Maxine Waters at Her Best….Playing the Race Card!….Trying to Make Sense

Jonah Goldberg is kinder to Maxine Waters than her history merits.  “Race Card Payment Coming Due” is the title of his National Review article: 

“The race card is maxed out.”

That was the punch line for a recent hilarious exchange on The Daily Show in which Larry Wilmore, the faux news program’s “senior black correspondent,” reported that the race card is not only over its credit limit but is in fact “void during a black presidency.” This discovery came in the wake of Maxine Waters’s allegation that her political problems stem from a racially biased congressional ethics investigation.

Wilmore said he should have seen this coming, given that “the Congressional Black Caucus has been overusing the race card for years.” Like when it circled the wagons around Rep. William Jefferson. The CBC in effect argued it’d have been no big deal if a white congressman had been videotaped receiving a $100,000 bribe and if the FBI then found most of it in his freezer. Singling out a black congressman for this sort of thing, Wilmore joked, amounts to punishing Jefferson for “Legislating While Black.”

Of course, Wilmore (a great comic talent) is joking, but not everyone is laughing. Waters, the representative for South Central Los Angeles since 1991, is one of America’s premier racial hucksters. A notoriously nasty piece of work, she sided with the murderous rioters in what she called the post-Rodney King-verdict “rebellion” and danced the Electric Slide with the Crips and the Bloods. (Who says she’s not bipartisan?) So it’s hardly surprising that she’d lump all of her problems on Whitey.

In Aesop’s Fables, the scorpion must sting the frog because that is what scorpions do. In real life, Waters must blame her problems on, well, you know who.

Waters is alleged to have offered special help for OneUnited, a minority-owned bank where her husband served on the board until April 2008. Her husband owned roughly $350,000 worth of OneUnited stock. If it hadn’t gotten bailed out by the Treasury Department, the bank would have gone under. Waters told Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, about the potential conflict of interest, and Frank – not everyone’s idea of a scrupulous ethicist to begin with – told her she should stay clear of it. She ignored his advice and allegedly helped secure OneUnited $12 million in TARP money, saving the value of her husband’s bank shares. Waters says it’s all a misunderstanding since she was barely involved. She merely outsourced most of the work to her chief of staff, a.k.a. her grandson.

She insists she won’t be anyone’s “sacrificial lamb” and points to the fact that eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been subject to ethics investigations – which she and many in the CBC suggest is no coincidence.

And they’re right.

But the culprit here isn’t racism, it’s the corruption that is almost inevitable when any politician – black or white – is given a job for life. Charlie Rangel, the 80-year-old deposed chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, is also in ethical hot water for a list of reasons too lengthy to recount here (but they include failure to pay taxes on unreported income – awkward, given that he was, until recently, in charge of writing the tax laws). Rangel, one of Washington’s most charming characters, ran his office like a pasha – because he could.

Indeed, that’s long been the problem with the CBC: its scandalous lack of accountability. Because of racial gerrymandering (cynically abetted by the GOP in the 1980s), black representatives have been insulated, even more than other incumbents, from democratic competition. Worse, the older generation of CBCers in particular actually believes this claptrap about being the “conscience of the Congress” (the Caucus motto). This has put the CBC to the left not just of the average voter but of the average black voter. Less than 10 percent of the CBC voted to ban partial-birth abortion in 2003, even though a majority of blacks support the ban. A majority of blacks oppose racial quotas and support school choice, but the CBC claims to speak for them when taking the opposite positions.

Caucus members pulled this off by invoking racial solidarity and Tammany Hall tactics in their districts, while maxing out the race card with the media and their non-black colleagues in Congress. And that’s what Waters and Rangel are doing now, the former explicitly, the latter implicitly. Both are demanding an immediate trial, before the November elections, which would hammer even more nails into the Democratic coffin. In effect, they’re saying, “Let us off the hook or we’ll take you all down with us in a racial spectacle.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are laughing. Even the ones who don’t watch The Daily Show.

Maxine admitting in November, 2008, that the Obama government would socialize the oil industry:

Click on here:     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3I-PVVowFY

Rep. Maxine Waters trying to make sense polling the “captains of the universe”.

Click on here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxPzxTAOjgg&feature=related

Thomas Sowell Writes about Bean Counting

The bean-counters have struck again– this time in the sports pages. Two New York Times sport writers have discovered that baseball coaches from minority groups are found more often coaching at first base than at third base. Moreover, third-base coaches become managers more often than first-base coaches.

