Sleepless in Midland

So you think you're unbiased? A Harvard test is here to tell you otherwise

An interesting article appeared in the Wall Street Journal titled Why We Stereotype Strangers. The point they drive home is that we all have unconscious biases about people, and those biases may influence our behavior. Here's an excerpt:

One way to think about implicit bias is as a habit we developed from the moment we were born and started perceiving the world around us. “Everything we take in—everything our parents tell us, everything we see on TV or hear in music, that we learn in school or from friends or see on the streets—all of this adds up to associations in our brain,” Dr. Chugh says. We may not consciously believe these influences, but they’re there, idling in the background.

Unconscious bias is “sticky and malleable,” Dr. Chugh says, meaning that it fluctuates according to what is happening in the world and in the mind of the bias holder. It can be higher or lower on different days and in different situations.

(Alternate link.)

There's even a test you can take to identify your biases. Link. I'll have to take their word for it that I'm biased. I would take the test but for the bias I have against sites that require registration for use. In any event, a person could go so far to overcome a particular bias that he/she develops an intolerance for others.

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10:58 AM 10/30/2018

Quote of the week 11-29-17 -- from Jesse Waters

Jesse Waters on "The Five" Tuesday about Democrats claim that Trump made a racist remark when he called Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas:"

"It would be as if I had lied on my college application and said I was black. So Gutfeld says, 'Hey, there's Jesse Jackson over there.' That's not racist."

Watch it yourself here.

What a great analogy. Democrats have used the "racist" label so many times it's meaningless to anyone except die hard Dems.

Helping drive that point home is this remarkable declaration: "Brown University is implementing a change to its graduate school application that will allow applicants to 'self-identify' as persons of color."

If individuals can now declare their sex then why not their race? Liz Warren was just a little too far ahead of the times.

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12:59 PM 11/29/2017

In PC wars alleged racist gesture outweighs flag disrespect

Astros player Yuli Gurriel allegedly made a racist gesture in a World Series game the other night between the Astros and the Dodgers. The PC warriors forced an apology out of him, so I had to hunt for it to figure out just what a "racist gesture" looked like.

Apparently, he touched both sides of his face and stretched his eyelids to look oriental. See Astros player Yuli Gurriel appears to make racist gesture mocking Japanese opponent. He got banned from five games next year as punishment.

In professional football a player can insult an entire country by disrespecting the national anthem and he becomes a hero to the same crowd that condemns Gurriel. What a contrast.

Jeryl Bier calls out the Southern Poverty Law Center's fake news

Political bias is the only possible explanation for the MSM's reliance on the press releases from the SPLC. Whenever I see a reference to SPLC research without some skepticism I typically dismiss it as probably misleading and possible false.

So it's refreshing to see "Fake News From the SPLC -- A church fire started by a congregant isn’t an example of ‘hate.’" in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal. Here's the paywalled link. There Jeryl Bier describes a case of church arson described by the SPLC as a hate crime. But there's much more to the story. Here's Mr. Bier:

But the SPLC:s "harbinger" turned out to be fake news. Three weeks after the center issued its report, police arrested a member of the vandalized church, Andrew McClinton, and charged him with arson. According to the Washington County Circuit Clerk's office in Greenville, Mr. McClinton has been indicted and is awaiting a trial date. The state fire marshal told the Associated Press in December he did not believe the incident was just the crime was "politically motivated."

Although the December 2016 arrest was widely reported at the time, the SPLC did not update or correct its report until I called it to their attention this week.

The SPLC enjoys labeling innocent people as members of hate groups, but it looks as if the SPLC is itself a hate group.

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1:40 PM 10/14/2017

College Students want to pave the road to serfdom

We've grown so used to being shocked by young people's ignorance of the constitution that new revaluations are met with a resignation that we really are headed down a path most of us have spent our lives thinking could never happen.

