Right on all counts

Love this take

Black Conservative Perspective's analysis on Trump's inroads into African American and Hispanic voters is a good look at the Trump rally in the Bronx and the leftist media freakout that resulted from it:

Meanwhile, president Trump is making inroads with voting blocks

In contrast to the Left's growing Crazy Train, Mark Dice takes a look at African Americans who are starting to lean towards Trump.

Should African Americans support president Trump in numbers that reflect what he has done for them, his landslide win in 2020 will be of epic proportions.

The Kanye Effect?

This is good news but let's see if it lasts (Kanye's support of president Trump, and more broadly, African-American males' increased support of president Trump).

But will they vote Republican?

Short answer: NO. But they really should consider it.

Is a paradigm shift inderway? Part 12

A former Black Panther leader endorses Trump.

Is a paradigm shift underway? Part 5

An African American pastor in Virginia, who endorsed Donald Trump, is predicting a landslide victory for Trump in that state.  That's a big deal - if Virginia votes Republican after having shifted to a Democrat state over the last several election cycles, then Trump will win because that state is one of the swing states less likely to flip this cycle.  It would be a signal of a larger wave.

Still skeptical?  What about this one from Detroit?

Is a paradigm shift underway? Part 4

Another African American supporting Trump, who understands that voting as a block doesn't make sense when the Democratic party, including president Obama, demand it.

Is a paradigm shift underway? Part 3

Another video this week from an African American, rightfully disenfranchised from the Democratic party.

Is a paradigm shift underway? Part 2

This week I have be posting videos from various African American voters who are actively supporting Donald Trump or are at least distancing themselves from the democratic party who have been taking their votes for granted for decades.

Of course a bunch of anecdotal videos don't mean that African Americans are suddenly shifting opinions en masse, but videos like these are not inconsequential. This could be an early signal of things to come, and that's what is really interesting.

Is a paradigm shift underway? Part 1

This week I'll be posting videos from various African American voters who are actively supporting Donald Trump or are at least distancing themselves from the democratic party who have been taking their votes for granted for decades.

First is Wayne Dupree whose radio show I've enjoyed listening to this election cycle.

Thoughts on the police shootings in Dallas (part 1 of 2)

It's never as easy as the numbers.  This morning I was surfing around Facebook and I came across a couple of items regarding violence and the police. No doubt it's a hot topic because of the police shootings in Dallas.  First I found this picture and there's a couple of problems with it.

Firstly, the comment added at the bottom of the image, as a commenter pointed out, doesn't take into account the population percentages.  Because non-Hispanic whites represent 62.6% of the population they apparently should account for roughly that percentage in the statistic above. They actually account for 51.75% of the cases where the race was reported (including the unreported race in the denominator is misleading and I have excluded it from consideration.  They could be all white, all African-American or all Asian for example - we don't know).  The comment too is overly simplistic.

African-Americans are over-represented in the killings by police.  However, they are also over-represented in violent crimes committed, accounting for 28% of all violent crimes and 49% of all murders. Given that increased rate of violent activity it makes sense that African-Americans are over-represented in the police killings category, not necessarily because of police intent but because they could have been killed in the process of committing a violent act.

From the overly simplistic graphic above it is impossible to tell if there is a systemic bias of some kind.  Furthermore, the source of that variance in rates of violent crimes is in itself a topic for debate.  Is it born of poverty and desperation? And is that poverty a result of the disproportionate single mother households in the African American community?  Is it a racial bias on the part of African Americans that causes them to be disproportionately violent towards other races?  A chart on CNN is grossly misleading.

What is also missing is the reverse statistic regarding how many police were killed in the line of duty. The video below is also from 2014.  Not only were 108 police killed in the line of duty, how many attempted assaults or murders of police were also committed?  The video below is a reminder of the dangers that police officers face daily.  It is easy to see why, despite the overwhelming restraint police show given how many millions of incidents occur without negative consequences, that there are situations that escalate, and that mistakes can happen.  That is not to say that individual officers cannot be racist, some surely are, just as within any other population.  But to credit all police killings to race is not only overly simplistic, it's intentionally misleading.

