RattlerGator Blog

I'm Ashamed of Black America, and You Should be Too

I'll likely write much more in the coming weeks regarding why I'm so ashamed of Black America but suffice it to say -- for now -- that it will be quite some time before we as African Americans live down the outrageous lie perpetrated in our name by the hustlers pimping the Trayvon Martin nonsense. Bill Whittle does a good job explaining why:

He's clearly outraged, and he should be. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it. The level of willing ignorance is stunning. Absolutely stunning. And all across our community, good people have fallen for the lie because leaders they trust have failed them. The failures by our leadership class occurred for varying reasons. Some did so cynically, some did so unknowingly, some did so with the most evil of intentions.

Whatever the case may be, our admirable instinct to defend the defenseless -- here, a young black boy gunned down (by a white boy with a concealed weapon) for the crime of simply walking in white boys' neighborhood -- has been played for the fool. In truth, that admirable instinct has been manipulated by black and white hustlers for reasons that have nothing to do with justice. That's the cold, hard truth. And it's painful.

Enough is enough, and it has to stop. It has to. As the historic victims of unspeakable crimes at the hands of mob rule, it is especially sickening that we've now put ourselves in the position of essentially demanding mob rule when it comes to George Zimmerman.

How crazy is that? How sick is that?

Quite crazy. Quite sick.

Are black clergy honestly not troubled by this craziness? Are black Democrats completely blind to where they are leading us? Are white Democrats seriously unconcerned about throwing someone who voted for Obama (Zimmerman) under the bus, all because some personal injury trial lawyers working with and for the Democrat party told them to do so?

Really?

Heaven help us.

Little Remembered Aspect of New England's History

This morning, thanks to reading comments to an Ann Althouse post, I came a across a fascinating essay that I highly recommend -- The Birth of the Blues. Only, this is no discussion about music or the Southern genesis of American blues. This is all about New England, in general, and Boston, in particular:

In politics, the blues were born farther north: in the Puritan commonwealth of 17th century New England centered around Boston.  For the Puritans, the construction of a godly society was the first order of business.  The state was not the enemy of liberty; the state was society’s moral agent.

Today’s libertarians sometimes like to call their blue model liberal opponents “unamerican”.  Nothing could be farther from the truth: if Yankee New England isn’t American, nothing is.  If John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, the Mayflower Compact and the first Thanksgiving aren’t part of the American story, friends, we don’t have a story.  That doesn’t mean Boston is always right, much less that in its current state the Puritan big-state tradition in American has useful answers to offer, but it also means that Americans inspired by this tradition will continue to add to the discussion over our future.

And far from being dead and buried, the Puritan political tradition in America is best represented by our current president; intellectually and morally, President Obama is a distinguished representative of Boston at its best.

Fascinating. And it rings true to me. Read the whole thing for yourself and see what you think. It was a particular comment, however, that especially sparked my curiousity. Specifically this assertion:

Much emphasis is given to the way in which the Constitution compromised in dealing with the incompatibility between the Founding principles of liberty and equality, and Southern states insistence on maintaining slavery, perhaps more attention needs to be paid to the way in which the Constitution also compromised its principles of liberty and equality in permitting individual states to establish religion and enforce moral laws perhaps as odious to those who disagreed with them as slavery was to those who favored abolition.

Hmmmmm. That is truly interesting stuff to me, especially the context vis à vis "other" compromises made in order to get the American constitution adopted. Individual states establishing religion when the nation was first created definitely gets glossed over these days. Had that also been a unique component of the Southern situation, we'd never hear the end of it these days. But it's New England, and that changes everything.

My, my.

Two Videos

I stumbled across two interesting and seemingly unrelated videos today; here's number one:

These kids these days can just be so dadgum graphic with the tools they use, can't they? That image is going to stick with me for a bit.

How about number two? Here 'tis:

Yes, I do see a connection between the two videos. And that's all I'm gonna say about that. For now.

