Can you tell us what Black Twitter has to say about this issue?
"I’d say that you ought to get rich. It is your duty to get rich. Men who get rich may bethe most honest menyou find in a community. That is why they are rich. That is why they aretrusted with money."
How dare he? How dare he?!?! Le Monde's Nicolas Bourcier can barely hide his shock at the fact that, in his new autobiography, George W Bush "has the gall" ("l'ex-président … ose") to defend his policies, from the War in Iraq to waterboarding. How typical of Dubya ("Du Bush dans le texte")!
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger wrote a book review of Decision Points while Kimberley A Strassel published an interview with Dubya, in which we learn that there are the anecdotes about Jacques Chirac, who at several points lectures the U.S. on the folly of morality or idealism. When I ask the president if he wants to expand, he starts, stops, and gives that Bush chuckle. "Let's just say he wasn't a freedom-agenda guy."
We are so glad to be American. With the exception of the Civil War and 9/11, we have never had a serious conflict on our soil so we, as a people, are pretty much immune from the soul-scarring cynicism of Yurp. We know we can do things, while they're trapped in self-inflicted visions of failure - and will be for centuries to come.
Is the European Union collapsing? Oh - so sad. And - oh - so typical. (And - oh - so expected!) But, still, they expect us to listen to them ("France does not agree!") like their word, which they've betrayed countless times, collectively and individually, means anything. We're like a Gold Medalist who they insist should be getting tips from someone in the Special Olympics. As the French like to say (because their lazy Socialist/Commie backstabbing asses can't do shit) "this is not done." And, thank goodness, it never will.
"While hanging out yesterday at Ace's yesterday as he was flogging racists, I happened to mention that many if not most black Americans view the federal government as beneficial and friendly. Some other commenters were surprised and I was surprised at their surprise, because it isn't difficult to figure out why this is. Whether it's the Emancipation or the desegregation of the Armed Forces or Brown v. Board or the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the federal government for the most part had seemed to be on the side of the black American as his constitutional rights were being oppressed by state or local governments.
What needs to be spelled, however is what the federal government did in the above-mentioned areas: it legally removed obstacles to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of Americans who are black. And that is what it was supposed to do.
The present problem in my unlearned opinion is this: the federal government began overstepping its bounds during the Great Depression and did so most infamously in the late sixties via the Great Society programs. Doing more that getting local racists out of the way, the federal government sought to and succeeded in making itself the suppliers of life, liberty and, putatively, the happiness of many black Americans. (Try telling a senior of any race that Social Security is sending the country to financial ruin. You'll get an earful about her 'rights'.)
And even many black Americans who do not rely on the federal government still view the fed as our friend because of that history."
"Americans are less enthusiastic about free trade than Europeans, and their enthusiasm for free markets is at the European average. US workers strike at about the same rate as the Italians, but they are much more highly paid. To be sure, they can be fired more easily, but there are European levels of regulation on hiring them, and their workplaces are safer.
Americans take fewer holidays but it seems not to affect the national mood, for they commit suicide less frequently than most Europeans. That may be because they are generally prouder of their country. US tax, which is on the low side by European standards, is more progressive than the European norm, and tax revenue per head is higher than Ireland, Greece and Switzerland.
Health outcomes are not good, especially given the huge amounts spent. People live shorter lives (though not much – three years less than the Euro leader, Italy) and more infants die. On the other hand, cancer cure rates are generally higher and the billions spent on medical research has benefits worldwide. Crime is high, especially the murder rate, and the prisons bulge more; but there are fewer police per head than in Italy and fewer guns per head than in Finland.
The good universities are very good, with high private spending; schools are middling, as is the number of public libraries. Americans vote less, trust government more, volunteer and give to charities much more. They have more faith in God but less in astrology and homeopathy; and they are more welcoming to immigrants. At the same time, they have more gay experiences, more gay marriages and more three-in-a-bed sex than almost all Europeans.
One fact stalks these figures: it is that the black underclass accounts for many of those few areas where a stark difference exists between the US and Europe: 'Take out black homicide and the American murder rate falls to European levels. Child poverty rates...fall to below British, Italian and Spanish levels if we look at the figures for whites only.' Baldwin’s conclusion is that what most distinguishes New World from Old 'is not a grand opposition of worldviews or ideologies...it is the still unresolved legacy of slavery and its tragic modern consequence of a ghettoized and racially identifiable underclass'."
