Congressman Jim Moran is an old white Democrat from Virginia who thinks he can judge whether we minority conservatives are acting sufficiently non-white enough. Moran’s an inveterate bully, a brawler, a crook and a bigot. And not one of his civility-preaching liberal colleagues has the courage to call him out.

Responding on cable news to GOP Rep. Allen West’s blunt criticisms of President Obama this week, Moran derided the retired U.S. Army colonel, who is black, as “not representative of the African-American community.” Moran then launched into the kind of tired race-traitor tirade I’ve heard from progressives of pallor for more than 20 years.

How dare we “people of color” stray from the left’s ideological plantation? If we choose personal responsibility over entitlement, capitalism over statism or self-determination over identity politics, presumptuous white liberals appoint themselves spokespeople for our forefathers and deciders of our true destinies.

To wit: Lt. Col. West “just seems clueless now that he has climbed aboard ship,” Moran fumed. “He’s climbed this ladder of opportunity that was constructed by so many of his ancestors’ sweat, sacrifice, blood, you know, they did everything they could for his generation to be successful. But now that he’s climbed on board ship, instead of reaching down and steadying the ladder, he wants to push it off.”

West, his father, his mother and his brother all dedicated their lives to military service; four consecutive generations of his family served in the U.S. armed forces. As a freshman congressman, West’s message has been a compelling agenda of self-empowerment. For this, he is savaged by a House colleague as a racial saboteur?

But Moran was just warming up. Next, he contrasted conservative West with big-government savior Barack Obama, who he said acted in proper accordance with his ancestors “by reducing college tuition and training our workers, trying to get a decent job for everybody” and leaving a “constructive legacy.”

Er, how’s the savior’s near double-digit unemployment, record food stamp enrollment, re-inflation of the housing and higher-education bubbles, and massive redistribution of wealth from the working class to the Wall Street bundler class working out for you?

Moran hailed Obama as “our Lion King” and compared his Republican detractors to the “hyenas in the background trying to cause trouble” for the White House. This bumbling chief of political correctness apparently is unaware that those hyenas in the Disney movie have been criticized for perpetuating negative stereotypes about blacks and Hispanics.

Dog-whistle politics, anyone?

Do Moran’s constituents in Virginia’s 8th district support his incessant race-baiting? Last year, he accused Tea Party activists of racism for sweeping out entrenched Democrats in the November 2010 midterm elections. It “happened for the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States. It happened because the Southern states, the slaveholding states, didn’t want to see a president who was opposed to slavery,” he ranted to Arabic-language television network Alhurra. “(A) lot of people in the United States don’t want to be governed by an African-American, particularly one who is liberal, who wants to spend money and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society.”

Yesterday, FrontPage Magazine featured an article by Joseph Klein critical of Congressman Ron Paul’s proposal that the US use the “Golden Rule” in dealing with radical Islamists. As usual, Ron Paul followers descended on the article, unloading a wealth of hateful invective and anti-Semitic comments. A typical occurrence with such articles, the following selection of comments from the piece reflect a dark and disturbing sector of the Ron Paul movement. (Note: comments have not been edited for spelling or grammar.)

***

“Why don’t you quote some scripture from the jewish talmud, like any non jew is subhuman and is on earth to be a jew slave. You are either a fool or are being paid by your jewish masters to write this filth. I am amerian, I do not pledge alegience to israel and I don’t care what happens to them just like I don’t care what happens to the arab country”

“LOL – I never can figure out how all the obvious fascists ended up Zionists?”

“This ‘journalist’ reminds me of the Jews who chose to spare Barabas over Christ. Sad, really…”

“Surprise surprise, another Zionist hit job against Dr. Paul from the loons at FPM. You Israel-firsters are getting pretty desperate, aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t bend over and kiss Bibi’s rear isn’t a worthy puppet for you people, huh? What a disgraceful, treasonous lot you are. You are the primary reason why anti-Semitism still exists in the world, and you owe all the Jews of upstanding character (i.e., anti-Zionist) in the world a giant debt for the trouble you’ve caused them. Indeed, Jews would be a lot better off in the long run if Israel were erased from the pages of time.”

“Joseph Kleim is such a bad man that he believes even the Golden Rule is an object that belongs to the Jews, and is something to not only use for evil but to prevent other people from having. Really, Joseph? The Golden Rule is Jews’ intellectual property? You are wicked.”

“bloodthirsty AIPAC Neocon war profiteers”

“Interesting Perspective. We give Israel over 5 Billion a year in foreign aid. Some of it not just financial but hardware. I am sure Israel would never start a smear and fear campaign to ensure they keep getting our tax payer dollars. www.jewwatch.com”

“A ‘twist on the Judeo-Christian Golden Rule’?! You are the person whom Jesus was referring to when he said (to paraphrase): ‘Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.’ Or, ‘But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken.’ Daft is not a good enough word for you Mr. Klein – you are Shylock. Take your pound of flesh.”

In his press conference on Nov. 8, Tuesday afternoon, Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain defiantly addressed the claims against him, rejecting them in full. “The machine to keep a businessman out of the White House is going to be relentless,” Cain robustly affirmed. But the machine Cain referred to is not overly concerned with his business acumen. Rather, the leftist media hit squad, personified by celebrity sleaze lawyer Gloria Allred, has mobilized for the primary objective of destroying the most prominent African-American conservative on the scene today. This is not coincidental. The Left reserves a special destructive zeal for Republican minorities of any variety.

The Left’s distinct hatred of Herman Cain has been transparently evident for some time now. Its assaults rely on classic racist stereotypes of black stupidity and sexual preoccupation. The belittling of Cain’s intelligence and achievement has taken especially appalling and humiliating forms. In August, on Keith Olbermann’s newly resuscitated “Countdown” show, now on Current TV, progressive harridan Janeane Garofalo neatly summarized how such white leftists view any black American who dares to eschew progressive ideology. “[Cain's] a businessman,” she said sarcastically, continuing:

Whoever pays him. And he may have a touch of Stockholm syndrome. There may be a touch of Stockholm syndrome in there because anytime I see a person of color or a female in the Republican Party or the conservative movement or the Tea Party, I wonder how they could be trying to curry favor with the oppressors. Is it Stockholm syndrome, or does somebody pay them?

Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological condition in which hostages express sympathy and/or empathy with their captors. Thus for Garofalo and her odious ilk, Herman Cain couldn’t possibly be a free-thinking individual. He’s either mentally impaired or simply so stupid as to be exploited by his oppressors for pay.

Garofalo is hardly alone. Speaking on Martin Bashir’s program on MSNBC, Democratic strategist and MSNBC analyst Karen Finney offers a similar take on Mr. Cain: “One of the things about Herman Cain is I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy,” she explains. “I think he is giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place. I know that’s harsh, but that’s how it sure seems to me.”

HBO’s Bill Maher, offering a rundown of Republican presidential candidates last May, offered the same rationale to his viewers. “Herman Cain, I never heard of this guy, but apparently he ran Godfather’s Pizza, and Republicans say they love him so they’re not racist–right.” And MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell took Herman Cain to task, insinuating that he and his father were little more than house Negroes. MSNBC host Ed Schultz contended Herman Cain panders to “white Republicans out there who don’t like black folks” while “The View’s” Joy Behar warned Herman Cain that the Republican party “hasn’t been black friendly over the many centuries in this country,” a statement of stunning historical ignorance. Jon Stewart mocked Cain’s manner of speaking and said he didn’t like to read.

What’s telling is that every one of the above statements and interviews occurred before the first story about Cain’s alleged sexual harassment was reported by Politico. The fix has always been in.

The Politico stories–more than 90 and still counting since last week–represent an interesting shift. Two nameless women accusing Cain of “sexually suggestive behavior…that made them angry and uncomfortable” turns Cain into a potential predator. When Sharon Bialek appeared on the scene on Monday the accusations moved from sexual harassment to those that could be construed as sexual assault. As a result, the alleged predator becomes a potential criminal.

