What's being said on whether America should interfere in the jihadi holy war of the Middle East

Poor Dr. Sowell has not received the memo that Israel has launched a full-scale lobbying war to get the USA to bomb Syria, otherwise his opening sentence in the article below would have been different.  Being an admirer of the Jewish homeland,  he will either pretend not to know about Israel's intentions or will hide his disappointment and might even  let his intelligence go take a nap and make excuses for Israel.  I am waiting to see what this great thinker has to say about Israel's role in trying to bring about Armageddon and about aligning herself with Saudi Arabia.  

Don't miss watching the vid below.  McCain the warmonger gets a pretty good beating at a townhall meeting from a guy who vents out a lot of steam.  

Thomas Sowell:
I cannot see why even a single American, a single Israeli or a single Syrian civilian should be killed as a result of a token U.S. military action, undertaken simply to spare Barack Obama the embarrassment of doing nothing, after his ill-advised public ultimatum to the Syrian government to not use chemical weapons was ignored.
Some people say that some military response is necessary, not to spare Obama a personal humiliation, but to spare the American presidency from losing all credibility -- and therefore losing the ability to deter future threats to the United States without bloodshed.
There is no question that the credibility of the presidency -- regardless of who holds that office -- is a major asset of this country. Another way of saying the same thing is that Barack Obama has recklessly risked the credibility of future presidents, and the future safety of this country, by his glib words and weak actions......



John Stossel:
...Some things you just have to do,  in spite of great uncertainty.
Launching missiles at Syria isn't one of them.
Many pundits talk about going to war as if all we have to do is make up our minds about what "ought" to happen -- who the bad guys are -- and the rest is just details. If we decide we must punish a tyrant, let the military worry about how to get it done.
We ought to worry more about details.
Everyone agrees there are huge "known unknowns" in Syria -- we barely know the composition of the rebel movement we're supposed to aid -- but we should be more concerned about "unknown unknowns," to borrow former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's phrase.
Remember the confidence with which he and other Bush administration officials described their plans to remake Iraq? Dick Cheney said, "We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." The Wall Street Journal beat the drums for war for a year. I read that Iraq was full of repressed democratic activists just waiting for Saddam to be overthrown.
Pundits also argued that once the authoritarian ruler was gone, Iraq would blossom into a showcase of peace and democracy that would inspire transformation throughout the region. I wanted to believe it. Once they had a choice, why wouldn't they pursue our way of life? It's clearly better!
Instead, we've spent more than a decade fighting feuding factions that most Americans have never heard of -- and still can't name....

Thomas Sowell: "Many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions."

A Wise Man speaketh, but nobody listens.  **sigh**

Dr. Thomas Sowell at Townhall:
..... It is hard to read a newspaper,  or watch a television newscast, without encountering someone who has come up with a new "solution" to society's "problems." Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than there are problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions.

San Francisco and New York are both plagued with large "homeless" populations today, largely as a result of previous housing "reforms" that made housing more expensive and severely limited how much housing, and of what kind, could be built.

The solution? Spend more of the taxpayers' money making homelessness a viable lifestyle for more people.

Education is a field with endless reforms, creating endless problems, requiring endless solutions. One of the invincible fallacies among educators is that all sorts of children can be educated in the same classroom. Not just children of different races, but children of different abilities, languages, and values.

Isn't it nice to think so? I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals' imagination, rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.

The result is that many very bright children are bored to the point of becoming behavior problems, when the school work is slowed to a pace within the range of students who are slower learners.

By federal law, even children with severe mental or emotional problems must be "mainstreamed" into classes for other students -- often in disregard of how much this disrupts these classes and sacrifices the education of the other children.

Parents who complain about the effect of these "solutions" on their own children's education are made to feel guilty for not being more "understanding" about the problems of handicapped students.

Nothing is easier for third party busybodies than being "understanding" and "compassionate" at someone else's expense -- especially if the busybodies have their own children in private schools, as so many public school educators do.

