Defiance

We’re all going to die. Yup, it’s true. And before we die, we’re going to pay taxes. Those realities haven’t changed since Benjamin Franklin pointed them out more than two centuries ago. We’re all going to die of something, but it probably won’t be swine flu, or H1N1, or whatever you want to call it. And it won’t be global warming, or climate change, or whatever Al Gore or the New York Times are calling it lately either. The only uncertainties about dying are the when and the how. I don’t want to know those things for myself, any more than I wanted to know the sex of my children before they were born. I can wait. Given my druthers though, I’d prefer to eat a well-prepared dinner, drink good wine, make love, go to sleep, and then wake up dead when I’m in my eighties and in otherwise good shape. If that kind of demise isn’t fated for me, then I’d just hope to live my own way - do and say whatever I believe to be right until the day comes. Then I want to die defiantly. Meanwhile, I want to see, smell, hear, feel, taste, and try to understand why everything is the way it is. I never will, of course, but it’s great when I get a clue here and there.

One clue I’m getting is that there are genuine threats out there, but it baffles me that we instead become obsessed about nebulous ones like avian flu, swine flu, and global warming. The two most glaring examples of real threats would have to be Radical Muslims and nuclear weapons. The two are about to come together in both Pakistan and Iran. If they’re not stopped, their first targets are likely to be Israel, the US, Europe, or India. Only the US would be out of missile range, but that our enemies could smuggle a nuclear weapon into one of our cities and detonate it is a distinct possibility - a likelihood even - according to former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Even if most of us here in the United States are oblivious to these threats, the citizens of Israel are anything but.

Real threats of mass death are quite real to them, and have been for millennia. Israel’s re-creation as a nation-state in 1948 is direct result of the biggest mass murder in recorded history. I’m speaking of the Holocaust, of course. Recognizing this, Iran is doing everything it can to de-legitimize Israel as a country before destroying it. Hence the conferences sponsored by President Ahmadinejad inviting anti-Semites from around the world to argue that the Holocaust never happened.

After several years with the wussy Ehud Olmert, Israel just elected a Prime Minister with fortitude. Benjamin Netanyahu understands clearly that Iran will destroy his country and kill its citizens if he doesn’t strike first, so he will. For years, his country has been rocketed nearly every day by Iran-sponsored terrorists. To Israel’s north, there’s Hezbollah in Lebanon. To the southwest, there’s Hamas in Gaza. Former Prime Minister Olmert made half-hearted attempts to deal with those threats during his tenure, but he lacked the resolve to do what Israel must do if it’s going to survive - attack Iran’s nuclear facilities directly.

The Muslim countries around it want Israel gone. They’ve invaded three times in Israel’s sixty-year history and President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said that he will wipe Israel off the map. The lessons of history are not lost on Israel. It exists as a nation so it can field a military capable of defending itself against those who would destroy it and Adolph Hitler taught them they must take such threatening rhetoric seriously.

Iran said it will block the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf if either the US or Israel strikes. If we think the world economy is in bad shape now, wait until the Persian Gulf is shut down for even a few months. Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline will seem cheap. Those of us who remember the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970s know that, at times, it won’t be available at any price. Would that precipitate a world depression? Indeed, but even that would the least of our difficulties. A wider war in the Middle East with mushroom clouds is the worst case scenario.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, we wring our hands about carbon emissions and gay “marriage,” believing our smooth-talking president will diffuse it all by schmoozing Radical Muslim dictators the way he did the American electorate. Israelis, however, know better. If there’s to be another Holocaust with mushroom clouds,they’re not going to go as lambs to the slaughter like they did in the first one.

No. They’ll go defiantly this time.

Galway and Mayo in the Rain

Got to read about the "Pirate Queen" when I get back home. The remains of one of her castles was behind our B&B on an island in Maam, County Galway. Evidently, she was quite a character. Wonder why I didn't know about her.

More typical Irish weather lately. As one pub keeper put it, "It only rains three hundred days a year." But even when it's raining sideways, sometimes filtered sunshine peeks through and illuminates up a mountainside far off, lending a mystic aura to the landscape.

Some visitors describe Galway as "melancholic" and one can see why. Others praise the solitude and stark beauty. I wonder what it's like living day-to-day in that white cottage in all that lonely countryside.

I pick out routes with remote mountain passes as we make our way north to Crossmolina. We pass lochs with centuries-old sporting lodges built and maintained by British aristocrats and off-limits to Irish tenant-farmers in the old days.

As I mentioned last year, memories of the Great Famine permeate the country. If you've forgotten about it for a day, there'll be a memorial beside a lonely road in the middle of nowhere to remind you. In Westport, Country Mayo, is the national memorial - the bronze sculpture "Coffin Ship" with skeletons strung about as rigging.

It's eerie, but poignant. Makes me appreciate the Irish breakfast I ate this morning.

Just got an email from my daughter, Annie. Our next grandchild is a little girl! We'll see her in September.

Life goes on.

Aran Islands

One of the most stunning places I've ever visited. We all were thoroughly charmed.

Why all the walls? Behind the horse's head is a "field" of limestone bedrock. According to Thomas Joyce, one of the locals, all the fields were like that until they hauled in sand and seaweed to create the soil - an ongoing process as you can see in the next shot. They broke up some of the stone and built up the walls as boundaries for different plots and to enclose the animals. The walls are higher here than in any place I've seen in Ireland, or anywhere for that matter, and I live in New England.

It all makes me feel lazy. It's even more stunning when you think about what went into making it all.

I promised to get some horse pictures for my daughter Annie

It rained in the morning so we almost cancelled, but then the sun came out and we bought ferry tickets. Joe said it was one of the best days of his life and he's had a lot of them. Let's see . . . ninety times 365 is what?

The sun stayed out all day. I had two pints of Guinness for lunch. So did Joe and Ma. Roseann had a Heiniken. I think I'll have the same tomorrow in Connemara. Very nourishing.

I've taken 410 shots so far. Even Roseann took some. I hate posing and smiling on que, but today I obliged. It was that good a day.

