Kosovo independance & our embassy
The more I read about the area comprising the former Yugoslovia the more I am convinced that I do not, and probably will not ever, fully understand it. There are Hatfield and McCoy hatreds in that part of the world that go back centuries. I was unsure if our intervention in the 90's was a good idea. Mind you, I was not convinced it was a bad idea, but given the folks in charge then and the fact that I wasn't convinced that it was clearly a good idea.....
That said.... what set of morons had to come together to put us in the situation where a bunch of rioters set fire to our embassy.
1. It may or may not have been a good idea to support the independence declaration but the fact that the proposed "constitution" was clearly written by the UN wonks and not a bunch of devout Muslims should have been a clue to withhold judgment until the dust settled. I am guessing the illustrious State Department was heavily at work here.
2. It should have been clear to everyone that there would be significant opposition in Serbia.
3. If we were going to be "out in front" and ignore #1 above we should have guarded against what should have been an obvious potential for violence against our embassy and put in place appropriate security measures to avoid being overrun by a mob of civilians armed with rocks, sticks and bottles. A couple of squads of marines, for instance, could have avoided our embassy being overrun. This would likely have come at a cost of a couple dozen pissed off civilian Serbian lives but there must be a cost to invading US sovereign territory because you are pissed off. I have been pissed off at Castro and the ChiComs for decades but it never occurred to me that it would be a good idea to try to ransack a Commie embassy in NY because I really don't want to meet my maker quite yet.
On the up side I have seen no reports of any embassy personnel being killed, kidnapped or harmed so maybe we did the non-confrontational thing of bailing out before the violence started. This is a distant second in the reasonable choice category. It really matters not if we should be supporting the Christians or the Muslims in their little Hatfield and McCoy history. We must defend our sovereign territory against invasion. We will have no standing to bring to bear to settle the violence in the eyes of the Serbs or the newly declared Kosovo state if we allow a handful of pissed off Hatfields to overrun our embassy and set it ablaze. Need one be reminded of how quickly Ackmedinawhackjob and crew bailed on their hostage situation in our Iranian embassy as Reagan was taking the oath of office? The people in that part of the world (regardless of religion and ethnic heritage) do not seem to understand compassion and empathy from Goliath but they seem to understand military strength just fine.
Michelle Obama's pride
From the first report I saw on Michelle Obama's statement that this was the first time in her adult life she was really proud of her country I thought this was much ado about nothing. It was one of those platitudes/overstatements/etc that politicians and their supports say every day that don't mean much when you pull back the covers. I would agree that it was a stupid thing to say only because people (meaning your political opponents) can turn it into whatever they want but it didn't strike me as particularly offensive.
Today Dennis Prager invited black Americans to call in and express their feelings about it. Their take was an eye opener to me. Even one guy who said he wouldn't vote for Obama because he is a conservative said something to the effect that the mere fact that a black person could/might get elected made him feel better about this country even if he lost in the general election. This struck me. Odd.... troubling.... scary?
I have been all over this country and I just don't meet many white people who wouldn't vote for someone because of the color of their skin. There are a few bottom feeding morons in our corner of the human race, I admit, but there aren't many and we tend to marginalize them (read poke fun at them in public and smack them upside the head when nobody's looking). I would say that during this campaign I have heard far more people say they wouldn't ever vote for a Mormon than I would have ever dreamed and not a single person who has said the same thing about Sen. Obama's skin color. I believe that all of my white friends who lean Democrat are voting for Sen. Obama in the primary. I wouldn't swear to that but I am sure it is at least most if not all. We conservatives have known all along that white conservatives would vote for a conservative black person. We cheered at the appointments of Condi Rice and Gen. Powell and especially Justice Thomas. The antique media, the schools, most Democrat politicians and the race baiters constantly tell black Americans that we (white America) hates them and do things every day to inhibit their progress in our society. You'll never have a black president because whitey won't vote for a black. "The man" will always oppress you, unless you vote D that is.
