Is it because they don't like fast food?
Two of America’s largest unions have denounced McDonald’s Corp. this week following Crain’s story that the company is mobilizing franchisees against a law designed to make it easier for workers to unionize.
The Service Employee International Union encouraged its 1.8 million members to send letters to McDonald’s in support of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. The AFL-CIO issued a press release saying it plans to make sure the 10 million working men and women who make up our membership know that McDonald’s has just announced a whopper of a campaign against their economic interests and against their hopes for an economy that works for all, not just for the CEOs.”
McDonald’s USA President Don Thompson urged 2,400 franchisees to “contact your U.S. senators and representatives to oppose” the Employee Free Choice Act in a Nov. 25 memo obtained by Crain’s. He also wrote that McDonald’s formed a “response team” to help franchisees “actively participate in the opposition to the EFCA.”
The EFCA, or “card-check” bill, would enable unions to organize a workplace by obtaining the signatures of a majority of workers on authorization cards. Current law requires secret ballots. In addition, the legislation would establish a bargaining process that could lead to binding arbitration for labor contracts. President-elect Barack Obama supports the bill.
Possibly the executives of the AFL-CIO are just a little bit out of touch with the world. I mean eating in all the big resturants they don't get out to much with the real people. Maybe they could have come up with better phrasology. Burger King makes Whoppers, even Homer Simpson knows that. In any event a secret ballot has always been the "American" way.
Now if Obama could just get rid of the secret ballot at election time...
de Brantigny
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Separated at birth
Eric Holder, Obama's choice for Attorney General
Graham Stedman, Oprah's Beau. Coincidence?
de Brantigny
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Four Big Lies about the Big Three Automakers
NEWSMAX article
Monday, December 8, 2008 3:58 PM
By: Dan Weil
With congressional Democrats and the Bush administration agreeing in principle during the weekend to drop a few billion on General Motors and Chrysler, all signs point to a government-backed auto industry bailout. But could the crisis in Detroit be the product of myth, spin and outright lies?
As the nation inches closer to an unprecedented investment in private industry, Newsmax has examined the falsehoods being spread to promote the deal. Indeed, the exact amount of money to be doled out isn’t clear yet. GM and Chrysler executives testified before Congress last week that they need $14 billion to survive until March 31.
Whatever the total, a number of financial experts say it would be money better left unspent until the Big Three and their supporters agree to level with the American taxpayers. Until the car makers can offer convincing proof that they will be able to produce cars at a reasonable price that customers will want to buy, here are four of the biggest whoppers they are relying on to get a massive infusion of American tax dollars:
1. Detroit’s wages really aren’t out of sync with those of auto workers in other countries.
It has been well established that total compensation for U.S. auto workers, including pensions and benefits, comes in around $70 per hour. That compares to $45 per hour for Japanese workers.
But some auto industry supporters have distorted the argument. They use the American workers’ hourly wage without benefits – about $30 an hour – and compare that number to the $45 hourly total compensation for Japanese workers. Then they claim that U.S. auto makers are actually more labor efficient than their Japanese counterparts.
Obviously that’s not comparing apples to apples. If you are looking at apples versus apples, a new auto plant in India offers hourly pay of only $19.
And it’s not just line workers who are overpaid. Ford’s chief executive Alan Mulally earned $22 million in total compensation last year – a year that helped push the company toward oblivion. Asked last month if he thought he deserved a pay cut, Mulally said, “I think I’m all right where I am.”
Top executives at Bear Stearns, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch probably felt the same way right before their companies went under.
2. The auto industry is unique and therefore must be bailed out.
It’s true that auto companies, including suppliers, etc., account for about 3 percent of economic output and employ at least 1 million people. But those numbers aren’t dependent on the financial status of the Big Three.
If the companies go into bankruptcy and come out stronger, the industry will employ about the same amount of people. If not, foreign auto makers will produce more cars in the U.S. and pick up many of these workers.
Plenty other uniquely American industries are taking it on the chin, and no one is calling for a bailout of those sectors. Take newspapers for example. One could argue they are far more important for the functioning of our democracy than the Big Three auto companies.
