DebateGate

The media is ignoring this telling Jeb Bush gaffe
Updated by Dylan Matthews on August 7, 2015, 11:10 a.m. ET

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower once famously said of George Bush Sr., "He is a man who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." There has never been a better illustration of that attitude in the Bush family than this verbal slip-up Jeb Bush made in last night's Republican presidential debate, when challenged by Fox News moderator Bret Baier to address "the real concern in this country about dynastic politics:
 
"I've got a record in Florida. I'm proud of my dad, and I'm certainly proud of my brother. In Florida, they called me Jeb, because I earned it."

Jeb is called Jeb because his name is John Ellis Bush, a name given to him by George H. W. and Barbara Bush. He is claiming that he "earned" something that was literally bestowed upon him by his parents. In hindsight, he probably meant to use the "earned" line later in his answer, where he bragged about being known as "Veto Corleone" because of his 2,500 line-item vetoes of spending programs. But intentional or not, it's not a very compelling way to rebut concerns about dynastic politics.
 
More than a bungled answer, this seems to be a genuine blind spot. Just before Nameghazi, Bush contended that he faces "a higher bar" as a presidential aspirant due to his family connections, when the reality — obvious to anyone but a member of his immediate family — is that there's no way an ex-governor who left office in 2007 would be leading in fundraising or endorsements absent a vast political network bequeathed to him by his father and brother. Just ask George Pataki.

“He is claiming that he "earned" something that was literally bestowed upon him by his parents”

The rest of his answer was a rote recitation of some highlights from his tenure as Florida governor: tax cuts and balanced budgets every year, expanded fiscal reserves, a AAA bond rating, the spending vetoes, 1.3 million jobs created. Sure, fine. But how exactly does this set him apart from his brother?
 
Jeb Bush put zero distance between himself and his brother
 
You know who else signed tax cuts?
 
After all, Jeb's brother passed big tax cuts, both as president and as governor of Texas, too. Of course Jeb balanced the budget; that's literally a constitutional requirement in Florida. Jeb could not legally submit or sign into law a budget that wasn't balanced.
 
The spending vetoes aren't a differentiating factor either; the federal government doesn't have a line-item veto whereby presidents can excise specific provisions from budgets. And the jobs brag, if anything, ties him more closely to his brother. For six of Jeb's eight years in office, his brother was president, and one could plausibly argue that George had more effect on the economy of Florida than Jeb did.
 
Contrast this with what Jeb could've said if he really wanted to differentiate himself from his brother. He could have said that the Iraq war was misconceived and that the US shouldn't engage in nation-building efforts like it in the future. He could have denounced his brother's torture regime. He could have argued that his brother's administration was too lax on Wall Street and embraced reforms like those his primary opponent Rick Perry and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) have promoted. He could have denounced No Child Left Behind as a failed experiment in federal control over education. He could have criticized his brother's Civil Rights Division for hacking away at the right to vote.
 
But he can't do any of that. He has already gotten into trouble for goofing and saying that he would've invaded Iraq even knowing what we know now, before clarifying and saying he would've invaded knowing what we knew then, which is still pretty bad. He has also surrounded himself with advisers from his brother's administration, including dyed-in-the-wool neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz and Paula Dobriansky (not to mention former NSA director and surveillance proponent Michael Hayden).
 
He can't distance himself from his brother on education because he's also a fervent proponent of an accountability agenda and federally promoted standards. He can't attack his brother on financial regulation because he's heavily reliant on Wall Street for campaign cash. He can't criticize his brother on voting rights because he restricted early voting and purged voter rolls as governor of Florida, and has supported voter ID laws.
 
Those aren't the only possible lines of differentiation, of course. He could have attacked his brother's administration for spending too much and for adding a costly entitlement in the form of Medicare Part D. He could have lambasted the handling of Hurricane Katrina, comparing it with his widely praised handling of hurricanes in Florida during his tenure. Neither of those contradicts past positions Jeb has taken — and Jeb has even mildly criticized his brother's spending record already.
 
But when Baier handed him a perfect opportunity to make that contrast again, he refused.
 
"When you love someone or your brother or your dad, it’s not easy for me to throw them under the bus to make myself look better," Bush said in an interview in June. "I just can’t do that."
 
In a joint interview with his brother in 2010, he went further: "I am the only Republican that was in office when he was in office as president that never disagreed with him. And I’m not going to start now. 'Til death do us part."
 
It's a nice familial sentiment. But Bush fatigue is real, and Jeb has to find a way to acknowledge his brother's screw-ups if he's going to have any hope of beating it.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/7/9116053/republican-debate-jeb-bush

"A Sickness of the Public Mind"

The Battle Flag and the Attack on Western Culture

Boyd D. Cathey
 • July 31, 2015




Too much misinformation has been generated recently about Confederate flags and monuments. A great amount of it floating about on the Internet is as palatable and useful as what my neighbor cleans up out of his horse paddock each week—although what my neighbor cleans out actually has a better and less pungent odor about it than most of the shoddy, culturally Marxist ideological agenda pieces I’ve read.
 
Back in mid-June, after the Charleston shootings, the frenzied hue and cry went up and any number of accusations and charges were made against historic Confederate symbols, in particular, the Confederate Battle Flag, which is not as some supposedly “informed” writers called it, “the Stars and Bars.” (The Stars and Bars is a completely different flag with a totally different design—this error is an indication of those writers’ supine ignorance).
 
