More Pro-Obama Media Manipulation

English professors advise media students that a piece of discourse requires an opening, powerful (preferably emotional) “hook” in order to grab the attention of potential listeners or readers.   Having secured the requisite attention, the presenter then can advocate his position, even when the position makes little or no empirical sense. 

Hook and manipulate (h&m) worked well in enabling the liberal media to promulgate the “beautiful story” of candidate Barack Obama that resulted in his winning the 2008 presidential election.  Now they are at it again. 

On December 26, 2011, in print and over the air waves, Chris Satullo, Whyy Public Radio’s Executive Director of News and Civic Dialogue, continued the h&m tradition.   On that day, he introduced an essay by recounting an uplifting vignette about how a lady in Grand Rapids, Michigan chose to pay anonymously the past-due K-mart layaway balances of three, presumably financially strapped, shoppers.    Satullo went on to recount how the practice induced some others to do the same such that over 1000 similar acts occurred in K-marts across our nation.

So far, so good.  We need all the positive news stories we can get and, to my way of thinking, the essay starts out right for Satullo, Whyy and for us all.   However, to really appreciate the Whyy story, it requires further context.  

For about two weeks prior to Satullo’s piece, President Obama had been pounding away at the Republicans, blaming them for refusing to tax the rich and for obstructing his plan to extend the “middle-class payroll tax holiday.”  His emotional hook concerned equating the evil GOP with the anti-Christmas villain, the “Grinch”  — a tactic consistent with the Barack Hussein Obama dark-triad personality that demonizes any opposition in an identity-oriented manner.

So, what about the Chris Satullo-Obama connection?

Halfway through his heart-rending essay, Chris asks, “Why are Americans so often so generous when the act of digging into one's own treasure to help others in need is framed as charity, yet so reluctant when it's framed as taxation?”   This pro-Obama question implicitly encourages us to suspend our reality testing and to accept Sutullo’s equating being taxed and being charitable.  I could spend all afternoon on this and I bet you could as well, so I will make only a couple points.

First, one gives freely to charity, whereas taxes are taken from us by force of law.  Second, one chooses when to give, whereas the government takes according to its timeline.  Third, a charitable giver presents his “gift” to the specific person or organization whom he chooses.   And  fourth,  a charitable giver provides as much or as little support as he wishes.

Chris Suttulo’s article, “Charity and paradox in the aisles of Kmart” has little to do with charity and everything to do with pro-Barack Obama political advocacy through subterfuge.  The piece captures our attention by tugging at our heart strings and attempts to deceive us by juvenile, mawkish logic.  What an affront to the intelligence of the National Public Radio audience!        

Making Soup

It’s the time of year when we think about our families, about getting together and nurturing one other. The Campbell Soup Company recommends that we make an old-fashioned “M'm! M'm! Good!” meal. 

Great idea.   Prepare a “hearty” healthful soup.  Choose the ingredients that you believe are best.  Invite everyone over.    

Should you expect to make a perfect soup that perfectly satisfies the entire gang?  Probably not.  After dinner, open up to the family’s constructive criticism and you will improve your meal for future occasions.   They will appreciate your effort and, over time, the soup will improve progressively.  In any case, what you make will be immeasurably better than what you would get at the local fast food establishment.

Right now Mitt Romney is the soup maker.  He has presented ideas for your consumption.  At this point, you might be especially vulnerable to the Obama people’s propaganda claiming that Barack used Romney’s Massachusetts’s plan as a template for his own health program.  They, of course, are saying that in an attempt to derail the Romney campaign because they are scared stiff about running against him.

There may be some Romney ingredients that you do not like, but Romney has been a collaborator.  He fashioned his health program in cooperation with the citizens of his state and with the Republican and Democrat legislators in order to make a “soup” healthful and palatable enough for the majority.  Obama made his soup in such total isolation that Nancy Pelosi told us that we needed to pass it before anyone could understand what was being force-fed to us.   The Obama plan was not the Romney plan.  Whatever Obama took from Romney was peppered  with artificial and toxic ingredients.  It was not the dish that Mitt Romney had created.

Mitt Romney presents our best opportunity to unseat Barack Obama.  In addition to being a good cook, he has the personality necessary to lead.  Romney has proven himself in his marriage, in his businesses, and in his conduct in government.  Forget about the cracks regarding his “perfect hair” and wealth.  Judge him by what he has done over an entire lifetime.  Compare that with the Obama personality, the Obama style, and the Obama “accomplishments.”  Then decide whose soup you want to sup over the next four years.               

The Mainstream Press’s Presidential Campaign

They have started their 2012 re-election campaign with obvious tactics—propagandize and incentivize subsections of the Barack Obama base, and disseminate party-line excuses for his failures.  Two examples should suffice to make my point.

First, consider the “Occupy Wall Street” anarchists— retros, quackos, wackos, smackos, slackos, or bandidos— to whom I referred in a previous blog.

