Monday, November 29, 2010

The Wikileaks Fallout

The Wikileaks fallout, the release of the diplomatic cables, is of course, damaging to the US. Diplomats will no longer be able to communicate in confidence, and will push mealy mouth cables endorsing motherhood and apple pie. Relations with critical but fragile Muslim regimes will be damaged (principally Yemen). Leaving a freer hand for Jihadis (which is the reason Julian Assange has released the cables in the first place). But it is domestically where the impact will be greatest. Obama looks weak and ineffective and stupid, in protecting America. Now, unavoidably, America knows Obama's handling of foreign affairs has been even worse than his handling of the economy (itself disastrous).


The headline attention grabbers are that North Korea has sent Russian designed missiles capable of hitting Europe (and perhaps eventually America) to Iran. That Iran has serious internal problems. That Saudi Arabia is both funding Al Qaeda, and is so afraid of Iran's nukes that it recommends that the US bomb Iran. The Saudis are more hawkish on Iran than the Israelis. Included is the assessment of Turkey that its leaders would wish to reconquer Spain for Muslims and take Vienna and Central Europe.

Americans can see the Saudis fears of Iran's nukes, and pencil in $10 a gallon gas, once Iran has a complete nuclear system. As well as a direct threat to Europe and America. Obama has done nothing to stop both aggressive Iran and North Korea. The revelation that North Korea has sent nuclear capable missiles to Iran makes Americans angry and uneasy. They expect Obama to do something about it, and Obama has done nothing but flounce around on the world stage.

Obama's embrace of Turkey, which has ambitions to reconquer Spain for Islam, and complete what the Sultans tried to do (conquer Vienna and Central Europe) looks now monumentally stupid. Turkey is a threat and an enemy, not an ally of America. Meanwhile in Europe, 53% of Swiss Voters approved a plan to automatically deport foreigners convicted of serious crimes (including murder and rape), despite a rival proposal that was less strong and threats from the EU and Human Rights commissions. As Obama has embraced Turkey's desire to reconquer Europe for Islam, ordinary Europeans are sick of Islamic aggression and starting to get angry, voting for reasonable measures that allow only law-abiding foreigners, not a conquering army in being.

Other revelations from Wikileaks include China hacking into ordinary people's information at Google and US companies and the Pentagon and pretty much every place else. As well as "Let's Make a Deal" for Guantanomo Bay jihadis, the ineffectiveness of the Obama Adminstration in protecting America has been stunning for Americans to learn.

A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.

Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the “worst in the region” in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar’s security service was “hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals,” the cable said.

Arms deliveries to militants: Cables describe the United States’ failing struggle to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel. One week after President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official that he would not send “new” arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained that it had information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group.

Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen [who just happened to show up in the Balkans with lots of cash and weapons -- Ed] with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official “that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S.”


Americans understand well that globalization plugs them into global instability and risks as well as cheap sneakers. The arrest of the young Somali man, age 19, a US citizen, who planned to murder hundreds in downtown Portland (including many children) at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, is part of globalization. By what right do Somalis belong in America? Why indeed should they be there? And given that the young man, a part time Oregon State student, has reportedly dreamed of being a jihadi since 15.

Americans are sick and tired of apologizing for America. They expect Obama to be a President who kicks terrorist behind, not apologizes to it. While they want threats to go away, that is not a desire for surrender. Americans are slowly realizing that Multiculturalism is a joke, as German Chancellor Merkel said recently. And that Muslim men in the US guarantees a constant, low level jihad. An arson fire at the Islamic Center/Mosque where the Portland Christmas Tree Bomber worshipped shows that even terminally PC Portland residents get mad when Muslims try to blow them and their kids up at a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. Mohammed Osman Mohamud has certainly awakened even Portlanders. Americans expect Obama to keep Muslims in line, by fear, not apologize for making them mad enough to blow up American families in Portland.

Meanwhile weakness in Korea, weakness with Iran, weakness with Pakistan, weakness with Turkey, there is a pattern here. The nation's first Muslim-born President, who was born and raised a Muslim and has noted in his book that he would "stand with the Muslims" against America, has little margin for error with the American public. The Wikileaks cables will certainly help end cooperation in Yemen against Al Qaeda. Where that organization has had some success in organizing itself to attack the US. Being able to act with impunity will simply recreate the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan that enabled the 9/11 plot to proceed without much risk. But it is with Americans seeing Presidential weakness, over and over again with Muslim threats, magnified by Jihad at home aimed at ordinary Americans and their families, that the Wikileaks revelations hit home hardest.

Obama is now as weak, as clueless, as useless, for most Americans abroad, as he is with the economy. His collapse has been stunning, an example of Affirmative Action promotion at its worst. The only way for Obama to recover, is to kick Muslim ass all over the planet, till threats go away. Something Obama constitutionally and spiritually is incapable of doing.
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The Teen Mom Phenom


The Teen Moms are everywhere. On MTV. At the Supermarket checkout counter. On TMZ and the other gossip sites. And their popularity tells us a lot about what drives our culture, increasingly ever focused on a tiny demographic: White female teenagers.


I’ve seen teenage girls page through fascinated, by the Teen Mom covers of the various gossip mags: US Weekly, People, Star, and so on. And why not? Teen Mom is not, so much the celebration of teenage motherhood, as it is teenage celebrity.


For those unfamiliar with the Teen Mom phenomena, it all started with MTV. Long gone are the days when MTV ran music videos, these days MTV is the launching pad for "reality" shows aimed at teenage girls. Kim Kardashian got her reality show start, by appearing in the MTV reality show "My Super Sweet 16" which featured rich girls getting extravagant sixteenth birthday parties. Her father, the late Robert Kardashian, of the OJ Simpson trial infamy, threw her a birthday party featuring her entrance on a throne carried by a bunch of shirtless Chippendale's dancers. Total cost? Around $250,000, as I recall.


Among MTV's most popular shows, was "Sixteen and Pregnant," featuring the trials and tribulations of teenagers just so situated. A number of the young women featured were spun off into "Teen Mom." The Teen Moms get a pittance, only $50,000 or so ... per season. But they can leverage the fame into appearance fees, and get paid for magazine covers. The money is better than nothing of course.

But the most important thing about MTV's reality shows is that they are not in fact, reality. They like nearly all reality shows are heavily scripted. The writers just don't make union scale and neither do the people playing characters. There are villains, for the teenage girls to hate, and heroes, and most of all, hunky guys. The storylines might as well be lifted from a soap opera, and are as obvious and manipulative as WWE Wrestling, but without the virtue of athletic performance.

If Bristol Palin was an "unlikely" rival to eventual winner Jennifer Grey on "Dancing With The Stars," it was unlikely only to those unfamiliar with the manipulations of reality shows. Every show needs a villain. A character for the audience to hate, with situations manipulated and lines written for characters to say. Both the British "X Factor" and American Idol have admitted to using auto-tune to make certain singers sound better, and others worse. Everything being driven off character, the good girl the good guy, the bad boy, the rebel, the hunk, and the edgy and hip arty girl or guy.

Obviously, some things are improvised. But the "reality" of the shows are only the reality of cheaper, much cheaper, writing and acting budgets. The fore-runner being once again, MTV with "Real World." It is important to recognize, the paucity of ideals or ideas or issues that inhabit the universe of reality shows. The show producers do not feel, and have some evidence (the popularity of their approach) that the teen female audience they pursue actually cares about ideas, or ideals, or anything beyond who is the most hunkiest? Apropos of the old Saturday Night skit "Who Is More Muy Macho? Ricardo Montalban y Fernando Llamas?"


This lack of focus on ideals, or anything beyond personality and character, is not unique to the teen female audience either. Older skewing reality shows (and scripted ones) are subject to the same focus on hunkiness versus nerdiness, Alpha versus Beta male, bad boy versus good guy, with divas, princesses, and so on. Even a relatively escapist show like NBC's "Life" explored ideas and issues: the limits of revenge, how to fight evil without becoming a monster in turn, finding peace and tranquility, overcoming various traumas. All absent in things as varied as "Vampire Diaries" or "Desperate Housewives" or "Teen Mom" or "Real Housewives."

Which does a dis-service to the female audience. While female viewers may not find the limits of revenge interesting, they certainly are interested in exploring what makes a good or bad boyfriend, husband, and father. What makes a marriage strong or weak, bad or good ways to raise children, and how to balance career, family, and self-fulfillment. That they are female-focused does not make them trivial, nor should women and girls of any age be treated as mere soap opera addicts.

Yet overwhelmingly, the focus is on celebrity, diva-esque behavior, romantic entanglements, and other idiot trivia of a psuedo celebrity culture. Teen Mom focuses on the "bad" (and also fat) girl who may lose her kid, and a "bad" girl with chaotic relationships (her ex, a new boyfriend) and a "good" girl with less chaotic relationships. All of this has led to success.

TVByTheNumbers.com reports that Teen Mom in October pulled a 2.4 in the Adults 18-34 demographic to lead all cable, with 4.1 million viewers. That may seem like nothing compared to American Idol pulling in as many as 30 million viewers during peaks. But most of the viewers are indeed, teen girls. Who just cannot get enough of Teen Mom.

