Thursday, August 18, 2011

Affirmative Action President

VERDICT - THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PRESIDENT

By Frances Rice

A scathing and absolutely accurate assessment of the Obama Presidency has been rendered by knowledgeable pundits. The following article provides a clear-eyed analysis of the fact that, indeed, Barack Hussein Obama is an Affirmative Action president. To view the article on the Internet, click on the below title.

Frances Rice is a lawyer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and chairman of the National Black Republican Association.

She may be contacted on the Internet at: www.NBRA.info


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Obama: The Affirmative Action President
By Matt Patterson

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator.

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin. Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin -- that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.

But hey, at least we got to feel good about ourselves for a little while. And really, isn't that all that matters these days?

© National Black Republican Association, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Monday, August 08, 2011

Bill "Bull Connor" Clinton

BILL "BULL CONNOR" CLINTON

By Frances Rice

Playing the race card is no longer working for the Democratic Party. That stunning pronouncement was made by Bernard Goldberg, author of "A Slobbering Love Affair". This momentous turn of events highlighted by Goldberg was welcome news to us in the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) who launched our educational campaign six years ago aimed at stopping the Democrats' race-baiting.

Into the spotlight stepped former President Bill Clinton, brazenly engaging in race mongering by declaring that the passage of voter ID laws by some states was a return to Jim Crow. Clinton told a group of students: "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today."

Clinton's racism charge is particularly irksome since it is the Democrats who passed those Jim Crow laws as is explained in detail by Wayne Perryman in his book "Whites, Blacks and Racist Democrats" and Ann Coulter in her book "Demonic".

It was gratifying to observe that Clinton's incendiary charge was not echoed to any great extent in the liberal media as was done in the past. Instead, he was lambasted by the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled "Bill Clinton Does 'Jim Crow' " That article can be found on the Internet by clicking here.

Even more grating is the fact that Bill Clinton, himself, engaged in unconscionable racism against black Americans while governor of Arkansas and president, benefiting from the poisonous racial climate engendered by his fellow Democrats. A particularly odious Democrat was Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor in Birmingham who let loose vicious dogs and turned skin-burning fire hoses on black civil rights demonstrators during the 60s. Another racist Democrat was Alabama Governor George Wallace. Michael Barone described Wallace as "a man who really didn't believe in anything—a political opportunist who used opposition to integration to try and get himself ahead." This description aptly fits Bill Clinton, too.

Following in the footsteps of his mentor J. William Fulbright, a staunch segregationist, Clinton refused to enforce a court-ordered affirmative action plan while president and was himself sued for discriminating against his black employees while he was a governor. Clinton also had his Attorney General, Janet Reno, file a class action, reverse discrimination lawsuit on behalf of a group of white janitors at Illinois State University to stop the University from hiring blacks. None of Clinton's inner-circle of advisors was black, and Clinton failed to take action to stop the massacre of over 800,000 Rwandans. Without congressional or UN approval, Clinton sent 20,000 troops to help the white Europeans in Bosnia, but refused to send troops to help the 800,000 blacks in Africa.

Clinton showed the extent of his disdain for black Americans when he praised former Ku Klux Klansman Senator Robert Byrd at his funeral and gave Byrd a pass for being a recruiter for the Klan. Never mind the Klan was responsible for killing (lynching) 3,000 Republicans—2,000 blacks and 1,000 whites.

His anti-black actions and attitude show he clearly deserves the moniker: Bill "Bull Connor" Clinton.

Frances Rice is a lawyer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She may be contacted on the Internet at: www.NBRA.info

© National Black Republican Association, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, August 06, 2011

Obama Devastates Poor And Middle Class Blacks

OBAMA DEVASTATES POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS BLACKS

By Frances Rice

Showing not a modicum of compassion, President Barack Obama is steadily pushing his socialist agenda that is spiraling black Americans into the depths of economic ruination. His unyielding mantra of "tax the rich" is just a smoke screen for his desire to punish job creators, mostly small business owners, who produce the majority of the jobs in this country. Hurt most by Obama's failed socialist policies are the poor and middle class. Below is an excerpt from an article by Chidike Okeem that provides the troubling details about how Obama is devastating the black community. The article in its entirety is posted on the Internet and may be found by clicking on the title below.


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Barack Obama and the Betrayal of Black America
By Chidike Okeem

When Barack Obama was elected as the president of the United States, black liberals dreamily believed that the numerous maladies in the black community would cease to exist. They believed that his election was indicative of a vigorous wind of political and social change that was blowing across the country. Barack Obama himself vowed that his election would demarcate the conclusion of grisly "politics as usual" from the commencement of political and democratic freshness. However, as this administration continues on, it is abundantly clear that Obama has not only failed to deliver in a general sense, but he has also completely betrayed his most loyal constituency -- the black community.

