Barack Obama Cozies Up With Chicago Slumlords

His Earness is a typical limousine liberal. He lives in luxury while his constituents live in squalor. He supports all these great socialist programs that supposedly help the poor while actually making them poorer and more dependent on the government. The Chicago Sun-Times has a revealing article about his relationship with two slumlords in Chicago:

For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side.
It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony'' Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers. Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on.
But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building.

It gets even better:

Much of the criticism has centered on two real estate deals involving Obama's South Side mansion. In the first, Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price for a doctor's home, while Rezko's wife paid the doctor full price for the vacant lot next door. Then -- a few months before Rezko was indicted -- Obama bought part of that lot from Rezko's wife.

This reminds me of Hillary's sweetheart deal with Tyson chicken and the way they funneled bribe money to her through the cattle futures trading.

Blacks in America have been sold down the river by the likes of Jesse Jackass and Al Sharpton. What they need is a leader who will show them the way to individual responsibility and personal achievement. They don't need another limousine liberal like Obama who only wants to keep them on the welfare/affirmative action/public school plantation.

Coin of the Week: Scottish bawbee of Charles II (1678)

This coin was issued during the period when Scotland and England were two separate countries but ruled by the same kings: The Stewarts of Scotland. I bought a coin similar to this one when I was in Edinburgh two weeks ago. This photo comes from David Parrish's website.

The inscriptions read "Carolus II Dei Gratia Scotorum, Angleterre, France, et Hibernia Rex" (Charles II King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland by the Grace of God), and "Nemo Me Impune Lacessit" (Don't mess with me).

Mountain of the Week: Shisha Pangma

Found in Tibet. Also known as Gosainthan. This is the fourteenth-highest mountain in the world.

Paul Wolfowitz Gets Smeared by the Left

Our Heroes on the Left have always been quite good at falsely accusing or exaggerating alleged misdeeds of conservatives. Now they have another scalp on their belt. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page reports:

The paper trail shows that Mr. Wolfowitz had asked to recuse himself from matters related to his girlfriend, a longtime World Bank employee, before he signed his own employment contract. The bank's general counsel at the time, Roberto Danino, wrote in a May 27, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyers:
"First, I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Wolfowitz has disclosed to the Board, through you, that he has a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staff member, and that he proposes to resolve the conflict of interest in relation to Staff Rule 3.01, Paragraph 4.02 by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member." (Our emphasis here and elsewhere.)
That would have settled the matter at any rational institution, given that his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, worked four reporting layers below the president in the bank hierarchy. But the bank board--composed of representatives from donor nations--decided to set up an ethics committee to investigate. And it was the ethics committee that concluded that Ms. Riza's job entailed a "de facto conflict of interest" that could only be resolved by her leaving the bank.
Ms. Riza was on a promotion list at the time, and so the bank's ethicists also proposed that she be compensated for this blow to her career. In a July 22, 2005, ethics committee discussion memo, Mr. Danino noted that "there would be two avenues here for promotion--an 'in situ' promotion to Grade GH for the staff member" and promotion through competitive selection to another position." Or, as an alternative, "The Bank can also decide, as part of settlement of claims, to offer an ad hoc salary increase."
Five days later, on July 27, ethics committee chairman Ad Melkert formally advised Mr. Wolfowitz in a memo that "the potential disruption of the staff member's career prospect will be recognized by an in situ promotion on the basis of her qualifying record . . ." In the same memo, Mr. Melkert recommends "that the President, with the General Counsel, communicates this advice" to the vice president for human resources "so as to implement" it immediately.
And in an August 8 letter, Mr. Melkert advised that the president get this done pronto: "The EC [ethics committee] cannot interact directly with staff member situations, hence Xavier [Coll, the human resources vice president] should act upon your instruction." Only then did Mr. Wolfowitz instruct Mr. Coll on the details of Ms. Riza's new job and pay raise.

The problem is that all this is too complicated for the simple-minded sheep who blindly follow the fuhrers of the left and their court jesters in the media. But it is clear to anyone who cares to consider at all the facts that Wolfowitz acted properly.

So why is he being smeared? He has made a great effort to hold the World Bank accountable for the money it loans to third world countries. He is taking some people off their gravy train, just like the invasion of Iraq took some people off the 'oil for food' scam.

I am increasingly learning that whenever the Left starts howling about corruption, its more likely necessary to investigate them, rather then whoever they are accusing.

You Knew This Was Coming

The victims of today's tragedy at Virginia Tech have not yet been laid to rest, but the gun control freaks are already using the incident as an excuse to further their sick, misguided political ideals. Here are just a few from:

The Independent (UK)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
CBS News
The Independent (again)
New York Times

Their names are legion, for they are many. And I am sure that there will be many, many more. They can barely disguise their glee over the dead students' bodies for this opportunity to restrict our most fundamental freedom.

