Don't it make my blue eyes brown

Don't know when I've been so blue
Don't know what's come over you
You've found someone new
And don't it make my brown eyes blue

-- Crystal Gayle, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue"

"This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who thought they knew everything and now show they know nothing," Brazilian President Lula da Silva said the other day after meeting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose eyes, fortunately, are the color of his name.

Orator in Chief Barack Hussein Obama is hard at work making sure that future crises, insofar as the United States is on the playlist, will not be caused by blue-eyed devils. The Leftist Establishment's race for race replacement in the U.S. isn't going quite fast enough to suit them (whites are expected to become a minority only in 2042 at current levels of non-white immigration and fecundity), but in his own kingdom he'll see to it that it happens faster than the blue eye can follow.

In a story it's unlikely any mainstream U.S. news source would report, The Telegraph says:

While Mr Obama has played down the influence of race over his government and policies, Washington is abuzz that the president has handed control of domestic policy, all White House social events, environmental issues and food safety to African American women - seven senior government posts in all....

President Obama used his press conference last week to joke that interest in his own race lasted "about a day" after his election. But below the radar, Mr Obama has been quietly transforming the upper echelons of government. Black woman only hold 192,000 of more than 1.7 million government jobs, making up about one in nine of the federal workforce, but Mr Obama has given them one fifth of the most senior jobs in government.

I have my doubts about that figure of 192,000 XX chromosome blacks out of 1.7 million employees in the federal government. My impression -- admittedly, I haven't counted -- is that there are at least 192,000 in every federal office I've ever visited. Putting that aside, since when does a United States president act "below the radar"? FDR's lend-lease program to help Britain before the U.S. entered World War II was as euphemistic as it gets, but it was out there in plain sight. This is an ethnic Manhattan Project.

But presidents (and this applies not only to Obama; I said the same about Jorge W. Bush-Gonzales) are no longer servants of the people. Along with the federal judiciary, they are our rulers. Congress merely gets to dramatize itself, like the Roman Senate long after the Republic was beyond living memory.

Oh, and then the Muslims-he's-not-one-of, but with whom he has a special understanding, are also to be given a place in his sun. The Denver Post reports:

In a bid to get more Muslim Americans working in the Obama administration, a book with resumes of 45 of the nation's most qualified — Ivy League grads, Fortune 500 executives and public servants, all carefully vetted — has been submitted to the White House.

The effort, driven by community leaders and others, including U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., was bumped up two weeks because White House officials heard about the venture, said J. Saleh Williams, program coordinator for the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association, who sifted through more than 300 names.

"It was mostly under the radar," Williams said. "We thought it would put (the president) in a precarious position. We didn't know how closely he wanted to appear to be working with the Muslim American community." [Emphasis mine.]

Above the radar, speeches and TV talk-show gigs. Below the radar, well, Obama will tell you about it when it's a fait accompli.

Even in the Germany of 1935, it was necessary to apply a coat of legality to promulgate the notorious Nuremberg Laws, which provided for the ethnic classification of the Volk into Aryans and undesirables. From Wikipedia:

After the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, Hitler received telegrams of congratulation from all over the Arab and Muslim world, especially from Morocco and Palestine, where the Nazi propaganda had been most active.^[16]. Moreover, because of these, and the thousands of other racial laws promulgated during the Third Reich, a vast bureaucracy developed in Germany for the determination of people's "racial acceptability."^[17].

The Orator in Chief don't need no stinkin' laws. He's the Man.

Obama gives Islam speech therapy

Barack Obama and Secret Service members
practice upcoming address to Muslim world.

As everyone agrees, President for Life Barack Obama is a splendid talker, at least when he is accompanied by a certain technological crutch. He believes there is no problem so great that it will not yield to his skill at saying nothing, but with panache. Charming birds from trees is not worth his effort; he could persuade an asteroid set on pronging the earth to change its mind and reverse course, needing but to open a dialogue with it.

