AMERICA'S BLACK DINOSAURS

The death of 13-year-old Devin Brown at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department has generated a wide array of complicated emotions in the black community, including shock and anguish, confusion and introspection. Why, people wondered, was this boy killed? .... But while the community searched for real answers to complex questions in the days after the shooting, the traditional black leadership of the city did no such thing. Instead, our leaders reacted in ways that were all too predictable.

The Urban League's John Mack immediately jumped in - before the investigation had even been opened, much less completed - saying, "Some police officers don't value the lives of young African American males." The ever-pugnacious Rep. Maxine Waters beseeched the community to "demand justice." The NAACP's Geraldine Washington said police were supposed to " protect and serve, and they've got it wrong."

Not only were these responses predictable, but they were inflammatory, offering new reasons to question the health of America's civil rights advocacy groups, not just in Los Angeles but across the country. The leaders of these groups say they represent the interests of black Americans, yet it seems increasingly clear that their lives rarely touch the lives of those they claim to speak for and, in many cases, that they never move outside their own cloistered, out-of-touch activist circles....

In a desperate search to maintain their own relevancy, these groups have insisted on making white racism their nearly singular focus. This has not served them well.... With rare exceptions, the quest by civil rights groups to recapture the vibrancy and relevancy of a bygone era often leads to the advocacy of issues that cause a great deal of head-scratching. This tendency was exposed by the recent shameful episode involving Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where Rep. Waters (backed by a host of community activists and other leadership figures) led a series of protests and demonstrations in an attempt to "save our hospital" - even though the hospital teeters on the brink of closure because of irregularities that resulted in the deaths of patients. It was stunning to watch leaders arguing that efforts to close a hospital that was killing its black and brown patients was somehow the result of a conspiratorial racial animus toward the black-run institution.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Voting fraud in Britain too: "The general election is wide open to fraud, thanks to the headlong rush into postal voting, the Government was told yesterday. Ministers have been urged for years to introduce safeguards against cheating but have refused to change the law, according to John Owen, Birmingham's elections officer and one of the country's leading experts on the subject. He was giving evidence to a special election court convened to hear allegations of widespread fraud and vote-rigging in the June local elections last year.... Voters described how they were persuaded to hand their completed ballots to Labour canvassers to be delivered to the election office. The votes appeared to have been opened and changed, using correction fluid, in favour of Labour before being counted in the poll. An election manager testified that the office received phone calls during the campaign asking whether votes altered with correction fluid would count even if they arrived in sealed envelopes that had been slit open. Callers were assured that they would be valid" (!!).

How ironic that far-Leftists are implementing Milton Friedman's ideas about traffic congestion. Under "Red Ken", the system works like a charm in London -- by keeping the poor out -- and San Francisco is leaning that way too: "San Francisco would become the first city in the nation to charge drivers just for driving in its chronically congested downtown under a sure-to-be controversial proposal being aired today. Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, chair of the San Francisco Transportation Authority, will ask the agency to study a downtown toll zone -- whereby drivers would need to purchase a daily pass to drive in The City's most congested streets -- as a potential solution to the Municipal Transportation Agency's woeful budget problems."

America's own terrorists: "A pipe bomb was found and safely dismantled at a Department of Motor Vehicles office Tuesday - the latest in what is being investigated as a string of possible ecoterrorist incidents in communities east of Sacramento. In the same community of Auburn, a different type of homemade explosive was found and dismantled Sunday outside the Placer County Courthouse. No one claimed responsibility for either incident, the FBI said"

Californian terrorist caught: "In what federal agents consider a huge break in their probe of five attempted firebombings that have plagued the region since December, a 21-year-old Newcastle man was indicted Thursday on charges that he took part in three of the incidents. Ryan Daniel Lewis, who has been in federal custody since Feb. 8, was indicted on charges tied to attempted arsons in Lincoln on Dec. 27 and Auburn on Jan. 12, as well as the Feb. 7 firebombing of a Sutter Creek apartment complex that was under construction".

Feds protecting illegals: "Arizona prison officials say taxpayers are paying more than $28,000 a day to incarcerate hundreds of undocumented immigrants because the federal government hasn't filed the paperwork necessary to deport them to Mexico. Arizona Department of Corrections Director Dora Schriro said deporting such criminals should be a 'no-brainer' given the money that could be saved and the beds that could be freed in the state's overcrowded prison system. Formal deportation orders for 46 of the 526 eligible inmates have been on file for several months, but state prison officials can't get Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pick them up, Schriro said. 'I don't know why it's not getting done anymore, but it's not getting done,' she said."

A lot of Left-leaning churches are moving to "divest" from Israel -- i.e. sell shares in companies that make profits from dealings in Israel. Ten O'Clock Scholar has some good comments on it but misses the main point: The shares will be bought by someone else so the action will have no effect on anything in the real world.

Myth illogical : "The AARP claims to represent us seniors, but more often it just lectures us relentlessly. One such sermon in the AARP Bulletin, opposing any addition of choice and ownership to Social Security, boasted 'groups like AARP that oppose [privatization] will spend millions of dollars to sway opinion.' Apparently, it plans to waste thousands of words, too, and without much concern about accuracy."

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels despised democracy and believed in violence. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at "the true religion"

There is a good article today on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS about the towering hypocrisy of the Leftist media in the Gannon affair.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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