As the story of the FLDS raid continues to be a major news story, I have decided to add my two cents to the issue. While I am not a fan of the LDS Church in any of its forms, in this inst5ance I have to side with the members of the FLDS because the actions of the state have concerned me since I first heard of the raid on their “compound.”

The first troubling sign for me was the way the Texas Rangers went into the “compound”, which seemed more like a community to me. The massive show of force and the instant removal of all of the children in that community, even though there was no evidence that the children were in any danger, quite frankly scares me. The thought that the state can break up families on a whim and a whiff of suspicion should scare all of us. While I understand that children need to be protected in cases of abuse, and that the state has been given that responsibility by its citizens in most cases, this simply does not seem to be a situation where this action was warranted. It seems to me that the state looked at the lifestyle of the people living in that community, made a decision that they did not condone that lifestyle, and made the decision to break that community up by way of “protecting the children.” But can anyone tell me what good comes from taking children away from their mothers, none of whom has been charged with any crime, and sticking them into the state’s child welfare system? How is becoming a ward of t he state in the best interest of those children, and why are we willing to condone the treatment of these women as criminals in spite of the fact that none of them has been charged with any crime?

Another thing that bothers me is the seeming collusion between law enforcement and the media to paint the FLDS in the worst possible light. I always get a little bit suspicious when law enforcement and news organizations get too chummy, especially in a case that has the potential to be this explosive. Did anyone else find it odd that the press was in attendance when the raid was taking place? We know the police had to have informed the press, but to what purpose? After following the press coverage and their reportage of every little tidbit of salacious rumor and gossip about the FLDS, and the great cooperation between the Rangers and the press I have come to the conclusion that the whole point is to demonize the FLDS. If they can be made to look sufficiently sinister, then that allows the Rangers and the child protection agencies to escape any real scrutiny of their actions in this case; making the FLDS out to be some weird sex cult allows the authorities to sidestep questions about their launching this massive raid and breaking up these families on the word of one alleged victim.

This brings me to the most troubling aspect of the case: the mysterious “Sarah.” If you remember, it was a call to an abuse hotline from a young lady identifying herself as Sarah that was used as the basis of this raid. “Sarah” claimed to have given birth to several children while a minor, having been married off to an abusive husband, and having been so severely abused that she had to be hospitalized with broken ribs. The only thing is, no one can find “Sarah” anywhere, and none of the many women/girls named Sarah living in the community seems to fit the story given in the phone conversations with the abuse counselors. The Rangers and child protection agents have done their best to link someone in the community to that story, but so far have come up empty. You would think that before launching this raid and creating this media firestorm that the authorities would have had their ducks in a row, especially as it concerned the witness/victim whose story set this process in motion, but they didn’t. They simply decided to believe this story and forge ahead against a group they obviously felt was outside of the mainstream; it was basically an attempt in my view to destroy a community that the authorities deemed strange.

The funny thing is, while there have been no arrests of any of the people living in that polygamist community, there has been one arrest liked to the case. It seems that the police have taken into custody a woman that seems obsessed with the FLDS and is suspected of faking the “Sarah” phone call to destroy the FLDS. There is a nice piece at the American Spectator that describes this person’s past and points out that the alleged husband of the mysterious “Sarah” lives in Arizona and has not been to Texas since 1977! Yet CNN, Fox News, and the alphabet networks have not reported that, and the Texas authorities are trying their best to keep all of this information under their ten-gallon hats.

If the authorities felt they should raid that compound because they had proof of polygamous marriages going on there, then fine. Polygamy is against the law, and the law should be enforced. But to raid this compound on testimony that was sketchy at best, and is looking more fraudulent all the time smacks of the abuse of power to me. If the Texas Rangers can raid a community and separate families simply because they don’t like their lifestyles, and if they are allowed to do this without presenting any evidence of wrongdoing or without pressing any criminal charges, then who’s next? Regular LDS churches, AME Zion, primitive Baptists, and Hindus? I’ll be watching to see how this all shakes out, because it will say a lot about how far we are willing to allow our law enforcement to go in the interests of “protecting” us.

