Eye Of The Tyger

America's First Arab President?

This Is Reminescent Of A Scene From MacBeth

The current political stage is being set as a scene, nay, a chapter from Macbeth.

The inevitable democrat nominee, Prince Ibrahim Barak Hussein al-Obama (Peace be upon him), is strutting on the national stage, awash in rose petals thrown by his admiring, no...make that fawning group of eunuchs and swooshing fags of the national press.

I doubt seriously that The Prince (PBUH) will deign to anoint the fair damsel Hillary as his second (can you IMAGINE the denigration (watch it...no pun intended) of Hill and Bill to be forced to play second and third fiddle...or would it be third and fourth fiddle to Hussein (Peace be upon him) and Michelle (Peace be upon her).  This would, at the least be entertaining.

Also, imagine the drama, as Hillary contrives to get Ibrahim Hussein (PBUH) out to Fort Marcy Park?

"....***Ring!, Oh hello, your excellency.  How would you like to join me out at Fort Marcy Park for a bit of target practice?"  "No, don't bother to bring a gun, we know you don't own one...but this will be instructional as well as practicing..."

My true suspicion is that Hill and Bill will turn down the second and third (third and fourth) banana spots and do their level best to ensure Ibrahim Barack Hussein Al-Obama's (PBUH) ignominious defeat in November, thereby setting the Hill up for her ultimate power grab in 2012.

Now, one further word of warning:  If you own guns of any shape, size, or description, SELL them as soon as possible.  Regardless of which democrat comes to power, they will, as a first step, seize all guns.  The only gun that I am retaining is a pump .22 caliber Rossi....In NO WAY Assault Rife, in NO WAY automatic.  All the others are long gone.  Take a lesson from Canada, where all guns are outlawed.

Oh, by way of total disclosure...I DO have a .177 caliber air rifle and air pistol that I use to harass squirrels, who steal seed from my bird feeders.

But knowing the democrats, they will take them as well, so that only criminals (Peace be upon them) will remain with firearms.

Update

For the past ten days or so, I've been sluffing off.

I got a new job, in Huntsville, Alabama.  Got a new apartment (a really nice one, on a very pretty 126 acre lake) and have been in the process of moving furniture, buying new stuff, and generally making the place comfortable.

Thanks to my lovely wife, Nell, the place is now cozy, comfortable, and beautiful.

My new job is going great, and I'm just waiting for the security clearance to get through so that I can really do INTERESTING stuff.

I hope to be back doing my usual thing now, bringing you the latest in trivia.

President Bush's Mistake

President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism.
But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq . Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. It is not. Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression.   But they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.

Therefore, when the war broke out the people together, rallied
behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not. And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today.  Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war. Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in. Small children  pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for th e war effort. Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.   Even collected tinfoil from cigarette packs to candy bars.

 

Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military. Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.

You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President.  Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted. And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a pledge of allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops!

Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies. A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being "tortured" by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.

There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crackheads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.

No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism.   He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve. It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz. We even have the wicked witch of the west as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives .

We did unite for a short while after 911, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices. 

NOW HEAR THIS! We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatical Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam.  It has been estimated that about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists' cause.  Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.

We either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing.

Better Wake Up, America!

My friend Kathy reports this from her cousin in Texas...just a few miles from Dallas:

"Fox News just reported that a standoff between two Muslim women and the Dallas police has ended and the women are in custody.  They had been observed, on security cameras, pacing off distances at Love Field and DFW.  They were observed watching flights in and out of DFW from the hood of their car and when approached it was discovered that they were wearing camos under their Muslim garb.  The 51 year old has a record with the police as an expert on explosives and automatic weapons.  They found four homemade bombs in their house and are studying to see how powerful they are.

My question is, "Why haven't the Dallas outlets of news and the Dallas police alerted the public and reported this and a national news channel has to break it?"" 

Why not, indeed?  The media are waxing wroth over the poor Texas border agents who are being imprisoned for just doing their job...and by the way apprehending drug smugglers.

We're supposed to believe that the peaceful muslims only want to be left alone to worship in peace.

Yeah, right.

Islamofascism in Perspective

This is an EXCELLENT essay by Raymond S. Kraft, a writer living in Northern California that has studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion.  It is Well thought out and presented, and worthy of being promulgated.

