Obama Micromanaging Shirley Sherrod Firing

Obama pointed to Tom Vilsack as his spokeman to announce that Obama had made a mistake acting so hastily when firing Shirley Sherrod the other day.   John Kass of the Chicago Tribune writes it this way: 

“In post-racial America, whenever conservatives provoke liberals to foolishly overreact in a racial controversy and step right into the doo-doo, two things are required:

A ticket to “sensitivity school.” And a fall guy.

Lately, we can’t help getting hit with all the flying racial cards. Everything from whether LeBron James was treated like some “runaway slave” to whether the NAACP was racist by accusing tea party activists of being racists.
And now the latest. The knee-jerk reaction by the Obama administration in firing Department of Agriculture bureaucrat Shirley Sherrod, an African-American accused of racism when there wasn’t any.

So let’s meet the new fall guy, Sherrod’s boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

 Vilsack is a perfect fall guy for racial controversies. He’s white. He’s male. He’s from Iowa. He’s got an ethnic “European”-sounding name.

Vilsack is the fall guy.

He now says it was his decision alone to fire Sherrod over a speech she made this year to the NAACP about an event 24 years ago.

In a two-minute segment that became viral on conservative blogs and then FOX News, Sherrod tells the black civil rights organization that, as an African-American who experienced discrimination, she wasn’t inclined to help white farmers who needed it.

But what wasn’t reported initially was the central theme of her speech: She realized that it doesn’t matter what color a farmer is, if he needs help, he needs help.

If only we all could act the Shirley Sherrod way. But then what would politicians and groups that leverage skin pigments for votes, power and government benefits do for a living?

As many of you know, Sherrod’s bosses ordered her to immediately type her resignation on her government BlackBerry.

She says the pressure actually came from the Obama White House.

So how is it that Vilsack is the fall guy?”

Because he’s the one who went before the TV cameras to say he’s sorry that “a good woman” was “put through hell.” He admitted to hasty action, apologized and offered her a better job.

Once a fall guy is chosen, the label must be firmly seared into the public mind. And so President Barack Obama called Sherrod on Thursday.

“The president expressed to Ms. Sherrod his regrets about the events of the last several days,” said the White House official version of history. “He emphasized that Secretary Vilsack was sincere in his apology yesterday, and in his work to rid USDA of discrimination.”
It ended with the president’s hope that Sherrod would use the “misfortune” to accept a new post and “continue her hard work on behalf of those in need.”

Such bureaucratic verbal surgery, while effective, is somewhat flat. So allow me to translate:

The president “regrets” what the guy with the bear on his head did to poor Ms. Sherrod, and he reinforces that it was the guy with the bear on his head — and not the president or Rahm or David or Michelle or Valerie — but the bear-head guy alone, who is very, very sorry and won’t do it again.

So we’re hoping she’ll take the new job at better pay and a nicer government car and benefits, even an iPhone, so she won’t be in the news anymore, because we feel really, really stupid, OK?

Sherrod is no fool. She accepted the Vilsack apology but not the job.

What I found most fascinating is what Sherrod said on the morning talk shows Thursday. She supports Obama yet still insists it was the White House that had her fired, and figures the president needs to learn some things.

“He hasn’t lived the kind of life I lived,” she told CNN. “I know that he’s African-American — or part African-American — many of us are not totally black in our genes, and I’m one of them,” she said.

To George Stephanopoulos of ABC, she layered it on some more.

“I’d like for him — he’s not someone who has experienced some of the things I’ve experienced through life, being a person of color. He might need to hear some of what I could say to him. I don’t know whether that would guide him in the way he deals with others like me. But I would at least like to have the opportunity to talk to him about it,” she said.

Is it just me or is she telling Obama that he needs to go to Sensitivity School to fully understand the black experience?

Straight away, she received a text message from the White House saying Obama had been trying to reach her since Wednesday. Imagine that. The president of the United States couldn’t find her. She must have left her BlackBerry off the hook.

Finally, they had their talk, and America got what it requires.

A little presidential sensitivity session.

Something More to Know About John Kerry, The Would Be President

John Kerry is easy to poke fun at. He is a man of modest abilities who has had, apparently from childhood, an outsized sense of entitlement. Even when he was a relatively unknown politician, he was notorious in Boston for demanding privileges and, if balked, asking imperiously, “Do you know who I am?” And he acquired his vast fortune the old-fashioned way: he married it.

Currently, Kerry is under fire for dodging taxes, specifically, Massachusetts’s boat sales and use tax. Kerry bought a $7 million yacht, and he docks it in Rhode Island, which has no similar tax. This saves him an astonishing $500,000. The newspapers are having a field day, and Kerry is on the defensive. Here is Kerry’s yacht, named Isabel, which boasts an “Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage.”

