If the Word Nigger is Such an Unspeakable Word, Why is Spoken So Much?

About 4,470,000, that is the number of hits I got on Google, when seached on “nigger.”  Your results may vary.  Say what you want about the word, it sure gets used a lot.

Which brings up Micheal Richards recent verbal gaffe, tirade.  That Richards used the word, indicates that Richards has a temper, don’t we all.

Kathleen Parker offers a pity summation of the affair:

Meanwhile, attorney Gloria Allred has entered the fray. She is seeking an in-person apology from Richards before a mediator, who, she and her clients hope, might order some monetary compensation for their suffering. Not that this is about money, of course.
From his comments, we might conclude that Richards is a rage-filled jerk. Nevertheless, if we start attaching monetary reparations to insults, the country will soon be bankrupt.

Which brings me to the Washiington Post. Darryl Fears argues that the “The Word That Is the Very Definition of Unspeakable:

Paul Mooney is a popular black comedian with a foul mouth who’s used a nasty racial epithet as part of his shtick for decades. But when his friend Michael Richards, who’s white, spewed that same epithet during a gig at a Los Angeles comedy club, Mooney said it “freaked me out” and “filled me with disgust.”

For a word that is alleged to be “unspeakable” it sure gets spoken a lot.  Take what position you will on the word, but then be consistent.  If you feel the word is inherently offensive, as it is your right to feel, then if is offensive without regard to speaker or content.  If on the other boot, if you feel that use of the word to say destigmatise it is acceptable, then the word is not inherently offensive to you, and don’t pretend otherwise.

Power Line notes this morning:

Even with all of the recent talk about foreign policy “realism,” one of the major tenets of leading realists (George F. Kennan and Hans Morgenthau come to mind) has gone largely ignored. Most realists subscribe to the view that any state that seeks to accumulate too much power will almost surely provoke a balancing coalition of other states seeking to check the expansion of its influence.

Many realists would argue that the U.S. has experienced this phenomenon to its detriment in the past few years. Some realists would also maintain that if the U.S. is “checked” in Iraq, the same dynamic will come into play against the emerging power in the region — Iran. Under this scenario a coalition, led most likely by Saudi Arabia, will seek to balance Iranian power. The religious divide between Sunni and Shia will help propel the coalition building.

Diana West (no “realist” to my knowledge) notes that an adviser to the Saudi government, Nawaf Obaid, has said that in the event of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the Saudi government might try to check the spread of Iranian influence by supporting Iraq’s Sunni fighters and by inducing a drop in oil prices so as to limit Tehran’s ability to subsidize proxy militias. Diana argues that “a Saudi-Iranian rift over Iraq sounds like a win-win situation for the United States,” especially if accompanied by a drop in oil prices. And she contends that such a scenario provides an alternative to “victory” (probably unattainable) or “cataclysm” in Iraq.

Powerline goes on to muse:

I’d be quite surprised if, in the absence of a U.S. presence in Iraq, the Saudis would be able to counter-balance Iran there.

Frankly, so would I.  Saddam wasn’t able to deal with Iran either.  And the Saudis are certainly less militaristic than were the Iraqis under Saddam… Though given the financial situation they would undoubtedly be better equipped.  And, yes, I’m thinking of this and militaristic terms.  Because, frankly, I don’t see it falling out any other way with Iran, do you? 

Now, as for Diana West, and her reporting of Nawaf Obaid’s comments, I read this as a win / win situation for the United States only if we make the assumption that the victor in such a struggle is not going to come after us, afterward.  Given what we’ve seen of religious fanaticism in that part of the world, I am not so sure, particularly given I think Iran …by far the more fanatical… is going to be the victor in that contest.  Is anyone, Diana West included, so naive as to consider that once the smaller target is out of the way the aggressor won’t come looking for fresh meat? 

The same comments would seem to apply to Powerline’s suggesting that such a conflict would not affect the security of the United States. Add to that, the situation of oil and energy being a vital component to the security of the United States, and you’re running a very risky play indeed. Unattractively so. 

I also don’t except their analysis as regards the possibility of victory in Iraq, but then you knew that.

Ok, I didn’t know who Rose Mattus was.   I am a fan of her product.  as all ice cream lovers are.   Rose and Reuben Mattus founded Häagen-Dazs,

Rose Mattus, who died on Tuesday aged 90, was the co-founder of Häagen-Dazs luxury ice cream; she spent her early childhood in the back streets of Manchester, and — to American ears — always spoke with an English accent.

