Hate Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry

Stuart Taylor, Jr. writes a stinging column in the National Journal denouncing the rot of political correctness that infests most colleges and universities - and not a few high schools in the United States. He starts with the example of the Orwellian nightmare just exposed - and shut down - at the University of Delaware. By the rot and stench of decay spreads much, much further than that one totalitarian institution of "higher learning."

Despite a succession of court decisions striking down university speech codes, they re-emerged thinly disguised as rules to prevent and punish "harassment," defined to include any speech deemed offensive by minorities, women, gays, or other preferred groups.

The PC sickness goes far beyond intolerance of dissent. It also has a pervasive effect on course offerings. History departments, for example, offer fewer and fewer traditional courses such as political and diplomatic history, to make room for courses portraying history as a tale of unrelieved oppression of minorities, women, the poor, gays, and everyone else by privileged white males.

Academia's "diversity" obsession is founded on hostility to diversity of opinion. To most academics, "diversity" is a code word for systematic preference of minorities and women over white males in all walks of life. The preferred groups include many faculty members who are manifestly unqualified for their positions and whose websites read like a "Saturday Night Live" parody of wacky professors.

"At least in the humanities and social sciences," Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein wrote in a 2004 essay, "academics shun conservative values and traditions, so their curricula and hiring practices discourage non-leftists from pursuing academic careers…. The quasi-Marxist outlook of cultural studies rules out those who espouse capitalism. If you disapprove of affirmative action, forget pursuing a degree in African-American studies. If you think that the nuclear family proves the best unit of social well-being, stay away from women's studies."

Over the decades, academic extremists have taken over more and more departments, like cancers metastasizing from organ to organ. For example, the 88 Duke professors who signed a disgraceful April 2006 ad in the school paper spearheading the mob rush to judgment against falsely accused lacrosse players included 80 percent of the African-American studies faculty; 72 percent of the women's studies professors; 60 percent of the cultural anthropology department; and lots of professors in romance studies, literature, English, art, and history.

Not one member of that academic lynch mob has ever apologized. As Taylor tells it, most of them are of questionable worth, scholarship-wise. This is a hard takedown, but it only scratches the surface of the hatred, bigotry and thought control being routinely push by the denizens of the corrupt ivory tower. I fear for the young people of this nation.

Boo Hsu

Mr. Hsu now is back in California, in a 7-by-10-foot cell on the medical floor of the Brendan P. McGuire Correctional Facility in Redwood City. His wardrobe consists of orange jumpsuits. From his tiny window, he can see trees outside.

That's the close of the Wall Street Journal article on Norman Hsu detailing a twisted life of scam after scam. Also a big, big fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and a lot of other Democrats.

An in-depth look at Mr. Hsu's peculiar rise and abrupt fall reveals a man consumed with a desire to gain respect and wealth, even as his scattershot business ventures failed at every turn. In politics, he found everything he seemed to be looking for — glamorous friends, acclaim and a measure of credibility that he used to help attract investors to his dubious business pitches.

His business failures and resulting deceptions required him to construct a facade. To those who met him, he seemed a success, filled with confidence, warmth, generosity and sincerity. But he was dogged by lawsuits and angry creditors, once outwitting an intimidating debt collector nicknamed "Shrimp Boy" by telling police he was being kidnapped. He would tap one circle of friends, then disappear, only to turn up later with new friends and new funding.

Politics was a world where his schmoozing and fund-raising talents were powerful currency. He became a "bundler," someone who could induce hundreds of acquaintances to donate. Bundling has emerged as a major source of U.S. campaign-finance abuse, and Mr. Hsu was in the thick of it.

He befriended Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats, decorating his SoHo loft with their photos. He displayed a saxophone autographed by former President Bill Clinton, bought for $26,000 at a Red Cross benefit. He sported a chocolate-brown leather bomber jacket with the presidential seal. "Bill Clinton gave this to me," he told Mr. Waters.