The media needed three years to finally start paying attention to the Obama-based economic fiasco.  It took they that long to find a way to turn the meltdown into an Obama plus rather than the negative that it indisputably is.  To do so, media types jumped on the occupy bandwagon as it careened down Main Street, out of control.  Following the “never let catastrophes or miseries go unexploited” philosophy of Barack Obama, the media suddenly got religion in the form of supporting the occupiers.  To their way of thinking, the nation should blame Republicans for all its economic and other woes and, well, that’s worth talking about.  

So, television, especially, has recruited a cadre of talking head to relentlessly, pseudo-scientifically assemble and disseminate the “data” to show how only the Democrats can avert Republican-initiated social-political-economic  Armageddon.    And, you can be sure that the current onslaught of pro-occupy media is merely a dress rehearsal for next year.  

The closer we come to the presidential election, the more frequent, intense, and sympathetic the media will be to anything that in anyway can be construed as anti-Republican.  A few months from now, you undoubtedly will begin seeing shabby, starving American waifs, staring  out from the cover of Time magazine and pleading for “social justice” of the Barack variety.

Second, simultaneous with the first strategy, media types already are honing their Obama apologetic talking points to a keen edge so as to be razor-sharp by Fall 2012.  I already have heard one laugh-out-loud, ludicrous discussion that just must be shared. 

How does popular, Obama-pandering media explain the current economic  chaos and failure of presidential leadership?   Rush Limbaugh provides a partial answer by citing Morning Joe December 12, 2011 during which Jon Meacham, executive editor at Random House and syndicated columnist Mike Barnicle explain who Obama is and why he does as he does.

BARNICLE: He has reeeemarkable gifts. He’s eloquent, he’s convincing, he’s clearly very smart. He wins the presidency in 2008; overcoming all sorts of doubts and surpassing a field filled with a couple of truly, truly good candidates.   I think he is stunned, given his gifts, and his inability to get anything really done in Congress. I think he’s stunned by it.

MEACHAM: In a weird way the country is not commensurate with his gifts. That’s a harsh thing to say but I have a feeling in the dark night of the soul –

BARNICLE: Yeah!

MEACHAM: — that’s what he feels. I think he thinks that this is a[n] eighteenth century constitutional republic that needs s-s-significant updating.

There you  have it.  The liberal media advises that the crises assailing us and not due to any Barack Hussein Obama inadequacy.  The crises are due to deficiencies in the archaic, 18^th Century principles that served to found and guide our country until the 2008 presidential election.  Since then, whatever has gone wrong in America is attributable not to anything in anyway associated with the remarkably gifted, eloquent, convincing, very smart, 21^st Century Barack, but to our failure to understand and follow him.  Meacham and Barnicle implicitly suggest that we must re-elect our nonpareil president so that he can educate the nation out of its foolish ways.  If so, there will be no occupiers, poverty or pestilence; rather we will discover: 

Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions

Mystic crystal revalation

And the mind's true liberation.

Those lines sound soooooo familiar.  I hope I haven’t failed to quote someone!

What's Up with the Term, "People of Color?"

It’s much more than an objectively descriptive word.  “People of color “often is used by some non-whites, and even some whites, as a wedge, dividing humanity into two mutually exclusive camps.  On one side are white people, and on the other are all the rest, united in their “non-whiteness.”

Who would promote so destructive and cynical a distinction?  The answer, of course, is:  anyone with what is called a “dark triad” personality structure characterized by narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.  These are persons—Barack Hussein Obamas and Eric Himpton Holders— who so avariciously lust for profit, power, and prestige that they do not hesitate to climb over anyone or everyone to achieve their ends.   Dark triad individuals continually speak about “people of color” to keep the issue fresh in our national consciousness, and, thus, always available for their self-serving exploitations.

But not even a president or an attorney general can keep a malignantly divisive idea alive.  Many “lesser” persons, even a few everyday people, sometimes identify themselves as a person of color in a deliberate or unconscious attempt to extract even a small measure of personal or social advantage.

If I conceive of myself as a person of color:

Whatever failures I sustain can be mitigated, blamed on my racial victim status.

Whatever successes I achieve can be magnified by my racial victim status, “Look what I did despite the insuperable odds against me!”

Whenever I am angry, I can express hatred of the wicked white culture and vent rather than looking within myself for the source of my misery.

Whenever I feel alone, I can console myself by remembering that most of the world is populated by poor, downtrodden people of color who would understand my desperation and feeling of oppression.

If there is a benefit to be had, by referring to my person of color membership I can go to the head of the handout line, even if I am more objectively well-off than most of the “poor white trash” in line behind me.

