Enough already! Maureen Dowd and race, Part III

I am sorry if it seems that I am picking on Maureen Dowd, but she just provides so much fodder for my posts. I must say, she is a great writer (hence my regularly reading her), but she is a perfect example of what is wrong with liberals today. They constantly tell us to look past race and gender, that we are living in a "post-racial" America, yet just as constantly remind us of the race and gender of this or that person, as if this will tell us all we need to know about his or her thought process and values.

People's Exhibit C, Your Honor (Exhibits A and B have already been discussed): Maureen Dowd's September 15, 2009 column in the New York Times. In her second column on the subject of Rep. Joe Wilson's disrespectful "You lie!" outburst at President Obama, she continues her theory that what was really behind the accusation was racism. Her proof? Nothing, except her conviction that "black members of Congress were fed up" with "sulfurous attitudes towards the first black president." She quotes former President Jimmy Carter, who was equally convinced that the overwhelming animosity towards President Obama is "based on the fact that he is a black man."

If you were paying attention during the 2008 election, you knew this was bound to happen. It had to. Barack Obama was so built up as the first black president, that it came to totally define him. Not that he was a president armed with arguably the flimsiest of public records coming into the White House. Not that he was undoubtedly the first leftist (not liberal, but leftist) person to occupy the Oval Office. He was a black man, and that was all anyone needed to know. Any attack on him, I predicted to friends, would be seen as racist, no matter how documented the charge. Liberal blacks (the "liberal" label being almost a redundancy) are immune from any kind of attack. Conservative blacks have no protection whatsoever (see Thomas, Justice Clarence; Blackwell, Ken; Keyes, Alan et al).

Note to liberals: Stop assuming that whenever conservatives attack one of yours, the reason is due to that person's race or gender. You focus on those externalities much more than we do. For us, values are paramount. For you, if you know a person's race, gender, or social class, you feel you know all you have to about him or her. We're a bit deeper than that. Ever noticed that conservatives hardly ever accuse liberals of attacking one of theirs on the basis of race or gender? An exception might be Sarah Palin, but that was because the attacks on her were so overtly directed at her gender. Nothing riles up liberals more than a conservative black, Hispanic, woman, or homosexual. Those groups belong to the liberals, no matter how many policies liberals support which hurt those groups (the topic of another posting; stay tuned!).

So, write on Ms. Dowd! But let's try and hold onto the race card for a few weeks, shall we?

J Street - Helplessly naive on Iran

In August, I posted a cartoon by Dana Summers of the Orlando Sentinel, depicting Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korea's Kim Jong Ill hammering away on a nuclear bomb, as they say to Barack Obama, "You don't mind if we work while we talk, do you?" That cartoon really summed it up for me. President Obama, and his fellow leftists/liberals, subscribe to the belief that no matter how evil a person may be, there is always some carrot one can offer him to change his ways. They say, "You can't only talk to your friends! You must also talk to your enemies!" It sounds great, in theory, but so did Communism.

Enter J Street, the leftist/liberal answer to AIPAC. They have released a position statement on how best to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions. Here are some selections, with my comments:

• "...we are outraged at the Iranian regime’s apparent vote fraud..." - Apparent? Apparent? To say that the Iranian vote was apparently fraudulent is like saying that pro wrestling in America is apparently rigged. Everyone knows the vote was rigged. Everyone, that is, except for, apparently, J Street. MSNBC knew it. CNN knew it. Even the New York Times knew it, quoting an Interior Ministry worker who said the fraud had been planned "for weeks." But J Street describes the fraud perpetrated as "apparent."
• "The international community must, in the words of the President, “bear witness” to the disturbing events taking place right now in Iran." - "Bear witness," eh? "Bearing witness" does not usually help those in need. Usually, those in need require others to stand up on their behalf and deliver them from oppressors. The international community "bore witness" to the genocide in Rwanda, the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the mass starvation of Ukranians, and continues to "bear witness" to the slaughter in Darfur. An international, or unilateral, military force might work better than merely "bearing witness."
• [Should President Obama involve himself further in the Iranian election issue, it will be] "perceived [as the] US meddling in internal Iranian affairs." - Here is what President Obama had to say about the Iranian election results: "The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching." Yes, Mr. President, as you suggested, the world is "bearing witness." "...free speech must be respected..." Excellent suggestion to a tyrannical regime. Excellent. "...the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights." Yes, by "bearing witness." Not exactly let's-make-Ahmadinejad-quake-in-his-boots-statements, right? But here was Ahmadinejad's reaction, as reported by CNN: "Do you think that this kind of behavior is going to solve any of your problems? It will only make people think you are someone like Bush." Priceless. Barack Obama is compared to George W. Bush by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And J Street insists that President Obama might be accused of "meddling" should he "involve himself more directly." He didn't, yet was still accused.
• "As the leadership struggle in Iran continues, we suggest that a tactical pause be considered in the United States’ diplomatic outreach efforts and a hold be placed on any new sanctions against the Iranian government." - Is J Street seriously in the dark as to whom will emerge victorious in the "leadership struggle"? Ahmadinejad's side has guns. Moussavi's doesn't. Guns win.
  