This may seem to be just another passing piece of silliness. But it is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing the gross fallacy that it is.

At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations and income brackets if there was not something strange or sinister going on.

Although this notion has been repeated by all sorts of people, from local loudmouths on the street to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States, there is not one speck of evidence behind it and a mountain of evidence against it.

Ask the bean-counters where in this wide world have different groups been proportionally represented. They can’t tell you. In other words, something that nobody can demonstrate is taken as a norm, and any deviation from that norm is somebody’s fault!

Anyone who has watched football over the years has probably seen at least a hundred black players score touchdowns– and not one black player kick the extra point. Is this because of some twisted racist who doesn’t mind black players scoring touchdowns but hates to see them kicking the extra points?

At our leading engineering schools– M.I.T., CalTech, etc.– whites are under-represented and Asians over-represented. Is this anti-white racism or pro-Asian racism? Or are different groups just different?

As for baseball, I have long noticed that there are more blacks playing centerfield than third-base. Since the same people hire centerfielders and third-basemen, it is hard to argue that racism explains the difference.

No one says it is racism that explains why blacks are over-represented and whites under-represented in basketball. Bean-counters only make a fuss when there is a disparity that fits their vision or their agenda.

Years ago, a study was made of the ethnic make-up of military forces in countries around the world. Nowhere was the ethnic make-up of the military the same as the ethnic make-up of the population, or even close to the same.

Nearly half the pilots in the Malaysia‘s air force were from the Chinese minority, rather than the Malay majority. In Nigeria, most of the officers were from the southern tribes and most of the enlisted men were from the northern tribes. Similar disparities have been common among various groups in many places.

In countries around the world, all sorts of groups differ from each other in all sorts of ways, from rates of alcoholism to infant mortality, education and virtually everything that can be measured, as well as in some things that cannot be quantified. If black and white Americans were the same, they would be the only two groups on this planet who are the same.

One of the things that got us started on heavy-handed government regulation of the housing market were statistics showing that blacks were turned down for mortgage loans more often than whites. The bean-counters in the media went ballistic. It had to be racism, to hear them tell it.

What they didn’t tell you was that whites were turned down more often than Asians. What they also didn’t tell you was that black-owned banks also turned down blacks more often than whites. Nor did they tell you that credit scores differed from group to group. Instead, the media, the politicians and the regulators grabbed some statistics and ran with them.

The bean-counters are everywhere, pushing the idea that differences show injustices committed by society. As long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it– and the polarization they create will sell this country down the river.

Comment:   Where  did  the Lefty Americans gain such confidence in bean counting?……In the American university, I’d guess……What do you think?

Dennis’s Plea for Your Pledge at Townhall.com to Support Democracy

For those of you who are regular listeners to Dennis Prager you know how concerned he is about the turns taken by the Obama administration as well as the Leftwing Judicial fiats which have taken place over the past forty years which have undermined our American democracy and the peoples’ right to chose.

“The bigger  the government, the smaller the citizen” is Dennis’ phrase to remind citizens of this erosion of citizen choice, duty and responsibility in a free society.

How can one  judge, and a GAY one at that……….  a judge not impartial or disinterested in a matter so important in any free democratic society as redefining the status  of marriage……….dictate law  not only for the state of California but for the entire nation,  from his bigotted and parochial and prejudiced view to advance his social and cultural status?

How can democracy be so easily corrupted?

How can a free democratic nation long stand free when one of its major political parties prefers intimidation, smear and lies over the rule of free and open debate to achieve the best solutions for that  society’s future?

Since when did the nation become so unAmerican?

Please do not forget to go to Dennis Prager’s website or to go to Townhall.com to add your name  as Dennis has requested every day of his broadcasts, to help stop the disintegration of our democratic America led  by these  Leftists and their Marxist colleagues and take the pledge for November ……Simply add your name to the hundreds of thousands of those who have already pledged and announced they have had enough……..no cost, no money needed, just your pledge to begin to repair DEMOCRACY in November.

The pledge spot is to the right of Dennis’ smiling face.  

A good man, Dennis Prager,  asks you to do a good thing for your country!!!    Do not forget.  America needs you.

What Paul Ryan Says We Need to Know About Medicare’s Future

Most Washington politicians do little more than occupy space, vote as told,  or smear opponents.   One which does neither is the thoughtful policy practitioner, Paul Ryan, Representative from Wisconsin who actually attempts to solve problems.  The following is an article he wrote, “A Road Map to Saving Medicare”, published in today’s Washington Post:

“The annual analysis of Medicare’s financial health released by the program’s trustees on Aug. 5 led some Democrats to claim that Medicare’s imminent bankruptcy has been delayed, thanks to the creation of their health entitlement program. Only in Washington could the government raid one entitlement program to finance a brand-new one and still claim that deficits have been reduced and entitlements have been reformed.