County Clare

Weather is great so far here in County Clare, but that could change any time. Yesterday was a long day, but great. Ma(84) and Uncle Joe (90) are holding up as well as I am. We toured the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren before eating dinner at O'Connor's Pub in Doolin.

On to the Aran Islands today. Sleeping in Galway tonight.

Sorry if I mislead readers with my last post. I'm only here for a visit and won't be posting columns for two weeks - just short bursts like this one - unless Israel attacks Iran.

Leaving The Country

Crossmolina

It's not because liberal dominance has gotten too difficult to bear, though it is trying. I'm going back to Ireland with my wife, my mother (84), and my uncle (90). We're heading for Crossmolina, County Mayo, from where my great-grandmother, Kate McDonnell, emigrated to Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania in the 1880s sometime. My great-grandfather Peter Haggerty followed her to Wilkes Barre and married her. My mother and uncle knew Kate when she was an old woman and they were children.

I may post short pieces from there with a few photos, but I probably won't be posting columns unless I'm very inspired.

Or, unless Israel attacks Iran.

Gotta go catch a plane . . .

Blue-Eyed Devils

The global financial crisis is “caused by white men with blue eyes,” said President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil at a press conference with UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. He’s right, of course, and as a heterosexual, non-Hispanic white guy with blue eyes, I’m ashamed to look at myself in the mirror. President da Silva went on to say that the people who have to pay for the crisis are the poor, brown people. All this misery and suffering - I’m stricken with remorse. President Obama’s Chicago buddy, Minister Louis Farrakhan, believes we’re “blue-eyed devils” too and I guess he’s right. His other Chicago buddy, the, Reverend Wright, had nasty things to say about us like: "God damn America!" President Obama is apologizing for people like me wherever he goes lately, and I guess it’s time I joined in and helped him out. I need to purge myself of this guilt so I can at least shave in the morning without wanting to cut my throat.



In Strasbourg, our president said America has “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward France, after LaFayette helped us out so much more than two centuries ago. Arrogant Americans think that just because we left 512 American military cemeteries in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg after World War I, that it somehow made up for what the French did for us, but they didn’t allow for inflation. I mean there were far fewer people in the world when the French came over here and helped us compared to how many were around in 1917/18 when tens of thousands of Americans died in the trenches defending Europe. Even though most of those dead Americans were non-Hispanic, heterosexual white guys, it doesn’t begin to make up for the bad things others of our ilk did all throughout history.

Yes, Americans went over again in 1942 after France had again been conquered by the Germans, this time in just a few weeks. Yes, we left another 359 American military cemeteries with over 246,000 dead Americans in them, and some of us think that’s enough. But think about this when you see pictures of all those lines of white crosses: The treads of Patton’s tanks tore up the ground for hundreds of miles and nobody stopped to put up silt fence anywhere. And how much truffle habitat was forever altered by arrogant Americans digging all those graves? How many frogs with nice, fat legs could have been croaking there? How many grapes could be ripening if dead Americans weren’t taking up so much space?

Why did we think we needed to go in there and push the Germans out anyway? Lots of French people were cooperating with German rule in Vichy France. They were working it out quite well until we arrogantly interfered. The French have had a lot of practice at surrendering and they’re very good at it. They cooperated nicely with the Germans by putting French Jews on trains to the gas chambers in Poland. France cooperated with the Japanese in their their former colony in Vietnam as well. Heck, they surrendered so gracefully when the Japanese moved down the Indochina Peninsula that Japan didn’t even have to disarm them. French troops kept their weapons and cooperated until the United States forced Japan to surrender by dropping two atomic bombs on them in 1945.

Speaking of those atomic bombs, President Obama apologized for dropping them too, in Prague. “As a nuclear power – as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon – the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” he said. He wants America to take the lead getting rid of nuclear weapons, since we so arrogantly dropped them on Japan. Heck, all the Japanese did was attack us at Pearl Harbor - and they only did that because we refused to sell them scrap metal. If we weren’t so stubborn, all that misery could have been avoided. And, it was blue-eyed white guys who invented those terrible weapons in the first place.


Finally, it was great to see President Obama bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. What a nice way to start making up for stealing all their oil. This is the kind of hope and change the American people wanted last November. I didn’t think I’d like it, but now I see that there’s even hope for us heterosexual, non-Hispanic white guys to change too - or at least stop screwing up the world.

Ditching Dollars

Getting a straight answer from an economist is like nailing jello to a wall. “I'm tired of economists who say, ‘On the one hand ... and then on the other hand.’ Send me a one-armed economist,” said President Harry Truman about his Council of Economic Advisors sixty years ago. It isn’t called “the dismal science” for nothing.

In an old western I saw as a boy, two cowboys who didn’t trust each other negotiated a deal. One gave a coin to the other who looked at it, bit on it, looked at it again, then put it in his pocket, satisfied. It didn’t matter whose picture was on the coin or what was stamped there. He was satisfied that it was made of silver or gold. Ridges are stamped on the edge of dimes and quarters because they used to be made of silver. If there were no ridges, people would suspect someone had been shaved off. The cowboy trusted the metal in his pocket more than he trusted the other cowboy.

The value of gold or silver depends on how much is in circulation. If there were a fixed amount and no more were being mined, the value - or the price if you will - wouldn’t change, right? Like the cowboy in the movie, most of us can understand that much. There’s always a possibility of a big discovery somewhere increasing supply and reducing the value of the coin in his pocket, but such things are relatively rare. The law of supply and demand applies, like it or not. It can no more be repealed than the law of gravity can.

When our government printed paper dollars, we had to trust that it maintained enough gold and silver in Fort Knox to back up dollars it printed, just as we have to trust that someone writes a paper check, he has enough in his account to cover it. Absent trust, paper is no good. In 1971, however, President Nixon announced that the US dollar would not longer be backed by gold. It would float freely. I don’t understand how he had the authority to do that since our Constitution gives Congress power to coin money (or print it) in Article I Section 8, but Nixon did it anyway. The dollar would instead be backed by the full faith and credit of government. Nixon also said he would control wages and prices to keep down inflation, but it didn’t work. Inflation soared - as it will whenever government prints money recklessly.