Having emigrated to America as a young girl, Rose Mattus established the Häagen-Dazs brand with her husband Reuben in the Bronx district of New York in 1959. Reuben Mattus, a Polish immigrant, had started out in the 1920s selling his widowed mother’s lemon-flavoured ice from a horse-drawn wagon

Great ice cream, great story.

… Really.

That weather front came through this afternoon and to say it rained is like saying that the Atlantic ocean has some water in it.  It’s still raining outside, pretty much, and it’s windy, too.  Our neighborhood, while not getting hit as badly as some other areas of the country, still is feeling the effects.  Our neighborhood firehouse has gone out on at least seven different calls this evening.  All of them storm damage, and all wind related.  We’re catching gusts of 50 and 60 miles an hour easily.  After all the rain this afternoon, I can’t imagine we haven’t lost a few pine trees, at least. 

Driving home was a new experience tonight.  With all the wind, my van probably would’ve been a handful to drive, if we hadn’t been driving at fifteen miles an hour.  Someone apparently get sideways at some point, taking out a bit of guardrail, and the freeway as a result was basically the world’s longest parking lot.  I fear there is something about the leading edge of the winter season which is frightening to drive in.  What frightens me, specifically, is the other drivers, who have apparently forgotten how to drive when there’s white stuff on the ground.  This looked to be one more case of that. 

Presently, one of the cats , the oldest time we have, is supervising this operation of posting to the web. I’m sure he thinks he’s helping me.  We have three .  Sam, who was our first cat and was nice enough that my wife decided to get into cats and a big way.  Ultimately, we ended up with two more; Ray, and Molly.  Molly, for the most part, has adopted me.  Ray, has adopted my wife, and Sam has always been very fond of our oldest boy Matt.  One of these days I’ll have to pass along some pictures of them to you. Perhaps sometime this week I will introduce you to them. 

It’s going to be a fairly slow weekend, this one; I plan to put a new bathroom sink and mirror and vanity and whatever else.  I may also get some time to spend on Matt’s website.  It’s going to take some time to get that working right.  Matt’s a typical sixteen year old.  Bright, but impatient as hell.  I wonder if he understands the kind of time that he’s resigning himself to in the upkeep of a web site like this.  It’s not unusual to see me spend a couple hours a day on this one.  And that’s been true for years and years.  I have an advantage in that I’m an IT professional and most IT functions are second nature to me.  He’s starting from the ground up; and doesn’t know a lot about the server end of things.  So the things he manages to accomplish are going to be accomplished somewhat slower than he’d like to see them I think.  Oh, well, we’ll see. 

Tomorrow. 

Let me put this business with Barak Obama into some perspective: Hillary Clinton.

There are a number of Democrats who figure Hillary is going to run… Obama and his supporters among them. My take here is that Obama and his supporters know that there’s a long road ahead for them, to get to the rockstar status… and the name recognition… of Hillary Clinton. She’s got several years worth of head start. Further, Obama’s supporters are looking at the disaster looming should Hillary Clinton actually win the primaries… which is itself anything but a done deal. Let’s say they’re ‘motivated’.

I grant that he’s not bringing any credentials to the party, in the way of positives. Then again, he doesn’t have nearly the negative baggage of a Hillary Clinton, either.

There’s something a bit strange going on, here though. Has anyone seen Hillary Clinton in the last couple weeks? A quick and dirty web search revealed only one story about her, from a little newspaper in Wellsboro, PA, about a foul-up at the Rochester International Airport, dated yesterday. Past that, her campaign is considering an amber alert for her. The speculation is high that she’s not running this time, beacuse she won’t be able to make it by Obama in the primaries. 

Reports are suggesting that Hillary and her people are nervous about Obama… and the story fits, given her high polling negatives.

All this bottom lines, though, at this:
All the noise about Obama centers around Hillary’s nagtives among both Republicans and leftist Democrats.

What we’re seeing is Democrat voters looking for a fresh face… and apparently, they’re willing to elect an unknown to get it. Rich Lowry points out:

The Rose Law Firm was Hillary Clinton’s firm back in Arkansas that was the focus of a little criminal activity and a lot of obsessive right-wing conspiracy-mongering. Halliburton is the former Dick Cheney energy firm that Democrats in Congress will spend the next two years investigating and that has been a swear word for Bush critics all along. Both entities represent, more than anything else, the putrid partisanship and malicious monomania that have characterized the 14, going on 16, years of the Clinton-Bush era.

