws. Many members of the Taliban — from foot soldiers to leaders — have indicated an interest in reconciliation. The path to peace is now set before them. Those who refuse to walk it will face strong Afghan security forces, backed by the United States and our allies.

Fifth, we are building a global consensus to support peace and stability in South Asia. In Chicago, the international community will express support for this plan and for Afghanistan’s future. And I have made it clear to its neighbor — Pakistan — that it can and should be an equal partner in this process in a way that respects Pakistan’s sovereignty, interests and democratic institutions. In pursuit of a durable peace, America has no designs beyond an end to al Qaeda safe havens and respect for Afghan sovereignty.

“Peace in Our Time” was delivered by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938, in defense of the Munich Agreement, which he made with those infamous barbarians, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party, or as the world came to call them, the Nazis, and Hitler’s good buddy, the Italian Fascist, Benito Mussolini.

The following is an excerpt:

…I would like to say a few words in respect of the various other participants, besides ourselves, in the Munich Agreement. After everything that has been said about the German Chancellor today and in the past, I do feel that the House ought to recognise the difficulty for a man in that position to take back such emphatic declarations as he had already made amidst the enthusiastic cheers of his supporters, and to recognise that in consenting, even though it were only at the last moment, to discuss with the representatives of other Powers those things which he had declared he had already decided once for all, was a real and a substantial contribution on his part. With regard to Signor Mussolini, . . . I think that Europe and the world have reason to be grateful to the head of the Italian government for his work in contributing to a peaceful solution.

In my view the strongest force of all, one which grew and took fresh shapes and forms every day war, the force not of any one individual, but was that unmistakable sense of unanimity among the peoples of the world that war must somehow be averted. The peoples of the British Empire were at one with those of Germany, of France and of Italy, and their anxiety, their intense desire for peace, pervaded the whole atmosphere of the conference, and I believe that that, and not threats, made possible the concessions that were made. I know the House will want to hear what I am sure it does not doubt, that throughout these discussions the Dominions, the Governments of the Dominions, have been kept in the closest touch with the march of events by telegraph and by personal contact, and I would like to say how greatly I was encouraged on each of the journeys I made to Germany by the knowledge that I went with the good wishes of the Governments of the Dominions. They shared all our anxieties and all our hopes. They rejoiced with us that peace was preserved, and with us they look forward to further efforts to consolidate what has been done.

Ever since I assumed my present office my main purpose has been to work for the pacification of Europe, for the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air. The path which leads to appeasement is long and bristles with obstacles. The question of Czechoslovakia is the latest and perhaps the most dangerous. Now that we have got past it, I feel that it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity.

We all know what happened next:  World War II.

That’s what happens when you negotiate with barbarians.

Happy May…errr…Labor Day

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

The 44th President of the United States appears to have that rule down pat.

In advance of a major Occupy rally planned for Tuesday, President Obama delivered a speech this [yesterday] morning filled with class warfare rhetoric.

The president warned union members that Republicans would rather give “rich folks” more tax breaks, than invest in the American worker.

“Republicans in Congress would rather put fewer of you to work rebuilding America than ask millionaires and billionaires to live without massive new tax cuts on top of the ones they’ve already gotten,” Obama declared in a speech to to construction union members at the Hilton hotel in Washington.

Obama added that Republicans’ economic plan depended on tax cuts for the rich and “dismantling your unions.”

“I mean, if you ask them, what’s their big economic plan in addition to tax cuts for rich folks, it’s dismantling your unions. After all you’ve done to build and protect the middle class, they make the argument you’re responsible for the problems facing the middle class,” Obama added.

The president praised the unionized middle class as the for contributing to an economy based on the middle class.

“You believed prosperity shouldn’t be reserved just for a privileged few; it should extend all the way from the boardroom all the way down to the factory floor.”

According to marxists.org:

Out of its traditions the American labor movement has given the international working class two fighting days which the revolutionary workers consider as mile posts and which they must pass each year on their way to ultimate victory. Those who were midwives at the birth of these “days” have renounced them as soon as they have acquired revolutionary meaning. The A. F. of L. helped with the inauguration of May Day. It has long expiated that sin against American capital and it is never held against it.