Real Estate Food for Thought

I have no idea who this commenter (Tamquam Leo Rugiens, a Christian/Catholic reference of some sort) is on Wretchard's website but I was struck by the thoughts expressed. So, I wanted to post the whole thing here and if someone knows the context of Tamquam Leo Rugiens, please advise. Also, I don't want to overlook the substance of the post -- I am fascinated by Nassim Nicolas Taleb:

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There is no doubt but that a whole raft of government entities from both the executive and legislative branches have left their fingerprints on the housing bubble and the credit collapse. Whereas it is important in many respects to pursue studies of who did what in order to correctly remedy the situation and prevent it’s recurrence, there is another side to the story that nobody seems to be talking about.

Some time back Real Estate Commissioners across the country began relaxing the requirements for licensing procedures. It got to be fairly easy to become a licensed Real Estate Sales Person or Mortgage Broker. And when the market got hot everybody and his brother saw that there was money to be made in real estate so they jumped in. Many did so without properly understanding or caring about the responsibilities of the job. Many, a surprising number actually, jumped in without bothering with the niggling formality of passing the real estate exam and getting a license. The result was a whole lot of people who presented themselves as real estate professionals who were incompetent and many were simply unscrupulous. The result was that a public that perforce trusted an agent or mortgage broker to safely guide them through the process wound up taking bad advice. And, in the case of mortgage brokers in particular, advice that was not just bad but positively rapacious.

Not a week goes by but that I don’t run into somebody who got an adjustable mortgage who had been promised a 30 year fixed; who paid double or triple or more the going rate for fees; a higher interest rate than what they actually qualified for and were promised; who had gotten a mortgage on the basis of fraudulent information; who had hidden fees rolled into the loan; who bought a house only to discover some major fault that had been hidden at the time of sale; who had paid for services which were never rendered. On and on it goes. The FBI has begun to go after some of these parasites, but meanwhile people are losing their homes as a result of the illegal actions of these unlicensed, improperly educated, improperly supervised so-called professionals. It’s gotten almost as bad as politics, the reprehensible behavior of 90% of these people make the rest of us look bad.

In the case of mortgage brokers especially, the actions of the unscrupulous tends to debase the integrity of the honest ones. “If you’re not willing to fudge the numbers for me so I can get the loan I want, I’ll take by business over to a guy I heard about who will.” When the choice comes down to fudging the numbers or no food on the family table, standards erode.

It is the job of the Real Estate Commissioner and the Corporations Commissioner to set the standards, oversee and enforce them. This they have failed to do. Despite blatant, egregious, widespread and ongoing abuse they have not done their job. They have become useless watch dogs on the public payroll who can neither bark nor bite. Oddly, I don’t see anybody calling them on it.

The first step is to start cleaning up the mess on the ground, never mind what they do in Washington. Until the States are willing to implement and enforce the regulatory, oversight and accountability powers they already possess it will be business as usual even if Congress manages to pull off a miracle and clean up the cesspool in Washington. I personally feel that the penalties for this kind of illegal behavior are too mild. These blood suckers have been enriching themselves at the expense of the public who have in many cases lost their life savings, their credit, their home, their hope for the future, their good name and their native trust in not only their fellow man but in the social institutions which exist to protect them in the first place. The law need teeth. Big teeth in strong, relentless jaws that will not only leave a mark but draw blood and break bones.

First, the unlicensed real estate and mortgage players need to be taken down and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Same goes for licensed people who defraud their clients to enrich themselves.

Secondly, these people, including licensees, should be required to make restitution to the full extent of their assets. That goes for the Commissioners who failed in their trust. The practice of fining someone $1,000 for failures of ethics that cost their clients hundreds of thousands of dollars is baloney. You got paid $20,000 for setting someone up a crooked deal which led your client to lose their $500,000 home which gets auctioned by the bank for $350,000? You pay back the $20,000 plus the $150,000 plus you get the 1099 for the bank’s loss. You did it 175 times between 2001 and 2007? Add it up. Sorry, bankruptcy’s not an option and there’s no statute of limitations.

Third, there should be a Rapid ReFi available through FHA for people with these rotten loans who have been making their payments for two consecutive years. No appraisal required, the barest minimum of paperwork. Just a simple modification of terms to clean up the loan. In most cases people bought the home in the first place because they liked it and wanted to live there and that hasn’t changed.