Newspapers are firing workers right and left and shifting more of their operations to the Internet. And they will have to continue doing so until they can put out a news product cheaply enough and well enough so that readers will pay to read it, and advertisers will pay to appear in it.
That’s called adjusting to a changed market place, something the Big Three have largely failed to do since first facing foreign competition in the 1970s.
3. Bankruptcy for the Big Three will mean the end of the U.S. auto industry.
That is simply poppycock. A prepackaged bankruptcy actually could leave the major automakers in better shape than they were prior to the financial crisis. Since the mid-1990s, the Big Three made most of their money on gas guzzling SUVs and trucks. That simply won’t cut it anymore. Bankruptcy will force the auto makers to quicken their shift to smaller cars.
Plenty of companies have emerged stronger from bankruptcy. Nearly all the major airlines have gone through that process and came out stronger than when they entered. Some industry apologists have argued that American consumers won’t buy any cars from the Big Three if they are in bankruptcy because of concern that warranties won’t be honored.
But as long as the companies offer quality autos at reasonable prices and make it clear that warranties will remain in place no matter what happens to the companies themselves, American drivers will want the cars.
Meanwhile, bankruptcy would give the Big Three an opportunity to rework their labor contracts, cutting compensation, and to jettison incompetent executives.
4. A limited aid package now will ensure the industry’s long-term future.
The amount of money being bandied about, $15 billion to $25 billion, is chump change. GM and Chrysler are bleeding $2 billion in cash a month. So the high end of the bailout range keeps them in business for about a year. Then what? Without major changes in their business model, they’ll simply be coming back to Washington with their hands out again.
The Big Three have had so many opportunities to change their practices since the first oil crisis of the early 1970s, yet they have been reluctant to budge. GM still has eight brands of cars, even though critics have pointed out for years that’s probably about seven too many.
As recently as last month, GM CEO Rick Wagoner had the gall to tell Congress: “What exposes us to failure now is not our product lineup, or our business plan, or our long-term strategy.”
Until Wagoner and others at the Big Three come to realize those are exactly the factors that have put the industry on the brink of failure, there is no hope for improvement. And it’s not a bailout that’s going to make auto companies implement the adjustments they need to survive.
And remember, this current "bailout" bears no resemblance to the rescue of Chrysler in 1980. In 1980, Congress passed, and President Carter signed, a law giving a U.S. government guarantee of a private $1.5 billion loan to Chrysler. Not one dollar of taxpayer funds was ever used in the deal. It's also important to remember that import tariffs sheltered Chrysler and the Big Three from Japanese competition in the 1980s. And unlike today, Chrysler also had a clear plan to make a comeback and the loan was relatively small.
All of the automakers should follow Chrysler's 1980s success story: create a viable business plan for the future and get private sources to fund it.
de Brantigny
Monday, December 8, 2008 3:58 PM
By: Dan Weil
With congressional Democrats and the Bush administration agreeing in principle during the weekend to drop a few billion on General Motors and Chrysler, all signs point to a government-backed auto industry bailout. But could the crisis in Detroit be the product of myth, spin and outright lies?
As the nation inches closer to an unprecedented investment in private industry, Newsmax has examined the falsehoods being spread to promote the deal. Indeed, the exact amount of money to be doled out isn’t clear yet. GM and Chrysler executives testified before Congress last week that they need $14 billion to survive until March 31.
Whatever the total, a number of financial experts say it would be money better left unspent until the Big Three and their supporters agree to level with the American taxpayers. Until the car makers can offer convincing proof that they will be able to produce cars at a reasonable price that customers will want to buy, here are four of the biggest whoppers they are relying on to get a massive infusion of American tax dollars:
1. Detroit’s wages really aren’t out of sync with those of auto workers in other countries.
It has been well established that total compensation for U.S. auto workers, including pensions and benefits, comes in around $70 per hour. That compares to $45 per hour for Japanese workers.
But some auto industry supporters have distorted the argument. They use the American workers’ hourly wage without benefits – about $30 an hour – and compare that number to the $45 hourly total compensation for Japanese workers. Then they claim that U.S. auto makers are actually more labor efficient than their Japanese counterparts.
