Herman Cain Isn't Really Black

Some liberals apprently don't believe Herman Cain is really black, because he is a successful conservative.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain isn’t “black enough” for liberals? Should he be smoking crack and slamming and hating whites, should he not be a business success, but a welfare-dependent, whining failure, to be an “authentic black” to racist Democrats?

Black conservatives face racism from liberals, particularly black liberals:

But for black Americans the choice of political party appears predestined. It seems liberals but more specifically black liberals have carved in the ten black commandments that “thou shall never be a Republican.” These same black liberals also refuse to submit to the fact that not all blacks think alike.

With black conservatives like Congressman Allen West, Congressman Tim Scott and Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain debunking this insulting stereotype, many black liberals have resorted to racist name calling to protect the myth that Democrat policies help blacks. Cain has been target number one on their list.

Here is an example of liberal "tolerance":
 
Apparently, all members of an "oppressed minority" must think identically or else they are "self-hating" or they are not actually part of that minority.  Herman Cain has been called an "Uncle Tom" and an "oreo," among other things.  He is very successful, despite much adversity.  His success should be admired, and I would think he would be a good role model.  But no, his success apparently makes him "not black."  So, no black people are capable of being successful?  Racists.

UPDATE: I should also mention Janeane Garofalo and her belief that Herman Cain's campaign is designed to deflect accusations of racism of conservatives.

On Wednesday night, she slammed Republicans, conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts, calling them racists. As you’ll recall, she said the following back in August (about Cain):

“[He's] in this presidential race because he deflects the racism that is inherit in the Republican party, the conservative movement, the Tea Party certainly.”

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air makes this observation on "the supremely irrelevant Janeane Garofalo" (h/t The Blaze):

 this clip encapsulates perfectly how intellectually vapid the Republicans-are-racists argument truly is.  If African-Americans don’t do well among Republicans, it’s evidence of racism, and now if theydo get support among Republicans, that’s also racism. It’s an unanswerable assertion that not only is completely circular in its logic, it’s also lunacy. Basically, Garofalo is kind of like a cult member who insists that every data point supports her religious belief, regardless of whether it contradicts with other data points that are also used in defense of groupthink. 

Another Example of Leftist Ugliness and Hypocrisy

Strangely, prior to yesterday, I had not heard of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests.  For the benefit of others who apparently live under metaphorical rocks, "Occupy Wall Street" is a leftist grassroots movement opposing "corporate greed" and "economic inequality."  With the rightist Tea Party movement in the spotlight for the past couple years or so, many people are comparing the two grassroots movements.  While OWS is protesting "corporate greed" and "economic inequality," the Tea Party is protesting government greed and economic inequality.  The reason I put the object of OWS in quotation marks and not the object of the Tea Party is that I believe in the Tea Party's cause, unlike that of OWS.  Corporations have every right to be greedy, so long as they are in compliance with the law.  I do not believe the government has this right, as its purpose is nothing more than to serve its constituents.  And, economic inequality, as I see it, is caused by the redistribution of wealth.

While the fundamental difference between the two movements is the political ideology that motivates them, another key difference is the method of protest.  Tea Party protests, in general, are peaceful and law-abiding (or so I hear).  OWS protests, on the other hand, are not.  Twenty-three OWS protesters were arrested yesterday in New York City for disorderly conduct, only a few days after a much larger arrest (see quotation below).  I can't remember ever hearing of anyone arrested at Tea Party protests, nor can I find any evidence in a quick Google search (I do, however, find links about anti-Tea Party protesters being arrested).  Keep in mind that the Tea Party movement is several years old, compared to the fledgeling OWS movement.  My Google search did result in me finding this fantastic article, however.  Here is an excerpt (emphasis added):  

One aspect of the Occupy Wall Street and other leftist activism that is a definitive divergence with the tea party movement is disruptive behavior.

On October 1, over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested — mostly for disorderly conduct — during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Despite two other peaceful marches across the bridge by other groups earlier that day, the Occupy Wall Street crowd couldn’t resist blocking traffic and scuffling with police. 

When not under arrest (approximately 100 other arrests occurred over the weeks of the protest), the Occupy Wall Street crowd is actually occupying the privately-owned Zuccotti Park, whose owners are working with city officials on plans to return it “to its intended purpose.” 

This rowdy attitude of the radical left is something that, by mistake or design, is grossly unreported in the media.  As the Tea Party must fend off allegations of being violent and racist, leftist protests that are unruly don’t get similar coverage. 