Whether in housing, education or innumerable other aspects of life, the key to busybody politics, and its endlessly imposed "solutions," is that third parties pay no price for being wrong........

Thomas Sowell on the immigrants of today

Worth reading in full.

Dr.Sowell writing at JewishWorldReview:
.... Immigrants from some countries are seldom on welfare but immigrants from other countries often are. Immigrants from some countries are typically people with high levels of education and skills, while immigrants from other countries seldom have much schooling or skills.

Nevertheless, many of our current discussions of immigration issues talk about immigrants in general, as if they were abstract people in an abstract world. But the concrete differences between immigrants from different countries affect whether their coming here is good or bad for the American people.......

......It is hard to imagine Milton Friedman looking for "the ideal outcome" on immigration in the abstract. More than once he said, "the best is the enemy of the good," which to me meant that attempts to achieve an unattainable ideal can prevent us from reaching good outcomes that are possible in practice.

Too much of our current immigration controversy is conducted in terms of abstract ideals, such as "We are a nation of immigrants." Of course we are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of people who wear shoes. Does it follow that we should admit anybody who wears shoes?

The immigrants of today are very different in many ways from those who arrived here a hundred years ago. Moreover, the society in which they arrive is different. The Wall Street Journal column ends by quoting another economist who said, "Better to build a wall around the welfare state than the country."

But the welfare state is already here— and, far from having a wall built around it, the welfare state is expanding in all directions by leaps and bounds. We do not have a choice between the welfare state and open borders. Anything we try to do as regards immigration laws has to be done in the context of a huge welfare state that is already a major, inescapable fact of life.....

.......Among other facts of life utterly ignored by many advocates of de facto amnesty is that the free international movement of people is different from free international trade in goods.

Buying cars or cameras from other countries is not the same as admitting people from those countries or any other countries. Unlike inanimate objects, people have cultures and not all cultures are compatible with the culture in this country that has produced such benefits for the American people for so long.

Not only the United States, but the Western world in general, has been discovering the hard way that admitting people with incompatible cultures is an irreversible decision with incalculable consequences. If we do not see that after recent terrorist attacks on the streets of Boston and London, when will we see it?
"Comprehensive immigration reform" means doing everything all together in a rush, without time to look before we leap, and basing ourselves on abstract notions about abstract people.

Thomas Sowell on "fashionable racial rhetoric" and its consequences

Good stuff as always.  Show me someone with more commonsense than Dr.Sowell and I will show you how to grow wings and fly.

New York City's Stuyvesant High School    is one of those all too rare public schools for intellectually outstanding students. Such students are often bored to death in schools where the work is geared to the lowest common denominator, and it is by no means uncommon for very bright students to become behavior problems.

Recent statistics on the students who passed the examination to get into Stuyvesant High School raise troubling questions that are unlikely to receive the kind of serious answers they deserve.

These successful applicants included 9 black students, 24 Latino students, 177 white students and 620 Asian Americans.

Since this is definitely not the ethnic makeup of the general population of New York City, we can expect to hear the usual sort of comments from those who are in the business of being indignant and offended.

The most common of these comments is that the tests are "unfair." That is of course possible, but it is also possible that the groups themselves are different. Yet only the first possibility is allowed to be mentioned, in an age when race can be discussed only with pious hypocrisy and obligatory lies.

However shocked some people may be by the ethnic breakdown among students who passed the test to get into Stuyvesant High School, similar disparities can be found among students from different ethnic backgrounds in other countries around the world. Back in the decade of the 1960s, students from the Chinese minority in Malaysia earned 20 times as many Bachelor of Science degrees as students from the Malay majority.....

........Every study I know of that compares the amount of time that black students and Asian American students spend watching television, and how much time they spend on school work, shows disparities as great as the disparities in their academic outcomes.
When teaching at UCLA, years ago, I once went into a library on a Saturday night, noticed how many Asian students were studying — and looked around in vain for any black students. How surprised should I have been when Asian students did better in the courses I taught?.....

