Gallup Finds NRA is More Popular, Media Hits Record Low in Trust

Heh.

From Gallup (h/t Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart):

Fifty-four percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the National Rifle Association, while 38% have an unfavorable opinion. The public's ratings of the NRA have fluctuated since first measured by Gallup in 1993 -- from a low of 42% favorable in 1995 to a high of 60% in 2005. 

The NRA's positions on guns and gun control legislation have received significant attention from media and politicians during the last week after the association's top lobbyist, Wayne LaPierre, held a press conference in the wake of the Newtown school shooting. LaPierre denounced the idea of additional gun control legislation and instead called for armed guards in the nation's schools. The press conference came midway through the field period of this Dec. 19-22 USA Today/Gallup poll.

On a more granular basis, 21% of Americans have a very favorable opinion of the NRA, and 18% have a very unfavorable opinion. These strong opinions have held roughly the same over the years, with the notable exception of 1995, when 26% reported a very unfavorable opinion of the NRA.

Meanwhile, also from Gallup:

Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004. 

The record distrust in the media, based on a survey conducted Sept. 6-9, 2012, also means that negativity toward the media is at an all-time high for a presidential election year. This reflects the continuation of a pattern in which negativity increases every election year compared with the year prior. The current gap between negative and positive views -- 20 percentage points -- is by far the highest Gallup has recorded since it began regularly asking the question in the 1990s. Trust in the media was much higher, and more positive than negative, in the years prior to 2004 -- as high as 72% when Gallup asked this question three times in the 1970s.

[...]

Independents are sharply more negative compared with 2008, suggesting the group that is most closely divided between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney is quite dissatisfied with its ability to get fair and accurate news coverage of this election.
 

Yeah. Well, I'm sure this won't concern the people running CNN, or the network news outlets. After all, those interviewed by Gallup are just the little people.  One could argue that laws might even apply to those interviewed.

No Deal on Fiscal Cliff, but Obama Gives Federal Workers a Raise

Because they're doing such a great job, I guess...

From The Weekly Standard:

"President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden.

"According to disclosure forms, Biden made a cool $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he'll now make $231,900 per year.

"Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little bump, as their annual salary will go from $174,000 to 174,900. Leadership in Congress, including the speaker of the House, will likewise get an increase.

"Here's the list of new wages, as attached to President Obama's executive order"

Handing out raises while the country is on the brink isn't the smartest idea in my opinion... but hey what's a few more million? I Obama spent almost $6 trillion in four years.

Surprise! Obama Lied About Economy During Election

I'm a couple days late on this, but I'm putting it up anyway.

From Investors Business Daily:

It hasn't been two months since Barack Obama won re-election, but already we're finding out things that were kept from us during the campaign. Expect to hear more in the coming months.

[...]

• Economy: "The economy's getting stronger ... confidence is growing." The media and Obama repeated these like a mantra. But as IBD reported earlier, real weekly earnings for American workers have fallen 3.5% since Obama took over, a declining trend that has continued post-election.

How about other signs of well-being? The Census Bureau reported after the election that the number of Americans in poverty grew by 712,000 people in 2011. A far-more bullish report issued in September said it had fallen by 96,000. Oh yes, and a record 47 million people today are on food stamps — up 47% since Obama took over.

Meanwhile, we also heard that consumer confidence was strengthening — and that would lead to a spurt of new economic activity in the new year. But in December, the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index tumbled to 72.9, its lowest reading since June, from 82.7 in November. [This has led to "unexpectedly" low retail spending during the holidays. I'm getting real tired of the word "unexpected" when it comes to the cruddy economy Obama is presiding over.]

[...]

• Regulations: President Obama stayed virtually mum on the topic of regulation during his campaign. Smart move. The EPA is set to release a tidal wave of new rules to slash CO2 that will close as many as 332 energy plants, while costing the U.S. economy $700 billion, according to the Manhattan Institute. The rules will hit Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia — states that voted for Obama — especially hard. Think they might have liked to know that before voting?

• Budget: Obama promised a "balanced" approach to taxes and spending. But data from the CBO and OMB show spending will surge 55% over the next 10 years under Obama — nearly $2 trillion in added spending — swamping Obama's promised "cuts" of $880 billion.

• Taxes: Remember how Obama and his Democratic surrogates taunted Republicans repeatedly, saying they wanted to raise taxes only on "millionaires and billionaires" while cutting taxes for the middle class?