Though I’m a history teacher, my teaching license says “Social Studies.” I’m charged with teaching current events, geography, civics, and economics as well. That’s daunting at times - especially when I’m having difficulty making sense of what’s going on. Things are happening so fast, it’s hard to keep up. Last November, Americans elected leftists to run the country. I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad, this soon. I’m not sure voters understood what they would actually do, but we’re all finding out now and we’re getting nervous. I’ve been gritting my teeth wondering what it’s going to be like after four years. The President and his congressional allies are using the banking crisis to take control of our economy in a hurry. The president is taking over banks, firing auto company executives, guaranteeing transmissions, and will soon take over the entire health care industry. A recent Saturday Night Live skit in which the president micro-manages the lawn mower, air conditioner and blue jean industries, isn’t far from reality.

Congress is so rushed, it voted for almost $800 billion - the biggest money bill in history - without even reading it. Yet it insists it’s “rescuing” our economy and legions of two-armed economists applaud with both hands. We’d already been bailing out banks, auto companies, insurance companies, and God knows who else with $700 billion in TARP money, and the treasury won’t tell us who-all is getting it. A Democrat congress and a Republican president hurried TARP through last fall with few people anywhere understanding where the money would come from, how it would be spent, or whether it would do any good. We know it increased our debt to over $10 trillion and China started signaling it wouldn’t lend us any more. China and Russia want to start a new world currency to replace the dollar. The old commies bit the coin and didn’t like what they saw. They’re concerned that we’re moving too far left. Europe too. Who would ever have imagined this a year ago? Not me.

Then, two weeks ago, $1.2 trillion appeared out of nowhere. The Federal Reserve snapped its fingers and there it was. Worried? It’s all backed by the full faith and credit of our federal government. And what’s that worth? Not much in the opinion of an increasing number of American taxpayers who are turning out all over the country on April 15th for a Tax Day Tea Party.

Trees and Tears

It was as if the tree were crying. Watery beads oozed out of small branches and dropped to the stone wall below. I’d never seen that before and wouldn’t have noticed if it were not back-lit by a setting sun. The prismatic twinkling caught my eye through the window. Drops fell sparkling in the amber light. I thought it was melting ice because it had been a very cold morning, warming up after noon. Then I realized it was a maple tree and those conditions were perfect for running sap. Plumes of wood smoke rose up around town as people boiled it down. Untapped, that old maple surged with too much to hold in. So the teardrops fell, making tiny splashes on the gray stones.

“You don’t have to tell a tree how to be a tree,” someone told me, and thank God for that. It’s difficult enough trying to figure out how to be a man in early 21st century America. At long last, I’m learning its best to leave other living things alone whenever possible and concentrate on myself. Life can freeze a man, but he must thaw when sun shines. Tears can form, and fall, when things surge and pressure builds. As Robert Frost said, “Poems begin as a lump in the throat.” If it can’t escape, that lump will grow and freeze a man hard.

Once allowed to flow, it gets harder for men to hold them back. Not all tears are sad though. They can surge in happiness, as women allow but men resist. Men prefer release in private and that’s all right, as long as they do it. My wife, the therapist, says: “If you can let it flow, you can let it go.”

When my house was finished twenty years ago, I began cutting trees around that maple to see the mountains behind. I split them up and warmed my family with them through several winters. I spared that tree because it’s on the edge of a panorama I was opening, but I cut some of the limbs that intruded, saving one lower limb to look out over. It was that limb upon which the sparkling droplets formed to focus my attention. Soon thereafter, buds emerged. I thought of women giving birth in pain and joy, and with tears accompanying both.

Many kinds of maple trees grow on my lot - reds, whites, swamp maples, sugar maples - and they present different colors come fall. Some, however, have been wounded and go soft inside. Scars and punky wood are obvious sometimes, sometimes not. With other trees, a black stain on the bark indicates a crack beneath. I’m careful dropping wounded trees because I need solid wood in the hinge to guide them when they fall. Some trees show no scarring, but the wood inside has gone soft anyway. My saw feels it first, revving higher and cutting faster, and I realize I won’t get as much good firewood out of that tree. But I work it up anyway.

I’ve wondered why perfect-looking trees rotted inside. Now I consider: Have they hidden their wounds to present a flawless exterior? Has their sap congealed to rot them in their cores instead of nourishing growth in their limbs? Some maples are like this. Some people too.

Another tree nearby tortures itself. It forks twelve feet up and one side sent out a limb that chafes the other. The wounded side grows scar tissue as it rubs painfully during a wind. I hear it groan in a gentle breeze. In a strong gust, it screams. A tree can be its own enemy, as a person can.

Some of my favorite trees are the old, gnarled ones whose scars are open to the world. Some scars are cavernous holes, offering shelter to animals, even children. Old trees live with their wounds over many human lifetimes and send out fresh leaves anyway. They grow bark over and around their scars without hiding them, and the resulting forms charm me. They grow in the open sunlight, and send massive limbs out laterally - unlike trees that grow in dense groves and burn out in competition to shoot upward.

They have strong branches good for swings - not good for lumber and difficult to split into firewood. Maybe that’s why they survive so long. By their very form, they show how to enjoy sun and endure storms. They display endurance. “The artist in me cries out for design,” said Frost, and old, gnarled trees show design by circumstance - what has happened around them and to them - how they’ve withstood it - has shaped them.

A tree doesn’t move. It observes. We stand under it but can’t understand it. Not all of it. Although I have a notion the tree does.

The EUnuchs Are At It Again

There’ll be no more “Misters” in Europe. No more “Madames” or “Mademoiselles,” “Fraus” or “Frauleins,” “Senoras” or “Senoritas” either. The European Union issued a booklet for EU Parliamentary Staff instructing them to eliminate all “gender-specific” terms from its literature. According to Lifesitenews.com: “. . . terms, such as ‘statesman,’ are to be replaced with gender-free alternatives, such as ‘political leader.’”