After all this, who doesn’t hunger for a clean break? Thus the energy behind the possible presidential bid of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. He is the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement. And that is because everything about him says, “I’m not a Bush, I’m not a Clinton, and can we please talk about something else?”

But the dirty little secret about Obama is the cause for the excitement among the far left: He has a solidly liberal voting record.  Nary a tax, a government program, or a give-away he doesn’t like. So liberal in fact, the “Americans for Democratic Action gave him an unheard of 100% rating. So the far left woukld far prefer Obama to Clinton. ANd we know the far left is by far more vocal than any other subset of the Democratic Party… or for that matter, the whole of American political life.

Consider with me for just a moment, the bizarre conditions under which Hillary Clinton is demonstrated to be the more moderate candidate.

The strangest political ground swell continues.  Why in the World is Barack Obama considered a presidential canidate?   The man has literallly no resume, no ideas and virtually no experience.   Yet now only is Obama apparently running, he may be scaring out every democrat aspirant aside from John Kerry, who can’t read a poll.

Obama reminds of a democrat version of Colin Powell.  Everybody loved Powell until he started taking positions.  Well every democrat loves Obama, but he doesn’t have any position on anything.

Lynn Sweet, Chicago, Sun-Times Columnist reports:  “Obama is going to go for it”

Bottom line: I think Sen. Barack Obama, who is seriously considering a run for president, is going to jump into the 2008 race. I predict the freshman Illinois Democrat will announce near the end of this year or the beginning of 2007, sometime after he returns from a holiday break in his native Hawaii. Here’s what’s on Obama’s to-do list:

Now can anybody explain why?

Ace notes Andrew the Excitable as saying:

I’ve often wondered how many straight Catholics fully appreciate how gay their church has always been. Especially in the old days. High Mass was, in its heyday, more elaborate and choreographed than a very melodramatic Broadway musical. Do people really believe that gay priests and religious had nothing to do with it? They had everything to do with it.

The first time I walked into a gay disco, with all those lights, music, ritual and smoke, my immediate thought was: church! Madonna gets this, whatever Jonah says. Because she’s a born-and-bred Catholic, which Jonah isn’t. It’s theater, sweetie, theater. And the Church once understood that – which was part of its beautiful Catholicity. Gone, now, alas. But Benedict is helping nudge it back. And although I tease him about it, it’s a wonderful thing. More incense, please. And lace.

Says Ace:

There’s nothing sadder than an aging homosexualist.

Now, mind you, I’m not posting this because I’m giving Sullivan any creds, here.  I stopped doing that years ago. I’m simply noting the increasingly downward trajectory, that I predicted three years ago was inevitable. 

I also said about the same time, that there was only one thing , the drives Sullivan’s politics, his commentaries, his very being.  Go back up and read that quote, and tell me what that might be. clearly, if there has been a change in that aspect, it is that it has intensified. 

The weather is finally changing, around here…. a cold front moving through, and it’s been raining nonstop for the last four hours or so.  Driving home was an interesting adventure.  Apparently the signal patterns on the night time AM band predicting the weather change was accurate again. The change did come, and right on time.

It actually made it up to around 70° today , which for this area is a record by about 2°.  Not all that much to write home about… It’s a little unusual to be this warm and this time of year but not totally so. 

One of the problems with putting away the trailer early this year, is that the grill only works with the trailer.  It’s designed that way.  So we found ourselves without a grill to cook out on. Well tonight, we solved that problem.  We bought a little gas powered grill, just big enough for a couple or three steaks, and went to town… grilling some fine steaks, and some carrots, too. ‘shrooms and some fresh bread on the side.  since we put the trailer way over a month ago we haven’t had a grilled meal like that in some time.  I’d forgotten how much I missed it. 

I’m working on putting together a website for my older boy. Looks right now, like it’ll be on WordPress, which is what we’re on here.

We’re putting a new bathroom sink in this weekend, along with a new medicine cabinet and new lighting fixture over the whole deal and so on.  Going to be an interesting week and if a little on the busy side.  But it’ll be worth it.  We’ve been letting the bathroom go for a lot longer than it should have been, mostly for financial reasons.  But now we can get that mess cleaned up. The Smalley can the faucet was one thing, but the look was beginning to grate on my nerves. It’ll be a nice change.

I am a little disappointed, but not very surprised, that the account for this new web site hasn’t come up to the normal levels we had with the Blogspot Blog, more quickly than it has.  Still, as I say, I’m not really surprised, it’s going to take awhile to get back to those levels.  That’s OK, because I need the extra bandwidth at the site to get things arranged properly.  The amount of uploading that my older boy was going to be doing very shortly is going to come out of the budget as well.  So, it’s just as well. 