The story is not at all sympathetic, maintaining a neutral tone throughout. But this is the portrait of a very shady operator who lived by the scam. He was very good at fooling people and he took advantage of pretty much everyone he ever did business with. Hsu was the top bundler for Hillary Clinton. She apparently treated him as a friend - at least a political one, appearing via closed circuit television at a party he threw.

Invention Of The Week

A Washington Man has obviously seen a market niche and has filled the need for a new product! The pump-action tire iron!

The 66-year-old man had been repairing a Lincoln Continental for two weeks at his home northwest of Southworth, about 10 miles southwest of Seattle, and had gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the right rear wheel by Saturday afternoon, Kitsap County Deputy Scott Wilson said.

"He's bound and determined to get that lug nut off," Wilson said.

From about arm's length, the man fired the shotgun at the wheel and was "peppered" in both legs with buckshot and debris, with some injuries as high as his chin, according to a sheriff's office report.

"Nobody else was there and he wasn't intoxicated," Wilson said.

We are not real sure what market segment he is trying to reach. The self-destructive mechanic or the completely clueless tool user market. But best of luck with your invention, sir! (No alcohol was involved? Really?) There is one burning question left, however: did he get the lug nut off?

Error Corrected

I posted about the strange case of Willie Hayes, a decorated veteran who was buried with full military honors at Calverton National Cemetery. The odd part is that Willie Hayes had already been buried in Calverton in 2003. Or rather A Willie Hayes had been buried there in 2003. The family of the real Willie Hayes was understandably upset that someone had been buried using the real man's honorable discharge. After an investigation, authorities announced that the first man buried was one William Hayes who had served in the Marine Corps from 1965 to 1969. However, William Hayes did not receive an honorable discharge and is not eligible for burial in a National Cemetery. William Hayes remains were slated to be moved to a Potters Field.

Enter Isaiah Owens, the funeral director who had handled the burial of Willie Hayes. He is paying for a burial for William Hayes in a civilian cemetery. He is doing so out of his own pocket as an act of simple human decency.

The director, Isaiah Owens, said Monday he'll pick up the reburial costs for a man who will be exhumed from a national cemetery nearly four years after he was mistakenly interred there in a bureaucratic blunder. Until Owens stepped up and volunteered to pay the $3,000 to $4,000 in funeral expenses, the man faced the prospect of being reburied in Potter's Field, a pauper's graveyard in New York City.

"Whoever he is, he can't do anything for himself any more," Owens said. "I'd rather this for him than having him go to Potter's Field."

The mix-up apparently is the first time "somebody was buried who we thought was somebody else" in any of the national cemeteries, which date to the Civil War era, said Michael Nacincik, a spokesman for the National Cemetery Administration.

The error was discovered in late September when the family of Willie Hayes sought to have the Army veteran buried at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, only to find that a William Hayes had been buried there in 2003. Cemetery officials initially balked at the new request, but after being presented with overwhelming evidence that Hayes was a legitimate war veteran, the burial proceeded.

Officials then launched an investigation and announced last week that the mix-up was apparently the result of a clerical error……

……Owens also handled the burial of Willie Hayes last month. And he's been to Potter's Field.

"It's a no man's land where everyone is buried in simple pine boxes," Owens said. "I always get a real sad feeling when I leave that place."

Kudos, Mr. Owens. William Hayes did not belong in Calverton, but at least he'll have a proper burial thanks to you.

No True Glory

"There will be no true glory for our soldiers in Iraq until they are recognized not as victims, but as aggressive warriors. Stories of their bravery deserve to be recorded and read by the next generation. Unsung, the noblest deeds will die.”
-Bing West, No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah

Mackubin Thomas Owens has a must read in the National Review Online about the continued - or continuous - attempts to slander members of America's armed forces. He leads off with the Scott Thomas Beauchamp incident, but moves beyond that rapidly, tracing the slanderous narrative of the left back to the Vietnam war. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.