Guess what America, in a 3 way race between a white guy, a white woman and a black guy who hold basically the exact same policy positions on everything Utah gave 57% of its vote to the black guy. I haven't seen a breakdown but I wouldn't be surprised that all 14 black people living in Utah voted for Sen. Obama but the minority vote doesn't get you a plurality in Utah. It might get you South Carolina but, let's face it, if Utah were any whiter it would disappear in the winter. Part of it actually does.
The left has been lying to you/us to keep you (black America) voting 90% Democrat even though a majority of you actually hold personal positions that are totally at odds with the leadership of that party. There is no other explanation I can think of. They have been lying to you and at least some of you were believing them. And yes, it is a lie and not a misunderstanding of the situation. I am a computer guy, not a sociologist, and I knew it. I guess I was shocked today because I thought you knew it too.
White people don't leave the inner city for the suburbs to get away from black people. They leave the inner cities because the inner cities have been in the exclusive hands of Democrats so long that it is a totally crappy place to live. Aside from the fact that I disagree with the Democratic policy positions you have to agree that giving any political machine total control of your city/state/country for decades will lead to big trouble. White people go to the suburbs to get away from crime and drug dealers and high taxes and terrible schools not to get away from a particular ethnic group or to live in an all white neighborhood. Ask any real estate sales person how often they get asked if there are any blacks in the area of the house they are looking at. We will admit there are blacks living in the suburbs won't we. I didn't ask. I don't think any of my neighbors did either. What's the crime rate, how are the schools? Those questions get asked. We asked about schools and we don't have and are not going to have kids. Good schools = good neighbors for the most part.
I will not vote for Barak Obama because I disagree with almost every policy position he has. I will be voting against him (assuming he gets the nomination) for the exact same reason that I would have voted against Billary or the Breck Girl. I am a conservative and I loathe socialist ideas. Give me Michael Steele at the top of a ticket and wild horses couldn't keep me from getting to the polls to vote for him.
Speaking of that, my fellow conservatives, how about we just scrap McCain at the convention and put up a Michael Steele/JC Watts ticket? I would be happier and we would guarantee that a black man becomes the next leader of the free world. We can all have a black man we largely agree with to back. And, finally, we will be able to tell the left to quite lying about this and have a concrete data set to point to: Everybody who voted pulled the lever for a black man for President of the USA. Everybody! Conservatives, liberals, independents, progressives, everybody!
Don't get me wrong, I am glad that there are now, apparently, a lot of black Americans who understand that we whites will, with very few exceptions, vote for a black politician they agree with. These are apparently folks who did not understand this a year ago. This is a very positive thing. I am just shocked that there were, apparently, a lot of Americans of any racial background in this country that did not understand this last year. Welcome to the enlightenment.
Could you now at least consider the proposition that Barak/Billary/Breck will tank our economy, castrate our health care system, feed the teacher's unions at the cost of your kids and possibly get us all killed? :-) I am only partially kidding there. The Dems have been systematically foisting this lie upon the country my whole adult life to get almost all of black America to vote for them like clockwork no matter how sad their candidates are or how good the Republican ones might be. If you don't believe that then check
wikipedia for the 1980 election. Only 66% of registered Democrats voted for Carter while 82% of black voters did. That is an astonishing fact. No other group broke 60% and they split things by age, income, gender, religion, political bent, profession and level of education. Jimmy Carter was without question the worst president of the last century. Everybody knew that by 1978. For four years he gave us all stupidly high taxes, high unemployment, outlandish inflation, gas lines, unaffordable interest rates and race riots. And yet after four years of the tragedy that was the Carter administration 82% of the black voters wanted to send him back to the white house. Why? Because Carter was so good for inner city black Americans? Hardly, the economic problems and race riots were the worst in the inner city. Blacks were even more unemployed than whites by a large margin. By the way, Jimmy Carter is a biggot and everybody knew it then so there was no particular reason that blacks had to look kindly at him other than the D behind his name.
My fellow Americans of darker complexion: they don't need to give you anything or do anything for you because they count on your vote irrespective of what they do in office and you give it to them. Please just consider what else they might be lying about before you cast that ballot in November. It is a totally nice place over here with us conservatives. We will welcome you to our table of lower taxes, better national security, more jobs and school choice for your kids. We promise. Just give it a shot, you might like it over here better.