• "...we take note of the recent US national intelligence assessment, placing a possible Iranian nuclear weapons capacity in 2013..." (Actually, the NIE suggests it could be as early as 2010. Read the report. Folks, that's next year. But what's three years between friends?) And if they're wrong, and Iran gets the bomb earlier? What will J Street say? "Oops! Our bad!" When one is dealing with a government like Iran's, which has expressed its desire to wipe out another nation, and which is building a nuclear bomb, it is advised to deal with such a threat seriously, and not hope that said threatening nation is really a few years off from having nuclear weapons capabilities. Then, it will be too late. But J Street will still be able to say, "At least we tried, right?" A nation can not threaten another with extinction, proceed to build a nuclear bomb, and expect no reaction from the threatened nation.
• "Under the current circumstances, it is our view that ever harsher sanctions at this time are unlikely to cause the Iranian regime to cease weapons development. In fact, tougher sanctions, let alone military action, are only likely to strengthen the resolve of Iranian hardliners to pursue weapons development and confrontation with the United States." - So Iran keeps breaking the rules, the United States will do nothing except negotiate, and this will stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear bomb? Only liberals could come up with such logic. In truth, what will cause Iranian hardliners to pursue weapons development is not "tougher sanctions" or "military action," but rather the perception that America (not Europe) is weak, and that the Obama Administration will endlessly negotiate, no matter what Iran does. When the sharks smell blood, as they do now, they will close in for the kill.

When one reads pieces like this from groups like J Street, one has to wonder how much longer western civilization can last with such thinking. The naivete is breathtaking. History be damned. Just because endless negotiations with dictators never stopped them in the past, is no reason to believe it won't stop them in the future, right?

Maureen Dowd plays the race card...........again

In a previous posting, I noted that Maureen Dowd enjoys playing the race and gender card, even as she and her fellow liberals exhort the rest of us to see beyond someone's race, and that men and women are, sans anatomy, essentially the same. But now she is at it again. Does she not realize how foolish she is sounding recently? She may be very smart, but she is not wise. On Wednesday evening, September 9, 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) interrupted President Obama's speech on health care with a shout of, "You lie!" when the President claimed that Democratic health proposals would not cover illegal immigrants. Now there is a whole brouhaha over the lack of respect Rep. Wilson showed to the President. Was it the right thing to do? Probably not. Was it disrespectful? Yup. Would I have done it? Nope. I must say, though, it's a tad tamer than outburst I have seen from the House of Commons or the Israeli Knesset. President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said, "No President has ever been treated like that. Ever." Sorry, Mr. Emanuel, but President Andrew Johnson was treated like the Antichrist by the Radical Republicans after the Civil War, so let's not go overboard here.

But the piece de resistance goes to the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, who in her September 12, 2009 column claimed that Rep. Wilson's outburst was racially motivated. In her words, "...what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!"; "Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber"; "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it." In response, the White House claimed that race was not a factor in Rep. Wilson's outburst. When even the White House itself repudiates a New York Times' claim, you know something is awry. (By the way, why was Fox News the only media outlet to cover this part of the story? It can't be because the rest of the MSM agree with Ms. Dowd, right?)

Where to begin? During the campaign in 2008, we were inundated with claim after claim that if then-Sen. Obama would lose it would be due to his race (which is half-white, by the way. It's the half which raised him, and did not abandon him as a child.). By that logic, if John McCain would lose, would it not be due to his age, and those who did not vote for him were age-ists? The argument was so foolish, but made it was. I remember listening to NPR (as a conservative, I often listen to and read opposing viewpoints) back in August 2008, and wanting to rip the radio out of my car when Harvard Law Prof. Lani Guithier said that if Barack Obama would lose, it would mean that America "was still caught up in the original sin...of slavery." I screamed at the radio, "I am not not voting for him because he is black! I am not voting for him because I disagree with almost everything he stands for! If I agreed with a three-headed Martian, I'd vote for him! I care about values, not color!"

Why is it near-impossible for liberals to accept the reality that overwhelmingly, we conservatives disagree with President Obama because of his policies, and not because he is black? Are there racist conservatives? You bet. Are there racist liberals? Undoubtedly. But consistently, when liberals oppose a non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, candidate for office, it is always presented as principled opposition. When conservatives do it, it's because they are racist, misogynist, homophobic pigs.

Nobody ever said standing up for your principles was easy. Ms. Dowd, if Barack Obama were whiter than the whitest Office Depot copy paper, we conservatives would still oppose his policies. Unlike you and your friends, we believe values trump the liberal trinity of race, class, and gender.

Assaf Ramon ע"ה, son of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon זצ"ל, killed in training accident

Tragedy in Israel today: Assaf Ramon, the son of the late Israeli Air Force (IAF) pilot and astronaut, Ilan Ramon, was killed this morning (Sunday) when his F-16A fighter jet crashed in the southern Hebron hills. According to the Jerusalem Post, Assaf announced his intention to join the IAF after his father was killed in the Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed sorrow on behalf of the people of Israel to the Ramon family.

May the new Jewish year of 5770 bring comfort to the Ramon family, and only good news to all of Israel.