....Unfortunately, we are at a stage where the interests of race hustlers is to cry "unfair" at the tests — and they have a lot more political clout than black Tiger Moms have. So long as the rest of us are silenced by political correctness, racial progress on that front is unlikely.
Put differently, whole generations of black young people can continue to go down the drain because their fate carries less weight than fashionable racial rhetoric.....

Thomas Sowell on what the Republicans should do

However, you can take it for granted that his advice will fall on deaf ears.

...One of the secrets  of Barack Obama's success is his ability to say things that will sound both plausible and inspiring to uninformed people, even when they sound ridiculous to people who know the facts. Apparently he believes the former outnumber the latter, and the election results suggest that he may be right.....

...Since most of the media will never expose Obama's fallacies and falsehoods, it is all the more important for Republicans to do so themselves. Nor is it necessary for every Republican candidate for every office to become an expert on every controversial issue.

Just as particular issues are farmed out to different committees in Congress, so Republicans can set up committees of outside experts to inform them on particular issues.

For example, a committee on income and poverty could be headed by an expert like Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. This is a subject on which demonstrable falsehoods have become the norm, and one on which devastating refutations in plain English are readily available from a number of sources.

A committee on the counterproductive effects of liberal policies such as minimum wage laws on minorities could be headed by someone like economist Walter Williams. Here too, there are many writings in plain English that could expose the huge harm done to minorities by liberal policies that claim to be helping them....

Quotable quotes from the wonderful world of free speechers ... Part Three

This is only the first collection of several more I have collected from the writings of the  Great   Dr. Thomas Sowell:  

"If there is ever a Hall of Fame for confidence men, Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff will have to take a back seat to Barack Obama. Obama is the gold standard — or, perhaps more appropriately, the brass standard."

"No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results."

"Those who disdain wealth as a worthy goal for an individual or a society seem not to realize that wealth is the only thing that can prevent poverty."

"Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad."

"Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as "racists." "

"With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution."

"If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government."

"Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom — are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?"

"Immigrants who come here from around the world with every desire and intention to become Americans may be hi-jacked by those activists who are ideologically committed to keeping them speaking foreign languages, loyal to foreign values and -- if possible -- taught to feel historic grievances against the country that is welcoming them today."

On Affirmative Action:
"People differ - and have for centuries.... Any 'temporary' policy whose duration is defined by the goal of achieving something that has never been achieved before, anywhere in the world, could more fittingly be characterized as eternal."

On the Clintons during the Monica scandal:
"No one who really cares about this country wants to see it torn apart by the impeachment of any president. By the same token, no one who cares about humanity really wants to see a war, but we have had to fight wars to protect ourselves and our country.
Today, it is considered clever to shrug at abuses of power and say, "Everybody does it." Because of the struggles and sacrifices of generations who went before us, everybody in America does not do it.
But history shows that everybody will do it if you let them get away with it."

"The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be "materialistic" and "greedy" to want to keep what you have earned. But it is "idealistic" to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself."

"The pretense of having solutions can be more dangerous than the problem. Yet there are whole armies of shrinks and social workers, whose jobs depend on pretending that they have answers, even when no one has answers."

On Obama's policies in 2010:
"In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.
The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.
Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere."

"There seems to be something "liberating" about ignorance — especially when you don't even know enough to realize how little you know."

"The great ideological divide is between those who believe that theories should be adjusted to reality and those who believe that reality must be adjusted to fit their theories. Many of the horrors of the 20th century were created by the latter. And such people are still with us, in many movements."

"If you don't like growing older, don't worry about it. You may not be growing older much longer."

All the above are obtained from various articles of  Dr.Sowell here.  Each and every article written by Dr.Sowell is thought-provoking.

Thomas Sowell: "Israel is in a desperate situation — and there is no way that Barack Obama does not know that."