The best way to examine these charges in a short column is point by point, briefly and succinctly.
 
First, the demand was made that the Battle Flag needs to come down, that images of that flag need to be banned and suppressed, because, whatever its past may have been, it has now become in the current context a “symbol of hate” and “carried by racists,” that it “symbolizes racism.”
 
The problem with this argument is both historical and etiological.
 
Historically, the Battle Flag, with its familiar Cross of St. Andrew, was and is a square ensign that was carried by Southern troops during the War Between the States. It was not the national flag of the Confederacy that flew over slavery, but, rather, was carried by soldiers, 90-plus per cent who did not own slaves (which was roughly comparable to percentages in various regiments of the Union army, which had slave holding soldiers from Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri in its ranks; indeed, General Grant’s wife, Julia Dent Grant, owned slaves).
 
By contrast, the American flag, the “Stars and Stripes,” not only flew over slavery for seventy-eight years, it flew over the importation, the selling and the purchase of slaves, and the breaking up of slave families. Additionally, the Stars and Stripes flew over the infamous “Trail of Tears,” at the Sand Creek massacre of innocent Native Americans, later at the Wounded Knee massacre, over the brutal internment of thousands of Nisei Japanese American citizens in concentration camps during World War II, and during the action at My Lai during the Vietnam War.
 
Although there are some zealots who now suggest doing away with the American flag because of these connections, I would suggest that most of the pundits on the Neoconservative Fox News and amongst the Republican governors presently clamoring for banning the Battle Flag would not join them in this demand. Yet, if we examine closely the history of both banners from the radically changing contexts that are used to attack the one, should we not focus as well on the history of other banner, as well? And, pray tell, if only a particular snap shot context is used to judge such symbols, is any symbol of America’s variegated history safe from the hands of those who may dislike or despise this or that symbol?
 
Second, a comparison has been made between the Battle Flag and the Nazi flag (red background, with a white circle and a black swastika centered). Again, this comparison is ridiculous and demonstrates an utter lack of historical acumen on the part of those making it: the Nazi flag was created precisely to represent the Nazi Party and its ideology. The Battle Flag was designed to represent the historic Celtic and Christian origin of many Southerners and served as a soldier’ flag.
 
Third, the charge has been made that we should ban Confederate symbols because they represent “treason against the Federal government.” That is, those Southerners who took up arms in 1861 to defend their states, their homes, and their families, were engaged in “rebellion” and were “traitors” under Federal law.
 
Again, such arguments fail miserably on all counts. Some writers have suggested that Robert E. Lee, in particular, was a “traitor,” that he violated his solemn military oath to uphold and defend the Constitution by his actions. But what those writers fail to note is that Lee had formally resigned from the US Army and his commission before undertaking his new assignment to defend his home state of Virginia, which by then had seceded and re-vindicated its original independence.
 
And that brings us to point four: the right of secession and whether the actions of the Southern states, December 1860-May 1861, could be justified under the US Constitution.
 
One of the best summaries of the prevalent Constitutional theory at that time has been made recently by black scholar, professor, and prolific author Dr. Walter Williams. I quote from one his columns:
 

During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it, saying, ‘A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.’
 
In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty — in a word, secede.
 
On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, “No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”
 
Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional? [my emphasis added]
 
Let me add that an examination of the ratification processes for Georgia, South Carolina, and in my own North Carolina in the late 1780s, reveal very similar discussions: it was the independent states themselves that had created a Federal government (and not the reverse, as Abe Lincoln erroneously and incredibly suggested), and it was the various states that granted the Federal government certain very limited and specifically enumerated powers, reserving the vast remainder for themselves. As any number of the Founders indicated (cf. Elliott’s Debates and voluminous correspondence on this point), there simply would not have been any United States if the states, both north and south, had believed that they could not leave it for just cause.
 
Interestingly, in my many years of research I can find only one, possibly two, American presidents who openly and frankly denied the right of secession (of course, there is John Quincy Adams, but carefully). Even in March of 1861, lame duck President James Buchanan in his farewell address, while deploring secession in the strongest terms, stated frankly that, under the Constitution he had “no power to halt or interdict it.” Former President John Tyler served in the Confederate Congress, and former President Franklin Pierce, in his famous Concord, New Hampshire, address, July 4, 1863, joined Buchanan in decrying the efforts to suppress the secession of the Southern states:
 

“Do we not all know that the cause of our casualties is the vicious intermeddling of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the constitutional rights of the Southern States, cooperating with the discontents of the people of those states? Do we not know that the disregard of the Constitution, and of the security that it affords to the rights of States and of individuals, has been the cause of the calamity which our country is called to undergo?”
 
More, during the antebellum period William Rawle’s pro-secession text on Constitutional law, A View of the Constitution of the United States (1825,) was used at West Point as the standard text on the US Constitution. And on several occasions the Supreme Court, itself, affirmed this view. In The Bank of Augusta v. Earl (1839), the Court wrote in an 8-1 decision:
 

“The States…are distinct separate sovereignties, except so far as they have parted with some of the attributes of sovereignty by the Constitution. They continue to be nations, with all their rights, and under all their national obligations, and with all the rights of nations in every particular; except in the surrender by each to the common purposes and object of the Union, under the Constitution. The rights of each State, when not so yielded up, remain absolute.”
 