As a person of color, I share in the glory of people of color heroes—past, present, and future—and I discount any Caucasian standouts.  For instance, I can reject George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the like as nothing but degenerate slave holders.  Instead of paying attention to them, I can band together with other people of color to cajole, threaten, and coerce our society into giving the lion’s share of societal attention to the accomplishments, holidays, and festivals related to Martin Luther King, Junior-like persons.

If you doubt the last point, some quiet time, take an elementary-age child aside.  Ask him/her to tell you about Washington, Jefferson, and King and merely tally the amount that he/she knows about each.  Then, ask the child how much classroom time was spent this year in talking about the three historical figures. 

Mumia and Geraldo: Birds of a Feather

The Associated Press reported today that Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black Panther convicted of murdering white police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, will serve life in prison, rather be executed as had been his sentence.  As far as I know, murder victims always remain dead, but those sentenced to death for murder almost never are executed.  Why?

Geraldo Rivera provided a “perfect” answer to the Abu-Jamal case this morning on Fox News when he rationalized that “It  [The execution of Jamal] only would exacerbate racial tensions in Philadelphia.”

Time to deconstruct Rivera’s comment and, in the process, to learn a little bit about race, crime, and journalism in America.

Geraldo’s remark suggests the “burn baby burn mentality” that implicitly or explicitly threatens mayhem whenever a “popular” bimp (black inner-city male person) is convicted of a crime against someone white.  The conviction always is framed as egregiously racist and indicative of the immorality of the “white” Justice System, even when that system is lead by a black Attorney General, in this case an “articulate fella” named Eric Himpton Holder, Junior.  No one ever worries that white people will burn down the city when O. J. Simpson-like "folks" go free.

Notice, too, that Geraldo Rivera uses the word, “exacerbate;” presuming that he, a New Yorker, knows all about Philadelphia.  He knows that Philadelphia is awash with racial tension because his saying so lends further credence, power, and urgency to his sage explanation of the logic of converting the death sentence to life imprisonment.   

Geraldo had his opinion about the mother of the apparently slain two year-old child, Caylee Anthony.  Her referred to that white woman, Casey Anthony, as a “narcissistic, child killing slut.”

So, what do we have here?  Geraldo Rivera, an attorney by education, had no problem with a sentence reduction for a convicted black cop killer.  On the other hand, he maligned the never-convicted Casey Anthony as a “slut.”  No matter what you or I thought about the Caylee Anthony death, to have her non-convicted mother mocked on national television was nothing short of a character assassination by broadcast.  Here we found Geraldo, a powerful, prominent so-called “person of color,” campaigning against a helpless white woman. Where were the National Organization for Women, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the sundry other groups who sanctimonious preach about women’s rights?  

Washington Senators 100, Obama 0

Barack Obama, who regards himself as the Great Communicator II, tried to stereotype George W.  Bush as a shoot-first-and –ask- questions- later, loco cowboy.  During the 2008 election, Obama promised to a “different” kind of president, more erudite, articulate, and cosmopolitan than “Bushy.”  After all, Barack lived in Indonesian from about age six to ten.  He even visited Africa for a couple months after graduating from college.   

From the outset then, Barack has been convinced that he and only he understands the intricacies of our world.  With his vastly superior intellect and unassailable logic, he, and only he, can present arguments of such persuasive power that all nations fall in line behind his Pied Pipership.

Barack Obama and his supporters touted him as “the man” who can “talk to our enemies,” despite his abject failure to even try to communicate effectively with Republicans in and out of government.

So, whaaaaa  happened this week?  You undoubtedly know: the United States Senate voted unanimously against President Obama.  That is, 51 Democrats, 47 Republicans, and 2 Independents slapped Barack down on Iran.   Against the advice of the Oval Office, all senators came out for tougher sanctions against Ayatollah land.  

When was the last time you found such anti-presidential cross-aisle unanimity on so critical an issue?  Does this mean that Barack, you now can call me “Hussein,” Obama might not be so great a communicator, either at home or abroad?

Democrat Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey certainly did not have any faith in Barack Obama’s allegedly superior international relations skills.  To quote Josh Rogin’s article, (http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/01/menendez_livid_at_obama_team_s_push_to_shelve_iran_sanctions) Menendez livid at Obama team’s push to shelve Iran sanctions amendment :

The administration's strategy of working behind the scenes to change what's become the Kirk-Menendez Iran sanctions amendment, only to publicly oppose it today, angered several senators, including Robert Menendez himself. The New Jersey Democrat took seven minutes at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to chastise Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen at Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting for asking him to negotiate on their behalf, and then criticizing the compromise he struck with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL).

Next time someone boasts of the President’s “fantastic” intellect, persuasive oratory, and foreign policy successes remind them of the Senate’s vote on Iran.

She's Super

Those from the Philadelphia area knew her well.  You, too, might know about her since I mentioned in my book that Arlene Ackerman, African American Philadelphia Superintendent of Schools, tried to blame Asian American students for causing an attack on them by their black schoolmates.  In fact, she resisted meeting with the Asian students, capitulating only when pressured to do so.  That pretty much sums-up the kind of superintendent that Arlene Ackerman was.