Heather Mac Donald recently put in front of us the hideous response college administrators had to two professors' suggestion that young people should, “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime.” (Her article was originally published in the Wall Street Journal, but for non-subscribers it can be seen at Sigforum.com. Click Higher Ed's Latest Taboo Is 'Bourgeois Norms'.) These days anything that refers positively to good character traits is racism. And the two professors caught hell from their respective colleges.

Well, here's another troubling sign as survey results came to light from a Brookings survey of college students about the First Amendment. See Views among college students regarding the First Amendment: Results from a new survey. Some highlights:

Over 60% either think hate speech isn't protected by the First Amendment or answered "Don't know."

51% believed it was acceptable to shout down a speaker with whom they disagreed.

19% believed it was acceptable to use violence to prevent the speaker from speaking.

62% believed the First Amendment legally required an organization who brought in a speaker with whom many people disagree to ensure that the opposing view is also presented.

53% believed colleges should prohibiting certain expression of viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups of people.

Where does this come from? Is it from their teachers? Their parents? The mainstream media?

In any event, it appears as though many college students want to pave The Road to Serfdom, ignorant of where it ends. And it's only a matter of time before Democrats will begin pandering to them.

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12:23 PM 9/20/2017

Nostalgia for liberals of old

The face of the Democrat party has stayed the same, but the body has changed. At one time they called themselves liberals, and at one time they were liberals. Now the party seems to be dominated by leftists.

Dennis Prager explains Leftism Is Not Liberalism. Here Are the Differences. And here are some excerpts:

Race:

The essence of the liberal position on race was that the color of one’s skin is insignificant. To liberals of a generation ago, only racists believed that race is intrinsically significant. However, to the left, the notion that race is insignificant is itself racist.

Capitalism:

Liberals did often view government as able to play a bigger role in lifting people out of poverty than conservatives, but they were never opposed to capitalism, and they were never for socialism. Opposition to capitalism and advocacy of socialism are leftist values.

Nationalism:

Liberals deeply believed in the nation-state, whether their nation was the United States, Great Britain, or France. The left has always opposed nationalism because leftism is rooted in class solidarity, not national solidarity. The left has contempt for nationalism, seeing in it intellectual and moral primitivism at best, and the road to fascism at worst.

View of America:

Liberals venerated America. ... Liberals well understand that America is imperfect, but they agree with a liberal icon named Abraham Lincoln that America is “the last best hope of earth.”

To the left, America is essentially a racist, sexist, violent, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic country. The left around the world loathe America, and it is hard to imagine why the American left would differ in this one way from fellow leftists around the world.

Free speech:

No one was more committed than American liberals to the famous statement, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Liberals still are. But the left is leading the first nationwide suppression of free speech in American history—from the universities to Google to almost every other institution and place of work.

It claims to only oppose hate speech. But protecting the right of person A to say what person B deems objectionable is the entire point of free speech.

Western civilization:

Liberals have a deep love of Western civilization. They taught it at virtually every university and celebrated its unique moral, ethical, philosophical, artistic, musical, and literary achievements. ... The most revered liberal in American history is probably former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who frequently cited the need to protect not just Western civilization but Christian civilization.

Yet leftists unanimously denounced President Donald Trump for his speech in Warsaw, Poland, in which he spoke of protecting Western civilization. They argued not only that Western civilization is not superior to any other civilization but also that it is no more than a euphemism for white supremacy.

Judaism and Christianity:

Liberals knew and appreciated the Judeo-Christian roots of American civilization. They themselves went to church or synagogue, or at the very least appreciated that most of their fellow Americans did. The contempt that the left has—and has always had—for religion (except for Islam today) is not something with which a liberal would ever have identified.

It's doubtful that leftists would identify with the old school liberals. Too bad that liberals, if there are any remaining, had to take the back seat.

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11:08 AM 9/13/2017

Google company dogma has a lot in common with Sharia law

In the archives of this blog are a few posts about James Mitchell's book, "Enhanced Interrogation." That book contains a trove of information about Islam, terrorism, Sharia law, and other subjects the detainees opened up to him about.