Many of your are not old enough to remember that nearly every family in America was fundamentally affected by WW II.  Those who do remember may recall the rationing of meat, shoes, gasoline and sugar.  There were no tires for our automobiles (in fact, no new automobiles) and a speed limit of 35 miles per hour.  Imagine what life in the United States would be if we were taken over by the Muslim Islamofascists in 2007.

"Historical Significance

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America taking food and war materials.

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany , who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe.  Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia.

Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe.

America's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it All of Europe, from Norway to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel.

The US was certainly not prepared for war.  The US had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the depression, so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks A huge chunk of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually the property of Belgium) given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).

Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could.

Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later.  Hitler, first turned his attention to Russia, in the late summer of 1940 at a time when England was on the verge of collapse.

Ironically, Russia saved America 's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone . . . 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America.  If that had happened, the Nazis could possibly have won the war.

All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things.  Now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world.  To them, all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel , and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.
(goal)

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas.  Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win -- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US , European, and Asian economies.

The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.  Do you want gas in your car?  Do you want heating oil next winter?  Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away.  A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements.  We have to do it somewhere.  We can't do it everywhere at once.  We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing . . . . . . . . in Iraq .  Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein.  Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades Saddam is a terrorist!   Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, responsible for the deaths of probably more than a 1,000,000 Iraqis and 2,000,000 Iranians .

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq.   We have focused the battle.  We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here.  We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed

WW II, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928.  It did not begin with Pearl Harbor.  It began with the Japanese invasion of China.  It was a war for fourteen years before the US joined it.  It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own a gain . . a 27 year war.

WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars.  WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivalent to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States) in the 9/11 terrorist attack.

The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism.

This is not a 60-Minutes TV show, or a 2-hour movie in which everything comes out okay.  The real world is not like that.  It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly.  It always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is.  It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an ally, like England , in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East.  The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the world.

The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending war.  Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons.  Unless some body prevents them from getting them.

We have four options:

1 . We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2 . We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons
(which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3 . We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East now; in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

OR

4 . We can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe.  It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes, cultural clashes.  All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

Remember, perspective is every thing, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989; forty-two years!

Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany !

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan.  World War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than
100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq..  The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.

In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years.  Most of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

The stakes are at least as high . . A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law)

It's difficult to understand why the average American does not grasp this.  They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America , where it's safe.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most?  I'll tell you why! They would be killed!

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc . , but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.

Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy!"

A Sign Of Better Times?

Thank God Imus Is Gone!

This was sent to me by a friend...the source was unattributed.  It so hit the point that I couldn't resist posting it.  I'm sure someone will let me know who originally wrote it:

"Now our problems are solved.

Little black kids can walk home from school without worrying about catching an accidental round from one of the afternoon's drive-bys. Black teen-agers can congregate on street corners without stirring the fears of their neighbors or the rivalries of the black teen-agers congregated on the street corner two blocks away.

In black neighborhoods all across America's great cities, home ownership rates will rise and foreclosure rates will fall. Balanced meals will be cooked, lead dust will be cleaned up, Section 8 will become a thing of the past.

Parents will come to open house to meet their children's teachers,  kids will do their homework, they'll take the metal detectors out of the schools.

The phrase baby daddy will be replaced by the title husband. Instead of two-thirds of children being born out of wedlock, babies will be born to a woman with a ring on her hand and a father for her child. A 32-year-old grandmother will be a very rare thing.

Dad's paycheck will take the place of mom's welfare check. A benefits card will come from the human resources office, not the caseworker.

Now that Imus is gone.

Now that Imus is gone, our problems are solved, black America is saved.

Teen-agers will stay in school and read on grade level and graduate. Teachers won't have to worry about being assaulted, the resource officers won't have to wear Kevlar vests, suspensions and expulsions will be a thing of the past. The word remedial will never be used, extra police won't have to be brought in when certain schools make the championship game, free lunch won't be the main meal of the day.

The f-word will go out of style. Women will be called women and men will sing about loving them, not sodomizing them.

The funeral homes will only bury old people and they won't need to print those memorial t-shirts with the picture and the date someone's baby was gunned down.

If there is a popping noise outside the window at night it's because the neighbor kids are playing with firecrackers. If the ambulance comes to the neighborhood it's because somebody's sick. If there's the sound of breaking glass, it's followed by the sound of a sweeping broom.

Now that Imus is gone.

Now that Imus is gone, our problems are solved, black America is saved.