On November 29, 2011, myfoxphilly.com reminded us of Ackerman’s tenure.   According to the piece, she had been the highest paid government official in the city with $364,000 per annum.  When those who control the purse strings finally became irrevocably fed-up with the ill-tempered, cantankerous administrator, they gave her the boot before her contract had expired.   To do so, the virtually bankrupt school district had to buy her off with $905,000 and $86,000 worth of unused vacation/personal leave days.   According to myfoxphilly.com, “The school district had a $629 million deficit under Ackerman and it is still laying off employees as it struggles to make ends meet.”

Nothing new so far, many big city superintendents use, abuse, and discard the children and school districts about which they had professed unwavering love during their initial job interviews.  But Ackerman takes the scam-our-community rip-off to a new low.  Myfoxphilly suggest that Superintendent Ackerman has filed for unemployment benefits.

Guess the Superintendent has replaced the oft-spoken “give-back” to the neighborhood credo with the “take-more” philosophy.  What else would you expect from her?

The Legend of Barack Hussein Obama as Promoted with Taxpayer Dollars

Husna Haq of the Christian Science Monitor reported on October 27, 2011 that the United States State Department purchased $70,000 worth of Barack Obama books, mostly his autobiography, Dreams From My Father.  When questioned about the appropriateness of the action, according to Haq:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told CNN it is "longstanding practice" to allow embassies to buy books, "to put them out in libraries ... give them to contacts, which they think will help deepen understanding of the U.S. political system, of U.S. political figures and leaders of U.S. history, U.S. culture."

Fox News pointed out, however, that the State Department did not disseminate either George W. Bush’s book or Bill Clinton’s.

Neither Haq nor Fox mentioned what I regard as the essential issue, however: the relevance of Dreams From My Father to anything remotely related to the State Department.  One could argue that John F. Kennedy’s best seller Profiles in Courage was the kind of book that warranted distribution by the State.  Profiles celebrated others—eight U.S. Senators who took unpopular positions of conscience in the interest of our country.  Dreams, on the other hand, amounted to a duplicitous, manipulative self-agrandizing fantasy—Barack Obama as a legend in his own mind. 

Obama, the narcissist, spent his time obsessing and writing about his favorite subject—himself.  And the State Department reinforced his self-absorption by helping to spread his self-serving identity propaganda as far and wide as possible.  Equally outrageous, Barack Obama will make a few bucks from the royalties that follow from the State’s purchases.

Nowhere could I find any information identifying the governmental official who made the decision to buy and disseminate the book.  I’m sure we never will discover who did so.  But we reasonably can speculate about that person. 

If it was not Barack or Michelle who chose use taxpayer money to buy and disseminate the Obamafuscation book, it clearly was someone enamored by the Emperor’s New Clothes, a person for whom fantasy of personal identity substitutes for hard-core reality, a person who REALLY wants to believe.  The person who made the purchase is the kind of individual who has made “President” Barack Hussein Obama possible, someone so intent on creating an identity-assuaging myth that he/she will do anything to promulgate it.   A little president-pandering probably played a part as well. 

Identities versus Issues

How does a society continue to develop and thrive?  We all know the answer:  through relentlessly and objectively discovering essential issues and problem solving our way through them together.  That is how America always has operated—issues before identities.

Then along comes Barack Hussein Obama and the problem solving process gets turned on its head.  The President does not think about problems that need solving, but subgroups who need placating—subgroups with whom he feels identity allegiance and/or to whom he is beholding.  

Consider the jobs crisis.  The old-fashioned American way would have been to discover tasks that must be addressed and means for doing so.  That process inexorably would have led us to discover the jobs that need to be filled, the skills and training that workers require, and the funding necessary to put the most qualified people to work.

Not so with Barack.  Obama listens to the demands of his favored interest groups, the group with whom he identifies and decides how to placate them.  Invariably, the identified-with groups share essential similarities with him, especially racial, ethnic, and philosophical similarities.  

So how about a couple interest groups to whom the pandering President devotes his attention, time, and resources?  

1.  Race-focused, especially black- and Hispanic-focused, programs of all sorts.  
Therefore, job-creation is not driven by needs of the market place, but by the kind of jobs that the favored groups are willing and capable of doing.  Low tech, low-skill, high-paying jobs tailored to persons with little education and limited English language skills do just fine.   

2.  Benefits based on the sexual orientation of the citizenry.  
Thus, the military should respond to sex-driven appetites of soldiers, sailors, and marines.  For instance, homo-erotic needs come first and the mission comes later.  In civilian life, work benefits must be provided for “life partners” of homosexual employees.  Why not provide equal benefits to the biological parents and siblings of all employees, if the workers live in a household with them?  Or is copulation, rather than blood-ties, the premier criterion for life-long commitment?      

