What more proof do you need?

Cartoon May Have Been Catalyst for ‘Kick a Ginger Day’ Attacks on Redheads at Calif. School

Dozens of students at a California middle school attacked their red-haired classmates as part of “Kick a Ginger Day,” an event possibly inspired by TV show “South Park,” police said.

Sheriff’s Lt. Scott Chew told MyFoxLA.com that up to four students were assaulted at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas on Nov. 20.

One 12-year-old boy, who has red hair and freckles, was reportedly attacked twice on Friday by as many as 14 students.

How many of you want to bet that the kids’ parents try to sue the creators of South Park?  More importantly, how many will reflexively return their children to the scene of their abuse?

I have been meaning to write plenty about this subject, but here’s a fragment:  why do we unthinkingly inflict torture on children–both in the home and in their schools by the force of law–when we’re not sentimentalizing them?  They are in the position that women occupied in this country in the last century, and arguably up to the present moment:  alternately demonized and idealized.  When they react poorly to a pathological situation, their maltreatment is then justified:  they are then scapegoated as pathological, instead of their environment.  The Malthusians, environmentalists and many feminists openly proclaim that far fewer of them should even be born; others unthinkingly characterize all babies as “little angels” and ignore their human needs, shutting them up in horrific schools that do little to educate them, and perhaps slapping them around at home in the guise of “discipline.”

The leaked (or stolen) climate change emails are more disappointing than surprising to me.  See this Washington Post article, In the trenches on climate change, hostility among foes:

In another [e-mail], [Phil] Jones and [Michael E.] Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” Mann writes.

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor,” Jones replies.

Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who comes under fire in the e-mails, said these same academics repeatedly criticized him for not having published more peer-reviewed papers.

“There’s an egregious problem here, their intimidation of journal editors,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘If you print anything by this group, we won’t send you any papers.’”

I’ve encountered bullies like this, and it sucks.  But I agree with Jeff Id of the Air Vent that the e-mails really pale in comparison to the kind of stuff that’s aired publicly.  In “Baby Steps” he writes:

If you are new and have a technical background (of any sort) and you read the hockey stick posts you’ll be asking yourself why the insanity of this can get through peer review and why it’s not a front page story on the New York Times. In my opinion it makes the emails look like child’s play. What’s more is that the hockey stick creators make one method after another which provide similar distortions of the data and FALSE temperature curves. In my opinion, ANY, statistician would say the same thing. — Several have.

These new emails do not provide any huge revelation of collusion, we already knew about that. They don’t provide any smoking gun proving intentional corruption of data for a conclusion (although the Jones quote was good enough for me). They don’t have any proof of making a conclusion in exchange for money or proof of changing a conclusion for personal benefit. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t expect any of that. The mechanism of reward for certain results is exactly what some of us expected it to be.

What the emails show is that there is some good science going on. There are some quality open discussions in them for sure. What they also show however, is a pattern of elimination of dissenting views. They show an advocacy by some ’scientists’ which belies scientific credibility. These few names are universally limited to the top people in the field — think about what that means. These are the ones who actively work to make sure that dissent is unpublished and are often the loudest in public to discredit others. Mann (creator of the bogus Al Gore hockey stick) seems to be the worst offender along these lines but he clearly has a circle of trusted friends. Finally, these files show a lot of money involved in the industry. Big dollars are in play with big travel budgets, prestige and a lot of power for those who follow the main player’s lead.

I think the distortions that are occurring in public view are the most frightening, along with the marginalization of anyone who disagrees.  You don’t have to invade some scientist’s privacy to find accusations that dissenters are oil company shills and the like.  Left-feminists seem particularly amnesiac, with their apparent willingness to repeat terms like “denialist.”  It seems they have already forgotten about the hurtfulness of the epithet “feminazi,” and are perfectly willing to appropriate the tactic of mindlessly smearing, rather than engaging with, anyone they disagree with.  Comparing or linking your ideological opponents to Nazis is a cheap tactic intended to shut down serious debate, particularly when the topic of debate was never practiced by the Nazis (it’s one thing, however misleading, to point out that Hitler was in fact a vegetarian, or that the National Socialists wanted universal healthcare; it’s another to link them to practices they simply have no meaningful association with, like contemporary feminism or climate science.)

Essentially:  the e-mails are bad, but I hear worse things in supposedly polite conversation.  Also, like Real Climate, I can’t endorse a criminal invasion of privacy.  But, like many others, I’m willing to bend my principles if the New York Times does it first.

