Theo Spark

Sunday, 21 August 2011

The Sunday Best...........

Recession, Depression, and Plain English

Confessions of a New York City Bike Messenger

The Last Straw? Maliki Appoints Dulaymi as Acting Minister of Defence

Explosions, gunfire rock Libyan capital

Surprise! HHS still granting ObamaCare waivers

President McCain is clearly a warmonger

Parameters Spring 2011 Now Online

Rule 5 - Girls With Guns

Libyan capital rocked by blasts and gunfire

Obama's deportation policy: Smart politics?

Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don't Know How to Use CTRL+F

Gaddafi flees to Venezuela?

Peshmerga Colonel: Joint force formed in Jalawla

Madoff scandal A tough message for Bernard Madoff's victims

Doctors wary of Perry’s stem cell treatment

Why companies are cozying up to napping at work

Give Us Liberty: SURPRISE TEA PARTY PATRIOTS WELCOME JEROME CORSI

A gown that's off-key or in perfect pitch?

The President's Island Retreat

D.C. is Like a Separate Country ... One Which Couldn't Care Less About The American People

Study names world's 3 most expensive cities

Employees bid goodbye to corporate America

Red Arrows pilot killed in crash

Libya conflict: Col Gaddafi faces rebel uprising on streets of Tripoli

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il travels to Russia to meet Medvedev

Strewth, scientists discover how the kangaroo got its hop

and finally..........

The Election Version of the Osama Bin Laden Mission

Sunday Tip: How-To Field Strip and Clean a Glock With Ashley

Saturday, 20 August 2011

Black America's Gains and Losses

By Alan Caruba

You know that Barack Obama is in trouble when even the Congressional Black Caucus begins to criticize him.

Maxine Waters (D-CA) recently told a gathering that the CBC is “frustrated” with regard to unemployment, a problem that has hit blacks harder than whites. The only thing holding the CBC back from being more vocal, said Waters, was its fear they will lose the support of the black community.

It says something about Congress and politics in America that the only race-based caucus is the Black Caucus.

Like many Americans, I watched the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s unfold with the feeling that, a century passed the Civil War, it was long overdue.

The movement had a leader of remarkable talent, Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., plus others from the ministry and labor movement. It was a time of turmoil that ended with the assassinations of Dr. King, President John F. Kennedy, and of Bobby Kennedy.

Others died too in the struggle but they have become relegated to being minor historic players. When the dust settled President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The changes in American life since then have been extraordinary. Afro-Americans were assured their voting rights, equal housing, and other opportunities that had been routinely denied.

Whites accommodated themselves to the changes, having already accepted the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, that "separate but equal" schools, a widespread practice in the southern and border States, were unconstitutional.

While many blacks have achieved middle class status and risen to levels of real achievement, the vast bulk has not. These comments acknowledge individual success stories, but address the larger black community.

As a general observation, blacks in America have chosen to ignore the gains in legally protected civil rights equality.

By most indices the black community has not changed. In U.S. cities they remain ghettoized, as much from choice, as external circumstances. Instead of moving forward, integrating and assimilating into the larger white population; blacks have emotionally remained apart, nurturing a sense of being victims, holding onto an animus for whites.

Social failures are so rampant among blacks that it is appalling to contemplate how many are born into single-parent families, often raised a mother or grandparents because the men are absent. They drop out of school. Unskilled and often illiterate, employment opportunities are limited. Blacks and crime have become synonymous to the point where they fill the nation’s prisons far in excess of whites and Hispanics. Drug use ravages black communities.

To say whites are disappointed is an understatement. It is a source of resentment that is rarely expressed aloud to avoid being deemed a racist or engaging in hate speech.

So how does one explain the phenomenon of the first black President?

Observers attribute it to a large turnout of younger voters, born well after the 1960s, to union members, many of whom were government workers, to 98% of the Afro-American community, and, of course, Democrats in general. Many white voters who wanted to affirm their belief that equality was an American value pulled the lever for Obama.

Barack Obama has exacerbated white disappointment and it is likely that many blacks, too, are experiencing buyer’s lament.

Among whites, there’s a feeling that scores are being settled with incidents like Obama’s condemnation of a white Boston police officer, the appointment of Eric Holder as the first black Attorney General, and of others like Van Jones as Obama's “Green Jobs Czar.” Jones is a self-identified Communist and a radical environmentalist who resigned and is now safe in the bosom of progressive organizations.

The latest affront to a predominantly white population is an executive order, issued on August 18, titled “Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workplace.” In other words, whites need not apply.

When whites became aware of Obama’s preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying “God damn America”, they had to actively ignore the fact that Obama had spent many years in his church, that Wright had married him and Michelle, and baptized their children. Theirs was no casual relationship, nor were others from any earlier point in his life such as the Communist Party member, Frank Marshall Davis, who advised young Barack that his white grandmother had a right to be scared of blacks because “She understands that black people have a reason to hate.”