3.  Unbridled, long-term government sponsored and funded health care for the Obama-defined “needy.” 

I guess we should expect that people given unlimited access to any and all extravagant medical procedures will show proper restrain in their use.  There are no hypochondrical, alcoholic, or drug-abusing “poor folks.”  No poor people whose own maladaptive lifestyles contribute to their ailments.

Occupy Wall Street: Notable Subgroups

Without a doubt, there are some sincere occupiers with noble intentions.  But, I am sure, these comprise a small minority.  Most streeters fall into several broad categories as follows:

 Retros  - “Folks” who have drunk the Jesse Jackson juice, causing them to become inebriated with the suggestion that the Wall Street protestors are heirs to the black civil rights movements.  Devoid of self esteem, the poor bastards need something to give them a bogus sense of value.

Quackos - More to be pitied than censured (as my grandmother used to say), these are persons terminally deficient in common sense.  They believe that the best way to lift themselves up is to drag other people down.   Like Jeremiah Wright, they also think that the United States created Aids to harm black people and that Paramount staged the 1969 moon landing.

Wackos - Flat out crazies.  Paranoids, psychopaths, and others of that ilk attempting to cope with their own psychotic-like confusion.  First, they project their delusions onto convenient targets, and then they do battle with them, thereby absolving themselves from personal responsibility for their own misery.

Smackos - Heroin, alcohol, and other substance abusers who regard Occupy encampments as nice places to conduct their drug business, have a bite to eat, and catch some Zs. 

Slackos - These are people who think that work is for saps.  They just love “hanging out.”  They wouldn’t stoop to doing any job for which they are qualified.   Many aspire to the NBA or NFL.

Bandidos – Criminals in the crowd, tingling with the excitement of kids in a candy store.  They single-out easy, naïve marks to rob or abuse within the relative anonymity of the teeming throng.

Subtract the retros, quackos, wackos, smackos, slackos, and bandidtos and what have you got?  About two dozen people who have genuine grievances and genuine desire to make a positive difference.  These are ones who you can talk to, the ones you can work with, and the ones who can help us make constructive social changes.  It would be nice to find a way to separate them out from the miscreants.         

Heavyweight Racial Hypocrisy

He called him “a gorilla.”

No.  The maligner was not a virulent white Southern racist.  It was Mohammed Ali, narcissistically attempting to contrast what he regarded as his pretty, brilliant self with Joe Frazier, the man he perceived as ugly and dumb—essentially subhuman.

Lonnae O’Neal Parker, an African American journalist, quoted Jelani Cobb, Rutgers Professor of African Studies at Rutgers University: “There was something searing and non-evolved about this tall, light-skinned black man calling another black man a gorilla. With the rest of America, especially black America, co-signing it.”  (Imagine if a white man had referred to Joe Frazier as a “gorilla.”)

The Parker article sometimes stated and sometimes implied how hurt and angry Frazier remained even in his later years; for instance, when Ali lit the Olympic Torch at the 1996 Games, Joe said that he would have liked to have tossed him into the flame.

Of course, as one would expect, Ali, the “real” black man, had to racialize his disdain for Frazier, calling him, “an Uncle Tom,” for only God knows what.  Parker quoted Janks Morton, Jr., whose father trained Sugar Ray Leonard, as saying,

“I can still see [Ali] sitting next to Howard Cosell punching that [rubber] black gorilla, saying, ‘It’s going to be a thrilla in Manila when I kill that gorilla.’ ”

Morton, 48, a documentary filmmaker from Laurel, says that “what Ali represented, that black-power vein, everybody was rooting for him. But we didn’t stop and pause to understand that was a painful period for Joe.”

Since Frazier died, Ali has decided that he will always remember Joe Frazier with “admiration and respect.”   Touching isn’t it?  This is a typical self-serving raceketeer trick—racially batter black identity non-conformers until there no longer is an advantage to continue.  Then take the high road and the bows appertaining.

Now there is a new black heavyweight on the scene.  He doesn’t box, but he has been a life-long fighter.  You might have heard of him—Herman Cain.  And, as one would expect, the black racial identity slavemasters are swarming. 

Long before accusations of sexual impropriety surfaced, Harry Belafonte, Jon Stewart and scores of others mocked Cain as being racially inappropriate, and some flat-out call him an Uncle Tom.  Chauncey DeVega on Salon.com wrote a piece called, “Herman Cain: Lover of Jim Crow, Apologist for White Racism."

The 21st Century slavemasters are trying to denigrate Cain’s racial credibility, just as Ali and his henchmen did to Joe Frazier.  When Herman dies, maybe they will conclude that he wasn’t so bad after all.

Beyond Class Warfare

We hear about it every day:  Barack Obama is attempting to incite class warfare.  To my mind this is a true but an incomplete assertion.   The class warfare that Obama promotes to his self-serving ends is more than class warfare; it is class warfare as a subset of identity warfare.