Watch the video below and tell me you would not also be extra cautious and perhaps a bit quick to react if you were a police officer.  We ask them to protect us and to sometimes put themselves in harms way to do so.  To expect perfection is unreasonable, and still the vast majority day in and day out perform remarkably close to that level and deserve our respect.

Most will never understand.
Posted by 53 Hours on Monday, August 3, 2015

As I stated in my post title, it's never as easy as the numbers.  I say that as a numbers guy who thinks that numbers don't lie.  Benjamin Disraeli originally said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Statistics are a great tool for understanding things, but dangerous when used incorrectly. It's not the numbers that are the problem, it's how the numbers get used that is the problem.  It's kind of like the same notion as guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Part 2 will follow on Monday.

Trump's VP nominee

Newt Gingrich is angling for the job, as are many others to be sure.  Trump's VP nominee is not an inconsequential consideration, given that recent polls show him surging versus Hillary Clinton. A lot of conservatives would love to have The Donald's ear.  But what makes the most sense, given today's identity politics playing field that the Democrats have established?

African American? A woman?  An African American woman?  How about an Hispanic woman?  Trump did say he'd win the Latino vote.  And what about a young nominee to attract millennials disaffected by Democrat party nomination rigging?   Thank you Debbie Wasserman-Shultz by the way.  Clearly Trump is not playing by the same map-driven rules used by other GOP nominees.  He wants to shift the electorate across many states, and perhaps with the right nominee, he could do just that. 

A young conservative Hispanic woman then? Just speculating, but that's more what I'd expect from Trump than Chris Christie or Newt Gingrich for the VP nod.

I told you so.

Way, way back in 2008 when I started this blog, one of things that has stuck with me was in speaking with some of my black (African-Canadian?) friends, I recall speaking with them about their views the importance of having an African-American president. They argued it's importance, and I argued what was more important was competence. An ineffectual, ideological president would make matters worse because he would make it that much harder for their to be a second African-American president. I argued supporting a presidential candidate because of is skin color was being blind to the person as an individual and being racist in your voting selection.  A good leader is a good leader regardless of skin color.  Supporting Obama's candidacy because of race, I argued, would set matters back, not move things forward, unless Obama followed up his election with positive results. My argument was that he did not possess the qualities needed to achieve success - namely, experience and a solid understanding of economic fundamentals. That sank in with one of my friends but not the other two.  There are a number of other things I'd add to that list today, such as personal humility as opposed to being a national apologist.

But, and keep in mind this is coming from a likely Repbublican candidate for president, looking back there's been some corroboration of my pre-Obama-era assessment.

Ben Carson says race relations have suffered under this president. It's hard to disagree.

"I actually believe that things were better before this president was elected. And I think that things have gotten worse because of his unusual emphasis [on race]" he stated.

Carson cited Obama's criticism of the police in the Henry Louis Gates incident and his remarks that his son would look like Trayvon Martin and accused the president and other progressives of trying to "manipulate, particularly minority communities to make them feel that they are victims." And that the president "absolutely" plays the race card, but he said the president was attempting not to do so in the aftermath of the grand jury decision regarding Officer Darren Wilson.

This is just one example where Obama has set things back rather than moved them forward when it comes to African American issues, but it's an important one.

I'm conservative and racist

I have a confession to make -- I'm conservative and I'm a racist.  Okay, at least according to liberal doctrine I'm a racist. A couple of my recent posts seem to support that conclusion. Each night after the convention speeches I posted some quick, first-instinct assessments of the speeches.  There seems to be a pattern in my assessments that looks like it might be racist.  Parenthetically, I should add, I'm a middle-aged white guy, which makes the racism on my part extra evil.

