Sharp Knife

THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC

John Hawkins does aphorisms:

* Too many people are assuming they can screw up because someone else will be adult enough to fix their messes. Even our POTUS assumes that.

and Mark Steyn quotes some French guy who is definitely not John Kerry, Cabana Boy:

"It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs…

The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

Welcome to the twenty-first century.

"MNN--STILL BUILDING OUR NEWS PRODUCTS RIGHT HERE IN THE GOOD, OLD USA. UNTIL SOMEONE MAKES US A BETTER OFFER."

***(Camp X-Ray, Cuber) Despite whining about Gitmo for years and years, the administration has only now formulated a Guantanamo Replacement Plan.

"We will first open a new facility called "Camp Time-Out", where detainees will learn to play well with others and use their inside voices," said spokesman and former Bee Gee Robert Gibb.

"To get around the congressional NIMBY problem, the new facility will be virtual and the un-detainees will be required to wear ankle monitoring devices. The ankle bracelets won't transmit a homing signal; they're just a fashion accessory," said Gibb in a high, nasally but passable falsetto. "But the bracelets will be a constant reminder to these young men and women that we have high expectations of this graduating class."

Gibb added that the truly hardcore cases would be ineligible for "Camp Time-Out", but would instead be sent to "Camp Self-Esteem".

***(Rae Dawn Chong, South Korea) North Korea denied that it had launched a missle, claiming that it was merely making an infomercial for the the new Plutonium-Powered Pot-Belly Ab-Rocket.

In dramatic before and after photos, customer K. J. Il of Pyongyang says "The Ab Rocket Launcher helped even me to get rid of my pot-belly. It also helps that the entire country has been on a diet of tree-bark for more than a decade."

But wait, there's more; if the US acts now and makes North Korea the largest welfare recipient in Asia as it was during the Clinton administration, North Korea will also include the USS Pueblo, free of charge! Just add $10,593,236. for shipping and handling. Plus 42 cents. And if you throw in the towel on missile defense, The People's Republic will also send you a bag full of shiny promises...absolutely free! Trade them with all your State Department friends! Call today!

***(Funky Hot Medina, Saudi Arabia) The International Press reported today that President Obama's trip to Egypt and Saudi Arabia was a smashing success, solving all the region's problems and paving the way for world peace. This despite the fact that Obama will not actually be leaving Washington until tomorrow.

"We like to try and look over the news horizon and get ahead of the story," said AP's Gulliver Travell.

"I am...uh...looking forward to visiting Memphis and, uh, seeing my...uh...the King again," a visibly all shook up Obama told reporters.

Obama will also visit other sites, including the Pyramids of Giza, the 900 Million Dollar Pyramids of Gaza and an event in Mecca called "Black Rock: Concert at the Kaaba", which White House spokesman Hodge Tripp calls "a once-in-a-lifetime-chance for the president to visit and mingle with the folks."

***(Bureaucrat Falls, Virginia) In hopes of creating a single-payer health care system, the administration is looking at many different ways to wring even more efficiencies out of current operations.

"We have already instituted our Tax Simplification Program," said bureaucrat Fred P. Myrtle, (famous in bureacratic circles for designing OMB's Form #887-291, parts A...and B!) "Of course, no taxes will actually be simplified. But we will hire thousands of new workers from ACORN to do your taxes for you, so you never even see a tax form."

"We were all sitting around one day," Myrtle continued "and someone said ''Hey; wouldn't it be easier if all these different W-2's came from the same place instead of being scattered all over the country?' And that's when it hit us: a Single Employer system to help pay for Single Payer!"

"Under our Single Employer program, the government will take over every business in America. It will decide how much you earn, how much you owe, how much to put in your Government Bank account and where you'll be going on your new mandatory paid vaction!"

Sources said President Obama will issue the Executive Order as soon as he gets back from Mecca.

***(Washington, D.C.) While making the rounds on Capitol Hill today, Judge Sonia Sotomayor addressed a group of senators:

"Look at me. If any of you vote against me, I will personally kick you in the groin, punch your teeth down your throat, drag you behind an Amtrak train and throw you out of Air Force One high above the Statue of Liberty, until a team of a dozen surgeons can't put you back together again. Are we clear?"