But of course, one thing these massacre sluts don't bother to tell you is that Virginia Tech is a gun-free zone:

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.
House Bill 1572 didn't get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

Last spring a Virginia Tech student was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit.

(Jan 31, 2006)

The only effect this ban had was to make the students unable to defend themselves against the murderer. Do these idiots really think that someone who is capable of murdering 33 people will really care what some gun control law says?

Don Ho: 1930 - 2007

Tiny bubbles

In the wine

Make me happy

Make me feel fine

Tiny bubbles

Make me warm all over

With a feeling that I'm gonna Love you till the end of time

R. I. P.

Blog of the Week: Uncorrelated

One of my favorite blogs. Some words of wisdom from their posts today:

The left might also want to pay attention since no cultural and political ideology has done more damage to the prospects of western nations than socialism and its attendant lunacies.

To which I say "Amen".

Mountain of the Week: Mt. McKinley

Castle of the Week: Dunluce

On the northern coast of Ireland. Can't you just imagine the stuff that happened there?

Charges Against Duke Lacrosse Players to Be Dropped

It's about time. The case never had half a leg to stand on. ABC News is reporting the charges will soon be dropped by the special prosecutors who replaced the race-baiter Nifong.

Wouldn't it be nice if those 88 professors at Duke who signed a petition condemning the innocent young men apologized? Don't hold your breath.

En Garde!

Trying out a sword at CarrickFergus castle, near Belfast. The balance was good but rather long to handle well.

I'm Back

I had a magnificent seven days in Scotland and Ireland. I wish I could have stayed longer.

Things have improved greatly in Belfast and the rest of Ulster since the days of the War. The DUP and UUP (Ulster Protestant parties) are about to enter into a coalition government with the IRA/Sinn Fein in a few weeks. The local economy is booming.

I am naturally an optimistic person, but in this case my optimism must be tempered with the reality of whom my kinsmen in Ulster are dealing with. This is a photo I took in the Catholic section of Belfast, last friday. The author of the graffiti is calling the Israelis "nazis" and showing support for Hamas and Hizbollah, two prominent muslim terrorist groups with whom the IRA have had dealings before.

The IRA are a group of homicidal maniacs, just like their islamofascist allies. They are a marxist group that tried their best to destroy society in Ulster in the 1970s and 1980s. Have they changed their minds? We shall see what we shall see.

I'm Off to Scotland and Ulster

This blog will be inactive for the next ten days while I am off to Scotland for a conference. I will also visit Ulster while I am there.

But have no fear, Provocateur will be back and I will be as ornery and offensive as ever when I return.

Ulster Scots wha hae!

Barack Obama Criticizes Bush For Not Being a Socialist

Our beloved Senator accused Bush of 'Social Darwinism' as if the president wants to kill people with lower incomes.

"It's a strategy that we've seen this administration pursue over the last six years, that basically says government has no role to play in making sure that America is prosperous for all people and not just some," Obama said to applause during an appearance before the Communications Workers of America.

Hey Barack, the government can't make all people prosperous, any more than it can make all people rock stars. The only thing that government can do is to try to foster the conditions under which people are free to pursue their own prosperity. The only thing that policies like those that you propose will accomplish will be to make people dependent on the government.

You want to tax individuals and businesses excessively. You want to increase government regulation of our lives, with the inevitable result of reducing our civil liberties. You want people of some races and gender to have preferences over others.

All of your fawning sycophants in the lefty media are talking about how you are so new and unique. There's nothing new about anything you are proposing. Your ideas are nothing but old, rehashed socialism. It has been tried in various forms all over the world, and the results have been dismal.

Children Who Play With Legos are Capitalist Pigs

I never thought that the idiots on the left would see a harmless toy like Legos as a tool of capitalist oppression. But the moonbats never cease to amaze me. It turns out that some after-school daycare workers at the Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle became concerned that their young subjects were developing an "unjust and oppressive" society built out of Legos:

the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.

That is definitely something to worry about. We can't have those young, impressionable kids developing notions of free enterprise and personal responsibility, can we?

Tragedy struck and the Legotown that these capitalist oppressors were building was destroyed! The teachers of this progressive day care center seized the opportunity:

We saw the decimation of Lego-town as an opportunity to launch a critical evaluation of Legotown and the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded. Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation.

The teachers decided to "liberate" the Legos by removing them from the classroom:

We recognized that children are political beings, actively shaping their social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity — whether we interceded or not. We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children's understandings from a perspective of social justice. So we decided to take the Legos out of the classroom.

Legos were finally brought back, but only to be played with under certain "progressive" rules:

All structures are public structures. Everyone can use all the Lego structures. But only the builder or people who have her or his permission are allowed to change a structure.
Lego people can be saved only by a "team" of kids, not by individuals.
All structures will be standard sizes.

