From AtlasShrugs.com

EXCERPTS:

At first, the group that claims responsibility, the Anti-Racist Action Group, focused on just one table, then decided that it wasn’t enough to beat whom they consider their sworn enemies, but also other placid suburbanites who just happened to be enjoying the Irish fare served at Winston’s. When the owner of the restaurant took on one of the hoodie thugs physically, tackling him, he was beaten by five of the thugs.

But it wasn’t the tea party or Republicans. It’s the media’s dahlings — the left. And their victims were a reviled group. So that makes it okay? The left is certainly ratcheting things up on the order of pre-Nazi reign. Yes, these leftist jackboots are attacking a group that no one will stand with, but who is next on their list of victims?

Which means people can get beat up and eventually killed in the name of “social justice”, and nobody in the business of reporting about it, cares. In fact, you get the feeling they kind of digg it.

Pathetic.

FULL ARTICLE

By Cliff Kincaid

Tamara Holder, a Fox News contributor, is accused of having an affair with Jesse Jackson, Sr. in a lawsuit that alleges the illegal use of a gay Jackson employee to facilitate the relationship.

The accuser, Tommy R. Bennett, was Jackson’s personal travel assistant and ran the legal clinic at Jackson’s organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He says he was eventually fired for protesting his treatment by Jackson and other PUSH employees and is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

Holder has not responded to repeated requests for comment from Accuracy in Media, but Jackson’s press representative, Lauren Love, says the allegations are false and will be proven so.

Bennett attorney Thomas V. Leverso says that Jackson and PUSH have been stonewalling a legal response for many months but that investigations and the case are moving forward. Leverso tells Accuracy in Media that witnesses have come forward to verify the allegations against Jackson.

Jackson, a minister and Democratic politician who served as an aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., suffered a major embarrassment in 2010 when he admitted to an extramarital affair that produced an illegitimate child.

Bennett worked for Jackson for more than two years and was known as “Aruba Tommy” on local Chicago radio station WVON. The lawsuit alleges that Bennett was subjected to “humiliating tasks” because he was a homosexual, such as “escorting women to his [Jackson’s] hotel room” and then being ordered to clean up after Jackson had sexual intercourse with them.

One of those women, the suit claims, was Tamara Holder, a pundit and criminal defense attorney who claims she “single-handedly” founded what she calls “a pro bono legal clinic at Rev. Jesse L. Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition.” A self-described Democrat, she appears regularly on Fox News to defend the Obama Administration and other prominent Democrats. “Because of the Democratic Party’s deep Chicago roots, Tamara has worked closely with some of the City’s most prominent leaders,” her website says.

Another Holder website says that, in addition to being “a legal and political contributor for Fox News Channel,” she “previously wrote for The Huffington Post and now writes for The Daily Caller.” The latter identifies her as “one of the nation’s rising attorneys and legal analytical stars.”

On one occasion, “Mr. Bennett was instructed by Rev. Jackson to escort Ms. Holder to Rev. Jackson’s hotel room at the Hilton at Chicago O’Hare airport,” the suit says.

The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, says Bennett was director of the clinic but that when he objected to Holder taking a majority of the cases and charging too much to poor clients, he was replaced. He says Jackson then gave control of the clinic to Holder.

The allegations are the subject of several legal actions and complaints, including one by Bennett to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, which is still under investigation, and another to the Illinois Department of Human Rights, which was not acted upon, prompting the lawsuit.

Bennett’s original complaint consisted of seven charges, including that Jackson exhibited a “bigoted attitude” toward homosexuals and ordered him to perform “improper job duties.” This was followed by a “supplemental statement of facts” from his attorney that runs eight pages in length.

This document declares, “It was well known that Ms. Holder was a mistress of Rev. Jackson,” and states that the Jackson family was informed of this because of a letter from another Jackson mistress.

It refers to Jackson visiting Holder’s apartment, while Bennett waited in a car outside, and “several occasions” during which Bennett “was instructed by Rev. Jackson to escort Ms. Holder to Rev. Jackson’s hotel room at the Hilton at Chicago O’Hare airport.”

Lauren Love, who runs the Rainbow PUSH Coalition press department, provided a statement to AIM that said:

“The Rainbow PUSH Coalition unequivocally denies Tommy Bennett’s false claims of harassment, retaliation and discrimination. The Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. unequivocally denies Tommy Bennett’s false claims of harassment, retaliation and discrimination. We are fully cooperating with the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and expect to be fully exonerated.