Obviously that’s not comparing apples to apples. If you are looking at apples versus apples, a new auto plant in India offers hourly pay of only $19.
And it’s not just line workers who are overpaid. Ford’s chief executive Alan Mulally earned $22 million in total compensation last year – a year that helped push the company toward oblivion. Asked last month if he thought he deserved a pay cut, Mulally said, “I think I’m all right where I am.”
Top executives at Bear Stearns, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch probably felt the same way right before their companies went under.
2. The auto industry is unique and therefore must be bailed out.
It’s true that auto companies, including suppliers, etc., account for about 3 percent of economic output and employ at least 1 million people. But those numbers aren’t dependent on the financial status of the Big Three.
If the companies go into bankruptcy and come out stronger, the industry will employ about the same amount of people. If not, foreign auto makers will produce more cars in the U.S. and pick up many of these workers.
Plenty other uniquely American industries are taking it on the chin, and no one is calling for a bailout of those sectors. Take newspapers for example. One could argue they are far more important for the functioning of our democracy than the Big Three auto companies.
Newspapers are firing workers right and left and shifting more of their operations to the Internet. And they will have to continue doing so until they can put out a news product cheaply enough and well enough so that readers will pay to read it, and advertisers will pay to appear in it.
That’s called adjusting to a changed market place, something the Big Three have largely failed to do since first facing foreign competition in the 1970s.
3. Bankruptcy for the Big Three will mean the end of the U.S. auto industry.
That is simply poppycock. A prepackaged bankruptcy actually could leave the major automakers in better shape than they were prior to the financial crisis. Since the mid-1990s, the Big Three made most of their money on gas guzzling SUVs and trucks. That simply won’t cut it anymore. Bankruptcy will force the auto makers to quicken their shift to smaller cars.
Plenty of companies have emerged stronger from bankruptcy. Nearly all the major airlines have gone through that process and came out stronger than when they entered. Some industry apologists have argued that American consumers won’t buy any cars from the Big Three if they are in bankruptcy because of concern that warranties won’t be honored.
But as long as the companies offer quality autos at reasonable prices and make it clear that warranties will remain in place no matter what happens to the companies themselves, American drivers will want the cars.
Meanwhile, bankruptcy would give the Big Three an opportunity to rework their labor contracts, cutting compensation, and to jettison incompetent executives.
4. A limited aid package now will ensure the industry’s long-term future.
The amount of money being bandied about, $15 billion to $25 billion, is chump change. GM and Chrysler are bleeding $2 billion in cash a month. So the high end of the bailout range keeps them in business for about a year. Then what? Without major changes in their business model, they’ll simply be coming back to Washington with their hands out again.
The Big Three have had so many opportunities to change their practices since the first oil crisis of the early 1970s, yet they have been reluctant to budge. GM still has eight brands of cars, even though critics have pointed out for years that’s probably about seven too many.
As recently as last month, GM CEO Rick Wagoner had the gall to tell Congress: “What exposes us to failure now is not our product lineup, or our business plan, or our long-term strategy.”
Until Wagoner and others at the Big Three come to realize those are exactly the factors that have put the industry on the brink of failure, there is no hope for improvement. And it’s not a bailout that’s going to make auto companies implement the adjustments they need to survive.
And remember, this current "bailout" bears no resemblance to the rescue of Chrysler in 1980. In 1980, Congress passed, and President Carter signed, a law giving a U.S. government guarantee of a private $1.5 billion loan to Chrysler. Not one dollar of taxpayer funds was ever used in the deal. It's also important to remember that import tariffs sheltered Chrysler and the Big Three from Japanese competition in the 1980s. And unlike today, Chrysler also had a clear plan to make a comeback and the loan was relatively small.
All of the automakers should follow Chrysler's 1980s success story: create a viable business plan for the future and get private sources to fund it.
de Brantigny
Bailouts or is the government moving towards socialism
We have been listening to the proposed bailout of the auto industry for the last month or more. Frankly I am becoming bored by it all. This is unfortunate because my boredom will lead to apathy. Apathy is the grey area in which the Jacobin faction operates in this country.