If you look at the show, or the website, you will see the synopsis:

In 16 and Pregnant, they were moms-to-be. Now, follow Farrah, Maci, Amber, and Catelynn as they face the challenges of motherhood.

Each episode interweaves these stories revealing the wide variety of challenges young mothers can face: marriage, relationships, family support, adoption, finances, graduating high school, starting college, getting a job, and the daunting and exciting step of moving out to create their own families.



From a male perspective, this is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but the show cleans up among White teen girls. The tabloids do their part to make this all happen as well.

Is this healthy? Nope. Sixteen year olds are not emotionally nor financially mature enough to provide for children in today's society, which is fast paced and brutal on those without competitive advantages to put their kids ahead: good neighborhoods with good schools, safe suburban environment, money (generally meaning two high-income earners), and a two parent family with the mother married to the biological father. Teen Mom is focused first on glamorizing diva-esque behavior, by teen "celebrities" but it does in fact glamorize teen age pregnancy as well. Including the fantasy, tellingly, that teen girls can have a kid by a hunky, bad boy and then pay little penalty in raising their kid or with romantic opportunities. Female hypergamy encouraged.

But just as toxic, is the idea that being famous, or a junk celebrity, is a substitute for having professional skills that pay well, being careful and cautious in personal judgments and behavior, and that adopting diva-like behavior is something that pays off. An entire generation of teen girls are getting exactly the wrong messages. To pursue the hunky bad boy without reservation. To abandon education in favor of chasing fame. To act like a princess or diva. Disastrous messages to young women who need the unvarnished truth. That their youth and beauty will quickly fade. Choosing a father for their child is the most important thing, not the least. That children need a father, and a mother, who can both earn money to support a safe and prosperous suburban lifestyle.
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Friday, November 19, 2010

When Did Old White Guys Become Jokes?

White professional women like Julie Klausner (and her audience) are not the only ones with a disdain for beta male White guys. Other beta male White guys have internalized the idea that being White (and also, old) is to be laughed at. An object for derision. Fresh off his observation of Hillary's balls (yes, really), James Carville and Stuart Greenberg muse that Mitt Romney is a joke, because he's an old White guy (like McCain) and therefore an object of derision?





Now, recall that Democratic Senatorial Candidate in South Carolina, one Alvin Greene, was not laughed at in the media for being a stupid Black guy. No, that was never in the cards. James Carville never laughed at Alvin Greene. But Mitt Romney, ex-Bain Capital, one very rich, powerful, and smart White guy, is an object of derision. For being an Old White guy. Look at the video. Other old White guys themselves laugh at him.

Old White guys who would by that standard be no longer part of any credible attempt to be President would include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman, Andrew Jackson, John Adams, and Ronald Reagan. Some of the most important, and for Democrats like Carville, idolized Presidents.

The entire press briefing was filled with middle aged and older White guys. No people of color, or hip young women present. Yet is remarkable that all those White guys laughed at the idea, the very thought, that a White guy older than they were could be President again. That Barack Obama broke the chain of history and now ushered in a new hip, young, and non-White requirement for future Presidents.

They cannot be old. And they cannot be White Men.

Again, I want to point out how remarkable this new standard is. How different it is from American history, and how it plays out against a White majority, even in Democratic politics. All the men laughing were White. Most of them middle aged or older.

The number of hip young non-White men and women, who have a brain in their head and the character to lead (without punishing reflexively ordinary Whites to retain approval from their communities) can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. While it is wise to nominate in lesser races, whoever is the most youthful and handsome MEN, because the feminized media and key, White female voters are influenced by youth, vigor, and looks in male candidates, and no one hates conservative women quite like … female White professional women voters, this hits a snag when considering the Presidential races.

Yes, perhaps Republicans would be wise to nominate Bobby Jindal or better yet Marco Rubio, and be done with it. Barack Obama, unless facing a very handsome and youthful, and vigorous man such as Rubio, or Scott Brown, will win because he will take a great deal of the White female vote and almost all of the non-White vote. Like it or not, this is how White women vote. And with Whites only 65% of the population, achieving White bloc voting (as the way Blacks and Mexicans vote) is key to booting out Obama.

But winning the nomination requires construction of a powerful political machine. It requires raising money (or your own fortune), ground operatives in key states, ability to get endorsements through horse-trading, and powerful allies or key voting blocs in the early primaries. For Obama that was Blacks, and SWPL caucus voters. For McCain, that was military voters, and social conservatives wary of Huckabee and Romney. Even able politicians like Mayor Guiliani and Fred Thompson were no match. Not even wealthy Romney could buy victory, or Hillary for that matter, or even Edwards, himself a wealthy man.

In this case, because America cannot afford Barack Obama as President for another four years, Republican voters must educate themselves on Demographic Reality and how White women vote. Which is basically a variation of the old Saturday Night Live Skit: "Who Es More Muy Macho?" It is sad but true.

But this brings up the other question. When did White and Old become an insult? An identity prone to derision, in the media and political world?

In my view, this is a function of a feminized West. One shaped by the need to appeal to female consumers and voters, as the key or swing voters who give victory to candidates or domination for consumer products sold in the marketplace. White women don't like old White guys very much (nor younger beta ones either). They view indeed Whiteness itself as a mortal sin, one that should be punished (they themselves are of course, honorary non-White by virtue of being female). It is not uncommon for liberal White women to prefer say, Mexican or Black candidates be hired as teachers over their own sons, on the basis that those communities deserve to be hired more than their own flesh and blood, aspiring teachers. I know of at least one such case personally. You can see this attitude all the time in the columns of Maureen Dowd, herself White and from a large Irish-American family. I can recall riding in one elevator, on the Westside of LA, with a Black woman dressed fairly ridiculously, in some faux-leopard print African dress and headrap (for Kwanzaa). Akin to myself wearing a kilt on St. Patrick's Day. A White woman in her fifties got on the elevator and gushed over how awesome the woman's idiot outfit was, in a way that made me embarrassed for her. It was indeed pathetic.

All those commercials on TV, featuring Black actors and actresses, in nuclear families doing middle class things, are not designed to reach middle class Black families. Blacks are under current estimations, 12.9% of the population. Middle class Blacks are 40% of that number, or approximately 5.12% of America. Lowe's, Home Depot, Hometown Buffet, Toyota, and the rest are not trying to reach that 5.12% of America. They are instead reaching for White women, who mostly hold that non-Whites are "authentic" and more "real" and have more value than Whites. Indeed when most White women contemplate White guys, they get as depressed as Julie Klausner.

White guys in the workplace are mostly denatured, demasculinized jokes. At best they are "Jim" from the Office, not the arrogant, obnoxious jerks most women crave. To get ahead in the real workplace, White guys cannot act the way women like them acting. They cannot be arrogant, rude, obnoxious, and dominating, except for a few at the very top, or those who rose to power from entrepreneurship, such as Larry Ellison of Oracle or Steve Jobs of Apple. This is particularly true since American culture had a decades long effort to "PC the racism out of White guys" which punished quickly from childhood onward any display of masculine aggressiveness by Whites and ignored it completely from non-Whites.

The White guys who fought in WWII, Korea, and even Vietnam, in very miserable conditions, enduring what could not but must be endured, in an environment that would have broken most other men, did not suddenly have genetic defects to create effeminate emo kids. It was instead, widespread social conditioning looking to eradicate racism (and seeing it only among ordinary White guys) by eliminating all masculine behavior. Thus over time, as White guys in each succeeding generation became more demasculinized, from the Boomers to Gen X to Gen Y to Millenials, their peer White women found them … effeminate. And "Whiteness" became an insult or a punch line.

Old is no longer a repository of wisdom and strength, of experience. No, it is now a joke about lack of sexual vigor and dominance. So FDR, Reagan, Churchill, and the like are out, and Justin Bieber, effeminate but young, is in. White guy is now an insult as well, with the assumption that only a non-White guy can be truly masculine. [Witness Michael Moore regretting that Flight 93 was not filled with Black guys, who would have by their masculine dominance deterred the jihadis.] Only a non-White guy can understand the world. White guys are idiots, while Black guys are smooth computer geniuses (Terminator 2 comes to mind) or at least middle class and authoritative.



Or, White guys are fat and feminized idiots dominated by their hot, hip and happening wives:



Bear in mind, these commercials are carefully constructed to appeal to White women, and upscale ones too. Hence the positioning on social value, denigration of nerdy White guys, as idiot doofuses, and the "colorful" White female character of "Flo." Instead of a straight out push "we are cheaper than anyone else" which is only part of the message. Instead it is "we are so hip you won't care we are cheap."

Compare Geico's masculine approach (target: White guys):



Here the old White guy is not the joke. He's the guy the target audience (White guys) is supposed to laugh with, not at.

Culture is determined, bit by bit, by what is allowed and not allowed. Much of it is created by TV, and particularly, commercials, whose logic most people absorb without thinking too much about it.

I would argue that Carville laughing at Romney for being an old White guy, and thus, "loser" came about in the early 1990's when commercials first started showing the idiot White guy and his long-suffering wife and/or Black guy co-worker. In other words, when commercials like this began appearing:



Now bear in mind, the commercial is designed to appeal to … yes, women. Who make up most of the TV audience. But these attitudes also shape that of White guys who are professional, work in the media, itself aimed at women, and shape political coverage.