Homeowners in trouble who contact the bank on their own initiative to try to work out a modification of terms should be able to do so whether or not they currently qualify for the loan under the new rules. Having spent years giving away loans based on insanely flimsy criteria, the banks have now thrown out the baby with the bathwater and are setting the bar so high that you almost have to prove that you don’t need a loan to buy in order to get one. Charge a little higher mortgage insurance to cover the risk. If a bank refuses a reasonable workout with an existing mortgagor they should not be allowed to dump the loan under the provisions of the rescue package, but must keep it.

Finally, REO asset managers need to thoroughly vet the brokers they are using to sell the inventory they’ve taken back. They are in many cases trusting the same crooked brokers and agents who caused so much of the problem in the first place. Unless they do so they will guarantee that the issue will not be solved, but keep on cascading into the future.

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That, my friends, is a very interesting take.

As was the case with the ridiculous responses of nonstop bitching and moaning about the Katrina aftermath, so much of this situation comes back to state and local failures. As the folks closest to the people, and most responsible for protecting ordinary Americans, I always start my focus at this level and not the federal level.

Federally, I always think of the current commercial incessantly played of the motorized wheelchair that is available FOR FREE -- no cost to you -- and I always think . . . well, damn, there has to be a cost to someone. The only someone that can be is the American taxpayer.

In any kind of turnaround, we're going to have to relentlessly attack that kind of thinking. Many of us are sinners in this regard, myself included. The sins may differ and my excuses may be unconvincing to you and vice-versa but, there you have it.

All the more reason why Sarah Palin is the right individual for this time, the right politician we need as one of the primary faces of the Republican Party.

Fantastic Piece by Kenneth Anderson

With so many people perpetrating at this time of uncertainty (those presumed to be learned and otherwise, and yes I realize I may be guilty as well), I found Kenneth Anderson's piece, Prematurely Jumping From the Global Financial Crisis to the End of the World as We Know It, very persuasive. Below is his ending but the whole thing should be read:

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[I]s it not far too early for sweeping geopolitical and historical interpretations?  I had reason recently, in reviewing Paul Kennedy’s 2006 book on the UN (reviewing the recent Spanish translation), to go back and reread Kennedy’s 1987 The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.  Goodness.  If ever the un-wiseness of speaking too soon in sweeping historical terms were on display, that book is it - appearing, famously, as a tract on American decline just before the collapse of the Soviet empire.  Curiously, the monumentally-comic timing of the book seemed to have no impact on Kennedy’s international reputation; it has been translated into at least twenty-three languages because, I venture, the facts of what happened are less important than awaiting the final triumph of hope over experience.  There is a big gap between the indubitably true proposition that no empire has ever survived forever to the proposition that the American empire, if that’s what it is, is falling now, and we know this because … the Dow has crashed a gazillion points and credit default swaps won’t sell and no one knows for sure what a liquidity put is, and it will cost trillions and trillions to put it all back together again.  Ergo, the days of the dollar as reserve currency are numbered, and from there, it is up to Russia and China (and perhaps Venezuela, save for the fall in oil prices) to pick up the pieces of the international economy - pick up the torch, as it were, from the faltering Americans. 

As Richard Posner pointed out acidly in his book on American public intellectuals a decade ago, there is essentially no reputational cost to scholars who make spectacularly wrong public predictions and, for public intellectuals, all publicity is good publicity.  Gary Becker, it seems to me, is a lot more realistic in his assessment of what this all means, in an opinion piece today in the Wall Street Journal.  The euro is not coming to an end, so far as the actual evidence suggests; the dollar’s role is shifting somewhat in relation to the euro, but it will continue as the main reserve currency for the foreseeable future; if massive political-historical changes in hegemony are now underway, they can surely wait a couple of weeks before predicting them (although part of the novelty market in public intellectualism is to be there first, right or even plausibly, or not).  We might at least wait until after the election.

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That, to my way of thinking, is how you deliver meat to the hungry.

It also illuminates (for me, anyway) some of the unhelpful doom-and-gloom among too many Republican public intellectuals when discussing the prospects of this election. Or, on the other end of the strictly conservative spectrum, the feeling among some on the more Jacksonian right wing that all is lost if Barack Obama wins the Presidency.