It will be a long time before the majority white and Hispanic populations forget or forgive the legacy of Barack Obama.

Obama has wreaked economic havoc on America since taking office and this time people—black, white, Asian and Hispanic—have taken notice.

© Alan Caruba 2011

Obama Downgraded in Pennsylvania

See: "Obama Down to 35 Percent Approval in Pennsylvania."

Saturday Night is Bath Night.............

H/T Paul N

Late News...........

Duncan should worry about his mess in Chicago before messing with Texas

Are the Poor Really Poor?

Take a lesson from Cuban citizens

Getting ready for a wave of coal-plant shutdowns

On Obama’s Habitual Use Of Executive Fiat – “Is That The Act Of A Dictator?”

Looting yobs SHOT at police helicopter in Birmingham

Panetta: Yeah, we’re going to stay in Iraq

West Point reinstates cadet in LaBelle altercation

The Hidden Hand

Iran: When a mullah imitates Louis XIV

Details only get worse from ATF’s Fast and Furious fiasco

Doing things differently

Allen West and the politics of nuts

Iran sentences 2 American men to 8 years in jail in blow to hopes for freedom

The View From Martha's Vineyard

Bad luck? Bad faith?

Pay attention, President Next

WoW Time!

WoW - the Watchers Council - it's the oldest, longest running cyber comte d'guere ensembe in existence - an eclective collective of cats both cruel and benign with their ability to put steel on target (figuratively - natch) on a wide variety of topictry across American, Allied, Frenemy and Enemy concerns, memes, delights and discourse.

Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers.

Council Winners

*First place with 3 1/3 votes! The Razor–-Working for Free: The Economics of Being a Primary Care Physician
Second place with 2 2/3 votes – Simply Jews-Ron Paul 2012 and Paultards
Third Place with 2 votes – New Zeal- Yes They Did!: Barack Obama, Cesar Chavez and Their Common Communist Roots
Fourth place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – The Colossus of Rhodey-The Wrest Of The West
Fourth place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit-China’s Chief Of Staff Visits Israel To Discuss Strategic, Military Cooperation
Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Sudanocide
Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – VA Right! – Thoughts on Last Night’s Republican Debate
Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room – Reminds Me of What to Do Before I’m Dead
Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Right Truth – Losing the Habit of Work?
Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Bookworm Room – Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother

Non-Council Winners

First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Terry Glavin- The Final Nail In The Coffin Of The Pakistani Pantomime? submitted bySimply Jews
Second place with 2 votes -Big Peace – Ron Paul: The GOP’s Henry Wallace submitted by New Zeal
Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Bizzy Blog – AP Puts Dem Propaganda Spin on Obama’s ‘Me Too’ Tour submitted by Snapped Shot
Third place *t* with 1 1/3 vote -City Journal – Why the Gender Gap Won’t Go Away. Ever. submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
Third place *t* with 1 1/3 vote -Sultan Knish – Anatomy Of Law Enforcement Impotence submitted by The Noisy Room
Fourth place *t* with 1 vote -Peter Hitchens’ Blog – Police water cannons and plastic bullets? submitted by Joshuapundit
Fourth place *t* with 1 vote -
2012 Campaign Report Patriot Action Network – Take A Bow submitted by Right Truth
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Danny Ayalon – The Truth About The West Bank submitted by Bookworm Room
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Daily Caller – Presidential debates should focus more on foreign policy submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Atlas Shrugs – An Old Custom submitted by The Political Commentator
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The League Of Ordinary Gentlemen – To Boldly Go Where No Two Men Have Gone Together Before submitted by Rhymes With Right
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Atlas Shrugs – An Old Custom submitted by The Political Commentator
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Atlas Shrugs – Obama Betrays Another Ally: U.S. to Deny Taiwan’s request, “We are so disappointed in the United States” submitted by VA Right!
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -JustOneMinute – All He Is Saying Is, Give War A Chance submitted by The Glittering Eye

See you next week! And do us on Facebook and Twitter... via the WoW girls at GrEaT sAtAn"s gIrLfRiEnD

"GM Crops Farmer to Farmer"

"Michael Hart, a conventional livestock family farmer, has been farming in Cornwall for nearly thirty years and has actively campaigned on behalf of family farmers for over fifteen years, travelling extensively in Europe, India, Canada and the USA.

In this short documentary he investigates the reality of farming genetically modified crops in the USA ten years after their introduction. He travels across the US interviewing farmers and other specialists about their experiences of growing GM."

Cartoon Round Up....

The Search For No God...............by Dan Friedman

Don’t you sometimes get the impression that much of scientific endeavor is motivated by a quest to prove there’s no G-d.? I do. But the deeper science digs the more unfathomable the origin of life becomes. Even the great Darwin was reduced to speculation, suggesting life originated in a warm pond. Here’s a good rabbi with some clarifying thoughts on the matter for Jews and gentiles alike.

Scientists Prove Again that Life is the Result of Intelligent Design

Dan Friedman
NYC