Washington Post's Milbank plays race card. Again...

The Daily Caller: WaPo's Milbank suggests GOP toned down Sebelius attacks due to race:

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank suggested Thursday night that the GOP didn’t go after outgoing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius with the same zeal as Attorney General Eric Holder because — unlike Holder — Sebelius is white.

Milbank made the insinuation during an interview on MSNBC’s “Politics Nation with Al Sharpton,” after the Reverend ran a segment alleging that Republican opposition to Holder, including his contempt citation, is race-based.

“Well, here’s an interesting thought experiment,” Milbank said. “So let’s compare Holder to Kathleen Sebelius, who has presided over Obamacare – which is the thing that has most antagonized the right and Republicans over all these years. You’re not seeing calls for her impeachment. You’re not seeing the same level of personal vitriol.”

“So I think that why, again, it’s fair to ask the question and let every individual say why it is they have that particular antipathy towards this attorney general, towards this president,” Milbank said, “and why not, say, towards Kathleen Sebelius, who they’re obviously much more at odds with.”

Old TRUTH:  The Republicans were unreasonably tough on Sibelius because they are sexists and she's a woman.
New TRUTH:  The Republicans went easy on Sibelius because they are racists and she's white.

The left has two suits in its deck.  Apparently, for this hand, the Race Card is now trumps, as opposed to the WarOnWomen card.

So when the Republicans were lambasting Sibelius all fall during the disastrous Affordable Care Act roll-out, trumps were WarOnWomen, and they were beating up on her because she was a woman (and you can't hit the girl, because that makes you a sexist [as does saying that you can't hit the girl, which makes for a really interesting and difficult to follow set of moral standards]) but now, in retrospect, they were going easy on her because she's white.

Yeah, that's all perfectly sensible and coherent...

Oh, and Dana, if you're capable of understanding it, here's a significant difference between Holder and Sibelius, totally unrelated to either race or gender:  Holder has presided over a corrupt, politicized Department of Justice, while Sibelius presided over a grossly mismanaged government program rollout.  Malfeasance and corruption, which have led to cries for Holder's impeachment, are different from gross incompetence, which led to cries for Sibelius' resignation. 

Another (liberal) racist self-reveals...

This time, it's Kevin Baker (Harper's Magazine):

Yet there he was, giving a presentation devoid of substance, vision, principle, or even basic coherence. He didn’t show a spark of anger, even when Romney slyly found a way to call him a boy, comparing Obama’s statements to the sorts of childish lies his “five boys” used to tell.

How the right’s hard-core racists must have howled at that! Mitt, at long last, has secured his base.

Um, Kevin - I hate to be the one that breaks this to you, but if you're the one that hears the "racist dog whistle," that means that you are the racist. If you are the one that hears the word "boy" in that context, and thinks, "hey, he's talking about the black guy!" then you are the racist.

So I guess we should thank you for sharing that with us...

Bob Is A Racist

This would be funny if there weren't so much truth to it.

Ok, it's funny anyway...

DNC pre-game report

As I’ve already noted, my exposure to the events in Charlotte this week will be, if for no other reason than to keep my blood pressure reasonable, limited.  But I’ve got a couple of thoughts on what’s going to happen as they get underway.