This is why I write about TV so much. Obama is President, and probably odds on favorite to be re-elected, because a great many older White guys in media, and their female audience, believes that Old White Guy, or even just White Guy, is a joke. A dancing idiot with numbers, a guy who cannot order Dell ink, a fat guy carrying a man purse. And can you blame them? This is what our culture has become, a few White guy winners allowed to be masculine (Charlie Sheen, George Clooney, Gavin Newsome, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton) in the worst not best way, the rest effectively neutered lest they become drooling, cross burning "racists." All pandering to the worst instincts of White women (hypergamy) not their best.

This is a disaster that must be fought, inch by inch. Not the least of which is that the quality and ability of political leadership will be mighty thin if Whites are essentially excluded from the Presidency.
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Thursday, November 18, 2010

Beta Males and Inferior Men


Comedy writer and former "Upright Citizens Brigade" performer Julie Klausner has a new book out. Called: "I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, Felons and Others," it contains her complaints about inferior men and beta males.

To quote from the story in the Miami New Times:

Like most of us, she spent her twenties ricocheting from douchebag to douchebag, and she reveals every crappy moment in her dating memoir I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, Felons and Others. As expected, there are tons of laugh-out-loud lines delivered from Klaunser's sharp-wit pen. More surprisingly is how cringeworthy tales of blow jobs with goths and bedbug-infested one-night stands are followed with sage observations. For instance, she points out the stark difference between guys and men. (As she writes, if Mad Men was called Mad Guys, it'd star Joe Pesci and not Jon Hamm.)


The book is due to be made into an HBO series produced by Will Ferrell.


Historically, leading men, at least in comedy, have featured either the feckless or the boorish: the Fred Flintstones and Bullwinkles and then useless beta males. In my book, I say date guys like Rowlf and Fozzi and not Kermit. Let me think about it.


Klausner is unhappy with Michael Cera as a leading man, finding him immature and not manly. Though she is quite happy with teen-age Molly Ringwald, girlish 80's icon, as the leading lady for the late John Hughes movies.

It's the teenage boys I'm worried about. They're not going to college in numbers. They're going to be angry -- depending on who's coming back from the war. There are charities for girls and I'm all for that, but ultimately, the real problem is the epidemic of inferior men - which is basically what my book is about.


But her real beef is with the "inferior men" she has to deal with. In other words, not being hot enough to get the commitment of an Alpha male, full time, or "change" the "vintage-eyeglass-frame-wearing guys from Greenpoint or Silver Lake, who pedaled along avenues in between band practice and drinks with friends, sans attachment, oblivious to the impending hazards of reality and adulthood." Plus of course insulting attention from "inferior" and useless beta males.


This then, is the portrait (in extreme, somewhat) of the modern urban professional woman. Moving from "douchebag to douchebag" in fairly grotesque sexual situations, but terminally attracted to hipsters and trustafarians and indie band layabouts and felons and other Alpha males. Finding the "useless beta males" in her orbit both annoying and inferior. As ultimately the men she cannot gain commitment from or "change" into a tragically hip douchebag with money and responsibility, are inferior.

While of course, you'd expect this from say, Paris Hilton, who associates with Gummi Bear Davis and Fat Elvis Davis (grandsons of oilman Marvin Davis). The modern day equivalent of the Dick Van Dyke Show's Rose Marie? Not so much.

Note too, her books are designed to appeal to women readers. So both the exploits of sexual hook-ups in the most degrading and debased nature, and the complaints about the useless beta males and other inferior men, hit a chord. Otherwise this stuff would not be published, nor would she have so many projects. Even if the chord is mostly in Hollywood, it is important. Because Hollywood shapes the culture.

Modern women who are attractive but no great beauty, face a quandary. They can have access to "douchebag after douchebag" as the writer put it, Alpha males who will happily bed them or exploit them to pay the bills if they are layabout indie musicians in lame bands. But only the most beautiful women, can secure the commitment of an Alpha with money as well as options, and then only when they couple with an aging Alpha (think Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, or Annette Benning and Warren Beatty.)

After all, an Alpha is by definition, a man who can have many women. So he has many options. He will exploit them fully. Women are drawn, inexorably, to men who have the approval of other women, particularly those with a high partner count (other women slept with him, he must be GOOD!) This is hard-wired. The inferior men, the useless beta males, are not even on their radar. Nor will they be, ever. Women don't need anymore, a Kitchen Bitch.

Yet the qualities that women like Klausner desire, along with the sexiness, are found only in beta males, for the vast majority. Only a beauty like Catherine Zeta Jones marrying a much older Alpha at the end of his string, can expect faithfulness or even tenderness, sustained. This is the nature of the sexual marketplace. The freedom comes with a cost, and the winners exist only at the expense of the losers. The sexual marketplace, after all, is not like others. Men cannot "create" new women out of demand, and a value of a woman sexually and romantically decreases with age (as do that of men). A woman with many lovers is worth far less than one with fewer, and even for men there comes a point when too many is too many. Though indeed it comes later for them than women, given the aura of pre-selection dominant among women's decision making. But for winners to exist in the marketplace (maximizing their partner counts and freedom) there must inevitably be losers.

Average women are now no longer shamed (by more beautiful and Alpha women) from sharing the few desirable men. Be they indie rockers, trust funders, felons, pornographers, and hipsters. These are the men after all, Klausner chose to sleep with. Her book was not titled: "Accountants, Actuaries, Engineers, Programmers, and Managers: Boring Beta Nice Guys I Slept With." Those guys go home to their porn collection, while a few male winners go home with a new girl every night.

The biggest losers in the new Sexual Marketplace are ordinary guys, who live a life of involuntary celibacy in intermittent spurts, unless they can generate their inner asshole, and become at least for a while, the dominant, jerky, asshole that professional urban women like Klausner craves. Is Klausner an outlier? Certainly. Most professional women don't behave the way she does in outrageous degree. But it is certainly there, the preference for jerks and a-holes, just not as publicly expressed and likely not as thoroughly lived, as Klausner. But there, as the white-hot reaction for her book and HBO series shows.

Next up as losers, are the most beautiful women, who have to put up with cheating, endemically, from Sandra Bullock to Elin Nordgren. Their dominant Alpha a-hole husbands often choose less lovely hook-ups, because they simply crave variety and convenience. Of course these women could have married an accountant or someone of far lower social standing and power, but they chose naturally a man equal or better than their own, and with masculine power to match their feminine beauty. Thus not just discreet cheating, but massive amounts of it, in various forms. From John Edwards to Bill Clinton to Gavin Newsome (now California's Lt. Governor) to Eliot Spitzer to Mark Sanford, this is the cost for the beautiful women married to the most powerful men.

Winners, are of course, the women like Klausner, attractive but no great beauties, who can rack up sex with men they would never have been able to have before. No wonder this group, professional urban women, are the greatest advocates of the current social and sexual system. And no wonder they have nothing but contempt for the Kitchen Bitch and useless beta males.

What beta males offer, which is the potential (but not guarantee) of companionship, faithfulness, and help in child-rearing, really is not important. Klausner's book, in exploiting as she puts it, the 18-34 demo, is proof of that. It is a memoir of the bad boys she slept with (including felons apparently), not a good guy she ended up marrying. Absent from the book is a path to marriage and family, something very different from what women were interested in, fiction-wise, even thirty years ago.

This cannot be emphasized enough. Fiction appealing to women, overwhelmingly, does not focus on marriage and family, but rather bad boy hookups and degradation, along with rage at useless, beta males and other inferior men, as Klausner puts it.


Indeed, dig deeper and and see that is nerdy White guys who are Klausner's problem (and women like her).

"What I say in the book is the white, nerdy, sensitive guy is not the minority anymore," Julie said. "Between tech jobs and the creative establishment, I mean, they are the ones who feel repressed but they are actually high status."

Julie explained how the "white, nerdy, sensitive" guy, who is most in control of the comedy world, is not the nice, non-threatening person a lot of women think he is.

"There is this book 'Guyland' by Michael Kimmel [that says] how boys don't really grow up to be men anymore, they mostly become 'guys' who play video games and live in a 'frat house' type of environment for the duration of their 20's," she said. "The kind of boy's club I'm used to? It is definitely not a jock-y, frat-y kind of thing. They say 'I'm sensitive and nerdy,' but actually it's like 'You're a huge child and you're terrified of women, but you don't like sports so you think that makes you less of a misogynist."


Yep, from the woman who dated felons and trust-funders, the enemy is the nerdy White guy who is really a misogynist. Read: not high status enough. Klausner doesn't have a problem with bad-boy Charlie Sheen, who held a knife to his wife's throat, on Christmas Day. But she does have a problem with guys who are not dominant and masculine enough to hold her sexual interest.

Or rather, White guys who are not sexy enough for her. Its basically the equivalent of the frat guy "No Fat Chicks" refrain. Only "No Fat Chicks" extended to every woman who is not super-model thin. This is the attitude of sexual plenty. Never before have ordinary women had so much sexual access to dominant bad boys as today. No wonder the ordinary guys around them provoke them to rage and disdain and the nuclear missile "misogyny." After all, they don't need them. They can pick up a sexy bad boy any time.

