A Gentleman’s view.

Emails Show How Hawaii Stiffed Arizona Secretary Of State’s Birther Investigation  NICK R. MARTIN

From: Jill T. Nagamine

Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 8:15 PM
To: Bennett, Ken
Subject: Link to Hawaii laws and the Department of Health webpage

Hi Ken—

So sorry I’ve taken so long to get back to you. I may take a few more days to get your final response about what we can verify and how we will do so. I have been tied up with some legislative deadlines that take precedence. To start with, here are the links that I mentioned to you.

The first link is to the Department of Health’s website that was created in response to the high volume of inquiries about the President’s birth certificate. It includes the press releases issued by the former Republican-appointed Director of Health.
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html

The second is to section 338-18, Hawaii Revised Statutes, which governs the confidentiality of vital records. Let me direct you to paragraph (g) which relates to verification of records.
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol06_Ch0321-0344/HRS0338/HRS_0338-0018.htm

Another link is to section 338-14.3, Hawaii Revised Statutes, which pertains to verification.
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol06_Ch0321-0344/HRS0338/HRS_0338-0014_0003.htm

The last link is to all of chapter 338, Hawaii Revised Statutes, Hawaii’s vital statistics law.
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol06_Ch0321-0344/HRS0338/

Jill T. Nagamine
Deputy Attorney General
State of Hawaii

—

March 30, 2012

Hawaii Department of Health
Office of Health Status Monitoring
Vital Records Issuance Section
P.O. Box 3378
Honolulu, HI 96801

Ladies and gentlemen:

Enclosed please find a request for a verification in lieu of a certified copy for the birth record of Barack Hussein Obama II. In addition to the items to be verified in the attached form, please verify the following items from the record of birth:

Department of Health File #151 61 10641
Time of birth: 7:24 p.m.
Name of hospital: Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital
Age of father: 25
Birthplace of Father: Kenya, East Africa
Age of mother: 18
Birthplace of mother: Wichita, Kansas
Date of signature of parent: 8-7-1961
Date of signature of attendant: 8-8-1961
Date accepted by local registrar: August-8 1961

Additionally, please verify that the attached copy of the Certificate of Live Birth for Mr. Obama is a true and accurate representation of the original record in your files.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Sincerely,

Ken Bennett
Arizona Secretary of State

—

From: Bennett, Ken
To: Jill T. Nagamine
Date: 04/16/2012 01:48 PM
Subject: RE: Link to Hawaii laws and the Department of Health webpage

Dear Jill,

Thank you for speaking with me several weeks ago and providing the helpful links below. I sent a request for a verification in lieu of a certified copy of President Obama’s birth record to the Dept. of Health on March 30th. I was just wondering if you knew whether the request was received and how long it usually takes to process? Thanx.

Ken Bennett
Arizona Secretary of State

—

From: Jill T. Nagamine
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2012 5:39 PM
To: Bennett, Ken
Subject: RE: Link to Hawaii laws and the Department of Health webpage

Ken—

Thank you for this heads up. This is the first I heard of it. I will check with my client to see if they received your request.

Jill

Jill T. Nagamine
Deputy Attorney General
State of Hawaii

—

To: Jill T. Nagamine
From: Drake, Jim
Date: 05/01/2012 11:52AM
Subject: Request from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office

Hello Jill. I just left you a brief voice mail message. I am wondering whether you can give me a ballpark timeframe on our request. As you know, the closer we get to November, the more my phone rings. I believe that having Hawaii’s response on hand might help to quell the inquiries! Thanks in advance. Jim

Jim Drake
Deputy Secretary of State

—

From: Jill T. Nagamine
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2012 5:11 PM
To: Drake, Jim; Bennett, Ken
Subject: Re: Request from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office

Dear Mr. Bennett and Mr. Drake—

My apologies for not responding immediately. I have recently been away from my office a great deal, including today. My client, the Department of Health, has forwarded your request for verification of President Obama’s birth record to me. We need more information to substantiate that you are eligible to receive verification. Hawaii Revised Statutes, section 338-18(g), provides:

(g) The department shall not issue a verification in lieu of a certified copy of any such record, or any part thereof, unless it is satisfied that the applicant requesting a verification is:

(1) A person who has a direct and tangible interest in the record but requests a verification in lieu of a certified copy;
(2) A governmental agency or organization who for a legitimate government purpose maintains and needs to update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities;
(3) A governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks confirmation of a certified copy of any such record submitted in support of or information provided about a vital event relating to any such record and contained in an official application made in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities by an individual seeking employment with, entrance to, or the services or products of the agency or organization;
(4) A private or government attorney who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record which was acquired during the course of or for purposes of legal proceedings; or
(5) An individual employed, endorsed, or sponsored by a governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record in preparation of reports or publications by the agency or organization for research or educational purposes.

