Thomas Sowell: Black and White, Left and Right

Thomas Sowell had a doctorate, so is indeed referred to as "Doctor". His pen name is simply "Thomas Sowell", but I had a conundrum: if I left out the honorific 'Doctor", would liberals have called me racist for diminishing Dr. Sowell? Or by referring to him as "Dr. Thomas Sowell", am I being patronizing and showing my racism?  Michelle Obama's response would have depended on her mood, er,...wait! Have I just been sexist? (Her mood swings decided her descriptions of a short lady asking for something on a top grocery shelf as funny on one TV talk show  and racist on another). What do I do? What DO I do?  TD
Oh, sorry; I forget why we were on this subject. Anyway. . . 

"The biggest difference between the left and right today, when it comes to racial issues, is that liberals tend to take the side of those blacks who are doing the wrong things -- hoodlums the left depicts as martyrs, while the right defends those blacks more likely to be the victims of those hoodlums."

Dr. Thomas Sowell   "Much is made of the fact that liberals and conservatives see racial issues differently, which they do. But these differences have too often been seen as simply those on the right being racist and those on the left not.

"You can cherry-pick the evidence to reach that conclusion. But you can also cherry-pick the evidence to reach the opposite conclusion.

"During the heyday of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, people on the left were in the forefront of those promoting doctrines of innate, genetic inferiority of not only blacks but also of people from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, as compared to people from Western Europe.

"Liberals today tend to either glide over the undeniable racism of Progressive President Woodrow Wilson or else treat it as an anomaly of some sort. But racism on the left at that time was not an anomaly, either for President Wilson or for numerous other stalwarts of the Progressive movement. . . . 

"Progressives spearheaded the eugenics movement, dedicated to reducing the reproduction of supposedly "inferior" individuals and races." . . .

Cadbury Drops The Word “Easter” From Their Easter Candy

"UPDATE: Cadbury Responds: “Easter Is On The Back Of The Treats”

Weasel Zippers

"PC claims another victim. Via Irish Central:"

Cadbury’s, Ireland’s leading chocolate manufacturer, is denying that the word “Easter” has been dropped from the packaging of their famous chocolate eggs this spring in an attempt to market their products in a more secular way.

A spokesperson from Cadbury’s told the Irish Independent that “Easter” was not prominently displayed on the chocolate egg packaging because they felt that “Easter” was implied by the product itself, denying that it was down to political or religious correctness.

“Most of our Easter eggs don’t say Easter or egg on the front as we don’t feel the need to tell people this – it is very obvious through the packaging that it is an Easter egg,” said the spokesperson.

Not only is “Easter” nowhere to be seen on the front of the boxes this year, but “Cadbury’s Easter Egg Trail Pack” has been replaced with “Cadbury Egg Hunt Pack” and the chocolate manufacturer’s Creme Egg product – commonly known to disappear from the shelves after Easter – shows no references to Easter in warnings of the deadline by which to scoop them up.

Keep reading…

Beam me up, Scotty. 

America's humiliation by Obama's Latin America trip.

To think, I had hoped if we just got Obama out of Washington that he could not damage this nation more. How could I have thought that?
If you elect the choice of Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayres, Al Sharpton and most of Hollywood, this is the kind of president you get. In fact, if Rev. Wright himself was POTUS, how could he have been more of a tool for dictators? The Tunnel Dweller.

Obama Embarrasses Nation with Visit to Cuba  "All the people that have risked their lives to come to the U.S. from Cuba were told that America is just as bad as their former country... and they were told this by President Obama no less!" Watch this video:

Obama Thinks Capitalism and Communism Are Only “Intellectual Arguments”

. . . "But as he finished I was truly horrified at what I’d heard." . . .

Brutal Video: 'The Obama Tango'

GOP senator hits Obama for trying to 'downplay' threat from ISIS

. . . "'Anything less will invite more aggression not only from Cuba, but others adversaries as well, who will see once again there’s no price to pay under President Obama for humiliating the United States,' he said."

And finally, just as we had predicted, President Ayres speaks:

Obama Apologizes to Argentina for CIA's "Early Dark Days"

. . . ""In the 1970s, Soviet communism and socialism was spreading rapidly throughout South America and the CIA created Operation Condor to help local right-wing groups such as the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance repel the Russian influence.  Politics aside, trying combat the spread of communism has never been easy and CIA agents did what was necessary to protect the United States.

"But rest assured, Obama, who swept in to save the day, gave a most sincere apology to Argentina on behalf of the "early dark days" of the CIA and the United States." . . .