The trustees’ report compares the revenue that supports Medicare’s trust funds with the program’s planned expenditures. Last year’s report revealed a $38 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years. This year the shortfall appears to have decreased, but only after the Democrats’ health bill cut $529 billion from Medicare. This apparent improvement was the basis for Democratic celebration — even though the program remains tens of trillions of dollars in the hole.

With the same legislation that cut more than half a trillion dollars in Medicare spending, the Democrats created a nearly $1 trillion health-care entitlement. The Obama administration’s own chief actuary has explained that in addition to the dubious assumptions on provider cuts and other claims of savings, the health-care law’s Medicare cuts cannot be used to both reduce Medicare’s unfunded obligations and pay for a new entitlement. And the Congressional Budget Office said in March that the health-care overhaul’s Medicare savings “would be used to pay for other spending and therefore would not enhance the ability of the government to pay for future Medicare benefits.”

Put simply, Medicare is on course to collapse. Medicare and interest on the national debt alone will soon overwhelm the federal budget, crowding out all other national priorities. The CBO estimates that Medicare will consume 12 percent of gross domestic product by 2080 (up from 3.6 percent of GDP today), bringing total health entitlement spending to 17 percent of GDP. Exacerbating our unsustainable trajectory, health spending explodes under the Democrats’ health plan — raiding Medicare, expanding Medicaid and creating two entitlements without any clue of how to finance the ones we have now. The economy simply cannot handle such crushing levels of taxation and the borrowing required to finance this spending; the CBO warned last month of a devastating debt crisis within two decades.

We do not have a choice as to whether Medicare will change from its current structure. It is being driven to insolvency. An honest debate requires a serious discussion of how Medicare will avert its collapse and be made sustainable. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the Democrats’ political machine has attacked my contribution to this debate, making the false claim that the only solution put forward to save Medicare would “end Medicare as we know it.”

The CBO has said that my reform plan, “A Roadmap for America’s Future,” would put Medicare on a sustainable path. The plan protects and preserves Medicare for those enrolled now and for those who will become eligible in the next 10 years, while reforming the program to ensure it will be there for younger generations. Future seniors would have access to the same coverage I enjoy as a congressman.

Far from the claims of “radicalism,” this proposal is based on a key reform from the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, chaired by then-Sen. John Breaux (D-La.). That commission in 1999 recommended “modeling a system on the one Members of Congress use to obtain health care coverage for themselves and their families.”

Future Medicare beneficiaries would receive a payment to apply to a list of Medicare-certified coverage options. The Medicare payment would grow every year, with additional support for those who have low incomes and higher health costs, and less government support for high-income beneficiaries. The most vulnerable seniors would also receive supplemental Medicaid coverage and continue to be eligible for Medicaid’s long-term care benefit.

If we act now, we can avoid disruptions for current seniors while advancing patient-centered reforms so Medicare will be strengthened for future beneficiaries. The alternative is the European-style death spiral of the welfare state: kick the can down the road as our debt explodes. Under an ever-expansive, all-consuming central government, costs will be contained with Washington’s heavy hand imposing price controls, slashing benefits and arbitrarily rationing seniors’ care.

The Democratic leadership will seek to brand every Republican running for office with my road map. Ironically, if Democrats succeed in demagoguing to death efforts to save Medicare, that political victory will hasten the program’s end. While I am proud to have 13 House Republicans co-sponsor the legislation, and have been overwhelmed by the support outside the Beltway, my plan is not the Republican Party’s platform and was never intended to be. This proposal is my sincere attempt to break the political paralysis on entitlement reform, to show that this challenge can be met — mathematically and politically — and to challenge those who disagree with my proposal to offer their own.”

Charles Krauthammer Writes about Ground Zero Sacrilege

“Sacrilege at Ground Zero” is the title of  the following article at the  Washington Post:

“A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).

When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there — and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated.

That’s why Disney’s 1993 proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition that feared vulgarization of the Civil War (and that was wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It’s why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It’s why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.

And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.

Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who denounced opponents of the proposed 15-story mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero as tramplers on religious freedom, asked the mosque organizers “to show some special sensitivity to the situation.” Yet, as columnist Rich Lowry pointedly noted, the government has no business telling churches how to conduct their business, shape their message or show “special sensitivity” to anyone about anything. Bloomberg was thereby inadvertently conceding the claim of those he excoriates for opposing the mosque, namely that Ground Zero is indeed unlike any other place and therefore unique criteria govern what can be done there.

Bloomberg’s implication is clear: If the proposed mosque were controlled by “insensitive” Islamist radicals either excusing or celebrating 9/11, he would not support its construction.

But then, why not? By the mayor’s own expansive view of religious freedom, by what right do we dictate the message of any mosque? Moreover, as a practical matter, there’s no guarantee that this couldn’t happen in the future. Religious institutions in this country are autonomous. Who is to say that the mosque won’t one day hire an Anwar al-Aulaqi — spiritual mentor to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, and onetime imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 terrorists?

An Aulaqi preaching in Virginia is a security problem. An Aulaqi preaching at Ground Zero is a sacrilege. Or would the mayor then step in — violating the same First Amendment he grandiosely pretends to protect from mosque opponents – - and exercise veto over the mosque’s clergy?

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history — perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi — yet despite contemporary Germany’s innocence, no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.

Which makes you wonder about the goodwill behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s proposal. This is a man who has called U.S. policy “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 and, when recently asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, replied, “I’m not a politician. . . . The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.”

America is a free country where you can build whatever you want — but not anywhere. That’s why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn’t meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.

These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz — and no mosque at Ground Zero.

Build it anywhere but there.

The governor of New York offered to help find land to build the mosque elsewhere.  A mosque really seeking to build bridges, Rauf’s ostensible hope  for the structure, would accept the offer.

Is it Anti-Semitism Popping Up, Clear to All Except the American Jewish Voter?

“Name That Ethnicity” is now playing at PowerLine.  It is an article by Paul Mirengoff.   It is often played.  It’s a great game in any society enriched with many national and social diversities.

Apparently America’s so-called mainstream media….in other words the university indoctrinated Leftwing minds upon whose twisted writings  Marxist Barack Obama depends to continue his ride to conquer America for equality…..has done it again.   Is it  anti-Semitism  popping up into public view clear to  all except the American Jewish voter?

It has quickly and assuredly announced Elias Abuelazam, a suspect in the stabblings of many and the death of some….. his victims being black, is Israeli.  And that is what I had heard from television voices last evening on several occasions. 

I was relieved he was captured……Just in case any Obama Marxists are reading  to this point.

Naturally, being concerned about Israel and its reputation, I was not rooting for that particular ethnicity as perpetrator of these deeds……If push comes to shove, I would prefer murderers, suspected or otherwise, would always be among my opponents…..Wouldn’t you? 

How could this be?   Israelis, thinking Jewish Israelis, just don’t seem to be into that, I thought when I heard the news.    Nor generally do American whites! 

I wondered what the story might be.   Why did this atrocity occur?

I had played the game of “Name That Ethnicity”!

Paul Mirengoff  illucidates in his PowerLine article:

“Elias Abuelazam is accused of a series of stabbings in this country, mostly in Michigan and Virginia. Though he apparently has lived in the U.S. for years, having come here as a child, he is a citzen of Israel.

The accounts I’ve read about Abuelazam all note his Israeli citizenship. That’s fair enough, though the initial report my wife showed me from the MSNBC website repeated this fact several times, which seems excessive.

But the MSM accounts I’ve seen fail to mention that Abuelazam is also an Arab. Today’s front page story in the Washington Post, for example, omits this fact.

Israel has a large Arab population. During much of its history relations between Israel Jews and Arabs weren’t bad. In fact, they were pretty good in Haifa, which I used to visit. But in the past 20 years or so, relations have soured and from what I gather, many Israeli Arabs feel a deep hostility towards the Jewish state.

Given the fact that Israeli Arabs are, in some senses, a “population apart,” it would seem worth mentioning in any full article about Abuelazam that he is an Arab. But the MSM seems to want its readers in the dark about this fact.

The Post, in addition to pointing out Abuelamam’s nationality, also notes that he is a Christian. This, I imagine, is to make sure that no reader infers from Abuelazam’s name that he is a Muslim.

I wonder how the MSM iwould dentify the 33 year-old Abuelazam if he were originally from somewhere in the Middle East other than Israel. Perhaps he would be referred to as a “youth”.

Maxine Whacked but Barney Frank Untouched?

Jonathan Weil writes for Bloomberg News .  He implies in his article, “Maxine Waters Whacked, Barney Frank Untouched”,  that these two Dems either should be both “whacked” or both “untouched”.

