Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere…The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble
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This is the Vacation Edition Not that I actually have one this year, (Thanks, Barry!) but I can dream, right?
- IT’S THE CULTURE, STUPID: I’ve said for years, it’s not racism, it’s cultural clash. Mike Shelton at Pajamas Media confirms: [2]
The story is about a young man, Chinedu Ezeamuzie, 21. Originally from Nigeria, he’s lived most of his life in Kuwait. In 2003, his parents brought him and his three siblings to America, where he was enrolled at the Clarke Central High School in Athens, Georgia, his first time in a public school. He came from a mother and father that instilled values of family, community, spirituality, and self-betterment.On his first day in school, wearing khakis, a button-down dress shirt, and nice leather shoes, this African caught the attention of the African-Americans in the school cafeteria. They ridiculed him. He said, “They gave me ‘the look,'” and asked in so many words, “Why is this guy dressed like the white folks, like the preppy guys?”
He would be insulted because he ate in the school cafeteria with whites. The blacks accused him of being a “traitor.” Such attitudes made no sense to Ezeamuzie. In Kuwait, his life was enriched in time spent with Europeans, Arabs, workers from the Philippines, and a mixture of groups from the African continent. The thinking was so puny, narrow, and counterproductive that it was hard to believe it was coming from Americans.
What have I been saying, gang?
- NOT COOL: Boortz makes the same point I’ve been kaking [3]for the last several days as regards Support for Obama and the Democrats and does a good enough job it’s worth quoting here:
[4]Neal Boortz
Democrats are shell-shocked. They truly cannot believe that this is happening to them. Just last February they were participating in a coronation that was to usher in a new age of Government Cool. Now people are starting to realize that there is nothing all that cool about the government taking over almost 20 percent of our economy. The polls are clear … almost 7 out of 10 people are satisfied with the health care they’re receiving right now. They’ve seen the mess that government has made out of Social Security. Recently they saw that the government couldn’t even do the work that thousands of used-car salesmen handle every week with no problems. These people wonder why Obama is so hell-bent on getting this done NOW, and they suspect that’s because the more they learn about the plan the less they’re going to like it.
Well,Nneal, it’s like this… A lot of them have figured out that the real purpose behind the push isn’t the stated one. This isn’t about solving the problem, it’s about growing government power.
- MUSLIM MODERATES? REALLY? Ryan Mauro over at Pajamas Media today [5]makes the case that Islamic moderates are winning the war against the radicals. He points to a number of fronts where the radicals have made major electoral losses and clearly have lost publc support, and then says:
[6]Ryan Mauro
Skeptics of this argument will point to Egypt and the Gaza Strip, where extremists have made gains due to elections. It must be noted that they did not win because of democracy, as the freedoms that enable moderates to have their voice heard and win a following were denied. In such a situation, the extremists offer the only alternative to the government.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the war on terror is over. Somalia is falling [7] to al-Qaeda affiliates and a terrorist offensive sponsored by Syria and Iran or a regional war could reverse many of these gains. The battle between moderates and extremists rages on in the West as well, as frightening percentages still express support for different elements of radical Islam. This is all true, but these victories are showing an unmistakable trend in favor of the moderates. I am in agreement with my friend John Loftus [8], who writes [9] that “we may be witnessing the death throes of the fundamentalist terror states, and the birth of a renaissance of modernity in the Middle East.”.
Frankly, I’m unconvinced. Oh, I don’t doubt that the moderates are starting to come out of their shell a bit, and I do not doubt at all that the radicals never really had the popular support among Muslim rank and file types. I’ve said that the only way the radicals were going to be defeated, was if the moderates were heard in greater numbers… that silence their amounted to defacto support. What Ryan fails to add into his calculations, here, however is that terrorists have a tendecy to win far greater influence than their raw numbers and overt support would suggest, simply because they’re terrorists. More… (And something that Bush never allowed his calculations to consider) …they tend not to use democracy to do it, being rather prone to bypassing it, as demonstrated in Egypt, the Gaza and more recently, Iran. The question of who wins this war eventually, still depends on moderates standing up not just in the election booth, but on the streets to fight the radicals. And I wonder if the courage needed for such a noble task is in them.
You see, I wonder what the definition of a Muslim moderate is. I’ve yet to see one, as measured by western standards.
- SHE’S IN: Judge Sonia Sotomayor was officially sworn in over the weekend [10] as our new member of the USSC. Of course we were subject all weekend to plattitudes of how ‘historic’ a day it was. How can that be, if we’re already in a post-racial society? Do these morons actually think before they shovel this sludge?