And to this day, critics of that war invoke the specter of My Lai to prove that atrocities were widespread in Vietnam. Not too long ago, Ellis Henican of Newsday quoted the late Ron Ridenour, the soldier who publicized the My Lai massacre (even though he was not present): “My Lai was a whole lot more than one crazy lieutenant. And there were plenty of My Lais.”

But this is nonsense. Atrocities did occur in Vietnam, but they were far from widespread. Between 1965 and 1973, 201 soldiers and 77 Marines were convicted of serious crimes against the Vietnamese. Of course, the fact that many crimes, either in war or peace, go unreported, combined with the particular difficulties encountered by Americans fighting in Vietnam, suggest that more such acts were committed than reported or tried.

But even Daniel Ellsberg, a severe critic of U.S. policy in Vietnam, rejected the argument that My Lai was in any way a normal event: “My Lai was beyond the bounds of permissible behavior, and that is recognizable by virtually every soldier in Vietnam. They know it was wrong. . . . The men who were at My Lai knew there were aspects out of the ordinary. That is why they tried to hide the event, talked about it to no one, discussed it very little even among themselves.”

Jim Webb, a Marine hero of the Vietnam War and junior senator from Virginia, got to the real heart of the matter concerning atrocities in the war and Kerry’s testimony in an NPR commentary several years ago: “. . . stories of atrocious conduct, repeated in lurid detail by Kerry before the Congress, represented not the typical experience of the American soldier, but its ugly extreme. That the articulate, urbane Kerry would validate such allegations helped to make life hell for many Vietnam veterans, for a very long time.”.

The media behaved similarly poorly in breaking the “Tailwind” story, a ludicrous claim that U.S. special forces used nerve gas during an operation in Vietnam intended to assassinate American defectors to the communists. Anyone with an ounce of sense could see that this story was ridiculous, and indeed, it began to fall apart almost from the instant it was reported, ultimately ruining a number of reputations at CNN and Time.

Would anyone have believed such a story about World War II and the “greatest generation?” Of course not, but many in the media have been willing to believe that U.S. servicemen in Vietnam were capable of any atrocity. This predisposition lives on today. Here’s our old friend, John Kerry, last year on Face the Nation. American troops, said Kerry, were “going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the — of, of, of historical customs, religious customs . . .”

The narrative of the left includes that all soldiers are driven to enlist by economic factors (some are, not all), all soldiers are children forced into going to war, all soldiers come back from war deranged and dangerous and that all soldiers are war criminals waiting to happen. Never mind that the majority of Americans reject that narrative. But the media is interested in the negative stories and ignore people like First Lt. Walter B. Jackson when he receives a Distinguished Service Cross. The true stories, the real narrative, are out there. Just not on the news:

To read of the abundant acts of heroism in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. soldiers, all one has to do is read Bing West’s account of Fallujah, No True Glory; or the blogs of Michael Yon; or the remarkable story by Jeff Emanuel in the American Spectator, entitled “The Longest Morning,” an account of a battle in Samarra involving four paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division. Those paratroopers “became the object of a pre-planned, coordinated effort by dozens of al Qaeda to kidnap and slaughter American soldiers only days before General Petraeus’s internationally televised testimony to the U.S. Congress on the state of the war in Iraq. Not all survived — but those who did fought like heroes, saving each other and preserving the honor of their nation.”

In No True Glory, one can read about Marine major Douglas Zembiec, who as a captain was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions during the battle for Fallujah. After the battle, he said that his Marines had “fought like lions,” and himself became known as “the Lion of Fallujah.” Volunteering to return to Iraq before he was slated to do so, the 34-year-old Zembiec was killed on May 10. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates eulogized him this way:

In May, the Lion of Fallujah was laid to rest at Arlington [National Cemetery] and memorialized at his alma mater in Annapolis. The crowd of more than 1,000 included many enlisted Marines from his beloved Echo Company. An officer there told a reporter: “Your men have to follow your orders; they don’t have to go to your funeral.”