I’ve been active in the Tea Party movement since 2009.  As a black woman, I define the movement’s political diversity and have always been quick to defend its inclusiveness against those who would try to slur it with racist accusations.
I have had the amazing opportunity to meet thousands of freedom-loving Americans who are involved in the movement on their own time and these individuals are sincere in their efforts to reign in our government gone wild by holding our elected representatives accountable. 

As a frequent speaker at Tea Party events nationwide, I’ve never seen the same behavior as described during Occupy Wall Street’s Brooklyn Bridge demonstration.  Tea Party activists, in my experience, police themselves.  Additionally, I’ve never been to a rally in which the grounds weren’t as clean or cleaner than when the first activist arrived. 

Doing a Google search of “tea party activist” and “arrest” brings up nothing of merit.  On the first page, I found three articles about people described as tea party activists, but the arrests were unrelated to rallies. 

Another article, about the demonstrations outside the U.S. Capitol Building on the weekend of the Obamacare vote in the House, reports one man — one single person — was detained after being accused of spitting on a congressman.  But that person was immediately released, and no one has come forward to legitimize the claim and collect conservative Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 reward for providing proof. 

Furthermore, Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa told people waiting to see President Obama speak at a Labor Day rally that they need to “take these [Tea Party] son of a bitches out.”  And there was a January 30 rally in Rancho Mirage, California in which progressive protesters, many of whom were attending a nearby conference sponsored by Common Cause, were caught on video saying they wanted to “torture” and “hang” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. 

Salacious allegations against the tea party will get more coverage than actual law-breaking by the left.

It is evident that leftist protests embody the negative attributes that conservative protests are wrongly accused of embodying.  Not that you would ever be able to tell by watching the news, though.  Do we have enough proof now that many leftists are hypocrites?

And, a final note: this is not meant to apply to all leftists.  Only the crazy ones.  

When Politics and Sports Collide

Arizona must be one of the USA's most scenic states.  The desert, the mountains, the canyons, and the red rocks are all things that contribute to Arizona being one of my favorite states.  Obviously, Arizona is one of the states that borders Mexico.  And, as such, it is prone to illegal immigration.  To anyone who has been reading my blog, it should come as no suprise that I would be all for toughening immigration laws as well as enacting laws that are designed to prevent illegal immigration.  So, when I first heard about Arizona SB 1070, I was proud of Arizona for trying to solve its immigration problem.  The reactions of some people, however, left me confused.  For example, the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis, and St. Paul all boycotted Arizona in some form.  I can understand Los Angeles, but how could Minneapolis possibly know how bad the situation in Arizona is with illegal immigrants?  Also, there were accusations that the bill was racist.  That is ridiculous, since the bill was designed to solve a problem that was getting out of hand.  Anyway, there was one particular reaction that I wanted to mention.

Last may, the Phoenix Suns wore jerseys that read "Los Suns" both to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and to protest Arizona SB 1070.  Since the Phoenix Suns are a private corporation, they should have the right to protest the bill.  However, I am not so sure that would make business sense.  Since it is a sports team, perhaps its fans who support the bill would overlook that protest.  It just seems kind of odd to me that they would take the risk of alienating some of their fans, especially when some polls suggested that over 70% of Arizonans supported the bill.   It was over a year ago, so maybe most people have forgotten about that protest.  I have no idea.  

In case anyone is wondering, there is really no reason I am mentioning this now.  I just saw something that reminded me of it, so I decided to opine.  

What is Wrong With Norway?

I will admit that prior to the terrorist attack in Norway last Friday, I did not know very much about Norway.  When I think of Scandinavians, I think of people who are unemotional, logical, and efficient.  I realize that that is just a stereotype, and stereotypes cannot be accurately applied to everyone belonging to a certain group (in fact, I should know that better than most people).  However, stereotypes usually have some degree of accuracy, as they must come from somewhere (having said that, I have never met a Canadian who has the stereotypical Canadian accent, pronounces "about" like "aboot," or frequently says "eh"; perhaps that is an Eastern Canadian thing).  And, the more I learn about Norway, the more I realize how inaccurate that stereotype is.  In fact, Norwegians, in general, seem to harbour an irrational hatred toward both Israel and the United States, as well as an irrational compassion toward Muslims and terrorist groups such as Hamas.  I must say that I am disappointed in some of the information I am learning, as I have always been quite fond of Scandinavia, the homeland of some of my ancestors (and, a side note: I am also dismayed at the notoriously liberal Netherlands, also the homeland of some of my ancestors).