The article didn’t say if this resulted from a vote in the EU Parliament, but if that’s what Europeans want, fine. As long as the United States is a sovereign nation and isn’t controlled by liberal EUnuchs or the United Nations, they can do whatever they want over there.

Feminists are a strong force in the UN and many of their proposals are bizarre. At several UN Conferences on women, they suggest eliminating all references to gender in humans. They think gender a social construct with no biological basis. They would eliminate men’s rooms and ladies’ rooms and replace them with unisex rest rooms. Others would force public buildings to add a “transgendered” restroom because persons whose “gender” changes from day to day would feel uncomfortable in a men’s room or ladies’ room. I don’t care whether they feel comfortable or uncomfortable, and I certainly don’t want my tax money being used to construct special bathrooms for them, but let the EUnuchs do whatever they want with their own money.

Other feminists disagree with the unisex approach. Instead, they would expand the number of sexes from two to five. Anne Falso-Sterling wrote an article entitled "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough." She (and she’s not alone) thinks the five are: male, female, homosexual male, homosexual female, and bisexual.

The United Nations takes this stuff seriously. I’d be happier if my country resigned from the UN and evicted them from New York City. Let them to go Europe where they can build as many bathrooms as they like.

Some of this stuff is happening here too. The New Hampshire legislature votes this week on HB-415, which would allow “transgender” people to use whatever bathroom they choose on a given day, depending on how they feel. You don’t like that? Then you’re the problem, not the cross-dresser. Etransgender.com claims: “Employers facing the restroom issue for the first time are legally inclined to apply the ‘Principle of Least Astonishment,’ which is that a person who presents as a woman will be less astonishing using the women's restroom than the men's, vice versa for a person presenting as a man. If a concern arises, from the corporate legal department or another employee, the employer must provide alternative solutions for the employee complaining - NOT the transgender individual.”

You’re astonished by the drag queen next to you? You’re homophobic and you need Sensitivity Classes.

Feminists see men like me as members of the Evil Patriarchy that oppresses women everywhere. They don’t like the Catholic Church either because it teaches that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered,” and it insists that only men can be priests. If women want to become priests, they can join the Episcopal Church, where they can be openly homosexual too, and even be promoted to bishop. Episcopalians are fading away, but they’ll probably hang on for a few more decades.

The Roman Catholic Church has resisted fads for thousands of years. We’re not without our feminists though, and they’re making inroads. While singing hymns at mass lately, it bugs me to notice that the lyrics have been changed on some of my favorites. One is “Be Not Afraid,” by John Foley SJ, which used to go: “. . . and if wicked men insult and hate you, all because of Me, blessed, blessed are you.” Having read and heard plenty of insults, and not a little hatred for my opinion columns over the years, I related to that line. Now, however, “wicked men” has been replaced by “wicked tongues.” Now I’m distracted by visions of disembodied tongues floating in the air and uttering nasty things about me.

Another is “Turn to Me,” also by Foley, with the lyrics “Turn to Me, oh man and be saved, says the Lord for I am God.” Now, however, it goes: “Turn to Me, oh turn and be saved,” and that bugs me. Did Foley agree to the changes? If he did, well, they’re his songs and he can do what he wants with them. But if it’s stealth feminists playing with my mind, I don’t like it. Those hymns became special when I learned them at a men’s retreat called “Cursillo” twenty-five years ago. They were written by a man; Jesus Christ was a man; but feminist Christians have a hard time with all that. Women can certainly enjoy the hymns if they want, but no one has the right to change them except John Foley.

In spite of what they claim in their academic treatises at university Women’s Studies Departments, men and women are quite different and they always will be. Confused men and women can change their language and cross-dress every other day. They can cut off and sew on genitals and take all the hormones they want. Just don’t ask me to pay for any of it, and don’t send out the PC Thought Police to arrest me when I call attention to their foolishness in this space. This is still America, and we still have a Constitution with a First Amendment - for the time being at least.

Who's the Coward?

“Hello fellow cowards,” said Ward Connerly after stepping up to the mike at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) last month. Thousands in the crowd with me laughed uproariously. He was referring to what President Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, said the previous week - that we are “a nation of cowards” because we don’t talk about race enough. He wants to “foster a dialogue between the races.”

I couldn’t disagree more. I got tired of talking about race decades ago and most people I know are tired of it too. Remember 1997 when President Clinton began his second term saying we needed a “national dialogue on race”? I was thinking, “Oh boy. Not again.” We talk about race way too much, but Democrats are obsessed with it - so on and on it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.

On two different forms this school year, government asked my students to categorize themselves by “race,” even though that same government outlaws racial discrimination. Everybody in America is forced to do this over and over again in an ordinary lifetime. Government is obsessed with race but ordinary people are moving well beyond it. It compiles statistics endlessly about how “African Americans” score on tests, are infected with HIV, own their own homes, are aborted, are imprisoned, what their average life expectancy is, and on and on. If there are discrepancies between how blacks are doing and how whites are doing on anything, it’s assumed to be the result of racial discrimination by whites against blacks. Democrats in government proclaim that “Affirmative Action” is necessary to “remedy” the situation.

That generally takes the form of racial quotas in hiring, awarding contracts, admission to universities, and, most recently - writing sub-prime mortgages, according to economist Thomas Sowell. Community organizers like President Obama’s buddies at ACORN threatened to sue banks if they didn’t lend to “minority” applicants who too often couldn’t afford the kind of house they wanted to buy. This sort of “affirmative action” is at the root of the economic debacle we’re currently facing, but such a discussion is not the kind of dialogue Attorney General Holder wants to have - and I’ll probably be accused of racism for writing about it.

Democrats think their racial discrimination is benevolent. They tell themselves and everyone else that granting jobs, contracts, and college admissions to women, blacks, and other minorities over white and Asian males isn’t discrimination at all. Such doublethink is their stock in trade. That’s why they get 95% of the black vote and 75% of the Hispanic vote.