"There will be no true glory for our soldiers in Iraq until they are recognized not as victims, but as aggressive warriors." That quote from Bing West says it all.

Barack Attack!

Jay at Stop the ACLU notes the rapid reaction to Barack Obama's remarks about raising Social Security taxes by the nutroots.

One had better walk the thin line drawn by the nutroots or they will turn on you like a rabid dog. After all, they think they made you so they’ll do their best to unmake you if you don’t stay in line. In today’s political world where the left have let the nutroots gain so much control of their party, Obama could have just made a fatal flaw. Things can turn on a dime, but when the big lefty blogs speak, most moonbat bots obey. It will be interesting to see if Obama can recover from this one. This could be the nail in his coffin.

Step out of line, and a pack of ravening HuffnPuffers, Koz Kidz or other nutroot organizations will MoveIn™ to the attack like a pack of rabid wolverines!

With the television and movie writers on strike, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard, always on the lookout for a new way to turn a buck, have decided to step in and fill the void! The way in which the nutroots can turn on a former darling in the blink of an eye provides us with the fodder for the first offering from our new television network, Blue Crab Television or BCTV™. Our first daytime drama will be a soap opera that tracks the day-to-day fun and games As The Nutroots Turn! Can't Miss TV! Daytime Emmy, here we come!

UPDATE: New, improved photo!

The Hard Way

No matter what I do or say,
Youre much too dumb to educate.
One day lifes going to turn around and slap you in the face,
Then youre gonna find out the hard way.
Youll take the hard way,
Gonna take the hard way.
(Ray Davies, The Hard Way)

DrewM, posting at Ace of Spades HQ, points out the dismal box office numbers for the latest Hollywood anti-war flopperoo, Lions for Lambs. (When even the Guardian calls it a 'turkey' you know it has to stink so badly that one can hear it.) Yet another slap in Hollywood's collective face.

Looks like the Saturday night box office estimates are in and while Lions for Lambs basically doubled its take from Friday, $6.7 million in box office is only good for 4th place.

A distant 4th place: Bee Movie grossed $26 million, American Gangster $24 million, and Fred Claus $19 million.

Hollywood is flushing huge amounts of money down the drain on these celluloid gobblers. At some point, the studios are going to realize that their declining revenues are somehow tied to their poor judgment in selecting targets to bash. They'll have to take a few more hard lessons to figure it out, though. Although they may yet prove to be completely incapable of being educated.

When Dirty Politics Fail

Harry Reid, the most ineffective Senate leader in recent memory, has managed - yet again - to have one of his dishonest ploys fail. Desperate to pass any of the 13 pork-bloated annual spending bills, Reid tried to couple together a few bills using money for veterans as a sort of human shield to prevent a veto. A funny thing happened on the way to the scam, though. Republicans held firm and forced the decoupling of the bills. Reid continues to stuff the spending bills with glistening gobbets of fresh pork, though. Not one of the spending bills has passed yet.

The reason that not one of 13 appropriations bills had reached the president's desk was Bush's threat to veto at least 10 of them. Doubting their ability to override these vetoes, Democratic leaders conjured up combined packages that Bush would dare not veto. The earmark-heavy appropriations bill for the Labor and Health and Human Services (HHS) departments would be joined with the Defense bill, which funds Iraq, and with Military Construction, which contains money for veterans.

The Defense component was quickly removed after protests by Rep. John Murtha, influential chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. But plans for a Labor-HHS merger with Military Construction went forward. A stand-alone bill containing veterans money had passed the House, 409 to 2, on June 15, and a similar measure got Senate approval, 92 to 1, on Sept. 6 — measures Bush would sign. But Democrats held off final passage so they could meld it with Labor-HHS, which they did in last week's Senate-House conference report.