Eric Holder plays the panic card

I'm Alright Jack.

I guess it could be classified as a sub-category of the race card.  Eric Holder is busy ginning up fear among African American pastors in order to gin up fear among African American voters that their right to vote is under attack by conservative boogymen.

Via Politico;

Attorney General Eric Holder told a council of African American church leaders Wednesday that the "sacred" right to vote is under assault nationwide, with federal lawsuits and at least a dozen state laws that could hinder - or block – minorities’ access to the ballot box this fall.

"In my travels across this country, I’ve heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who – often for the first time in their lives – now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation’s most noble ideals,” Holder said in a speech before the Council of Black Churches. The threats of legal assaults and lingering discrimination, he added, means that “some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang in the balance.”

As if to underscore the point, however, a voting rights group is worried that Holder and the Justice Department aren’t acting quickly enough to stop Florida’s Republican governor from continuing a purge of registered voters from the state’s rolls because they lack proof of U.S. citizenship.

Not only is that a spurious argument regarding voter disenfranchisement, both Holder and the Politico piece completely ignore the questionable tactic of getting churches to preach politics.  As Rush Limbaugh points out, they are doing an end run around IRS rules:

Representative Emanuel Cleaver (Democrat-Missouri), said, quote, "We will have representatives from nine denominations who actually pastor somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 million people, and we’re going to first of all equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS. In fact, we’re going to have the IRS administrator there, we’re going to have the Attorney General Eric Holder there, we’re going to have the lawyers’ organization from around the country, the ACLU -- all giving ministers guidance about what they can and cannot do."

They're gonna tell 'em just how close they can get to the line. They're probably gonna tell 'em how they can jump over the line a couple times. What's funny about this is Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson. These guys fund-raise from the pulpit! They pass the plate for campaign donations from the pulpit. It's been reported, but nobody does anything about it because nobody's got the guts to. Who wants to criticize black churches for being engaged in politics?

Indeed.

Churches get involved in politics fairly regularly.  Some churches do at least - remember Jeremiah Wright?  There's certainly a line there somewhere that is not supposed to be crossed, but note that some leeway is intentionally allowed for whatever reason.  That's not the real issue.  The real issue is that the Attorney General of the United States is out there trying to smudge whatever that line already is by pressing it as much as he can, for purely partisan political reasons.  You don't think he's blurring it?  Forget for a second about how far away from this a responsible Attorney General would stay from this sort of activity.  Go instead back to the intention of Holder being there in the first place.

Via the Conservative Review:

Representative Emanuel Cleaver, whose Congressional Black Caucus, says quite plainly what his little project is all about.

Cleaver said they would not tell pastors which candidate to support. They will let them know who to regard as the bad guys, though (hint: not Democrats).

“President Obama is going to get 95 percent of the [African American] vote,” and wants to keep that turnout high.

And using the Attorney General of the United States and the IRS to directly do that constitutes multiple violations of the Hatch Act. The most obvious one is this:

May not knowingly solicit or discourage the participation in any political activity of anyone who has business pending before their employing office.

Every one of these churches (and the churches not getting the special “advice,” for that matter), by virtue of their tax exempt status, perpetually has business pending before the IRS. That’s what makes this particular and blatant partisan encouragement of black churches to pontificate on policy so egregious.

Never heard of the Hatch Act? It would seem not only are those pastors at risk, under the Hatch Act, Holder himself may be crossing that line.  Don't worry though liberals, everyone seems to be afraid to raise concerns about it.  No complaint, no foul.  With it looking lately like Mitt Romney has some electoral momentum, conservatives may not care as much about this as they otherwise would, but they should.  Eric Holder has consistently displayed a preference for liberal agenda over legal scrutability in his decisions.  Either we stand on principle, or we just allow the notion of the rule of law to slowly evaporate bit by painful bit.  Personally, I prefer the former course of action.  That means Holder must be taken to task for these actions, as well as others like his role in the Fast and Furious scandal.  The same goes for those ministers who would simply do his bidding.