As is so often the case, Kerry is easy to ridicule. But in fact, he is doing the right thing by avoiding his home state’s tax. One of the principal advantages of our federal system is that states must compete for residents and for business. Because Rhode Island doesn’t try to charge Kerry a half million dollars up front, its residents will benefit from the opportunity to house and maintain his boat. This episode reminds me of 1990, when the Democratic Congress, eager to show that it was anti-rich people, adopted a ten percent excise tax on luxury yachts. The tax devastated New England’s boat-building industry while generating almost no revenue. An embarrassed Congress soon repealed the tax.

Maybe John Kerry’s rational tax avoidance will embarrass Massachusetts into competing with its neighbors.

The above article was writen by John Hinderaker at PowerLine earlier today.  I see he knows  this JFK well too.   Kerry is wonderfully transparent to all.

Peggy Noonan’s Smearing of “Right-wing” Media in the Shirley Sherrod Incident

Peggy Noonan is at her put downs  again in this morning’s Wall Street Journal.   The enemy of Sarah Palin could be expected to be the enemy of  ‘right-wing’ media.    And so, in her article, The Power of Redemption, Peggy swoons over Ms. Shirley Sherrod’s sufferings by  this media brand.

“She was smeared by rightwing radio, condemned by the NAACP, and canned by the Obama administration”, Ms. Noonan began her story about Shirley Sherrod.

But only two of her collections are accurate.  I don’t believe it is true that “Rightwing radio” smeared Ms. Sherrod.  I don’t think people closer to the “know” believe it true, either. 

I am not confident the whole story has been truthly put together, yet.  How did the video become available?   Was it edited for brevity?    Did someone not  review its overall  integrity?   When Fox television showed the video, did Bill O’Reilly know he was smearing  Ms. Sherrod?   Who committed the smearing, Ms. Noonan?   Could it be that someone goofed and goofed badly?

About two minutes of listening to Ms. Sherrod express herself, as she has done after the incident, a normal American would know  for sure, that this is one hard nose, difficult female storing tons of angst.  She cannot hold it back.

Packaging Sherrod into something describable, I’d bet we all would agree, knowing nothing about her background, but merely listening to her words and tones, Ms. Sherrod is probably  a black with racist feelings toward whites. 

Ms. Noonan reminds readers Ms. Sherrod’s father was killed by a white man.

It should be in our American memory bank that the vast majority of Americans murdered by members of the “opposite” race is whites  murdered by blacks…..rapes, racist rages, theft, gang membership tests, anger, revenge, enjoyment…whatever leads to murder…..and the murders are done by males. 

American racist tradition dictates such statistics are not to be reported.   They might excite some whites, and make some blacks feel bad.   Some whites may discover the breadth  and depth of racism carried by the American black in his and her normal patterns of day to day behaviors. 

From my experience from the contacts I have had in the inner city black community, its society is hugely dysfunctional, made so primarily by the absence of a responsible male figure in something like a normal family unit and group disdain for a good education.

The inner city black has not competed well fulfilling the American dream with a good life, liberty in his or her pursuit of happiness.  The plantation culture in which they live does not lend itself to such a dream.   It favors  maintaining dependency among its constituents.

It was  thirty years ago when  I became submerged  into that culture at a time when its racism was  openly expressed, and often proudly, in violent behavior and speech, and openly and boldly in schools classes for disruption and entertainment purposes.  Some of these folks work in  inner city goverrnment jobs  these days.

It is likely community behavior has deteriorated since then.

How does a member of this plantation culture  explain to its  children and youth of the advantages of those around them who succeed and prosper.  Should they confess the truth that within this plantation culture there are certain frailties and shortfalls besides racism, which interfere with success, such as fatherlessness, a lure of the criminal life for immediate financial “reward”, a disdain for education,  a code of male disrespect and domination over the female, and one of the worst curses to overwhelm the culture, that  habit to  teach hate and resentment against their fellow Americans by blaming all  of their own well earned shortcomings on whitey.

Here we are in the year 2010 and according to the rules of political correctness, neither black nor   white is allowed to express  freely  their  experiences with, and feelings and worries about those of “that other race.”  

“Whatever has happened to the first amendment?” that we all are so silent about  so important a matter for our country as  ”One Nation, Under God” ?

The American Leftwing has enforced these  unwritten laws of Political Correctness.  One must never talk freely and openly about racial matters.  Only so-called victims are allowed to complain.   The Left has indoctrinated us to believe that feeding money into the black kitty was the only way to lift the inner city communities into modern educated and professional life.   Feeding the kitty meant feeding the Democrat Party as a child depends upon its parents.  

President Obama’s man fired Shirley Sherrod without any moment to lose.  While she was driving home, the story goes.  Was it the president’s decision?