“The organization does not condone or tolerate discrimination in any form. Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition stands on their record of advocating for equality and human rights for all people—from standing up to affirm the humanity of persons with HIV-AIDS and advocating for HIV-AIDS education and research, to supporting marriage equality and the abolition of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy of the U.S. Military.

“His inflammatory allegations are an attempt to malign Rev. Jackson and the organization, and are hurtful and harmful to the progressive community.

“Rainbow PUSH and Rev. Jackson will have no further comment while the matter is pending before the Commission.”

The Bennett allegations have been covered by some gay media and one of the supermarket tabloids. The National Enquirer, which broke the story of the Jackson mistress that produced the illegitimate child, wrote about the Bennett charges in a story headlined, “Jesse Jackson Gay Sex Shocker Legal War.”

The Courthouse News Service has run a lengthy account of the “lurid” allegations, while the Chicago Sun-Times published a small story which made no mention of Tamara Holder being named in it. Holder says the Chicago Sun-Times once recognized her as one of “50 People Who Make Chicago a Better Place.”

In addition to the alleged relationship with Holder, Jackson is accused of demanding sexual favors from Bennett, such as being told to apply a cream on Jackson’s inner thigh to treat a rash. Bennett says he refused, Jackson became angry, and called Bennett a “little mother——.”

“My termination was discriminatory and retaliatory,” says Bennett’s complaint. He was told he was fired because of a “drastic economic downturn” when in fact another individual was hired to replace him.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. 

by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.

Dear Dr. Hurd,

You recently wrote:

“The people who command and expand our Big Government know this. They tend to be the educated elites. They tend to be the Ph.D.s and the intellectuals.”

I have wondered about this.  Why are so many civilized, intelligent, well to do people so far to the left, particularly when it is ultimately against their own self-interest?

Their air of refinement  and “compassion” lends an air of credibility, which can be quite convincing and alluring to those who do not think their ideas through carefully.

You mentioned control of education and the psyches of the masses through the teachings of the public schools as the motive, but outside of the president and his “leaders” I don’t think power is the goal of most lefties. There must be guilt, religion or ignorance driving their misguided ideas in the name of compassion.

I did a search on You Tube for Objectivism [Ayn Rand’s philosophy of capitalism, individualism and rationality] in my quest for knowledge and I came up with quite a few red-necked (religious) hicks who could  barely string together a grammatically correct sentence touting Objectivism. This seems upside down and makes rationality a tough sell to intelligent, refined people, unfortunately.
Dr. Hurd replies:

Times change, and they eventually will. I can’t say when, but I can be sure they will. How can I be so sure?

First of all, being wrong can only sustain you for so long. The prevailing attitude in leftist circles is, “You’re not Republican, are you?!” Or, “You’re not a capitalist, are you?!” Ayn Rand is widely known, but not [yet] taken seriously by leftists, at least. But if you say you’re in favor of Ayn Rand, you’ll get the same, “What?! You don’t like her, do you?”

This is the psychology of people who are sure they are right, and see no reason to question it. In other words, they’re no longer thinking. It’s also the psychology of people who, as individuals, are very frightened of being seen as different, or as out of the mainstream. Today’s liberalism IS conservative, in the deepest sense of that term: Unwilling to reconsider, think or change.

The psychology and attitude of contemporary liberals, from Obama on down, is one of resentment, rigidity and arrogance. It’s not idealism at all. The closest they get to idealism are the rotten bums stinking up the streets in the “Occupy” temper tantrums in cities across the country. These are not the actions, attitudes or strategies of people who truly have anything of substance to say. They’re not idealists, but simply nihilists. They’re not the movers and shakers who will ever do anything to change the world as we know it.

The real, and serious, intellectual activity is taking place on the right.

The times are changing because nothing can ever stand still. Even Obama will eventually go. No, I’m not saying things are moving to the “right” or to an Ayn Rand-like revolution. Most of the evidence at the moment suggests the opposite, if anything. In today’s climate, even with the sagging economy and fiscal disaster, it’s unlikely that even Ronald Reagan could win.

However, things are falling apart. And it’s happening on the socialist liberals’ watch. Everyone knows it because it’s simply self-evident.

The non-leftist point of view suggests that this was inevitable. The liberal point of view suggests all we need is MORE Big Government, and things will start to get better. Sadly (to those of us who don’t agree), we are getting more Big Government. We have been getting huge, huge doses of Big Interventionist Government since the last year of Bush’s term in office. Bush was no proponent of little government, either, but Obama has massively expanded on Bush’s interventions. The Republican House of the last year can or will do nothing to stop it. They seem to have simply given up.