A review of the Northern press at the time of the Secession conventions finds, perhaps surprisingly to those who wish to read back into the past their own statist ideas, a similar view: few newspapers took the position that the Federal government had the constitutional right to invade and suppress states that had decided to secede.
 
Indeed, were it not the New England states in 1814-1815 who made the first serious effort at secession during the War of 1812, to the point that they gathered in Hartford to discuss actively pursuing it? And during the pre-war period various states asserted in one form or another similar rights.
 
One last point regarding the accusation of “treason”: consider that after the conclusion of the War, the Southern states were put under military authority, their civil governments dissolved, and each state had to be re-admitted to the Union. Now, unless the logic I learned in university is wrong, you cannot be “re-admitted” to something unless you have been out of it. And if you were out of it, legally and constitutionally, as the Southern states maintained (and many Northern writers acknowledged), then you cannot be in any way guilty of “treason.”
 
The major point that opponents of Confederate symbols assert is that the panoply of those monuments, flags, plaques, and other reminders actually represent a defense of slavery. And since we as a society have supposedly advanced progressively in our understanding, it is both inappropriate and hurtful to continue to display them.
 
Again, there are various levels of response. Historically, despite the best efforts of the ideologically-driven Marxist historical school (e.g., Eric Foner) to make slavery the only issue underlying the War Between the States, there is abundant evidence—while not ignoring the significance of slavery—to indicate more profound economic reasons why that war occurred (cf. writers Thomas di Lorenzo, Charles Adams, David Gordon, Jeffrey Hummel, William Marvel, Thomas Fleming, et al). Indeed, it goes without saying that when hostilities began, anti-slavery was not a major reason at all in the North for prosecuting the war; indeed, it never was a major reason, as Lincoln made explicit to editor Horace Greeley of The New York Tribune a short time prior to the Emancipation Proclamation (which only applied to states in the South where the Federal government had no authority, but not to the states such as Maryland and Kentucky, where slavery existed, but were safely under Union control).
 
Here is what he wrote to Greeley on August 22, 1862:
 

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
 
The Emancipation Proclamation was a desperate political ploy by Lincoln to churn up sagging support for a war that appeared stale-mated at the time. Indeed, Old Abe had previously called for sending blacks back to Africa and the enforcement of laws that made Jim Crow look benign. He knew fully well that “freeing the slaves” had no support in the North and was not the reason for the conflict.
 
Professor di Lorenzo, returning afresh to original sources, focuses on the deeper, all-encompassing economic motives:
 

“Whatever other reasons some of the Southern states might have given for secession is irrelevant to the question of why there was a war. Secession does not necessitate war. Lincoln promised war over tax collection in his first inaugural address. When the Southern states refused to pay his beloved Morrill Tariff at the Southern ports [monies that supplied a major portion of Federal revenues], he kept his promise of ‘invasion and bloodshed’ and waged war on the Southern states.”
 
Indeed, late in the conflict the Confederate government authorized the formation of black units to fight for the Confederacy, with manumission to accompany such service. As many as 30,000 black men fought for the Confederacy. Would a society ideologically intent on preserving in toto the peculiar institution as the reason for war, even in such dire straits, enact such a measure?
 
It is, of course, easy to read back into a complex context then what appears so right and natural to us now; but it does a disservice to history, as the late Professor Eugene Genovese, perhaps the finest historian of the Old South, fully understood. Understanding the intellectual struggle in which many Southerners engaged over the issue of slavery, he cautioned readers about rash judgments based on politically correct presentist ideas of justice and right, and in several books and numerous essays defended those leaders of the Old South who were faced with difficult decisions and a nearly intractable context.
 
And more, he understood as too many writers fail to do today, that selecting this or that symbol of our collective history, singling it out for our smug disapprobation and condemnation, may make us feel good temporarily, but does nothing to address the deeper problems afflicting our benighted society.
 
As I have written elsewhere about Dylann Roof, the lone gunman responsible for the Charleston shootings: if a rabid fox comes out of the woods and bites someone, you don’t burn the woods down, you stop the fox.
 
In the United States today we live in a country characterized by what historian Thomas Fleming has written afflicted this nation in 1860—“a disease of the public mind,” that is, a collective madness, lacking in both reflection and prudential understanding of our history. Too many authors advance willy-nilly down the slippery slope—thus, if we ban the Battle Flag, why not destroy all those monuments to Lee and Jackson. And why stop there? Washington and Jefferson were slave holders, were they not? Obliterate and erase those names from our lexicon, tear down their monuments! Fort Hood, Fort Bragg, Fort Gordon? Change those names, for they remind us of Confederate generals! Let’s dig up Nathan Bedford Forest! Amazon sells “Gone with Wind?” Well, to quote an inane writer at the supposedly “conservative,” Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, ban it, too!
 