As the Secretary and I initially discussed, it appears that you might be eligible for verification of the record based on subparagraph (2), but we need to see what your authority is “to update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of your activities.” Will you send me a copy of your law that allows this, and will you send me information that shows:

(1) What list are you updating?
(2) Is it your normal procedure to update all entries on your list by requiring birth data verification?
(3) Are you requiring birth data verification of all entries on your list, rather than just targeting one name on your list? (please provide evidence that you are doing so)

You may address your response directly to me, and I will relay it to my client.

Thank you,
Jill T. Nagamine
Deputy Attorney General
State of Hawaii

—

From: Bennett, Ken
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 3:12 PM
To: Jill T. Nagamine; Drake, Jim
Subject: RE: Request from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office

Dear Ms. Nagamine:

As the chief elections officer for the State of Arizona and pursuant to Arizona Revised Statutes, sections 16-212, 16-301, 16-502, 16-507 and others, my office is tasked with quadrennially compiling a list of candidates for the Office of the President of the United States. This list is then officially “certified” by my office and transmitted to the fifteen counties for creation of the official ballots. The list is generated in the “ordinary course” of my office’s activities (every four years) and it is certainly made for a “legitimate government purpose” (elections).

Based on the above representation, I believe that my office has strictly and expressly complied with all of the elements found in Hawaii Revised Statutes, section 338-18(g).

I understand your client’s initial trepidation in responding to this request given the significant amount of email, fax and phone call traffic that this issue has spawned. My office too has received numerous constituent requests and I agree with Director Fuddy’s assertion in her letter of April 25, 2011 that the sheer volume of inquires has “been disruptive to staff operations and have strained State resources.” However, I am concerned that a rejection of a request by another State’s chief elections official will dramatically exacerbate an already untenable situation.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Ken Bennett
Secretary of State

—

From: Jill T. Nagamine
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2012 3:38 PM
To: Bennett, Ken
Subject: RE: Request from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office

Dear Mr. Bennett:

I am in receipt of your email dated May 17, 2012. As I have informed you and Mr. Drake, Hawaii law requires that for verification of a vital record the requestor must satisfy the requirements of section 338-18(g), Hawaii Revised Statutes, which provides:

(g) The department shall not issue a verification in lieu of a certified copy of any such record, or any part thereof, unless it is satisfied that the applicant requesting a verification is:
(1) A person who has a direct and tangible interest in the record but requests a verification in lieu of a certified copy;
(2) A governmental agency or organization who for a legitimate government purpose maintains and needs to update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities;
(3) A governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks confirmation of a certified copy of any such record submitted in support of or information provided about a vital event relating to any such record and contained in an official application made in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities by an individual seeking employment with, entrance to, or the services or products of the agency or organization;
(4) A private or government attorney who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record which was acquired during the course of or for purposes of legal proceedings; or
(5) An individual employed, endorsed, or sponsored by a governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record in preparation of reports or publications by the agency or organization for research or educational purposes.

I asked you for legal authority that establishes your right to obtain verification, and your email of May 17, 2012 provides me with references to Arizona Revised Statutes 16-212, 16-301, 16-502, 16-507, and unnamed others. These statutes seem to deal with election of presidential electors, nomination of candidates for printing on official ballot of general or special election, form and contents of ballot, and presentation of presidential candidates on ballot, but none, as far as I can tell, establish the authority of the Secretary of State to maintain and update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of his activities. I researched other sections of the Arizona Revised Statutes and was unable to find the necessary authority.

If I have missed something, please let me know. My client stands willing to provide you with the verification you seek as soon as you are able to show that you are entitled to it.