There is a critical difference:  Despite all its faults, class warfare is, at least, objective.  In class warfare one sets a measurable criterion to differentiate friend from foe.  Using a purely class warfare standard, Barack, for instance, might tell us that anyone making more than $250,000 a year, anyone who votes Republican, or anyone working on Wall Street are the enemy.  But Obama goes beyond class; he includes race, ideology, education, and whatever issue du jour suits him in any particular situation; he then decides on the fly the subjective criteria that determines who or what gets labeled as it does.  For instance, any black, no matter how black, is “not black enough,” if he or she disagrees with Barack.  You can be sure that Herman Cain would not be considered a “real” African American according to the Obama metric.

Barack Obama is fond of finding a scapegoat, exaggerating what he feels are its negative qualities, and encouraging his followers to denigrate, humiliate, and castigate the scapegoated person or idea.  Watch him, listen to him, and you will find this occurring again and again.  

In short, the President who does not embrace his biracial identity not only is a slave to his own identity conflict, he is an identity slavemaster.  Like Santa Claus, Barack Obama makes his list, checks it twice, and then determines who’s naughty and nice.  Unlike Santa, Obama is not content merely to put coal in the stockings of the naughty.  Barack Hussein Obama also incites his minions to punish anyone whose identity conflicts with his own.  Remember Joe Wurzelbacher, the plumber, who on October 12, 2008  challenged Obama’s tax plan?  According to Julian Sanchez,

In the days following the debate, The Columbus Dispatch reported this weekend, Wurzelbacher's file at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles was accessed three times. The information requests came from accounts associated with the office of the state attorney general, the Toledo Police Department, and the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency. The attorney general's office has said, however, that the request did not come from their office, but from a "test account" used by their IT division and shared with other law enforcement agencies.   

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/10/joe-the-plumber-database-snooping-under-investigation.ars

Racialized Thought: A Special Form of Irrationality

In the aftermath of the 911 terrorist attacks, the American lexicon expanded to include “stovepiping,” an information science term used to explain how government agencies had created separate intelligence-related data bases that were not being shared among law enforcement, and thus endangered American security.

  
Post hoc, everyone realized the danger of rigidly compartmentalizing information.  We all knew that truth and informed action result only when relevant ideas climb in the ring together and engage in a knock-down, drag-out fight within the public discourse arena.  To remedy the stovepiping problem, talking heads advised security analysts to “connect the dots,” meaning, of course, that information should be culled from multiple sources, juxtaposed, and honestly evaluated—a suggestion so obvious that even Barack Obama endorsed the practice so long as the resulting information did not undermine his Machiavellian ends.

On the other hand, Barack Obama always has stovepiped the elements of his racial identity, separating the black half of his being from the white, dragging out the white portion only when he needed to do so.  You recall, for instance, that Barack first got into hot water during the 2008 presidential election by denigrating working-class Caucasians by suggesting that "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." and then distributed a political ad showing himself surrounded by his white mother, grandmother, and grandfather.

Obama’s stovepiping is one example of a general form of racial irrationality rampant within contemporary American culture—an irrationality that permits black and white raceketeers to separate racially related information mostly in the service of a pro-black agenda.  

Switch on your radio or television and you will find multiple examples of racial stovepiping.  For instance, I recently heard a news report lamenting the fact that the black unemployment rate currently stands at 16.7%, its highest rate since 1984. From time to time the piece said or strongly implied that the black rate was disgraceful and an example of American racism. 

Certainly, everyone should be sympathetic to any group suffering unemployment.  But let’s add another data point: black underachievement.  When expedient to raise support for increasing inner-city school budgets, we hear that African Americans have a shamefully low 57% graduation rate.  Data point number three: communities with the least educated workforce have the highest rates of unemployment.

Let’s help raceketeers connect the dots.  Black unemployment is a direct result of insufficient black educational commitment.  The racial storm troopers should spend their time facilitating African American education and other training rather than searching for cultural scapegoats.

Racialized thinking is a dead end strategy that benefits no one—least of all black people. 

Mr. Obama, Mr. Cool?

During the 2008 presidential campaign, many media types bludgeoned us with the phrase “no drama Obama” which they usually presented as a high compliment.   They underscored the cool, cool, supercool Barack Obama as a counterpoint to the hot, hot, hothead John McCain.  News people forever chortled about how “comfortable” their guy was “in his own skin.”  (Their reality testing, then, was sufficiently intact for them to know that Barack was not inhabiting anyone else’s skin.)

Then came Jeremiah Wright.  When the good reverend viciously maligned whites and white America, Obama continued to maintain his iceman composure.  But when Wright impugned Barack’s disingenuous black identity by saying that the future president’s criticism of him was political double speak, Obama erupted like Mount Vesuvius, charring Jeremiah in the process.

