Page on Kemp.
Starting in the `60s, urban media started hiring professional blacks for the express purpose of telling us whites how it feels like to be black. By 1970 almost all were gone, moved into the mainstream of journalism where they covered stories without reference to their race. Gradually they’re all fading away to jobs where race is not the major component. Warner Saunders at Channel 5 is the latest old-timer to go. The
”Tribune” has two hangers-on. One is Clarence Page whose job description for many years has consisted of getting us to feel guilty on how blacks are treated. You’d think he’d get tired of having to stick to one subject for decades but as all of us know, the “Tribune” is old-fashioned…and jobs are hard to get in journalism these days.
Last week Page used Jack Kemp’s passing to excoriate the Republican party to be more liberal i.e. in Page’s estimation by which he means more pandering to blacks.
Of course, as one who knew Kemp from the first day he was sworn in as Congressman through his 1996 vice presidential run, I can say Page is about as ignorant as he always has been about politics—believing that everything…and I mean EVERYTHING…has to do with race. Kemp’s undeniable greatness was not because he ooh’ed and ah’ed like modern Democratic liberal panderers over minorities…but because he brought supply-side and Say’s Law into modern usage and convinced a president to apply it over the steadfast opposition of people like the late Paul Simon, a walking liberal cliché. Kemp’s prosperity produced 25 years of prosperity to the country. Page can’t fathom this because he is getting old from being too long in the racial trenches—as was Vernon Jarrett over at the “Sun-Times” who finally turned in his press card. But Page has a few years to go yet as does another special interest racial pleader, Dawn Turner Trice who insists there is nothing white America can do to ameliorate the guilt it owes blacks. And at the “Sun-Times” you have Mary Mitchell who loves baiting whitey to justify her job to the business office…although blacks either aren’t sufficiently in agreement with her or are bored with her stuff (I think the latter).
Jack’s Kemp’s greatness lies in his exposition of tax cut economic theory at a time when his own party as well as the liberals…and Page with his Keynesian support of “spreading around the wealth by taxes” was among them…scoffed at the notion that cutting taxes would increase revenue. Like all of us, unfortunately, in his later years after Kemp-Roth passed, Kemp was eminently seducible and he adored being thought of as the great white Republican hope of the black community.
Unfortunately it got intermingled with his economic ideas. You see, it’s not just ALL tax cuts. You should be able to cut spending as well. This Jack was never interested in. Especially social programs. As HUD secretary he vastly outspent his predecessors on hugely expensive grant programs in order to be lionized for blacks—with future national elections in view. Kemp resembled Hubert Humphrey in many ways. Both were horribly long-winded, hugely idealistic and totally fiscally irresponsible. In the Iowa caucuses we could never get Jack to agree to cut any spending (or as I’ve explained earlier, spend any time talking about moral issues) with the result that Iowa’s Christian voters thought of him as a one-issue Charlie.
Well, they could be excused because he WAS. He renounced the need to cut government spending. He thought cutting tax rates was enough: you could continue social spending at the same unimaginable LBJ version. That’s what intrigues Brother Page, not his economic theory.
That’s about as balanced a view of Kemp as I can come up with. He deserves huge economic credit and more—but not the boilerplate, amateur psychology of Page who every week has an agenda to serve in 700 words and who is using this great man’s death as another cheap shot, a cudgel with which to beat conservatism.
Keller’s Killer Quote.
I’ll just quote him and let you draw your own conclusion. Bill Keller, executive editor of “The New York Times” on the need to save his own newspaper which is running deeply in the red, as reported in “World” magazine for this month:
“Saving The New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.”
Get that? As important as ending genocide.
Defense Secretary on North Korea.
The Bush holdover Defense Secretary who reflects whom he works for like Zelig, commenting before the North Korean missile launch:
“I would say we’re not prepared to do anything about it.”
Cardinal George on Obama.
Francis Cardinal George commenting on his private meeting with Obama in a talk covered by CNS.com at the Louisiana Priests’ convention on April 21. He really has the president’s number. This comes from Jill Stanek’s excellent blog Jill Stanek Pro-Life Pulse.
In a Q and A session the prelate said of Obama:
“I think on the life issue, he’s on the wrong side of history. I think he has his political debts to pay and so he’s paying them. It’s hard to disagree with him because he’ll always tell you he agrees with you. Maybe that’s political. I think he sincerely wants to agree with you. You have to say again and again, `No, Mr. President, we don’t agree [on abortion].”
On Obama’s decision to rescind the Mexico City policy which resulted in providing taxpayer money to fund abortion overseas. George: “He said we weren’t exporting abortion. I said, `yes, we are.’ He would say, `Be patient and you’ll see the pattern will change. I said, `Mr. President, you’ve given us nothing but the wrong signals on this issue.’…I think we’re up against something a little bit like slavery…It’s a society-dividing issue and on this issue we’re with Abraham Lincoln and he’s with Stephen A. Douglas and he doesn’t like to hear that but that’s where he is.”
Wanda Sykes Tickles Obama.
Think what would happen if a President John McCain were at a White House Correspondents dinner and a Republican comedienne said she hoped Keith Olbermann died of kidney failure…and followed up with a scatological reference to the sexual act by ridiculing a teen-aged unwed mother and abstinence. And suppose McCain laughed heartily and looked like he enjoyed the comments.
Big scandal, huh? The media would not get over it.
But in the presence of Barack Obama who enjoyed her humor hugely, Wendy Sykes, a black liberal comedienne, said since Limbaugh hopes Obama fails, she hopes Limbaugh’s kidneys fail. Hahahaha. But anyhow what’s so bad about yearning for death to a president’s critic? Then she had a particularly obscene reference to teen-aged unwed mother Bristol Palin. I can’t describe it without violating the family nature of this blog but it has to do with the intricacies of uncompleted sexual intercourse which Sykes said Bristol presumably views as abstinence.
Oh so funny. All the TV network anchors and top correspondents chortled into their soup.
Of course you had to be there.
Keller's quote is an excellent shorthand example of moral relativism. I bet Obama opts to spend more taxpayer money trying to save the Grey Lady than trying to protect the black women and children in Darfur. Ditto for Pelosi and Reed. Change you can believe in, just not be proud of.
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