Flash back twenty years to the Clarence Thomas hearings and every attack on him then and since has wound around two common points: He’s dumb and he’s oversexed. Now, twenty years later, the front-runner for the Republican nomination is being hit again by his leftist haters with those same two charges.

It’s possible to believe that the fact that the two accusations leveled against Justice Thomas just happened to play into traditional racist stereotypes was a coincidence, but that the same stereotypes are being used again against the second most prominent black conservative after Thomas on the national stage is more than just coincidence.

Once is a shot in the dark, twice is a pattern, and it’s an ugly pattern. Leftists eagerly tear apart women who accuse Democratic politicians of improper behavior and then suddenly become born-again feminists when there’s a black Republican to be taken down.

Anita Hill was treated as a hero, not because of anything that happened to her, but because she was useful to the Left’s cause. Seven years later, the women who stepped forward to accuse Bill Clinton of wrongdoing were jeered and demeaned for opening their mouths by the same politicians and activists who had presented Hill as a role model for women. Meanwhile, Kathleen Wiley, who accused Clinton of attacking her and was libeled for it by the Left, has expressed her support for Cain.

The unwinding is obvious at the fringes. Janeane Garofalo has accused the Republican Party of being the last bastion of white supremacy in the country. When Cain began to achieve prominence, she tried to deal with the contradiction by claiming that he was there just to cover up all the white supremacy. Now that he’s the front runner, and there are sexual allegations against him, she can resolve the contradiction by attacking Cain on the allegations and then pointing to the remaining white candidates as proof that the Republican Party is racist.

This is something that the Left does over and over again, turning black conservatives into a special target, and when it succeeds in hounding them out, then it has “proof” that the Republican Party is racist: “Where are all the minorities?”

Janeane Garafalo, who has a framed picture of herself with Bill Clinton, is the perfect poster child for leftist hypocrisy. She defended supporters of Hollywood pedophile Roman Polanski and claimed that Weinergate wasn’t Weiner’s fault but a distraction created by the media and Republicans; but now she suddenly has a “truly important” case to focus on.

The issue isn’t Cain’s guilt or innocence, which can only be determined by the evidence, not by pundits and commentators — the issue is the Left’s contemptible double standard on racism and sexism, which it exploits for its own benefit. The Left plays the race card against conservative women and the sexism card against conservative black men, not because it believes that racism and sexism are wrong, but because it’s a party built on the art of dividing and conquering along the lines of group identity.

If Cain, like Mel Reynolds, a former black congressman convicted of 12 counts of sexual assault, happened to be a Democrat, then the media would have been telling a completely different story. Reynolds, who was also convicted of bank fraud, received a special commutation of his sentence from Bill Clinton –  without even actually applying for it.

This is how Reynolds, a key figure in the rise of Obama, was greeted on his release by one Chicago newspaper. “Welcome back to `the world’, Mel Reynolds.”

By spending the last three decades leveling accusations of “racism” every 10 seconds, liberals have made it virtually impossible for Americans to recognize real racism — for example, the racism constantly spewed at black conservatives.

In the last year alone, a short list of the things liberals have labeled “racist” include:

– Being a Republican;

– Joining the tea party;

– The word “the” (Donald Trump’s statement that he has a “great relationship with the blacks”);

– References to Barack Obama’s playing basketball (Trump again);

– Using Obama’s middle name;

– Scott Brown’s pickup truck;

– Opposing Obamacare;

– Opposing Obama’s stimulus bill;

– Opposing Obama’s jobs bill.

The surge in conservative support for Herman Cain confuses the Democrats’ story line, which is that Republicans hate Obama because he’s black.

Cain is twice as black as Obama. (Possible Obama campaign slogan: “Too Black!”)

This is why the liberal website Politico ran with a story on Cain that had everything — a powerful black man, a Republican presidential candidate, the hint of sexuality — except facts.

All we learned was: About a decade ago, as many as two anonymous women accused Cain of making unspecified “inappropriate” remarks and one “inappropriate” gesture in the workplace. (We had more than that on John Edwards’ mistress a year into the media’s refusal to report that story.)

If the details helped liberals, we’d have the details.

To have been accused of sexual harassment in the 1990s is like having been accused of molesting children at preschools in the 1980s or accused of being a witch in Massachusetts in the 1690s.

In the 1990s, one plaintiff won a $50 million jury verdict against Wal-Mart on the grounds that a “hostile environment” was created by her supervisor’s yelling at both male and female employees. In another case, a plaintiff won a $250,000 award for sexual harassment based on her complaint that a male colleague had reached for a pastry saying, “Nothing I like more in the morning than sticky buns,” while “wriggl(ing)” his eyebrows.

It got so crazy that a 6-year-old boy was suspended from class for a day for kissing a classmate on the cheek, and a Goya painting had to be removed from a Penn State classroom because a professor complained that it constituted sexual harassment.

With no standard other than the subjective offense taken by the accuser, absolutely anyone could be called a witch, i.e., a sexual harasser. So it’s striking that the only two conservative public figures accused of being witches both happened to be conservative blacks: Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain.

Liberals go straight to ugly racist stereotypes when attacking conservative blacks, calling them oversexualized, stupid and/or incompetent.

The late, lamented, white liberal reporter Mary McGrory called Justice Antonin Scalia “a brilliant and compelling extremist” — while dismissing Thomas as “Scalia’s puppet.”

More recently, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid called Scalia “one smart guy.” In the next breath, he proclaimed Thomas “an embarrassment to the Supreme Court,” adding, “I think that his opinions are poorly written.”

When Bush made Condoleezza Rice the first black female secretary of state, terror swept through the Democratic Party. What if people began to notice and ask questions: “Who’s that black woman always standing with George Bush?” Never mind! He’s probably arresting her.

In addition to an explosion of racist cartoons portraying Rice as Aunt Jemima, Butterfly McQueen from “Gone With the Wind,” a fat-lipped Bush parrot and other racist cliches, allegedly respectable liberals promptly called her stupid and incompetent.

Joseph Cirincione, then with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Rice “doesn’t bring much experience or knowledge of the world to this position.” (Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose experience for the job consisted of being married to an impeached, disbarred former president.)

Democratic consultant Bob Beckel — who ran Walter Mondale’s 1984 campaign so competently that Mondale lost 49 states — said of Rice, “I don’t think she’s up to the job.”

When Michael Steele ran for senator in Maryland in 2006, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee dug up a copy of his credit report — something done to no other Republican candidate. He was depicted in black face with huge red lips by liberal blogger Steve Gilliard. Oreo cookies were rolled down the aisle at Steele during a gubernatorial debate in 2002.

Trafficking in racist imagery is consequence-free for liberals because they have ruined charges of “racism” with their own overuse of the term. By now, any accusation of racism has the feel of a Big Foot sighting.

It’s a neat trick, rather as if the Nazis had called everything “genocide” right before launching the Holocaust, and then admonished resisters not to “play the genocide card.”

Liberals step on black conservatives early and often because they can’t have black children thinking, “Hmmm, the Republicans have some good ideas; maybe I’m a Republican.”

The basic setup is:

Step 1: Spend 30 years telling blacks that Republicans are racist and viciously attacking all black Republicans.

Step 2: Laugh maliciously at Republicans for not having more blacks in their party.

It is beyond insane that Herman Cain would have considered running for president if he had the tiniest skeleton in his closet. To be an out-of-the-closet black Republican, you had better be a combination rocket scientist/Baptist preacher. Which, as it happens, Cain is.

Meanwhile, MSNBC is cutting into its prime-time programming to announce updates in the fact-free hit on Cain. That’s not because anyone there thinks he’ll be the nominee. Everyone knows it’s going to be Mitt Romney.

But liberals are determined to make sure that, six months from now, everyone has forgotten Herman Cain so they can go back to claiming Republicans oppose Obama because they hate blacks.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle. Click here.