It is, as I say, a slippery slope, but an incline that in fact represents a not-so-hidden agenda, a cultural Marxism, that seeks to take advantage of the genuine horror at what happened in Charleston to advance its own designs which are nothing less than remaking completely what remains of the American nation. And, since it is the South that has been most resistant to such impositions and radicalization, it is the South, the historic South, which enters the cross hairs as the most tempting target. And it is the Battle Flag—true, it has been misused on occasion—which is not just the symbol of Southern pride, but becomes the target of a broad, vicious, and zealous attack on Western Christian tradition, itself. Those attacks, then, are only the opening salvo in this renewed cleansing effort, and those who collaborate with them, good intentions or not, collaborate with the destruction of our historic civilization. For that they deserve our utmost scorn and our most vigorous and steadfast opposition.
 
http://www.unz.com/article/a-sickness-of-the-public-mind/

Cecil the Lion and the Goodwhite-Badwhite Cold Civil War

John Derbyshire
 • August 1, 2015

The subject of our latest Two Minutes Hate: 55-year-old Dr. Walter Palmer, a dental practitioner from the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie. Early in July, Dr. Palmer, on a hunting vacation in Zimbabwe, killed a lion. Now he’s in hiding, his office is under siege by furious mobs, and his patients have all deserted him.
 
All the emotional stops have been pulled out for this one. The mobs around Dr. Palmer’s office are weeping and rending their garments. Mothers are taking their little kiddies—known in lion-speak as “midnight snacks“—to lay bouquets of flowers on Dr. Palmer’s doorstep in memoriam for the lion.
 
I suppose the tots have images of Simba in their silly Disneyfied heads. Come to think of it, probably the “adults” do, too.
 
Sentimentality about animals is not a new thing in the world, of course. I can remember my sister, back in the Truman administration, crying when the hunters shot Bambi’s mother.
 
That was fiction, though; my sister was five; our fellow-countrymen had just gotten through reducing Hamburg and Berlin to piles of rubble; and anyway Bambi’s Mom was a herbivore. This fuss over the lion is way more preposterous.
 
Latest news as we go to tape: this incident—which happened in Zimbabwe, remember—is now a federal case, literally. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on Thursday that it is investigating the killing. They will, they tell us, quote, “go where facts lead.” [US Fish & Wildlife Service Investigating Killing Of Cecil The Lion « CBS Minnesota, June 30, 2015]
 
Why all the hullabaloo? What are the facts? Let’s take a look.
 
This wasn’t just any lion. This was Cecil, a star attraction in Hwange National Park. That’s a huge safari park—it’s about eighty miles across—in the west of Zimbabwe.
 
The late Cecil was 13 years old at time of death, equivalent to mid-fifties in human years. He was named after 19th-century empire-builder Cecil Rhodes—as indeed was Zimbabwe, when it used to be called Rhodesia. Concerning Rhodes, historian James Morris had this to say in 1968:
 

Rhodes died in 1902, and was buried at a site of his own choosing in the Matopo Hills in Rhodesia, which he called The World’s View. There, in a place of silent beauty, he lies with his friend Jameson and the dead of Allan Wilson’s Shangani patrol—all the heroes of Rhodesia, awaiting one fears not the Last Trump but the next regime. [Pax Britannica: Climax of an Empire, p. 298]

Rhodes was the man who said, “To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery of life.” He was not the man who said,” If you don’t like black people, don’t come to live in Africa,” That was Sir Roy Welensky, premier, until 1963, of what is now Zimbabwe.
 
So anyway, this lion Cecil was killed by Dr. Palmer of Minneapolis. What’s wrong with that?
 
Well, nothing per se. Shooting lions is legal in Zimbabwe, provided the proper formalities are observed. Lots of people, big game hunters, go there for just that purpose, as Dr. Palmer did.
 
Problem is, the formalities were not observed. Cecil was shot a few hundred yards outside the park, on privately owned land that had not been assigned a lion quota. That’s the main point of illegality.
 
Cecil wore a radio collar because he was being tracked by an Oxford University research project. That’s OK: It is not illegal to shoot a collared lion. He was drawn out of the park by bait and shot initially with a bow and arrow. He staggered off, was tracked for several miles, and was then dispatched with a rifle shot. None of that is illegal either. However, the hunting guide who lured the lion so Dr. Palmer could shoot it, tried to destroy the collar when he saw it. That is a secondary illegality.
 
So the illegality here is pretty technical stuff: no lion quota on the private land where Cecil was shot, attempted destruction of the tracking collar. Dr. Palmer tells us, very plausibly, that he had all necessary permits and relied on the guide and the landowner to ensure everything was legal. From what I’ve read so far, I don’t see any way he can be faulted on this.
 
The killing happened, furthermore, in Zimbabwe, a country not best known for firm adherence to rule of law, property rights, and governmental integrity. The place is, in fact, a miserable black African slum r uled by an aged despot who has murdered his political opponents, banned dissent, and allowed his family and friends to loot the economy, what’s left of it.
 
Freedom House ranks nations on a four-point scale: Free, Partly Free, Not Free, and Worst of the Worst. Zimbabwe is ranked Not Free. Starting 15 years ago, white farmers have been driven off their land, frequently with violence, and their farms have been handed over to blacks with political connections. Only about 300 farms are still white-owned, down from 4,500.
 
Zimbabwe is an economic disaster zone. Six years ago the currency bottomed out after years of hyperinflation. For a while the national bank was issuing $100 trillion bills, each one worth around 33 cents U.S. The currency has since been recalibrated, but the economy hasn’t improved much.
 
The latest report on Zimbabwe from Human Rights Watch makes pretty devastating reading. You can read it for yourself on the Internet. That’s human rights.
 
And people—Americans—are worked up about animal rights in this hell-hole?
 