It’s late again, so I better hit it. Just one more day to the weekend… and I might actually get the chance to sleep in. Given we have an older dog in the house, I tend to doubt it, but, hey, I can dream, can’t I ?

Well, maybe we ought to find another way to phrase that. 

Speaking of dreams, I have a specialty dish for somebody’s restaurants; we’ll take Thai food and put it in flat bread… and we’ll call them Thai wraps.

I must say, James Joyner disappointed me this morning. I admit, I came down on him pretty hard… and particularly hard for someone I so often agree with on most matters…  Perhaps overly so, but bless it all, why on earth would someone with a capacity of at least two brain cells capitulate to these people, as he does here?

Makes no sense.

And anyway, my response is dictated as I told you some months ago, by the IDEA of the thing.

A growing body of evidence, including reports from the National Academy of Sciences, NASA and major universities, has found that increasing global temperatures will have dramatic effects in the United States, including rising sea levels, worsened air quality, water shortages and droughts, and increased intensity of hurricanes. Power plants are the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions responsible for increasing temperatures worldwide. According to current projections, dozens or even hundreds of new coal-fired plants will be built in the United States over the next 15 years. Under the current rule, these plants would face no requirement to control or reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Since the power plants have a life span of 40-60 years, the plants built in the near future will determine the level of our carbon emissions for generations.

This certainly seems right. While there is debate as to the exact interaction of these variables as well as the degree to which changing human behavior will solve the problems, we should be able to agree that the overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion is in one direction.

From both a public safety and practical political perspective, then, a Republican – conservative – libertarian right solution should be formulated that does not involve abject denial of that consensus.

For pity’s sake, WHY?
This group of scientists who came to this “consensus”… Tell me, is this the same group of scientists who told us nigh on 30 years ago, that global cooling was going to be the problem? 

Is this the same group of scientists who predicted we’re going to have our real barnstormer of a hurricane season? From the press release announcing their wisdom on the matter:

“For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become ‘major’ hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher,”

Just in case you didn’t keep score, we had one category three storm and a couple of category two storms, none of which came closer than 800 miles to our shores.  We had a total of nine dorms that were strong enough to name versus the sixteen that were predicted and the six major storms that were predicted.

Apparently, one cannot make something true, based on the power of a “consensus” alone.  And that’s assuming their really IS a consensus, at all.

And yet, we’re supposed to take predictions on what the weather is going to do for the next 50 years based on man’s input alone, Ruining our economy in the process, apparently in the hope that these morons all actually get one right for change.  I don’t think so. 

(BBCT: Schwarz, via mail)

By the way, while I have the editor opened, I should relate the idea that James has been having server trouble for the majority of the day.  It’s unclear whether it’s just a matter of too much traffic on too little server, or whether he’s got some kind of a denial of service attack going on. 

For various reason all the recommendations of the Nine-Eleven Commission have yet to implemented.  For one, nobody ever elected the commission and they remain accountable to nobody.  Further their elephant size egos dwarf their moles size brains

Yet for reasons unknown the democrats campaigned on pledge to implement all the commissions recommendations.

For the Washington Post, Jonathan Weisman reports “Democrats Reject Key 9/11 Panel Suggestion:”

It was a solemn pledge, repeated by Democratic leaders and candidates over and over: If elected to the majority in Congress, Democrats would implement all of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that examined the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

I am not saying the democrats are wrong not to implement all of the Nine-Eleven Commission recommendations.  I am saying the democrats were wrong to promise to implement all recommendations.

Addendum:(Bit)

I’m in full agreement with David on this.  However;

There is a point that he seems to have missed; the democrats are already falling into their pattern of promising one thing prior to the election and delivering something quite different once they’ve won it.  As an example, let’s remember the tax cut promise that Bill Clinton delivered while he was trying to sell himself as been worthy of the office of president.  He hadn’t gotten the chair warm, before the song we heard from the oval office was “I tried, I really did, but I caint cut yer taxes like I promsised”.  If you’ll recall, he also promised “the most ethical administration in history”.  I think we know how that came out. 

Looks like the tradition continues.

So, now we see the results of the Iraq study commission:

WASHINGTON —AP– A leader of a bipartisan commission on U.S. options in Iraq said the group has agreed on a set of recommendations due next week, and published reports said the panel will urge a major withdrawal of U.S. forces but set no firm deadlines.