The Washington Post’s vendetta against Cuban-American Marco Rubio continues with another hit-piece last week and with MSM soul mates CNN and The Los Angeles Times chiming in. But the WaPo’s rancor against the most lopsidedly Republican voters in America didn’t start with the Rubio hit-piece last month.

To wit: Imagine the uproar from the mainstream media/Democratic axis upon discovering a Tea Party placard that celebrates the mass expulsion of Hispanic U.S. citizens from U.S. shores. (Heck, one that celebrated the expulsion of illegals would detonate their hair-trigger charge of “racism”). Well, back in August 2007 a mass expulsion of U.S. citizens of Hispanic heritage was in fact celebrated with a cartoon by The Washington Post. This hyper-sensitive guardian of liberal sensibilities, this vigilante, prosecutor, and judge for anything printed, spoken, or whispered that could conceivably imply a derogatory quality to any conceivable ethnic group ran this cartoon. Please study it carefully.

Note that a smiling Uncle Sam insults an American ethnic group (Cuban-Americans) as “nuisances” while forcibly expelling them from the nation in a rickety boat titled “Cuban-Americans,” while these scowling, elderly and Mafiosi-clad people scream “we demand a chance to interfere with the ’08 election!”

By “interfere” we have to assume the cartoonist refers to the right, privilege and duty bestowed upon U.S. citizens known as “voting.” It so happens that the cartoonist, Pat Oliphant, is himself an immigrant to this country. In an interview with Time magazine he admitted to “leaning Democratic” in his politics.

I now invite you to contemplate the reaction from the usual political-correctness police had any other U.S. ethnic group (except overwhelmingly Republican Cuban-Americans) inhabited that boat. Imagine the fire and brimstone (literal, perhaps) if instead of Fedoras (rarely worn by Cuban-Americans, by the way) the group had worn keffiyehs, burqas and chadors.

Imagine the clamor and attempted extortion followed by craven apologies and groveling if the boat’s passengers had been “nappy-headed” and headed for Africa. Imagine the rallies in Los Angeles and the indignant blustering by California politicians, The Hispanic Congressional Caucus and Nancy Pelosi if they’d worn sombreros.

Such cartoons are indeed imaginable with other ethnic groups — but surely with Uncle Sam cast as the villain, wearing a white hood, a swastika or an Ann Coulter mask. Maybe all three. In this one Uncle Sam smiles benevolently while handing the boat’s ethnic occupants their just desserts.

When authorities in Virginia’s Prince William County attempted to enforce U.S. laws against illegal immigration a few years ago The Washington Post denounced it as “shameful,” “hypocritical” and “ugly.” “Hounding Immigrants” ran the editorial’s title. “By singling out illegal immigrants, local politicians are contributing to what is becoming a poisonous, increasingly nativist atmosphere that will infect relations with Hispanics generally.”

Charles Krauthammer of Fox News: “Do you think that race, being a strong black conservative, has anything to do with the fact you’ve been so charged (with sexual harassment)? And if so, do you have any evidence to support that?”

Herman Cain: “I believe the answer is yes, but we do not have any evidence to support it.”

Playing the race card is vulgar, whether done by Al Sharpton or President Barack Obama — as he did to contain the Rev. Wright scandal. Especially when, as here, the complainant admits he lacks evidence. If Cain were not a front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination — a shock probably even to him — the media wouldn’t bother. But when the quest goes from curiosity to conceivable, the scrutiny increases exponentially. And who knows how the media got the information, possibly from one of Cain’s presumably non-racist GOP rivals.

Cain can — and should — complain about the media’s hypocritical double-standard, however. There is a real-world, apples-to-apples comparison to examine whether, as a conservative, Cain is being subjected to harsher treatment: the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

During the heat of the 1988 race for the Democratic presidential nomination, rumors surfaced of Jackson’s alleged numerous and rampant instances of infidelity. He was, for a while, his party’s front-runner.

Democratic Underground, a left-wing website, recalls, “(After) Jackson won 55 percent of the vote in the Michigan Democratic caucus, he was considered the front-runner for the nomination, as he surpassed all the other candidates in total number of pledged delegates.”

Unlike Cain, Jackson actually won several primaries and caucuses — and finished second in pledged delegates, beating out rivals such as future Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden.

To blunt whispers of Jackson infidelity, his wife, Jackie, warned Life magazine: “I don’t believe in examining sheets. That’s a violation of privacy. If my husband has committed adultery, he better not tell me. And you better not go digging into it because I’m trying to raise a family and won’t let you be the one to destroy my family.”

Whether the media feared being accused of racism or whether it feared Jackie, there were no “establishment media” stories on Jackson’s alleged sexcapades. That is, until years later, when Jackson admitted fathering a child with a staffer to whom he paid money for a house and who received monthly payments.

Black conservatives — along with white male Christian conservatives and child molesters — remain one of the few groups to which the usual rules of civility and restraint do not apply.

Consider these recent comments about Cain:

“(Cain) really doesn’t want to be overtly associated with African-Americans.” — MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on Cain’s failure to appear at the Martin Luther King Memorial dedication.

“I think that (Cain) makes that white Republican base of the party feel OK, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy. I think he is giving that base a free pass, and I think they like him because they think he is a black man who knows his place. And I know that sounds harsh.” — MSNBC Democratic strategist Karen Finney.

“(Cain) needs to get off the symbolic crack pipe and acknowledge that the evidence (of racism in America) is overwhelming.” — Princeton professor Cornel West.

Reporter: ‘We’re Not Going To Get Into Details Of Exactly What Happened’…

Fmr. Secy: Not the Cain I know…

CAIN FLASHBACK: ‘I’M READY FOR HIGH-TECH LYNCHING’…

Coulter: ‘They Are Terrified Of Strong, Conservative Black Men’…

RUSH: ‘Unconscionable Racially Charged Attack’…

‘Occupy Politico’…

The stories behind these headlines illustrate why good people no longer want to run for the presidency of the United States. They immediately become targets of the left, which almost always pulls the race card or the sexual harassment card when they have nothing legitimate to say against the people they fear.

In Herman Cain’s case they use both disgusting smear tactics. They have no shame!

The website Politico has dredged up a couple of items which they claim show that Herman Cain has a background that includes sexual harassment of two former employees of a group he once headed. The exact nature of the alleged offenses is left obscure, filed under the heading of sexual harassment. The women were given financial settlements by the restaurant association on the grounds that the allegations should be settled even if meritless.

The women are left unidentified and Cain heatedly denies both allegations. But the damage is done and regardless of the fact that they are baseless, as he insists, they are out there.

David Horowitz’s powerful speech at UCLA last week cemented my belief that the black community in America has been devastated by left-wing policies and ideas. Horowitz spoke on a wide variety of issues including Israel, radical indoctrination at the University and the uncivil scare tactics student groups and professors use to silence him (David Swindle wrote this article about the entire event at NRB and Mark Tapson had a write-up here at FPM.) However, the most poignant moment of the night came at the question and answer period, when Horowitz engaged in a dialogue with a couple of black students from the Afrikan Students Union.

In this clip the student asks Horowitz how he can reconcile the dysfunctional school system in the inner city and low quality of life of the black community with his statements that America is the greatest country in the world for blacks.

Horowitz’s response is very illuminating, as he informs the student that to the extent that the black community is deteriorating, it is the fault of Democrats; every major inner-city in America, including Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia is exclusively run by the Democratic Party. Furthermore, he states that the Democratic Party is in collusion with the teachers unions, which have run these school districts into the ground. Horowitz explains the indisputable fact that these two entities are largely responsible for the decaying school systems in the black community because they administer these schools as a job program rather than an educational institution, and make it virtually impossible to fire poor teachers.

In the next clip below Mr. Horowitz continues his dialogue with another leftist black student, and explains how a voucher program for all students, wherein power is taken away from the teachers union and competition is introduced, would greatly improve the school system. Horowitz then lets the student know that the only political party proposing these changes is the GOP.