The Socialist Party, a close, even if poor, relation of the A. F. of L., must be considered as having contributed to the origin of International Women’s Day, celebrated each year on March 8. About twenty years ago the Socialist women of New York organized, in contradistinction to the bourgeois suffrage movement, a mass participation of proletarian women in the movement for woman suffrage. This particular action took place on March 8. The success of the New York demonstration led to the establishment of March 8 as Women’s Day on a national scale. The International Socialist Congress in 1910 made March 8 international.

With the granting of woman suffrage in the United States, March 8 was abandoned by the S. P., since the ballot and election to office has always been the alpha and omega of that party. The Russian working women did not forget March 8 and, following the October Revolution, rejuvenated this important fighting labor day. The Communist International made International Women’s Day again a living reality. As in the case of May 1, only the Communist parties are carrying on the traditions of March 8, with men and women workers jointly utilizing this day to call upon the proletarian women to take their place in the struggles beside the men workers.

For the May Day, 1923, edition of the Weekly Worker, C. E. Ruthenberg wrote: “May Day – the day which inspires fear in the hearts of the capitalists and hope in the workers – the workers the world over – will find the Communist movement this year stronger in the U. S. than at any time in its history…. The road is clear for greater achievements, and in the United States as elsewhere in the world the future belongs to Communism.” In a Weekly Worker of a generation before, Eugene V. Debs wrote in a May Day edition of the paper, published on April 27, 1907: “This is the first and only International Labor Day. It belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the Revolution.”

Bloomberg.com reports that the Occupy Wall Street movement is ready to celebrate today, in their own inimitable classless style.

Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, whose anti-greed message spread worldwide during an eight-week encampment in Lower Manhattan last year, plan marches across the globe today calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.

Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp.’s 55-story tower.

“We call upon people to refrain from shopping, walk out of class, take the day off of work and other creative forms of resistance disrupting the status quo,” organizers said in an April 26 e-mail.

Occupy groups across the U.S. have protested economic disparity, decrying high foreclosure and unemployment rates that hurt average Americans while bankers and financial executives received bonuses and taxpayer-funded bailouts. In the past six months, similar groups, using social media and other tools, have sprung up in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Alinsky and Marx would be very proud of these “useful idiots”.

Come, Mr. Taliban…

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

When is a conspiracy theory, not a conspiracy theory?  When evidence is found to prove it as a fact.

Guardian.co.uk has the story:

Documents found in the house where Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago show a close working relationship between top al-Qaida leaders and Mullah Omar, the overall commander of the Taliban, including frequent discussions of joint operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and targets in Pakistan.

The communications show a three-way conversation between Bin Laden, his then deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Omar, who is believed to have been in Pakistan since fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of his regime in 2001.

They indicate a “very considerable degree of ideological convergence”, a Washington-based source familiar with the documents told the Guardian.

The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban – seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda – might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism.

One possibility, experts say, is that although Omar built a strong relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri, other senior Taliban commanders see close alliance or co-operation with al-Qaida as deeply problematic.

Western intelligence officials estimate that there are less than 100 al-Qaida-linked fighters in Afghanistan, and last year the United Nations split its sanctions list to separate the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Both David Cameron and US secretary of state Hillary Clinton have said that some kind of political settlement involving the Taliban is key to the stability of Afghanistan once most western troops have withdrawn by 2014.

Some communications in the documents date back several years but others are said to be from only weeks before the raid on 2 May last year in which Bin Laden died.

The Obama Administration has been reaching out to negotiate with the Taliban within the last year, in the misguided notion that you can negotiate with barbarians who want your whole nation to be wiped off the face of the earth.

Last week, thehill.com explained why this was a very stupid strategy:

The Taliban’s recent multi-pronged attacks, coming just a month after suspending talks with the U.S. is a stark reminder that peace negotiations remain a long shot at best, escalating an increasingly contentious debate over whether the insurgent group has any serious intentions of reaching a political settlement. Given the unpredictable nature of the enemy, adopting either policy — cease to participate, or stubbornly pursue peace talks — is irresponsible and extremely risky. Before making any decision, we must first understand why the Taliban might not be vested in reaching a compromise at this point in time. Only then the Afghan government could craft strategies that would strengthen its leverage in any serious peace talks and maintain security in case the enemy abandons negotiations all together.