"I will leave it up to you to decide who Obama was referring to when he said, "commemorate those who fought side-by-side with Argentinians for human rights.' "

 

Cheap grace and American hedonism

Patrice Lewis stresses Christians' need to 'work in the vineyard'

" .  . .anyone who objected was intimidated into silence, including many churches. An exception was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who helped found the Confessing Church in Germany. Since he refused to be intimidated into silence, he was imprisoned, sent to a concentration camp and later executed.

"But his words live on, especially his searing analysis of what he called “cheap grace” where he rebukes nominal Christians: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”

"Repentance is working in the vineyard. Discipline is working in the vineyard. This is God’s way, not our way. We can’t choose to do whatever we want as long as it feels good and expect to be rewarded for our decisions. We need repentance and discipline.

"Just some rambling thoughts on this Resurrection weekend. May you all be blessed by Jesus’ sacrifice."

Dancing with the Scars

HopeNChange Cartoons

"For the record, Hope n' Change wouldn't want any president of the United States to lose his cool and change his schedule in the face of every terrorist attack overseas. We would, however, like him to make a sincere show of sympathy, anger, resolute leadership and - oh yeah! -not act like a completely spineless dweeb when our allies are suffering and Americans have been injured and possibly killed.

"As a case in point, following the carnage in Brussels and the president's much-criticized appearance at a Cuban baseball game with new BFF Raul Castro, Obama (and his huge entourage) jetted off to Argentina  . . ."

Bill Clinton might look at this photo and think, "Man, next year that'll be me dancing with her!"

The beach in La Jolla; 1911

History Things

"Southern California has an amazing history. Now known for its beautiful topography and large cities, California has long been a crowded and expensive place to live. That wasn’t always the case. Long settled for a thousand years by native American tribes, California was first discovered by the outside world in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Spanish and soon claimed in her name. In 1891 it became part of Mexico till it was “liberated” in the Mexican-American war of 1848. It became the United States 31 state in 1850. The picture above shows that all the way till the early 1900’s, you could find more livestock on the beaches than people, a far cry from the modern California we know today."

CARLOS EIRE: OBAMA’S INGLORIOUS SPEECH

"The second context is the location where the speech was delivered, the so-called Great Theater of Havana, a building stolen from its proper owners and renamed to hide that fact. The Orwellian sleight-of-hand reified by the building’s new name mirrored in many ways what was most significant about the speech: its contrived avoidance of historical facts and present-day realities."

 

Power Line
("NOTE: Interested readers will also want to check out Professor Eire’s “Theater of the absurd in Havana: Dissidents meet with the Great Visitor.' ”)

"Carlos Eire is professor of history at Yale and author of the National Book Award-winning memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy. At Babalú Blog Professor Eire wrote a proposed speech for President Obama in Havana that was posted as“The speech never given, the op-ed never published”.  . . ."Seeking the opinion of Professor Eire on the speech Obama actually gave, I invited him to comment on it for Power Line readers. Professor Eire has graciously responded with the essay below; we are grateful to Professor Eire for the opportunity to publish his thoughts on the speech. Professor Eire writes:"

. . . "In Obama’s thinly disguised Marxist narrative there is a constant dialectic between an imperialist power (the United States) and an unjustly exploited subaltern (Cuba), and in this poisoned relationship, the United States is responsible for most of Cuba’s ills.

"The exploitation, said Obama, began with the Spanish-American War: “The blue waters beneath Air Force One once carried American battleships to this island — to liberate, but also to exert control over Cuba.”

"After that, with “control” over Cuba, the United States could not help but behave very badly. “Before 1959,” said Obma, “ some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit, ignored poverty, enabled corruption.”

"This is pure Castroite propaganda, which all Cubans born after 1959 have had force-fed to them as “history.” And in this false “history,” of course, it is always assumed that the Castro are the heroes who rescued Cubans from all of the exploitation.

"That an American president should parrot such lies tells us a lot about the character of such a president, and the real-world value of his speech to the enslaved Cuban people." . . .

A Gentle Reminder On Who We’re Voting Against

Earl of Taint

Hat tip to American Thinker

Krauthammer: Obama’s ideological holiday in Havana

Charles Krauthammer  "The split-screen told the story: on one side, images of the terror bombing in Brussels; on the other, Barack Obama doing the wave with Raul Castro at a baseball game in Havana. 

"On one side, the real world of rising global terrorism. On the other, the Obama fantasy world in which romancing a geopolitically insignificant Cuba — without an ounce of democracy or human rights yielded in return — is considered a seminal achievement of American diplomacy.