 

Moral: 1:a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior:ETHICAL c: conforming to a standard of right behavior

Immoral: not moral: WICKED, LEWD, LICENTIOUS

Amoral: neither moral nor immoral; esp: outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply

In this day and age where so much seems to be going wrong, there have risen among a group of people who have anointed themselves “culture warriors”, and who believe it is their lot to somehow define what is moral for society. While their intentions are admirable, I have long found their existence to be a bit disturbing. While I may share many of their views on many issues, one thing that makes me uncomfortable with the “culture warriors” is their quest to use the legislative process to enshrine their views of morality in statutory form. While I understand that nearly every law that is passed has some moral component to it, I still am a bit unnerved with the idea of trying to enshrine Judeo-Christian morality into the laws of the land, since those views do not cover everyone that is a Christian, much less those that are Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim.

One of the other problems that I have with the whole “culture warrior” mindset is that it tends to see America in the least moral light. Many of the “culture warriors” have a vision of American morality that is every bit as dark as the way that many liberals see the American conservative movement; where liberals see every move and position of the conservative as inspired by some sort of animus towards some special interest group, the “culture warrior” sees American society as bereft of any sense of morality at all. Hence, the liberal feels that it is his job to impose liberalism on a society that needs to be saved from itself, and the “culture warrior” sees his mission as one to save the American soul from its own depravity.

However, I cannot accept this view of the American soul as true, no more than I can accept that liberalism is the cure for the body politic. When I look at America, I know that there is much that needs to be improved upon and I know there are problems that must be solved. I have my problems with the promotion of the homosexual lifestyle, especially when it is aimed at schoolchildren; I object to the wanton slaughter of innocents that is called abortion; I stand against the attempts made to recast criminals as some sort of heroes, and I would like nothing more than to see the current system of “sex-ed” revamped. But even with those issues, I do not see a society that has lost its sense of morality, but a society that is struggling to define morality.

Contrary to the baleful cries of the “culture warriors,” America is not an amoral society…and that is why we have hope. Even as the society has slid towards a more immoral stance on many issues, there has always been a strong moral center in this nation. There have always been those who knew right from wrong, and have chosen to live moral lives. There have always been people whose lives we could look to be a guide to the types of lives we want to live, and whose ideals have shaped our society. We do not have to stand in fear of immorality, because the very idea of immorality means that our society still has a moral center; we still understand and recognize that right and wrong continue to exist, as they always have.

We have no need for the “culture warriors” because morality starts in the individual and then spreads to the society, and not vice versa. So long as we have people that are willing to stand for right, who are willing to do right, and live right we will survive. We are still a moral nation, regardless of the doom and gloom the “culture warriors” are selling as truth. And as long as one righteous, moral man lives, we will have hope.

 

 

A little while ago I wrote post about why black Americans were slow in warming up to Barak Obama, and in it I posited that the reason was that Barak was not viewed as “black like me.” He had not gone through the same struggles that many blacks had gone through, that he was just so different from most blacks that he would have a hard time connecting with them. Since that time the worm has truly turned, and now I find myself trying to figure out why there is this sudden embrace of Obama by much of the black voting populace. Some think it is simply about his race, some think it is just the same old politics as usual, and there are I am certain other theories floating around that may or may not shed led on the subject. But what follows is my particular take on the issue.

I was in my African American history seminar class the other day, and we were having a class discussion about how blacks treat one another, how we relate to one another, and how we see each other. One of my young classmates had the view that much of what we see in the black community is a manifestation of how the rest of the world views us; that we are in essence victims of the perceptions of us that others have created. I countered that the problem is not how others see us, but how we see ourselves; I felt that many of the images that we say bother us are our own creation, so we are victims of ourselves. Thinking a little more about it, we were both right in sense and it is in the melding of those ideas that I see the traction that Obama has been able to gain in the black community, even after first struggling to gain traction with “his” constituents.

The embrace of Barak Obama all comes back not to the fact that he is simply black, but because he is what blacks want people to see when they look at us. His image, politics aside, is the image that blacks want to be associated with all of us, as opposed to the dominant images of blacks in the media. So many times the images associated with blacks is of the inner city single mother, the gangbanger on the corner, or of the “iced out” rap star. These are all negative images, and many blacks want nothing more than to not be associated with these images, as we know how negative they are. We know that the world is watching and judging all of us on the basis of those images.