When reached for comment, President Obama explained "Her words are being taken out of context. You know--just like they did with Reverend Wright's. I bet those are some she'd like to have back, but she just misspoke. Clearly, she was talking about the lack of affordable health care."

***(Detroit, Russia) Government Motors unveiled its new Chrysler line today.

"We were trying to evoke the Muscle Cars of the '70's," said Government Motor's spokesman Johnson Junior, "without all that pesky horsepower and stuff. That's why Government Motors/Chrysler is proud to present the new Plymouth Pectoral, the Dodge Duodenum and the Satellite Sphincter!"

Meanwhile, across town, arch-rival Government Motors/GM is planning their own line of Muscle Cars, including the new Trans Am Achilles Tendon (including a special Burt Reynolds "Smokey and the Bandit" 30th Anniversary Commemorative Hernia and Hamstring Edition).

GM is also said to be under pressure from anonymous bureaucrats in Washington to trade its German Opel line for Russia's Zil limousines. Apparently, it is a sentimental issue with many Democrat staffers. Which is odd, because the only one who had Zil limos in America was the Soviet Embassy. Huh.

Anyway, Zil would be marketed under the slogan "Zil--For Limousine Liberals In a Hurry!"

***(Salteen, Georgia) The Justice Department has withdrawn guilty pleas from members of the New Black Panthers Party who stood outside a polling place with baseball bats, hurling racial taunts at voters.

Instead, the Voting Rights Division will "award the young lads a Good Citizenship Award for providing security," said Justice spokesman Connor Bull.

"These boistrous little rascals will be given AmeriCorp jobs and sent to Georgia, where they will help the Justice Deptartment stop the vicious, threatening practice of asking voter to present their free IDs before voting," said Supervisor Maddox Lester. "Because of the voter intimidation, you see."

***In Bridal News, Dick Cheney approves of waterboarding at gay weddings.

THE CONTENT OF CHARACTER VS. THE CHARACTER OF THE CONTENTED

Judge Sonia Sotomayor told those white firefighters to go to the back of the bus, sit down and shuddup.

After all, that's how second-class citizens should be treated, isn't it? She didn't even give them the courtesy of an explanation.

According to the judge, if your house is on fire with your loved ones trapped inside, the Constitution demands that you ask not for the most qualified fireman, but for the most Asian/Pacific Islander fireman.

Oops--I mean "firefighter"--even if those gals can't lift your wife down the ladder. Hey; I warned her not to eat all those Twinkies!

It's almost not Sotomayor's fault. This is the Official State Racism. It is proudly taught at all of our major institutions where it is unthinkingly accepted as normal and good, just as pro-white racial eugenics were accepted there a century ago. Are we really better of with a pro-minority regime of discrimination instead of the old pro-majority one? Shouldn't we just follow the Constitution instead?

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 said we should stop discriminating against anybody. Period. But Liberals think it lets the government discriminate against white people for a change, giving minorities their turn to discriminate against others. Turns out, white people don't really like being discriminated against anymore than minorities did. Imagine that!

If New Haven had gotten the results they wanted, that firefighter's test would have been called the greatest thing since sliced bread. The City never should have given the test if they had already decided who the winners should be. But that's the problem; groups don't take the test; individuals do. And individuals have an individual right not to be treated as a round peg in a square hole by their own government, even if it makes their racially-superior judge upset.

Let's face it; elites in both parties have adopted this policy or at least tolerate it. After all, their kids will never suffer from it. They'll still go to good schools and get good jobs. It's easy to be a "hero" when you're giving away some other kid's hard-earned place in line. Sadly, it is becoming more salient than ever, now that government is charge of handing out even more jobs, money and even car dealerships.

Some Republicans want minorities on our team so badly, they will not confront this issue. I get it; I want them, too--but the impulse to cut corners should be resisted. It tells the recruiter to compromise his principles and it tells the recruited that he is entitled to special privilege, a bad message for both.