Have you noticed that the auto mobile industries, the so called "Big Three" threaten disaster for the nation if they are not bailed out for their previous inability to modernize and build cars which Americans will buy. I for one am totally against any bailout. Ford, GM, and Chrysler have all one great problem, Americans like bargains. The "Big Three" have pandered to the unions to the point that auto prices have increased far above the other 3 auto makers.
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has refused to allow any of these automakers from claiming chapter 11 bankruptcy which would have required a re-negotiation of all contracts. The Unions could have their excessive benefits decreased, such as a starting wage of $28 an hour. This would not do in a Congress run by a Democratic faction which moves us closer and closer to a socialist government.
Of course the "Big Three" auto CEOs have not helped themselves. Flying 3 separate private jets like rock stars to Washington expecting adulation was a huge mistake. The driving to Washington in cars was probably just as stupid, allowing the media to portray them as full of contrition, when in actuality it was an advertising ploy.
Then we have the mortgage banking industry debacle, which congressman Barney Frank refuses to take responsibility for, even though he and his accomplices were told 2 years ago that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were in trouble.
AIG the insurance giant has been bailout out and its executives expect a huge bonus!
So now the taxpayers are funding a bonus. How about the stoke holders!? This is hubris.
Enough!
de Brantigny
Have you noticed that the auto mobile industries, the so called "Big Three" threaten disaster for the nation if they are not bailed out for their previous inability to modernize and build cars which Americans will buy. I for one am totally against any bailout. Ford, GM, and Chrysler have all one great problem, Americans like bargains. The "Big Three" have pandered to the unions to the point that auto prices have increased far above the other 3 auto makers.
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has refused to allow any of these automakers from claiming chapter 11 bankruptcy which would have required a re-negotiation of all contracts. The Unions could have their excessive benefits decreased, such as a starting wage of $28 an hour. This would not do in a Congress run by a Democratic faction which moves us closer and closer to a socialist government.
Of course the "Big Three" auto CEOs have not helped themselves. Flying 3 separate private jets like rock stars to Washington expecting adulation was a huge mistake. The driving to Washington in cars was probably just as stupid, allowing the media to portray them as full of contrition, when in actuality it was an advertising ploy.
Then we have the mortgage banking industry debacle, which congressman Barney Frank refuses to take responsibility for, even though he and his accomplices were told 2 years ago that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were in trouble.
AIG the insurance giant has been bailout out and its executives expect a huge bonus!
So now the taxpayers are funding a bonus. How about the stoke holders!? This is hubris.
Enough!
de Brantigny
Speaking of 3rds
There are now three former Governors of Illinois locked up. "Honesty" is forgotten as a by word for the "Land of Lincoln". A fourth former Governor is now out of prison.
CHICAGO – AP
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested today on charges that accuse him of trying to benefit from his ability to appoint President-elect Barack Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate.
The U.S. Attorney in Chicago says federal investigators bugged Blagojevich's campaign offices and placed a tap on his home phone. At a news conference on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the corruption charges represent "a truly new low."
An FBI affidavit says the 51-year-old Democrat was intercepted on wiretaps conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife.
FBI chief Robert Grant says even seasoned investigators were stunned by what they heard on those tapes.
Fitzgerald described the situation by saying: "We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it."
The governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Did I mention the governor is a democrat? Calls are being made for (this supporter of President-elect Obama's) impeachment. It is feared that an appointment by "Blago" as a prisoner would tarnish the chances of keeping the US Senate seat vacated by Obama in democratic control. Point of fact to the legislature in Illinois, Blagojevich has yet to be tried. In any case the legislature should not worry, it appears that Illinois doesn't care who's a crook...