If you insist on discussing animal rights in Zimbabwe, start from the rampant poaching since whites lost control of the country. Poaching has severely depleted wildlife stocks, to the enrichment of the poachers and of their friends and relatives in Zimbabwe’s ruling class. This is Africa, for crying out loud.
 
National Geographic reported in 2007 that 60 percent of Zimbabwe’s total wildlife had been killed off in just the previous seven years. [Zimbabwe’s Wildlife Decimated by Economic Crisis, by Nick Wadhams, August 1, 2007] The surprising thing in the Cecil story is not that a guy shot a lion, but that there are any lions left to shoot.
 
So, once again, why the massive nationwide hysteria over a lion killed in a remote, badly misgoverned country, under some rather technical issues of local illegality, by a hunter who plausibly was not aware of those issues?
 
Because, inevitably, the whole incident became refracted through the lens of current public discourse in the U.S.A. into a skirmish in what I call the Cold Civil War: that is, the everlasting struggle between, on the one hand, the Progressive goodwhites who dominate our country’s mainstream culture—the Main Stream Media, the universities and law schools, big corporations, the federal bureaucracy—and, on the other hand, the ignorant gap-toothed hillbilly redneck badwhites clinging to their gun s and religion out on the despised margins of civilized society.
 
Dr. Palmer is, of course, a badwhite. The evidence for this in in his actions. Hunting charismatic megafauna for sport is a thing only badwhites do. Big game trophy hunting is in fact as typically, characteristically badwhite as shopping at Whole Foods, or patronizing microbreweries, or listening to NPR are characteristically goodwhite.
 
For a full catalog of typical goodwhite lifestyle choices I refer you to Christian Landers’ 2008 book Stuff White People Like—slightly out of date now, but still reliable on most points. I have occasionally entertained the notion of putting out an updated version to be titled Stuff Goodwhites Like, with a companion volume titled, of course, Stuff Badwhites Like. Big game trophy hunting—indeed, hunting of all kinds—would definitely be listed in that latter volume, along with commercial beer, pickup trucks, Protestant Christianity, side-clip suspenders, NASCAR, and other badwhite favorites.
 
So we now have our badwhite antihero: this leocidal dentist, Walter Palmer. Who will step up to do battle for the goodwhites?
 
Jimmy Kimmel, that’s who.
 
Kimmel’s is one of those names that floats around on the outer fringes of my awareness. I know he has a late-night talk show, but I’ve never actually watched it. Looking him up, I see that he’s a 47-year-old native of Brooklyn of mixed German and Italian ancestry who’s been busy in radio and TV all his adult life. Hey, good luck to him.
 
Now there’s a clip of Jimmy Kimmel on his TV show the other day putting the goodwhite viewpoint on the Cecil story with exceptional clarity. Samples:
 

[Kimmel]: The big question is: Why are you shooting a lion in the first place? I mean, I’m honestly curious to know why a human being would feel compelled to do that. How is that fun? Is it that difficult for you to get an erection that you need to kill things? [Prolonged applause.]
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRJsofh9I9M
 
Note the instant recourse to sexual insult. It is an article of faith with goodwhites that badwhites have unsatisfactory sex lives, and that the discontent badwhites feel in this regard explains their otherwise incomprehensible tastes and viewpoints.
 
Whether badwhites actually do have less happy sex lives than goodwhites, I have no data. This ought to be a matter that can be settled by rigorous empirical enquiry—although given the difficulty of finding out what couples actually experience in the privacy of their chambers, there are some knotty problems of methodology to sort out. Pending reliable research studies, I stand agnostic.
 
But I can think of some facts that might be taken as counter-indications. On genetic evidence, for example, Genghis Khan seems to have enjoyed an exceptionally vigorous sex life, yet there surely can’t be many topics on which the great conqueror would agree with a modern Progressive goodwhite, certainly not big game hunting.
 
And then there is the fact—I’m pretty sure it’s a fact—that goodwhites’ fertility is way lower than badwhites’.
 
Whatever the underlying truth of the matter, what is undeniably on display here with Kimmel and his audience is the psychic need among goodwhites to feel, not only morally superior to badwhites, but also sexually superior. Just listen to the studio audience whooping and applauding in approval there. The thought they’re taking away, and that you are supposed to take away too, is something like: “If only Dr. Palmer were as sexually liberated and fulfilled as we are, he wouldn’t want to hunt and kill animals.”
 
For full penetration here, Kimmel follows up with a Viagra joke, followed in quick succession by a Bill Cosby joke:
 

Kimmel: If that’s the case, they have a pill for that. It works great. [Laughter.] Just stay home and swallow it, and you save yourself a lifetime of being the most hated man in America who never advertised Jell-O Pudding on television. [Laughter, applause.]
 
Kimmel’s performance strategy here seems to be: First, go for the broad goodwhite audience with a joke about erectile dysfunction among badwhite males. Then pivot to the feminists with a joke about Bill Cosby, who is now a hate figure to them.
 
Kimmel needs a deft touch here, as Cosby is black and you don’t want the audience to catch a whiff of racism. Cosby’s accusers, though, to judge from the 35 of them pictured on the cover of New York magazine, are almost exclusively white. And thirty or so white females trump one old black guy who hasn’t had a hit show since way, way back in the remote past, before Facebook came up.
 
Cosby anyway made a name for himself—I mean, before the Trial Lawyers Association got to work making a different name for him—by telling his fellow blacks to shape up and stop complaining. So he’s not, like, authentically black. So hey, screw him!
 