We have it on the authority of Time that his eloquence drive is to be turned on the Muslim World:

When President Obama visits Turkey early next month, some observers are expecting he will use the occasion to deliver on his promise to deliver a major foreign policy speech from a Muslim nation in his first 100 days. But indications are that he will not give the speech in Turkey. The White House and State Department have not yet decided on the location for the speech, which is meant to undo some of the damage done to America's image in the Muslim world during the George W. Bush Administration.

This reminds me of how, when I am negligent enough to pick up a copy of Time in a dentist's waiting room, it is like getting an extra root canal. "Undo some of the damage done to America's image in the Muslim world during the George W. Bush Administration"? What about the damage done to the United States of America by the Muslim world during every administration since Carter's?

Trouble is, Obama's handlers are dithering about where exactly in Dar-al-Islam he should pronounce his historic message of "forgive us for breathing." Jakarta? According to the CAIR spokesman Time quotes, it's a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to waste your golden breath there. Rabat, Morocco? "Too far west." Amman, Jordan? Don't call us, we'll call you. Mecca and Medina? Non-Muslims are not allowed, so Obama fetching up there might raise questions. Cairo? Too anti-U.S.; the president might not live long enough to sign the surrender document. "Baghdad? Still too dangerous. Riyadh? Obama would be seen as being in the pocket of the Saudi royal family. Oman, Bahrain ... the list could go on."

Look, I've got an idea. Forget Old Islam. The future lies with New Islam. How about Europe? Brussels, for instance.

In the end, though, Hooper believes that geography may be secondary to the content of Obama's speech. "What will resonate is [Obama's] words and policies," he says. Muslims will respond not only to the location but also to "the fact that he's trying to reach out — with rhetoric, and hopefully also with actions."

Regardless of where B. Hussein Obama chooses to do his resonating and reaching out, in the CAIR spokesman's words, he'd better take an extra teleprompter as a back-up. An unscripted remark could call forth one, two, many jihadists: "A powerful bloc of 57 Islamic states is again pushing for the UN to make it a criminal offense to criticise or ‘defame' Islam."

Obama bowling alone

For the first time ever, I find myself supporting Barack Obama.

Temporarily, you understand. I still think he is a soft-focus Lenin who will turn the country into a debtor's prison if he isn't stopped. But I can be fair. For five minutes, I'll defend him against enemies domestic and foreign, because of his alleged "gaffe" on that late night TV show. Namely, this:

President Obama, in his taping with Jay Leno Thursday afternoon, attempted to yuk it up with the funnyman, and ended up insulting the disabled. Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he's gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.

He bowled a 129, the president said.

"That's very good, Mr. President," Leno said sarcastically.

It's "like the Special Olympics or something," the president said.

Okay, not the soul of wit, but a mild little jest that deserved an appreciative chuckle. At the least, Obama earned an I'm-a-Real-Person lapel pin for showing that he is actually capable of devising an un-teleprompted one-liner that didn't come from his Little Red Book of Meaningless Sayings of Chairman Barack.

When I watched the tape excerpt of that moment, Obama reminded me of a human being instead of the Disneyland audio-animatronic simulacrum of Abraham Lincoln, programmed to repeat the same lines as each new mob marches in and takes their seats for a brief encounter with synthetic inspiration.

Of course, the Offended of the Earth gave him a piece of their mindlessness straight off. Oh my God, he's making fun of the handicapped! You can't say that! Send him to sensitivity training camp!

Even Republicans and other pseudo-conservatives who should have known better rushed (Rushed?) to bash him, just so they could pile on. If we still had free speech, they would have been better advised to note that any offendee group that can invent a prissy name like "Special Olympics" deserves to be made fun of every hour on the hour.

Poetic justice of a sort, I call it. The Great Divider whose main interest in life is to pander to every ethnic and racial grievance outfit gets whiplash from Indignation Nation.

So, Barack, I'm in your corner. For five minutes. Then I go back to being offended every time you open your mouth.



3/23 The last sentence must sound inconsistent with my stand against those who claim to be offended, believing that to be the trump card that overcomes all arguments (see my reply to Stephen Lawrence in the comments). I was trying to be ironic in my use of the word, but it's perhaps not very clear.

So if I could strike that sentence, I would. Well, actually, I can. With one keystroke I can make it disappear! What power!

