America's First Black President: Been there, Done That

103 Years of Prominence

OK, here we are. We have as a nation of alleged "racists" our first black president. The most obvious and burning question, then, is this: has it changed anything? My answer may surprise most of you, and it would be a resounding "yes"!

I could follow up that first paragraph with a litany of rhetorical questions, but it would be a waste of time and an exercise in futility and redundancy. But there is one question that must be asked in response to the previous one...has America been magically "healed", as we were led to believe it would have been? That one would elicit an equally resounding "NO"!

It is an interesting paradox that leads us up to the 103rd Annual Convention in Houston of the N.A.A.C.P, at which Republican candidate Mitt Romney is scheduled to speak on Wednesday. Ahead of the convention, the Liberal media is working full tilt to paint Romney as "so white he makes white bread look like pumpernickel", something that should realistically scream "racism" to any normal, thinking person, but which somehow, mystically does not. But the kicker is yet to come.

Romney will speak tomorrow to the group regardless of the liberal media's criticisms, and he will make his pitch on the economy and the tragic unemployment rate among blacks and minorities in general, something on which Obama has been given a pass by everyone in the media. But Obama was also scheduled to speak at the convention tomorrow, speaking to "his people", if we are to buy into the stereotypes set before us by the very people making the accusations of racism against us.

What's particularly intriguing is that Mr. Obama will not attend, sending in his stead his whiter-than-white vice president, Joe Biden. (Heck, even his hair is white)! Got that? We have the so-called "mainstream media" wailing about a white Republican candidate addressing the N.A.A.C.P. because we have a black Democrat president, but they don't mention that the black Democrat president is sending an even whiter Democrat proxy.

For those familiar with my writing, you all know well my fondness for irony, and this is a banquet of the grandest proportion. But wait, we're not done! The feast goes on, praise the Libs.

Our Attorney General, Eric Holder, (he's black, in case any of you missed it) has been a valiant champion of minority rights against "voter disenfranchisement" in those "redneck states" that are requiring photo identification as proof of identity in order to perform an American's most cherished right; the right to vote. It seems that AG Holder (D) thinks that "po black and asian folks" is too dumb to get their pitcher tooken! All of my ethnic friends have a driver's license already, so it's not an issue.

Mr. Holder spoke today at the N.A.A.C.P. convention about this very pressing issue, decrying the racist right wing for trying to frighten away those citizens simply seeking the truth and the exercise of their God-given rights as citizens. What were the required credentials -- in a voter ID state like Texas -- to see Holder speak? How about a government-issued photo ID and a second form of identification?

If irony were a meal, I'd be loosening my belt right now.

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DOJ's Double Standard and the Bounty

They've Got a Friend in the DOJ

I suppose the argument could be made that all of the years in the United States in which we've had a white president and a white attorney general saw racial preference in that blacks are incarcerated at a much higher rate than whites. Either that, or it could have been mere coincidence. The point is, it's an ambiguous topic with no clear conclusion.

Now that we have a black president and a black attorney general, examples of racial preference are far more evident than at any time in history. From the beginning of the forty-fourth president's term right on through the Trayvon Martin shooting, the double standard is glaring, and the New Black Panther Party seems to be the obvious beneficiary of the Department of Justice's bias.

NBPP at PA Polling Place 2008

During the election of 2008, when several New Black Panthers -- dressed in military-style garb and carrying weapons -- were intimidating voters at a Pennsylvania polling place, a young man filmed part of the day's action. The DOJ took up the case and was moving toward criminal proceedings until Eric Holder, as the newly appointed Attorney General, squashed the case. There was nothing arbitrary about the intentions of the New Black Panthers that day, it was obvious voter intimidation, serious business. That is, to everyone but Eric Holder.

When Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested by Cambridge police, President Obama leaped into the fray before he knew any of the facts, and because Gates is a black friend, publicly stated that the "Cambridge police acted stupidly".

And now, in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting, we are getting a very eye-opening look at the depths of our new government's bias and the liberties their favorites can take with the law. Despite all of the facts of the shooting not having yet come out, the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) has put out a very public $10,000 bounty for the "capture" of shooter George Zimmerman. (It matters not, apparently, that Zimmerman is every bit as white as the president, which is half).

Consider that in announcing the bounty, the NBPP declared that if law enforcement wouldn't do the job (of apprehending Zimmerman), they would, and the Department of Justice has not raised a peep of protest. This is the same Department of Justice, however, that has sued several states and harassed local law enforcement officials in those states over immigration laws, claiming that the federal government's jurisdiction is being usurped.

Imagine, a Department of Justice being run by people who will prevent legitimate bodies of government from trying to stop the illegal entry into the country by foreigners, prosecute a local sheriff, sue its own member states to get their laws repealed, but they won't utter a word over an organization openly declaring that they are preparing to take the law into their own hands.

And there's the media, who wailed about the "vigilantism" of George Zimmerman" in participating in the Neighborhood Watch program, all the while gleefully reporting on the NBPP bounty. How will they report on the information trickling out from the alternative media about the angelic Trayvon and his apparently questionable character? Or the allegations -- seemingly corroborated -- that Trayvon viciously attacked Zimmerman before being killed?

More importantly how will the New Black Panther Party and the Department of Justice react if it is proven that they have had it wrong all along? My guess is that they will quickly and quietly fade into the woodwork until the next sensational opportunity arises for fame and retribution. And they will never admit that they were wrong.

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Or Forever Hold Your Peace

Will America Emulate China?