America will not come to an end if Obama wins. Black people and radicals will not go rampaging through the streets, win or lose. They will be smug as hell, and talk much smack, but that's the way it goes. I don't think we're going to have to deal with that but this is why we have ballot boxes and value the enfranchisement of our vote.

Is This the Leading Edge of the Unseen Political Earthquake This November?

Interesting press release from the Americans for Limited Government organization:

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ALG Urges Congress to Amend Bailout to Repeal CRA

October 1st, 2008, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson in a letter today called upon Congressional leaders to amend the $700 billion financial sector bailout bill to repeal the Community Reinvestment Act, rescind all federal funding for ACORN, dissolve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and eliminate the dual mandate at the Federal Reserve.

The letter was addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), and Senator John McCain (R-AZ).

“As you work to craft a new proposal to bring stability to the financial system, I call on you to include provisions that will go directly toward a remedy for the root cause of this crisis, lax lending standards imposed on the private sector by government edict,” wrote Wilson in his letter.

In particular, Wilson called upon Congress to repeal the Community Reinvestment Act and the 1995 Clinton administration regulations “that forced lending institutions to give loans to individuals lacking the ability to repay the loans.”

“For the tens of millions of families who have played by the rules, paid their bills and lived within their means, it is an insult to now force them to pay for those who did none of these things. Over and above this fact, Congress owes these families a realistic assurance that such lending practices will end, that we are not creating the next financial crisis while attempting to repair the current one,” wrote Wilson.

In a statement, Wilson said, “There has been a culture of cheap credit that has pervaded Washington and our economy. Congress needs to set an example and bring an end to the ‘we’ll pay for it later’ mentality.”

“The proposal that was defeated on Monday would have raised the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. Have we learned nothing from our mistakes? Congress’ solution to getting the financial sector out of debt is to borrow yet more money. There is something simply insane about this approach,” Wilson added.

“And since Congress does seem to have its heart set on doing something, they might as well do the right thing and reshape the way America approaches credit. We need honest credit, not easy credit.”

Wilson also called for an end to all federal funding for the extremist organization, ACORN. “There can be no excuse for activist organizations such as ACORN receiving large payments of public funds. The work of this organization is now under investigation in numerous states. Their involvement in pushing sub-prime mortgages onto lending institutions and unwitting borrowers is well documented. It is an outrage to the taxpayers to fund such groups,” wrote Wilson.

In his statement Wilson called upon Americans to sign a petition against ACORN. “Concerned citizens should visit StopAcorn.org to sign our petition and let Congress know they do not want any more taxpayer funds going to this corrupt organization.”

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There's something seriously bubbling out in America that's whizzing right by D.C. and Wall Street. The only remaining question is will it coalesce by the time the first Tuesday in November rolls around?

Perseverance on the Fourth: 2008

Last year at this time, I posted a Perseverance on the Fourth entry well worth reviewing if you are so inclined. It may serve to frame my thoughts for every 4th of July into the foreseeable future. This year my extended family has once again suffered an untimely death; this one has ruined two years worth of planning for a big family reunion weekend in Miami. But death stalks us all, every day and all day.

The focus last year in my post was the face of our mortal enemy: the jihadist who lives among us and is either consciously or unconsciously the heir to Marxist-Leninist thought mascarading as pure Islam, and his lawless brethren back in Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Pakistan, etc.

Mohammed Jamil Asha

That dead-ender was caught before he and his cabal could blow up portions of the London and Glasgow airports. This year? The primary news story is quite different but also a successful effort in the War for Freedom. Colombia's stunning rescue of hostages from the FARC has even the left-wing grudgingly praising American resolve to support Colombian resolve:

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The rescue alone could reverberate across the region. Hugo Chávez, the leftist leader of Venezuela who negotiated previous releases of hostages held by the FARC but failed to free Ms. Betancourt or three American contractors also rescued Wednesday, has lost the regional spotlight to Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe, his top rival and a staunch ally of the Bush administration. At least temporarily, Mr. Uribe, one of Latin America’s most market-friendly leaders, has usurped the regional agenda.