Politically, the images that people have of blacks in this country by and large are dominated by people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, and Charles Rangel. All of these people are your archetypical hardcore “Black Left” Democrats, whose very stock in trade is to garner power by appealing to what Shelby Steele so correctly called “white guilt.” Every slight is a reason to cry racism, every plan in opposition to them is a conspiracy against blacks, and every policy debate is a reason to launch another scathing attack on “institutional racism.” As much as we would like to see ourselves in the images of people like JC Watts, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, or Harold Ford, we have come to realize that since the squeaky wheel gets the media grease, the image of blacks in the political realm that are going to be publicized will not be the articulate manner of a Harold Ford, but the wild eyed conspiracy mongering of a Maxine Waters.

Into this political scene then steps one Barak Hussein Obama and he is exactly what many have been waiting for. He is tall, good looking, accomplished, educated, successful, polished, and as slick as black ice. He carries himself with pride, without looking haughty; he speaks like an Ivy League graduate, yet he retains some of the street patois that identifies him as “one of us”; he has “made it” in this world that seems like it is stacked against our success, yet he has never stopped being “down”, as the slang puts it. His is the image that we all want for the world to see and associate with black Americans, that of a man that is all of the things that whites admire and is still at home among the “regular” black folks.

And that is what concerns me about this situation, and not so much Obama’s decidedly left of center, boilerplate Democratic politics. It is the fact that we, as blacks continue to allow ourselves to be defined by what white people think of us; we internalize their views of us and spend so much of our time attempting to either live up to or escape those views that we barely are able to define ourselves. We are constantly wearing a mask to project to others what we think they want us to be and in so doing we lose sight of who we are. We allow ourselves to be seen as members of a group, whose image is wrapped up in how white people perceive one member of our race, and if that member is getting a negative reaction we all feel as if we are being viewed in a negative light. Until we are able to honestly define ourselves as individuals, until we are able to truly accept the fact that our black “brothers” are not wrong to hold unpopular opinions, and until we are able to divorce our ideas of “blackness” from the embrace of a defined set of opinions, mores, and political views we will remain stuck in our current rut.

We have the power to become Americans just like any other people, regardless of our skin color. But until we embrace those opportunities and divorce ourselves from the compulsion to group identify instead of behaving as true individuals, we are always going to be a people searching for just the right image, and just the right leader. We have to understand that we are too diverse to need a single leader, and that we are too diverse to allow ourselves to be defined by any single image. We have among us the poor, the rich, the gangbanger and the graduate; our race contains all of these things…but we have to be strong enough not to allow any one of those things to define all of us.

And as much as it may pain some to hear it, that includes rejecting the image of Obama as the image of all black Americans. His story can be an inspiration, and he can be used as a role model for people to aspire to be like. But he is no more the singular image of black Americans than I am, and we have to be strong enough to say so.

Even if it hurts.

I was reading an article at Town Hall by John Stossel today about the unintended consequences of the sex offender registry laws, and how one young man was prosecuted and forced to register for having the misfortune of not being liked by his girlfriend’s mother. There were of course comments that acknowledged that the law was being misapplied to a case like this, that there should be some consideration taken for the entire circumstance of the “crime”. There were also the posters who said quite loudly that the law is the law, and it shouldn’t be changed or interpreted differently just because there are cases like this man’s out there. I related the story of my cousin who is a “sex offender” because he, as a 19 year old custodian, had sex with a 17 year old student that he was dating at the school, and how he was only prosecuted because the girl’s parents disapproved of their interracial relationship.

What really struck me about the people saying that the law is the law was how absolutist and moralistic they were in defending these types of prosecutions. While I understand that it is immoral to have sex outside of marriage, I also understand that it happens. Hellfire and damnation, I had sex with my wife before we were married (we were engaged, but that doesn’t really change anything) and I didn’t go to jail for it. Those that defend this on moral grounds just don’t seem to understand that the laws are not meant to uphold the morality of individuals, but to ensure a safe and functioning society. Those acting as if these laws should be seen as protecting the morality of the public seem to forget that our laws aren’t even passed by the most moral of characters. Does anyone put their faith in the morality of Barney Frank, Teddy Kennedy, or North Carolina’s own Jim Black? So what sense does it make to think that any laws these people draw up and pass is some sort of morally positive pronouncement from Mt. Sinai?