With the exception of conservative black men such as Ward Connerly and Thomas Sowell quoted above, there’s little or no inclination among most so-called black “leaders” to scrap the racial discrimination euphemistically known as “affirmative action.” Even though much was made of Barack Obama’s election as the first black president, and his appointment of Eric Holder as the first black Attorney General, those two men are making sure they play the same old victim tune previous unsuccessful black candidates like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton make their livings on.

Speaking to a group called the “State of the Black Union” two weeks ago, President Obama said, “You know that tough times for America often mean tougher times for African Americans. This recession has been no exception.” He obviously intends to continue affirmative action, saying that he is “closing the gap between the nation we are and the nation we can be,” by including it in his “economic stimulus” bill.

About the jobs in that bill, Obama’s chief economic advisor, Robert Reich said, “I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals, or to white male construction workers.”

Victim mentality pervades the 95% of blacks who voted for Obama and other Democrats. They don’t tend to think of themselves as Americans first. They’re “black” first, and Americans second. Hence the now ubiquitous term “African American.” The dysfunctional numbers gathered for blacks by a race-obsessed government show a lead in nearly every negative category: illegitimate births, crime, unemployment, HIV infection, lowest life expectancy, and so forth. Black “leaders” and liberal Democrats desperately want something else to blame for all this and avoid examining their own culpability. Slavery and white racism kept blacks down for centuries, but the above-listed issues cannot be explained that way. Most flared up after the Civil Rights Act - and after Democrat “War on Poverty” subsidies nearly destroyed the black family, and after a gangster subculture began filling the vacuum created.

The Civil Rights Act was intended to outlaw discrimination and equalize public and private treatment of people regardless of race. Liberal Democrats, however, used it to substitute one form of discrimination for another, then masked it by calling it Affirmative Action. Hence the title of Ward Connerly’s latest book, “Creating Equal,” in which he argues for an end to it. He wants bookstores to take it out of their “African American Department” and include with all their other books.

If Eric Holder wants to talk about these issues, fine. But we know they’d be off the table because cowards like him are afraid to address them.

Roof Perchers and Retirement

Roof-perchers. That’s what Laura Ingraham calls them, and their numbers are rising. They’re people who depend on government for everything. If there’s a flood coming, they don’t heed evacuation orders. They don’t head for higher ground. They certainly don’t keep an inflatable raft on hand. They climb on their rooves and wait for government to rescue them. If there’s any delay, they whine to the media who amplify their complaints. Why don’t they take common-sense precautions? They don’t have to, they don’t want to, and they’ll never learn to until government cuts them loose.

That’ll never happen, you say. Oh yeah? As the roof-perchers increase, the number of rescuers declines. More are climbing on the wagon to ride between floods while wagon-pullers are getting tired and getting scarce too. To sustain their ever-increasing numbers, President Obama will increase taxes on the rich, right? Trouble is, the rich are already paying most of the taxes. The top 1% pay more income tax than the bottom 90%. How much more does the president think he can squeeze out of them until they collapse? How long before the goose that laid the golden egg lays down and dies? It’s unsustainable. The socialist programs he’s pushing haven’t worked anywhere they’ve been tried and they won’t work here either.

Last June, Iowa flooded. Did you see people on rooves waiting for government to rescue them? I didn’t. Why were there so many in New Orleans? Because people there are descended from generations who have depended on government. Soon, with all President Obama’s bailout programs and pork-barrel, “economic stimulus” programs, most of the country will become roof-perchers and wagon riders just like them. They’ll reach a critical mass even in places like Iowa and there won’t be enough rescuers or wagon-pullers to keep things running. Eventually, someone is going to call 911 and nobody will be there to answer the phone.

It’s tough watching it all unravel around us. I knew it was was going to get worse when left-wing Democrats consolidated their control over Washington DC, but I didn’t think it would start collapsing so quickly. Meanwhile, it seems every other person I bump into lately asks me, “When are you going to retire?”

Heh. What a quaint notion. Retirement doesn’t seem sustainable either.

I’ve been teaching in the same community for a long time and I have children of former students in class regularly. “You must have enough years in by now,” people say. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop working until I’m either dead or drooling in a rocking chair, but I’m more fortunate than many. I have three jobs and I like them all. The work is interesting, rewarding, and I enjoy most of the people I work with. It gets a little hectic, but my schedule is flexible enough where I can get away from time to time. I’ve been eligible to retire for a while. Theoretically, I can depend on pension checks for life.

Theoretically.

However, I’m hearing horror stories from friends in the private sector about their retirement funds disappearing as stock markets nosedive. Some envy my public-sector retirement “guarantees,” but should they? Is my pension secure? It says so on paper in the state capitol, but I don’t believe it. The Maine State Retirement System is a pension fund like others. It’s invested. Market declines hit MSRS as hard as they hit someone’s 401K and it’s down 28% for 2008 - the biggest decline ever. I hate to even look at what’s happened to it in the six weeks since Obama was inaugurated. But it’s is backed up by the taxpayers according to statute, right? Uh-huh. This poverty-stricken state is one of the highest-taxed states in the country already. Do I want to depend on the prudence of Maine State Government for my support? I’d rather depend on myself, but I’ve been forced to give them my money for three decades. I had no choice.

My wife and I had four children and they’re all working, but most of my generation had smaller families, in Maine and elsewhere. Our population would be declining if not for immigrants pouring in, many of them illegal, and with a higher percentage of them riding on the wagon than the native population. Making matters worse, Maine is a sanctuary state with better-than-average welfare benefits for illegals and all other kinds of roof-perchers and wagon-riders who move here.

But I’ll still have Social Security to help in my declining years, right? Hah! That’s funny. Retirement? People used to do that in the good old days. Roof perchers and wagon riders retire early, but retirement of for the middle class is history. That’s the kind of change President Obama has brought us.