This back and forth between Horowitz and the students touched on the broader theme that conservatives have been emphasizing for years: the left-wing mantra of victimhood that has been ingrained in the black community is a corrosive bigotry that has greatly hindered progress. For years the Left has told black children that America is racist and oppressive. Black children have been told that the system is stacked against them, and that white people are the enemy. Racial hucksters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are the main perpetrators against the black community, but the entire Democratic Party is guilty as well. And of course, who can forget President Obama’s pastor for twenty years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who constantly proclaimed to his congregants the evil and racism inherent in America:

Think about what this type of rhetoric does to a young child. Imagine you were told your entire life that the country you lived in was intentionally set up so you would fail. Imagine you were told that the majority of the people in your country hated you because of the color of your skin. Imagine how you would react if you were taught that America was an oppressive society, no better than the days of segregation and Jim Crow. Don’t you think this would encourage you to hold your country in contempt? Wouldn’t this type of derisive rhetoric enable you to disrespect your country’s laws and institutions?

Most importantly, this type of victim mentality allows for blacks to not be accountable. It gives them a free pass. The Left sets the bar lower for blacks then for anyone else in society, which is why these ideas are a form of racism. Left wing teachings and values are the perfect recipe for dependence and dereliction. Is it any wonder that so many black communities are rife with poverty and crime?

Dennis Prager captured these sentiment exactly in his book, Think a Second Time, wherein he discussed leftists’ complete lack of moral expectations for blacks during the Los Angeles riots. He writes:

“As I was watching the local NBC television coverage of the rioting, this is the way one reporter described what he saw: ‘Here I am on the corner…and I see five black gentlemen throwing stones at cars.’ I said on my radio show, ‘Can you imagine anybody ever saying, ‘I saw five white gentlemen in hoods burning a cross.’?” And so, my motto—which I repeated in South Central Los Angeles to black listeners—became ‘If you can’t call a black thug a thug, you are a racist.’”

Prager is right on, as leftists sadly will not hold blacks to the same standards as everyone else in society.

As Prager points out, during the L.A riots, dozens of innocent people were murdered and countless shops were burned to the ground and looted. A decent society that wishes to instill virtue and responsibility in its citizenry would’ve condemned these evil acts, and insisted that the perpetrators be brought to justice and locked up, in order to send the message that indiscriminate violence is wrong. However, as Prager writes, instead of condemning the rioters, liberals tried to “understand” the rage of blacks and in some cases outright supported it: “We had a United States representative, Maxine Waters, screaming, ‘No Justice, no peace.’” Prager also cites this reaction to the riots by leftist Andrew Hacker:

“So there is the sheer strain of living in a white world, the rage that you [blacks] must suppress almost every day…The conclusion seems all but self-evident that white America has no desire for your [blacks] presence or any need for your people. Can this nations have an unstated strategy for annihilating your people?”

If it was a bunch of whites rioting in the streets and murdering people, do you think the Left would have reacted with sympathy and understanding? Of course not, and rightfully so.

Conversely, conservatives espouse a message of self-empowerment and personal responsibility. Conservatives believe blacks are just as capable as whites to thrive in America. This is why conservatives are against Affirmative Action; it sets a lower standard for blacks, which infers that they are inferior to the rest of society. This is a sick lie that has been unintentionally embedded in the black community by left wing orthodoxy.

The truth of the matter is America is the least racist country on earth and protects its citizens’  liberty and opportunities to succeed. Lives like Barack Obama’s and Oprah Winfrey’s are only possible in America. Immigrants from all over the world do everything within their power to sneak into this country for good reason. However, listening to liberal rhetoric, one would think that we are still in the 1950s with Jim Crow and segregation.

This post was first published here on May 2, 2011.

Let’s take a journey back in time. Do you remember when Hurricane Katrina happened and that intellectual giant, Kanye West, accused President Bush of hating black people because of the slow response from the Federal Government? This charge stuck to Bush better than a leech from the Louisiana swamp; he’s still missing a few pints of blood from that “Heck of a job, Brownie!” comment.

Tragically, the “chocolate city” has been struck with another disaster. Several days ago, an explosion on an oil platform began spilling thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It is believed that this spill will be worse than any other in American history, including the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

The Federal Government has had all of this time to prepare for the impending arrival of oil to the most vulnerable parts of the Louisiana coast. Where have they been? Well, Obama was busy pushing for the Banking Reform Bill and he did have an important speech to deliver to Wall Street. Not to mention the one he gave for Earth Day. Memorizing speeches takes up a lot of time- oh, wait. Obama has yet to survey the damage. On April 29th, ABC News reported that Janet Napolitano declared the spill to have “national significance.” Heck of a job, Janet.

So far, Obama has placed the task of clean up, finance and compensation for the mess on the shoulders of British Petroleum. That’s well and good but shouldn’t we have mobilized every resource WE had to clean up the spill before it reached the coast? We live here. Is it wise to wait for an evil corporation to act in our best interest? We wasted an entire week. There were swat teams sent to check the safety of other oil rigs but where were the scientists, clean-up crews and chemical engineers needed to deal with the disaster at hand? Lousiana’s fishermen are offering their boats to assist with the clean up.

Did we just say skip it because it was not our fault? This is how children deal out blame and consequence but our government is charged with the responsibility of protecting our coast line no matter who made the mess. The only possible answer to why the government’s response was so slow, is that Barack Obama must hate black people.

On the bright side, at least Obama doesn’t have to follow up on that crazy idea of additional drilling in the Gulf. We can all rest assured that he takes the protection of our environment seriously. Seriously?

Barack Obama is a man of many talents. Some presidents might be content to wreck the nation’s finances and display confused impotence to our enemies, but Obama also takes the time to needlessly poison America’s cultural well. Last night, Sean Hannity took the president to task for including Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., AKA rapper/poet “Common,” on the docket of a White House celebration of American prose.

Common’s prose covers all the bases of lefty thug culture, including railing against supposed warmongers:

Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push

No button

Killing over oil and grease

No weapons of destruction

How can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one

And resentment of the law as the mortal enemy of blacks, who might want to consider packing heat, just in case:

Tell the law my Uzi weighs a ton

I walk like a warrior, from them I won’t run

On the streets they try to beat us like a drum

In Cincinnati another brother hung

Common is also a friend and defender of Obama’s old pal Jeremiah Wright—in 2008 he claimed what he “picked up from the pews…was messages of love.” Why, even love for the “US of KKK-A,” and those in the CIA who cooked up AIDS to decimate the black population! I don’t know about you, but I can certainly feel the love!

Of course, keeping in line with Wright, Common is also a racist. John Nolte revealed at Big Hollywood that Common disapproves of interracial relationships.

The usual defense of these guys is something along the lines of, “they may not be role models, but they’re not writing for kids.” Someone should tell that to Common himself, who says he is trying to “reach out and say something” inspiring to children, especially those who “don’t have parents around.” My hero.

In response to the uproar, the White House simply says that Common’s words has been distorted and that cop-killing isn’t the sum total of his work. Obama has never exactly been a crusader against filth in pop culture, but he did take a harder line as a candidate, when he called out rappers who degraded women and wrote in The Audacity of Hope (paperback pp. 60-61):

Progressives in particular seem confused on this point, which is why we so often get our clocks cleaned in elections. I recently gave a speech at the Kaiser Family Foundation after they released a study showing that the amount of sex on television has doubled in recent years. Now I enjoy HBO as much as the next guy, and I generally don’t care what adults watch in the privacy of their homes. In the case of children, I think it’s primarily the duty of parents to monitor what they are watching on television, and in my speech I even suggested that everyone would benefit if parents—heaven forbid—simply turned off the TV and tried to strike up a conversation with their kids.

Having said all that, I indicated that I wasn’t too happy with ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs popping up every fifteen minutes whenever I watched a football game with my daughters in the room. I offered the further observation that a popular show targeted at teens, in which young people with no visible means of support spend several months getting drunk and jumping naked into hot tubs with strangers, was not “the real world.”