"Cuba wasn’t so much a legacy trip as a vanity trip, vindicating the dorm-room enthusiasms of one’s student days when the Sandinistas were cool, revolution was king and every other friend had a dog named Che.

"When Brussels intervened, some argued that Obama should have cut short his trip and come back home. I disagree. You don’t let three suicide bombers control the itinerary of the American president. Moreover, Obama’s next stop, Argentina, is actually important and had just elected a friendly government that broke from its long and corrupt Peronist past.

"Nonetheless, Obama could have done without the baseball. What kind of message does it send to be yukking it up with Raul even as Belgian authorities are picking body parts off the floor of the Brussels airport?" . . .

OBAMA: 'There's Little Difference Between Communism and Capitalism'...

"Just choose from what works"

. . . "For a more accurate breakdown of how capitalism beats socialism every time, watch the video below." . . .

Infowars  "President Obama has stoked controversy after he suggested to an audience of Argentinian youth that there was no great difference between communism and capitalism and that they should just “choose from what works”."

“ 'So often in the past there has been a division between left and right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate,” Obama said.

“ 'Those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it really fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works,” he added.

"Obama went on to praise Cuba’s socialist system under dictator Raúl Castro, touting the country’s free access to basic education and health care, although he acknowledged that Havana itself “looks like it did in the 1950s” because the economy is “not working”.

"Obama concluded his comments by arguing that a market-based system “has to have a social and moral and ethical and community basis”.

"Reaction to the remarks wasn’t pretty." . . .
Tell me again, why is this man at the top of the presidential popularity list?

Why do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton believe they know more about Islam than Muslim clerics?

"When he said the scriptures command that Muslims strike terror into the hearts of Islam’s enemies, the scriptures backed him up."

Andrew C. McCarthy  "One of the first things I learned concerned the leader of the terror cell, Omar Abdel Rahman, infamously known as the Blind Sheikh. Our government was portraying him as a wanton killer who was lying about Islam by preaching that it summoned Muslims to jihad or holy war. Far from a lunatic, however, he turned out to be a globally renowned scholar—a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence who graduated from al-Azhar University in Cairo, the seat of Sunni Islamic learning for over a millennium. His area of academic expertise was sharia—Islamic law.

"I immediately began to wonder why American officials from President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno on down, officials who had no background in Muslim doctrine and culture, believed they knew more about Islam than the Blind Sheikh. Then something else dawned on me: the Blind Sheikh was not only blind; he was beset by several other medical handicaps. That seemed relevant. After all, terrorism is hard work. Here was a man incapable of doing anything that would be useful to a terrorist organization—he couldn’t build a bomb, hijack a plane, or carry out an assassination. Yet he was the unquestioned leader of the terror cell. Was this because there was more to his interpretation of Islamic doctrine than our government was conceding?". . .  

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute. A graduate of Columbia College, he received his J.D. at New York Law School. For 18 years, he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, and from 1993-95 he led the terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Following the 9/11 attacks, he supervised the Justice Department’s command post near Ground Zero. He has also served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and an adjunct professor at Fordham University’s School of Law and New York Law School. He writes widely for newspapers and journals including National Review, PJ Media, and The New Criterion, and is the author of several books, including Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad and Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotages America.

The Theology of Donald Trump

Michael Horton

"Four words that reveal what his followers really believe."

"I am not a politician, but a minister who teaches theology. As a citizen of this great republic, I have convictions about domestic and foreign policy, but none of that qualifies me to join the fray of political experts and pundits. I am qualified, however, to engage the topic of significant support among self-identified “evangelical voters” for Donald Trump and what this means, not for the country but what it suggests about significant segments of the US church.

"While a theological analysis of other candidates would suggest many equally troubling assumptions of their evangelical followers, no candidate is more identified with the word evangelical as is Trump. The loyalty of his self-identified evangelical followers is especially startling to many.

A more recent exponent of a feel-good gospel, Joel Osteen, has called Donald Trump “a friend of our ministry” and “a good man.” Trump has previously tweeted, “Being associated with Joel is my great honor—he’s a fantastic man!”So when in recent months, it has appeared that Trump appeals to a sizable group of evangelicals, it may be less surprising than all the hoopla suggests. Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. hailed him as “one of the greatest visionaries of our time” and a wonderful Christian brother “who reminds me of my dad.” The redoubtable Pat Robertson gushed in an interview with the empire-builder, “You inspire us all.” Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, who has introduced Trump at rallies, says, “We need a strong leader and a problem-solver, hence many Christians are open to a more secular candidate.” . . .

Well, Trump does like both Old and New Testaments equally, and he can find Two Corinthians in the Bible. Somewhere.