The coming shariah, if Obama gets a second term,  will deprive us of  learning from  great thinkers like Thomas Sowell.

....From the beginning,   Barack Obama has tried to downplay the threat of a nuclear Iran. At one time he said dismissively that Iran was just “a small country.”

In fact, Iran is physically larger than Japan,   and its current population is slightly larger than what the population of Japan was when the Japanese dealt a devastating blow to the United States with its attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

A nuclear Iran can do a lot more damage to Israel than the Japanese did to the United States. Moreover, it is well on its way to being able to produce more than the two bombs that were enough to force Japan to surrender in 1945.

Israel is in a desperate situation — and there is no way that Barack Obama does not know that.

Of all the authors whose books about Barack Obama have flooded the market, Dinesh D’Souza has shown the best grasp of Obama’s strange ideological view of the world. Based on that understanding, D’Souza said two years ago: “I predict that even as Iran develops the full capacity to build nuclear weapons, Obama will do little or nothing to stop it.”

As for the possibility that Israel will “launch airstrikes to disable the Iranian nuclear facilities,” D’Souza said, “I predict the Obama administration will do its best to prevent Israel from taking any such action.”

That is what Obama is doing to this very moment. He has even taken the unconscionable step of revealing to the world Israel’s secret arrangements with Azerbaijan to provide a refueling place for its planes going to or returning from an airstrike on Iran.

Dinesh D’Souza has no crystal ball. But you don’t need a crystal ball to predict Barack Obama’s hostile attitude toward Israel, despite all of Obama’s lofty words saying the opposite.........

Thomas Sowell: Random thoughts on the passing scene

Dr. Sowell's wisdom can always be counted on.


...Even squirrels know enough to store nuts,   so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution prescribes "equal protection of the laws" to all Americans. But what does that mean, if the President of the United States can arbitrarily grant waivers, so that A, B and C have to obey the laws but X, Y and Z do not -- as with both ObamaCare and the immigration laws?

Two reports came out in the same week. One was from the Pentagon, saying that, in just a few years, Iran will be able to produce not only a nuclear bomb but a missile capable of carrying it to the United States. The other report said that the American Olympic team has uniforms made in China. This latter report received far more attention, both in Congress and in the media.

People who lament gridlock in Washington, and express the pious hope that Democrats and Republicans would put aside their partisan conflicts, and cooperate to help the economy recover, implicitly assume that what the economy needs is more meddling by politicians, which is what brought on economic disaster in the first place. (Skeptics can read "The Housing Boom and Bust.")

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as "racists."

One of the arguments for Medicare is that the elderly don't want to be a burden to their children. Apparently it is all right to be a burden to other people's children, who are paying taxes.

Those who talk as if more people going to college is automatically a Good Thing seldom show much interest in what actually goes on at college -- including far less time spent by students studying than in the past, and a proliferation of courses promoting a sense of grievance, entitlement or advanced navel-gazing and breast-beating...........

..........If we wake up some morning and find some American cities in radioactive ruins, courtesy of a nuclear Iran, nobody is going to care whether the president who lets this happen is the first black president or the last WASP president. But, in the meantime, many people will keep on voting for symbolism, as if an election is a popularity contest, like choosing a college's Homecoming Queen or Parade Marshal.........

Thomas Sowell: "..in any great disaster, there's a Harvard man in the middle of it."

Uncommon Knowledge interviews Dr.Sowell where he talks about intellectuals and their ego, Obama, professors, how before the government's  "minimum wage" mandate, the unemployment rate for young black Americans was lower than for others, and lots more. Really worth your time.

A Racial Revolution in America ?

Dr.Thomas Sowell's thoughts on what can happen.

.... Yet when all is said and done, the future political direction of the country seems painfully clear for these demographic trends, unless something happens to change the current correlation between race and political party affiliation. Moreover, even that may not be enough.