And the crack and the chronic and the malt liquor will be gone. Young men will sell cars and computers instead of cocaine and heroin. The murderous grip of addiction will be loosened. Rehab will be what people do to their guest room, not where they spend the summer.

In black neighborhoods, a young man will leave home to go to college, not prison. Jail will not be glorified and lawlessness will not be tolerated.

The neighborhood stores will be owned by black families who will use their profits to buy a home and send their children to law school and medical  school. The rising scourge of diabetes will be eradicated and regular health care will be sought and received.

Guns will be sold in stores for hunting, not on street corners for robbing. Children will be loved and cared for. At 2 o'clock in the morning, the streets will be deserted and people will be home in bed. More people will pay Social Security, instead of receive Social Security.

Self-esteem will be determined by personal achievement instead of classroom pep talk or radio wisecracks.

Now that Imus is gone.

Now that Imus is gone, our problems are solved, black America is saved.

What a great victory we have won.

(Somehow ...I don't think so.  What will Jesse Jackson do?)"

Whew!  I'm glad THAT's cleared up!

SCP On Reparations

My good friend, Simple Country Physicist, had this well thought out response to my posting on reparations (See "Fred Reed says", below):

" I would extend that statement a bit. It is almost certain, P>0.95, that 100% of the U.S. population is descended from slaves. This applies regardless of the "racial" composition of the individual. (I really dislike/detest that "racial" taxonomy. It has little scientific validity and is socially misleading, but since it is recognized and used by the Yankee government I cannot escape it.)
    Since everyone in the U. S. is descended from a slave, then the idea that they should receive some compensation becomes moot. The legal matter is equally so. Claims against estates have time limits, all of which have expired. No one in the United States has been a slave in the country, in the chattel sense at least, for almost 150 years. No one who owned slaves has been alive for a comparable magnitude period. Claims for such recompense are fraudulent and opportunistic and will not stand up to the logic chopping of the Tudor robed ambulance chasers. The same court system has determined that supportive discrimination is no longer needed, that the suppressed and oppressed minorities no longer need such public mandated welfare. If the Yankee government has determined that the descendants of former slaves no longer need such benefits and are able to compete in the national marketplace as equals, how can we entertain the idea that they need a donative?
    The whole matter is as odious as class action lawsuits against tobacco companies for causing cancer. It is nothing more than a lack of personal responsibility and integrity coupled with unbridled and rampant greed.
    And if we were to pay this tribute, this appeasement, would it end the continued whining and begging for preference? Would these incompetents suddenly discover honor and courage? Would it truly right any wrong than assuaging the false conscience of oversensitive, illogical, and historically ignorant liberals who have the same mental maturity as preadolescents? As such they degrade and defame the designation of liberal in general, for the sake of those thankfully imprecious few who strengthen such insanity.
    The idea that we are responsible for the actions of our forebears is even more ludicrous. Such responsibility can only be predicated on the existence of any measure of control, which is patently absent. There may be some basis for finding some temporal span when they exercised control over us as children, but demonstration that this places us at fault has yet to be advanced.
    The founding fathers assured us that we have some inalienable rights. One of those is the right to make our way in the world within the constraints placed upon us by Nature, government, and society. If we cannot be successful in making that way, and cannot demonstrate that failure is the direct result of someone's overt interaction with us, then no one can be blamed for failure but ourselves."

As the first sentence implies, there was a prior brief exchange which the interested reader can see by following the comments.

I encourage one and all to regularly read SCP's blog.  He is (usually) interesting and logical...except of course when he disagrees with me :->

Fred Reed Says...

For those of you unfamiliar with Fred Reed, he's a police reporter for one of the large Washington newspapers.......

Anyway, Fred publishes (published) a weekly online column in which he got to say the things his editors would never, ever have let him write in the paper. His stuff is iconoclastic and various articles have probably o ffended everyone regardless of political orientation.

So, with the warning that "This is definitely not politically correct," here comes Fred.

The following is an essay regarding the failings of a system and a culture. Please note that he elegantly describes the mood of many Americans and he does so without prejudice.

"Slavery Reparations .......by Fred Reed

On the Web I find that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., th e chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, is demanding that whites pay reparations to blacks. It's because of slavery, see. He is joined in this endeavor by a gaggle of other professional blacks. I guess he'll send me a bill, huh?