For starters, the Taliban, who have waged a war of attrition against the Afghan government and its allies for more than ten years now, have seemed more interested in waiting out the international forces that are scheduled to leave the country by the end of 2014. Why? There are three plausible reasons.

First, President Obama’s premature declaration of a withdrawal date and the expected “race to the exits” by other countries have only reassured the Taliban that their plan to exhaust America’s commitment is working — and that sooner rather than later the early 90s scenario would repeat itself. The recent transfer to Afghan security forces of authority over detainees and the conduct of night raids, and Australia’s panicky announcement to pull out its troops nearly a year earlier than planned (although they took a “U-turn to fine-tune the coalition’s plan”) are affirmations of that realization.

Secondly, Taliban’s belief that their worst days are soon to end and that the fight will only get easier have boosted its morale. It should not come as a surprise from an insurgent group that lost thousands of fighters—yet remained steadfast against mighty forces in the decade-long war—that they would give themselves an extra five-year window to test out its ability to take over Kabul after foreign troops withdraw. In fact, it would be a quite rational step forward, especially when the Taliban’s leaders expect the tide to turn in their favor post-2014.

Third, this ideology-driven terrorist group believes that God and time are on its side, resulting in an unwavering commitment to stay the course to oust what they consider the soon-to-be-vulnerable puppet Afghan government militarily.

In the face of a foe like the Taliban, it is clear that hinging all hopes for a sovereign and peaceful Afghanistan on a political settlement would be foolhardy. Yet it does not mean that Afghans should refuse to welcome talks. Either way is an extreme position that will only limit the government’s options. Instead, a middle ground strategy is needed to limit the enemy’s options and possibly its ambitions before any serious negotiations are possible and fruitful.

So, now it turns out that Obama and his minions have been attempting to negotiate with people who were close confidants with those instrumental in the largest Terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil on September 11, 2001.

Smart Power?  Nope.  More like Chamberlain-esque.

Anti-Bullying “Savagery”

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

Did you know that the Obama Administration has a defacto “Anti-Bullying Czar”?  No, it isn’t any of the wrestlers from the WWE, which has its own “Be A Star” Anti-Bullying Campaign.

It is syndicated writer Dan Savage, author of a syndicated sex-advice column titled “Savage Love”.

The column appears weekly in several dozen newspapers, mainly free newspapers in the US and Canada, but also newspapers in Europe and Asia. It started in 1991 with the first issue of the Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger.

Since October 2006, Savage has also recorded the “Savage Lovecast”, a weekly podcast version of the column, featuring telephone advice sessions. Podcasts are released every Tuesday.

The openly gay author uses the column as a forum for his strong opinions that reject conservative views on love, sex, and family. He generally encourages advice-seekers to pursue their fetishes, so long as activities are legal, consensual, safe, and respectful. The tone of the column is humorous, and Savage does not shy away from using profanity.

…For the first six years of the column, Savage had his readers address him with “Hey faggot”, as a comment on previous efforts to recapture offensive words.

This weekend, Savage more than proved my often-stated observation that

Those among us (Liberals) who claim to be the most tolerant are actually the least tolerant of all.

Citizenlink.com broke the story:

A group of high school journalism students attending a conference called “Journalism on the Edge” in Seattle over the weekend felt they were pushed over the edge by syndicated sex advice columnist Dan Savage.

Savage, the creator of the two-year-old It Gets Better Project, which encourages teens struggling with same-sex attractions to embrace homosexuality, was invited to give a keynote address last Friday at the JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention.

Students were expecting him to talk about bullying. But they also got an earful about birth control, sex, and Savage’s opinions on the Bible.

A 17-year-old from California who was attending with half a dozen other students from her high school yearbook staff, was one of several students to walk out in the middle of Savage’s speech.

“The first thing he told the audience was, ‘I hope you’re all using birth control!’ ” she recalled. Then “he said there are people using the Bible as an excuse for gay bullying, because it says in Leviticus and Romans that being gay is wrong. Right after that, he said we can ignore all the ‘B.S.’ in the Bible.