Even if Republicans can siphon off enough votes from groups that normally vote for Democrats to keep the two-party system alive, the preservation of the Republican Party is a trivial issue compared to the preservation of American society....

h/t: Irene

A Question of Race and Black America

Very telling and very informative article by Jay Schalin writing at the AmericanThinker . Also has a link to Dr.Thomas Sowell's "A Censored Race War" which is an awesome and insightful article on the same topic. Worth your time to read in full.

.....One was conservative writer John Derbyshire, who wrote a column for the online publication Taki's Magazine that summed up safety advice he had given his teenage sons over the years concerning blacks. These lessons included telling his sons to avoid black neighborhoods, to leave events where blacks were in the majority, and that a small but significant percentage of the black population hated whites enough to do them harm without cause.

For that, Derbyshire had his decades-long relationship as a columnist with the conservative National Review ended.

Several weeks ago, another such "firing" occurred, with Naomi Schaefer Riley sent packing from her role as blogger at the Chronicle of Higher Education for daring to insinuate that a selection of black studies dissertations with cringe-inducing titles, such as "'So I Could Be Easeful': Black Women's Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth," might be "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap."

Unlike Derbyshire, Riley was not banished to non-personhood in established conservative circles. Instead, she fired back from the op-ed pages of her previous employer, the Wall Street Journal, doubling down on her assertion that black studies departments were too politicized from their inception to be objectively academic.....

Dire warning from Dr.Thomas Sowell

Mitt Romney better sit up and take this seriously.  The clearest brain has spoken.

.....Franklin D. Roosevelt won his biggest landslide victory after his first term in office, during which the unemployment rate was never less than twice what it has been under Barack Obama.

The "smart money" inside the Beltway says that a high unemployment rate spells doom at the polls for a president. But history says that people who are getting government handouts tend to vote for whoever is doing the handing out.

The Obama administration has turned this into a handout state that breaks all previous records. Lofty rhetoric about "stimulus," "shovel-ready projects," "green jobs" or "investment" in "the industries of the future" all give political cover to what is plain old handouts to people who are likely to vote to re-elect Obama.

At the local level as well, history shows that some of the most successful politicians have been people who ruined the local economy and chased job-creating businesses away. Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s was not worried when affluent whites began moving out of the city in response to his policies, because they were people who were likely to vote against him if they stayed.

Of course they took their taxes, their investment money and the jobs they created with them. But that was Detroit's problem, not Coleman Young's problem. Barack Obama may win re-election by turning the United States into Detroit writ large.

Something similar happened in earlier times, when James Michael Curley served 4 terms as mayor of Boston, and 2 terms in prison. As the non-Irish left the city, in response to Curley's policies, that increased Curley's likelihood of being re-elected.

This kind of cynical politics is even more likely to succeed when political opponents fail to articulate their case to the public. And Republicans are notorious for neglecting articulation.

The phrase "tax cuts for the rich" has been repeated endlessly by Democrats without one Republican that I know of saying, "Folks, I don't lie awake at night worrying about millionaires' tax problems. Millionaires have lawyers and accountants who get paid to do that. But I do worry about jobs being lost to millions of American workers because we make the business climate here worse than in other countries. That's a high price to pay for rhetoric."

The case can be made. But somebody has to make the case.

Yes, the mask has come off and what's exposed is coyote ugly

Dr Thomas Sowell writing at Townhall:
Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being -- not by what they actually are or what they actually do.

Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off."

That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.

First there was the grossly misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act" that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting -- a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union.........

Affirmative Action .... here, there and everywhere

No wonder African Americans don't have much confidence in their own abilities. They have been conditioned to think that without that little push to help them climb up the ladder and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with non-blacks, they would have never made it up the ladder.  Being a non-white person myself, I know I would have been extremely hostile to anyone or any regulation giving me a hand-up only because of my color. The idiots who thought up this ridiculous affirmative action shit were total fucks and the scum who are still insisting on keeping it going are wanna be slave masters.... once again.  It's in their DNA  but they cloak it in any number of ways ... one of the ways being "affirmative action'. 