-- John Lloyd, charging Europeans flatter themselves at America's expense - he's taking information from Peter Baldwin's new book, The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe are Alike - since we're "more like European countries than these individual countries are like each other", to The Financial Times.
Conclusion: we are Americans, and the government is here for our purposes (not to rule over us as they do in Europe) and once "We The People", regardless of race, decide to take control over our government - and not give our power away to it - we will once again discover the pride of knowing that, probably because of a bunch of old racists, there wasn't ever a chance we'd fall behind any other country in the world. We've just got to stop trying to be like Europe - because we ain't. We've got a different history - and a much, much different future.
It's liberal NewAge Americans, seeing race today and denying it, that's screwing us up - and European-style political correctness is, definitely, the "new racism" that's one of our country's biggest problems.
Personally, I - as a black man - don't think Barack Obama, many of my fellow blacks, or the average European, understands that,...
"Religious leaders have been recruited to front this negative scare campaign,...This campaign,...relies on,...expanding the meaning of extremism. The term extremism tends to be used promiscuously today, to include anyone who does not share the cultural and political attitudes of the so-called,...mainstream,...to demonise,...anyone holding sceptical views,..."
-- Frank Furedi, explaining how Hope'N'Change™ work in the European Union - which is (not surprisingly) similar to how they work here - except, there, it's covered by Spiked!
Here is Nigel Farage, the United Kingdom Independence Party member, before Daniel Hannon gave the speech that has electrified conservatives around the globe. If you ask TMR, the old boy took a pretty good whack at Brown himself - and deserves a bit of credit for it.
It's a shame: In America, most people run from men who talk like this now, when it's exactly what's called for - The Macho Response.
Here's Farage later, enjoying a beer, and describing the fallout: Those motherfuckers got money. Good for them.
And many thanks to UKIP for bringing men such as these to our attention. We're with you!!!
"As the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, an economist, anti-totalitarian and climate change sceptic, prepares to take up the rotating presidency of the European Union next year, climate alarmists are doing their best to traduce him.
The New York Times opened a profile of Klaus, 67, this week with a quote from a 1980s communist secret agent's report, claiming he behaves like a 'rejected genius', and asserts there is 'palpable fear' he will 'embarrass' the EU.
But the real fear driving climate alarmists wild is that a more rational approach to the fundamentalist religion of global warming may be in the ascendancy...
One of Australia's leading enviro-sceptics, the geologist and University of Adelaide professor Ian Plimer, 62, says he has noticed audiences becoming more receptive to his message that climate change has always occurred and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
'Climates have always changed and they always will',...'There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature.'
...Creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that 'we're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational'.
Human-caused climate change is being 'promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance.'
It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.'
-- Miranda Devine, showing A) the NYT is America's enemy that will do anything (including quoting the KGB) to advance the NewAge agenda, and B) the EU knows it faces embarrassment (or, hopefully, more) if this silly plot is exposed, and C) even scientists have formed a cult that promotes this outlandish idea, though they can't fool The Sydney Morning Herald.
*Click on the "climate change" and "global warming" tags, below, for much more on this NewAge plot - and why those who advanced it should be prosecuted, to the fullest extent of the law, for attempting to bankrupt us.
"The EU prefers to talk about soft power partly to distinguish itself from the United States. As world superpower, America has for decades automatically linked the projection of that status with military might. It has, however, rarely coupled that might with soft power - for example, building strong and independent state institutions. The decision to invade Iraq exposed the weaknesses of hard power alone. But it also reinforced a view inside the EU that soft power was preferable to the military option.
The EU has adopted this soft power approach toward Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Sudan. It has provided aid for reconstruction and has sent soldiers to protect refugees or police officers to build up new security forces. But in every one of these cases, that soft power has failed to deliver security or peace."
-- Judy Dempsey, on Yurp's reluctance to care for it's own security (while constantly criticizing the job the United States does) in the International Herald Tribune.
Yeah, let them run things and everything will work out fine,...
"The Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy,...It was probably unexpected of the man. It was expected of the nation, but not of the man,...What's in it for [Mr. Bush]? Absolutely nothing."
- Various reported quotes from Bob Geldof (leader/singer for the Boomtown Rats, organizer of LIVE AID, and self-appointed activist for Africa) with some from the (Moonie owned) Washington Times