Not even the judge in a trial really has that ability. A witness testifies, "I was told the defendant is an arsonist who collects Nazi souvenirs, cuts in line, and steals money from the church poor box," the lawyer says, "Objection! Hearsay,"and the judge says, "Sustained. The answer will be stricken from the record and the jury will disregard." Oh yeah?

Yet I can make ill-chosen words go away and in a matter of days, if not minutes, no one will ever know or remember! But it is bad form to change anything substantive in a posting once people have commented on it, so I won't. And now, besides one regrettable sentence, you have in addition a whole tiresome long-winded explanation.

The people who've seen life after death

For more than a year I've been attending monthly meetings of a near-death experience (NDE) group. Most of those at the meetings have had one or even more NDEs. I have not, but the group welcomes people interested in the phenomenon.

With advances in medical science, many patients in recent years have been revived after their vital signs (hearbeat, respiration, brainwaves, etc.) have stopped. Sometimes the revival happens without medical intervention. Sometimes the NDE occurs when death from an accident appears imminent, such as during a fall from a high altitude, which seems to confirm occult teachings that the consciousness can separate from the body even before the body is destroyed if its destruction seems certain.

Skeptics argue that those who experience NDEs weren't "really" dead, since they are now alive. But in at least many instances, the subjects met the medical criteria for death, sometimes for several minutes. NDE experiencers typically report certain features of their temporary afterlife, too well known for me to repeat. You can read as many firsthand accounts as you want at the Near Death Experience Research Foundation web site.

What is said at the meetings I attend is confidential, but since I will not reveal any names or identifying information, I can't imagine anyone would mind if I share a few general observations.

1. It's one thing to read in books about NDEs, but hearing about them from individuals present in front of you who've undergone them has a different epistemological quality.

2. Outwardly, the NDE experiencers I've met are normal. They work at conventional jobs and appear to have ordinary everyday lives. Nothing about them suggests they are fantasy-prone.

3. They are absolutely convinced that they experienced a different order of reality, that it was not a dream or hallucination.

4. The meetings include people who attend fairly regularly and new attendees. I've now heard the regulars describe their NDEs several times. They don't always use exactly the same words (which would arouse suspicion), but I have never caught any of them in a contradiction. They give the impression that the experience was so powerful that it is easy to summon up in memory.

5. Some experiencers say they had their NDE(s) before they ever heard of such a thing. One woman, now elderly, had her NDE in the 1940s. She is one of those who've told the story several times, with complete consistency, as though it happened last week.

6. Every description of an NDE when I've been present has brought up strong emotions in the person talking about it — and often in other experiencers just listening. Even if the NDE experiencer begins the account in a very calm, matter-of-fact way, sometime between sooner and later he or she is immersed in waves of feeling.

7. I've asked them directly: do they now have any fear of dying? Without exception, no.

8. One way or another, they describe the NDE as a spiritual experience, although not in standard religious terms. One woman, raised as a Catholic and with Catholic relatives, is unable to communicate the NDE experience with most of her family because it doesn't fit their beliefs.

9. Although they call the immediate NDE positive, sometimes extravagantly so, the aftereffects are by no means an unmixed blessing. It seems incredible to me, but even close friends and family members can reject or ridicule them when they reveal what they've seen. (The woman who had an NDE in the '40s told her sister-in-law about it, and was told in return, "Don't ever mention this to anyone." It was another three decades before she spoke of it again.)

They have been very candid about how hard it is to integrate the NDE into their present lives. Some feel they have important knowledge that they want to let everyone in on, but don't dare for fear of being thought cracked. Hasn't the NDE idea entered the mainstream by now? I asked. Yes, they answered, but only as a subject for jokes, like UFOs or the Loch Ness monster.

NDE experiencers sometimes feel caught between two worlds, not at home in either. They may believe they've known a larger existence, and have to keep shrinking their consciousness to be able to operate in the state of mind of almost everyone else in their environment.

Even so, I let it be known that sometimes I envied them. Although I know intellectually and feel intuitively that we survive the death of our current bodies that must be foreclosed on, it would be deeply satisfying, I said, to have actually visited the Other Side and know it experientially.