When Republicans tried to do just that, Obama said no thanks. In fact, he has major tax hikes in store for middle-class Americans — starting with ObamaCare's 18 or so new taxes, and ending with the admission of key Democrats such as former presidential candidate Howard Dean that taxes on everyone must rise dramatically to pay for the Democrats' spending orgy.  

[...]

• War On Terror: Obama claimed the war against al-Qaida was basically over. Now we find out that isn't true. Governments friendly to al-Qaida, if not its aims, have taken over in Libya and Egypt. Syria may be next.

For those who think the fight's done, think again. Quietly, Obama is sending troops back to Iraq to help stabilize the country. And he plans to send Army teams to as many as 35 countries in Africa to battle growing terrorist threats — mainly from al-Qaida.

Ah, yes. Well, when people vote according to who they like, or perhaps who the media likes, rather than the candidate who most represents their principles, values, visions, ideologies, or ideas leadership (h/t to Jacobson at Legal Insurrection for the link), then they get the government they deserve.

Own it.

Kwanzaa: An Inauthentic Holiday Created by a Torturer of Women Pt. 2

Here's part two of my re-postings on Kwanzaa. Part one is here. I decided not to wait unti tommorow. Some of the links are down, and some of the wording has been changed, such is the fluid nature of the internet. Still, here is Part Two:

The socialist (actually Marxist) nature of the seven principles, the Nguzo Saba, of Kwanzaa is addressed, but once again dismissed by Riley. Of the seven principles of Kwanzaa (unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith), Riley writes "The ujima [collective work and responsibility] and ujamaa [cooperative economics] principles certainly sounds socialist, but any of the Kwanzaa principles can be interpreted to mean that through private means we should help others. I do think that these principles - if the focus is on private efforts, and not Big Government - have merit year-round in building black communities."

True enough. Who would have problems with the incredibly general idea of "faith" or "creativity" etc.? I mean, how many anti-faith (not necessarily religious faith-- faith here is used too generally for that) people are out there? How many people are against creativity?

But the seven principles of the Nguzo Saba were not created from an ideological vacuum, nor have they evolved from centuries of social development, such as Christmas' general "peace on Earth and goodwill toward men"-- a process that defines the general principle with a cultural understanding and imbues it with a meaning beyond the mere vague words. When scrutinized beyond the thinnest of superficial gloss, it is evident (from Karenga's own words UPDATED 12/10/10 & re-checked 12/26/12: *sigh* Once again the link is down. You'd think that the works of Karenga would last longer on the web than my tiny blog-- but no. Once again a search for these quotes have come up empty.) that the seven principles, are, in fact, merely Marxist principles created by Karenga for the expressed purpose of promoting Marxist doctrine.

There is no question of Karenga's Marxism. He makes no effort to hide his Marxism and openly promotes it. From Scholer: "Eight years later [in 1989 according to the wikipedia entry on Karenga] California State University at Long Beach made Karenga the head of its Black Studies Department. Karenga had toned down his rhetoric and abandoned his cultural nationalism for straightforward Marxism." This "toned down" Marxism continued to be expressed in the seven principles as detailed in the Kawaida Theory: An African Communitarian Philosophy, (UPDATED 12/26/12 alas, this link is basically down. It's amazing to me how quickly these links change) his book from 1980.

Karenga expounds on the intended principles of the Nguzu Saba here 1965 (UPDATED 12/10/10 & still down in 12/26/12: This link was to the same site as above and, as I said, it's down).

For Ujima (collective work and responsibility) he writes, "The third principle encourages self-criticism and personal evaluation, as it relates to the common good of the family/community. Without collective work and struggle, progress is impossible. The family and the community must accept the reality that we are collectively responsible for our failures, as well as our victories and achievements. Discussions concerning each family member's responsibility prove helpful in defining and achieving family goals."

For Ujamaa (cooperative economics) he writes, "Out of the fundamental concepts of 'African Communal Living' comes the fourth principle of Kwanzaa. In a community or family, wealth and resources should be shared. On the national level, cooperative economics can help African-Americans take physical control of their own destinies. On this day, ideas should be shared and discussed for cooperative economic efforts to provide for needs as related to housing, education, food, day care, health, transportation and other goods and services."