It’s one thing that Barack Obama has been largely AWOL on race relations since becoming the nation’s biggest black role model, but now he’s elevating part of the problem. “Inspiring” black children with the message that the police everywhere are naturally inclined to oppress them not only stokes division and racial resentment, it can’t help but undermine the rule of law by conditioning mistrust for one of the government entities that actually is essential to society. The Common invite highlights how yet another of the promises of Obama’s election was never more than a pipe dream: the promise that he would lead America into a post-racial age.

As the White House deals a devastating blow to one Obama conspiracy theory, leave it to leftists to dig up another one to browbeat allegedly-bigoted conservatives with. At the Daily Beast, pseudo-feminist Michelle Goldberg “traces the far-right history of the claim” that something funny’s going on with Barack Obama’s academic background:

Claims about Obama’s educational history date back to September 2008, when The Wall Street Journal attacked him for not releasing his school records, writing in an editorial, “Some think his transcript, if released, would reveal Mr. Obama as a mediocre student who benefited from racial preference.” Since then, Orly Taitz, queen of the birthers, has developed elaborate theories about Obama’s college years. As Taitz argues, Obama himself acknowledged that he was directionless when he started college. How, then, did he get himself accepted into the Ivy League?

Despite purporting to refute the right-wing “fever swamps,” Goldberg won’t actually reference the WSJ piece again, so it’s worth mentioning that it makes substantive points, among them that the ambiguity of Obama’s college days doesn’t square with the prominence of his personal story in his claim to fame. And as Andy McCarthy points out, Obama has a habit of modifying details of his biography for different audiences. (Ace has more solid analysis of Obama’s college days here.)

But not a peep about any of this from Goldberg. Instead of addressing what serious Obama critics have said, she spends the next couple paragraphs shooting down the theories of Orly Taitz, an especially destructive Birther attorney, who speculates that Obama attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student, attended for a mere nine months instead of two years, and even that he got into Harvard Law thanks to the machinations of a Saudi prince.

Whatever the fact-to-crap ratio of Taitz’s allegations may be (the Saudi connection seems outlandish, but the explanation of the National Student Clearinghouse rep, who says Taitz got bad results from submitting queries to NSC’s database incorrectly, doesn’t seem adequate either), it’s ultimately a sideshow. The point is, Goldberg is making clowns like Orly Taitz the face of the opposition rather than McCarthy or the Wall Street Journal editorial board because she wants to delegitimize their argument without addressing it. Why? Why else—race-baiting:

It’s easy enough to see why this particular narrative has endured. Not only does it position the president as a Muslim Manchurian candidate with longtime ties to agents of the caliphate, but it also assures resentful whites that this seemingly brilliant black man isn’t so smart after all. In that sense, it’s of a piece with the right-wing obsession with Obama’s use of a teleprompter, and with the widespread suspicion that he didn’t really write the eloquent Dreams From My Father, a claim Trump recently made at a Tea Party rally. Obama, in this view, is both sinister and stupid, canny enough to perpetrate one of the biggest frauds in American history but still the ultimate affirmative-action baby.

Trump is clearly not as intelligent as Obama, but he’s not an idiot, either. When he blows this particular dog whistle, he knows exactly what the Republican base is hearing.

No, the Right’s desire to knock Obama’s brain down a peg is a reaction to the endless mainstream media narrative that conservatives and Republicans are morons, while Obama is a genius (indeed, look no further than Goldberg’s own unsupported claim that Donald Trump’s intellect “clearly” pales in comparison to The One’s). To demonstrate the absurdity of claiming this is about Obama’s race, let’s perform a little thought experiment.

Imagine for a moment that instead of black Democrat President Barack Obama, we currently have white Democrat President Barry Osborn, who, aside from his racial and ethnic background, is identical to Obama in every way—same handling of the economy, same healthcare plan, same treatment of Israel, and the same positions on abortion, guns, etc. Then take any of the claims listed above—the president isn’t that bright, he didn’t write his book, he’s helpless without a teleprompter. Regardless of their particular merits, simply ask yourself: do you really think we’d be treating Osborn any more favorably than Obama? Do you think we’d pull these punches against a white ideological opponent, or be more open to left-wing ideas just because they came from a white leftist?

Of course not. Leftists understood from the start that Obama’s skin color would make a potent weapon for smearing opponents instead of engaging their ideas, which is exactly what Michelle Goldberg has done here.

Israel isn’t racist: Just ask black people.  The one good thing to come out of Israel Apartheid Week is a letter from the Vanguard Leadership Group (VLG) that all but essentially calls Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) liars who seek to inflame and popularize the stereotype that Zionism is racism.

To the 16 leaders of VLG hailing from “historically black colleges and universities” the use of the term “apartheid” in conjunction with Israel is not only incorrect, it is insulting.  “Black South Africans could not vote and had no rights,” the VLG explains, in comparison to the Arab minority in Israel “which enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in government.”  Moreover, to the VLG, the SJP’s attempt to define Israel as an apartheid State is nothing more than a “transparent” strategy that easily reveals the pro-Palestine organization’s true motives: to delegitimize Israel on the world stage.

The VLG’s statement was published as an advertisement that “appeared in newspapers on campuses that saw Israel Apartheid Week activity in February, including Brown University, UCLA, Columbia University and the University of Maryland.”  A few unnamed colleges refused to carry the ad in their campus papers, feeling the language was too inflammatory—or, perhaps, that the truth is too painful.

The radical Left’s criticism of the Vanguard Leadership Group’s statement is, to borrow the latter’s descriptor, as transparent as are their claims of Israeli apartheid.  These young future leaders of America are held in comparison to the likes of “seasoned anti-apartheid activists who resisted injustice and suffered for it,” like Desmond “The Jewish Lobby is very powerful” Tutu and Arafat’s “comrade in arms” Nelson Mandela.  The VLG leaders are also depicted as the owners of a “cryptic” website that is “peppered” with references to the group’s relationship with AIPAC and visits to the Israeli Knesset.

The conclusion: The student leaders of the Vanguard Leadership Group who signed the advertisement are too privileged to understand the real meaning of apartheid; having naively parlayed their unearned affluence into certain political relationships, they have merely become tools of the “Jewish Lobby.”  In past generations, these kids would’ve simply been defined using a slew of racial epithets too ugly to mention here.  It’s nice to see that the Left does take a cue from their own Politically Correct playbook once in a while, at least when it comes to dressing up their rhetoric for print.

Lest criticism from the Jewish Left be ignored, The Magnes Zionist jumped on the Left’s “They’re just funded by AIPAC” bandwagon with this gem of an insight: “let’s not forget that the only groups with money to take out full-page ads are Israel advocates”—I guess Soros’s billions are busy being poured into Obama’s re-election campaign.  Magnes also carefully pointed out the distinction between the Israeli (read: Jewish) attitude toward Arabs in Israel proper versus that of the Palestinians in the “occupied territories”.  Calling Israeli security measures in the West Bank an “insult to apartheid,” the writer explains in thoroughly sanctimonious prose:

“The situation in the Occupied Territories is not apartheid. The Blacks in South Africa were considered South African. Inferior, but South African. They were not completely segregated from Whites; they did not have their own roads. In Israel, nobody views the Palestinians as part of their country, only their lands and resources.”

Nothing justifies your argument more than delegitimizing your opponents by re-defining the term in question.  For those of us in the real world, apartheid is defined as “a policy or system of segregation on the grounds of race.”  In Israel’s case, erecting a fence, setting up checkpoints, and putting soldiers on duty has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with national security.  But it’s not poor Magnes’s fault; after all, if he were to acknowledge the real race issue inherent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he’d have to point out that the terrorist organizations operating in the West Bank and Gaza are the groups that want to “drive the Jews into the sea.”