Sleazy, untrustworthy, deceptive  as they both so often are, it seems in this particular  instance, one has committed a crime and the other has not.  One should be whacked and the other one should be untouched.  Please read ahead to see if you agree:

“For all the strange details to emerge in the Maxine Waters bank-bailout scandal, this one might be the most surprising: It turns out members of Congress are prohibited from doing “special favors” for anyone, even if they receive nothing of value in return.

Who knew? Here I had been living under the impression that handing out special favors is something Washington lawmakers do all the time — be they free pens, tax breaks or earmarks. And, of course, it is.

Yet under the Code of Ethics for Government Service, it is against the rules for any federal employee to “discriminate unfairly by the dispensing of special favors or privileges to anyone, whether for remuneration or not.” That’s what it says in Count III of the ethics charges against Waters, which were unsealed this week by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. The House of Representatives adopted the code in 1958.

The case against Waters, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, centers on her efforts in September 2008 to help a troubled Boston lender, OneUnited Bank, land a government bailout. Waters asked Hank Paulson, then the Treasury secretary, for a meeting between Treasury officials and representatives from the National Bankers Association, a lobbying group for minority-owned banks. The meeting was granted. However, the discussion there focused on a single bank, OneUnited.

Husband’s Role

Waters, a California Democrat, didn’t mention to Paulson that her husband owned OneUnited shares worth about $350,000, or that he had been on OneUnited’s board of directors until April 2008. In any event, Treasury officials told OneUnited they couldn’t grant the bank’s initial request for taxpayer money, because they lacked legislative authority to do so.

The favors for OneUnited didn’t stop there. The bank eventually received $12 million under the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, in December 2008. That’s because an even more powerful lawmaker intervened, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

Frank wrote a special provision into the TARP legislation designed specifically for OneUnited. It instructed Treasury to consider assisting banks with less than $1 billion of assets that had suffered severe capital losses on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred shares. OneUnited incurred more than $50 million of such losses, which wiped out its book value, after the government seized the two mortgage financiers in September 2008. Frank says he also spoke to regulators about OneUnited and asked them to consider it for a cash infusion.

Special Favors

Those look like special favors, too. “I do that frequently when I think it’s good public policy for institutions in the area that I represent, and especially for minority banks,” Frank said in an interview this week.

Later during our phone call, I suggested to Frank that, because the rule barring special favors was written so expansively, perhaps his efforts on OneUnited’s behalf might have fallen under it, too. He agreed this was possible. “I suppose that I might meet that definition, and it’s too broad,” he said. Even something like helping a kid get into Harvard, Frank’s alma mater, could be construed as a violation.

Frank had no financial stake in OneUnited. He said he wanted to help the only black-owned bank in his home state, and that he didn’t think preferred-stock losses on government- chartered Fannie and Freddie should disqualify a bank from receiving TARP money.

Frank Advice

Frank told Waters sometime in September 2008 to stay out of OneUnited’s affairs, because of her husband’s prior board membership, and that he would handle issues related to the bank. However, Waters’ chief of staff continued communicating with OneUnited executives and raising the subject with Frank’s staff, according to the House ethics panel.

The special-favors accusation is only one of the claims against Waters. The other two charges in the ethics panel’s complaint are more substantial: using her office to advocate on a matter in which she had a personal financial interest, and behaving in a manner that brought discredit to the House. Waters has denied the allegations and asked for a full hearing.

Those charges aside, for anyone who’s upset that OneUnited ultimately got a taxpayer bailout, the person to blame for this is Frank. The government sold TARP to the public as a program for healthy banks only. The reason OneUnited wasn’t healthy is it made poor investment decisions. But for Frank’s efforts, the bank would have collapsed.

Undercapitalized Bank

OneUnited’s liabilities exceeded its assets by $6.6 million as of Sept. 30, 2008. It had the lowest regulatory capital ratio of any of the 213 financial institutions that received money under the TARP’s Capital Purchase Program in 2008, according to SNL Financial, a bank-research firm. And it was the only one classified as undercapitalized.

Since receiving its $12 million TARP investment from Treasury, OneUnited has skipped its dividend payments to the government each of the last five quarters. At least it hasn’t failed, though that may be a matter of time.

OneUnited is a classic example of why politics and banking regulation don’t mix. Waters’ actions reek of corruption, while Frank’s smell of pork. OneUnited didn’t deserve special favors from either one of them.”

Comment:  Sick are the ways of Washington.  A powerful elixir may help.