Let's see here... communal living, collective work, and a fading of the individual through "self-criticism and personal evaluation, as it relates to the common good of the family/community" [I must add that this "self-evaluation" is a mainstay of repressive communist regimes, particularly in the uber repressive North Korea under Kim Il Sung]. I think it's perfectly reasonable to conclude that that an avowed Marxist (cultural nationalist at the time) talking in these terms is preaching to Marxist principles; therefore Ujima and Ujamaa do not just sound socialist, they are socialist.

When Karenga says Ujamaa he meant specifically the definitions I quoted above. As the originator of Kwanzaa, these are indisputably the specific meanings of Kwanzaa's founding, generalized principles. So while Riley maintains that "any of the Kwanzaa principles can be interpreted to mean that through private means we should help others," she is presenting a mis-reading that is obvious once Karenga's writings and theories are examined. If we are not a socialist or a Marxist, we should look elsewhere for guiding principles to improve our communities.

Riley tacitly acknowledges Karenga's violent history by writing "And while Maulana Karenga’s history of abusing women is highly problematic, I believe that events can transcend problematic founders (look at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia back in 1787)." Again, an attempt to build an equivalency, in this case between Karenga and the attendees of the Constitutional Convention.

Rather than discuss in detail the myriad of differences between Karenga and various members of the Constitutional Convention (men whose births are separated by about two centuries), I will go into some detail about Karenga's acknowledged abuse as publicly reported by the Los Angeles Times and related by Scholer.

"On September 17, 1971, Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. The charges stemmed from a May 9, 1970 incident in which Karenga and two others tortured two women who Karenga believed had tried to kill him by placing 'crystals' in his food and water.

"A year later the Los Angeles Times described the events: 'Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.'"

I'm sorry, but I don't believe that the phrase "highly problematic" really does justice to the imprisonment, stripping, binding, beating, burning, and the mangling of a toe during the systematic torture of two women by Karenga and a pair of cohorts.

Karenga's sanity can also be fairly questioned. Scholer again writes: "The shooting at UCLA [the Jan. 17, 1969 killing of Black Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice Carter by US Organization members George and Larry Stiner immediately following Huggins' and Carter's verbal attack of Karenga during a public meeting] caused Karenga to become deeply paranoid and spurred his bizarre behavior. At his trial, the question of Karenga's sanity arose. The psychiatrist's report stated, 'This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.' The psychiatrist observed that Karenga talked to his blanket and imaginary persons and believed that he had been attacked by dive-bombers."

While it is, perhaps, true that at times "events can transcend problematic founders," Karenga's problems, to me, are an awful lot to transcend.

And of course, this begs the question as to what an event will become once it transcends its founder. Would Kwanzaa become transformed into something more then a racially divisive, anti-religious, Marxist promoting event?

As I wrote in part 1 of this post, as Kwanzaa became more popular within mainstream Black American communities, Karenga backed down from his virulently anti-religious bent. As I stated before, Karenga's newer books like Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture (1997) tell lies (contradicted by Karenga's earlier works) about Kwanzaa not being intended as an alternative to Christian holidays.

But this inauthentic backing away from its anti-religious roots has not been coupled with Kwanzaa backing away from the radical black separatist movement. At least none is in evidence at the Official Kwanzaa Information Center as Scholer, once again, points out. "Still, some charge that the holiday and its official black, green, and red flag promotes racial separatism and violence. Says the official Kwanzaa Information Center: 'red, or the blood, stands as the top of all things. We lost our land through blood; and we cannot gain it except through blood. We must redeem our lives through the blood. Without the shedding of blood there can be no redemption of this race.' The Kwanzaa Information Center also notes that the flag 'has become the symbol of devotion for African people in America to establish an independent African nation on the North American Continent.'"

Okay... So the official Kwanzaa Information Center (UPDATED 12/10/10 & 12/26/12: The site this link is to is no longer the "official" Kwanzaa Information Center-- gosh, a lot changes in a year. It is now simply the Kwanzaa Information Center. The Official Kwanzaa Website [at least according to its web address] is here and gives pretty much the watered-down, family-friendly schtick-- among the ample links for making a donation.) is basically calling for a race war --the shedding of blood to redeem the race etc.-- not unlike white supremacists. Great. Actually the quote Scholder mentions is from the "Feel Good Information" section (I am not making this up) of the Kwanzaa Information Center's website. The quote regarding the Black Nationalist flag in full is:

"Origin of the Flag of Pan-Africanism and/or Black Nationalism Red is for the Blood. Black is the Black People. Green is for the Land.