So what happens to the kids who do not "collaborate" with the "team"? Are they sent to a timeout in the daycare version of Vorkuta?

When I think of some of the sick, twisted minds who are taking care of our kids, I feel very ill.

Hat tip to John Miller at NRO.

Why So Few Men in College?

The newspaper in Flint, Michigan notes the fact that 58% of undergraduate college students are women. This is not surprising at all, but the author of article does not mention the true reason why so few men are enrolling.

Academia has declared war on men. White men in particular. When I was a graduate student at Ohio State, the administration had screens put in the urinals that said "You are holding the power to stop rape in your hands". I was a mature graduate student in my thirties. I've never been in trouble with the law, much less ever raped anyone, and I couldn't even take a whiz without being accused of being a rapist.

Stamp of the Week

Postmaster Provisional from Brattleboro, VT. Issued in 1846.

Mountain of the Week: Mt. Rainier

"Baby, don't be eruptin' on me tonight"

Another Moonbat from the Carter Administration Toots His Horn

Jimmy Carter's term as president was thirty years ago, yet we are still dealing with the repercussions of his totally foolish, incompetent foreign policy. As if that's not bad enough, we get to hear Jimmah and his clowns like Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor, continually mouthing off with the stupidest, lamest ideas they can think of. Of course, they have an eager audience in the hate-America left.

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.
The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves.

Isn't that rich? Using the phrase "War on Terror" has caused more damage than the three thousand people who were murdered in cold blood on 9/11. More than the 50 people who were murdered on 7/7 in the subway bombings in England. More than the 200 people who were murdered in the Bali nightclub bombing. Is it any wonder with such "intelligent" and "nuanced" advisors like Brzezinski, Jimmy was overhwelmingly voted out of office in 1980?

Some more words of wisdom from this raving genius:

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.

Hey Einstein, the cause of the fear was not the phrase "War on Terror". The cause of the fear was those homicidal maniacs flying planeloads full of people into buildings on September 11, 2001. I can just imagine what was going on in your sick little twisted mind on that day. You were probably thinking that the USA deserved the terrorist attacks, weren't you?

That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable.

Tell me something Zbig, how many terrorist attacks have there been in the USA since 9/11? We have become more secure from the efforts of the war on terror, not less. As for paranoia, I think you have cornered the market on that form of mental illness, with your paranoia about the war on terror.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: A Man of Courage and Intellect



Justice Thomas is a man who has been the target of more false accusations and insults than anyone else in the USA. And yet, he has carried this burden with grace and dignity, never stooping to the level of his detractors. He suffered the indignity of the ludicrous accusations of Anita Hill on national TV during his senate confirmation hearings. He has been repeatedly called "Uncle Tom" and worse by the scum on the left.

Justice Thomas' opinions he has written have shown the intellect of a brilliant jurist. I was particularly heartened by his opinion in the Kelo v. New London case.

Business Week published an interview of Thomas concerning his undergraduate years at Holy Cross:

Q: Why do you think some people are so eager to cast you as a beneficiary of affirmative action?

A: That was the creation of the politicians, the people with a lot of mouth and nothing to say and your industry. They had a story and everything had to fit into their story. It discounts other people's achievements. Ask Ted how many all-nighters he pulled. It discounts those. It's so discouraging to see the fraudulent renditions of very complicated and different lives of people who were struggling in a new world for them. Everything becomes affirmative action. There wasn't some grand plan. I just showed up.

Q: How is the world different for college kids today?

A: You don't go to college to be a decoration. You're not there to please other people. You're there to do better in your own life. The only answer I'm interested in is to the question: Are these kids better off for having gone to a college? If they are, how? Ask that question about the first black kids who went to Holy Cross and the answer is a resounding 'Yes.' Yes, they are better off. Ask yourself that today. What's the attrition rate? It used to be up around 40% or something like that. There was no attrition in my class.

Q: Is it solely because of a mismatch of students and the schools that admit them?

A: I don't know. I don't think people even ask the question any more. I tried for years to get focus on why you actually went to school as opposed to diversity and multiculturalism. I didn't go to school for any of that stuff. I went to school to learn and get on with my life. I wasn't there to prove or disprove anybody else's point. I've thought a lot about these things, and I've spent the bulk of my life, beating my head against a wall, trying to get people to see that they can have their grand theories but, in the end, you can't impose them on other people's kids. How many kids do you have? They're different, aren't they? If your kids are different—and they're all yours—what about just some kids who happen to be different shades of black, different degrees of Negro? They're all from different family settings—some two parents, some no parents, some raised by grandparents. Come on. How can you just all of a sudden treat them as all the same?

Hat tip to John Lott.