I feel like saying, "Let me get this straight, Hank. I'm slow. Be patient. You want free m oney because of slavery, right? I don't blame you." I'd like free money too. Tell you what. I believe in justice. I'll give you a million dollars for every slave I own, and another million for every year you were a slave. Fair enough? But tell me, how many slaves do you suppose I have? In round numbers, I mean...Say to the nearest dozen. And how long were you a slave?

Oh. In other words, I owe you reparations for something that I didn't do and didn't happen to you. Tha t makes sense. Like lug nuts on a birthday cake.

Personally, I think you owe me reparations for things you didn't do and never happened to me. I've never been coated in Dutch chocolate and thrown from the Eiffel Tower. I'll bet you've never done it to anyone. I want reparations. Kinda silly, isn't it?

But if we're going to talk about reparations, that's a street that runs in two directions. You want money from me for what some other whites did to some other blacks in another century. How about you guys paying whites reparations for current expenses caused by blacks? Not long ago blacks burned down half of Los Angeles, a city in my country. Cities are expensive, Hank. Build one sometime and you'll see what I mean. Whites had to pay taxes to repair Los Angeles for you. You can send me a check. ; Now, yes, I know you burned LA because you didn't like the verdict in the trial of those police officers. Well, I didn't like the verdict in the Simpson trial. But I didn't burn my house and loot Korean grocers. Over the years blacks have burned a lot of American cities: Newark, Detroit, Watts, on and on. Now add in the fantastic cost over the years of welfare in all its forms, of large police forces and jails and security systems in department stores.

I can't live in the capital city of my own country because of crime committed by blacks. Toss in the cultural cost of lowering standards in everything for the benefit of blacks. See what I mean?

Now, I'd view things differently if you said, "Fred, blacks can't get anywhere in a modern country without education. We know that. We need better schools, smarter teachers, harder courses, books with smaller pictures and bigger words. Can you help us?" I'd say, "Hallelujah! Hoo-ahh! Not just yes, but hell yes. Let's sell an aircraft carrier and get these folks some real schools and get them into the economic mainstream." I'd say it partly because it would be the right thing to do, and partly, be cause I'd like to add you guys to the tax base.

The current custodial state is expensive. I'd just love for blacks to study and learn to compete and stop burning places. But is it going to happen? You may not believe it, but I, and most whites, don't like seeing blacks as miserable and screwed up as they are. I spend a fair amount of time in the projects. Those places are ugly. It's no fun watching perfectly good kids turn into semiliterate dope dealers who barely speak &g t; English. It just plain ain't right. But, Hank, what am I supposed to do about it? I can't do your children's homework. At some point, people have to do things for themselves, or they don't get done.

Maybe it's time.

I'll tell you what I see out in the world, Hank. I think blacks are too accustomed to getting any thing they want by just demanding it. True, it has worked for over half a century. Get a few hundred people in the street, implicitly threaten to loot and burn, holler about slavery, and the Great White Cash Spigot turns on. Thing is, whites don't much buy it any longer. Most recognize that what once was a civil-rights movement has become a shakedown game. Few people still feel responsible for the failings and inadequacies of blacks. Political correctness keeps the lid on -- but everyone knows the score. Which scares me, Hank.

On one hand, blacks hate whites and incline toward looting and burning.
(The whites you hate are the ones who marched in the civil-rights movement. Ever think about that?)  On the other hand, whites quietly grow wearier and wearier of it. Not good.

On the third hand (allow me three hands, for rhetorical convenience), blacks keep demanding things. As I write, you demand reparations for slavery. Blacks in Oklahoma (I think it was) want money for some ancient race riot. Other blacks reject the Declaration of Independence, blacks in New York hint broadly at burning and looting over a trial, yet more demand the elimination of the Confederate flag, and the federal equal opportunity apparatus, which means blacks, wants to sue Silicon Valley & gt; for not hiring nonexistent black engineers.

That's a lot of demanding for one month, Hank. What happens if whites ever say, "No?"

Now, how about you? You've got a cushy job up there at Harvard, and you can hoot and holler about what swine and bandits whites are. I guess it's lots of fun, and you get a salary for it. But don' t you think you might do blacks more good if you told them to complain less and study more?

For example, if you want blacks to work in Silicon Gulch, the best approach might be to find some really smart black guys, and get them to study digital design, not Black Studies. That's how everybody else does it. It works. Then blacks wouldn't feel left out, and racial tension would decline.

Sound like a plan?

Just out of curiosity, ho w many hours a week do professors of Afro-American Studies spend in the projects, encouraging poor black kids to study real life sho-nuf subjects?"