I've got this wacky idea that minorities should be reached on the same basis that brought you and I to conservativism; broad American principles of strength, prosperity and freedom. Yes, there can be emphasis on the concerns of a community, but never the divisive tribal politics of Democrats. We will never out-pander them and we shouldn't try, because it's bad for individuals and it's bad for America.

Shelby Steele:

"What drew me to conservatism years ago was the fact that it gave discipline a slightly higher status than virtue. This meant it could not be subverted by passing notions of the good. It could be above moral vanity. And so it made no special promises to me as a minority. It neglected me in every way except as a human being who wanted freedom. Until my encounter with conservatism I had only known the racial determinism of segregation on the one hand and of white liberalism on the other -- two varieties of white supremacy in which I could only be dependent and inferior. The appeal of conservatism is the mutuality it asserts between individual and political freedom, its beautiful idea of a free man in a free society. And it offers minorities the one thing they can never get from liberalism: human rather than racial dignity. ... In a liberalism that wants to redeem the nation of its past, minorities can only be ciphers in white struggles of conscience."

There is no way to fix the past on the backs of today's firefighters without burning down the Equal Protection Clause in a four-alarm fire sale of their individual rights.

Steele reminded me where I'd heard that line about the mystical wisdom of the wise Latina. It's a variation on Hollywood's "Magic Negro". That's when a minorty character is imbued with special moral powers. Unfortunately, they are not fully-developed characters but merely a plot device that exists for the edification and enlightenment of the white characters.

Also troubling is the judge's La Raza membership. La Raza was founded in more "blood and soil" rhetoric than a 1930's Hitler Youth rally in Nuremberg. The only difference between Arayan Nation and Aztlan Nation is the spelling and the suntan.

The judge's professed biases would disqualify her from serving on a jury, let alone the bench. "Sorry, your Honor; I can't serve on this jury and give this defendant a fair trial--I think like you do."

Some say we should cower and refuse to confront her bad ideas in hopes that Hispanics won't hate us. That is just desperation, accepting the Left's terms and playing on their tilted playing field. No thanks.

Whether or not she passes, conservatives should oppose her on her principles, not on her pigment, as Racist Democrats did to Miguel Estrada. They wouldn't even give him a vote because they didn't want a conservative Hispanic on the court. That's because despite losing the Civil War, Democrats think they still own people of color. And they're still trying to subvert the equal protection amendments that flowed out of that war. Old habits die hard, I guess.

How much better to simply follow the Constitution for a change. It's funny; when these people go home and look in the mirror, they see themselves in an invisible Che beret, fearless class warriors in the vanguard of the People's Revolution, bringing freedom to the masses by subverting that stodgy old Constitution.

The truth is exactly the opposite; this Constitution has brought freedom to millions as the most radical statement of political liberty in the history of man. The Constitution is radical, not them; they are merely stuffy statist bureaucrats. No wonder they've declared war on it.

UPDATE:
Paul M. at Powerline:

I've argued many times that Republicans must apply whatever standard the Democrats use when a Republican president makes a Supreme Court nomination. For if the two political parties don't employ the same standard, one of them will have an unearned advantage when it comes to what is arguably our most important institution.

The standard used by Democrats (including President Obama before he was president) is that it's appropriate to vote against a nominee based on nothing more than pure political disagreement. It was on this basis that 40 of 44 Democrats voted against Justice Alito. So that's the standard Republicans should adhere to now.

We can't copy Democrats entirely, though. We oppose Sotomayor because she's liberal and they oppose Estrada because he's conservative--AND HISPANIC. We can't copy their sleazy racism by opposing nominees based on their skin.

To me, the standard is the oath senators took to defend the Constitution. If they believe a nominee will gut the Constitution, they owe deference to no president, only allegience to the duty they accepted freely and without purpose of evasion.

"Bending over backward is the antithesis of the rule of law. It is depriving the people of the protection of their laws, in order to pander to mushy notions among the elite. Even under the Geneva Convention, enemy soldiers have no right to be turned loose before the war is over. ... We don't need to risk American lives to prove that we are nicer than they are."--Thomas Sowell