You know, I’m a feminist who acknowledges sex differences. Hell, I’ll even go on record defending Peter Thiel and Larry Summers. And I don’t think human nature is infinitely malleable. But it drives me crazy to read mindless theorizing about sexual (or racial) differences in scientific aptitude or capability, based on studies showing how certain groups behave at this point in history. Apparently the status quo magically becomes an objective standard and predictor for how certain groups will behave throughout all eternity.  It’s bad enough coming from conservatives, but you’ll also hear it often–too often–from libertarians.

In 1910 women represented 6% of American doctors; I’m sure that many took this to mean that few American women were interested in practicing medicine as physicians.  In 2003 they represented for the first time the majority of applicants to medical school, and slightly less than half its students.  What conclusions can I draw from this?  Nothing that I can be confident of, which distinguishes me from those who would confidently assert that women lack the fundamental drive to study the sciences.  Also, I found those figures via Wikipedia.  Certainly no conservative men writing about sex differences have brought it to my attention.

Of course, now that women are making advances in the life sciences, we must be reminded that they can’t wrap their pretty little minds around the physical sciences, and would never want to.  The Audacious Epigone uses this Pew Research Center interactive quiz on general scientific knowledge to hint as much.  A bare-bones summary of the results is available here, but only the completed quiz will provide you with a demographic breakdown of the responses, which show, as the A.E. points out, that men did slightly better on the non-life-science questions, whereas women did better on the life-science (or Betty Crocker) questions.

From Audacious Epigone’s post on the matter, More evidence men more interested than women in non-biological science:

The following nine questions were more frequently answered correctly by men than they were by women:
- According to most astronomers, which of the following is no longer considered a planet?
- Which of the following may cause a tsunami?
- The global positioning system, or GPS, relies on which of these to work?
- What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures in the atmosphere to rise?
- What have scientists recently discovered on Mars?
- The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move in the future. (T/F)
- Lasers work by focusing sound waves. (T/F)
- Electrons are smaller than atoms. (T/F)
- All radioactivity is man-made. (T/F)

In contrast, women did better than men did on the following three questions:

- Which OTC drug do doctors recommend that people take to help prevent heart attacks?
- How are stem cells different from other cells?
- Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria. (T/F)

As you can see, women are most successful at answering the questions involving home and hearth.  They are most concerned with information that determines whether or not Hubby should take aspirin to prevent his heart attacks, say, or if Junior should take antibiotics for his cold.  Am I being outlandish?  Here is what A.E. takes away from this:

Although the public faces of outrage over sex differences in scientific accomplishment are those of feminist academics, I suspect most women are indifferent or even a bit annoyed by the push for them to pursue avenues of study they are largely uninterested in, just as I’d be irked at encouragement to become skilled in the fields of interior decorating or primary education.

Aren’t most interior decorators gay men–at least the prominent ones I see on TV?  Moving on, by way of comparison, A.E. does not point out that the college-educated do far better on the quiz than the general public.  Turns out that the differences are far more dramatic along educational lines than gender ones.  I took the liberty of capturing an image of the demographics so you can see for yourself without taking the quiz:

As you can see, college graduates score the highest on this quiz.  The gap between college graduates and those with some college is 1.4 points, much more dramatic than the gap between male and female scores (0.7).  And they really wipe the floor with those who have no college education at all, with a whopping advantage of 2.9 points.

From this would it be safe to conclude that we should stop harassing the American public about scientific knowledge, since clearly the majority are content with their NASCAR, nachos, boobs, and Oprah Winfrey?  Imagine how you’d feel, my presumably educated reader, if someone tried to force those plebian pursuits on you.  And vice versa, of course:  the rubes just want to be left alone, and would be indifferent or even annoyed if you tried to push Science on them.

Finally:  the quiz measures knowledge, not aptitude, which I believe can help explain why those aged 30-49 also did the best.  (I don’t see anyone falling over herself to get those over 30 into new careers in the physical sciences.)  Or should we conclude that the young as well as the old have less interest in science, and that this is immutable?  In that case it might be futile to educate the young in the sciences at all.  Or, at the very least, annoying to them.

As a side note, I did find it frightening that anyone would miss the question linking carbon dioxide with climate change.  Not because the association is necessarily accurate, but because it seems one would have to be truly oblivious to miss it in every screaming news headline, whether in print, online or on TV.