Thank you,
Jill T. Nagamine
Deputy Attorney General
State of Hawaii

—

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Bennett, Ken wrote:

Dear Tom,

It offends and saddens me that anyone would characterize me as having “little interest” in the electoral eligibility of the President. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have personally met with Representative Seel, Jeff Lichter, and many others on multiple occasions. After considering the various options when we started working on this two or three years ago, I have consistently suggested what I believe is the best action: establishing a special private right of action in state law allowing any Arizona elector to challenge a presidential candidate’s qualification for office under expedited time frames in the courts. Ironically, I think that, after trying several other approaches, that’s what was most recently proposed in the Legislature by Carl. As the filing office for statewide, legislative and federal offices, our office does not have the resources, nor would I think it appropriate, to verify filings other than for elements that can be determined on their face: number of signatures submitted, completeness of documents, formation of committees, etc. Only in the courts can subpoena power, rules of evidence, and other judicial tools compel the production of and give impartial consideration to evidence on both sides.

Having said that, there are things we have been and are doing to insure the integrity of our ballot. First, we have revised the nomination forms and informed the parties that we will not include a Presidential or VP candidate on the ballot unless the candidates personally swear to meeting the itemized qualifications required in the Constitution. (In 2008, the Democrat nomination form simply said that their candidates had been “nominated” at the Party Convention)

Additionally, I have asked the State of Hawaii for a “verification in lieu of a certified copy” of the birth record of President Obama, as contemplated under HRS 338-18. This action was prompted, in large part, by constituents here in Arizona who wanted me to do whatever I could to verify the President’s eligibility. If the State of Hawaii does not confirm that he was born in Hawaii, his name will not appear on Arizona ballots.

From the tone of your letter, I assume you have personally concluded that Barack Obama is not qualified to hold his office, so the above actions probably fall far short of your desired outcome. However, I am doing what I think fulfills my oath of office based on the rule of Law. If you disagree with my past or future actions, you can obviously seek judicial review in the Courts.

Sincerely,

Ken Bennett
Arizona Secretary of State

—

From: Bennett, Ken
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 11:00 AM
To: ‘Brian Reilly’
Cc: Tom Ballantyne; Jeff Lichter; Jim Wise; Gabe Zolna; ‘crossroadswithvan’; Wesley W. Harris; Tom Jenney; ‘rodriddle’
Subject: RE: Your Oath of Office, Ken?

Dear Brian, Tom, and All,

Thank you for your emails seeking resolution to President Obama’s qualification for office and, therefore, his right to be on our ballot. In your calls for me to make sure he follows the law and is “subject to the same rational and reasonable standards as every other citizen”, it is imperative that we follow the rule of law as well.

Arizona law requires an individual to file nomination papers wherein they certify they meet the qualifications of the office sought and have met other requirements such as committee formation and signatures. We review elements in the filing that can be verified on their face (completeness, numbers of signatures, etc.). Challenges to the remaining facts in the filing (validity of each signature, residency and other qualification aspects) are solely brought through legal process in the courts.

Because of the importance and profile of the President’s case, and at the request of many constituents, I have gone the extra step of asking the State of Hawaii to verify the facts contained in his birth certificate. Hawaii is bound by their own statutes to provide such verification to other state officials in their official duties and, to Brian’s point, I do not believe they can avoid their duty to me under a criminal investigation loophole because I am not investigating them.

The fact that Obama certified his citizenship on the 2008 PPE form is irrelevant to me because Arizona does not grant its electoral votes in the PPE. I believe there is significance in changing our nomination form for the actual election to include the certification.

With all due respect, the MCSO investigation has not proven anything other than raised probable cause that the birth certificate posted on the Whitehouse website “may be” a forgery. The next lawful step would be for the Sheriff’s office to turn their findings over to the County Attorney for prosecution. Evidence would be brought on both sides and a judge should issue a decision. Whether or not that happens, if Hawaii can’t or won’t provide verification of the President’s birth certificate, I will not put his name on the ballot.

I can tell from the tone and language of your letters that the only acceptable outcome for you is that his name not be on the ballot, period. That may be what happens, but under my watch, it won’t happen based on opinions, petitions, probability or pledges to support or oppose me in the 2014 Governor’s race. My oath of office is to uphold the Constitution and laws of our State and country, and I’m going to do that by following the law. I look forward to continuing to work this issue under those parameters. Otherwise, I will respectfully agree to disagree.