• In contradiction to Jonah Goldberg’s prediction, I think we do get the “four more years” chant, on more than one occasion.  The awkward questions that this ought to raise in response won’t be asked by the media.
• Any mention of the national debt will be made in the context of what a problem George W. Bush and the Republican Congress left.  No member of the mainstream press will opine, or ask  any question which implies, that this is not the correct framework for thinking about the debt.
• The Democrats will repeatedly, and loudly, proclaim a position on abortion which is far further from the consensus of American public opinion than that held by the Republicans.  They will do this while calling the Republicans’ position “radical.”  At no time will any member of the mainstream media reveal this, nor challenge them on it.
• The Democrats will convey the message, both implicitly and explicitly, that "real women" have to hold certain positions on certain issues.  The mainstream press will never think to call this position, that women are limited in their thought processes by biological determinism, "sexism."
• The Democrats will convey the message, both implicitly and explicitly, that African- Americans have to hold certain positions on certain issues.  The mainstream press will never think to call this position, that people with dark skin are limited in their thought processes by biological determinism, "racism."
• The Democrats will be addressed by a graduate student whose claim to fame is that she previously appeared before Congress to insist that the Federal Government mandate that all insurance policies cover birth control, and, in the process, provoked an intemperate remark from a radio host.  Their advocacy of this position is indicative of either a) their serious lack of understanding of the American body politic or b) mine.  
• Some people will defend Sandra Fluke, and the contraceptive mandate, as a shining example of "separation of church and state."  Those people have a radically different understanding of the Constitution and the first amendment than I do.
• The Democrats will claim, repeatedly, that the stimulus bill and other economic measures passed by the Democratic Congress in 2009 and 2010, and signed by President Obama, left the country better off than it would have otherwise been.  The impossibility of proving counterfactuals leaves this as a position that, though wildly improbable, is not necessarily false.  There might actually be some questioning from the media on this, but it will be largely in a helpful, share-with-our-viewers kind of way, with no significant challenges.
• Joe Biden's convention speech will be filled with the kind of blatant factual errors that the mainstream "fact checkers" tried - incorrectly - to portray Paul Ryan's speech as containing.  The "fact checkers" won't find anything worthy of comment.
• The storyline going in to the Convention is “Democrats dispirited, unenthusiastic.”  That sounds like the media actually sharing negativity about the Democrats, but that’s not the correct understanding.  (The Republicans are living up to the “stupid party” nickname by gathering and sharing these stories.)  The proper frame for understanding the “enthusiasm gap” stories appearing today is as background context for Friday’s “Democrats united and enthusiastic after great convention” stories. 

Explicitly racial group: "Everyone who doesn't agree with us is a racist."

One of the adages I like when talking about confirmation bias is, "when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." In other words, there's a strong tendency in all human beings to see what we're looking for, what we want to see. If our only tool for interpreting society is racism, we're going to see racism in every societal interaction.  So it should come as no surprise that an explicitly racial group, a group based on skin color, taking its name from the skin color of its members, looks at the opposition to President Obama's policies and sees ... racism.

Congressional Black Caucas staff: Opposition to Obama is racist

"This is probably the toughest presidential term in my lifetime," Rye said during CSPAN's Q&A yesterday. "I think that a lot of what the president has experienced is because he's black. You know, whether it's questioning his intellect or whether or not he's Ivy League. It's always either he's not educated enough or he's too educated; or he's too black or he's not black enough; he's too Christian or not Christian enough. There are all these things where he has to walk this very fine line to even be successful."

Sigh...

Honestly, isn't everyone tired of this schtick yet? Let's be brutally frank for a minute: if Barack Obama were white, we would be talking about whether Mitt Romney could defeat Hillary Clinton's re-election bid. Barack Obama, in 2008, was the black John Edwards. Barack Obama is President, and John Edwards is not, because the vast majority of Americans abhor racism and go out of their way not to practice racist behaviors, or behaviors that they might perceive as racist. Barack Obama had absolutely nothing in his background to qualify him for the Presidency over a John Edwards. Barack Obama had absolutely nothing in his background to qualify him for the Presidency, period. He won because of his skin color, because enough media-Americans and Democrat-Americans decided it was time for an African-American President instead of a Woman-American, and enough independents and Republicans were appalled by the profligacy of the second Bush administration to go along.

And now he's being opposed for his policies. His health care proposals are loathed by the same people that loathed "Hillarycare" in 1994. His economic proposals are to the left of Al Gore's and John Kerry's, so he's got all of the opposition that they had, plus more of the "middle," who thought that Gore's and Kerry's policies were ok, but any further was bad. He's got the same kind of support that the equally disastrous, but much whiter, Jimmy Carter had, coming down the stretch in his own failed administration.

In other words, there's not a scintilla of evidence to support the idea that opposition to Obama's policies and re-election campaign, for other than a trivial minority, is based on skin color.

None.

Of course, Rye did try to provide some evidence and, in the process, demonstrated how racist her worldview is, while saying nothing about Obama's opposition.

She said that "a lot" of conservative opposition is racially-charged, citing the use of the word "cool" in an attack ad launched by Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS superPAC.

"There's an ad, talking about [how] the president is too cool, [asking] is he too cool? And there's this music that reminds me of, you know, some of the blaxploitation films from the 70s playing in the background, him with his sunglasses," Rye said. "And to me it was just very racially-charged. They weren't asking if Bush was too cool, but, yet, people say that that's the number one person they'd love to have a beer with. So, if that's not cool I dont know what is.

