Tag: politics

Apropos of yesterday’s discussion of the inimical effects of immigration, Dinesh D’Souza shows that Obama’s driving motivation is neither socialism nor traditional Democratic progressivism, but rather African anti-colonialism:

Clearly the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. And we can be doubly sure about his father’s influence because those who know Obama well testify to it. His “granny” Sarah Obama (not his real grandmother but one of his grandfather’s other wives) told Newsweek, “I look at him and I see all the same things–he has taken everything from his father. The son is realizing everything the father wanted. The dreams of the father are still alive in the son.”

In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir “the record of a personal, interior journey–a boy’s search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American.” And again, “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.” Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, “My father’s voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people’s struggle. Wake up, black man!”

The climax of Obama’s narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father’s grave. It is riveting: “When my tears were finally spent,” he writes, “I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America–the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I’d witnessed in Chicago–all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father’s pain.”

In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that “I sat at my father’s grave and spoke to him through Africa’s red soil.” In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father’s spirit. Obama takes on his father’s struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.’s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.’s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son’s objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father’s struggle becomes the son’s birthright….

Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

The Obama presidency, too, is strongly indicative of where America stands in Glubb’s theory of imperial lifecycles. In much the same way that the later Roman emperors were not Romans in the sense that Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, Gaius Marius, or Gaius Octavius Thurinus were, Mr. Soetoro-Soebarkah is not an American in the same sense that past presidents such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, and Bill Clinton were. None of Barack Hussein Obama’s predecessors identified with foreign cultures or ambitions, much less were motivated by them and none of them were steeped in expressly anti-American ideologies from their childhood.

And here you would have thought that all those futile years of George W. Bush, Arlen Specter, and Arnold Schwarzenegger would have cured the onetime conservative magazine of its dedication to power and political pragmatism.

Forty Jim DeMints or 60 Lindsey Grahams? Forty Christine O’Donnell’s or 60 Mike Castles?

These are questions conservatives have to think about when they see polls like the latest Rasmussen, which has Rep. Mike Castle, a moderate Republican thoroughly unloved by tea partiers, leading Democratic nominee Chris Coons 48-37 while conservative Republican Christine O’Donnell trails Coons by the same eleven-point margin, 47-36….

So, again: would conservatives in Delaware rather win, or send a message?

For actual conservatives, the only rational answer is 40 DeMints. Daniel Foster has asked a misleading question. The correct one is, would conservatives rather elect a false conservative majority that will vote against conservative principles while ensuring that a Democratic majority succeeds it when the inevitable reaction comes, or continue building towards a genuine and committed conservative majority?

But you can’t entirely take the madrassah out of the politician that the boy becomes. Obama whines about his “some powerful interests” and their opinion of him:

“Some powerful interests that have been setting the agenda in Washington for a long time, and they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That’s not in my prepared remarks, but it’s true.”

To me, the most interesting aspect of this is that the first negative thing that sprang to mind when Obama wanted to express how people were badmouthing him, he thought of “a dog”. That is not a normal American expression. One works like a dog, one is as loyal as a dog, one is dog-tired, whereas the negative forms tend to utilize the term “bitch” instead. Using dog in this perjorative sense is much more common in the Arab world.

It seems to me that this is, in addition to demonstrating Obama’s inability to withstand legitimate criticism, an example of his Indonesian Muslim upbringing showing itself in a moment of stress. This doesn’t mean he is a crypto-Muslim, but it is rather yet another indication of his essentially foreign perspective. In support of this interpretation, I would note that while I have seen many distinctly negative terms applied to Obama since he first launched his presidential candidacy, I have never read nor heard of him being referred to as “a dog”.

It wasn’t all that long ago when I wrote of my assumption that the Republicans were going to take the House and might take the Senate as well, thus leading to Obama’s eventual implosion in the 2012 Democratic primary. More than a few critics said that I was crazy. Of course, once it happens, everyone will believe that it was practically inevitable.

Typically cautious Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, is rocking the political world with a new “Crystal Ball” prediction: The GOP will win the House, making Ohio’s John Boehner speaker, might get a 50-50 split in the Senate, and will pick up some eight new governors.

The winds at Republican backs are more favorable than they were in 1994. If the idiot Republican establishment can merely avoid falling over their own feet and embrace the anti-government mood instead of attempting to tamp it down, they’ll clean up. But never underestimate Republican self-destruction.

Do you know, I honestly didn’t know Ken Mehlman was supposed to be straight. I was surprised to learn that Karl Rove had been married… I always figured he was gay too. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because if you don’t understand that the Republican Party leadership is a bunch of moderate Democrats attempting to keep the Republican grass roots reasonably in line, you can’t possibly understand how American politics works.