I’m the Thursday guest editor for Strike the Root.  Go check it out.  I especially like the links I put up today, also listed here:

Army Suicides in 2009 Equal Last Year’s Record High

And the year isn’t even over yet.

Arkansas Police Use Taser on 10-Year-Old Girl

All for the child’s safety, of course.

Retrial Ordered in Officer’s Killing

Cory Maye finally gets a second chance.

Promoting Democracy by the Sword

Wendy McElroy on the “fallacy of the excluded middle,” or the notion that pacifism is the only alternative to warmongering.

My Body, Their Choice

Peter Suderman:  “If the history of bureaucracy teaches us anything, it’s that what the government funds is what the government controls.”

The Contrarian Hero

Peter Thiel:  “In human rights, a conceptual breakthrough generally involves no new knowledge, but rather the rigorous application of a principle we already knew.”

On Poverty, Interest Rates, and Payday Loans

Payday loans look predatory to those who don’t need them.

Ten Reasons Not to Abolish Slavery

Robert Higgs examines the 19^th-century rationalizations for a once-pervasive abomination.

The Lethal Effects of Development Advocacy

Disproportionate spending on HIV and AIDS creates some very perverse incentives.

How Much Has Inequality Risen–Low B.S. Edition

Only a small fraction of top earners have seen a dramatic rise in income.

Do Big Boxes Displace Mom-and-Pop Stores?

It “depends on whether big-box stores like Wal-Mart are complements or substitutes.”

A Modest Proposal (satire)

As long as we’re forcing everyone to buy health insurance, why not make them buy firearms too?

CNBC Considers 3.7% Annualized Inflation “Tame”

The media have a rather high tolerance.

The Science of Success

Given a supportive environment, some genetic vulnerabilities may predispose humans to achievement rather than dysfunction.

smudo

A photoblog.

It continually baffles me that not only are there lots of infertile couples desperate for a child, or an additional one, as well as couples desperate to adopt; yet there are huge barriers to adoption and millions of young women have abortions every year.  I’m not fond of the idea of government subsidies for carrying children to term, but I would probably get behind some sort of free-market solution; and probably anything is better than the current situation.  Yet many people my age are more concerned about where their styrofoam cup or plastic bottle might end up, because that might hypothetically hurt someone, or, heaven forbid, some polar bear, in a future generation.  That’s considered being conscientious and socially just and politically aware.

Also, nearly everyone spends their most fertile, and possibly most productive, years locked up in a government school of one sort of another (I think many of our universities receive enough funding to be considered government schools, especially the so-called private universities that often get more federal funds than the public ones).  Nearly always, one is being forced to work on something better learned on one’s own out of a goddamn book.  Then many go off to work for a corporation–also a government entity, depending on your definition, or the military, which is a government entity by any definition.  That’s also considered the responsible thing to do.  Then women and men alike spend their thirties racing against the clock.

Am I the only one who thinks that things are considerably backasswards?

In “Daddy Issues,” Dennis Perrin wonders why we offer our presidents not merely obedience but also filial piety:

What is it that makes Americans feel a family connection to the presidency? Yes, we are indoctrinated from birth about our unique goodness, our special qualities; and yes, the president is viewed as the father figure of American righteousness. But how much intellectual or emotional energy does it take to step back from this scenario and see it for the fable it is? If history is any guide, apparently a lot.

…Why should we, who have no real political or economic power, who must rent our lives from those who do, feel such familial ties to the imperial manager? Over ninety-nine percent of those Americans who wept for JFK didn’t know the man, yet most behaved as if a loved one had been suddenly yanked from existence. This illustrates not only the strength of the national myth, but the eagerness of consumers to embrace it.

An independent, critical mind can, with enough practice and conditioning, resist such authoritarian impulses. But there is no reward for such thinking, and certainly no major market. Obedience to the master narrative is required to advance professionally, most especially in politics. For the rest of us, acceptance is expected but not really necessary. Our opinions matter only to the degree a demographic needs defining, or a voting bloc catered to. Beyond that, what we think or how we react to events like assassinations is our own miserable business. You might have cried for JFK, but he sure as fuck didn’t cry for you.