"Any woman I know can smell a boyfriend a mile away. Women are intuitive, they know when a guy is interested but he's not going to be there for her in that boyfriend-y way," Julie said. "But if he wants to fuck you, and he's attractive, obviously you're going to go in that direction. And for people to say 'Oh, you should have waited and he would have stayed' it's like, 'No he wouldn't have, and I wouldn't have gotten laid.' I'm still allowed to feel bad when he doesn't do what he's supposed to."


Again, Klausner and women like her (probably most women on the Huffington Post) want a sexy bad boy. Just one devoted to her. She'll trade sex with the bad boy in favor of "boring" life with a useless, White beta male.

And that is the other part of it. Klausner has no complaints about Hip Hop and Rap artists spouting off about bitches and hos. Nor the lurid imagery of most rap videos. Nor Mexican/Latin machismo. Nope. Her complaint is White guys are not macho tough and dominating enough. When of course, any masculine display by a White guy is allowed only if he is entirely outside the professional workplace. The macho assholes Klausner and most White female professional women crave, can only exist in the indie band, trust fund, hipster, and felon environments. Try that in the professional corporate workplace and you as an ordinary White guy get fired. Fired fast. Complaining about White guys not being as tough and as dominant as a Hells Angel's biker is like a guy complaining that the girls at the mall are ten pounds overweight, and are not in fact supermodels.

Indeed the hatred of nerdy white guys gets overt:

The "mousy" girl she's talking about, the kind that every guy around her seems to want, is brought up in her book as the character Pam Beesely on "The Office." She writes: "There's nothing scary about Pam because there's no mystery: she's just like the boys who like her; mousy and shy. The ultimate emo boy fantasy is to meet a nerdy, cute girl just like him, and nobody else will realize she's pretty."

So who decided Pam was the epitome of emo-boy desire? Probably the emo-boys who get writing jobs on popular NBC sitcoms. Julie expressed her discontent with this domination of culture.

"Whenever culture isn't being controlled by enough gay people or Jewish people, I always get nervous," Julie said. "I feel like the whole 'Pam' thing is a result of straight, angry nerds taking over the world, frankly. And the gays and Jews, look... We know what we're doing; we've done this for years."


Of course, Klausner would not like culture being controlled by Jewish guys like Shuster, or Siegel, or Lee, Kane, or Kirby, or Mayer. No Superman, Batman, Hulk, or Captain America for her. Funny, how when nerdy, non-gay Jews created a whole pulp industry, or the modern Hollywood, their model of masculinity was Superman, or Captain America, or Batman, or Jimmy Stewart, or John Wayne. Of course, in the same breath, Klausner worships Tina Fey. Who is definitely neither gay nor Jewish. Klausner's beef of course is with too many nerdy White writers. Who just are not hot and dominating enough for her.

Why does she care who the emo-boys find "pretty?" Considering her disdain for them? The answer of course is that Klausner herself is not exactly a knock-out. Her words about Tina Fey needing to lose 30 pounds before going on the air are revealing, and empathetic, and she herself in her pictures does not look like a drop-dead beautiful woman. And yet, she still racked up the bad boy count. Even an ordinary woman can rack up the frequent flier miles with the bad boys. Leaving her equivalent male counterpart with porn or World of Warcraft. She wonders why emo-boys and slackers never grow up? Why should they? What's the reward? Disgust they're not gay from the bad-boy addicts? Being an honorary gay for a day?

Klausner's ideal society would be comprised of a few bad boy Alpha Male White guys, plenty of non-Whites and all the beta males turned gay. So they won't bother her and be instead politically correct. Since most of PC is designed to channel "evil Male White energy" into a denatured and de-masculinized emo-boy dead end, that at least "stops racism" and such. Since every White guy who is not Alpha is a threat. A threat to hit on her, quite likely, which most SWPL women, urban professional White women, find revolting and sickening.

This explains, by the way, the gender gap for White women voting. White women will always vote more Democratic than White Men, because a non-insignificant portion of White women have nothing but contempt for White guys who are useless beta males. Not hot enough for them. Most half-way attractive White women would prefer all White guys be either hot, dominating Alphas, or Gay. Hence the love for gays and disdain for Straight White Guys Who Are Not Charlie Sheen. Professional White women simply detest the 90% of White guys not on their sexual radar, for obvious reasons, and detest everything that these White guys like and stand for. Not the least of which is anything to the right of Tina Fey. Who is the default taste-maker for the White female professional class.

Again, while Klausner is more extreme than most White professional women, she is not expressing anything that is not fairly common among most of them. Disdain for White beta males (and implicit approval for pretty much any non-White guy?) Check. Hatred for "useless beta males?" Check. Love of the gays and hatred of Straight White Guys Not Charlie Sheen? Check. Disappointment that all the douchebags she slept with would not "change" for her? Check! A dubious and checkered sexual past making her a poor bet for a long-term relationship? Double check! A taste for the slumming side (including felons?) Triple Check! Yes while Klausner is more extreme than most, she is not outside the pale. She's not subject to ridicule and hatred the way, say Sarah Palin is. Salon does not make fun or her, nor do New Yorker writers say of her, as they do of Palin, that hearing her voice makes a piece of their soul die!

White women will not change their general hatred of beta White guys until and unless they all turn into variations of Charlie Sheen. I.E. dominant in some way, complete assholes, who are nevertheless terribly sexy (because they break through PC behavior bs to be completely masculine a-holes). While still of course conforming to PC beliefs generally. As does 9/11 Truther Charlie Sheen (it only makes him more attractive to women, he's getting great ratings among his almost exclusively female audience on Two and A Half Men). Since that will happen, well never, the same fairly large (around 8-5 percentage points in the White female vote) split towards Democrats will happen.

Thus, any desire for Conservative votes among Whites MUST take far more of men. White professional women like Klausner will always vote their hatred of nerdy Straight White guys who insulted them by expressing a sexual/romantic interest* in their votes. Thus greater votes among same nerdy White guys is the only possible outcome for victory. Non-whites being futile territory since Democrats/liberals can always outbid conservatives with anti-White guy measures spreading pork, preferential discrimination (against White guys) and benefits (no White guys need apply) to win their votes.

Conservative Republicans need to take note. White Professional women will never vote for them any more than Tina Fey (their heroine) will. They need to hit the slacker guy, the emo-guy, with appeals to embrace their inner asshole and "be a jerk. Vote Conservative!" The way beer commercials push outrageous but funny behavior.

*It is an insult, for most semi-attractive women, to be hit on by guys their own attractiveness level who are not dominant A-holes. Because it implies they are on that level of attractiveness, not the level they pencil themselves in, as the most beautiful, because they can sleep with Alpha A-holes. Because average looking women can nab (for a while) that tattooed biker, or indie rocker layabout, or the trustafarian, or the hipster, all of whom have a lot of other women, they figure they are more beautiful and desirable than they are. They find it gravely insulting for an average guy, of their own status and attractiveness, to express an interest in them.


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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Agflation and the Cross of Gold


Updated



Some things never change. American and European history remain "deep," that is dominated by long cycles of debate over fundamental questions, that are never really resolved one way or another. The desire for elites (mostly but not exclusively in the East) for cheap labor and expensive land, and Jacksonian type Westerners (think Sarah Palin and the Tea Party) for expensive labor (their own) and cheap land remains one of these deep cycles. The Federal Reserve's decision to buy back $600 billion of Treasury Bonds, and achieve another $300 billion of repurchases through re-investment of maturing securities, and the resulting inflation of agricultural products, at least in part, is another. Meaning the debate between the Free Silverites, and the Gold advocates, is not over. Just flipped, entirely.


Now of course the Fed is not solely responsible for the inflation of agricultural commodities. As the Financial Times has reported, much of this is due to intense Chinese demand and tight global supply in the face of this increased demand. China has a voracious appetite for cotton, which it turns into cheap clothing exported mostly to the US, various base metals including iron, copper, lead, and tin (propping up the economies of Australia, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, and other commodity exporters) which it turns into various auto parts, cheap electronics, and other consumer goods for the US export market. A rising demand for food, and in particular, more protein, has led to a demand not just for beef and pork imports, but food-stocks including corn, soybeans, and wheat. Meanwhile, floods in Pakistan have destroyed the current harvest, and Pakistan is a major exporter of cotton. Droughts and fires in Russia have led to a ban on exports of grain, and Russia is a major grain exporter. Uncertain harvests in India have led to bans on sugar exports, with uncertain harvests in Brazil leading to very high sugar prices.

As the Financial Times noted:

The spectre of inflation loomed over agricultural markets after the US slashed key crop forecasts and warned of shortfalls in grains.

The agriculture department on Tuesday cut estimates of US corn yields for a third successive month, forecast record soyabean exports to China and warned of the slimmest cotton stocks since 1925.

“The combined production shortfalls and dramatic potential stock drawdowns mean a much tighter supply picture than just a few months ago,” the agency said in a separate grains report.

Benchmark Chicago corn futures soared above $6 a bushel for the first time since August 2008, before ending lower. Soyabeans rose 4.3 per cent and New York cotton futures posted a record above $1.51 a pound. The price rises have revived fears of a repeat of the global food crisis of 2007-08.