“I was thinking, ‘This is not going a good direction at all,’ Then he started going off about the Bible. He said somehow the Bible was pro-slavery. I’m really shy. I’m not really someone to, like, stir up anything. But all of a sudden I just blurted out, ‘That’s bull!’ ”

As she and several other students walked out of the auditorium, Savage noticed them leaving and called them “pansies.”

Though recordings of the keynote speech are unavailable, Savage has made similar comments in the past, which can be found on YouTube. Among them:

“Most people that you wind up arguing with about religion and homosexuality have not ever read the Bible without their, you know, moron glasses on.”

“If you believe it is the divinely inspired word of God, if you believe in the literal truth of the Bible, I challenge you to read the first five (expletive) pages. There are two creation myths in Genesis.”

“We ignore the (expletive) in the Bible about race, about slavery, and we’re going to have to get there for homosexuality.”

The student’s father is a public school teacher. Though he said Savage’s comments were inappropriate, he thinks the organizers of the conference are ultimately responsible.

“I’m well-versed in the rules of the game, the captive-audience ethic,” he said. “You have a bunch of kids. They’re required to go to school. They don’t have the option of walking out on you as a teacher, so you guard your speech.

“If Dan Savage was a teacher, they’d suspend him without pay for this behavior,” he added. “He didn’t take account of who his audience was. If he was doing this with a bunch of college journalism kids, that would be a different story — that’s more rough and tumble. How many of the kids who didn’t walk out felt backed into a corner? To me, that’s bullying behavior. It has all the symptoms, as far as I’m concerned.”

In a related story from 9/29/2010, abcnews.go.com posted that

At a backyard town hall in Albuquerque, NM, Tuesday, President Obama was asked “Why are you a Christian?” The question, from teacher’s assistant Elizabeth A. Murphy, 42, was one of three “hot topics” she raised with the president.

“I’m a Christian by choice,” the president said. “My family didn’t — frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church.”

The president said he “came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead — being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me. And I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we’re sinful and we’re flawed and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God. But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace.”

The president said “that’s what I strive to do. That’s what I pray to do every day. I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith.”

By endorsing vulgar, anti-christian heathens like Dan Savage, Mr. President?

Divide et Impera

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

As I have written in previous posts, I was born, raised in, and lived for 39 years in Memphis, TN.  I now reside right across the state line (literally) in Southaven, MS, after former Mayor W.W. Herenton told middle class folks like myself that we were no longer welcome there.

I left out the aspect of race from the preceding paragraph as to not beat a dead horse, but racial division in this country is being used as a political tool in an attempt to “divide and conquer” (divide et impera) through a deliberate campaign strategy by Obama and his minions, reinforced by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice.

Commercialappeal.com has the following story from my hometown:

Black juveniles in Memphis are more likely to be locked up, to receive tougher punishments and to be transferred to adult court than white juveniles, U.S. Department of Justice officials announced at a news conference Thursday.

Following a three-year probe of Shelby County Juvenile Court and its detention center, the DOJ found a pattern of constitutional rights violations for all youths, discrimination against black youths and unsafe jail conditions, according to the department’s 66-page report.

“We found serious and systemic failures,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general who oversees the department’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, said during Thursday’s news conference in Memphis. “African-American children were being treated differently and more harshly.”

Justice Department attorneys and outside consultants visited the court and detention center in 2010 and 2011 and analyzed more than 65,000 youth files.

The report concluded that “the juvenile court fails to provide constitutionally required due process to all children appearing for delinquency proceedings, that the court’s administration of juvenile justice discriminates against African-American children and that its detention center violates the substantive due process rights of detained youth by not providing them with reasonably safe conditions of confinement.”

U.S. Atty. Ed Stanton, who hosted the news briefing at the Memphis federal courthouse, told reporters: “While the Civil Rights Division’s findings are serious and compelling, I am encouraged that the leadership and staff of the Shelby County Juvenile Court and Juvenile Detention Center have demonstrated that they intend to take immediate action.”