The recent raft of sex offender laws is especially troubling to me for a couple of reasons: 1. The laws allow for no discretion by judges and delineation of sex crimes, and 2. Sex offender registries allow people to be punished in perpetuity for crimes that they have already done time for. Maybe this doesn’t bother anyone else, but it really concerns me when we give the government this type of power over anyone…even criminals who have served their time.

First, I don’t think that we should ever have any laws that are so hard and fast that no mitigation can be made for the actions, and that is exactly what these laws too often do. In the rush to pass “Meagan’s Law” type legislation the crusaders for these laws often fail to realize that the laws will have unintended consequences that come with them, and they fail to recognize that they are effectively tying the hands of the judges who hear these cases. That is why we can have a 19 year old facing a choice of 20 years in prison or a guilty plea, plus the sex offender registration, for having sex with a 17 year old girl…even though the relationship was totally consensual and only became a problem because of the racial biases of the girl’s parents. It lumps this “offender” in with the hardcore pedophile, and severely limits the way judges can deal with the situations.

Secondly, the ability of the state to force a person to register with the state because of the crime he committed, to allow the state to advertise the person’s crime to any future community they inhabit, and the restrictions on that person’s movements and living arrangements seems something more like Eastern Bloc practices than anything we should tolerate in America. While I understand the emotion behind this type of law, I cannot see any basis in law or logic for it; we are making this one type of criminal pay for his crime for the remainder of his days. What is so galling is that a convicted murderer can be released from prison and go on with his life with no further interaction with the cops, etc. so long as he stays out of trouble; yet, the sex offender must stay in constant view of the authorities long after his sentence is finished, under threat of further criminal punishment if he fails to live up to the rules of being a convicted sex offender. When is enough punishment enough? Where is the justice in singling out one type of criminal for perpetual draconian punishment, while all others can serve their sentences and move on?

Instead of dreaming up laws such as “Meagan’s Law” our legislators could have done much better by fixing the loopholes in their current laws. What was to stop them from strengthening sentences for convicted sex offenders? What prevented them from making sure that the punishment for the actual rape of a person or the molestation of a child drew tougher penalties than the “crime” of sex between a 16 and a 17 year old? I’ll tell you what…nothing but cowardice and political expedience. The two go hand in glove, because these legislators enacted this to look tough on crime, and to avoid any bad press…especially from the head “culture warrior”, Bill O’Reilly. But in taking the political shortcut, they have allowed people to get caught up in the system and treated like hardened pedophiles who simply may have given in to the temptations of the flesh. Does any of this make sense to you? I suppose that it is easier to create a new bad law than to fix the existing ones.

God save us from our politicians, and the laws we clamor for!

Over the past few years as I have moved from being a Republican to being a Conservative, I have noticed that many Republicans/Conservatives harbor some serious pipe dreams. They have a tendency to long for days gone by, for situations past, and they look at those times as the "good old days". Now, those days may not ever have been as good as we like to think they were, but they still stand as beacons for the way we wish things were. We also have a serious tendency to harbor pipe dreams and make them part of what conservatives want to see happen; we make those dreams part of our requirements for candidates and use them as disqualifying points for others. But those ideas and dreams are often do us more harm than good, so here is my list of the 5 pipe dreams we need to let go of and move forward:

1. Roe v. Wade: Roe may be the worst piece of "law" ever foisted upon this country, as it is entirely based on legal fictions. It is a monument to the massive egos of the Warren Court, which decided that the job of the Court was to force it's social views on the rest of the country. It was lawless, unreasonable, and repugnant to the Constitution. But with all of that said, we need to let go of the idea that Roe is going to be overturned. No matter who the President is, no matter how many conservative justices sit in the Court, no matter how long we wait Roe is going to stand. The best we can do is hope for opinions that chip away at Roe gradually and return the decisions regarding abortion back to the states, because there will be no outright overturning of this legal abomination.
2. Federal Marriage Amendment: As much as we may oppose the redefinition of marriage by the forces gathered on the left in this country, we will never see any amendment to the Constitution that allows the practice in any way, shape, form, or fashion. It has been tried before and has failed, not because of massive protests against the idea, but because of the unwieldy mechanism of amending the Constitution. There is simply not enough support for the idea to get a 2/3 vote in both houses of Congress or to get 2/3 of state legislatures in this country to call for a national convention. And honestly, this is a matter best left to the states to decide as well; the social mores of the states should be the deciding factor on whether this is acceptable or not. We just have to allow the people to decide the issue at the ballot box, and not some state court (hello Massachusetts!).
3. Internal Revenue Service: Politicians always know they can get a round of applause by going after the IRS, because everyone hates the IRS. And with good reason; the IRS may be technically a part of Treasury, but it is basically a department of its own. Not only does it have the expected tax geeks running around picking your pockets, but it has its own investigative division, and damn near has police powers! The IRS is very powerful, and very scary to most people: never forget, the FBI couldn't get Al Capone but the IRS did! So we all long for the day and for a politician to do something...anything...to reign the IRS in, and in our fondest dreams, to shut them down. After all, the existence of the IRS is unconstitutional on it's face, right? The only thing is that no one is going to do anything about the IRS because they perform a function that the federal government needs; they are the ones that do the dirty work assigned them by the Congress. The IRS did not create itself and does not sustain itself, the politicians in Washington do...and use the IRS as convenient scapegoats for their bloodsucking ways. The IRS is the face of the confiscation of American wealth to be given to the government to (mis)spent on all of its grand schemes. The IRS is never going to go away because they are the muscle that keeps the Congressional crime bosses out of trouble.
4. Department of Education: No one that looks at the educational state of America can honestly say that the Department of Education has been a boon to American education. In fact, since the federal government decided to hijack education from local school boards, America's educational standing in the world has steadily slipped despite the massive amounts of taxpayer cash that has been pumped into the system. The problem is the same as any other bureaucracy...people in Washington, DC have no earthly idea what students in Walnut Cove, NC really need. They don't know what the educational and community standards are in Axton, Va., and they have no idea if there is a need for vocational education programs in Laramie, Wyo. But you can't convince them of that, can you? And the influence of the Department of Ed. is not going to diminish anytime soon, because state and local school officials are addicted to the federal monies they receive for their districts. They have become so dependent on money for free and reduced lunch programs and Title X funds that if the fed told them to show "Debbie Does Dallas" to 4th graders as an educational tool, they would break their collective necks to do so! We may rail, with good reason, about how much of a failure the Department of Ed. is, but it ain't going anywhere!
5. Smaller government: If there has ever been an oxymoron committed to paper, "smaller government" is it! The nature of government is to expand and to grab any power that it can get without a fight. And our government is the world's greatest example of this: we have departments for energy, education, health & human services, occupational health & safety, land management, and space exploration. And in each of the areas that the government expands into, it tries to establish total control; that's why you have to get a freaking building permit to build a deck on your own property! Conservatives would love to see the government shrink, and hold fast to that idea...but  more realistic expectation is in order. Government is not going to get any smaller, so what we need to do is try to hold the line where it is. It may not be the dream scenario, but if the government is ever going to be scaled back we need to stop it from expanding any more than it has already.

So there you have it, my top five conservative pipe dreams. Let me know what you think, and feel free to add comments as you see fit!

 

Looking at the race for the Democratic presidential nomination many pundits, analysts, and the like are marveling at how badly the “Clinton Machine” is responding to the challenge of Barak Obama. They are surprised at how impotent the Clinton’s attacks on the Obama campaign have been, and they are openly wondering why. How has the infamous “Clinton Machine” suddenly become unable to do any opposition research on Obama, and why has its every move been so deftly countered by Barak…the “Man Of Hope”?