This is, remember, the Cold Civil War between two white armies. Blacks can be trucked in as auxiliaries when needed, to score points off the other side, but nobody cares what they think.
 
There follows a gesture from Kimmel towards multiculturalism:
 

And by the way, I’m not against hunting, if you’re hunting to eat or help keep the animal population healthy or to … part of your culture or something, that’s one thing …
 
Multicultural considerations do not extend to badwhites, though. They have no culture, being little better than animals themselves:
 

… but here’s some a-hole dentist who wants a lion’s head over the fireplace in his man-cave so his douchebag buddies can gather around it and drink scotch and tell him how awesome he is, that’s just vomitous …
 
“A-hole,” “douchebag,” “vomitous,” … Just listen to the language there! This is the grand old tradition of dehumanizing ideological vituperation, in direct line of descent from Thomas More’s ravings against Luther, or the names Karl Marx called Ferdinand Lasalle, both of which I’ll leave you to look up for yourselves, this being a family website.
 
The Chinese language is slightly more delicate in these matters, so I can tell you what Mao Tse-tung called his ideological enemies, quote: “bloodsuckers, parasites, smiling tigers, piles of garbage, cow ghosts and snake demons.” End quote.
 
OK, Kimmel has us pointed in the right ideological direction. Where is the Social Justice angle, though? How do we translate our righteous anger at the counter-revolutionary wrecker Walt Palmer into political action? To use the term Marx himself would have used: how do we incorporate our revolutionary impulses into praxis?
 
Kimmel tells us:
 

In the meantime I think it’s important to have some good come out of this disgusting tragedy. So this is the website for the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford:wildcru.org. These are the researchers who put the collar on Cecil in the first place. They track the animals and study them. If you want to do something … If you want to make this into a positive …
 
Here the tragic aspect of this, quote, “disgusting tragedy” seizes control of Kimmel’s pure but sensitive heart. In orations of this kind, you see, it is not enough to merely make verbal gestures towards feminism. The speaker must show us his own feminine side. Thus, for a moment, Kimmel loses control over his emotions:
 

… you can, er … [Voice breaks] … sorry. I, um … I … I … OK, I’m good.
 
Beautifully done! Just a glimpse of proper empathy; then stern self-control resumes its mastery. Or mistressy …
 

Er, make a donation and support them. At the very least …
 
Yes? Yes? Tell us, Jimmy! What, at the very least, can we do?
 

Er, maybe … maybe we can show the world that not all Americans are like this jackhole here, this dentist … [Cheers, tumultuous applause.]
 
Yes! Heaven forbid the world should think we are all callous brutes like Dr. Palmer. We, er …
 
Wait a minute, I need the goodwhite phrasebook here. I can never remember the approved form of words in the progressive liturgy. What am I searching for here?
 
Right, got it! This is not who we are.

http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/cecil-the-lion-and-the-goodwhite-badwhite-cold-civil-war/

The First Thanksgiving
 
Thanksgiving was named after an entire tribe’s massacre—not a peaceful meal between pilgrims and Indians.
 
In 1621, Wampanoag Indians investigated gun and cannon fire at a Pilgrim settlement to see them celebrating a successful harvest. The Indians—all male warriors, were fed as a gesture of peace. The act was not repeated annually.
 
In 1636, when a murdered man was discovered in a boat in Plymouth, English Major John Mason collected his soldiers and killed and burned down the wigwams of all the neighboring Pequot Indians who were blamed for the murder.
 
The following day, Plymouth Governor William Bradford applauded the massacre of the 400 Indians, including the women and children. The Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, William Newell, proclaimed: “From that day forth, shall be a day of celebration and thanks giving for subduing the Pequots.” For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.
 
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/06/29/8-big-lies-history-books-tell-about-natives-155540?page=0%2C1

See http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/11/28/6-thanksgiving-myths-share-them-someone-you-know-152475 for more details on this massacre, and some other common myths about Thanksgiving.

What have you decided, Plane - is history malleable?

Republican presidential candidate and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who positions himself as one of Capitol Hill’s foremost champions of the “war on terror,” says he’s never read 28 classified pages detailing indications of foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers.
 
Graham’s admission, which came at a July 10 town hall event in Goffstown, New Hampshire, was prompted by a prepared question from a member of the audience. In a recorded exchange posted to YouTube by “Declassify the 28,” Graham also expressed hesitation about releasing the 28 pages for fear of causing “damage” to Saudi Arabia.

28 Pages Said to Be Critical to Understanding Terror Threat
 
Since December 2013, Congressmen Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch and Thomas Massie have been urging legislators to read the 28-page chapter from a 2002 joint congressional intelligence inquiry. Jones says the 28 pages are “shocking,” and Lynch described them as critical to understanding “the web of intrigue…and the treacherous nature of the parties we are dealing with.” Massie said, “I had to stop every couple pages and try to rearrange my understanding of history.”
 
In light of those descriptions, Graham’s admitted failure to read the 28 pages could tarnish his foreign policy-dominated presidential campaign and make him vulnerable to being portrayed as neglectful of his duty to fully inform himself about America’s adversaries and their funding sources. (Senator Rand Paul has read the 28 pages and introduced Senate Bill 1471 to secure their release; it’s unknown if other members of the GOP candidate pool have read them.)
 