In one of the chapters he relays a conversation in which one of the captured terrorists explained that Sharia law equals freedom. The rationale was that because the rules are laid out plainly, it freed the people from making decisions.

Compare this with the fiasco at Google in which an employee was hounded out of the company because he didn't subscribe whole heartedly to the politically correct mindset in the company.

I didn't make the connection until Michael Barone's use of the word "dogma" drove it home in his article, Google's 'tolerance' requires repression. To wit:

And Google's tacit endorsement of the quasi-religious dogma that a fair society must produce gender balance and proportionate ethnic representation is at war with both experience and logic.

Defenders of that dogma say that rejecting it would justify gender and ethnic discrimination. But that's exactly wrong. Just follow James Damore's advice: "Treat people as individuals, not just as another member of their group."

The dogma is needed to justify the elaborate apparatus of gender and racial quotas and preferences and the lavish campus and corporate diversity bureaucracies to enforce them and stamp out heresy. As a reliable transmitter of free thought, Google seems headed down the path toward the Spanish Inquisition.

Freedom, in the minds of many of the techies on the West Coast -- as well as many on college campuses these days -- is freedom from associating with anyone who isn't of the correct mindset. Just like Sharia.

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11:23 AM 8/10/2017

Trump dumps military push for transgenders

What's not to like about this?

Source.

The Obama agenda was more focused on identity politics than on protecting America.

Time to turn the table on the Southern Poverty Law Center

The SPLC has long been a thorn in the sides of conservatives. They consistently brand conservative organizations as racist, radical, or terrorists. And the main stream media swallow it whole with hardly a trace of skepticism. Sad.

So it's nice to see at least one organization attempting to fight back. So far their efforts have resulted in a charity monitor removing SPLC's hate labels from their own rankings.  It's a start.

Meanwhile, if for a refresher on just what the SPLC is up to, see American Leninism; Southern Poverty Law Center brands some peaceful groups as 'hate groups'; and Nonprofit Tracker to Remove ‘Hate Group’ Labels on Conservative Groups for ‘Time Being’.

It's so sad that progressives ostensibly so opposed to hate seem so full of it themselves.

It's remarkable how much credibility MSM gives the SPLC

News media must have so much vacant print space and dead air time that they thirst for any news fillers, especially those supporting the narrative. In this case, the narrative is that the U.S. is full of haters.

This comes to mind as the SPLC issued a news release reassuring everyone that hate is alive and well in the Trump era. Fortunately, there are some who can see through their tactic -- they count individual groups that are within larger groups. Daniel Greenfield provides an example in How the Southern Poverty Law Center Faked an Islamophobia Crisis. To wit:

The SPLC decided to count 45 chapters of Act for America as separate groups. 

How do you get a sudden rise from 34 to 101 hate groups? It helps to suddenly add 45 chapters of one group. Act for America isn’t a hate group. It’s also just as obviously not 45 groups.

And it didn’t come into existence last year.

Act for America was only listed as one group in the 2015 list. It shot up to 45 now.

The SPLC this year listed the Los Angeles chapter of Act for America as a separate group. But the chapter has been around for quite a few years.

Furthermore Act for America boasts not 45, but 1,000 chapters across the country. Why list just 45 of them? Look at it from the SPLC’s perspective. Next year, it can add 200 chapters and claim that anti-Muslim hate groups once again tripled. And then it can do the same thing again the year after that.

That way the Southern Poverty Law Center can keep manufacturing an imaginary Islamophobia crisis.

Fake news, indeed. Who has anything to gain from this? That's easy. Any organization that raises funds on victim-hood status.

Feminists in a bind -- they have to support Muslim women's right to choose to subjugate themselves

Seems ironic to me. But then, we've all witnessed progressives twisting themselves into pretzels trying to reconcile what they say with what has gone on before.

As Muslim women celebrate their freedom* to wear the hijab, most of us are remembering the abuse women suffer in certain Muslim dominated countries when they don't adhere to Sharia law. Some of those acts against them are so horrific I hate to even think about them.