Why, isn’t this the same “Clinton Machine” that was able to turn a legitimate Special Counsel investigation into a “witch hunt” out to destroy the President? Isn’t this the same “Machine” that was able to turn Ken Starr into a man pilloried in the press as some sort of pervert for investigating Bill Clinton’s perverted sexual acts with “…that woman, Ms. Lewinsky”? Isn’t this the group that destroyed Paula Jones’s credibility after she accused the President of sexual harassment; that buried Juanita Broderick’s rape allegations; that escaped serious scrutiny over the Travel Office affair, and “File gate”? The “Machine” that allowed Bill Clinton to become the first “Teflon President” and ushered Mrs. Clinton into the US Senate by making her appear to be under physical assault in a Senate debate has utterly failed to land a glove on the senator from Illinois.

There is a very good reason that the “Clinton Machine” is failing, despite having Paul Begala and James “Serpent Head” Carville cheerleading for Mrs. Clinton. The faces are the same, yet their tried and true methods and tactics have failed miserably. The reason that they are failing is as obvious as the nose on Geraldo’s face, and that is that their main coconspirator for the 8 years that Bill Clinton occupied the White House has left them high and dry. That’s right; the media have deserted them and fallen in love with “Barak the Magic Negro!”

All of this time we were all giving the Clinton’s credit for being superior politicians and the “Machine” for being deadly efficient in destroying the Clinton’s enemies, we missed the real Machine. We sat around and gave Bill and Hillary credit for being great political infighters, for being able to stop opponents dead in their tracks, for being able to always move forward no matter what was happening around them and even in this campaign we have waited for the “Clinton Machine” to launch an offensive against Obama that would remove him from contention. But without the media to carry their water, indeed with the media supporting the other candidate, the “Clinton Machine” has ground to a halt. Now, instead of championing the attacks launched by the Clintons, the media reacts with shock that they would dare play dirty pool; in fact, many in the media act as though this all new to them, as if they never saw any dirty tricks played by the Clintons during their eight years in office! Now every attack on an opponent is “going negative”; now every question asked abut Barak Obama is a “personal attack”; now Bill Clinton’s actions are being called “un-presidential”…as if having oral sex performed on him by an intern in the Oval Office was “presidential”!

Without a willing press to protect them, the Clintons are just another former President and First Lady with no power to do anything politically. And without their media accomplices to cover up their warts, all of the dirty tricks and base tactics they have always used are being laid bare for all to see. Without the media, the Clinton’s are as powerless a gun with no bullets. Because everyone knows the power isn’t in the guns.

The power is in the bullets.

     

I was listening to the Rush Limbaugh program earlier today, and he said something that sums up the very reasons why Obama has taken the lead in the delegate count in his race against Sen. Clinton. And it is something that plenty of people have noticed about the good Senator from Illinois: he is the best we have seen in a long time at giving a speech and saying nothing of substance.

Think about it, after an Obama speech you will know that he is the candidate for change, that he is young and energetic, and that his apparent campaign slogan is "Yes We Can!" But can you name one original plan or position that Obama holds? Every policy idea he puts forth is the same old liberal boilerplate, just what is expected of a good liberal only presented with a nice smiling face and an engaging personality.

Contrast that with Sen. Clinton and that should give you a huge clue as to why Obama has been able to bring the heat on  her. Sen. Clinton's biggest problem is that she has ideas and is willing to say what they are to any who ask her. Her ideas my be terrible, socialist tripe like "Hillarycare" and the idea to steal the profits from evil Exxon-Mobil, but they are ideas you can easily attribute to her. Even her stance on the war in Iraq is a matter of public record,and while she has played the "I was misled" card, she nonetheless has not run away from her vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq. She has flirted with that line on more than one occasion, but she has never totally crossed it, whatever her motivations.

With Senator Clinton, you know what you're getting...an old time, down the line liberal/socialist. With Obama the exact opposite is true, which helps to explain his popularity. Because he has no hard and fast beliefs, no real positions on issues, and not much more than "change" as a calling card, Obama is a blank slate that everyone can project onto. Because he has no stance on homosexual marriage, the gay lobby can freely imagine that he supports the push for gay marriage. Because he has not taken a stance on illegal immigration, the open borders crowd can imagine that he will be right there with them...like Bush and McCain are. With no definite stance on the war, except the usual Democrat lines about how Bush is doing it the wrong way, the anti-war crowd can readily hitch their wagon the Obama train. By taking no definite positions on anything Obama has allowed himself to actually seem to be all things to all people in the Democratic Party. Hillary, on the other hand, simply is what she is and nothing is going to erase the fact that she has taken positions at one time or other that have p*ssed off nearly every major Democrat constituency. That's why Obama is winning, and will likely be the Democrat nominee.