“Pretending to Be Informed”?
 
At a June press conference, Kentucky Congressman Massie lamented the fact that so many members of Congress are proposing counter-terror policies without the fuller understanding of terrorism that’s enabled by reading the 28 pages.
 
“Not a day goes by when we aren’t discussing how to prevent another 9/11…whether we should get involved in Syria, to what degree we should be concerned about Yemen, what to do about Iraq. ” Meanwhile, Massie said, “some of the best intelligence we have is in these 28 pages, and most of our colleagues…have not read them, yet they’re pretending to be informed on these issues.”
 
Graham, a member of the Senate armed services committee, has been among those most eager to propose U.S. military involvement to confront terrorism. For example, while most legislators shy away from the notion of recommitting combat troops to the Middle East, Graham has urged the deployment of 10,000 American ground troops to Iraq and Syria to battle ISIS.
 
Graham’s campaign website proclaims, “We need a president who understands the complex threats we face.” However, having not read the 28 pages, Graham may be advocating aggressive moves against the symptoms of Sunni extremism without a complete understanding of their cause. Indeed, former Florida Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the joint inquiry that produced the 28 pages, says the continued classification of the 28 pages enabled the rise of ISIS by shielding Saudi Arabian sponsors of the 9/11 terrorists from scrutiny and consequences.
 
Graham Protective of Saudi “Ally”

Noting Senator Bob Graham’s assertion that the 28 pages “point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier” of 9/11, the audience member asked Lindsey Graham if he would, as president, “do what Bush and Obama have failed to do” and declassify them.

Graham said, “I will decide as to whether or not to release the pages based on what kind of damage it would do to our allies. Saudi Arabia is an ally that’s helped us with terrorism, but it’s a country that needs to change. Does that make sense?”
 
Reiterating the allegations of Saudi financial support of the 9/11 hijackers, the woman replied, “That doesn’t sound like an ally to me.”
 
Graham responded by outlining Saudi Arabia’s sponsorship of Wahabbi extremism as a bid to “buy tranquility” at home and said “one of the prices for admission” of Graham’s proposed military intervention against ISIS would be for Saudi Arabia to “stop funding these organizations. Stop funding terrorist groups. Stop double dealing.”
 
Graham’s claim that he would pressure Saudi Arabia as president seems at odds with his record in the senate. Though Graham is known for aggressive foreign policy positions against countries around the globe—including the use of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation— 28Pages.org could find no record of his legislative leadership of a toughened stance toward Saudi Arabia.
 
To the contrary, Graham, in concert with fellow Senator John McCain, met with Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to encourage the kingdom to finance Islamist extremist groups in Syria, a move that enabled the ascendance of the very ISIS threat that Graham now recommends deploying American servicemembers to fight.
 
Perhaps Graham’s posture would be far different if he’d read the 28 pages and had a fuller sense of Saudi Arabia’s apparent complicity in supporting the 9/11 hijackers. Or perhaps, more than 12 years since the 28 pages were written, he prefers not knowing what they reveal.

Brian McGlinchey is the founder and director of 28Pages.org

http://28pages.org/2015/07/29/lindsey-grahams-admission-i-have-not-read-the-28-pages/

Police probing death in LA find 1,200 guns, 2 tons ammo

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police investigating the death of a Los Angeles man uncovered an arsenal inside his home and garage — more than 1,200 guns and about two tons of ammunition, authorities said Monday.

Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Andrew Smith called the number of rifles, pistols and shotguns staggering. Many had never been fired and some were still wrapped in boxes, with price tags still attached.

"Our truck couldn't carry it all," Smith told the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/1HFAKVn). "We had to go back and make another trip."

There were no signs of foul play. Police have found no evidence the man, who has not been identified, was involved in criminal activity.

Police made the discovery after the man's decomposing body was found in a car down the street from his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

Detectives want to find out why he had so many guns and are examining the weapons to determine if they have been linked to any crime.

"We have a lot of work to do," Smith said. "Running the background, history and legality of these weapons is going to require a tremendous amount of time."

"It's not a crime to have a large number of weapons so long as they were legal to own and legally obtained," Smith added. "We want to make sure that's the case."


http://news.yahoo.com/police-probing-death-la-1-200-guns-2-024948394.html#

McCain Misses Classified Briefing While Blasting White House
By Jonathan Karl | ABC OTUS News

Senator John McCain is demanding answers on the Benghazi attack, but his office tells ABC News he missed a classified briefing on the subject because of a "scheduling error."

The classified briefing was held on Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee - of which Senator McCain is a member - and lasted three hours. It featured testimony by officials from the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center.

During part of the briefing, McCain was holding a press conference demanding answers about the administration's handling of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Step. 11 that killed four Americans, including US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens. McCain called on Congress to launch Watergate-style hearings to get to the bottom of what happened.

"More than two months after the Benghazi attack, there are still many unanswered questions," McCain told reporters in the Capitol Hill press conference. "While we await the findings and recommendations of the administration's internal review of the Benghazi attack, it's essential for the Congress to conduct its own independent assessment."

At precisely the same time McCain was holding that press conference, the briefing for the Homeland Security Committee was happening in another part of the Capitol building.

Why did he missing the briefing on a subject he has been so adamant in demanding answers on? McCain's office says his absence was unintentional - an oversight.

"Senator McCain was absent from the hearing due to a scheduling error," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told ABC News.