Profile in Courage

Courage is rare. That’s why we prize it. The high point of my trip to Washington, DC last week was meeting Geert Wilders - a profile in courage for our times. He has lived for years under 24-7 guard after radical Muslims put out a fatwa on him, just as they did with Salman Rushdie twenty years ago this week. Wilders, a Dutch Member of Parliament, had the temerity to make a film called “Fitna,” which quotes incendiary lines from the Koran and depicts sermons by radical imams preaching hatred of Jews and other infidels. Interspersed with these are scenes where those quotes and preachings are put into practice, including clips of the September 11th attacks in the USA, bus bombings in London, train bombings in Madrid, and beheadings in the Middle East.

Wilders knew he would incur a death sentence when he released Fitna, but he did so anyway. He took up the mantle of courage from fellow Hollanders like Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam after making a film depicting Muslim mistreatment of women, and fellow Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was driven out the Netherlands after the Dutch government declined to protect her following the fatwa issued against her.

CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) organizers were asked to give Wilders and opportunity to speak during their event at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, but they declined, claiming their schedule was full and they couldn’t fit him in. I hope that was the reason. I hope it wasn’t because they were too afraid. A separate reception for Wilders was thrown together elsewhere in the hotel at the last minute and word went around among CPAC attendees about when and where.

Although I showed up an hour early, I barely got into the small function room where it was standing-room-only. I’d been warned that no bags or jackets would be allowed inside, so I put those in my room and showed up in shirtsleeves with a camera and digital recorder. Uniformed security guys ran metal detectors over me and asked for my press pass. I hadn’t applied for one, so I had to talk my way past that. Inside were large, burly guys with folded arms, shaved heads, and stern looks surrounding the tall, smiling, blonde-haired Dutchman. The reception was sponsored by conservative activists including David Horowitz of Frontpagemagazine, Pam Geller of Atlasshrugs, as well as authors Robert Spencer and Dr. Andrew Bostom. After each made their introductions, Wilders came to the podium to thunderous applause. Speaking in mildly-accented English, he thanked the audience and thanked US immigration authorities saying, “It’s always a pleasure to cross a border without being sent back on the first flight.” He was referring to what happened to him the previous week, when he’d been invited to London to show “Fitna” in the House of Lords, but was deported immediately after landing at Heathrow Airport by a UK multicultural police squad who were afraid his presence on British soil would stir a riot by radical British members of the “Religion of Peace.”

It’s bad enough that Wilders must live out his life in safe houses, but his own government, the most politically-correct in Europe if not the whole world, issued criminal charges against him for “inciting hatred and discrimination” and “insulting Muslim worshippers.” Only under multiculturalism can someone “insult” Muslims by quoting them when they incite hatred and discrimination. The Dutch courts do not dispute what Wilders depicted in his film. They know it’s true. Wilders’ crime is publicizing the truth liberal Europe would prefer to ignore.

Genuine courage is indeed rare. Wilders’ display of it in the Netherlands sharply contrasts - and shines light on - Dutch government cowardice. That’s why they’re trying to shut him up. As Wilders himself put it last Friday night:

“In Europe freedom of speech should be extended, instead of restricted . . . As George Orwell once said: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’”

CPAC 2009

It's exciting down here. No doubt about it. Conservatives are fired up. I desperately needed a right-wing re-charge after 12 months in blue-state Maine.

I was surprised, however, to learn that even though Geert Wilders was in town, CPAC sponsors "couldn't fit him in." Was that it? Or did they run short of courage? Lots of mumbling and speculation about that.

Thankfully, some more gutsy new-media types like David Horowitz, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom sponsored a reception for him last night in another part of the hotel - separate from the CPAC function rooms - and I was able to attend.

Surrounded by tough-looking bodyguards, Wilders delivered a stirring speech - the highlight of my visit. He's a brave man.

More later about him.

Pork, Lipstick, and Suckers Like Me

From Gateway Pundit

Don’t know much about economics, but the economists I’ve been hearing lately don’t seem to know much either. To this ordinary guy, it looks like a rough road ahead, so I’m just going to trust my instincts and hang on tight.

A couple of months ago, I paid off my mortgage. For the first time since I was eighteen, I don’t owe anybody anything - no car payments, no student loans, nothing. My old truck still runs, but it’s rusting out underneath - kind of like our country. I’ll drive it until the frame breaks while I save up for another. I don’t feel too bad about junking my old pickup, but it’s hard watching Congress and the President junk my country.

My wife and I have worked long and hard. Can’t remember when I didn’t have at least two jobs. We scrimped, went without, raised four kids, sent them to college, and paid our bills. We still work hard, but we’re playing around some too. We have everything we need and our tastes are modest. Trying to figure out what to do with extra money is our problem now. Nice problem to have I guess, but a problem nonetheless. It’s not a lot but I don’t know where to put it.

Don’t know much about the stock market either. I’m not against putting some there , but like so many others, I’m wondering where bottom will be and it looks like we’re not close to it yet. Gold? Many are buying that and it’s up over $1000 an ounce. Maybe I’ll invest some there, but for now I’m listening, thinking, and worrying.

Obama said last Saturday he has a plan for “restoring fiscal discipline.” Uh-huh. That was a few days after announcing he wants to give $75,000,000,000 to people who can’t make their mortgage payments. We all know someone who bought more house than they could afford and defaulted, and someone else who could make payments until they burned through their equity and can’t anymore. According to CBS.com: “Homeowners in states without significant foreclosures will subsidize those in states like California, Arizona, and Florida. And borrowers who initially had affordable mortgages -- but then refinanced during the housing bubble and used their homes as ATMs -- stand to benefit.”

Now you want wagon pullers like me to pull harder because they’re jumping on? This is “restoring fiscal discipline”? Bailing out speculators and irresponsible borrowers? When the re-default rate on them is over 55% in six months? And sending the bill to people like me, my children, and my grandchildren? We’re not going to take this.