Sincerely,

Ken Bennett
Secretary of State

15 Major Differences Between Occupy Wall Street And The Tea Party Protests

I read an article recently, which compared the origins of the Occupy Wall Street movement to the origins of the Tea Party movement. As someone who has paid attention to both movements,  I believe nothing could be further from the truth. Below are just 15 differences between the Occupy Wall Street protests, and the Tea Party movement.

1. Occupy Wall Street is a grassroots movement, funded by people around the world, without corporate sponsorship.
The Tea Party is an AstroTurf  movement, receiving most of its funding from corporate sponsorship, and Fox News and its supporters.

2. Occupy Wall Street wants less corporate influence over our Government.
The Tea Party wants less Governmental influence over corporations.

3. Occupy Wall Street didn’t receive mainstream media coverage until several weeks after it began.
The Tea Party held rallies across the country sponsored by Fox News, and even small rallies with minimal turnout received attention from other media outlets.

4. Occupy Wall Street protesters are unarmed.
The Tea Party protesters openly carried a large variety of guns, including assault rifles.

5. Over 1,000 Occupy Wall Street Protesters have been arrested.
Zero Tea Party Protesters have been arrested.

6. Occupy Wall Street doesn’t endorse either political party.
The Tea Party actively endorsed the Republican Party.

7. Occupy Wall Street protests have sparked similar protests around the world.
The Tea Party protests were ridiculed around the world.

8. Occupy Wall Street protests have more than 50% approval from the general public.

The Tea Party protests peaked at 18% approval from the general public.

9. Occupy Wall Street protesters represent the poor, the disenfranchised, and the people who don’t feel like they have a voice in our Government.
The Tea Party protesters represented the wealthy, the elite, and the corporations who already have too much influence in our Government.

10. Occupy Wall Street doesn’t want politicians to co-opt their movement.
The Tea Party protests regularly featured speeches from conservative political figures like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

11. Occupy Wall Street protesters signs are spelled correctly.
Many Tea Party protest signs featured glaring spelling and grammatical errors.

12. Occupy Wall Street is supported by the youth in this country.
A majority of the Tea Party’s support came from middle-age citizens and people 65 and up.

13. Occupy Wall Street represents the 99% of Americans who aren’t millionaires and billionaires, and who don’t have a voice in our Government.
The Tea Party represents the wealthiest Americans, and wants the Government to stop trying to tax them.

14. Occupy Wall Street protesters are setting up camps across the country, to get attention from the media and to show that they’re serious.
The Tea Party went home as soon as their corporately sponsored rallies were over.

15. Occupy Wall Street has received endless criticism from the right-wing.
The Tea Party received endless and unconditional praise from the right-wing.

Hopefully this has been an informative list, of some of the more obvious differences between the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements.

It’s the 21st Century, but the house Negro is still here.

Happy Birthday Malcolm X.

“…If you’re afraid of black nationalism, you’re afraid of revolution. And if you love revolution, you love black nationalism. 

To understand this, you have to go back to what [the] young brother here referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro — back during slavery. There was two kinds of slaves. There was the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes – they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good ’cause they ate his food — what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved their master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master’s house quicker than the master would. The house Negro, if the master said, “We got a good house here,” the house Negro would say, “Yeah, we got a good house here.” Whenever the master said “we,” he said “we.” That’s how you can tell a house Negro.

If the master’s house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house Negro would say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” We sick! He identified himself with his master more than his master identified with himself. And if you came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate,” the house Negro would look at you and say, “Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?” That was that house Negro. In those days he was called a “house nigger.” And that’s what we call him today, because we’ve still got some house niggers running around here.

This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He’ll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about “I’m the only Negro out here.” “I’m the only one on my job.” “I’m the only one in this school.” You’re nothing but a house Negro. And if someone comes to you right now and says, “Let’s separate,” you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation. “What you mean, separate? From America? This good white man? Where you going to get a better job than you get here?” I mean, this is what you say. “I ain’t left nothing in Africa,” that’s what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa.

On that same plantation, there was the field Negro. The field Negro — those were the masses. There were always more Negroes in the field than there was Negroes in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn’t get nothing but what was left of the insides of the hog. They call ‘em “chitt’lings” nowadays. In those days they called them what they were: guts. That’s what you were — a gut-eater. And some of you all still gut-eaters. 