Recently Governor Blagojevich asked President Bush to commute the sentence of former Governor Ryan, who is currently in prison for coruption, contracts and leases and driving licenses to people, illegal aliens, and those unfit to drive legally. The corruption scandal that led to Ryan's downfall began over a decade earlier as a federal investigation into a deadly crash in Wisconsin that killed six children. The investigation revealed a scheme inside Ryan's secretary of state's office in which unqualified truck drivers obtained licenses through bribes.
de Brantigny
CHICAGO – AP
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested today on charges that accuse him of trying to benefit from his ability to appoint President-elect Barack Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate.The U.S. Attorney in Chicago says federal investigators bugged Blagojevich's campaign offices and placed a tap on his home phone. At a news conference on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the corruption charges represent "a truly new low."
An FBI affidavit says the 51-year-old Democrat was intercepted on wiretaps conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife.
FBI chief Robert Grant says even seasoned investigators were stunned by what they heard on those tapes.
Fitzgerald described the situation by saying: "We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it."
The governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Did I mention the governor is a democrat? Calls are being made for (this supporter of President-elect Obama's) impeachment. It is feared that an appointment by "Blago" as a prisoner would tarnish the chances of keeping the US Senate seat vacated by Obama in democratic control. Point of fact to the legislature in Illinois, Blagojevich has yet to be tried. In any case the legislature should not worry, it appears that Illinois doesn't care who's a crook...
Recently Governor Blagojevich asked President Bush to commute the sentence of former Governor Ryan, who is currently in prison for coruption, contracts and leases and driving licenses to people, illegal aliens, and those unfit to drive legally. The corruption scandal that led to Ryan's downfall began over a decade earlier as a federal investigation into a deadly crash in Wisconsin that killed six children. The investigation revealed a scheme inside Ryan's secretary of state's office in which unqualified truck drivers obtained licenses through bribes.
de Brantigny
Yes We Can!
During the run-up to the election we were told that Hillary if elected would just have a redux of the Clinton administration, and McCain if elected would institute a 3rd Bush administration. So Obama has been elected kept Bush appointees and returned Clinton appointees to his administration. Did I miss something? Business as usual...
Of course the liberal faction is all upset because he is not living up to his campaign promises. He has yet to serve one day as president.
de Brantigny
Of course the liberal faction is all upset because he is not living up to his campaign promises. He has yet to serve one day as president.
de Brantigny
Friday, December 5, 2008
Wave goodbye to America...
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:24:42 +0000
Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernize Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilization. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn't yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.
Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular savior, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn't believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he'd promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn't worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn't know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don't try this at home).
I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.
And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn't join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He'd have been better off bursting into ‘I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidized slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighborhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.
If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn't. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.
If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination program aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn't get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.
And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn't vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.
I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951 in Sliema, Malta) is a British journalist and author. A reporter for the Daily Express for most of his career, he left the paper in 2001 and currently writes for the The Mail on Sunday. Hitchens was educated at The Leys School, the Oxford College of Further Education, and the University of York. He married Eve Ross in 1983; they have three children. Although raised as an Anglican, Hitchens learned soon after his marriage that his mother, who had committed suicide when he was in his twenties, was of partly Jewish ancestry[1]. His older brother is Christopher Hitchens, also a prominent journalist.
The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth
Thanks and a tip of the beret to my brother in law Raymond...
Jhesu+Marie
de Brantigny
Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernize Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilization. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn't yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.
Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular savior, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn't believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he'd promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn't worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn't know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don't try this at home).
I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.
And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn't join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He'd have been better off bursting into ‘I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidized slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighborhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.
If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn't. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.
If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination program aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn't get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.
And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn't vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.
I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951 in Sliema, Malta) is a British journalist and author. A reporter for the Daily Express for most of his career, he left the paper in 2001 and currently writes for the The Mail on Sunday. Hitchens was educated at The Leys School, the Oxford College of Further Education, and the University of York. He married Eve Ross in 1983; they have three children. Although raised as an Anglican, Hitchens learned soon after his marriage that his mother, who had committed suicide when he was in his twenties, was of partly Jewish ancestry[1]. His older brother is Christopher Hitchens, also a prominent journalist.
The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth
Thanks and a tip of the beret to my brother in law Raymond...
Jhesu+Marie
de Brantigny
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