This reminded me of an interview with the creators of Family Guy, available on Hulu, where Seth MacFarlane reveals that their most controversial joke of all time mocked the Kennedy assassination:

Family Guy – Censored Jokes (video)

Apparently Family Guy can get away with making envelope-pushing jokes about race and sex, as well as characters who are rapists and pedophiles, but not with jokes about JFK.   Not even “feminine hygiene” is as offensive!  Which in turn reminds me of Rachel Simmons’ complaint that the nation was more outraged by Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s award ceremony than, say, the gang rape and beating of a 15-year-old in Richmond.  The message is clear:  don’t mess with the politico-celebrity class.  As Perrin notes, this rule is most rigorously enforced by the proles themselves.

Also see Gene Healy’s The Cult of the Presidency.  I’m also sure Arthur Silber has plenty to say about the dangerous implications of this phenomenon.

I learned of Watada’s release from the Army and Officer Hoh’s resignation the same day.  At first I was equally exhilarated by the stories, but then Hoh’s came to seem suspect.  As Arthur Silber more eloquently puts it, Watada is the genuine hero, while Hoh’s resignation lacks any underlying moral principles.

The main point of Hoh’s four-page resignation, which many commentators are fawning over, seems to be this:  that he is Not a Wussy.  (I’d put it in stronger terms, but I’m trying to keep this a family-friendly blog, for the 3-year-olds who might be reading.)  I’m surprised “Matthew Hoh – Totally Not a Wussy” wasn’t in the footer for each page.  As Silber did, I found the following passage the most indicative of this attitude:

“I’m not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love,” Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the “second-best job I’ve ever had,” his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve.

“There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed,” he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. “I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys.”

Basically, Hoh is not against killing per se; he is thinking it unwise to continue in a “wasteful” war.  He is even willing to take a cut in pay and prestige to do it.  I haven’t looked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this got the career blogs humming in disapproval.  It seems few can fathom turning down a promotion.

Perhaps because his resignation lacks principle, he is getting the bulk of the media coverage.  Watada’s resistance and release is getting less play.  Is it because his stance is the more genuinely liberating  and therefore threatening one?

“I believe the only real God-given right we have is the freedom to choose,” Watada says. “And when we take that away from ourselves, then we put ourselves in an invisible prison that nobody else imposes on us except for ourselves. When you tell yourself again that you do have a choice–I could go to prison for it, I could be tortured, I could die for it, but I have that choice and I can make it–then that invisible prison kind of lifts off, and you feel free. I felt so free when I told myself that I have a choice.”

It is good to be reminded of this.  When we complain that the government is oppressing us, we concede that our freedom comes from the government.  That leaves us even less free than before.

(Is it trivial to point out that Watada could have faced capture and “prison,” “torture” and “death” if he’d remained in the Army?  Had he followed his conscience or not, he would have been in danger.  I am not trying to imply that his decision was entirely self-serving, only to underscore that the government was offering him a choice between threats abroad and threats at home.)

I read Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia when it was published 15 years ago, in 1994.  I reread some of it on Saturday night.  It was part of my futile never-ending quest to understand why and how some men exploit women and children and generally get to go on with their lives without consequences, as though it never happened.  The book includes the case of a teenage girl whom 4 boys  pulled into a car  while she was walking home alone.  3 of the 4 took turns raping her while laughing and joking, as well as declaring that she had “asked for it” by walking alone.

As it turns out, exactly as I was reading this, a 15-year-old girl in Richmond was being raped and beaten by as many as 10 of her her high school acquaintances, while 20 or more watched and laughed and even recorded the torture.  None were brave enough to intervene or even to sneak off and call police, though some grew bold enough to join in the raping.

From the comments on many of the articles on this particular attack, I find that many are blaming race and class, when they are not blaming the victim herself.  Yet the victim described in Reviving Ophelia was white and middle-class, and presumably her attackers were also.  And the attackers in the Polanski and Phillips cases were most solidly privileged, white entertainers.  (Both Roman Polanski and John Phillips are accused of drugging and raping their teenage victims, in Phillips’ case his own daughter.)  Polanski acted alone, but the media and his Hollywood supporters have generally filled in for the role of leering mob.

Many also blame porn, but I think it is at worst a symptom, not a disease.  Reviving Ophelia was published well before the internet was streaming pornography into everyone’s bedrooms.   Polanski’s case, as his defenders never tire of pointing out, is decades old.