How liberals use shame to keep the black man down

If you're black, and you dare to be conservative be prepared for a backlash of furious insults and unfounded allegations. Breitbart has the story about how black conservative tea party backers take heat.  Welcome to the club. Being black doesn't single you out for ridicule or special treatment among conservatives (I'm looking at you Michael Steele), all it does from the liberal media and punditry is leave you open to a specific line of attack that differs from the attacks other conservatives endure.

Oh, and it's some Christian holiday too.

Earlier this week it was reported on ABC some town in Iowa decided to rename Easter to 'Spring Holiday'.  The de-Christianification of America continues.  They cited separation of church and state as their reason. It's more like separation of city officials and brains. Despite the ever-receding influence of Christianity in American politics and culture, it is still the dominant religion on the planet and in the U.S. It has nevertheless been tarnished and sullied at every turn by various progressive zealots.

The latest example, today Google's main page.

ZoNation

Just a quick plug for ZoNation as seen on Pajamas TV. A conservative African America with a great point of view and a unique delivery of his points.

America - bigger than Obama

Something important conservatives need to be reminded - Obama is not the Grim Reaper. I say that not because I don't think he's toxic for liberty, justice, and entrepreneurial freedom - he is. But I say that because one man, even in the Presidency, cannot destroy a country and an ideal that has stood for hundreds of years in a mere four years.


Despite the fact that President Obama appears to believe that he is bigger than America (for example nominally putting himself above the partisanship of both parties, giving an air of I'm above this and you all had better be too or America will suffer), the reverse is in fact true. The United States is bigger than Obama, it's bigger than the Democrats, it's bigger than the Republicans, it's bigger than the spending spree the government is about to embark on. The United States is big. No, in fact it's massive.


Let's put a little context around it. The United States is the 4th largest country in the world by geographic area. Only Russia and Canada have more area, and lets face it - Russia and Canada have a lot of their geographies covered by permafrost and uninhabitable.

In terms of military resources it's big. Only China has more troops but they are poorly equipped and have inferior training. The US defense budget is as large as the rest of the world's combined. Tanks? Russia has 4 times as many and China almost as many, but Russia's volume of tanks aren't exactly Abrams quality. 50% of the world's aircraft carriers are American. Nuclear weapons - only Russia has more, but again less technological than America's. And as far as Air Force capabilities and number of aircraft - second to none.

In terms on natural resources it's big. The United States is one of the few countries in the world that could sustain itself in most any capacity with the notable exception of oil. This is a self-imposed short-coming that could be mitigated. Indeed, between a fully productive US, plus Canada and Mexico, the petroleum needs of North America could be met and so could electrical needs with more utilization of coal and nuclear power.

In terms of population, it's big. Only China and India are larger (though significantly so).

In terms of capital, it's massive. Until at least 2040 it has the largest GDP in the world. In 2000 if you combined the economies of China, Japan, Germany, The United Kingdom, India, Russia and half of Brazil's you would have had a comparable economy in size.

In terms of ingenuity it's big. The number of patents registered in the United States is as much as Japan and Germany combined or as much as the 6 next highest ranking countries combined.


So we know, America is big. It can face tests without crumbling. The Obama administration will indeed be a test, the same way Jimmy Carter's administration was a test. But America survived it. America has survived a lot, and it will survive Obama. I'm not saying people shouldn't stand firm against socialism, because ultimately something as big as America can really only be destroyed from within. There are lessons to be learned from the Roman empire about that.

But, to quote (or paraphrase?) the Emergency Broadcast System, 'this is a test, this is only a test'. The good news is America can pass this test. It's got the required components, all that's lacking is the actual fight. A test means you've got to work to pass the test. American's who care need to display the willpower to stand up to the de-Americafication of America. Stand up to socialism, and if in fact it gets imposed, tear it down as soon as possible - 2010, 2012.