That may be the attitude of American feminists -- they don't even want to think about it. They celebrate their own freedom by parading with pussycat hats. Did they celebrate world hijab day, too? After all, both events involved a prominent display of head covers.

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*Sharia law is freedom to the ardent jihadist -- the freedom from making decisions.

Dennis Prager highlights a sharp distinction between liberalism and leftism

I had heard it referred to as "classical liberalism*." But Dennis Prager shortens it to simply "liberalism." He defines it this way in We’re in a fight over basic values:

Liberalism – which was anti-Left, pro-American, and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America, regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic human achievement, and viewed the celebration of racial identity as racism – is now affirmed almost exclusively on the right and among a handful of people who don’t call themselves conservative.

Then there's "the left." About them, Prager says this:

The Left, however, is opposed to every one of those core principles of liberalism.

Like the Left in every other country, the Left in America sees America as essentially a racist, xenophobic, colonialist, imperialist, war-mongering, money-worshipping, moronically religious nation.

Just as in Western Europe, the Left in America seeks to erase America’s Judeo-Christian foundations. The melting pot is regarded as nothing more than an anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic meme. The Left suppresses free speech, wherever possible, for those who oppose it, labeling all non-Left speech “hate speech.” To cite only one example, if you think Shakespeare was the greatest playwright, or Bach the greatest composer, you are a proponent of Dead White European Males and therefore racist.

Prager contends that it won't end until either the Right or the Left vanquishes the other. That's a bit harsh, and moderates would like to see less fighting. But as we saw in the demonstrations and heard in the speeches on inauguration day, the Left doesn't lack in ferocity. He could be right about this being a second civil war.

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*There's a good definition of "classical liberalism" at mises.org. See What Is Classical Liberalism?

"Classical liberalism" is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade. Up until around 1900, this ideology was generally known simply as liberalism. The qualifying "classical" is now usually necessary, in English-speaking countries at least (but not, for instance, in France), because liberalism has come to be associated with wide-ranging interferences with private property and the market on behalf of egalitarian goals. This version of liberalism — if such it can still be called — is sometimes designated as "social," or (erroneously) "modern" or the "new," liberalism.

Who you calling xenophobic, stranger?

So what are we to make of this new word of the year, xenophobia? Anointed as such by Dictionary.com, it was put into the popular lexicon by none other than President Barack Obama.

It was politically inspired through and through. Obama never missed an opportunity to diss his political opponents. And as an advocate of open borders and inviting residents all countries, nations rife with Islamic radicalism in particular, he laid out the bait. Calling them "xenophobic" makes him sound so much more sophisticated than simply calling them racist.

But is it really so wrong to fear Islamic terrorism? We have terrorists popping up all across the U.S. who have fooled a lot of people until the moment they plowed down innocent people with a vehicle, knife or gun. Only then do we discover the murderous spirit that lurked beneath the veneer of a peace loving Muslim.

Most Muslims may love peace. And immigrants probably appreciate most of the freedoms they have in the U.S.

But is it really unreasonable for average Americans to be a little bit wary? Rattle snake bites are rare, but anyone who strolls through weedy areas known to be home to rattle snakes is going to be very careful. That's not a phobia, that's common sense.

Meanwhile, anyone determined to be non-phobicly politically correct will exhibit compassion for terrorists and look like a real idiot to rational people.

Democrats rethink emphasis on identity politics -- women, minorities hit hardest

Democrats have been fighting the melting pot theory and working against immigrant assimilation for years. And it finally bit them back when a boisterous white guy came along who inspired a lot of people to proclaim they want to make America great again.

Now there's no shortage of people ready to change that particular aspect of the Democrat party. Even Bernie Sanders is in on the game: Sanders: Dems must move beyond 'identity politics'.

I dunno. They've used it to agitate their base for so long their voters may have a difficult time letting go. It's the only place where the phrase "diversity is our strength" has any validity. Now if only they could find a place for the whites.