The only truly common denominators are these:  that these children were raped by boys and men, and that someone has found a way to blame each of these women for being attacked.  Nothing can immunize these women from blame:  youth is not enough, being the attacker’s own daughter isn’t enough.  Even children, who can’t consent, are “asking for it,” in some cases presumably from their own fathers and friends.

I feel uneasy even pointing out that these were men who raped children.  I expect to be understood as a male-basher just for identifying the sex of those involved.  Yet many don’t hesitate to blame the victim, and implicitly all of womankind for their vulnerability.  Yes, I know, “victim” is not the politically correct word.  But nobody talks of “robbery survivors,” and I don’t want to imply that rape is some sort of routine trial for the strong to live through.

So, what to do?

The libertarians offer a very partial solution, which I do wholeheartedly support–the arming of women–but this is effective only against the small fraction of rapes which are committed by strangers.  Unfortunately it seems to be the only category of rape that libertarians and conservatives are routinely willing to acknowledge.  When they do acknowledge statistics showing that rape is widespread and perhaps worsening, they either:  deny them as paranoid concoctions of those harebrained feminists; or they blame the Sexual Revolution and the weakening of gender roles, which is, again, the fault of the feminists.

However, after reading Alternet’s “Why Do Men Catcall?” I suspect I’ve hit on some sort of solution of my own.  Feminists, always a problem, will probably object that it sounds too much like the stereotypical “woman’s intuition.”  But this is a step beyond, and far more impressive:  women merely have to attain psychic abilities.  This way, they will be able to detect whether or not a acquaintance, friend, date, relative, officer of the peace, or “liberating” soldier means them harm.  They will also be able to discern whether or not street harassment–itself often accompanied with joking and laughter–is merely harmless flattery, or will escalate into a brutal attack.  Since they are almost always blamed for their rapes, it is crucial that they develop these abilities.  (Abeer Qassim Hamza was harassed by soldiers for months before several finally decided to kill her and her family; her parents assumed they would “never attack a child.”)

I am not entirely being flip.  I’ve spent years trying to process the contradictory commands to women to “be careful,”  and nothing coherent has emerged, so I say:  attain supernatural mind-reading abilities!  Just be psychic, eliminate feminists, and girls can stop intruding upon others’ peace of mind with lurid stories of victimization.  The media’s got its hands full right now, what with the Richmond case and those of Polanski and Phillips.

Oh, but there’s this:  Reported Rapes hit 20-year low I further amend my conclusion:  become psychic, eliminate feminists, liberate technology.

By way of The Picket Line, I found this story:  Panel examines ‘war tax resistance’, where the hoary old “So are you against roads?” argument is resurrected in the comments.

The panel, “”The Power of the Purse: Women and War Tax Resistance,” was part of a four-day conference on tax resistance.  One of its speakers, Kathy Kelly, discussed the reasoning behind her convictions:

Kathy Kelly, who was sentenced to a year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites in 1988, said she came to the personal conviction that she would not support “bloody” government practices almost 30 years ago.

“There is no way, no how I would give my money to the Mafia, much less the IRS,” she said.

But her path isn’t for everyone, Kelly emphasized. Those who have families to consider, or who have been in the IRS system longer, could face stiffer penalties and heavier fines.

“We face a serious question about whether or not to continue to pour resources and productivity into military projects while we cannot meet human needs,” she said. “I think it’s a good idea to take that question seriously, as a personal question.”

And of course, in the comments (drumroll please), a formulation of the inevitable:  ”So, are you against roads too?”  One “Dinkledidder” writes:

Do these ladies have an issue with traveling on roads that are paved with tax-funded money? Did they receive an education at a public school? Do they have problems eating food or taking medicine that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration? I understand their stance as pacifists, I just find it hypocritical that they are willing to enjoy a free ride on the many other benefits that tax money provides.

What do I call this?  ”The Against Roads Fallacy”?  Driving on a taxpayer-funded road is taken as consent to funding it (it isn’t, for, generally speaking, no other roads are available); apparently it is also consent to participating in the American war machine as well, and everything else the government imposes on you and others.  What about the hypocrisy of those who want to expand government benefits for the sick and poor at home, but utterly ignore the lives being destroyed abroad–both funded by taxation?

Or is this just more of the “If You Don’t Like It, Why Don’t You Leave” fallacy? Well, there isn’t anywhere to go.