Here is some background on Norway:

Norway uses a "Nordic Model," which Wikipedia describes as:

This particular adaptation of the mixed market economy is characterised by more generous welfare states (relative to other developed countries), which are aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy, ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights and stabilizing the economy. It is distinguished from other welfare states with similar goals by its emphasis on maximising labour force participation, promoting gender equality, egalitarian and extensive benefit levels, large magnitude of redistribution, and liberal use of expansionary fiscal policy.

I will say that this seems to work well for them.  Of course, that doesn't mean that it would work well in other societies.

Norway is an extremely wealthy, oil rich nation.  It has one of the world's highest standards of living, and has had the world's highest Human Development Index (HDI) ranking for 8 of the past 10 years.  According to the American think-tank Fund for Peace's Failed States Index, Norway is the world's most well functioning and stable nation.

Aside from the efficacy of Norway's economic policies and the weath Norway's oil provides to its small population, Norwegian society appears to be highly flawed (at least from my biased perspective).  Please read this excellent post by Bruce Bawer at Pajamas Media (h/t Diogenes Borealis).  Here are some excerpts from that post:

This lack of security was certainly not unusual for Norway, where the police don’t carry guns, and where the very idea of police carrying guns is widely looked upon as some holdover from an earlier stage of human evolution. But — hello — in front of the main office buildings of a Western European government? After 9/11? It seemed sheer madness.
...
When I first heard the news of the explosions at those buildings, my first thought, of course, was that it was a jihadist attack. But it wasn’t: it was a right-wing lunatic. It wasn’t jihad. It was a meaningless killing spree by a madman, like the ones at Columbine and Virginia Tech. A headline in one Norwegian newspaper today noted that the death toll in Oslo and at Utøya yesterday was higher than at Columbine and Virginia Tech combined. The Norwegian media have always reported on mass murders by lone gunmen in the U.S. as if they were things that could never happen in Norway: rather, they were symptoms of a sick society that Norwegians could never possibly understand. In Norway, they use the term “amerikanske tilstander” — American conditions. It never means anything good. Yesterday’s nightmare, from a Norwegian perspective, was the most American of American conditions.
Those of us who thought, in the first hours after the blasts in downtown Oslo, that we were witnessing yet another act of jihad can be forgiven. In a way, it made sense. 9/11, London, Madrid, Beslan, Bali, Mumbai — why not Oslo? Then again…Norway, although a member of NATO with troops in Afghanistan and Libya, was not exactly in the forefront of the struggle to defeat jihad. On the contrary.  Norway calls itself “the peace country.” For years, the Norwegian government and cultural establishment have striven to communicate to even the most extreme elements of international Islam that they want to be friends.  They've shown their good faith in a number of ways: 

...

• They’ve dropped displays of Islamic totalitarianism down the memory hole.  Two years ago, on two separate nights, a small army of Norwegian Muslim youths rioted in the heart of Oslo, turning a usually placid quarter into something reminiscent of Sarajevo or Beirut at their worst.  The alleged motive for this explosion of violence was displeasure over the situation in Gaza; the real intention was to mount a display of power — to intimidate, and to communicate to Norway that their time had come, and that they had better be listened to with respect, or else.  And in February of last year, another small army of Muslims, this time not rioting boys but sullen-looking men in long coats and full beards, gathered in downtown Oslo, in the same square where Vidkun Quisling once held his Nazi rallies, and listened with apparent pleasure while a young speaker named Mohyeldeen Mohammed threatened Norway with its own 9/11.  Both of these events came and went, and the people who make decisions about this sort of thing plainly decided that it would be best to pretend that they had never happened.

• They’ve openly supported terrorist groups.  In the last few days, one of the major stories out of Norway has been the declaration by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of his country’s support for the effort by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state.  This stance scarcely came as a surprise, given the Norwegian government’s longstanding effort to “build bridges” to Hamas.  It was Støre, after all, who — when a couple of dozen Western diplomats walked out on a rabid anti-Israeli speech by Mahmoud Ahmedinejad at the 2009 UN conference on racism — was the only Westerner who chose to stay and hear him out.

...