The investigation followed allegations from Shelby County Commission member Henri Brooks and other African-American commissioners of discrimination and misconduct.

Brooks’ complaint, filed with the DOJ in 2007, alleged mistreatment of juveniles based on race, discriminatory hiring practices, nepotism and political patronage and disregard for federal anti-discrimination laws.

Brooks said she took action after reviewing documents showing that white youths in the suburbs were being sent to school or home after the same infractions that resulted in jail trips and a juvenile record for black youths.

“I’m very happy the Justice Department validated the concerns and allegations of the complaint that I took to D.C,” Brooks said Thursday. “There is something seriously wrong with Juvenile Court.”

The commissioner, a Juvenile Court employee for 11 years, said that in 2007 she was besieged with criticism that she was making Memphis look bad by unfounded claims of racism.

“I don’t want to say ‘vindication,’ but it’s kind of like: ‘Now you know you’re wrong,’ ” she said of her critics.

Juvenile Court Judge Curtis Person, who attended the news conference, told reporters he didn’t agree with all of the report’s findings, particularly those alleging tougher treatment for black juveniles.

“It’s a subjective finding,” the judge said. “I don’t think race enters into the decision-making in Juvenile Court.

“I deplore and will not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

It’s not just the Obama Administration sewing the seeds of racial division.  It’s those charged with teaching young minds full of mush in Obama’s hometown, also.

Per Breitbart.com:

Jones College Prep, a Chicago Public Schools “selective enrollment” school, held “Social Justice Week” in March, a collection of events geared towards turning students into activists. See the schedule of events here.

According to a flyer on the school’s website:

Social Justice Week was created to promote community advancement through dialogue and community service based activism. Moreover, we hope to unify the voice of various JCP and community organizations in which to facilitate collaboration for the betterment of the community at large and promote a unified human rights advancement initiative.

The school is, according to U.S. News & World Report, a Top 100 high school in the country. It’s one of the best of the best–the cream of the crop.

Demographically, Jones College Prep is fairly balanced. Statistics from 2007-2008 show black enrollment is 23.4%, white enrollment is 29.5% and Hispanic enrollment is 33.7%.

Yet the school administrators, through Social Justice Week, gave a platform to community organizers who in turn provided students biased information and encouraged them to take specific steps to protest, EAGnews.org reports exclusively.

When we heard about the week, we contacted school officials requesting to observe and record the events. All parties consented.

…On Wednesday of Social Justice Week, Black Star Project, a Chicago-based community organizing group, was brought into the school after school hours to teach students about “non-violent” protesting. Led by Phillip Jackson, former “Chief of Education” under former Mayor Richard Daley, the optional discussion was focused on students fighting back against gun crime.

Black Star Project, according to its website, is funded by Open Society Foundations (i.e. George Soros), Best Buy, ING and Toyota Motor Sales, among others.

But Jackson apparently had no interest in allowing students to come to their own conclusions on gun ownership.

NPR.org’s Carrie Johnson, in an post titled, Holder: “‘More Work to Do’ Before the Term is Over”, describes her interview with Attorney General Eric Holder:

But every generation has its own civil rights struggles. Holder knows that all too well.

He said the killing in Florida this year of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin prompted him to sit down and talk with his own teenage son, an experience he shared for the first time publicly.

Before the Martin incident, and the outcry that followed, Holder said, he didn’t think he’d have “the conversation” with his son. But he changed his mind.

“It brought back to me experiences that I had as a young man: getting stopped by the police on the Jersey Turnpike, getting stopped running to a movie in Georgetown by the police simply because I was running to get to a movie,” he said. “I was mad, I was angry, I was humiliated. But I didn’t do anything to put my safety at risk. And that’s what I tried to convey to my boy.

Follow police instructions, however wrong you think they might be, Holder told his son, and don’t let anger guide your actions.

“It’s a sad thing that my father had to have that conversation with me, that I thought I had to have that conversation with my son,” he said. “We are a nation that’s made great progress, great progress — the fact that I’m the attorney general of the United States is an indication of that. But we still have some work to do.”

Like refusing to investigate the Black Panthers for voter intimidation, Mr. Attorney General?

Hopefully, you’ll be unemployed soon.