I thought it might be prudent to get this piece out before Attorney General Eric Holder has the power to flip the switch on Sanity Sentinel and ban all of my content. Once AG Holder has that power, he may determine that the links, videos and photographs contained on this site constitute "copyright infringement", and I will be silenced.

Welcome to 21st century America and the era of Obama's Hope and Change. It is rapidly becoming a barren, lugubrious wasteland reminiscent of our worst nuclear-winter nightmares, a once gloriously free and industrious land choked into moribundity by the Progressive Socialist stranglehold. I'm reminded of an old Polaroid that was never properly protected by the felt roller, discovered decades later in the bottom of a drawer, once a colorful, cherished memory now reduced to an ashen image of the past.

So many societies have historically experimented with the philosophy of totalitarianism masquerading as compassion - and failed miserably - that we should know better than to keep trying, but the powerful are a stubborn lot. Then again, the powerful never understood the pain of what they had wrought until they lost. Expend no sympathy on their behalf, however, because whatever they experienced at the end was nothing compared to the devastation left in their wakes.

A few days ago a bill flew through the Senate Judiciary Committee with no resistance, passing unanimously. That bill was the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), and what it will do is to give the United States Attorney General the ability to shut down any website he deems to be in violation of this bill. He will have the authority to simply turn off any website on a whim.

COICA is ostensibly designed to protect Hollywood, music and media from piracy, but it's language is much broader than simply trying to prevent theft of copyrighted material. Yes, the AG will need to obtain a court order before acting, but the parameters for enforcement are so expansive that virtually any site he visits may suffer censorship and banishment. If copyright infringement is deemed to be "central to the site's activity", it will meet the criterion for action.

The chilling aspect of this is, even hyper links to another website may be considered grounds for termination, even if there has been no "crime" committed. For a good example, take a look at The Drudge Report. (Oops, I just did it!)

Matt Drudge's site is hugely popular, generating over nine billion hits in the past year. But his site is nothing more than a news aggregate source, consisting of nothing but links. While he has broken no laws, and while he has not been to sued to the best of my knowledge, it stands to reason that his site would be the first casualty of Lord Holder's reign.

 The good news is that the bill will not go before both full houses for a vote until next year, supposedly. One would think that in the new session of Congress, passage of such a thing would have little chance of success. But just the very idea that our government is even considering placing that sort of power in one man's hands is startling, at best.

Combined with elected officials openly calling for the shutting down of information television and radio stations, this is precisely the sort of thing that we the people must be ever vigilant against. We now live in a country built on freedom and personal responsibility that has been reduced to a government prison. They are taking our property, seizing our finances, and controlling our diets and habits. Now they are attempting to remove our ability to know about it.

The Tea Party movement probably never would have happened without the free flow of information. I maintain that that is exactly the reasoning behind these tactics by the government. If they can isolate us and silence us, we are lost forever. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

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For Obama, A Question Of Judgement

For quite some time, Americans have dreamed of having a "common man" in the White House, someone just like them. It was a dream that never came to fruition simply because of the logistics of running for the high office coupled with the price tag. Further, the intense scrutiny of the vetting process is prohibitive to most common men since, as such, they again have little resources to afford to cover up the skeletons we all have. What happened to Joe the Plumber should serve as a prime example.

What we have now, however, is the next best thing, depending on one's perspective. Barack Obama is the president-elect, and while he is far from being a commoner, he does lack experience and is therefore an empty canvass. His promises of change and hope have already begun to yellow around the edges, though, as he begins to build his cabinet; most of the bricks are used.

Aside from the obvious problem this causes, that being the erasure of the promise, it is not necessarily a bad thing since the neophyte will need to surround himself with people who are familiar with the process, people with experience. The trick is to pick people with good experience, though, and not someone who just happened to have performed in a similar role once before.

Eric Holder was assistant Attorney General in the Clinton administration, so yes, he does have experience, but what was the nature and the outcome of that experience? The pardon of Marc Rich immediately comes to mind.

Breitbart news has found a video of hearings on the Rich pardon from 2001, in which Eric Holder is grilled by Congressman Bob Barr. During that testimony, Barr asked Holder if he made a recommendation to the president on the Rich pardon, to which he said that he made the recommendation to the White House Counsel. When Barr asked if the White House Counsel asked on behalf of the president, Holder stated that he didn't "know the process there".

An incredulous Barr then asked, "You don't know what the process is there?" It would seem that an assistant attorney general should know who the White House Counsel reports to, one would think. But the other half of the problem with Holder is his involvement with the pardon itself.

The New York Times on Saturday was kind enough to provide a neat little synopsis of why the Rich case is significant at all. (Emphasis mine).

A little history first. In 1983, Marc Rich was indicted along with his partner, Pincus Green, and their companies on 65 counts of defrauding the I.R.S., mail fraud, tax evasion, racketeering, defrauding the Treasury and trading with the enemy. (The last of these was for an oil deal with Iran while it held American hostages.) On hearing that they were about to be prosecuted, they fled to Switzerland. For the next 17 years, Mr. Rich ducked extradition requests as well as attempts by federal marshals to arrest him in France, England, Finland and elsewhere.

Going back to the testimony of 2001, Holder told Barr that, regarding the pardon of Rich, he was "neutral, leaning toward favorable", despite his own prosecutors vigorously pursuing the case against Rich. This also caused Barr severe perplexity.

The president-elect may need to surround himself with experienced people, but this is not the way to start.

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