*The field Negro was beaten from morning to night. He lived in a shack, in a hut; He wore old, castoff clothes. He hated his master. I say he hated his master. He was intelligent. That house Negro loved his master. But that field Negro — remember, they were in the majority, and they hated the master. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try and put it out; that field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he’d die. If someone come [sic] to the field Negro and said, “Let’s separate, let’s run,” he didn’t say “Where we going?” He’d say, “Any place is better than here.” You’ve got field Negroes in America today. I’m a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man’s house on fire, you don’t hear these little Negroes talking about “our government is in trouble.” They say, “The government is in trouble.” Imagine a Negro: “Our government”! I even heard one say “our astronauts.” They won’t even let him near the plant — and “our astronauts”! “Our Navy” — that’s a Negro that’s out of his mind. That’s a Negro that’s out of his mind.

Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent. That’s Tom making you nonviolent. It’s like when you go to the dentist, and the man’s going to take your tooth. You’re going to fight him when he starts pulling. So he squirts some stuff in your jaw called novocaine, to make you think they’re not doing anything to you. So you sit there and ’cause you’ve got all of that novocaine in your jaw, you suffer peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw, and you don’t know what’s happening. ‘Cause someone has taught you to suffer — peacefully.” [Listen] 

“We sick”? Yes, “we sick”. Because, sadly, there are still a lot of house Negroes running around today.

The Campaign Against Women

Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women’s equality and well-being. New laws in some states could mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

Firing My Own Bu-cannon by John Derbyshire 

Having recently enthused about Pat Buchanan’s latest book and then about the man himself here on Taki’s Mag, please forgive me one more column about him.

His firing from MSNBC official at last, Pat recorded an interview with Juan Williams the other day for the Fox Latino website. If your preferred Internet viewing is Fox Euro, Fox Sino, Fox Islamo, Fox Indo, Fox Lesbo, or one of the other group-identity Fox outlets, you may have missed the interview. It can be seen in its entirety here.

I’m offering some edited highlights with my own commentaries added. Mostly I’m giving my own answers to questions Juan Williams was asking Pat. The first question is about 6:20 into the interview, with the others scattered through the remainder.
JW: Let me ask you: Are you a racist, Pat?

PJB: Do I hate black folks? That’s what racism means. I hate black folks, I want ’em discriminated against.…No!

[JD: I honestly have no idea what that word means, and I no longer use it. Since you just did use it, Juan, presumably you do know what it means. So here’s a deal: I will truthfully answer any question you care to ask me about my own attitudes, beliefs, and behavior in the matter of race. Then you tell me if I am a racist.]

“You can have meritocracy or you can have equal group outcomes, but you can’t have both. Which one do we want?”

JW: You say things like “Mexico is moving north.” Do you see those folks as a threat to the American dream?

PJB: (Boilerplate tribute to Mexicans as “hard-working” and “friendly.” Easy with the stereotypes there, Pat!)

[JD: Threat to the American Dream? Yes. The Mexicans we’re getting are a low-mean-IQ population, from the bottom SES levels of a nation that has accomplished nothing in its 500 years of existence. This is bound to degrade the USA’s human capital. Further, Mexican society is rigidly stratified by race. These low SES levels are disproportionately Indian and mestizo, so by admitting them in quantity we are acquiring a new race problem while we continue struggling with the old one. This is dumb. No, it’s beyond dumb; it’s insane.]

JW: Don’t you think that the history of discrimination, particularly in the area of education, but continuing disparities in terms of educational outcomes—in terms of things like income, families, all the rest—the terrible history of slavery and all its consequences—you don’t think that’s a legitimate factor?

PJB: I think with African Americans it was…but did we enslave Puerto Rican Americans? Did we enslave Mexican Americans? No!…

[JD: The outcome disparities are a natural and predictable result of racial differences. Races are big old inbred local branches of the human stock, like dog breeds. They are bound to exhibit different statistical profiles on all kinds of traits, including behavior, intelligence, and personality. That’s Biology 101. Those different profiles cause the observed differences in outcome. They are observed in all multiracial societies, even where no history of slavery or oppression has been present: in Malaysia, for example.]