Even if he had attended, McCain was unlikely to be satisfied with what he heard.

After the briefing was over, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, Senator Susan Collins, was asked if she was satisfied with the hearing.

"I really wasn't," Collins answered. "There are many, many unanswered questions. I feel that we've only scratched the surface through the briefings that we had today."

There are currently at least four Senate Committees looking into the Benghazi attack. For her part, Sen. Collins does not agree with McCain's call to combine those into one special - or "select" - committee like the one that investigated Watergate.

" I do not see the benefit of, nor the need for a select committee," Collins said. "Our committee, our Homeland Security Committee has government-wide jurisdiction and a history of producing comprehensive bipartisan reports on everything from the Ft. Hood terrorist attack to Hurricane Katrina, so I don't see the need for creating a brand new select committee to take a look at this."

The White House had no immediate comment on McCain's absence from the hearing, but one former White House official was quick to jump on it.

"It is nothing short of appalling that Senator McCain would use his time and influence to play politics instead of getting answers to the questions he claims to have," said Bill Burton of the pro-Obama group Priorities USA.

-Jonathan Karl and Sunlen Miller

http://news.yahoo.com/mccain-misses-classified-briefing-while-blasting-white-house-170656090--abc-news-politics.html

Current Petraeus affair has nothing on nation’s first sex scandal
By NCC Staff | National Constitution Center

.
The current sex scandal involving the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the military, and possibly several private citizens isn’t the first in Washington, but it has some things in common with the huge scandal that hit Alexander Hamilton more than 200 years ago.
 
The Maria Reynolds affair was the David Petraeus-Paula Broadwell-John Allen triangle of its day in the 1790s, with its admission of adultery, scandalous mail exchanges, and a high-profile resignation.
 
The Hamilton scandal also involved some elements that have nothing in common with the current situation: blackmail, a potential Founding Fathers duel, and a key role by two future U.S. presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe.
 
And Aaron Burr, the man who eventually killed Hamilton in 1804, made two cameo appearances as the events unfolded.
 
In the 1790s, Hamilton was arguably the second- or third-most powerful politician in the United States, after his mentor, Washington, and Hamilton’s arch-enemy, Jefferson.
 
But Hamilton had many foes due to his aggressive role in government. Hamilton had started the first political party in the nation, the Federalists and battled leaders within his own party as well as Jefferson and his followers.
 
Hamilton became the first treasury secretary of the United States in 1789 and was President Washington’s most-trusted adviser. But he resigned in early 1795, reportedly to seek a lucrative private sector career working as a lawyer in New York.
 
But Hamilton was harboring a secret.
 
During Washington’s first term in office, Secretary Hamilton started an affair in 1791 with Maria Reynolds, a Philadelphia woman seeking money to leave her abusive husband and return to New York.
 
Unknown to Hamilton, Reynolds’ husband knew of the affair. James Reynolds forced the married Hamilton to pay him blackmail if he wanted to continue the liaison. Hamilton did.
 
James Reynolds was then caught in a separate financial scheme and tried to implicate Hamilton in that plot in 1792. The speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg; Monroe; and a third Congress member confronted Hamilton.
 
Not only did the treasury secretary confirm the affair, Hamilton also handed over much of his mail correspondence with Reynolds to the men. The letters apparently proved that Hamilton wasn’t involved in the second financial scheme involving Reynolds.
 
Monroe and Muhlenberg agreed to keep the incident quiet, but Jefferson may have known of the affair. Monroe had given copies of the letters and records of the meetings with Hamilton to John Beckley, the clerk of the House of Representatives, to be sealed.
 
Five year later, Beckley was fired as House clerk by the Federalists, and all of the papers were suddenly made public in 1797 in what we would call a tabloid publication run by Philadelphia publisher James Callender.
 
Furious, Hamilton responded by publishing a denial and marching to Monroe’s house to ask him how the confidential papers became public. Monroe and Hamilton argued, and dueling challenges were exchanged.
 
A deadly battle between the future president and Hamilton seemed destined to happen, but Monroe’s second intervened in a series of letters and calmed down the two men. The second was Aaron Burr.
 
Burr was also the divorce attorney for Maria Reynolds.
 
Hamilton responded by publishing more correspondence on the matter, including 50 letters from Reynolds and fellow politicians and the dueling threats with Monroe.
 
The Maria Reynolds affair ended Hamilton’s likelihood of holding political office again. He remained a behind-the-scenes player in the Federalist Party, but would never become president–and his party wouldn’t win the presidency again in his lifetime.
 
But one lingering question remains today: What was Hamilton’s true role in the affair?
 
One theory that emerged in the 1970s, from a Jeffersonian scholar, was that some of the letters from Reynolds, depicting Hamilton’s innocence in the financial part of the scandal, were forged.
 
American Heritage magazine has a detailed account of the story online at http://www.americanheritage.com/content/notorious-affair-mrs-reynolds.
 
It also has an interesting footnote about those 50 papers that Hamilton published in 1797, which allegedly proved his innocence. The originals were supposed to be in the possession of William Bingham, a U.S. senator in Philadelphia who was one of America’s wealthiest men.
 
Bingham said he never received the papers in Philadelphia and the originals have been missing since then.

http://news.yahoo.com/current-petraeus-affair-nothing-nation-first-sex-scandal-175016966.html