Life of Julia: Some Other Perspectives...

The Obama campaign's Life of Julia is starting to look more and more like one of those exploding Acme cigars.  Two people with slightly different views and predictions, here and here...

Fauxahontas...

That's Mark Steyn's styling in his take-down of Elizabeth Warren and Harvard University over the former's claiming to be Indian (as in “native American”) while employed at the latter.  Here's an excerpt:

So did the University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania. With the impertinent jackanapes of the press querying the bona fides of Harvard Lore School's first Native American female professor, the Warren campaign got to work and eventually turned up a great-great-great-grandmother designated as Cherokee in the online transcription of a marriage application of 1894.

Hallelujah! In the old racist America, we had quadroons and octoroons. But in the new post-racial America, we have – hang on, let me get out my calculator – duoettrigintaroons! Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when men would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their great-great-great-grandmother's wedding license application. And now it's here! You can read all about it in Elizabeth Warren's memoir of her struggles to come to terms with her racial identity, Dreams From My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother.

Alas, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran'ma as Cherokee, but let's cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn't be black. She would if she could, but she couldn't. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind – "people who are like I am," 31/32nds white – and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America's melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.

Just in case you're having difficulty keeping up with all these Composite-Americans, George Zimmerman, the son of a Peruvian mestiza, is the embodiment of endemic white racism and the reincarnation of Bull Connor, but Elizabeth Warren, the great-great-great-granddaughter of someone who might possibly have been listed as Cherokee on an application for a marriage license, is a heartwarming testimony to how minorities are shattering the glass ceiling in Harvard Yard. George Zimmerman, redneck; Elizabeth Warren, redskin. Under the Third Reich's Nuremberg Laws, Ms. Warren would have been classified as Aryan and Mr. Zimmerman as non-Aryan. Now it's the other way round. Progress!

Do go read the whole thing...

Obama's Escape Clause...

Michael Mukasey was the U.S. Attorney General in the last George W. Bush term.  In Monday's WSJ he had a column (which I just read this morning) laying into Obama for his unseemly grabbing of credit for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.  But he also revealed something else, even more despicable:  Obama had prepared a way to blame the military if there was any failure in this incredibly high-risk mission. Mukasey:

A recently disclosed memorandum from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta shows that the president's celebrated derring-do in authorizing the operation included a responsibility-escape clause: "The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven's hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out."

The contrasts here with the famously different leadership style of Eisenhower and Lincoln are obvious, and (I hope!) familiar to most.

Shame and embarrassment.  That's what I feel right now...

Unemployment Down and Up...

I've and others been railing about the government's extremely misleading “unemployment rate” numbers, which the lamestream media generally parrots without comment.  For April, this published number dropped slightly to 8.1%.  However, the actual number of people who are unemployed climbed substantially.  How can this be?  Why, through the magic of blatant statistics manipulation, of course.  Bruce McQuain has a nice explanation, and also raises a related point about older workers.

But a funny thing seems to be happening on the way to the November elections.  The lamestream media is belatedly paying attention to this manipulation.  A few newspapers and reporting organizations talking about this may not seem like a big deal, but...they haven't been doing so heretofore, and we're in the runup to the 2012 Presidential election.  Somehow I don't think this is a good omen for Obama.

Which is just fine with me, of course...