That "master-slave" mentality is hard to get rid of, eh lefties?

In America, this inequality is directed at the Black population there. Over here in Canada, it's directed at the First Nations' people. Affirmative Action is an injustice done by stupid, idiotic, bleeding-heart do-gooders without realizing that they are doing more harm than good.

But then, when is the Left ever really aware of the harm they do ???

When I read   Thomas Sowell’s column (March 13, 2012) about an African American graduate student in mathematics at a prestigious university who had his dissertation written for him, I was shocked. Not because after spending more than three decades in academia I didn’t know such things existed. I just didn’t know they existed in mathematics and, perhaps, the real sciences. I thought that kind of intellectual corruption was confined to the social sciences and humanities.

So familiar am I with the process of writing dissertations for black students that I believe I can claim to know the professor who thinks he invented it. In fact, he alleges to have devised the euphemism to cover it up, which he “brilliantly” called “heavy editing.” Were he to come forth and accept recognition for this achievement, it would be the singular and most palpable accomplishment of his academic career.

To be a black graduate student and be constantly reminded that your race results in the special privilege of having a dissertation written for you does nothing for your self-esteem. To survive in this kind of intellectually abusive environment, one must turn against it. One must deny its legitimacy. If one weren’t radicalized before, one most certainly is radicalized afterward.

This explains Derek Bell’s critical race theory. Bell knew that he was not qualified to teach at Harvard. He proposed a theoretical standard by which Harvard was not qualified to judge him. Barack Obama’s admission to Columbia University remains a mystery. He became the president of the Harvard Law Review without ever having written an article for it. Obama knew that he was where he was because of his race. He too embraced a cultural explanation of a different reality and a political radicalization that affirmed that reality......

Thomas Sowell on one of Obama's highly developed talents

Dr.Sowell nails the whole picture in just one go at the hammer.

One of the highly developed talents of President Barack Obama is the ability to say things that are demonstrably false, and make them sound not only plausible but inspiring.

That talent was displayed just this week when he was asked whether he thought the Supreme Court would uphold ObamaCare as constitutional or strike it down as unconstitutional.

He replied: "I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."

But how unprecedented would it actually be if the Supreme Court declared a law unconstitutional if it was passed by "a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress"?

The Supreme Court has been doing precisely that for 209 years!

Nor is it likely that Barack Obama has never heard of it. He has a degree from the Harvard law school and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school. In what must be one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history — Marbury v. Madison in 1803 — Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle that the Supreme Court can declare acts of Congress null and void if these acts violate the Constitution......

Thomas Sowell: "Playing with racial polarization is playing with fire."

Dr. Sowell's opinion on the circus going on down south with Obama the ringmaster whipping up the starved maneaters into a frenzy.  Obama has probably never heard of how ringmasters are often the first to feel the lion's jaws.

...Many years ago, when I was a student at Harvard, there was a warning to all the students to avoid a nearby tough Irish neighborhood, where Harvard students had been attacked. It so happened that there was a black neighborhood on the other side of the Irish neighborhood that I had to pass through when I went to get my hair cut.

I never went through that Irish neighborhood dressed in the style of most Harvard students back then. I walked through that Irish neighborhood dressed like a black working man would be dressed — and I never had the slightest trouble the whole three years that I was at Harvard.

While I had a right to walk through that tough neighborhood dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, if I wanted to — and if I could have afforded one, which I couldn't — it made no sense for me to court needless dangers.

The man who shot the black teenager in Florida may be as guilty as sin, for all I know — or he may be innocent, for all I know. We pay taxes so that there can be judges and jurors who sort out the facts. We do not need Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or the President of the United States spouting off before the trial has even begun. Have we forgotten the media's rush to judgment in the Duke University "rape" case that blew up completely when the facts came out?

If the facts show that a teenager who was no threat to anyone was shot and killed, it will be time to call for the death penalty.