In a democratic society one does not perform such tyrannies.   Ms. Sherrod had not had a chance to tell her story.   She has a right in a free society  to believe  racism.   So many blacks do practice the belief freely.    No one should be fired for this condition.  Did she perform her work duties properly and professionally?   It would be exceedingly unprofessional for her or anyone else to perform one set of ways for a certain racial or ethnic group, and another set for others.

That would not be the American way!  There should be some penalty  for failing in her duties.

Ms. Noonan ….   I am not aware the right wing media  smeared Ms. Sherrod. 

You write: “Someone cut the 45 minute speech down to less than two minutes, to the part in which she talked about not wanting to hep white people.  Andrew Breitbart ran it on one of his websites and made Ms. Sherrod look like a race-game-playing government bully.

It was trumpeted all over conservative media.”

Ms. Noonan….Where is proof of the smearing as you liberally claim?   What if  ”some” or “all”  of those who reported the story stated:  ”According to Andrew Breitbart’s website, there is a video in which a Ms. Shirley Sherrod…….”   Do you judge that as smearing?  Your use of the word smearing suggests a moral value to the deed.  Why can’t  the references to the video be an example of  a shortcoming in contemporary journalism…. that speed of reporting trumps the integrity of the reporting? 

“She was smeared by right-wing media”  has a smear value to it, doen’t it.    Yet, I suppose it  could be true that all of these right wing media people were out to get Shirley.   If Peggy  had a staff to follow through on the story to research this smearing factor, it  might come up with something in a week or a month.   By then no one would remember Shirley what’s her name.

Obama: The First “Foreigner” American President?

How foreign is Barack Hussein Obama to the mainstream American’s  dream of things?

I have contended Mr. Obama is our nation’s first foreign president.  A person who had divorced himself from the American flow of life.  Orphaned, he viewed the American scene as a stranger, then as a black, but still a stranger.

He has given much evidence that he does not like the country he has experienced and is determined to twist it by his anger and dissatisfaction.   Mrs. Obama stated she had never been proud of her country until her husband became president.

Wow!  Does one believe her words?

How foreign is the president  to the American conversation?   Read the following  poll statistics published  by John Hinderaker at PowerLine:

“The current state of American politics can be summed up in this poll data, published today by Rasmussen Reports:

75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy. Just 14% think a government managed economy is better while 11% are not sure.

Well, one would hope so. But here is the kicker:

America’s Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin.

That strikes me as a rather stunning finding. Rasmussen divides voters into “mainstream” and “political class” based on their answers to these questions:

– Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgment do you trust more – the American people or America’s political leaders?

– Some people believe that the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Has the federal government become a special interest group?

– Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?

Most voters answer these questions in a way that categorizes them as “mainstream,” while a minority’s answers signify that they identify with the political class. Among “mainstream” voters, 90% prefer free markets over government control.

It strikes me that these data largely explain the political turmoil of the last year. The political class, now firmly in the saddle in Washington, wants to substitute government control for free choice wherever possible. Since members of the political class communicate mostly with each other, they evidently underestimated the extent to which such policies would be unpopular with mainstream Americans.

This is notable, too: there has been much controversy over whether the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats (or many of them, anyway) can fairly be labeled “socialist.” Many on the left purport to view that label as a vile epithet. But a plurality of the political class, not just a far-left fringe, thinks that a government-managed economy is better than free enterprise. If that isn’t socialist, what is?

The difference between the political class and the American mainstream is perhaps the most important divide in our current politics, more significant than that between Democrats and Republicans or even conservatives and liberals (although there is obviously much overlap in those pairings). The tea party fits well into this structure. While no doubt mostly Republican and mostly conservative, the tea party represents, more than anything else, the rebellion of mainstream Americans against the political class.

All of which helps to explain why, as Michael Barone explained, the dogs don’t like the dog food.

Comment:  Who are this alien’s friends?    Tony Rezko, who is in jail?   Bill Ayers, the American terrorist and Marxist about whose close friendship Mr. Obama has often lied?   His financial  friends at Countrywide?   Jeremiah Wright, the “Goddamn America” pastor of the church to which Obama belonged for over twenty years and lied about his knowledge of this man of the cloth’s hate for the country in which he was becoming rich and infamous?  Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s “father figure” according to the stranger’s own words?  Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega in the OAS in their efforts to destroy democracies?   Muslims in general since they, according to this president,  have been so instrumental in the building of America?   The list of the alien’s friends could go on and on and nowhere on the list will anyone find something winsome about Uncle Sam…..except hat Obama was elected its president.

We know who his enemies are.   The state of  Arizona, conservatives, both white and black, the Federal Constitution as a legal restraint, the Cambridge police and perhaps American police, white or black, in general, and I believe  he has angst against whites overall…..and  against America as it is.

And beyond all, Mr. Obama’s enemy is the freedom Americans have enjoyed to engage in private enterprise rather than government dictate.  He is a Marxist, so what can one expect?  His whole being as president thus far, has been to compromise and/or destroy that freedom.