In search to besmirch Steve Bannon, Washington Post stumbles on uncomfortable truth about immigration and unemployment for unskilled workers

Alex Pfeiffer found this reporting mishap and relayed it to us it at The Washington Post Thinks Reporting On A Study That Shows Illegals Take Jobs Is Racist.

Steve Bannon is one of the current victims of the left using Saul Alinsky's tactic of freezing, personalizing and polarizing a target. He's been accused of every ism in the book. And according to the above cited article, Washington Post attempted to find evidence that Breitbart news was white-supremist. The articles WaPo found were about immigration studies and seminars that supported the theory that immigration of less educated workers had a negative impact on employment. You can follow the link for more details about those alleged connections to racism.

However, for the final word on uneducated immigrants and their effect on local employment, listen to George Borjas in this C-Span interview. (NOTE: Site requires viewer to accept cookies.)

Borjas took the statistics coming out of the Mariel boatlift to determine what impact that influx of immigrants had on the local population. What he found most significant was the negative impact on the demographic group that most resembled the immigrants, specifically, high-school dropouts. This goes against the conventional wisdom that immigration has such a beneficial impact on an economy that everyone benefits. Wrong. It's merely redistribution.

For an excellent review of Borjas' book, "We Wanted Workers," see The Facts on Immigration.

And to anyone who thinks talking about this is racist, get a life that doesn't revolve around slandering those with whom you disagree.

It used to be called suicide by cop, now it's inner city machismo

Question: Is doing homework and studying for school still "acting white" is some communities? Or is that an urban legend? We've heard it for years, and with no denials coming forth, one has to suspect it's true, at least in some communities. Maybe it's inner city machismo.

That legend is all grown up now, along with the kids who perpetuated it while in school. Incidents occur in which someone doesn't drop his weapons when asked to do so by armed police. See, for example, Police Say Video Shows Keith Lamont Scott Had Gun in Hand in Charlotte.

It appears as if dropping one's gun when a police officer yells "Drop your gun" may be the new "acting white."

Machismo requires that the person on the receiving end of that command never back down from a police officer. Be a man or die trying. It used to be called "suicide by cop." Then it became martyrdom. Que the riots.

What a shame, especially so since politicians are using these incidents to solidify voting blocs.

Rioters pick their spots -- Charlotte yes, Tulsa no

It's hard to miss the disparity between the responses to the police shooting in Tulsa and the police shooting in Charlotte. Charlotte is enveloped in riots, looting, and at least one killing amongst the rioters, all in the name of social justice. Tulsa erupted in peace and quite.

My own shallow assumption was that Tulsa was too far away. The people who were renting the mobs didn't want to foot the transportation bill.

Patricia McCarthy says there's more to it than that. See Charlotte riots, Tulsa doesn’t. Excerpt:

For inexplicable reasons, leftists believe that the violence wrought by angry minorities will benefit them, so they encourage it.  They subsidize it.  Obama has given his not-so-tacit permission to riot every time one of these tragic events occurs, from the Henry Louis Gates minor incident to the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and the Dallas officers.  And now BLM is rolling in money, $100M from "social justice" organizations. Soros gave them $33M.

What we see in Charlotte is what they pay for.  They are not wasting their money in Tulsa because Oklahoma is in the bag for Trump.

Makes sense. Hillary Clinton is probably worrying herself sick over the lack of enthusiasm for her in Obama's most loyal voting bloc, African Americans. Democrats' plan appears to involve pouring gasoline on the fires of racial strife to motivate that bloc to vote for Hillary.

It's a sick and cynical plan, but will it work? We can only hope it doesn't.

Meanwhile, as I've said previously, like Dr. Frankenstein, they were smart enough to create a monster. But they are not smart enough to control it.

Has Blazing Saddles been banned from TCM?