But, the Left has its own playbook and its own rulebook; why not have its own dictionary as well?  How very apropos, then, that the Vanguard Leadership Group’s advertisement was entitled Words Do Matter: Unfortunately, when it comes to the Left’s incessant defense of Palestinian terrorism, words may matter, but definitions do not.

Israel isn’t racist: Just ask black people.  The one good thing to come out of Israel Apartheid Week is a letter from the Vanguard Leadership Group (VLG) that all but essentially calls Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) liars who seek to inflame and popularize the stereotype that Zionism is racism.

To the 16 leaders of VLG hailing from “historically black colleges and universities” the use of the term “apartheid” in conjunction with Israel is not only incorrect, it is insulting.  “Black South Africans could not vote and had no rights,” the VLG explains, in comparison to the Arab minority in Israel “which enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in government.”  Moreover, to the VLG, the SJP’s attempt to define Israel as an apartheid State is nothing more than a “transparent” strategy that easily reveals the pro-Palestine organization’s true motives: to delegitimize Israel on the world stage.

The VLG’s statement was published as an advertisement that “appeared in newspapers on campuses that saw Israel Apartheid Week activity in February, including Brown University, UCLA, Columbia University and the University of Maryland.”  A few unnamed colleges refused to carry the ad in their campus papers, feeling the language was too inflammatory—or, perhaps, that the truth is too painful.

The radical Left’s criticism of the Vanguard Leadership Group’s statement is, to borrow the latter’s descriptor, as transparent as are their claims of Israeli apartheid.  These young future leaders of America are held in comparison to the likes of “seasoned anti-apartheid activists who resisted injustice and suffered for it,” like Desmond “The Jewish Lobby is very powerful” Tutu and Arafat’s “comrade in arms” Nelson Mandela.  The VLG leaders are also depicted as the owners of a “cryptic” website that is “peppered” with references to the group’s relationship with AIPAC and visits to the Israeli Knesset.

The conclusion: The student leaders of the Vanguard Leadership Group who signed the advertisement are too privileged to understand the real meaning of apartheid; having naively parlayed their unearned affluence into certain political relationships, they have merely become tools of the “Jewish Lobby.”  In past generations, these kids would’ve simply been defined using a slew of racial epithets too ugly to mention here.  It’s nice to see that the Left does take a cue from their own Politically Correct playbook once in a while, at least when it comes to dressing up their rhetoric for print.

Lest criticism from the Jewish Left be ignored, The Magnes Zionist jumped on the Left’s “They’re just funded by AIPAC” bandwagon with this gem of an insight: “let’s not forget that the only groups with money to take out full-page ads are Israel advocates”—I guess Soros’s billions are busy being poured into Obama’s re-election campaign.  Magnes also carefully pointed out the distinction between the Israeli (read: Jewish) attitude toward Arabs in Israel proper versus that of the Palestinians in the “occupied territories”.  Calling Israeli security measures in the West Bank an “insult to apartheid,” the writer explains in thoroughly sanctimonious prose:

“The situation in the Occupied Territories is not apartheid. The Blacks in South Africa were considered South African. Inferior, but South African. They were not completely segregated from Whites; they did not have their own roads. In Israel, nobody views the Palestinians as part of their country, only their lands and resources.”

Nothing justifies your argument more than delegitimizing your opponents by re-defining the term in question.  For those of us in the real world, apartheid is defined as “a policy or system of segregation on the grounds of race.”  In Israel’s case, erecting a fence, setting up checkpoints, and putting soldiers on duty has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with national security.  But it’s not poor Magnes’s fault; after all, if he were to acknowledge the real race issue inherent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he’d have to point out that the terrorist organizations operating in the West Bank and Gaza are the groups that want to “drive the Jews into the sea.”

But, the Left has its own playbook and its own rulebook; why not have its own dictionary as well?  How very apropos, then, that the Vanguard Leadership Group’s advertisement was entitled Words Do Matter: Unfortunately, when it comes to the Left’s incessant defense of Palestinian terrorism, words may matter, but definitions do not.

Editor’s Note: Diane Schrader attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat earlier this month and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the fourth; the third, on stealth jihad, can be read here; the second, Separation of Mosque and State, is here; the first, Dennis Prager’s comments on how God’s doing, is here.

My first post from the David Horowitz retreat poked a little fun at Obama thinking he’s God. Nah, he (probably) doesn’t think he’s God. He does, however, seem to think that America is his personal empire. This approach to government was of course a hot topic at the retreat, as speaker after speaker unpacked the dismal failures of the Obama administration. At the top of everyone’s agenda? How to end his “reign.”

There was plenty of disagreement – not as much about particular candidates as about overall strategy. Author Ralph Peters offered the most divergent viewpoints – for instance, opining that President Obama’s Libya strategy should be given a chance and is not all bad. Nevertheless, calling Obama a second rate man of first rate charisma, he offered advice about nominating a candidate – urging conservatives to stop administering “litmus tests” and to purge the phrase “RINO” from their vocabulary. This advice stood in sharp contrast to that offered by Congressman Tom McClintock, who reminded conservatives of the dangers of RINOs and said “we win when we act like us.”

Author Mickey Kaus counseled a populist approach for Republicans, marrying the fight against public unions with a fight against “Wall Street interests.” Mr. Kaus is wrong on that one – the Wall Street issue is complex and not currently in the public eye. Republicans do need to frame the debate on public sector unions to highlight how it’s a battle for the (true) working man – the one who has to work till he’s 70 to support his government worker neighbor who gets a bigger paycheck and retires at 50.

Another perspective was offered by Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, who, while disavowing the corruption of his own party, cautioned Republicans against acting stupid. Referring to the 2010 elections and recent events, he said he’s “never seen a party win so big and cave so fast.” Caddell reminded GOP strategists that they should hit Obama where he is vulnerable – the incompetence of his explanation for Libya, for example (Victor Davis Hanson, in referring to the Obama Doctrine, said “there is none!”).

While confessing a fondness for the straight talk of a Chris Christie, Caddell emphasized that at this point Republicans should be standing firm on the issues they consider important, and letting the potential candidates emerge from that process. Caddell also issued a pointed warning to the GOP: “The American people and the Tea Party are not to be mocked.” I agree – and point out that if Tea Partiers feel mocked, things are going to get ugly for many Republicans (as rhetoric surrounding this week’s budget deal made crystal clear).

Virtually everyone agreed throughout the weekend that “it’s the economy, stupid”… but that terror concerns are also growing. Potential presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann told attendees that President Reagan’s success stemmed from his emphasis on these twin pillars of prosperity and national security.

Speaking of national security, pollster John McLaughlin noted that concern over external threats is bigger now that at any time since the Cold War. These concerns were vividly brought to life by James Carafano of the Heritage Institute, who screened the movie “33 Minutes” – which refers to the time it would take a ballistic missile to reach our shores from any number of hostile nations currently attempting to build nuclear weapons. The movie is a powerful argument in favor of a solid missile defense program – something Obama has allowed to lapse.

On another front, law professor John Eastman discussed the President’s unconstitutional penchant for ignoring the legislative process and forcing his agenda via executive order, creating more and more unaccountable government bureaucracies. Eastman also noted that Obama is ignoring the non-delegation doctrine in allowing, in some cases, private agencies (of a leftist bent) to in effect run federal agencies.

Obama’s insane job-killing agenda was unpacked in detail. Finance experts David Newton and Ben Horowitz (yes, that’s David’s son) outlined the oh-so-simple path to economic recovery: cut taxes, cut spending, cut regulations, and expand domestic oil. In other words, pretty much the polar opposite of everything Obama stands for.

As for the 2012 race, there was some discussion among attendees as to whether Godfather Pizza magnate Herman Cain would be an attractive choice – a black Republican vs. a (half) black Democrat. Racial issues were not, however, much of a factor in weekend discussions – although well-known investment strategist Charles Payne did note that Obama has certainly failed to bring us together. He pointed to “serious divisions fanned by the highest office in the country,” the politics of envy, and the misplaced sense of entitlement engendered in young people, particularly those in recognized victim groups. As a black child, he was involved in programs, ostensibly aimed at reducing poverty, that “tell you every day that ‘they’ don’t like you, that you’re a victim.”