So "cool" is now a racial slur. Right. Let's conduct a little experiment here: close your eyes, count to 10, and then say the name of the person you most associate with the term, "cool."

If you're over 65, I'm guessing that you said "Elvis Presley" or "Marlon Brando" or "Frank Sinatra." If you're between 45 and 65, you like came up with "Arthur Fonzarelli" (or just "the Fonz"). I'll confess that I don't know who you came up with if you're younger than that, but you're in the Obama demographic anyway.

Q: What do those men all have in common?
A: They are all nearly as white as Elizabeth "Fauxcahontas" Warren.

Claiming that "cool" is a racist term is obviously nonsense to anyone not steeped in the racial grievance industry. To one who is, anything is a racist term, if applied in a pejorative way to a black man. But that makes her position explicitly non-falsifiable. Any evidence that can be offered to her that Obama's opposition is not race-based can be explained away with ad hoc special pleadings. "Cool" is racist. "Proud" means "uppity" so it's racist. "Obama Isn't Working" apparently evokes "the stereotype of the 'lazy,' 'shiftless' black man" and is therefore racist. (Notice that it's the "unbiased" left that thinks about black men as "lazy...shiftless" and assumes racism on the part of those who don't think about black men that way.) Calling him by his full name is racist. Wondering whether he was born in Africa (a claim that he himself made for 17 years) is racist. Opposition to tax hikes is racist. Opposition to the individual mandate is racist. Commenting on how much time he spends golfing is racist. Calling him the "food stamp President" (because the number of Americans receiving food stamps is at an all time high) is racist.

Essentially, in the eyes of those who see the world through the eyes of the CBC, any criticism of a black man is inherently racist.

And I ask again, isn't everyone tired of this schtick yet?

Our Divisive President

Our Divisive President:

During the election campaign, Barack Obama sought to appeal to the best instincts of the electorate, to a post-partisan sentiment that he said would reinvigorate our democracy. He ran on a platform of reconciliation—of getting beyond "old labels" of right and left, red and blue states, and forging compromises based on shared values.

President Obama's Inaugural was a hopeful day, with an estimated 1.8 million people on the National Mall celebrating the election of America's first African-American president. The level of enthusiasm, the anticipation and the promise of something better could not have been more palpable.

And yet, it has not been realized. Not at all.

Rather than being a unifier, Mr. Obama has divided America on the basis of race, class and partisanship. Moreover, his cynical approach to governance has encouraged his allies to pursue a similar strategy of racially divisive politics on his behalf.

More radical Republican criticism? Uh, no. That's from a piece by Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen, two lifelong Democratic operatives.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Obama's campaign emphasized repeatedly that his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was being unfairly stereotyped because of racially incendiary sound bites that allegedly did not reflect the totality of his views. In the Gates incident and others, Mr. Obama has resorted to similar forms of stereotyping.

Even the former head of the Civil Rights Commission, Mary Frances Berry, acknowledged that the Obama administration has taken to polarizing America around the issue of race as a means of diverting attention away from other issues, saying: "the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. . . . Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness."

Now obviously, there's nothing the least bit surprising or revelatory here. This is what anyone who has watched has seen. But it's important that someone who isn't a Republican is willing to stand up and say it. The "racist" tag is so toxic, and played so quickly by the left, and supported so eagerly by the mainstream press, that it's almost impossible for a Republican to cut through the noise it creates. These guys are Democrats - maybe someone will listen...

JournoList: Is 'call them racists' a liberal media tactic?

JournoList: Is 'call them racists' a liberal media tactic?

Excerpts published Tuesday by a conservative online news site suggest that a group of journalists from the mainstream media discussed ways to shield Barack Obama from criticism during the 2008 presidential election.

Among the strategies put forward: call conservative critics racists.

...

The Daily Caller writes that Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent, "urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama's relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama's conservative critics, Mr. Ackerman wrote, 'Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists.' "

Think about that, the next time someone frets about the "racism" of the tea party movement. Where does that idea come from? It comes from the media. Why does it come from the media? Because it's about the only page that they've got left in their playbook. "Hey, let's call them racists!"

Why we homeschool, parts ... well, I've lost count, but trust me, there are many reasons...

But a couple of stories from the past couple of days. First, we've got the American students at an American high school who were sent home from school for having the temerity to wear, on a Mexican drinking holiday, clothing displaying the American flag:

On any other day at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Daniel Galli and his four friends would not even be noticed for wearing T-shirts with the American flag. But Cinco de Mayo is not any typical day especially on a campus with a large Mexican American student population.

Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out. When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal's office.

"They said we could wear it on any other day," Daniel Galli said, "but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today."

The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts "incendiary" that would lead to fights on campus.

If t-shirts showing the American flag are "incendiary," if they could "lead to fights on campus," well, the school and the community have far greater issues to address than could possibly be addressed by having the kids wear the shirts inside-out.


And up in that bastion of liberal tolerance and open-mindedness, Ann Arbor, Michigan, there's a school principal who sees nothing wrong with choosing a subset of a class to receive a special educational experience based on nothing but race...

An Ann Arbor elementary school principal used a letter home to parents tonight to defend a field trip for black students as part of his school’s efforts to close the achievement gap between white and black students.

Dicken Elementary School Principal Mike Madison wrote the letter to parents following several days of controversy at the school after a field trip last week in which black students got to hear a rocket scientist.

...

“The intent of our field trip was not to segregate or exclude students as has been reported, but rather to address the societal issues, roadblocks and challenges that our African American children will face as they pursue a successful academic education here in our community.”

A handful of parents have complained to district administrators about the trip, the group and Madison. More than a half-dozen parents contacted AnnArbor.com to raise the complaints, but none would agree to talk on the record, citing concerns of reprisals to their children by Madison.

While there’s no clear agreement between the two sides about exactly what happened, most of the controversy centers on a field trip taken last week by the Lunch Bunch for African American boys and girls to hear a black rocket engineer talk.

District spokeswoman Liz Margolis said after the trip was over, those who went returned to their fifth-grade class and were greeted by boos by those who didn’t go on the trip. Margolis said Madison, who is black, heard the boos, and went to talk to the class. She said he and the class had a “discussion” about race issues.

“He wasn’t yelling at them. He was very passionate about it,” Margolis said.

Parents have complained he was yelling at the class and belittled a Muslim girl who said she also had experienced racism and discrimination.

Your tax dollars at work. I guess racism and discrimination are only bad when they come from white people...

Racist Democrats

James Taranto:

The political left claims to love racial diversity, but it bitterly opposes such diversity on the political right. This is an obvious matter of political self-interest: Since 1964, blacks have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. If Republicans were able to attract black votes, the result would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party. Even in 2008, the Democrats' best presidential year since '64, if the black vote had been evenly split between the parties (and holding the nonblack vote constant), Barack Obama would have gotten about 48% of the vote and John McCain would be president.

To keep blacks voting Democratic, it is necessary for the party and its supporters to keep alive the idea that racism is prevalent in America and to portray the Republican Party (as well as independent challengers to the Democrats, such as the tea-party movement) as racist. The election of Barack Obama made nonsense of the idea that America remains a racist country and thereby necessitated an intensifying of attacks on the opposition as racist.

Excellent piece - click and read it all.

The bottom line is that it is the political left in this country that behaves in a racist fashion, that fans the flames of racial disharmony and racial strife. And they'll continue to do so, because a unified black voting bloc is the only way Democrats win elections...

"Racist slur" used at Tea Party? Breitbart says, "Put up or shut up."

Andrew Breitbart, putting his money where his mouth is.

There is no reason in 21st century America on an issue that is not a black or white or a civil rights issue to have a bloc of black people walk slowly through a mostly white crowd to make a racial point. The walk in and of itself — with two of the participants holding their handheld cameras above their heads hoping to document “proof” — was an act of racism meant to create a contrast between the tea party crowd and themselves.

...

They have not come forth with evidence to show that even one person hurled the vile racist epithet. The video also shows no head movement one way or another. Wouldn’t the N-word provoke a head turn or two? Is it really possible that in 2010, in a crowd of 30 or 40 thousand people — at the center of a once-in-a-lifetime media circus — not one person’s flipphone, Blackberry, video recorder or a network feed caught a single incident? And if not, then at least someone could have found an honest tea partier to act as an eyewitness — or the Congressional Black Caucus would have confronted the culprit(s). If that had happened, there would be an investigation to see if the perpetrator was a left-wing plant.

...

It’s time for the allegedly pristine character of Rep. John Lewis to put up or shut up. Therefore, I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point.

Will he have to pay out that $10,000? I suspect not. Will any of the media outlets that ran with this particular slander retract it? Again, I suspect not...