Die hard Gene Wilder fans probably like all his movies. But for casual fans like me, "Young Frankenstein" and "Blazing Saddles" top the list with everything else far behind. "Young Frankenstein" was shown on TCM the other day. But where the heck is "Blazing Saddles?"

It's not set for TCM broadcast on their Gene Wilder tribute day which could lead one to believe they're afraid it might be politically incorrect.

Race relations was the joke around which the story was spun as the redneck world got turned upside down by a black sheriff. But when the movie was released the most controversial thing about it was the fart joke. We can't blame TCM, though, since race relations have gotten so bad in the last half dozen years. What a shame.

At least TCM has the movie available for purchase.

P.S. I found a copy at the local library. If you are looking, try to get the 30th anniversary edition with Mel Brooks' commentary.

Clinton's "You name it" comment was smug and condescending -- Dems eat that stuff up

Hillary listed the various "isms" her opponents are purported to display, and she ends with the condescending, "you name it." This was an honest-to-gosh gaffe, not that it was actually the truth, but that it was what Democrats believe to be true. Here's the whole quote:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables,’” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”

It's that smugness of the "you name it" that pulls like a fish hook under the skin of an innocent bystander. And Clinton's audience is all in.

As a commentator famously said, conservatives think liberals are stupid, and liberals think conservatives are evil. Seems that remark is proven to be true every time there's an opportunity.

Clinton validated her audience's own prejudices. It's not bigotry when Democrats do it, it's progress.

Meanwhile, Clinton is recuperating from an embarrassing spill and a bout of pneumonia. Get well quickly, Hillary. While we may find you disgusting, Donald Trump needs your name on the ballot. Oh, how he needs you.

Colin Kaepernick sits it out for ambiguous reason -- if he were serious he would focus on education

NFL players who pranced on the field displaying the hand-up-don't-shoot symbol probably didn't win any converts to the Black Lives Matter as the whole thing was based on misinformation anyway. But there they were, and agree or not, Americans supported their right to express themselves.

Along comes Colin Kaepernick sitting out the national anthem with a thumb-in-the-eye type exercise of free speech.  His act apparently was intended to convey an ambiguous message along the race lines. But what exactly does he want us to do?

Reparations would be on the table as would 40 acres and a Cadillac. (Did the word "mule" pop into your head? Racist.)

If he or anyone else is serious about helping inner city kids, they need to try to help the kids get a decent education. But there's a pretty big road block which he and they probably don't want to address. It's manned by the teachers' unions and the NAACP.

Silvio Canto, Jr., has an opinion about that. See The NAACP is about teachers' unions, not black children:

Why would the nation's oldest civil rights group deny African-American children a real opportunity to succeed?

My guess is that most of these NAACP leaders send their kids to private schools anyway.  In other words, what do they care?

Ah, but here's the real reason:

More importantly, the Democratic Party is owned by the public-sector unions.  It's good for the party on election day, but it does not do minority parents any good when they try to educate their kids.

Depressing. Kaepernick, are you paying attention?

Mix Sharia law with national healthcare and Sharia comes out on top

Carol Brown has an eyeopening article at Americanthinker.com. See Creeping Sharia in Health Care. Opening paragraph:

Islamic supremacy is arriving in medical settings using stealth means, or what is often referred to as creeping sharia. Common themes include Muslim health care workers refusing to uphold infection control protocols, Muslim medical students refusing to study topics they deem forbidden according to Islamic law, Muslim visitors in hospitals ignoring hygiene guidelines to protect patients, and hospitals bending over backwards (or is it forwards?) to accommodate Muslim demands above and beyond anything done for members of any other religious or demographic group. Also covered are outright acts of violence perpetrated by Muslim men who attack hospital personnel.

And when they don't get their way, they sue.

They've had an easy time in Canada, Britain, and Europe with a welcoming government which happens to be in charge of healthcare. But it's creeping up on us here in the U.S.A. where millions of Muslim immigrants have settled in communities that are barely distinguishable from the communities they left behind.