JW: But I’m saying….If you’re from Central America, Latin America, and…you find that there are, given our history, preferences for people who are white in the society….

PJB: Do you think they really loved the Polish folks that came, and the Greeks who came, and the Portuguese—they were all privileged?

[JD: “…preferences for people who are white in the society?” Which the heck society are you talking about, Juan? All of current American society, from billboard and TV advertisements to affirmative-action programs and “diversity” browbeating, from crime reporters telling us that a gang of raceless “teens” trashed a convenience store, to the media swooning over a dramatically under-qualified presidential candidate because of you-know-what, to the hysteria over “racial profiling” and the incoherent, reality-defying judicial doctrine of “disparate impact,” to immigration officers waving in welfare-hungry Somalis, Haitians, Salvadorans, and Mexicans while slamming the door in the face of white South Africans fleeing torture and murder, the entire society has for decades been giving nonwhites every possible break, and then some, all at whites’ expense. “Preferences for people who are white?” Hoo hoo hoo hoo!]

JW: Didn’t LBJ say that if you have one guy who’s been in chains and held in a dark place and not fed good food, and then you bring him to that starting line, that is not a fair race, Pat?

PJB: Tell me why, then, African Americans have succeeded. They succeed in Hollywood, they succeed as writers, as journalists, on TV, and they succeed in athletics, obviously disproportionately….

[JD: “…been in chains and held in a dark place and not fed good food….” For crying out loud, man, LBJ was speaking half a century ago. Slavery ended a century before that. How long will this excuse keep its charm? It’s not as though American blacks have been the only people ever to labor under legal disabilities. Europe’s Jews did so until the 18th century; women did so all over the Western world until the mid-20th. Once the legal disabilities were removed, those groups asserted themselves in a single generation. Slavery was commonplace in the ancient world. Epictetus had been a slave, as had Saint Patrick. Once given their freedom, slaves quickly assumed normal lives. Many American blacks did likewise. That the overall social, educational, criminological, etc. profile of American blacks as a group has remained so distinctive after so many decades in spite of massive legal favoritism, preferences, and the institutionalization of white guilt bespeaks intrinsic race differences.]

JW: And you think that if we look at American business, at the top of the American structure for law, for medicine, and we see an absence of people of color, that there’s no problem?

PJB: Let’s take the biochemistry class….

[JD: If there’s a problem, Juan, it’s a problem with reality. Because of race differences, meritocratic filtering will never deliver equal group outcomes: not in business, not in medicine, not in the NBA, not in homicide statistics. Carve it on a board and hang it on the wall: MERITOCRATIC FILTERING WILL NEVER DELIVER EQUAL GROUP OUTCOMES. You can have meritocracy or you can have equal group outcomes, but you can’t have both. Which one do we want?]

JW: But you know, Pat, that historically, people of color were kept out of schools.

PJB: Who was discriminated in the 19th century…? [T]he Irish…but also the Japanese and Chinese on the West Coast were brutalized….

[JD: And now “people of color” are preferentially admitted, with much lower test scores than whites and East Asians, leaving them to struggle in classes where they are out of their depth. How about we try the one thing we have not yet tried: race-blind meritocratic admissions?]

JW: People who are concerned about [immigration] are oftentimes labeled as xenophobic, as racist, as nativist, when in fact you think they have a legitimate concern.

PJB: Well, sure… (Proceeds to mention legal immigration! On a website accessible to impressionable young minds! Oh my God!)

[JD: Immigration is an aspect of national public policy, like defense, interstate highways, or air-traffic control. It is a legitimate concern of all participating citizens. Why should it not be a legitimate concern? Immigration policy determines, among other things, the demographics our children and grandchildren will inherit. How is that not a legitimate concern of all citizens?]

JW: You don’t think that the immigrants, legal and illegal, who are here are valued by their employers…?

PJB: The businessmen…let’s say they bring ‘em to a car wash. These illegal immigrants, they’ll work for less, you don’t need to pay all this other stuff and they work off the books…sure businessmen love that, Juan!

[JD: For once I can’t improve on Pat’s answer. Immigration, legal and illegal, is mainly a cheap-labor racket, with immigration practice and the enforcement, or more often non-enforcement, of immigration laws mainly dictated by powerful business lobbies—such as Microsoft Corp. and Big Agriculture—with the anti-white race-favoritism claques cheering from the sidelines. Both major political parties are paid whores for these lobbies. Current US immigration policy, as implemented, is nothing but a continuous assault on American citizens’ livelihood and rights.]