The presidential election won’t change much. Let’s face facts. Obama is probably going to win. He might or might not get a more Democratic Congress—that could go either way. Romney could win, but if he does, it won’t matter much. Once Romney is President, he’s going to be like John McCain has been his whole career. He’s going to care more about pleasing the leftist establishment, and convincing them he’s not all THAT conservative, than he’s going to care about the Tea Party. He really won’t need the Tea Party, even if the Tea Party strengthens its hold on Congress. He’s got the Republican nomination for next time, and he’ll do his best to be a two-term President, by trying to get the left on his side. It won’t work. Given how little pressure the conservative Republicans in Congress have put on Obama, it seems highly unlikely they will give a moderate or left-leaning Romney any more pressure.

The bigger point here is that one way or another, we’re going to keep getting more leftist policies. They’re not going to work. Anything short of four percent economic growth a year and five percent or less unemployment will not be the American economy we’re accustomed to. By fixing and lying about the numbers, Obama is actually convincing more Americans than not (at this moment) that things are getting better. They’re not. And imagine a Republican President who had nothing better to run on than 8 percent unemployment and barely 1 percent of economic growth per year. It would be a bigger blowout than Obama’s victory against John McCain last time around.

Liberalism and socialism are about to achieve their biggest failure since FDR’s inability (after three terms) to end the Great Depression. Roosevelt was rescued by the distraction of World War II, but in today’s world it’s hard to imagine what such a “rescue” for Obama would look like. In academia, there are going to be more and more young, new people coming on the scene, people who look at the evidence of their own lifetimes and think, “Maybe some of those limited government people have a point. Who are those Austrian economists, again, the ones who promote laissez-faire capitalism? Didn’t that one president, Ronald Reagan, make some good points? And what about Ayn Rand? She at least deserves a reading.”

Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. It has to happen. Human beings don’t ultimately want failure. Failure is not a good thing.

The intellect matters. Just as the brain and the mind are the most important part of an individual, so too with a culture. Religious conservatives are never going to be the ones to sell America, including sophisticated cultural elites, on capitalism and individual rights. Like you say, many of these people are semi-literate and can gain no serious standing anywhere. Even the ones who are more literate are finding that you cannot base liberty on supernaturalism. Freedom is something required by the rational intellect, not by a praying person more concerned with an afterlife than survival on earth. Once enough intellectuals make this connection, socialism will have the fight of its life in academia.

It’s not the tail that will set us on a new cultural (including political) course. It’s the brain; the mind. The intellectuals will have to change. The ones currently there will have to die off. It’s the next generation we’re counting on. They’re going to need a lot of good ideas to clean up the mess that their elders created. The only creative, innovative and rational ideas are to be found on the right.

Dr. Hurd has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Psychology, Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, CA, November 1991. Degree awarded With Distinction. Master’s of Social Work (M.S.W.), Clinical, The University of Maryland at Baltimore, May 1988. Bachelor’s of Arts (B.A.), Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, May 1985. Distinguished Psychology Student Award, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude. Dr. Hurd blogs at DrHurd.com

By Thomas Sowell at IBD Editorials

EXCERPTS:

Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles and other places across the country.

A wave of such attacks in Chicago were reported, but not the race of the attackers or victims.

What the authorities and the media seem determined to suppress is that the hoodlum elements in many ghettos launch coordinated attacks on whites in public places.

Those who automatically say that the social pathology of the ghetto is due to poverty, discrimination and the like cannot explain why such pathology was far less prevalent in the 1950s, when poverty and discrimination were worse. But there were not nearly as many grievance mongers and race hustlers then.

FULL ARTICLE

By Victor Davis Hanson at Townhall.com

EXCERPTS:

… U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren had self-identified as a Native American for nearly a decade — apparently to enhance her academic career by claiming minority status. Warren, a blond multimillionaire, could not substantiate her claim of 1/32 Cherokee heritage.

University of Colorado academic Ward Churchill was likewise exposed as a fraud in his claims of Native American ancestry.

In the Trayvon Martin murder case, the media was intent on promulgating a white oppressor/black victim narrative as proof of endemic white prejudice that still haunts America and thus requires perpetual recompense.

… a glitch arose when it was learned that Zimmerman had a Peruvian mother. ….  So the panicked media coined a new hybrid term for Zimmerman: “white Hispanic.”

Note that the media has so far not in commensurate fashion referred to President Obama as a “white African-American” even though he too had a white parent.

after a half-century in our self-created racial labyrinth, no one quite knows who qualifies as an oppressed victim or why — only that the more one can change a name or emphasize lineage, the better the careerist edge.

FULL ARTICLE

By Alan Caruba

The media and the usual race-mongers made sure that all of America knew about George Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida on February 26. The local police initially did not arrest Zimmerman because it was an obvious case of self-defense.