"Red, Black and Green are the oldest national colors known to man. They are used as the flag of the Black Liberation Movement in America today, but actually go back to the Zinj Empires of ancient Africa, which existed thousands of years before Rome, Greece, France, England or America.

"The Red, or the blood, stands as the top of all things. We lost our land through blood; and we cannot gain it except through blood. We must redeem our lives through the blood. Without the shedding of blood there can be no redemption of this race. However, the bloodshed and sorrow will not last always. The Red significantly stands in our flag as a reminder of the truth of history, and that men must gain and keep their liberty, even at the risk of bloodshed.

"The Black is in the middle. The Black man in this hemisphere has yet to obtain land which is represented by the Green. The acquisition of land is the highest and noblest aspiration for the Black man on this continent, since without land there can be no freedom, justice, independence, or equality."

A little further down the page is the "devotion for African people in America to establish an independent African nation on the North American Continent" part as related by Scholer.

For an event to transcend the problematic founders, paraphrasing Riley, the event must move beyond both the faults and the intentions of the founder. If we were to peel away from Kwanzaa the racial exclusivity of the black separatism, the anti-religious ardor, the rituals designed to replace Christmas celebrations, the Marxist doctrines contained within the Nguzo Saba's seven principles, all of this imbued by its angry founder Karenga-- what's left?

I understand that Riley was somewhat ambivalent to Kwanzaa and that the very short blurb was not intended as an endorsement of the "holiday." I have nothing against Shay Riley. I have never met Riley, never (to my knowledge) have read anything else written by Riley, and this very long posting was not meant, in any way, to be an attack against Riley personally.

But Riley's ambivalence is something very common, and found both in my own and my wife's family. There's a real lack of understanding regarding the fringe origins of Kwanzaa. The idea seems to be that if Hallmark makes Kwanzaa cards, the holiday must be legitimate and not a bad thing. My family shies away from scrutinizing "black things" (best to leave it all alone) and my wife's family generally give black opinions, theories, and views (no matter how wild or fantastic) their quick approval and then an almost completely unearned pass. I don't think there's anyone in either branches of my family that would support Kwanzaa after learning the facts about its origins and creator.

Kwanzaa is founded on principles that are incompatible with today's mores and unacceptable by mainstream America's current values-- mores and values resulting from the many years of struggles for civil rights.

Kwanzaa champions racial separation, segregation, anger, and meaningless racial confrontation while rejecting racial integration and downplaying interracial understanding and tolerance.

It attacks religion rather than respects it-- uses outlandish language and concocted suppositions to coerce a needless and artificial racial confrontation.

Kwanzaa's seven principles sacrifice the rights of the individual upon a Marxist altar-- for the sake of communal work, collective economics, and sacrifice of self, all designed to help control Black American individuals and bring them into a black separatist fold-- making them think "correctly."

Kwanzaa was founded by a radical and violent black nationalist; a man who was convicted of personally participating in the atrocious tortures of two black women, as well being very closely (if not directly) linked to the1969 murders of two members of the Black Panthers.

Kwanzaa is a contrived, artificial, and inauthentic holiday championing anger and alienation. It is not something to celebrate.

Kwanzaa: An Inauthentic Holiday Created by a Torturer of Women Pt.1

Well, it's that time of the year again. I hope everyone had a merry Christmas yesterday. And in keeping with the times I thought I'd re-post my Kwanzaa posts from 2010. It garnered me a few anonymous quasi-death threats last time (the "Go ahead and shoot yourself" and "things happen to people like you" variety). So here you go:

I read this little blurb "Reflection on Kwanzaa" by Shay Riley at Hip Hop Republican [Time has marched on and Riley's small article is no longer at the end of the link], and decided I couldn't just sit by and let this one pass without comment. Kwanzaa (wikipedia link for those unfamiliar with the holiday) and its creator Maulana Ron Karenga (originally named Ron Everett) is a bit of a raw nerve with me. I hope that if you read the whole entry here, you can, perhaps, see why.