Eagle Forum: Minority Children Are Un-American Because They Don’t Have Conservative Beliefs

The Eagle Forum is one of the most dangerous conservative organizations in the country. Led by Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum opposes equal rights for women and promotes an anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-sex education, and anti-vaccination agenda that has contributed to the current wave of social conservative extremism in the Republican Party. And now we can add anti-immigrant and pro-racism to that list.

In response to a New York Times report on Census Bureau data showing that minority births out-paced the births of whites for the first time in America, a blog on the Eagle Forum website, criticized the liberal media, accusing the NY Times of bragging about the numbers. Eagle Forum then bashed minorities, writing that more minority births “is not a good thing” because they are “un-American” and won’t vote for Republicans when they get older. Here’s an excerpt:

“It is not a good thing. The immigrants do not share American values, so it is a good bet that they will not be voting Republican when they start voting in large numbers.

The NY Times liberals seek to destroy the American family of the 1950s, as symbolized by Ozzie and Harriet. The TV characters were happy, self-sufficient, autonomous, law-abiding, honorable, patriotic, hard-working, and otherwise embodied qualities that made America great. In other words, the show promoted values that NY Times liberals despise.

Instead, the USA is being transformed by immigrants who do not share those values, and who have high rates of illiteracy, illegitimacy, and gang crime, and they will vote Democrat when the Democrats promise them more food stamps.”

So Eagle Forum says that minorities, which includes African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and people of mixed heritage, are unpatriotic criminals who can’t read, don’t work, and live on food stamps. And Eagle Forum objects to minorities having babies because those babies will grow up to vote against Republicans. This is the kind of paranoia and hatred that has controlled the Republican Party for decades, and is just more proof that the Republican Party harbors racist feelings.

The American family, as depicted by Ozzie and Harriet in the 1950s never existed. There may have been some families like that, but the majority of American families, both then and now, are not. Eagle Forum is living in a fantasy world if they really think America should be like 1950s TV shows. Minorities are good for America. Minorities introduce new and fresh ideas, different cultures, and adds to the legacy of America as a melting pot, where people of all cultures and races can live free in peace. The folks at Eagle Forum seem to be too stupid to understand that when you hold an anti-immigrant and pro-racist agenda, of course minority groups are going to vote against you. Why would minorities vote against their own rights and interests? If conservatism is about keeping the white race large and in charge, who knows what kind of policies they could adopt to curb minority procreation. It’s a scary thought for minority groups to consider when stepping up to the voting booth this November.

To contact Eagle Forum and tell them that racism and hate is not okay, here is their contact information.

Eagle Forum
PO Box 618
Alton, IL 62002
Phone: 618-462-5415
Fax: 618-462-8909 eagle@eagleforum.org

‘Metrosexual Black Abe Lincoln’ By CHARLES M. BLOW

The New York Times reported on Thursday that a Republican “super PAC” was mulling over a plan to resurrect President Obama’s former pastor and spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., as a weapon against the president.

Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane

When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die.

When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “At times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”

The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of “primitive” societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.

The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire. This struggle between belief systems was not lost on Marx. “The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx” is a series of observations derived from Marx’s reading of works by historians and anthropologists. He took notes about the traditions, practices, social structure, economic systems and beliefs of numerous indigenous cultures targeted for destruction. Marx noted arcane details about the formation of Native American society, but also that “lands [were] owned by the tribes in common, while tenement-houses [were] owned jointly by their occupants.” He wrote of the Aztecs, “Commune tenure of lands; Life in large households composed of a number of related families.” He went on, “… reasons for believing they practiced communism in living in the household.” Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies, and also proved vital to Marx and Engel’s vision of communism.

Marx, though he placed a naive faith in the power of the state to create his workers’ utopia and discounted important social and cultural forces outside of economics, was acutely aware that something essential to human dignity and independence had been lost with the destruction of pre-modern societies. The Iroquois Council of the Gens, where Indians came together to be heard as ancient Athenians did, was, Marx noted, a “democratic assembly where every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it.” Marx lauded the active participation of women in tribal affairs, writing, “The women [were] allowed to express their wishes and opinions through an orator of their own election. Decision given by the Council. Unanimity was a fundamental law of its action among the Iroquois.” European women on the Continent and in the colonies had no equivalent power.