This was gently rebuffed. Combining several responses, this is what they said: We drink the waters of forgetfulness when we come into this life so that we can better fulfill our purpose here. Learning and growth would be much harder if our consciousness was always distracted by the various levels of the astral plane and others that the disembodied consciousness exists on.

For one reason or another, they said, we were allowed a preview, but we needed to or were told to return to this world. If there is a reason for you to have an NDE, you will have one. Otherwise, you will know the Other Side when the right time comes.

Only in California: Proposed taxes on marijuana, pornography

Having run out of normal things to tax, the welfare state of California is turning creative. From the San Francisco Chronicle (also known as Chronic-ill):

Less than a month after the Legislature approved more than $12 billion in tax increases to help bridge a $41 billion budget deficit, Democratic lawmakers have proposed more tax and fee measures they say would curb devastating cuts to state programs.

The proposals include a 25-cent fee for shoppers who use plastic bags; a tax on cigarettes to fund programs discouraging tobacco use; a $50 per ounce tax on marijuana; a higher income tax for the rich to help pay for schools; a tax on oil produced in California; and a tax on pornography.

If the object of taxes is to raise money, rather than to reform people, does it make sense to tax cigarettes so you can fund programs to discourage people from using them, thereby reducing the tax income?

"I think we're in a period in time where everything's on the table. We're going to be $8 billion down before the ink dries on the current budget," said Assemblyman Curren Price, D-Inglewood (Los Angeles County). …

"Education should be our prime priority," Price said. "We frequently are shipping funds away from education. My proposal is one way of ... trying to insulate education funds from those kinds of cuts."

Mr. Price, "prime priority" is redundant (as is "period in time"), suggesting that you suffer from a California education. That aside, you are no doubt aware that Hispanics make up 47 percent of the students in California, thanks to the Liberal Establishment's policy of population replacement. Being a politician, however, you could not be expected to suggest that closing our de facto open borders and encouraging illegals to return to Mexico could help the Golden Fleecing State reduce its budget shortfall in no small measure.

But California is Obamanation in its purest form: No Voting Bloc Left Unbribed. Gold nuggets for all! Bring your extended family! Excellent taco vending locations available! Sign here or make your mark, and watch those public assistance bennies fly to your mailbox and the nearest maternity ward.

So — no tax too big, no tax too small. Sorry, some taxes too small, but we'll fix that. Here is the Chronic-ill's list of Cali-form-ia legislators' newest suggested barrel scrapings:

AB87 (Davis)/SB531 (DeSaulnier): Fees for shoppers who use plastic bags.

AB89 (Torlakson)/SB600 (Padilla): Increases the cigarette tax.

AB390 (Ammiano): $50-an-ounce tax on marijuana, which would be legalized for recreational use.

AB462 (Price): 1 percent income tax for individuals who earn more than $1 million a year, to fund public schools and universities.

AB656 (Torrico): Oil severance tax to help fund the state's community colleges and universities.

AB1019 (Beall)/SB558 (DeSaulnier): Tax or fee on alcohol.

AB1082 (Torrico): Sales tax on pornography.

AB1342 (Evans): Cities and counties would be allowed to raise income taxes and vehicle license fees.

SB96 (Ducheny): Increases the income tax rate on the state's wealthiest residents while lowering the rate for some middle-class taxpayers.

If you're a "comfortably off" California grass-smoking, booze-drinking, car-owning consumer of pornography who sometimes forgets to take your organically-grown-natural-fiber Green Bag to the grocery, prepare to be a proud supporter of the state that never met a spending bill it didn't like.

I can see right through you

I'm looking through you, where did you go
I thought I knew you, what did I know
You don't look different, but you have changed
I'm looking through you, you're not the same

-- The Beatles, "I'm Looking Through You"

A small gallery of ordinary objects, in transparent versions:

Phone



Toaster



Canoe



Dice



Refrigerator




Macintosh monitor

I'm reminded of the time I used some "daily clarifying shampoo." When I looked in the mirror afterward, I thought I'd gone bald.