Call me old fashioned, but the way of life in American is just fine without huge chunks of people believing that their religion is supreme when it bumps up against the Constitution, the rule of law, and common sense healthcare guidelines.

BLM should hope for a Trump victory if they expect to exist after election

Remember Code Pink? Cindy Sheehan? The anti-war movement that got so much media coverage during the Bush administration? After the election they vanished from our TV screens. They didn't go away, they just lost their coverage and as a result, their funding and momentum. Code Pink is trying for a comeback, but there's no place for them in the current election cycle.

That's the route Black Lives Matter is on. Once they've served their purpose -- getting a Democrat elected president -- they're done. The media and Democrat biggies won't need them. They'll lose the TV coverage, and they'll become has-beens.

If they want to avoid that fate they should hope for a Trump victory.

Like Dr. Frankenstein, politicians created a monster with BLM that they can't control

Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" certainly became an apt metaphor. Is that what she intended, or was that merely a byproduct?

In the story, Dr. Frankenstein was smart enough to create a monster, but he wasn't smart enough to control it. Destruction resulted.

The Black Lives Matter movement is the modern day Frankenstein, reaping havoc in its path with hardly a week passing without police officers being murdered. George Soros is supposed to have been an early funding source and is probably still feeding the monster.

Then there's President Barack Obama. Those supporters of his who thought he would bring some racial unity sure got it wrong. He has been egging BLM on for quite some time. And only recently has he actually appeared to be serious about reining them in. Does he really mean it? This is an election year after all, and if he wants to help Hillary he will want to mobilize black voters. The BLM movement probably looked like a pretty good vehicle for that. So it's hard to imagine that he wants to do anything other than get the killings off the headlines.

Like Dr. Frankenstein, he's trying to control the monster. And like Dr. Frankenstein, he's helpless against the momentum he helped create.

Worst president ever.

NAACP chief erases any doubt -- Black Lives Matter movement is election year partisan politics

We've suspected this, and many have assumed it from early on. That would be the theory that the whole Black Lives Matter movement is about black lives only tangentially. It's really about getting Democrats elected.

Barack Obama has never missed an opportunity to politicize something to Democrats' advantage. And that becomes painfully obvious when he eggs on the protesters by comparing them to abolitionists.

Now we have the NAAACP head announcing it to TV news viewers. See NAACP chief: 'Ensure every demonstrator is a vote':

"To bring about the kind of change that we need, we need to ensure that every demonstrator is a vote and that we to show up en masse and in the millions at the polls in November," NAACP president Cornell William Brooks said on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday morning.

Should we suppose those voters would be pushing the button for the candidate who promises to make America great? HA HA! Sorry, I had to do that.

Return of kill whitey

*How many shooters were there in ambush of police officers in Dallas Thursday night? Only one has been identified. He's now dead. Another person was taken in but released -- he was legally carrying a firearm.

But also, "Three people were said to be in custody and not cooperating with authorities." Source.

Is no-one asking "why do they hate us?" Here's a clue. Suspect in Dallas police shootings targeted white officers.

"Kill whitey" was a phrase popular in some circles back in the 60s when the progressives of the era saw racism everywhere and rationalized violent hate groups like the Black Panthers. And it certainly is discouraging to think we are returning to those days.

Most white people these days bend over backwards to try to be non-racist. In fact, they're so serious about it that the avoidance of the appearance of racism might in itself be a form of racism -- the racism of low expectations. Ideally, we could treat everyone the same without regard to the person's race. But that too, is racist.

In any event, the violence against the Dallas police officers is certainly discouraging. The racial angle just makes it worse.

*UPDATE: They're saying the shooter acted alone even though others were brought in under suspicion of participating in the murders. Most people in the situation of those suspects would be shouting their innocence at the top of their lungs. By remaining silent they certainly exercised some extraordinary self control.

Who's on first -- with Muslims on top, where does your group fit in the Democrat pecking order?

When one special interest group wants to annihilate the other, that seems like an important consideration.