Again, while most speakers were taking a wait-and-see approach about specific Republican candidates (many names were not mentioned at all over the weekend’s many panels) – the discussion of disastrous Obama policy, including incoherent approaches to China and Israel, underscored why he’s “got to go.” Making that a reality will take courage – something shown by Paul Ryan when he unveiled his budget plan that of course took on the “sacred cow” of entitlements. Although some conference attendees expressed concern over alienating voters with this type of action, Congressman Ed Royce said that’s exactly why GOP legislators were elected – and they can’t wait till 2012 to take action. That principled approach should help Republicans, not hurt them, if conservatives can get out the message that they’re helping all working people by ensuring the entire system doesn’t collapse under its own weight.

Alas, Andrea Mitchell still hasn’t gotten the memo. NewsBusters’ Alex Fitzsimmons reports that the MSNBC host and her Democrat guest see the specter of bigotry behind Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) 2012 budget proposal:

“Representative Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget, released today, includes reforms, what they call reforms, and also big cuts in housing assistance, job training, and food stamps,” warned Mitchell. “All of which would have a very big impact on particularly poor and minority communities, some say.”

Mitchell was mum as Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) bandied ludicrous assertions about the 2012 Republican budget, which would slash spending by nearly $6 trillion over 10 years mostly by reforming unsustainable health care entitlement programs.

“It’s clearly a nervous breakdown on paper and it will do enormous damage, I think, to the vulnerable populations of this country,” predicted the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, who added that the House Budget Chairman’s proposed cuts to non-defense discretionary spending would “devastate the poor,” particularly in America’s racial minority groups.

Citing a concise Jennifer Rubin piece, Fitzsimmons points out that the Ryan plan’s welfare reductions are modest by historical standards, and that it in fact merely “pare[s] back such programs to 2008 levels.” If anything, it sounds like the Ryan plan can be best described as a welcome opening act, but not enough to escape the hole we’ve dug for ourselves. CATO’s Michael Tanner writes that it “cuts spending by $6.2 trillion over the next ten years” yet “still adds $6 trillion to the national debt.”

Whatever the merits or shortcomings may be, crying discrimination about attempts to seriously address the problem are as unserious and irresponsible as they are dishonest and malevolent. Of course the many people who are currently getting money from Uncle Sam would like to keep it coming, but if we can’t afford it, we can’t afford it. Do Mitchell and Cleaver not believe balancing the budget is a necessity? If so, then please, show us where else to come up with the money (and no, “tax the rich” is neither more noble nor more practical). That they instead choose the tired, worn route of casting privileged white Republicans against downtrodden minorities suggests that they simply don’t care. No wonder a whopping 25% of the country has confidence in our media.

Fortunately, this is where leftists collide with the law of diminishing returns. The first few times you allege racism, you’ll turn heads. But new acts of “racism” popping up every day? There are that many outright bigots thriving in government, on TV and radio, and in the newspapers, and enough Americans are okay with it to sustain their careers? That’s harder to swallow. It becomes increasingly obvious that all the label really means is “I hate you and what you stand for.” The more people realize that the accusers don’t take the label seriously, the more they’ll stop taking it seriously, as well. If everything is racist, nothing is.

What is there not to love about Rahm Emanuel? He’s the proud owner-operator of one of the foulest mouths in politics, he doesn’t have to live in a city to win its mayoral race, he’s linked to countless cases of political corruption and he’s given the world one of the most overused phrases in politics: Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste (NLAGCGTW).

Ol’ Rahm did us all a favor, in a way. That phrase has been a leftist modus operandi for years, but Americans were largely unaware of the strategy until Rahm let the cat out of the bag.

The Left’s reaction to one of the most potent natural disasters to ever strike a Western nation – the earthquake and accompanying tsunami that has devastated Japan – is merely the latest proof that, for leftists, Rahm’s Law is on a par with one of the ten biblical commandments. (Come to think of it, it’s way more important than biblical commandments, since leftists break those with frequent and casual disregard.)

Leftist reaction to this event-of-biblical-proportions has ranged from crass opportunism to bald-faced deceit to unhinged hysteria. Welcome to the Japan Edition of NLAGCGTW:

No more nukes? How about no more lies?

5. Nuclear energy is safe

This response could not have been more predictable.

As Japan raced to ensure its nuclear reactors were contained, the drumbeat from the “no coal-no oil-no nukes-know nothing” crowd heated up. These are the permanent Fantasyland residents who want us to power our world with sunlight, cool breezes, and magical pixie dust. For this granola-for-brains crowd, any excuse to shut down nuclear power is a good one, because they simply refuse to consider facts.

For instance, the fact that Ted Kennedy killed more people than American nuclear power plants ever have.

Yup, that’s a fact, all right, even after (pause for dramatic effect) THREE MILE ISLAND.

Here’s another interesting one. By living your life in Denver, Colorado, you are exposed to more radiation (because of radon) than people in New York City. If all those people were forced to move to New York, 4800 lives could be saved! (Of course, different perils await in the Big Apple – can you die of high taxes, for instance?)

Anyway, this kind of reality-check is woefully underutilized by our friends in the “old media,” who have been shamelessly parroting the leftist talking point that Japan “proves” we need to get rid of nuclear power plants. After all, this is Japan’s Chernobyl! (Line best delivered with breathless and alarmed sincerity.)

So let us take a moment to actually consider the facts about Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history by far. Dr. Jay Lehr, science director at the Heartland Institute, explains:

“(At) Chernobyl, where there was no containment structure… 10 years later when all the facts were in, there were less than 10 fatalities from that explosion – only people right near the plant were affected by the radiation. A thousand people got leukemia, 998 were cured… It was predicted that tens of thousands of people would get cancer… this never happened. This is not an atomic bomb and people don’t understand a nuclear reactor is something very different than an atomic bomb.”

No one is denying that being killed in an explosion in a nuclear plant (well, being killed in any explosion, actually) is horrible. Nor is radiation poisoning an attractive fate. However, as Dr. Lehr pointed out, nuclear power plant accidents are not akin to atomic bombs; nor are the results similar in any way, shape or form.

That isn’t stopping the Leftmeisters from attempting to make hay with Japan’s nuclear plants, however. Keith Olbermann, ranting to the minuscule audience that reads his pathetic Fox News-mocking blog, said that nuclear power plants are “doomsday machines.” Doomsday machines! Keith – are the transformer robots coming to get us, too? Good grief. No over-the-top hysteria or fearmongering there!

There is a great deal of common sense out there for those calm and intelligent enough to consider it. I invite Olby and his legion of fans (all 37 of them) to consider this – or this, written in language that even a leftist can understand. Hey you guys, it has colorful pictures, too – always a plus!

Next: Biggest damage? Reaction to the reactor. Here’s another fact to help you win every argument on the nuclear crisis in Japan…

One of the most iconic movies of my teenage years was Say Anything. The 1989 film starred John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler, a young underachiever who decides to ask out Diane Court, the valedictorian of his senior class. After their relationship gets serious, Diane breaks up with Lloyd under pressure from her father. After the breakup, in an act of total desperation, Lloyd stands under Diane’s bedroom window, holding a boom box over his head with “their” song, Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” blasting from the speakers.

As Lloyd Dobler proved to us in that famous scene, desperation leads people to do some pretty unreasonable, and often stupid, things, no matter what the reason. That’s exactly how the Left is these days. Unable to debate conservatives on the merits of their issues, many Leftists have resorted to straw-grabbing tactics like name calling. When a Leftist is losing an argument, or when the Right chooses to do what the Left won’t, elite Leftists, those self-professed bastions of nuance and intelligence, often jump up to cry “racism” or “bigotry.” We’ve seen it most recently in the furor over the recent congressional hearings on radical Islam, among countless other events.