After passing a gargantuan stimulus plan that was supposed to fix the economy, the unemployment rate continued to rise -- until it only recently began falling. Although we are currently at a 9.1 percent unemployment rate, the rate in the black community is at an unpardonably enormous 16.1 percent -- the highest of any ethnic group in the country. It is also important to note that black unemployment was lower under Bush than it has been at any point during Obama's administration. In point of fact, black unemployment was even lower under Bush than it was under Clinton.
More egregious than the high rate of black unemployment is the fact that Obama has been completely disconnected with the black community. He has failed to articulate any policy that would deal with the crisis that is evident in urban America. Rather, Obama is much more focused on articulating and enacting policies about issues that are close to his heart, such as allowing gays to serve openly in the military, as well as becoming a potent mouthpiece for the immoral Arab scam to steal Israeli land and annihilate the Jewish people.

Any intellectually honest person in America must look at Obama's demonstrable disregard for black issues and come to the unavoidable conclusion that black America is the very least of Obama's concerns. So obvious is this fact that even some of Barack Obama's most ardent supporters in the black intelligentsia have begun voicing strident denunciations of the president. The latest assault on Obama from his left-wing compatriot Cornel West is evidence of this phenomenon.

Although West's critique of Obama was partly personal and laden with his characteristically asinine divisive racial rhetoric, there was some substance to his criticism to which left-wing Obama cheerleaders in the black community remain willfully blind. West accused Obama of being "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats."

While West foolishly assumes that support for black issues and being in favor of business are mutually exclusive, the unstated and basic premise in West's critique is that Obama does not care enough about, and expresses no interest in, black people and black issues. As absurd as the rest of his intellectually messy ramblings are, West is right about that fundamental point.

Obama's sycophants are used to writing off all criticism of the president coming from whites as racist, and they are equally used to describing all criticism from black conservatives as being the puerile rants of Uncle Toms obsequiously looking for approval from "the white man"; however, although Cornel West is one of the black left's most revered academics, they would much rather write him off as entirely crazy than to admit that any criticism he has of Barack Obama contains even a scintilla of merit.

Big Government is the Problem, Not the Solution

By arguing that Obama has betrayed the black community, I am not arguing that Obama needs to spend his time carving out black-specific governmental policies. Manifestly, the black-specific liberal policies that have been attempted in the past have done nothing more than stimulate a metastasizing of the very social cancers that they were designed to treat. My argument is, however, that Obama has failed to enact the economic policies that would provide the necessary environment for blacks to fend for themselves independent of government -- despite the fact that he presented himself during his campaign as someone who was inimitably skilled and uniquely well-positioned to do so.

Without attempting to cater to blacks specifically, President Reagan managed to create economic prosperity throughout the entire country which, in point of fact, benefited blacks more than it did whites. The facts cannot be disputed: Reaganomics had a salubrious effect on the black community, whereas Obamanomics is having an unequivocally deleterious effect on black economics and the black community at large.

Obama Is Not The President of African Americans?

One of the talking points formulated by Obama's apologists in the media is the notion that Obama is not the president of black America. They argue he is the president of the United States of America. This pathetically feeble argument exists for the sole purpose of deflecting legitimate criticism of Obama's failure to meet the needs of the black community.

The fact of the matter is that Obama is the president of African Americans, just as he is the president of white Americans. It takes a shocking display of intellectual dishonesty to suddenly release Obama of any responsibility for black America, especially when previous presidents have always been held responsible for their treatment of the black community.

In 1998, the Nobel-Prize-winning writer Toni Morrison gave Bill Clinton the honorary moniker of "America's first black president" because, according to her, he "display[ed] almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

Leaving aside the recognizably insulting view of what constitutes blackness in Morrison's perverse mind, had white, southern Clinton possessed all these qualities while presiding over 16.1 percent unemployment, I am positive that this endearing nickname would never have been created -- much less believed by black liberals for many years until the emergence of Obama.

By contrast, the left, with unutterable alacrity, vociferously argued that George W. Bush's less-than-stellar handling of Hurricane Katrina was indicative of his incurable allergy toward black skin. Even largely apolitical rapper Kanye West took the time out to accuse Bush of not caring about blacks. The fact that Bush packed his administration with exceptionally well-qualified minorities was completely disregarded when the black left gave Bush his failing report card. One can only imagine the panic-stricken cries of racism that would have been heard for years if Bush had overseen 16.1 percent black unemployment.

It is nothing more than liberal hypocrisy to see the crisis evident in the black community under Obama's watch and simply respond with the contemptible shibboleth stating, "Obama is not the president of black America; he's the president of the United States of America" -- especially when every other president in recent history has been critically judged on their treatment of the black community. Mr. Okeem is a freelance writer and can be contacted at mrokeem@gmail.com . His blog on politics and culture can be read at voiceofchid.com



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"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,

The creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy,

Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..."

-Winston Churchill

© National Black Republican Association, 2011. All Rights Reserved.