Updated!



Drudge has a link to a Financial Times story on global food inflation here.

The bill for global food imports will top $1,000bn this year for the second time ever, putting the world “dangerously close” to a new food crisis, the United Nations said.

The warning by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation adds to fears about rising inflation in emerging countries from China to India. “Prices are dangerously close to the levels of 2007-08,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist at the FAO.

The FAO painted a worrying outlook in its twice-yearly Food Outlook on Wednesday, warning that the world should “be prepared” for even higher prices next year. It said it was crucial for farmers to “expand substantially” production, particularly of corn and wheat in 2011-12 to meet expected demand and rebuild world reserves.

But the FAO said the production response may be limited as rising food prices had made other crops, from sugar to soyabean and cotton, attractive to grow.

“This could limit individual crop production responses to levels that would be insufficient to alleviate market tightness. Against this backdrop, consumers may have little choice but to pay higher prices for their food,” it said.


Sell-offs at the height of prices last week lowered prices a bit, but structurally the imbalance between demand (high) and supply (low) have led to gains, with March 2011 futures prices still strong, indeed higher in many cases than spot prices. Meaning inflation in food prices is here to stay, at least for the moment. And not just food either, cotton prices have soared to record heights, and oil is trading at about $90 a barrel. Food price inflation in China is reported at 8% annualized rates, with lower rates in the US at 1.4% over the last 12 months. In both cases the real rate of inflation is likely undercounted.

Anyone who has shopped for food regularly in the past year knows that prices have risen appreciably. First, in packaging reduced amounts of food for the price charged in prior years for larger amounts. And secondly, in outright price rises simply not counted by US economists. The things people buy, nearly every day, gasoline, milk, eggs, butter, bread, have all risen steadily over the past year. It is true that prices for cheap Chinese sneakers or electronics have remained steady, but that is not something people buy every day. The ordinary person's experience with inflation (at a time of lowered wages and massive job losses and unemployment) is remarkable as the elite's disconnect from this reality.

And while increased Chinese demand amidst tight global supply of commodities is part of the story, so is the struggle between the Free Silverites and the Gold Advocates.

In 1896 during the Democratic National Convention, William Jennings Bryan, the man pictured at the top of this column, gave the famous "Cross of Gold" speech. He said, "Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

Bryan's political base was that of small farmers in the West. Who had debts they wanted to inflate away. Free Silver, or more properly, loose monetary policy designed to create inflation, would allow the farmers to inflate away their debts to nothing. That would of course destroy the Eastern Financiers, with extensive cash holdings, as well as Eastern laborers who paid cash for consumer goods and food. Bryan's base was demographically too small, as the small farmers were just too few in number to make a difference. Strong monetary policy prevailed, arguably until the 1971 decision by Richard Nixon to end the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944.

From then onwards, various Presidents have had more or less inflationary policy, to cover systemic deficits, but the core of US policy has been a free-floating dollar and inflationary monetary policy. From Reagan through Bush, including Clinton, the policy has been to have inflation around 2-4%, on the theory that this level of inflation would not inflame US consumers but mark an expanding economy. Call it the Goldilocks theory of inflation. Just right.

"Helicopter Ben" Bernanke, Chairmen of the Federal Reserve, noted:

In 2002, when the word "deflation" began appearing in the business news, Bernanke gave a speech about deflation. In that speech, he mentioned that the government in a fiat money system owns the physical means of creating money. Control of the means of production for money implies that the government can always avoid deflation by simply issuing more money. He said "The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost." (He referred to a statement made by Milton Friedman about using a "helicopter drop" of money into the economy to fight deflation.) Bernanke's critics have since referred to him as "Helicopter Ben" or to his "helicopter printing press." In a footnote to his speech, Bernanke noted that "people know that inflation erodes the real value of the government's debt and, therefore, that it is in the interest of the government to create some inflation."For example, while Greenspan publicly supported President Clinton's deficit reduction plan and the Bush tax cuts, Bernanke, when questioned about taxation policy, said that it was none of his business, his exclusive remit being monetary policy, and said that fiscal policy and wider society related issues were what politicians were for and got elected for. But Bernanke has been identified by the Wall Street Journal and a close colleague as a "libertarian-Republican" in the mold of Alan Greenspan. However, Bloomberg News writes he is "siding with John Maynard Keynes against Milton Friedman by flooding the financial system with money".


Suspicion is high that Bernanke, following Obama's marching orders, is determined to inflate away the Government debt, and also create high inflation to "force" companies with large cash reserves (which describes most large companies) to invest them to create economic growth rather than see their cash values decline in inflation. Bernanke in various public statements defending the Fed's purchase of $600 billion of US Treasury bonds, and the additional $300 billion re-investment in the same, by simply declaring the new money "created" has argued explicitly that inflation must be higher to force re-investment by major companies.

In other words, the most stupid policy one could imagine, is what the Federal Reserve (and Obama) are following. And it is the same debate over monetary policy that characterized most of the 19th Century, only reversed completely. [Astute observers will note that cheap dollars are merely serving to allow multinational corporations to invest in China and Vietnam and other places, taking US tax dollars to create jobs overseas where interest rates and returns are greater and labor is cheaper. Bernanke's and Krugman's and Obama's 1930's Depression models don't take into account US companies investing in China and other cheap labor places. FDR did not have to deal with Ford and GM and US Steel investing in China to earn more money than in the US.]

Now the loose monetary policy advocates are not relatively powerless small farmers, but East Coast and West Coast elites, with globally mobile investments, mostly sitting in government or the media or the universities, seeking to create inflation to preserve social spending (on their favorite hobby horses) and put away for another day a fiscal reckoning on the budget and spending. Those pursuing a strong currency are people who must buy the necessities of living every day, and do so on a limited budget.

On the one hand you have Obama, and Bernanke, and much of Wall Street, wanting high inflation to pump up stock prices, or commodity investments (which Wall Street makes a tidy profit on), and inflate away the government debt so that spending can continue, and on the other hand ordinary people who want to pay smaller amounts not larger ones of their earnings (which are not inflated) for daily living.

Deflation has been a feature of Japanese life since the end of the asset bubble (real estate) bursting in 1989. For most Japanese consumers, deflation has been tolerable, despite low or no economic growth, because their money goes much further. Inflation particularly linked to low or no economic growth (1970's stagflation) means a constantly eroding standard of living for ordinary people. While deflation means those with jobs at least, pay less every day not more for daily living.

Thus Obama's and Bernanke's objectives (and that of their Wall Street allies who donated heavily to Obama) are directly opposite that of ordinary people's. Who now, contra Bryan, want a cross of Gold. To protect them from inflation. The ads that run on shows like Glen Beck's on Fox News Channel, hit a populist chord with his viewers. Because they fear inflation as a mortal threat to their lives. Which it in fact is, and remains.

So what can be done to improve people's lives? Simple. Dump Helicopter Ben (Friedman's speech alluded to dumping money out of a helicopter to "save" the economy) and adopt a sound monetary system. Gold-backed dollars are probably out of the question, as there simply is not enough gold in US reserves or global reserves to back the dollar. But silver is another question. A silver backed currency, redeemable at a fixed rate, would force the US dollar into a strong rather than weak currency. This would hurt of course, US manufactured exports. But the exports themselves are a small portion of US manufacturing, itself only about 10% of all US jobs.

A strong dollar also means cheaper imported oil, and thus lower costs for daily living. Cheaper gas! A strong dollar can also promote more production domestically of grains and other food stocks, and cotton as well. Tariffs would have to be raised to keep US manufacturing from being flooded by cheaper foreign goods, but that is something that is far easier when US dollars buy much more food and gas than when it buys almost nothing. Certainly the experience of Argentina, which like Russia has used bans on wheat exports, has not been positive. The short term protection of prices in the local markets meant farmers stopped growing wheat and switched to soybeans, not subject to export bans. A strong dollar allows US consumers to outbid weak Chinese or other currencies, for the same bushel of wheat, and allows farmers to make money by planting more wheat.

A strong dollar also allows from a policy that is critical: US creation of currently imported foodstuffs internally. Some predict that Chocolate will be as expensive as Caviar in twenty years:

Chocolate industry experts say that in just 20 years, chocolate will be as expensive as caviar, Anthea Gerrie reports for the Independent. African farmers, who produce a huge chunk of the world's chocolate supply, are abandoning their farms because the work is so backbreaking and the pay so miserable. Their children are leaving for the city where they can life a better life.

Meanwhile, demand for chocolate is rising sharply as the Chinese and Indians develop Western a sweet tooth. "The biggest hope," Gerrie reports, "is a Nestlé project to replant 10 million trees over the next decade." But that will replace just a quarter of the trees lost in recent years. By 2030, we may face a depleted, miserable world in which only the rich can afford a chocolatey snack.


Cocoa of course, was native to Mexico. There is no reason that with a strong dollar, US farmers in parts of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and even South Carolina cannot grow Cocoa trees. And harvest them with mechanical harvesting machines, the way many orange and grapefruit trees are done now. Does cocoa need to be grown in chaotic, violent, and poverty-stricken Ivory Coast, or in the US in subtropical regions (Puerto Rico and Guam are also good candidates) with the latest equipment substituting for cheap labor?