At least one Democrat constituency has done the math. Obama puts Muslims above gays in the political calculation, and that was be a sobering realization. (I can't locate a link for it, but there were news reports that some members of the LGBT society were miffed because Obama puts Muslims above them.)

It makes one sympathetic to Monica Lewinsky when she discovered that Bill Clinton was cheating on her with another mistress. Coming in second place can't be much fun, number three even less so. That brings us to third place winner Hillary Clinton. Poor old gal. And to think she's leading the Democrat party now. What an exiting time in which we live.

Come January we'll get the president we deserve.

Our strength is NOT in our diversity

It's gratifying to see someone with the gravitas of Thomas Sowell eviscerate that shop worn platitude, "Our strength is in our diversity."

See Is Diversity Our Strength? Here's Sowell in his own words:

In the lofty circles of those who see themselves as citizens of the world, it is considered unworthy, if not hateful, to insist on living according to your own Western values or to resist importing people who increase your chances of being killed.

But if you don’t have the instinct for self-preservation, it will not matter much in the long run whatever else you may have.

America’s great good fortune in the past has been that Americans have been able to unite as Americans against every enemy, despite our own internal differences and struggles. Black and white, Jew and Gentile, have fought and died for this country in every war.

The U.S. was once a melting pot, or so we were taught. But it seems disparate groups find themselves more loyal to a cause designed to give themselves more power than to the country. Furthermore, it seems immaterial to them whether it makes the whole weaker, not stronger. Sowell references Balkanization. Maybe today when we peer into the melting pot we see a Balkan Salad.

t's time to retire the word Islamophobia especially after Orlando

Americans are in shock as news from Orlando fills our TV screens and computer monitors about the horrific mass murder at the night club there.

Expect the usual suspects to warn about a backlash against Muslims because of that evil thing called Islamophobia. Balderdash. It's a false claim for victimhood to deflect from the real threat. We know who is responsible. Let the blame go where it belongs, radical Islam.

In that regard, it didn't take long for ISIS to lay claim to the atrocity.

It's time to retire the word Islamophobia and face realistic threats. Many of us suffer from Obamaphobia -- the fear of being disarmed by a president hostile to the 2nd amendment and end up defenseless as an armed ISIS terrorist shows up at the front door.

If you think the high HIV rate among gay African Americans in the South is because of some other reason than racism then you're a racist

A few years ago the CDC published results of a survey of 34,557 adults and announced the following:

96.6% of adults identified as straight, 1.6% identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7% identified as bisexual. The remaining 1.1% of adults identified as ‘‘something else,’’ stated ‘‘I don’t know the answer,’’ or refused to provide an answer.

Their focus was on the non-straights. And while that might seem to most of us to miss the mark, the Obama administration has isolated that group for special attention, in particular transgenders.

They are still fine-tuning their results with emphasis this time on HIV. The DailyCaller.com caught that one and brings this to our attention: CDC: Southerners’ ‘Racism’ And ‘Homophobia’ Cause Gay Men’s High HIV Rates.

It's all starting to fall in place. Democrats in the government need election issues to counter all the baggage they're carrying now, and there's nothing quite as caustic as racism to gin up votes among interested parties. Phobias and isms are causing high HIV rates among gay men. Oh boy. Who would have thought it?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend -- maybe that's why the left is so protective of Islam

That's a profound observation suggested by Dennis Prager in Why the Left Loathes Western Civilization. Actually, it's just one of the profound observations he made. Some excerpts:

[The left] dismisses virtually all Western achievements, but regards criticism of anything non-Western as racist, chauvinistic, imperialist, colonialist, xenophobic, etc.

His theory is that the left hates the west because of the high standards the west has set. He continues:

The left hates standards -- moral standards, artistic standards, cultural standards. The West is built on all three, and it has excelled in all three.

Why does the left hate standards? It hates standards because when there are standards, there is judgment. And leftists don't want to be judged.

Plus, the left can't measure up to those standards.

Mr. Prager has certainly put us at a good starting point for exploring why they hate us.