But if the facts show that the shooter was innocent, then it will be time to call for people in the media and in politics to keep their big mouths shut until they know what they are talking about.

Playing with racial polarization is playing with fire.........

The great Thomas Sowell speaketh ...

and he speaketh the truth in the simplest of words.

It used to be common for people to urge us to learn "the lessons of history." But history gets much less attention these days and, if there are any lessons that we are offered, they are more likely to be the lessons from current polls or the lessons of political correctness.

Even among those who still invoke the lessons of history, some read those lessons very differently from others.....

Now that Newt Gingrich has become the latest in a series of Republican front-runners, he is getting the kinds of scrutiny and attacks that have done in other front-runners.

One of the issues that have aroused concern among conservative Republicans is that of amnesty for illegal immigrants, especially after Gingrich said that it would not be "humane" to deport someone who has been living and working here for years.

Let's go back to square one. The purpose of American immigration laws and policies is not to be either humane or inhumane to illegal immigrants. The purpose of immigration laws and policies is to serve the national interest of this country.

There is no inherent right to come live in the United States, in disregard of whether the American people want you here. Nor does the passage of time confer any such right retroactively......

h/t: Irene

Thomas Sowell on Political Culture

This vid on the last part of the interview is very, very interesting.  Sowell has stuff to say about Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney.



Vid 1 to 4 can be found here

Can Obama win a second term?

Dr. Thomas Sowell thinks it's possible.
Remember how the loudmouthed said that if Sarah Palin runs against Obama, then he would win hands down?  Now that she has been banished to the Alaskan cold, are the chances of "anybody but Palin" winning the WH from the snake oil salesman any better?  The one person who had a fighting chance against the powerful leftish machine which is an endowment of Obama and gang. was ridiculed and criticized into acqueising to the wishes of the stupidly gullible but spitefully malicious multitude who wanted her out.
Well ... I hope they will be happy seeing their country fully destroyed by 2016.



Go to RightScoop to read comments

Sublime Logic and Thomas Sowell

They were made for each other. 

On Dependency and Votes: Those who regard government "entitlement" programs as sacrosanct, and regard those who want to cut them back as calloused or cruel, picture a world very different from the world of reality.

To listen to some of the defenders of entitlement programs, which are at the heart of the present financial crisis, you might think that anything the government fails to provide is something that people will be deprived of.

In other words, if you cut spending on school lunches, children will go hungry. If you fail to subsidize housing, people will be homeless. If you fail to subsidize prescription drugs, old people will have to eat dog food in order to be able to afford their meds.

This is the vision promoted by many politicians and much of the media. But, in the world of reality, it is not even true for most people who are living below the official poverty line.

Most Americans living below the official poverty line own a car or truck-- and government entitlement programs seldom provide cars and trucks. Most people living below the official poverty line also have air conditioning, color television and a microwave oven--and these too are not usually handed out by government entitlement programs.........

The interview below is from   before Obama become the Prez. Watch it and you will  realize why people think Dr.Sowell is one of the greatest thinkers of our time. Check what he says about Obama and how dangerous he thought Obama was and how it is all coming true.



On Libya and Obama: You don't just walk up to the local bully and slap him across the face. If you are determined to confront him, then you try to knock the living daylights out of him. Otherwise, you are better off to leave him alone.

Anyone who grew up in my old neighborhood in Harlem could have told you that. But Barack Obama didn't grow up in my old neighborhood. He had a much more genteel upbringing, including a fancy private school, in Hawaii.

Maybe that is why he thinks he can launch military operations against Moammar Qaddafi, while promising not to kill him and promising that no American ground troops will be used.

It is the old liberal illusion that you can measure out force with a teaspoon, not only in military operations micro-managed by civilians in Washington, like the Vietnam war, but also in domestic confrontations when the police are trying to control a rioting mob, and are being restrained by politicians, while the mob is restrained by nobody.........