Coffee too, can be grown in the US. Hawaii currently exports premium coffee, but the plant itself is native to Ethiopia and Yemen. Meaning varieties can be grown in places like Southern California, or Arizona, or New Mexico, or Texas, or Louisiana, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or Florida, or Georgia, or South Carolina. As well again, as Puerto Rico and Guam.

Starbucks is opening its first ever coffee plantation in China, why not ones in the US employing a few people with labor-saving farming/harvesting techniques? Hawaiian growers are using coffee plants on trellises, to harvest the plants the way automated harvesters do grape vines in New Zealand, Australia, and some California vineyards. Some California growers are already experimenting with growing coffee this way, in California.

Certainly the government can play a small role, in providing credit and assistance. But private industry, taking advantage of strong domestic demand, and a more robust dollar, would be the model for growing US coffee and chocolate. The way California restarted its wine industry after prohibition, to become one of the dominant regions in the world. All of which is good for ordinary Americans.

The main feature of globalization is that cheap stuff comes with risks. Risks to supply, as shocks around the world are connected directly to ordinary Americans (and vice-versa). A "seat-belt approach" is needed along with global air bags of trade deals and the like. Meaning strong domestic supplies of key commodities and resources currently imported. From rare earths (currently not mined in the US due to environmental concerns and cheap Chinese competition) to coffee and chocolate, and particularly food and gas, the global system as configured is not working for most ordinary Americans. America has no power to change the global system, so it must create its own seat-belt to mitigate shocks from the global system of trade.

Fundamentally, a nation's economic and monetary system (which are mere reflections of each other) should be arranged to benefit ordinary people, not the rich and powerful (in concert with preferred poor people). A strong dollar, "the Dollar of our Daddies" provides the best means for ordinary people to play within the rules (save lots, work hard, spend wisely) and have a happy life. One less filled with anxiety because a Russian grain harvest failed, or a flood in Pakistan killed the cotton harvest. A strong dollar hurts stock prices, and commodity investors, but who cares? They are rich and powerful and can look after themselves. A strong dollar means a fiscal reckoning, well now, and programs like ObamaCare and others being junked as unaffordable (No Child Left Behind, Ethanol, "Green" subsidies, Fannie/Freddie, being prime candidates).

Will this require an all-out political battle against the powerful elites in the legal system, the media, the universities, and government? Assuredly. Can it be won? Yes, if put plainly: a strong dollar benefits ordinary people by reducing the price increases in daily life, and hurts Wall Street and the current elites.

It is simple as that.
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Scott Adams and the Casual Disclosure of Social Change

Sometimes large cultural change is encapsulated in the most casual disclosures. Scott Adams (Dilbert) noted in a WSJ story, that he was twice turned down for promotions on the ground that he was well qualified, but a White male. Instead, the jobs were reserved for minorities.

Now, that is a remarkable thing. Adams dismisses it, of course, with the idea that every White male will become like him, a wealthy cartoonist, or something. But for most White males, the ability to become some wealthy entrepreneur is limited. Moreover, the social cost for companies getting (inevitably) substandard efforts out of unqualified non-Whites and the resentful White guys passed over for promotion inhibits innovation. Innovation rarely being some out-of-the-ether astonishment and mostly being putting disparate pieces together for a better whole.


Can a society sustain itself when the men of its largest racial group have no real hope of promotion and upward mobility within any organization of any size? It is the very casualness, the lack of any real passion other than sarcasm, that is shocking about Adam's disclosure:

One day, a position opened above me, and I was the most obvious candidate to fill it. My boss called me into her office and said she had some bad news. She explained that the media was giving our company a lot of heat because almost all of our managers and executives were white males. Promoting me, she explained, would only make things worse. I asked how long I might need to wait for all of this to blow over. My boss was vague, but she said the timeline involved smoothing out the effects of two centuries of corporate discrimination.
...
One day my boss called me into his office and explained that the media was giving the phone company a lot of heat because almost all of the managers and executives were white males. So, he explained, promoting me would only make things worse.


For better or for worse, Corporate America has turned over everything but lower level positions to non-Whites, and perhaps some White women. Coca-Cola is run by Muhtar Kent, of Turkish-American descent educated in the UK. Indra Nooyi is the Indian born CEO of Pepsi. This is pretty remarkable. Two major companies in America, famous for their American heritage, neither run by anyone connected to it.

If anything, it is much worse at lower levels. Can a largely "White male free" zone of upper and middle management produce world beating products and services? So far, the answer by America's corporate citizens is no. They cannot. Diversity has its price.

The first is promoting the least, not the most, qualified candidates (as Adams admits) to meet diversity goals, not find the best and most motivated candidates for upward promotion. If one wants to know why Corporate America is so hostile to White males, it is because so few work in management positions. A Carly Fiorina can easily fire lots of HP engineers, and boast that Americans don't "deserve" jobs in comparison with Indian (cheaper) engineers. Corporate America will therefore be hostile to White males as long as it has the same promotion preference (anyone but them). That those promoted have the right skin color or gender rather than talent is of course another cost. Second-ratism at best, if not outright shoddiness.

But it is the other issue that deserves the most attention. America has largely pushed White males out of upward mobility in every sphere except the military, where few want to enlist, due to the hardships and danger. This won't end well.

One group, and one group alone, has no investment and no desire to protect the current system. And every reason to overthrow the culture and elites that run it. PC and the diversity preference is very powerful, but it is not everything. From South Park to Scott Adams, the mere disclosure has its own undeniable power. There will be a great deal of men, not as Adams suggests starting their own business or being famous cartoonists, but willing to burn down the corporate structure and American businesses along with politics and the larger culture. In this the sheer stupidity of making those alien in culture and background corporate leaders (and their lack of producing good paying jobs in America) will aid the burn-to-the-ground mentality.

Everything has its price. Punishing generations of White guys for bad things long-dead White guys did fifty years ago (or more) has its own. One just beginning to be felt.




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Monday, November 8, 2010

Erica Jong and the Kitchen Bitch

Erica Jong in an article in the WSJ complains at length that people are still having babies, noting:

Unless you've been living on another planet, you know that we have endured an orgy of motherphilia for at least the last two decades. Movie stars proudly display their baby bumps, and the shiny magazines at the checkout counter never tire of describing the joys of celebrity parenthood. Bearing and rearing children has come to be seen as life's greatest good. Never mind that there are now enough abandoned children on the planet to make breeding unnecessary. Professional narcissists like Angelina Jolie and Madonna want their own little replicas in addition to the African and Asian children that they collect to advertise their open-mindedness. Nannies are seldom photographed in these carefully arranged family scenes. We are to assume that all this baby-minding is painless, easy and cheap.



Motherhood for Jong is still not perfect. And its all everyone's fault. Even worse, people are having kids. Their own even! The horror! But even worse, is the lack of tragically hip measures to outsource child-bearing for everywoman, without the need for Sandra Tsing Loh's Kitchen Bitch quandry. For all of Jong's bitter lament that society does not provide nannies and caretakers for every woman to be a tragically hip "artiste" and creative woman, she ignores the obvious. There is an alternative to nannies whose own children, she notes are in the care of their grandmothers or no one. This alternative is called, husbands. And exciting, dynamic, Alpha males don't change diapers.

We are in a period of retrenchment against progressive social policies, and the women pursuing political life today owe more to Evita Peron than to Eleanor Roosevelt. "Mama grizzlies" like Sarah Palin never acknowledge that there are any difficulties in bearing and raising children. Nor do they acknowledge any helpers as they thrust their babies into the arms of siblings or daddies. The baby has become the ultimate political tool.


Here you have it. The real reason Sarah Palin is so hated. She rose from nothing, really, to become a national political figure. Not sacrificing family, either. The key was her husband. Who shared chores, family raising, and more. While Todd Palin is a masculine, aggressive man, he's not higher-status than Sarah Palin. Something women like Jong (and there are many who find her writing important, and worth paying for), find disgusting. Thrusting their babies into the arms of siblings or daddies? How gauche. How low class. No wonder Tina Fey hates Sarah Palin. Fey's own kids have well-paid professional nannies, the way a proper woman has.

Yes, class rules so much of American society. Not the least of which is that class is deeply entwined in feminism. There's nothing worse than marrying, after all, a Kitchen Bitch and "thrusting their babies into the arms of daddies." When a true, upper class woman goes from man to man (as Jong did) and hires nannies.

And this raises a larger point. The political and social culture is built upon upper class women and men, assuming a constant upward mobility and disposable income. For most women, that pawing off to nannies of children, is not possible. A husband looks better, though the supply of men willing to be Kitchen Bitches is now understandably short, and of inferior quality. Regardless, it is likely that we've reached a cultural inflection point. One where the desires of Jong and folks like her to move the culture in their direction comes up against one giant problem.

There just isn't any more money.
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Saturday, November 6, 2010

Tim Wise Calls for the End of Whites in America

Like Harold Myerson before him, Tim Wise has called for the end of Whites in America. Of course, he himself is White, but the internet is a glorious thing, not the least of which is that it collapses Wise's world of "professional anti-racism" into that of the larger public. Wise depends on most people not knowing what he is saying and doing, operating behind the veil of "anti-racism" in the University system and Corporate HR idiocy. That veil is now pierced. For better or worse, Wise must defend himself (and his employers/sponsors his ideas) in the public square. Reasonable White people (and the elderly White people) who Wise pretty much called for extermination, might wonder why their taxes go to support: Smith College, the Utne Reader, or Fisk University.