I wonder if Hillary would be willing to serve as the first woman VEEP? Nah, it's probably all or nothing for Senator Clinton and that's exactly what she'll be left with.

Nothing.

With the decision of Mitt Romney to drop out of the Presidential race, conservatives have been left hanging out to dry. Romney was not exactly Ronald Reagan, but he was way closer to that than John McCain or Mike Huckabee, both lovers of expansive government influence over the individual and both seemingly seekers of power for the sake of power. And sadly, that is what the GOP has left to go up against either Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton...or both. When you look at on the whole, with either McCain or Huckabee (or both) the GOP stands little chance of retaining the White House in November.

You see, the GOP seems to have decided that its entire strategy for the Presidential race is to try to simply run against the idea of a Hillary Clinton Presidency. They have not given the voters anything to vote for, they have decided that they can win by screaming about how bad another Clinton presidency would be for America. Think about it, from Rudy Giuliani to Mike Huckabee to John McCain, the cry has been "Vote for ___ because he is the only one who can beat Hillary!" Now we are left with two candidates that don't have the chops to even win among conservatives, much less win a general election against the Clinton machine.

Take the presumptive GOP nominee, John McCain (PLEASE!!!). A close look at John McCain's wins in the primaries and caucuses reveals that he is most successful in states where open primaries are held, so he can get votes from Democrats and Independents...votes that he will not be able to poach when there is a true Democrat on the ballot against him. And as much love as the press is showing him right now, that will be flipped as soon as the general campaign starts. Their beloved "maverick" will be portrayed as the most right wing, extremist, freedom squelching politician to ever roam the political landscape...and you can bank that, buddy! The media will turn on John McCain as sure as the sun will rise in the east... as soon as they have their nominee to prop up; that's just the way the game is played.

Then you have Mike Huckabee, whose sole claim to fame is that he is an evangelical and a former minister. Huckabee has proven that he cannot win anywhere other than the South, and once evangelicals start to really look at him they will probably abandon him. As much grief as Mitt Romney took over his Mormonism...and some of it from me...at least he never claimed, as Huckabee did, that in order for him to make a difference in this world he had to leave the ministry and get into politics! Take a minute to digest that.....a Baptist preacher says that the way to make a difference is not to serve God, but to serve in the government! Add to that his lack of foreign policy expertise, his repeated ethical lapses, and his penchant for letting violent criminals out of prison and you have all of the ingredients for a presidential loser.

But the biggest flaw in the GOP's "brilliant" plan is that Hillary Clinton may not even be the Democratic nominee! Mrs. Clinton is in a dogfight with Barak Obama for the Democratic nomination and is in real danger of having to win the nomination in a brokered convention. The Democratic Party faithful are increasingly climbing on the Obama express and are rejecting Mrs. Clinton in favor of someone promising "change". Obama may not have one truly original idea in the political realm, but his name is not Clinton and for many that is enough. Even the Democrats are starting to tire of the Clintons and their attitude of entitlement; they are rejecting the notion that somehow Hillary is owed the nomination. And as Obama gains more steam, not to mention delegates, the GOP "brain trust" has to be wondering, "What the h*ll do we do now?" Every bit of their "strategy" was built upon the notion that they could scare the GOP loyalists into line by repeating the "Stop Hillary" mantra. Where do the idiots go if Obama stops Hillary? Heck, even I don't have anything against Obama besides his liberalism, so what is the GOP going to say to stop him?

So to the GOP, I say "Welcome to the Terror Dome!" You now have a presumptive nominee that cannot galvanize the Party because of his years of p*ssing off the base, an also-ran that can only win in a select few states, and a "strategy" that was as dumb as the day is long. Add to that the fact that McCain or Huckabee will be filleted by the media as soon as the big dance starts, and you have a recipe for disaster. And come November, we can pretty much be ready to see a Democrat winning the White House. Maybe we can win enough in the Congress that we are able to at least stymie some of their plans.

The "Stupid Party" indeed...