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Perseverance. On the fourth. At home and abroad -- something far too many African Americans are woefully ignorant of. Listen, Eugene Robinson, who gives a damn if you knew what Michelle Obama meant by stating she was proud of her country for the first time -- it was a mind-numbingly stupid thing, first, to feel and, second, to say. So many black people rattle off that they knew what she meant, as if that settles things and moves it beyond the sphere of questioning or analysis.

Wrong, Eugene. Quite wrong.

As history continues to smile on the perseverance of George W. Bush, Happy Birthday to America.

Big Lizards Has a Great Riff on the Inalienable Rights of Americans

I love this from Dafydd ab Hugh on the question of our right to bear arms. Conferral of a right bestowed by the constitution? No. Acknowledgment of a pre-existing, inalienable right? Yes:

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[I]ndividual states at the time the Constitution and the First Amendment were enacted had established state churches and did, in fact, prohibit free exercise of religion. Like the right to liberty versus the peculiar institution of slavery, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ratified in an environment of essential contradiction [emphasis added]. Those contradictions would eventually have to be resolved; this resolution can come from new amendments (such as the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth) or, post Marbury v. Madison, from the Supreme Court.

Today, I believe Americans, including judicial conservatives, would be utterly outraged if a state were to start jugging citizens for speaking out on issues, or rounding up Jews for heresy, or nullifying habeas corpus rights, so that the authorities could simply round up and incarcerate anybody they didn't like. We've long since completely accepted that not even the states can violate fundamental rights, at least of American citizens (most of us would extend that to any lawful resident of any nationality).

Deep down, we understand that our government did not give ("confer") those rights to us; we have them inherently and inalienably from our Creator, or even just as an inherent aspect of having consciousness and a conscience. The word "inalienable" means that fundamental rights cannot be taken or even given away. Even the mullahs of Iran cannot take away those rights; they can only violate them... and doing so constitutes a crime against humanity, making the mullocracy of Iran a criminal government.

(It's not necessarily our duty to enforce those rights; "we are champions of liberty everywhere, guardians only of our own.")

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That, my friends, is mighty good stuff.

And Erwin Chemerinsky is howling. Good. Keep right on howling, Erwin.

Waging "Lawfare," not Warfare

Today John Yoo has a beautiful opinion piece in the Philadelphia paper. It is well worth a read:

Terror Suspects Are Waging 'Lawfare' on U.S.:

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Walk down Broad Street and you pass by a brown mansion, squeezed in between a music store and a Banana Republic. With its statues of proud soldiers in front, the Union League stands as a symbol of the sacrifices necessary to win the Civil War.

After being sued by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla, I wonder whether our nation today has the same unity and tenacity to defeat the great security challenge of our day, the rise of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. Even as our brave young soldiers fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, and our intelligence agents succeed in disrupting follow-ups to the 9/11 attacks, terrorists are using our own legal system as a weapon against us.

They use cases such as Padilla's to harass the men and women in our government, force the revelation of valuable intelligence and press novel theories that have failed at the ballot box and before the president and Congress.

"Lawfare" has become another dimension of warfare.

Padilla is no innocent. Last summer a Miami jury convicted him of participating in an al-Qaeda support cell in the United States. Prosecutors now are asking the court to sentence Padilla to life in prison. The conviction did not even address his detention in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on allegations that he had returned from Afghanistan to carry out a "dirty" bomb attack on a major U.S. city. According to the Bush administration at the time, Padilla had received the green light from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11 attacks.

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Another dimension of warfare that is blissfully ignored by far too many Americans on the left-wing here at home. Yoo concludes his piece with a bullseye aimed at Americans, in general, and African Americans in particular. He asks:

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Would we have wanted President Abraham Lincoln to worry about his personal liability for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves (done on his sole authority as commander-in-chief)? If so, then we will have a government that will avoid any and all risks, shun making any move that is not an exact repetition of locked-in procedure of 20th-century vintage, and keep plodding along the same path regardless of contemporary circumstances. These are exactly the conditions that make a nation susceptible to a surprise attack, whether a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11.

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It's high time we quit being so naively anal about our laws, how far we extend their protections, and precisely who gets cloaked under the protections of their umbrella.