From Wise's own site here:

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the United States, and has been called, “One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation,” by best-selling author and professor Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise, who was recently named one of “25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World,” by Utne Reader, has spoken in 49 states, on over 600 college campuses, and to community groups across the nation. He has also lectured internationally in Canada and Bermuda on issues of comparative racism, race and education, racism and religion, and racism in the labor market.

Wise is the author of five books, including White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son; Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White; Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male; Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, and his latest, Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity. He has contributed essays to twenty-five books, and is one of several persons featured in White Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories, from Duke University Press. He received the 2001 British Diversity Award for best feature essay on race issues, and his writings have appeared in dozens of popular, professional and scholarly journals.


One might argue the worth of "anti-racism" lectures to White people when it is Black and Hispanic people screaming racism:





Particularly since the internet prevents the news media from news suppression. Heck Fox News has ridden these internet-generated videos to ratings supremacy.

Wise wrote:

And in the pantheon of American history, conservative old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.

Fine, keep it up. It doesn't matter.

Because you’re on the endangered list.

And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.

In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.

There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation” -- a bunch whose white contingent was top-heavy with ethical miscreants who helped save the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights struggle.

It's OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Nothing, Senõr Tancredo.

Nothing, Senõra Angle, or Senõra Brewer, or Senõr Beck.

Loy tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta.

And by then you will have gone all in as a white nationalist movement -- hell you’ve all but done that now -- thus guaranteeing that the folks of color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will be able to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to the 8th grade student council.

Like I said, this is math. And numbers don’t lie.
...
We just have to be patient.

And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well...

Do you hear it?

The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?

Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.


The internet is beautiful too. It puts the open words calling for the extermination of Whites in America, into a "Colors of Benetton" society where Mexicans, and then Blacks, are all that is left, into undeniable and quotable words. Everyone now knows where the battle lines are drawn.

Those who depend on the "anti-racism" scam, of course want Whites essentially demographically cleansed. And look forward gleefully to the day when lower class Whites (Wise is at great pains to mock Larry the Cable Guy and Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry) and their culture are cleansed from America.

Selling America and White people as an original sin is easy pickings in Academia. So too in the corporate world. Outside it, now every White guy in America must be asking, "What's in it for me?"

And really, what is in it for them? A life as a discriminated, permanent minority? For payback for things long-dead White guys did fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago? Groveling for original sin for the "crime" of being born a beta White guy? [The Hollywood glitterati don't seem to hate their own Whiteness. I've never seen George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp act ashamed of being White.]

For most White guys, and increasingly White women, it comes down to money in the pocket, and quality of life. White people spend tremendous amounts of money to avoid having to deal with non-Whites, moving to distant exurbs. Because non-Whites are not people, for the most part, they want to send their kids to school with or live around. Drop out rates, gang involvement, single motherhood, rates of criminality, in the real world Whites do not talk about it much, but they move heaven and earth to avoid living in a working-class city like Bell. Preferring to drive considerable miles to live in distant exurbs like Temecula.

Yes, SWPL women do find this anti-White guy stuff great. They eat it up when it comes time to bash beta White guys. And that group of people punches above its demographic weight, culturally. But even they don't hang out in the Barrio or Ghetto, nor do they live around such places. Nor do they tend to marry non-Whites in significant numbers. [Working class enlisted people in the Military, including White men and Women, tend to be the biggest cross-race marriage group, followed by rich new celebrities. For the enlisted person, the divide is military/civilian, and for celebrities, likely famous and ordinary. In neither case do the issues of relatives, family, social approval, and much of anything else really matter.]

The Office on NBC shows SWPL women the clueless adventures of a beta White guy idiot, running afoul of PC rules and office etiquette all the time. SWPL women enjoy laughing at his failures. Tellingly, there is no White woman to make fun of as the central buffoon. And broadly speaking, the SWPL alliance, and particularly SWPL women, and guys like Wise (he himself is of course, White) has been effective.

Even nationally, The Wall Street Journal reports that White women voted, after a 50-50 split four years ago, at 41% Dem to 57%, compared to White men at 36% Dem, and 62% Republican. This is a not insignificant gap of about 5%. Had White women remained at their voting patterns four years ago, it would have been about a twelve point gap.

And here is the weakness of bashing beta White guys and calling for the "end of Whiteness" and a colors of Benetton America. Or Target commercials. It depends on good times. When times go bad, even SWPL women who do HATE HATE HATE beta boring White guys (because they insult them by hitting on them, thus lowering their sexual market value), worry about economics.

Does making America look like this put or take money from your pocket?


The answer, even for those with solid reasons to dislike the boring beta White guys hitting on them, is that it takes (considerable) money from your pocket. It requires you to move far away, from desirable jobs, or live under heavy and expensive security. It requires you to be on your guard at all moments, and to know you could be killed at any time. It requires heavy taxes, repressive policing, and eventually military rule, to counteract the drug cartels and spiraling violence. A hefty price to pay for a Target commercial fantasy.

This is why Wise's White-baiting rants are helpful. They concentrate the mind even of SWPL women, to the bottom line. Which is the bottom line. They can indeed have, a non-White majority country, where the only surviving White guys are by definition Alpha, not beta (and of course they will have to share them with other girls). But the cost is likely to be too high. In many cases, literally stepping over bodies. The Mexican investigator looking into the shooting of the American shot on a Mexican-Texas border lake, was beheaded in Mexico.

Even SWPL women find that just too expensive.



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Friday, November 5, 2010

Boehner vs Obama

Rarely do events throw up two antagonists who are direct and total opposites of each other. With the House now moving Republican, a show-down between John Boehner and Barack Obama, both total unknowns four years ago, seems certain. And for all the "genius" label put on Obama, don't bet against Boehner. Unheralded, White, Working Class, he's the complete opposite of Obama. He's worked all his life, and worked his way to his position.


Barack Obama was born to the former Stanley Ann Dunham, daughter of a Honolulu banker, and Barack Obama Senior. Obama Senior being the right hand man of Kenyan Luo tribe king-maker Tom Mboya. Obama Senior of course famously graduated from the University of Hawaii and enrolled in the graduate program at Harvard, and was a top man in Luo politics until his alcoholism got out of control. Stanley Ann Dunham held various US Embassy jobs in Indonesia, and received her Phd from the University of Hawaii (on peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia, no kidding). Obama Sr. was an economist. His ex-wife an expert on Indonesian peasant culture.

Obama himself was an infant and toddler, in the sole custody of his then single mother, who briefly received food stamps. After her marriage Lolo Soetero, an Indonesian national, Dunham and Obama moved with her new husband to Indonesia, then in the aftermath of the overthrow of Suharto. At the age of nine, Obama, after being educated in an Indonesian Madrassa, was sent to live with his grandparents in Hawaii. Residing in their high rise Honolulu apartment, he attended the exclusive and expensive Punahou Prep School, where by his own account he was an indifferent student, often getting high.

Obama then attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years, where he was close to a wealthy Pakistani student, and by his own account in "Dream From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" he hung out with radical feminists, marxists, gays, Black Nationalists, and Muslims. At Columbia University, in his final two years as an Undergrad, he was the room-mate of a Muslim who's lack of devoutness he criticizes in his autobiography. Obama of course later attended Harvard, where he was the first Black President of Law Review. Famously, he never wrote an article while President of Law Review. Holding brief jobs as an investment newsletter researcher, most of Obama's working life has been as a community organizer, State Legislator, and part-time guest lecturer at the University of Chicago. Obama has also written two books, his autobiography and "The Audacity of Hope," dedicated to long-time anti-White racialist preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's mentor. The very title taken from a Wright sermon.

Obama has dazzled news people, and the media, and celebrities. He famously recited the call to prayer in Arabic, which he had memorized as a boy, to a New York Times reporter.

John Boehner, by contrast, is completely different. The second of twelve children, he grew up poor, White, and rooted. His parents slept on a pull-out couch. He started working in his family's bar at age 8. Boehner has lived in Southern Ohio his entire life. Boehner enlisted in the US Navy during the height of the Vietnam War (1968) but was discharged honorably for medical reasons. He earned his bachelor degree much later, eleven years in fact (1977) from Xavier University in Cincinnati, becoming the first person in his family to attend College. [Obama's maternal grandparents attended and graduated, his mother and father were both Masters holders, and his mother held a Phd.]

Boehner has said he has done every dirty job there was. Cleaning toilets, sweeping floors, doing dishes, busing dishes, waiting tables, tending bar, he's done it. He worked his way up from salesman at Nucite Sales, a small packaging and plastics company, to President. Boehner served as member of the board of trustees for Union Township, Butler County Ohio, then a State Representative. He has been a Congressman since 1990, and was briefly majority leader in 2006 following Tom DeLay's resignation. Following loss of the House in 2006, Boehner has been Minority Leader.