Last week Vesuvius blasted back to life, and, again, black identity was its catalyst.  After months of intermittent tremoring, Barack belched fire.  At the September 24, 2011 Forty-first Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Legislative Conference, he excoriated the black audience for what he perceived as their lack of support for his policies, suggesting that they were doing too much “complainin',”  “grumblin',” and “cryin.'”  After all, Barack repeatedly has said that he is an unadulterated black man, and they clearly are a black organization, so they should not “diss” him in any way.

Black Congresswoman Maxine Waters spoke for many in the African American community, saying that Obama never would have unloaded on the Hispanic, Gay, or Jewish subcultures.  To my knowledge, Jesse Jackson, Sr.  remained numb, but I must wonder aloud whether he was thinking, “Barack is talking down to black people, telling niggers how to behave,” with visions of castration dancing in his head.

What got to the President?  The criticisms mostly were of his race-oriented decisions.   In short, the CBC believed that Barack Obama’s policies were not black enough.  And that criticism always was and always will be Obama’s Achilles’ heel. 

There is no cool Barack where race is concerned. 

Why so touchy?  Think about yourself.  What criticisms tic you off?  If secure in your intelligence, you do not flinch if someone calls you “stupid.”  If secure in your skill, you do not react if someone claims you are “incompetent.”  On the other hand, if you, yourself, question your intelligence or competency, those slurs slash you to ribbons.

Barack Obama has lived a life of racial insecurity and duplicity.  His neurotic repetition compulsion kicks in whenever there is any hint that he might not be black enough.  Do not expect Obama to make color-blind decisions for our country when he cannot make color-blind decisions for himself. Do not expect Obama to be Mr. Cool where his conflicted racial identity is concerned. 

What Context? Whose Context?

As many of you know, Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men exposes the doubles of Barack Obama and his band.  Among the many criticisms are that the President provides no leadership and that he and his group form their allegiances and allocate support based on identity—mostly a narrow notion of male, elitist identity.

How to counter that unflattering view of Barack and his boys?  The administration, of course, complains that Suskind took information out of context.  They could not use any other excuse to explain away the information, since Obama had given the Pulitzer Prize winning author carte blanche to conduct the interviews on which he based his book.

On the one hand, the demand for attention to context is quite reasonable.  We all have had moments when we suffered from out-of-context quotes.  On the other hand, how does one determine the context?  Should the challenged quote have included the sentence before it?  The sentence after it?  Should the quote have included previous or subsequent paragraphs, or chapters?  What about comments that the speaker had made after the interview ended?

To my way of thinking, the relevant parameters of context depend on the integrity and consistency of the person being quoted.  A speaker who clearly, honestly and reliably says what he believes is easy to accurately and fairly quote.  A speaker whose remarks deviate widely from day to day or audience to audience cannot be easily quoted.  The quoting person can never be sure what the speaker means nor whether the comments are real or contrived.  In short, whenever a writer attempts to document what a Barack Obama type says—a dark triad personality type characterized by traits of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism—the writer must consider the speaker's personality and purposes more than his words.

Our manipulative, conniving, arrogant President has proven repeatedly that we cannot trust his words.  Whether he is speaking about governmental transparency, the United States economy, international relations, or his own racial identity, Barack Obama double speaks incessantly. Honesty and reliability begins with acknowledging who we are—the whole us, flattering and unflattering, black and white.  If Obama is ever able to unapologetically and unfailingly refer to himself as biracial, rather than black, he will have gained enough credibility for me to listen to whatever else he has to say.

Context starts with personal identity and proceeds from there.

Identity Politics, Leadership, and Barack Hussein Obama

He campaigns as epitomizing the new, improved 21^st Century swaggering, informed and egalitarian emperor of the free world.  Obama underscores how he and his cohorts are the only reasonable alternative to evil, racist white old boy networks.  As a “person of color,” he, and only he, can save America from itself.  He, and only he, can lead America to the Promised Land, a land where, with him as role model and tutor-in-chief, we all learn to relate with dignity and respect.

That, however, is not quite the picture that emerges in the newly released Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President.”  The author, Ron Suskind, asserts that White House insiders paint a most unflattering picture of Obama and his administration.  Suskind views Barack’s brigade as roiling with dissension and discord.  He refers to a gaping leadership void, quoting Larry Summer, past White House economic adviser, as complaining, “There’s no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes.”  And as for equality, Suskind says that Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director, views the administration as sufficiently depraved to“… actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”  

Barack Obama lacks leadership and is hostile to women—sounds like Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.  Obama builds his White House around his notion of elitist masculine identity—consistent with Barack’s predilection for filling his cabinet and advisory positions with male Ivy-Leaguers from Chicago and the Northeast.  And, as for accomplishments, recall the 2008 presidential campaign when  Obama was criticized as having nothing to offer but rhetoric and his responding, “Don’t tell me words don’t matter! ‘I have a dream.’ Just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words! …”   

You also may remember how the Hillary Clinton coalition exposed the Obamafuscation and mendacity.   To be specific, Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, outed Barack Obama for having plagiarized the quote from a 2006 speech by the now Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick.

