As IF Times

link Cleaver: If Obama wasnt president, we would be ‘marching on the White House’ – The Hills Blog Briefing Room.

Apart from the racism that this sentiment represents, the truly astounding aspect of this announcement is the blatant stupidity and naivete.  It’s all but saying that policies coming out of the White House are horribly wrong and ineffective, especially to the Black community.  Hello! Rational people have been saying that for years and only now it’s become obvious? 

Barack Obama is the standard bearer for a number of constituencies which pushed him into the world’s highest office.  By liberals of course who were keen to demonstrate their willingness to embrace a non white candidate.   By youth because he was someone closer to their age than option B at the time.  By Latinos and other minorities because he represented a possible movement towards their sensibilities.  But especially by Blacks since he was one of their own and finally, some measures would be taken to address their issues of inequity in society.

It would be useful to look at history and note that some of the biggest human tragedies happened because of misplaced idealism granted to a member of that particular society.  By some counts the death of between 45 and 75 million Chinese by starvation during the Great Leap forward was orchestrated by…a Chinese, Mao Tse Tung, surely one of the biggest mass murderers in the history of man.   We’re not sure if those who died were pulling for the homey in Peking.  Josef Stalin didn’t care too much about the native blood since he was responsible for about 23,000,000 people’s death through starvation.  Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il haven’t exactly treated their own countrymen particularly well either, apparently disposing of  over 2 million of them over their terms in office.  During the terror reign of Idi Amin in Uganda, apart from being one of the 300,000 or so killed while he ran that country, you’d have a good chance of being eaten as well.

We could go on to list statesmen such as Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Min.   The point is, having a common racial heritage in all of these cases didn’t prevent people from being victimized in their own countries.  People who think that just because they happen to share a trait with someone in charge puts them on the insider’s list for favours are…well, they’re just dumb.  Would anyone ascribe any more trust to someone who was left handed just because they also happened to be a lefty? Or redheaded? Or bald? 

On the religious front, I’m sure lots of people happily absorbed all the earnest pleadings of James Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert before it was discovered that in fact they were the wolves among the lambs.  We know that Bernie Madoff was considered a mensch in the Jewish community until somebody asked for a cheque.  

The kind of identity politics being played out today ironically reduces the chances of anything being done which can benefit the most people.  Somebody will always feel aggrieved and the irrationality of their tribalism prevents the ability for society to move forward in a cohesive way.  It makes no sense to support someone who is unsupportable.   The bottom line is, if he’s a goof to you, he’s a goof to all.

link The Years of Shame – NYTimes.com.

Some may be aware of the writings, or more correctly the rantings of Paul Krugmann.  By profession, he is an economist, yet somehow his unhinged opinions on politics is where he derives most of his notoriety these days.   In the most recent missive published in the New York Times, the true depth of his insanity is on full display for the world to see.

Even as the U.S. rightly commemorates the September 11 bombings from ten years ago, Krugmann fires some vile shots at Messrs. Bush and Giuliani for the heinous crime of happening to be in charge when the terrorist acts took place.   He calls them false heroes who capitalized on the incident to aggrandize themselves.  As I’ve said numerous times, everyone is entitled to their opinions, no matter how out of touch with reality they may be.  The greatest benefit of living in a free society is that any and every idiot is allowed a voice.   Only by comparing these opinions with actual facts can  people determine whether or not to listen to these idiots. 

Years ago, a golfer savant named Moe Norman was recognized for his genius in doing one thing; striking a golf ball.  Other than this very narrow area of human achievement, he was essentially unable to communicate with people.  As long as you didn’t expect anything sage from his unintelligible utterances, you could admire his innate skill.  Apart from his ball striking ability, you couldn’t depend on his opinion on whether or not the sun came out much less on a topic of any kind.  Certainly, no one would seek his opinion on the state of fiscal balances in the economy.

Krugmann seems to fall into this same category.  Although a past winner of a Nobel prize in economics, it’s worth noting that Al Gore and Barack Obama are also Nobel winners, so this in itself is not a validation of other-worldy brilliance.  Unlike Mr. Norman, Krugmann has the soapbox of The New York Times to express his nonsense and that’s where it gets evil.  There are those people out there that still think the Times is a legitimate news organization.  Over the past 30 years and increasingly in the past 10, the opinions espoused in that circular are more conspicuously out of sync with reality.  It’s as if they lived in their own delusional bizarro world where reality is an inconvenient nuisance.  To them, gravity is the product of some capitalist monopoly.

There will always be a market for this kind of ‘journalism’, but increasingly, that niche market of leftist drivel is shrinking as subscription levels prove.  According to their own statistics, the Times circulation has fallen to just about 830,000 in 2010,  a decline of 5% from a year ago which was also in decline from the year previous.   When they publish the opinions such as Krugmann’s it serves to marginalize them more and more from sane people.  Even Moe Norman would wince.