The history of race relations in America is a subject that we cannot get away from, because in all honesty race is a national obsession in this country. Hardly anything that we do is truly free from the issue of race; not politics, not sports, not entertainment, and not even religion. Race touches it all, in either positive or negative ways.

One of the things that continue to make race this explosive issue with us is that we want to fool ourselves about the issue and its history. We want to believe, as we are taught in schools all our lives, that race relations in America is a string of unbroken progress. We like to look at it in an unbroken line that is always getting better: first there was slavery, then there was freedom, then there was the Civil Rights era, and now everything is hunky-dory. But the real history of race relations in this nation is not an unbroken line of progress, but is more of a set of fits and starts. In many instances, it is a situation where we take 1 step forward and 3 steps back.

For example, most people have the naïve idea that after the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments were passed that life was suddenly much better for blacks in America. Well, it was for a little while, but pretty soon the clock seemed to be rolling backwards towards slavery. The SCOTUS started finding ways to invalidate the enforcement provisions in civil rights legislation, and it eventually helped to usher in the Jim Crow era with its disgraceful decision in Plessy. All of the gains made in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War for blacks, those that untold thousands of soldiers died for and a president was assassinated for championing, were taken away. 1 step forward, 3 steps back.

Flash forward to the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights era. During this period of time, blacks were putting their very lives at risk have their God-given rights as citizens of this country respected; leaders like Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and Malcolm X arose to demand that blacks be treated as men and women…nothing more and nothing less. Yet, while all of this was going on, the federal government was actively creating segregated neighborhoods and suburbs all over America. For every step blacks took forward, the government was pushing them at least one step back.

But even with all of this history, we today have the chance to do better. Right now, today is the best we have ever seen in terms of racial relations in this nation. We share our music, our foods, our tastes, our lives with one another in ways that were not imaginable just 30 years ago. As we move forward, we are going to have to rethink this social construct that we call race as we continue to intermarry and share our lives together. And when we rethink the issue of race, I hope we can come to an agreement that while it matters, it should nit be the predominant thing in our lives. Moving forward I hope we can honestly start to look at each other and judge one another “not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.”

On the heels of the unfortunate words spoken by Golf TV analyst Kelly Tilghman, the most popular player in golf finds himself in the midst of a race relations storm. Tiger Woods, welcome to the world of race relations in 2008, where no matter what you do you are going to take hits.

Tiger Woods finds himself in the same position that Michael Jordan found himself in during the 1998s and 1990s; stuck in the middle of blacks who are angry that he doesn’t feel the same way they do and a public that simply wants him to keep entertaining us. With Michael Jordan the problem came when he was asked why he did not endorse black Democrat Harvey Gantt in his election fight against Southern iconoclast Jesse Helms in the race for US Senate; Jordan famously answered, “Because Republicans buy sneakers too.” That comment had black activists up in arms that Michael Jordan was not standing up and doing more to “help” blacks or was not more politically active in his public life; likewise, Tiger Woods decision not to publicly castigate Ms. Tilghman for her lynching comment has many of the same voices making the same types of statements about Tiger.

The thing with this though, is that these people actively ignored what Michael Jordan did behind the scenes with his charitable foundation, and they are discounting what Tiger Woods is doing with his charitable foundation as well. They have seemingly come to the conclusion that attempting to impact the entire community is less important than making some symbolic gesture to the black community. Personally, I think that attitude is total hogwash!

All of those “black activists” that are after Tiger Woods right now, including NFL legend Jim Brown need to step back and leave the man alone. They are not really concerned that Tiger is doing anything wrong, they are concerned that Tiger is not doing what they want him to. Honestly, why else would they be on someone’s back who forgave a personal friend for a slight that was his alone? I’ll tell you why, it is because by doing that Tiger is basically saying that he is moving beyond race in his dealings with people and attempting to deal with each person as an individual. And we all know that “black activists” will go out of business the day we all start to make those decisions in our daily lives. Booker T. Washington had it right when he said that those who stir up racial divisions usually do so for their own benefit.

So as the debate about what Tiger should have done continues to rage, take a moment to reflect on whom is right here. Is it the man who forgave the insult or the men who refuse to let it go?