The left and the MSM (A redundancy, granted) has been touting this report… at least the leaked versions of it… as justification for their call to cut and run.

Well, pardon me for asking, but isn’t the content of this report, the very plan that the President has been laying out for the last couple years? Perhaps the President’s not so dumb after all, huh?

As an update to my comments on Captain Ed’s post on Newt and ‘free speech’, yesterday… I note Andy McCarthy over at The Corner

Captain Ed offers an uncharacteristically overwrought analysis of Newt Gingrich’s sensible argument that the current threat – jihadists plotting mass-murder in a world where weapons of mass destruction are increasingly accessible – requires a rethinking of First Amendment principles.

The Speaker is right, and the fact that he is treading on this third rail is further indication that he will be formidable as a presidential candidate.  Plainly, he understands that the modern threat environment requires going back to first constitutional principles rather than simply accepting the law as sculpted by the Warren Court.

And therein, seems to me a huge part of this, and why these issues have not come up previously. We’ve not been bound by the rulings of the liberal courts… Warren and others, until this conflict came along. Andy cites an excellent example of such rulings:

The contention that speech inciting violence and lawlessness cannot be regulated is a legacy not of the Constitution but of the Warren Court, which held in Brandenberg v. Ohio (1969) that government could not proscribe advocacy of the use of force (or of other violations of law) “except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (emphasis added). There is no reason why the current Supreme Court could not reconsider whether Brandenberg is faithful to the original understanding of the First Amendment. 

Correct. Newt is, if nothing else, a strong proponant of the Constitution; always has been…. but the constitution as the founders saw it, not as the court have managed to bastardize it. Which in turn is why I refused to take the reports we’ve seen, and that I reported ealier, at face value. It simply doesn’t mesh with other things I’ve been hearing him say.  When considered in THIS light, his comments make a great deal of sense.

Andy also draws up an effective counter argument for those liberals who would now claim to stand up for free speech:

McCain/Feingold says the political speech that was the core of the original First Amendment protection can be regulated.  Are you really telling me that we can stop someone from speaking out on behalf of a candidate for public office but we have to allow jihadists to call for mass murder?  I don’t think so.

But that’s the situation we have at the moment, my freinds. Many kudos to Andy on this one, and he’s right… Newt is going to be formidable as a candidate.

Just got back from a trip to the rail line.  Matt, my older boy wanted to try his hand at some Night photos.  Still plenty warm, around here, probably the last warm night of the year, and I wanted to take advantage of it.  I had to run out for some gas, anyway. 

To the surprise of nobody, Bill Frist is not running for president in this cycle.  The fact is, he was never a serious contender in any event accepted his own mind.  Not that he wouldn’t make a reasonably good president… in a utilitarian sort of way.  I just don’t think he stood much of a chance given the field.  Nothing there to excite foloks, and it looks like that’s what will be needed to turn 08 away form the ‘rats. On the other hand, if he didn’t stand much of a chance in the field as its developed so far this time around, when will he? 

AM stations from all over the south, tonight… WSM, WRVA, WBT, WSB, and a bunch more. Usually, when southern signals get that strong around here, the weather’s about to change rather drastically.

Short ramble, tonight. Gotta hit the sack.

Hoystory looks at this bit with NBC unilaterally deciding Iraq is in a Civil war, and asks a question I don’t think I’ve seen elsewhere:

The closest comparison to Iraq that I can think of — and it was less violent than what we’ve got going in Iraq today — was the conflict in Northern Ireland between the IRA and the Brits.

Did the media ever characterize that conflict as a civil war?

Come to think of it, for all of the comparisons drawn by the left… and of course in this I include the MSM… between Vietnam and Iraq, I don’t think I’d ever remember Vietnam being considered a civil war, either.  And I wonder if there isn’t something to this. 

The New York Times just can’t figure out why dispite affirmative action hires by major law firms, white males are more apt to make partner: 

 

Thanks to vigorous recruiting and pressure from corporate clients, black lawyers are well represented now among new associates at the nation’s most prestigious law firms. But they remain far less likely to stay at the firms or to make partner than their white counterparts

Now I ask what evidence is there which would suggest that white males, females and minorities have the same potential to achieve law partner?   There appears to none.  Yet why is it a considered some  sort of problem, when females and minorities don’t make law partner as the same rate as white males?

As white males are hired with better grades, that just might indicate they are better lawyers and have more potential.