At the same time, the pork content of Labor-HHS grew. Citizens Against Government Waste found 2,274 earmarks in the bill worth $1 billion. They include $1.5 million for the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute and $2.2 million for the AFL-CIO Appalachian Council. Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, North Dakota's two professed budget balancers, got $1 million for Bismarck State College. Sen. Arlen Specter, the Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations subcommittee's ranking Republican, procured $882,025 for "abstinence education" in his home state of Pennsylvania.

The conference report's "compromise" Labor-HHS bill at $151 billion was actually more expensive than either the House or Senate version. It contains a $1 million earmark for a Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service and Representative Democracy at South Dakota State University to honor the former Senate majority leader who was defeated for re-election in 2004. Sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd and Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Daschle Center was one of nine earmarks "airdropped" into the final version by the Senate-House conference without being passed by either the Senate or House. Silently removed from the bill by the conference report was the prohibition, passed by the Senate in a rare defeat for earmarkers, against spending $1 million for the Woodstock "hippies" museum in Bethel, N.Y.

Reid was absolutely furious that his ploy had failed and resorted to calling Republicans "sheep and chickens", a completely unseemly way for a Senate leader to act. But completely in character for a bumbling, inept hack politician like Reid. This hometown Newspaper once likened Reid to Bozo the Clown. Which is grossly unfair to Bozo, who was a success in life.

“On Kenneth’s Frequency Since 2003″

Best completely ersatz news of the campaigns so far this season. It's at Cold Fury. Do not have liquids any where near where you are sitting. You have been warned.

UPDATE: Well, if you didn't see this coming, you haven't been reading here often enough!

Chronicle

My friend and fellow blogger from Thailand, Agam, continues to chronicle the uprising in Burma and the brutal suppression of the people by the military junta that controls that nation. He put together a video montage, in chronological order, of the protests in Burma. I'm embedding that video here, but I urge you to go over to visit Agam's blog (Agam's Gecko) where he has much, much more.

Crossing America

Toby Harndon, the US Editor of of the British Telegraph, is making a road trip across America and blogging about it daily at his Telegraph blog. In his blog post from yesterday, he has an interesting observation.

At Oklahoma City airport, we met a soldier, Private First Class Karen Casteel, 36, a single mother who had just spent 10 months away training while her parents looked after her son Taylor, six – who was kitted out in fatigues and holding a sign that read: “Welcome Home, Private Mom”. It was a reminder that in much of Middle America support for the war against Islamofascism remains solid.

“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” said PFC Casteel, an avionics mechanic on Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters, as she hugged Taylor. “It’s my job and I figure that every one person can make a difference.” She fully expects to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan any time.

Why would someone like this join the National Guard and be fully supported by her family in doing so? College credits and sign-up bonuses are certainly part of it. There’s also an individual’s get-up-and-go factor (which is where Michael Moore is almost 180 degrees out of whack) – plus the US armed forces are engines of social mobility.

But there’s also a deep patriotism, to which that the memorials to Americans who gave their lives in far-flung lands that dot the country bear silent testimony.

Exactly. Away from the East and Left coasts, America is quite different in many ways. Patriotism is not just a word in the heartland; it is a deeply held belief. Harndon also has some sharp observations on the problems Democrats are suddenly facing like Hillary Clinton's adventures in sockpuppetry to Barack Obama's apparently cold reception from the press over a recent press conference performance. It's worth a read.

Democratic Election Strategy 2008

UPDATE: This story is generating a serious tizzy on the left wing of the blogosphere.

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday that if elected he will push to increase the amount of income that is taxed to provide monthly Social Security benefits.

Obama and other Democratic presidential candidates previously have signaled support for this idea.

But during an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama said subjecting more of a person's income to the payroll tax is the option he would push for if elected president.

He objected to benefit cuts or a higher retirement age.

"I think the best way to approach this is to adjust the cap on the payroll tax so that people like myself are paying a little bit more and people who are in need are protected," the Illinois senator said.

"That is the option that I will be pushing forward."

Paul Krugman is whining mightily, The HuffnPuff Post has not one but two people weighing in, Taylor Marsh and Dave Johnson. To say both are unhappy is an understatement.