Now, it seems, the Left’s desperation is getting even worse, as Leftists are scraping the bottom of the barrel for opportunities to level accusations of bigotry. On his blog this weekend, Vanity Fair contributing editor James Wolcott had the audacity to try to make a link between conservatives’ praise of the lack of looting in Japan and racism. Wolcott wrote:

Last week I noticed a bevy of conservative commentators, such as Glenn Beck, piously lowering their voices and paying tribute to the calm and resilience of the Japanese people in their time of trauma, emphasizing that there had been “no looting” in the aftermath of so much destruction and disarray.

Yes, the Japanese people have conducted themselves admirably in a tremendous crisis. On that we can all agree.

But these tributes were thin envelopes for another, different, domestically-targeted message.

[...]

And the real message of those tributes was, There’s been no looting in Japan because they don’t have black people running amuck and ransacking. The Japanese know how to behave; you-know-who doesn’t… Much as the righties might profess otherwise, they were transmitting in their usual racial code.

Of course, couched within these allegations of racism are cheap shots in which Wolcott accuses us on the Right of being devoid of subtlety because we lack “refinement and sensibility”, which of course is ironic — another quality he says that conservatives do not possess — because his message that conservatives are racists is about as subtle as a two by four swung directly at someone’s head.

It is absolutely shameless for Wolcott to mine the unspeakable horror and tragedy in Japan for an opportunity to level charges of racism at conservatives. In the midst of an event that has left potentially tens of thousands of people dead and countless more missing, the Japanese people have acted nobly and bravely. Yet the only takeaway that Wolcott and his ilk get from the earthquake and tsunami is that the Right is exhibiting latent racism when pointing out the apparent absence of looting by the Japanese.

Next: Going after Glenn Beck…

The 1.1 million-member United Church of Christ (UCC) is trying to raise $50,000 for a media campaign, including a newspaper ad in the Phoenix newspaper The Arizona Republic, to blast that state’s new immigration enforcement law. Church prelates hope the ad will appear on May 29, when reputedly 500,000 will march in Phoenix against the law.

As America’s most left-wing Christian denomination, the fast declining UCC’s zeal for political activism perhaps compensates for its lack of evangelism. Having lost about half its members in recent decades, and several hundred congregations in recent years, the 1.1 million member denomination, at least as expressed by its elites, unapologetically plunges ahead with the latest causes du jour.

“God’s love knows no borders” the proposed ad will sermonize, as though that point were the issue. The UCC’s top bureaucrat for “Justice and Witness Ministries” is also prominently quoted in the ad draft, asserting:  “It is now legal for Arizona’s law enforcement to single people out because of the color of their skin, the language of their ancestors, their place of, or even the way they dress.”  She further snidely alleges:  “When racism raises its ugly head and our nation’s core justice values are at stake, fear cannot be an excuse to remain silent.”

When the Religious Left alleges racism, it’s usually because it has so few other arguments at its disposal.  In the mid-20th century, liberal Mainline Protestantism waged serious moral campaigns against authentic racism, and on behalf of other admirable causes.  Now an embarrassing shadow of once prestigious religious institutions, left-leaning Mainline Protestants have exhausted most of their Christian moral capital.  When they speak politically, they typically only spout bumper sticker slogans that slam their targets as racists, militarists, or exploitative profiteers.

“This law is nothing less than a modern day Jim Crow law of the 19th and 20th centuries,” virtually shrieked UCC President Geoffrey Black in the immediate aftermath of the Arizona law enforcement law’s passage.  He insisted:  “The immigrant rights struggle is a contemporary civil rights struggle!”  In typical fashion, he did not differentiate between illegal and legal immigrants, making his own sweeping ethnic assumption that all Hispanic immigrants, and their U.S. born descendants, essentially think alike.  That many legal immigrants themselves favor immigration law enforcement is a possibility not recognized by the Religious Left, which is too busy advocating its mainly WASP theoretical version of multiculturalism to ponder what immigrants themselves actually want.

Rev. Black claimed the new Arizona law will mandate “racial profiling of persons of color” that will assault the “rights of women, men and children, citizens and non-citizens alike.”   But what of the rights of women, men and children of all races in Arizona who expect a lawful society that regulates who can enter their state from outside the U.S. border?   Of course, the main victims of uncontrolled illegal immigration, who are legal immigrants, and the native born working class, do not typically constitute the constituency of the upper middle class, and almost all white, Anglo UCC or other Mainline Protestant denominations.  The UCC is among the most blue blooded of America’s old-line churches, having descended literally from the Pilgrim Fathers and the New England Puritans.

Like its 17th Puritan preacher ancestors, the UCC loves to inveigh against perceived evils.  But while the Puritans primarily were concerned about the sin in their own hearts, the theologically modernist UCC is mostly focused on lambasting perceived sin in other people’s hearts.  “We urge our brothers and sisters in the United Christ of Christ and our faith partners to resist hate, and insist that just immigration reform embodies our Christian understanding to love our neighbors,” Rev. Black implored.

“We call upon the President of the United States and members of Congress to enact comprehensive immigration legislation that protects the rights of all who reside in the United States.”  Do illegal immigrants have the same rights to residence and government services as citizens and legal immigrants, in the UCC/Religious Left perspective?  Apparently so.

Reportedly, the UCC has already raised most of what it needs for the Arizona Republic newspaper ad.  Now it wants some additional dollars for Spanish language ads.  Few UCC members are Spanish speaking, and Arizona’s Hispanics are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and Evangelical, primarily Pentecostal.  No liberal-led mainline denomination has successfully appealed to large numbers of Hispanics.  And the UCC lost much of its Spanish speaking membership when its Puerto Rico Conference officially withdrew from the UCC in 2006 to protest the UCC’s support for same-sex marriage.

“Across the church, we have heard eagerness that the United Church of Christ respond publicly in Arizona with a message that resonates both pastorally and prophetically to this unjust new law,” Rev Black explained to his denominational news service.  ”At the same time, we need to prepare a long-term response strategy that prepares us for the multiple legislative battles over immigration that will take place in the coming months and years.”  The UCC naturally is concerned about immigration law enforcement proposals in other states.  Rev. Black has encouraged “meaningful and respectful” debate on immigration even as he has called his labeled his opponents as racist and hateful.

Meanwhile, the UCC’s Southwest Conference has urged, by an apparently narrow vote while meeting in Sedona, Arizona, a virtual economic boycott against Arizona to punish it for immigration law enforcement.  ”We are profoundly disturbed by the passage of the harshest anti-immigrant legislation in the country by the Arizona Legislature,” this conference wrote in a public letter President Obama and other officials. “It is legislation such as this that codifies racial profiling and creates an atmosphere of suspicion, hatred, and scapegoating of immigrants and U.S citizens.”  The Southwest Conference represents about 50 congregations mostly in Arizona and New Mexico.  Its meeting “immediately went into a time of prayer for the soul of Arizona and all people who reside here” upon learning of Arizona’s “unjust and racist law,” against which it pledged “non-compliance.”

Posturing by Religious Left elites like the UCC’s prelates will not likely affect the enforcement of Arizona’s immigration law.  But the UCC’s vapid and histrionic rhetoric further expose the moral vacuity of the Religious Left’s emptying churches.

Once I get home, I will be more happy to give you a firsthand account of what I have seen over here. For example, the US rebuilding effort had an Iraqi contractor who was hired to build a school. It was later found out that he blew the school up shortly after its completion and immediately submitted a bid for a rebuild contract. Al-Qaeda was blamed for the bombing.

There are several Iraqi contractors who have received advances for rebuilding contracts (in the millions!) and then vanished to Luxembourg or the US, never to be seen again! Might I add that at BIAP (Baghdad In'tl), non-locals are held on the tarmac while Arabs board the plane. They also charge "us" 15 dollars to leave the airport, but you can clearly see Iraqis going straight to security and bypassing the payment counter. Racism at its best!

At the cost of how many billions of U.S. taxpayer money?