Using the environment as an excuse for disarming the citizenry:

Will Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson make a back door move to ban lead bullets the day before the November 2 elections? Several environmentalist groups led by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) are petitioning the EPA to ban lead bullets and shot (as well as lead sinkers for fishing) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Although EPA is barred by statute from controlling ammunition, CBD is seeking to work farther back along the manufacturing chain and have EPA ban the use of lead in bullets and shot because non-lead alternatives are available.

This won’t go over well, to put it mildly. Forget their rapidly diminishing chances of hanging onto the House and Senate, if the EPA is dumb enough to attempt this one, you can pretty much take out the Democratic Party and shoot it.

The New York Times shows why it is a rapidly fading force in printing the single most stupid statement ever to appear in a mainstream newspaper:

The Justice Department decided last week not to bring charges against Tom DeLay, whose unethical conduct represented a modern low among Congressional leaders. The decision is a reminder that some of Washington’s worst big-money practices remain either legal or far too difficult to prosecute. Mr. DeLay, the Texas Republican who had been the House majority leader, crowed that he had been “found innocent.” But many of Mr. DeLay’s actions remain legal only because lawmakers have chosen not to criminalize them.

Emphasis added. I note that actions such as selling cocaine and whipping slaves remain illegal only because lawmakers have chosen to criminalize them. It is interesting that the New York Times is so much more upset about a Republican lawmaker’s admittedly legal actions than it is about the blatantly illegal fraud that is still being committed by the banking industry on a daily basis.

Jennifer Rubin is among those who have finally figured out that Soebarkah is nowhere near as intelligent as advertised:

To be blunt, Obama suffers from a lifetime of others excessively praising his intellect. It insulates him from ideas and facts that conflict with his pre-existing liberal rubric (so “every economist” believed his stimulus would work). It leaves him unprepared to engage in real debate with informed opponents (e.g. the health-care summit). It skews his understanding of how geopolitics works, as he imagines that his own wonderfulness can sway adversaries and override nations’ fundamental interests (the Middle East)…. The image of himself clashes with the results he achieves and the reaction he inspires. No wonder he’s so prickly. You’d be, too, if everyone your entire life had told you that you were swell but now, when the chips are down and the spotlight is on, you are failing so badly in your job.

I figured out during the campaign that while Soebarkah is more intelligent than the average, he is far less intelligent than his academic background would normally lead one to believe. He’s simply not as smart as his underlings or most of his peers in the political elite and he knows it, which is why he accepts the de facto leadership of Reid and Pelosi. This doesn’t make him uniquely cretinous among the Washington set; John Kerry has a similar IQ in the 115 to 120 range. But because people expect more from a president, I have little doubt that by the time Soebarkah’s political career is done, most likely after his first term, the national consensus will be that he was one of the dumbest presidents with whom the electorate has ever inflicted itself.

China Mieville kindly demonstrates that intelligent, educated, and talented writers can most definitely be idiots:

To designers across the world: there’s a hot need for someone(s) to design & disseminate a symbol & slogan to unify & express, on t-shirts, websites, blogs, badges & buttons, support for the right of Muslims to gather in lower Manhattan, & indeed anythefuckwhere else. & with it to proclaim disgust at & condemnation of this scary hatemongering horseshit.

Racism out of Manhattan.

Tell you what, you silly English twit. Limit your historically ignorant, politically correct, socialist sensitivity concerns to Londonistan and the rest of your island. I was under the impression that the English already have all the mosques in their backyard that they want, but if you, China Mieville, happen to desire a congregations of Muslims at the University of Warwick, then by all means feel free to build them a mosque there. You see, it’s not my business what you want in your backyard.

Of course, what sort of buildings and what sort of people Americans happen to want in their backyards IS NOT YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS AND IT HASN’T BEEN SINCE 1776!

Although it pains me to have to point this out, I will restate the obvious for the benefit of clueless science fiction writers and anyone else whose ignorance of religion is near complete. A religion is not a race and opposition to the symbolism of the 9/11 Mosque has nothing to do with racism. For crying out loud, even the name of the group that wants to build it is a provocation that refers to the Muslim conquest of Spain! This is a not a freedom-of-religion test, but rather a semiotic test and Mieville has failed it badly.

Unsurprisingly, the irritating nature of Mieville’s foreign nannynagging somehow managed to escape one of John Scalzi’s subs. This is a fine example of why guest bloggers are usually a bad idea.