Speaking of which, I’ve had to defend The Seasteading Institute’s recently acquired nonprofit status against attacks that they are using “our” infrastructure to realize their goals, without paying taxes for them.  The irony is almost too deep to comment on.  They’re trying to create an option for leaving, which means they should have left already!  In other words, you’re totally free to build seasteads to live on in the ocean.  Try doing it with your bare hands out in the water.

So, to recap:  you consent to paying taxes by living in the United States (actually, you can’t dissent from paying them, which makes consent impossible).  You consent to using the tax-funded infrastructure, which by law is the only one available to you.  If you object to any part of that infrastructure, you are free to do exactly one thing, which is to give up everything.

Reminds me of the Onion spoof, Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village, where “Web users who choose to move to the desolate village are guaranteed an environment free from Google products and natural light from the sun.”  This is the illusion of choice offered to us.  You’re totally free to protest war, to opt out of the system.  This is only  so long as you also renounce, by Dinkledidder’s calculations, transit, education, food, medicine, and anything else necessary to life.  Do you feel free yet?  Have fun feeding yourself by the First Amendment.

Is this what they discuss on mainstream blogs?  The American Thinker tells us that maybe Obama isn’t as sweet as he seems, because he failed to properly defer to an older lady.  See if you can handle the awful truth:

Alice Palmer had been an Illinois state senator since 1991. In 1995 a U.S. congressional seat had become available and Ms. Palmer tossed her hat into the special election race. Barack Obama endorsed Palmer for Congress and she blessed him with an endorsement for the state seat she would leave open.

It was a simple plan: Palmer would go on to Washington and Obama would fill her seat in Illinois. The only problem was that Jesse Jackson Jr. would enter the congressional race and outspend Palmer almost two to one. After losing her congressional run, Palmer assumed that Obama would step aside and allow his elder to resume her post unchallenged.

But Barack Obama had no plans of stepping aside. That wasn’t the not-so-nice part. He certainly was entitled to stay in the Democratic primary. Convicted fraud artist, Tony Rezko raised over $15,000 for Obama’s campaign. That wasn’t the mean part either — though it was a little slimy. The not-so-nice part of Obama’s election victory was his treatment of Palmer. Obama had Palmer disqualified from the primary…[R]ather than leaving the outcome to the voters, Obama decided to take the matter into his own hands. He decided to use Chicago hardball tactics against Palmer. Obama had his team painstakingly examine each of the 1,580 signatures, searching for technicalities.

Obama was mean! To a lady! I’m shocked.  Shocked! Did you have any idea that those aspiring to positions of power might use anything but squeaky-clean tactics?  Like you, I never suspected.

But this is the sort of thing that captivates public attention, I suppose.  Is this all his opponents have got–breathless allegations that maybe he isn’t a nice guy?  If Obama kicked his new puppy on camera, it’d be all over the news outlets 24/7 for a week, and his popularity ratings would nosedive.  Actually, there’s an idea:  maybe he should try it if he decides to invade yet another country that hasn’t harmed us.  It would distract everyone from that.  Sort of like Clinton’s bombing of the Sudan to distract us from the Lewinsky trial, but backwards.

The American Thinker continues:

One by one, Obama’s ‘petitions guru’ [Ronald Davis] disqualified Palmer’s signatures for one reason or another. According to one local newspaper at the time: ‘Some of the problems include printing registered voters name [sic] instead of writing, a female voter got married after she registered to vote and signed her maiden name, registered voters signed the petitions but don’t live in the 13th district.’

At the end of the day, Obama disqualified enough signatures to kick Palmer out of the race. “While they were at it,” notes Freddoso, “Obama’s campaign got the other three candidates disqualified as well.”

Learning about the real Obama shatters the media-created image of Obama in an instant. Maybe, that’s why our brave journalists close their eyes, plug their ears and utter, “la, la, la, la.” Gee, Charlie, there’s a lot about him we don’t know.

In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Kerley, Obama doesn’t tolerate opposition well. His treatment of Palmer is sort of consistent with his treatment of his current opponents. I can think of words to describe Obama, like controlling and authoritarian. But nice doesn’t come to mind; unless you’re only looking at the polished image.

How many years of experience do we have with polished images coming out of American PR machines?  Is it so difficult to process that “liking what a guy says” is as laughable as thinking him “someone you could have a beer with“?  And did you know that a guy hankering for the most powerful office in the world might be something other than humble and egalitarian?  How often does this need to be repeated?

UPDATE:  I have been alerted by Divia Melwani that this should be reposted on seathogs.com.