There was no such outcry, however, when a month later on March 26 a 50-year-old white man was attacked and beaten with a hammer by two black teens, in Midway, Florida, just six miles from Sanford. The Orlando Sentinel published a description of the attackers, but neglected to mention their race. One of them had just finished a seventeen month prison sentence.

On May 9, the Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ published an article, “Group of 10 or 15 ‘thugs’ rob and beat 5 people following Prudential Center concert, cops say.” There was no reference to their race in the article and when I emailed the reporter for clarification, I received no response.

This kind of double standard is rampant in the reporting of black-on-white attacks and Colin Flaherty, a radio host on WDEL, Wilmington, Delaware, and a writer who has won more than forty awards for his work, has recently published “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America” that chronicles a trend that is receiving little media attention and one which local police authorities tend to avoid discussing.

The book is not a racist screed. It is the reporting of events.

It is also an appalling record of violence against whites that must be addressed or political correctness will doom any chance of dealing with it. In the introduction to his book, Flaherty writes, “Almost as astonishing as the widespread racial violence is the willingness of people in authority to deny it. Ignore it. Explain it away. Even condone and lie about it.”

The book is a chronicle of black-on-white violence in recent years. “In Chicago,” Flaherty notes, “after weeks of racial violence where the newspapers refused to mention the crime was almost exclusively black gangs on individual whites, the Superintendent of Police said he knew what was causing the violence: Sarah Palin.”

“A member of Congress from Chicago, Bobby Rush, said black violence in Chicago was routine and the only reason anyone was paying any attention to the race riots in downtown Chicago was because it was black on white violence.”

“The riots on the streets of South Philly had ‘no racial component’ and were ‘nothing much’ said the Mayor until events forced him to acknowledge the obvious: black people were taking racial violence to a new level.”

Flaherty says “The deniers fall somewhere in between two points; (on) one hand, they say the racial violence is not happening. On the other, they say it is, but everyone already knows it—and it is happening for a good reason. Sometimes they say both.”

“As I started to unravel the threads of these attacks,” writes Flaherty, “it became clear right away that this was happening all over the country for at least a year or two. And that newspapers were underreporting it—when they reported it at all.”

As the Memorial Day weekend approaches at the end of the month, Flaherty warns about Black Beach Week in Miami Beach and Black Bike Week in Myrtle Beach, Florida, along with Speed Week in Charlotte, North Carolina.

For the past decade the events in Florida “have become the center of the universe of the world’s biggest black beach party. The city doesn’t really host the party. People just show up.” The events are distinguished by “Shootings, assaults on police, mountains of trash, (and) violence against people and property on a scale that can only be called anarchistic.”

These are not isolated events. The pattern was repeated in Indianapolis, Indiana, during its annual Black Expo and in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the several day party that precedes the annual Coca Cola 600, a NASCAR event. In 2011, an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 blacks rioted, resulting in one of the city’s largest mass arrests. Charlotte will be the site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

In July 2010, in Milwaukee, some ten to twenty white youths were enjoying a Fourth of July fireworks show when they were set upon by a gang of blacks. In Minneapolis in 2011 more than 800 black people “marauded through downtown followed a few days later by an incident when twenty black women beat a white woman after she confronted them about harassing her child.

In city after city throughout America—Akron, Rochester, Atlantic City, Atlanta, St. Louis, Boston, Seattle, Las Vegas, Detroit, Denver, and even the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., Flaherty documents riots and attacks that can no longer be ignored or seen as isolated events.

It is just too easy to pass this off as “black anger.” It is racism and the Zimmerman-Martin killing is just the tip of the iceberg. Despite decades since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that was passed to redress the wrongs of the past against black Americans, some blacks retain a malignant hatred directed against whites.

“The Return of Race Riots to America” portends that the summer of 2012 could reflect this trend. It is a warning to the leaders in both the black and white communities to condemn it and to the nation’s media to do something other than ignore or exploit it.

The reality is that we are going to be hearing a lot more from Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan who thrive on such violence, and the real tragedy is that millions of law-abiding black citizens will be branded by such behavior.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

By David N. Bass at American Spectator

EXCERPTS:

If Obama wanted to take one step to solidify evangelicals’ vote behind Romney, however, it was to publicly endorse same-sex marriage. Much ado is being made about how Obama’s evolution (more appropriately, his switcheroo) will excite his base. Well, for every action there is an opposite reaction. Obama will earn very few evangelical votes this year. That will carry weight because Obama snagged 26 percent of the evangelical vote in 2008.

FULL ARTICLE