Rebuilding this older vision of community, one based on cooperation rather than exploitation, will be as important to our survival as changing our patterns of consumption, growing food locally and ending our dependence on fossil fuels. The pre-modern societies of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—although they were not always idyllic and performed acts of cruelty including the mutilation, torture and execution of captives—did not subordinate the sacred to the technical. The deities they worshipped were not outside of or separate from nature.

Seventeenth century European philosophy and the Enlightenment, meanwhile, exalted the separation of human beings from the natural world, a belief also embraced by the Bible. The natural world, along with those pre-modern cultures that lived in harmony with it, was seen by the industrial society of the Enlightenment as worthy only of exploitation.Descartes argued, for example, that the fullest exploitation of matter toany use was the duty of humankind. The wilderness became, in the religious language of the Puritans, satanic. It had to be Christianized and subdued. The implantation of the technical order resulted, as Richard Slotkin writes in “Regeneration Through Violence,” in the primacy of “the western man-on-the-make, the speculator, and the wildcat banker.” Davy Crockett and, later, George Armstrong Custer, Slotkin notes, became “national heroes by defining national aspiration in terms of so many bears destroyed, so much land preempted, so many trees hacked down, so many Indians and Mexicans dead in the dust.”

The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the “beast.”

The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction. The Native Americans understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering.

In William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” Prospero is stranded on an island where he becomes the undisputed lord and master. He enslaves the primitive “monster” Caliban. He employs the magical sources of power embodied in the spirit Ariel, who is of fire and air. The forces unleashed in the island’s wilderness, Shakespeare knew, could prompt us to good if we had the capacity for self-control and reverence. But it also could push us toward monstrous evil since there are few constraints to thwart plunder, rape, murder, greed and power. Later, Joseph Conrad, in his portraits of the outposts of empire, also would expose the same intoxication with barbarity.

The anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who in 1846 was “adopted” by the Seneca, one of the tribes belonging to the Iroquois confederation, wrote in “Ancient Society” about social evolution among American Indians. Marx noted approvingly, in his “Ethnological Notebooks,” Morgan’s insistence on the historical and social importance of “imagination, that great faculty so largely contributing to the elevation of mankind.” Imagination, as the Shakespearean scholar Harold C. Goddard pointed out, “is neither the language of nature nor the language of man, but both at once, the medium of communion between the two. … Imagination is the elemental speech in all senses, the first and the last, of primitive man and of the poets.”

All that concerns itself with beauty and truth, with those forces that have the power to transform us, is being steadily extinguished by our corporate state. Art. Education. Literature. Music. Theater. Dance. Poetry. Philosophy. Religion. Journalism. None of these disciplines are worthy in the corporate state of support or compensation. These are pursuits that, even in our universities, are condemned as impractical. But it is only through the impractical, through that which can empower our imagination, that we will be rescued as a species. The prosaic world of news events, the collection of scientific and factual data, stock market statistics and the sterile recording of deeds as history do not permit us to understand the elemental speech of imagination. We will never penetrate the mystery of creation, or the meaning of existence, if we do not recover this older language. Poetry shows a man his soul, Goddard wrote, “as a looking glass does his face.” And it is our souls that the culture of imperialism, business and technology seeks to crush.

Walter Benjamin argued that capitalism is not only a formation “conditioned by religion,” but is an “essentially religious phenomenon,” albeit one that no longer seeks to connect humans with the mysterious forces of life. Capitalism, as Benjamin observed, called on human societies to embark on a ceaseless and futile quest for money and goods. This quest, he warned, perpetuates a culture dominated by guilt, a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing. It enslaves nearly all its adherents through wages, subservience to the commodity culture and debt peonage. The suffering visited on Native Americans, once Western expansion was complete, was soon endured by others, in Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The final chapter of this sad experiment in human history will see us sacrificed as those on the outer reaches of empire were sacrificed. There is a kind of justice to this. We profited as a nation from this demented vision, we remained passive and silent when we should have denounced the crimes committed in our name, and now that the game is up we all go down together.