Boehner's reputation is one of a hard worker, night owl, and steady but unspectacular. He can play hardball, and is credited along with Minority Whip Eric Cantor for helping the Republican Congressional Wave get larger:

Success came with a fair amount of bickering. House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio decided to oust Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole as head of the GOP re-election effort amid a staffing spat. Mr. Boehner engineered his replacement as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's political arm, by installing Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas.


Boehner's man, Sessions (son of Clinton fired FBI Director William Sessions), led the effort to demand Republican candidates raise their own money, instead of depending on the NRCC to do it for them. In turn, this allowed the NRCC to target vulnerable Dems. Another Boehner Lieutenant, Kevin McCarthy of California, copied Rahm Emmanuel's use of statistics and money to find weak opponents. Quality challengers to "safe" Democratic districts were funded, to force some to retire, and others to raise money denied to other candidates. Census maps were studied to analyze demographics.

Boehner is steady, unspectacular, well known to his Republican colleagues. He has a reputation for toughness in politics, and has not panicked. He held his colleagues together on ObamaCare, the Stimulus, and other Obama policies that early on, looked both unstoppable and politically advantageous. Boehner has presided over, and at least not harmed, a Republican counter-wave that has erased all Democratic House gains since 2006. Which is remarkable, and speaks to his ability to delegate properly, organize politically, and remain focused for long periods of time.

Where Obama has lived a life of rootless internationalism, and is very familiar with Islam, Muslims, Indonesia, Kenya, Hawaii, and rich White liberals in New York City, and rich Black Nationalist radicals in Chicago, he knows nothing of ordinary Americans. Indeed he drips with contempt for them, and it shows, over and over again. Obama has never worked a dirty, manual labor job in his life. Indeed his autobiography is totally absent the kind of crummy Summer job that was a passage of life for most White American teens.

Boehner by contrast has deep roots in Southern Ohio. He knows ordinary working White voters very well, because he is one, along with his family. Where Obama was the beneficiary of Affirmative Action and wealthy privilege, and many personal connections, Boehner's success is due mostly to hard work and the ability to simply out-wait and out-organize opponents. It took the man after all, eleven years to finish College, working all the while. To move from sales job to President of a small, unglamorous plastics packaging company, is impressive in determination and doggedness, if nothing else.

In the coming showdown over defunding ObamaCare, and administrative Cap and Trade (which Obama will surely pursue) and monetary policy, and trade, and nearly everything else, don't bet against the stolid, stubborn Boehner. Obama is the mega-celebrity of all celebrities. Obama will always have the media with him. Famously tweaking Boehner as a "fellow person of color" for referring to Boehner's tan, Obama got his class-based shot in to the amusement of the media. But like Katie Couric talking of visiting the "great unwashed in the middle of the Country," that may have been a backfire.

Ridiculing "working class" people with "spray on tans" who "look orange" is a way of asserting upper class identity and Obama reflexively took it. Because Obama is at his core, a spoiled foreign prince deigning to rule and oh so obviously punish White America for past sins real and imagined. Against determined to lose McCain, and the huge unpopularity of George W. Bush (mostly because Bush failed to level on the costs and blood required by Iraq and Afghanistan), coupled with a suddenly collapsing economy, Obama cruised to victory. But media adulation cannot help him when unemployment is 9.6% officially, and about 20% in real terms. White voters have turned on Obama, only about 35% of White men and only 41% of White women voted for Democratic Congressional candidates, a referendum on Obama. His support is about that level too, in job performance. White voters have stopped listening to him, as a writer at NRO's The Corner noted. As they did before, with George W. Bush.

Obama can win the media, but it won't help him. Not with expected food inflation to hit, along with the effects of administrative cap and trade through the EPA. While wages stagnate and the Fed feeds inflation, with no prospect of a real recovery by employment gains. Upper class ridicule gets laughs from the press, when the target is a working class White guy, but White voters are not laughing. Outside of New York, California, Oregon, Washington State, DC, and Massachusetts, those are the people who vote: working class and harried middle class Whites. Not moneyed elites, secure in ridiculing those "prole."

In an otherwise whining editorial about how sullen and stupid ordinary Americans are for turning on Global President Obama, the columnist Philip Stephens notes that the US Dept of Labor Statistics paints a dire picture for the middle and working classes and a bright one for the new elite:

For some time, one of the most interesting numbers in US politics has been one not found in the opinion polls’ exit survey. It is published every month by the Federal Bureau of Labor statistics. It tracks changes in the real earnings – and thus the living standards – of middle America.

During the past 20 years the median earnings of these workers have risen in total by less than 10 per cent after adjustment for inflation. During the past decade they have stagnated. Someone has thrown a wrench into the escalator.

To put these figures into perspective, the economy grew by 60 per cent – six times as fast as median earnings – during the 20 years from 1990. Even during the past decade, which included the deepest recession since the 1930s, output expanded by 15 per cent.

For a time the effect on living standards was masked by the explosion of cheap imports and cheap credit. Americans could live their dream by borrowing from the banks and buying cheaply from China. The party came to an end with the global financial crash.

If Middle America has not shared in rising prosperity, the same cannot be said of the most affluent. The proceeds of growth have gone largely into corporate profits and into huge increases in boardroom pay. The richest have had a ball.

Figures from the Congressional Budget Office show that the share of overall incomes of the wealthiest 1 per cent of households stood at about 12 per cent in 1990. By 2007 that had jumped to more than 19 per cent. Measured in 2007 dollars, the incomes of this group more than doubled from a little more than $800,000 a year to $1.8m.

Globalisation, from this vantage point, has been good only for the few. It has enriched bankers and chief executives, but left the middle classes at once no better off today and more insecure about tomorrow.


Of course, read the whole thing. Even an elitist like Stephens (who goes on to excuse Obama with "Bush did it" and "racism" and of course, Obama not at all being in any way sympathetic to Muslims) can see it.

The case to be made against Obama and Democrats is that they will enrich a few elites, with sweetheart deals, flood America with Mexicans made instant citizens for votes to keep those sweetheart deals, sell out remaining manufacturing and agriculture to "save the polar bear" (and enrich China by killing competition), and turn the White middle and working classes into dispossessed, discriminated against, bottom of the diversity totem pole, people in their own land. All to benefit a few. The case against this is a massive border fence, massive tariffs, particularly at Chinese goods but also other low-cost labor manufacturers, oil and gas drilling here and now, tight money, a sound dollar, and a rebuilt industrial base with military stimulus. One that puts millions of Americans back to work, building latest generation fighter jets, or UAVs, or carrier groups, or attack submarines, or the latest nuclear missiles and warheads.

Closed borders. A closed economy (like China's). Massive military spending and build-up, to put people back to work and threaten bad actors. Drilling for oil and gas. An America that exports grains and manufactured goods, and imports relatively little from China or anyone else. One focused on pushing wage gains to average workers instead of a privileged few.

Can Boehner sell this? That remains to be seen. But it is clear from the character of both men, that Obama on the attack as the man against Boehner, who is indeed, not the man, turns Alinsky's rules on their heads. You cannot attack the man when you are the man. Freezing and personalizing the target does not work when people expect you to put money in their pocket and produce results. Obama has never been responsible for anything, nor can he grind out daily tasks.

There is this gem from Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest advisors and a Michelle Obama crony (which right there says it all):

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.


Yes, too "talented to do what ordinary people do." About 90% of success in anything comes from grinding things out. White voters have soured on Obama because he has not been willing to work. Work hard, long, tedious hours. White voters expected Obama to make their lives better, and he has shown them time and time again, he is only interested in parties for himself and Marie Antoinette Obama, at the Costa Del Sol, or with 34 warships guarding him in India, to the tune of $200 million a day, with over 3,000 people going with him.

Obama's weakness is that outside campaigning, he has not been willing to work. He is in fact, lazy. Bored. And rather untalented. Because he is both Black, and can string two sentences together without sounding like an NFL star who has sired seven kids with six different women, he has been told, and believes himself, to be brilliant. Obama has no ability to understand, or even affinity, with Americans outside Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan. The world of hard work, loyalty, doggedness, and lack of privilege that encapsulates nearly all of White America escapes him.

When Obama lectures the out of work plumber, who has spent his entire life since 18 working, on his innate racism and "White privilege," he loses him, as he does the waitress, or the out of work program manager for a fiber optic manufacturer, who as a teen worked as a roofer. Obama literally does not understand that the average White person has had a much harder, tougher, less secure life than he has had. And that his princely ways arouse their anger not their admiration.

John Boehner may lack Obama's ability to read a teleprompter, impressively. He is not Black, with all the social and political advantages that being Black brings to political figures. He has no followers among the media, or the glitterati. He does, however, like the hedgehog know one big thing very well. And that is to keep working. I expect the political showdown between Boehner and Obama to last fairly long (Obama has many resources as President). But in the end, I expect Obama to lose. Simply because Obama does not know how to fight a man prepared to simply out-tough and outlast him. Boehner may be simply a dogged, establishment and professional Republican politician. But as the man with the one thing Obama lacks (a work ethic) he is far better prepared than Newt Gingrich (who was and is, in many ways, just like Bill Clinton) to stare down the President. If the fight elevates him, which I think it might, he could even be a player for the race for President. At any rate, he more than Obama understands America and its voters.
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