The week before, Obama and his “economists” rammed a $900,000,000,000 “economic stimulus” bill through Congress. He doesn’t have that money either. So where’s he going to get it? With the US debt at over $10 trillion and climbing fast, China is reluctant to lend us any more. So, he sent Hillary over there to try and change their minds. If I were a Chinese leader, I’d give her a firm “No.” I’d like to say no too, but my two “Republican” senators here in Maine voted for the $900,000,000,000. I’ve had it with those two RINOs, but that’s another column. My fingers are cramped typing all the zeros.

Last fall, Obama said, “You can put lipstick on a pig,” as the crowd cheered. “It's still a pig.” You were right then, Mr. President, but that’s what you’re doing now. We know pork when we see it. I’m angry, and so are millions of other ordinary guys just like me.

Looks like President Obama is going to print the money. I suspect he already is. I don’t have to be an economist to know that the value of my money, which is in cash, is going to decline unless I do something else with it. But then I think that if inflation goes up, interest rates will too and I’ll be all right. And, my money will be secured by FDIC - the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That makes me feel better - except for one thing.

I’m no math genius either, but I can add and subtract. FDIC had about $52 billion to cover deposits of over $4 trillion, and that was a year ago before all those recent bank failures. What happens if there’s a bigger run on banks? Will Obama just print more and give some to me to cover my lost deposits? Won’t that lead to more inflation? Oh, but then there’ll be still higher interest rates, so I’ll be all right . . . Now I feel better . . . No I don’t.

It was simpler when I my problem was not enough money. I didn’t have time to think because I was working too hard to pay my bills. What a sucker I was, huh?

Scarey Court Cases

Two recent court cases on two continents make me very nervous. That they’re even being tried is outrageous. That either may succeed is ominous, and few people know anything about either one.

First is the case of Roger Barnett - an Arizona rancher who has been under siege by illegal immigrants and drug dealers. In the Washington Times, Barnett claims illegals “tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home.” Now sixteen illegals are suing him in federal court for $32 million, accusing him of “conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch next to the US-Mexico border.” The sixteen illegals claim Barnett caused them emotional distress by holding them at gunpoint and they want $2 million each.

Chief among our federal government’s responsibilities is to protect American citizens from foreign invasion, but it’s done little or nothing to help Barnett. Rather than protecting him, our government instead enables foreign invaders to sue him. That’s how bad it’s gotten.

The US Department of Homeland Security acknowledges virtual anarchy on the border and warns that Mexico itself is on the verge of collapse. That would come as no surprise to Barnett, who must wonder about his own country as well if it cannot, or will not control its borders. The DHS report states: “[Mexico’s] government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. . . . Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”

Drug cartel power depends on moving drugs across our border. We are their market. I’d say an American response is overdue already, wouldn’t you? USA Today reported in 2005 that: “First [New Mexico Governor] Richardson, then [Arizona Governor] Napolitano, declared a state of emergency this month in portions of their states along the border with Mexico.”

The second case is that of Geert Wilders in Holland: A Member of Parliament, Wilders has been charged with hurting Muslim immigrant feelings in Holland by “inciting racial hatred.” He made a film called “Fitna” comparing the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” As Dr. Sami Alrabaa reports in Canadian Free Press: “Wilders’ comparison of the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and describing it as a fascist book is not inappropriate. Hitler referred to the Jews as “rats and vermin” and the Koran and fascist Muslims call the Jews “The descendants of apes and pigs.”

When radical Muslims incite racial hatred in Holland, it’s okay. When a member of Holland’s government points it out, it’s a crime.

Dr. Alrabaa also writes that “Muhammad Sayyid Al Tantawi, president of Al Azhar University [established 975 AD in Cairo] also approves of killing and maiming Christians, Jews, and other infidels. He added, ‘This is not my personal view. This what the Shari’a Law says, the law of Allah, the only valid law on the earth.’”

There. I’ve pointed it out. I’m a criminal too.

Geert Wilders was invited by a member of the British House of Lords to show his film there. When he landed in London last Friday, he was promptly deported. The London Daily Telegraph reported: “Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary refused Mr. Wilders entry because his opinions ‘would threaten community security and therefore public security’ in the UK.”

So, when Muslim clerics in the UK preach hatred and violent jihad against the British government, it’s all right. But when Wilders expresses a negative opinion about that preaching, he’s the threat, not them.

This is what Europe, seat of western civilization and democracy, has come to.

Back here, groups like MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) use the US Constitution to bring suit against Americans like Roger Barnett when he tries to defend his property. MALDEF doesn’t recognize the US border. Similar radical Mexican groups like MEChA deny the legitimacy of state governments all across the southwestern United States, calling the area “Aztlan” and claiming themselves as indigenous people not subject to US law. MEChA has chapters in most colleges across the American southwest. If you check out their web site here, you’ll see their symbol: an eagle gripping an Aztec war club in one talon and a stick of dynamite with its fuse lit in the other. Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante are former members.

MEChA receives funding from La Raza (“The Race”). Politicians across America go out of their way to pay homage to “The Race.” President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain addressed the organization during the 2008 campaign, where both virtually promised amnesty for illegals. Two out of three voted for Obama.

Barnett and Wilders are brave men defending western civilization on the front lines. If they go down, watch out.

Demographic Destiny in Blue

Birth rates in New England are among the lowest in America according to The Boston Globe:

U.S. Census Bureau report says that in 2006, New Hampshire's birthrate was 42 babies per 1,000 women of childbearing age. The national rate was 54.9 births per thousand. Vermont had the second lowest rate, at 42.2. Counting Washington, D.C., Rhode Island was third lowest, at 45; Massachusetts had the seventh lowest rate, at 46.1; and Maine the eighth lowest, at 47.3.

New England is also leaning hard left politically, especially New Hampshire. The Granite State had been a conservative outpost in New England, but not anymore. It’s blue as can be now. Is there a correlation? Definitely. Is there a cause and effect thing going on between left-wing politics and low birth rates? I strongly suspect there is.
Four years ago I read accounts by several people who were noticing that liberal areas of the country were not reproducing. Writing about the election of 2004, David Brooks in the New York Times said:

You can see surprising political correlations. As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates. In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe, "Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."