During those hours when we all thought this was a jihadist attack, one thought that crossed my mind was that this would change the political map of Norway. For years, the Progress Party, which is the second largest of Norway’s seven or eight major parties, has led the way in calling for more responsible policies on the immigration and integration of people from Muslim countries — and has been demonized as a bunch of right-wing extremist xenophobes who hate Muslims. I assumed that after this attack, Norwegians would vote in a Progress Party-led government in the next elections. Now it appears that the man who committed all these murders is a former member of the Progress Party and is, indeed, a right-wing extremist xenophobe who harbors (according to Dagbladet) a “violent hatred for Muslims” and multiculturalism, and who targeted the Labor Party youth camp because he blames the ruling Labor Party for the Islamization of Norway. Norway’s political future looks very different now, in short, than it did 24 hours ago.

I will say that I thought many of those same things.  He said it better than I ever could.  More:

...it is deeply depressing to see this evil, twisted creature become the face of Islam criticism in Norway. Norwegian television journalists who in the first hours of the crisis were palpably uncomfortable about the prospect of having to talk about Islamic terrorism are now eagerly discussing the dangers of “Islamophobia” and “conservative ideology” and are drawing connections between the madness and fanaticism of Breivik and the platform of the Progress Party. Yesterday’s events, then, represent a double tragedy for Norway. Not only has it lost almost one hundred people, including dozens of young people, in a senseless rampage of violence. But I fear that legitimate criticism of Islam, which remains a very real threat to freedom in Norway and the West, has been profoundly discredited, in the eyes of many Norwegians, by association with this murderous lunatic.

It is evident that Norway is anti-Israel and pro-Palestine.  I am not capable of comprehending this, given Norway's claim of being "the peace country."

These points are important to consider, and I hope, for their own sake, Norwegians get some common sense.   Conservatives are not responsible for this man's horrible act of terrorism, and any rational person should be able to see that acts of violence on the part of those opposed to jihad are not only hypocritical, but also counter-productive (not to mention horrible).  It saddens me that "Islamophobes" are labelled as "extreme far-right."  "Islamophobia" is not racism.  Any rational person should be able to distinguish between the two.  The reason I put that in quotation marks is that it is a label with an (unjustifiably) negative connotation.

I will reiterate something I said in a previous post: I do not hate Muslims in general.  I hate jihadists, Muslim extremists, and Sharia law.  I hate Islam's treatment of women and homosexuals.  I hate some Muslims' and Islamic nations' views of Jews and Israel.  I hate the hatred these Muslims spout and act upon.  I hate the hatred Islam engenders.  I am making a distinction between Muslims and Islam here.  Islam is a hateful and oppressive religion.  Not all Muslims are hateful or oppressive.  The vast majority of Muslims are not violent.  For the record, I also hate extreme Christianity.  I hate extremism.  I hate violence.  And I hate unjustified hatred.  I believe my hatred is justified.  I realize that I failed to effectively communicate my views in that previous post, and I apologize for that.  Hopefully I managed to clarify my views in this post.

Furthermore, I hate the bleeding-hearts who hatefully accuse conservatives of unjustified hatred.  Yes, some conservatives do posses unjustified hatred.  But, the majority of conservatives are much less hateful than most bleeding-hearts realize.  Any rational person should be able to distinguish between uncompassionate, frank discourse and hatred.  Over 60,000 people have died as a result of Islamic terrorism.  Islam is a threat.  Although most Mulsims are not a threat, it is difficult to distinguish between the ones that are and the ones that aren't.  Western nations are slowly transforming into Islamic nations.

UPDATE: See also, this.  Norway is repulsively soft on criminals.  

The Person Who Points Out Racism Where There Isn’t Any Is Usually the One Who Is Racist

Representative Shiela Jackson Lee says that the disagreement over the debt limit is because President Obama is black. 

"I am particularly sensitive to the fact that only this president, only this president, only this one has received the kind attacks and disagreements and inability to work. Only this one," Jackson Lee said on the House floor this afternoon. 
"Read between the lines." 
"What is different about this president that should put him in a position that he should not receive the same kind of respectful treatment of when it is necessary to raise the debt limit in order to pay our bills, something required by both statute and the 14th amendment?"

I am pretty sure that whatever disagreements exist between the Republicans and Obama and the Democrats exist because the Republicans refuse to agree to a deal that involves tax increases and the Democrats refuse to agree to a deal that doesn't involve tax increases.   

What is different about this president is that he is an incompetent socialist.  Race doesn't have anything to do with anything.  Any person with the ability to see past their prejudice should be able to recognize that.