Could this blog merely be a thinly disguised political ad for Hillary Clinton?

When it comes to Presidents, Sometimes You Get What You Asked For

Sam Zell knows business, ranking as one of the 60 wealthiest men in America.  Among his accomplishments are that he leads or is a major shareholder of:  a private American investment firm, Equity Group Investments; Mexico’s most successful builder of low-cost housing; the USA’s largest waste-to-energy conversion company; and the planet’s largest telecommunications and cabling products distributor.

Barry Sternlicht is no business slouch either.  He is Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of the private investment company Starwood Capital Group and chairman of Starwood Property Trust, the largest commercial mortgage REIT in the U.S.A. 

So, what do Misters Zell and Sternlicht think of Barack Hussein Obama?

According to Mary Pilon of the September 14, 2011 Wall Street Journal, Zell wants “Anyone But Obama” to win the 2012 presidential election.  Sternlicht says, “We’ve elected a community organizer that’s acting like a community organizer” and, therefore, is unable to deal with our country’s financial crises.

Both of these captains of industry imply what is patently true:  the curtain has been torn away to reveal the emperor who has no clothes. 

America chose for president a man estranged from reality: a Machiavellian who pretends to be black rather than biracial and who believes he is capable of any and all greatness.  Should we be surprised that a man with no effective reality testing enters the presidency convinced that he knows what is best for our country and then sets out to remake our country to his specifications regardless of the consequences?  Should we be surprised that Barack Obama is totally opposed to bipartisanship.  A man who cannot accept the simple truth of his biraciality, who cannot reconcile the black and white halves of himself, cannot be expected to deal with hard realities facing our nation or to cooperate with those who hold opinions different from his.        

Culturally Conditioned Anti-White Racism

If you think that hatred of white people began in response to lies perpetrated against the Tea Party, think again. 

Augustin Cebada,  in front of the Westwood, California Federal Building July 4, 1996:  “You old  white people.  It is your duty to die… They’re taking up too much space and air … Right now we’re [Hispanics] already controlling those elections, whether it’s through violence or non-violence.”

And if you think that vicious maligning of whites is not fashionable today, in the age of Barack Obama, consider this.

Last week at a local community center I am speaking informally with a mid-40s black man and an early-30s white woman.  Nothing new there, since the three of us chat regularly.  Both the man and woman are highly educated and always have presented as amicable, engaging, and entertaining.

In the midst of an unremarkable discussion, the woman mentions that recently she had to wait to see someone who was attending to an elderly woman.  The 30 something then complains that the old lady had slowed her down.  She adds, “I hate old people.  [A brief pause]  Well, not all old people.  I don’t hate old African Americans or Asians.  Just old white people.”

Neither I nor the black man say a word, but I can tell by his expression that he is shocked.

You and I both can speculate as why a rather “nice” white woman would make such a vicious comment about someone whom she did not know and would inject race into the event.  I can say unequivocally that I believe it is rooted in our culture’s doubles mentality that tolerates and even sanctions racism against whites and whites alone—even white against white racism—a social conditioning so pervasive and effective that it poisons the mind of an otherwise nice white woman.  

Crazy Racists: White and Black

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when white people could be racist and not crazy.  In those days widespread institutionalized racism did exist.  Many black people suffered discrimination merely because they were black.  Anti-black bigotry was common, frequent, and accepted.  That cultural milieu enabled many white racists to delude themselves into believing that they were morally proper and emotionally stable despite their hateful racist ideology.   

Today, anti-black racism still exists, but it is not nearly so common, frequent, or accepted.  Because our society has taken explicit and implicit stands against anti-black bias, today no sane white person can express anti-black opinions or actions and then pretend to be either rational or moral.

Not so for blacks.  For decades, raceketeer leaders, secular and religious, directly and indirectly have told African Americans that they should be inter-racially suspicious.  The purveyors of those ideas literally profited from them at least as far back as 1968 as was true with Black Rage by psychiatrists Cobbs and Grier, and at least as recently as 2008 with John L. Jackson's Racial Paranoia.  We all remember too well Jeremiah Wright's 2003 "God Damn America" sermon and how Barack Obama in his 1995 Dreams from My Father spoke of his communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis advising him that whites have reason to fear blacks.

So, while whites are discouraged from race-based suspicion and prejudicial judgments of blacks, African Americans are taught just the opposite concerning whites.  Blacks get a big green "go" for any and all anti-white paranoia.

Where does Barack Obama, Eric Himpton Holder, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Office of Civil Rights, the NAACP, and the thousands of other guardians of racial justice stand on this issue?   The silence is deafening