The red-state/blue-state map isn’t as revealing as the one divided into counties. Hanging in my classroom are the red-county/blue-county maps from the elections of 2000, 2004, and 2008. After looking at these, anyone can see that Kotkin and Frey’s analysis is dead-on. Densely populated liberal cities like San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston, Seattle and Portland are surrounded by a sea of red with a blue island here and there. The coasts are blue-fringed and the rest of America was almost all crimson. New England on the 2008 map, however, is an exception to this pattern. Maine’s Piscataquis County is the only one in all of New England showing up red. It’s Maine’s second-biggest county in area after Aroostook, but it’s the least populated with fewer than twenty thousand people.

Coincidentally, I happened to be up there just before the election last fall and I noticed a majority of lawn signs with conservative candidates. There were twice as many McCain/Palin signs than there were for Obama/Biden, and the same pattern held for the US House and Senate races.

So why is rural New England so blue now? I’m not sure. It could be continuing in-migration of liberal retirees from Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. It could be that students indoctrinated by ubiquitous left-wing teachers and professors are voting age and going to the polls. It could be that a left-of-center view of the world prevails in the region because it reached a critical mass early in the 21st century.

How long will the trend continue? Hard to say. It depends on three factors, I think. First: Will Republicans return to conservative roots and articulate their message effectively? Second: Will Democrats in control of our federal government rescue our economy with twelve-figure spending bills, or will they bankrupt us all? Third, will conservative families continue to out-breed left-wingers?

As for why leftists don’t have children, I can only take them at their word. They claim a higher calling to preserve a natural environment as if human activity is outside of, and averse to nature, or rather - Nature - since they tend to deify it. So, having children is a violation because more people means more use of Nature’s resources which are better left in their natural state. Other organisms are more noble, more natural, and more deserving of those resources than homo sapiens.

Leftists champion abortion for America, and everywhere else too. One of Obama’s first acts as president was to authorize American tax money to fund abortions around the world. They’re okay with destroying unborn humans, but every other organism must be preserved at all costs. Even though more than ninety percent of organisms that ever existed on earth are extinct due to natural processes, we must spare no expense to prevent any more from disappearing. Remarkably, leftist environmentalists don’t perceive any contradiction here. They believe they know better what life should be preserved and what life should be destroyed.

Whatever motivates them, blue leftists aren’t reproducing. What does that mean for our future? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Bailing The Failing

Similarities between federal government “helping” the economy and “helping” public education haunt me. Government bails out failing businesses now the same way it’s been bailing out failing students and failing schools. Will Democrat Big Government fix our economy? I’ll answer that question by asking another: Has it fixed public schools? I rest my case.

Although math has always been a weakness for me, I’m fairly good at geometry. Why? Because I failed it in 10th grade. I didn’t fail because I couldn’t understand it. I failed because I goofed around in class, didn’t do my homework, and didn’t study. I had to take it again in summer school and I had to pass, so I did. I paid attention. I did my homework. I studied. Failure was good for me.

However, “Failure is not an option” has been a slogan in many public schools for a while now. If students fail courses, it’s the teacher’s fault for not doing enough to prevent it. Even if students goof around, don’t do assigned work, and don’t study, the onus is on the teacher to do more or expect less. Worse, if there’s a discrepancy between a student’s measured intelligence and his actual performance, a student can even be called “Learning Disabled,” or LD, and demand extensive government services. The LD label implies a perceptual difficulty and most lay people understand it that way, but that’s not how government defines it. That the discrepancy exists is enough, even if it’s due solely to lack of effort. There are certainly students with perceptual difficulties and it the LD label was designed for them. They work hard, but they’re forced to share expensive educational resources with the willfully ignorant who are often disruptive, but are enabled by government regulations. When government subsidizes something, we tend to get more of it.

Under our free enterprise system, we should all be free to succeed or fail. However, government is applying the “failure is not an option” philosophy to greedy individual investors who bought more house than they could afford, and to big corporations. Some are banks that squandered their capital on risky investments. Others are automobile companies that design poor vehicles, make them shoddily, and pander to bloated labor unions. They’re failing because they’re lazy, greedy, and out of touch with consumer wants and needs. They don’t like competition and they deserve to fail. What may save them is being forced to face the reasons they failed. Government bailouts only postpone that. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t solve it. Admitting failure and going into bankruptcy reorganization would force the issue.

Trouble is, union contracts would be suspended in bankruptcy court and auto workers would have to compete as individual workers the way their fellow auto workers in American Toyota plants do. Toyota makes excellent vehicles in the United States, and that’s why they outsell Ford, GM and Chrysler. Competition is good for workers, good for corporations, good for consumers. If the big three can’t compete, they should fail. We won’t run out of vehicles.

The federal government didn’t step in when big airlines were going bankrupt in the ’80s and ’90s. They couldn’t compete with newer, low-cost, low-frills airlines that started up after government deregulated the industry. Their bloated labor unions would not accept reduced pay and benefits to help their companies avoid bankruptcy and went out on strike instead. Eastern Airlines and others folded, but we can still fly wherever we want to go.

For decades, public schools have said they need more government money to fix themselves - and they’ve been getting plenty of it. See much improvement? Look around. School systems like Washington, DC that spend the most ($13,446 per student versus $9,138 per student nationally in fiscal 2006), and have the most big-government intervention, produce the poorest results. They’re beholden to bloated teachers’ unions - the biggest unions in the country - and they hate competition. Even the liberal Atlantic Monthly, says: “For decades, an establishment of Democratic politicians backed by union leaders has ruled the Washington public schools, which by almost any measure—test scores, attendance, safety—are among the worst in the country.” No wonder Barack Obama won’t send his kids there. He’ll send them to private schools, but he won’t allow less-fortunate DC residents that option because the teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party would go ballistic. For teachers’ unions, enemy number one is competition in the form of education vouchers or school choice. Obama is the most “pro-choice” politician in Washington, but not when it comes to education.

Success and failure are both good teachers and one cannot exist without the other. If we think we can eliminate failure by spending money on it that we don’t have, we’re all going to fail.