From Riley (in its entirety):

"I have mixed opinion about Kwanzaa. I’d argue that it’s based on culture - however garbled - not race. I don’t buy many conservatives’ claims that Kwanzaa is a racially divisive holiday, unless one is prepared to argue the same for St. Patrick’s Day (which is practically its own very-secular holiday here in Chicago). Critics charge that Kwanzaa sets up Christmas as a 'white' holiday, and thus isolates blacks from others. One of my aunts calls Kwanzaa a 'devil’s' holiday, designed to undermine the gospel of Jesus Christ among blacks. Calling Kwanzaa an invented holiday - which it is - is meaningless, as invention is behind all holidays. And while Maulana Karenga’s history of abusing women is highly problematic, I believe that events can transcend problematic founders (look at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia back in 1787). I don’t see the holiday as anti-Christian, but I’m not religious.

"Many bookeristas have also taken Kwanzaa to task for promoting socialism, but I don’t have a problem with the Kwanzaa principles per se: umoja (unity), kujichagulia (self-determination), ujima (collective work and responsibility), ujamaa (cooperative economics), nia (purpose), kuumba (creativity), and imani (faith). The ujima and ujamaa principles certainly sounds socialist, but any of the Kwanzaa principles can be interpreted to mean that through private means we should help others. I do think that these principles - if the focus is on private efforts, and not Big Government - have merit year-round in building black communities.

"I don’t have a problem with a black American-specific holiday, but my main issue with Kwanzaa concerns authenticity. Kwanzaa isn’t rooted in black American culture and experience. While the official Kwanzaa website calls it a 'celebration of family, community, and culture', why is the holiday a mishmash of East African cultures when the overwhelming majority of black Americans are of West African origin? Nor is it even a holiday that resides with Africans. Kwanzaa thus contributes to the stereotype that Africa is just one big blob, with few if any inter-country differences. This viewpoint is ironically a strange bedfellow of many white attitudes towards Africa, as if one can switch African cultures in and out at will. Black Americans should certainly learn more about Africa. However, Kwanzaa - with its misinformation about our African heritage - falls short of this goal."

While Riley's conclusion is ultimately true-- that Kwanzaa is "a mishmash of East African cultures," that it "contributes to the stereotype that Africa is just one big blob, with few if any inter-country [and racial, and ethnic] differences," and that it lacks "authenticity,"-- she reaches this conclusion but denies pretty much all the factors that would create a common definition of authenticity.

Kwanzaa's purposefully invented nature, its racial divisiveness, Kwanzaa's direct attack on religion and attempt to replace it with socialist doctrines, and Karenga's own history of violence (including the imprisonment and torture of women) are all mentioned, but rather off-handedly dismissed by Riley. Frankly, I just can't abide that and I thought I might address each of these in my response.

"The Story of Kwanzaa" is an eye-opening short essay written by J. Lawrence Scholer and the editors of The Dartmouth Review. Click on the link for the entire piece. I won't reprint the whole thing here, although it is short, but will use selected quotes from it to cover some of the facts glossed over by Riley.

Riley denies that Kwanzaa's made-up nature is any problem for its authenticity. "Calling Kwanzaa an invented holiday - which it is - is meaningless, as invention is behind all holidays."

In a way this point is difficult to address, as the generality of this statement makes it almost meaningless. Exactly what form of culture, what item, trait, accomplishment, or artifact within a society is not a human invention? In the broadest possible strokes, Riley seeks to build some of sort of equivalency between all holidays by virtue of their common human origins, or at least a human recognition of a holiday as such. This is ludicrous and sloppy. With this same logic, why can I not draw the same level of equivalency between Thanksgiving and the hi-lighter sitting here on my desk based on this implied criteria-- I mean they're both human inventions, right?

Okay, but let's restrict this line of thought in ways that Riley does not do (it is a very short work and perhaps it is terribly nitpicking and unfair of me to criticize her logic in this way) and restrict the talk to holidays. Riley sees no difference between Kwanzaa and, let's say, Christmas. She doesn't acknowledge that there is a difference between a religious holiday that celebrates the birth of the Christian religion's namesake and a set of days made up by a man with an immediate and very contemporary political agenda (more on that in a second). Perhaps I should whip out some red, white, and blue candles, declare January 12th "TeaPartia" and insist that it's a holiday that is, in all intents and purposes, the equivalent of Christmas.

Even if one were to divorce Christmas from its religious nature, one is still left with centuries of tradition and various forms of celebration. Yes, the more readily identifiable traditions are not nearly as old as popularly thought to be. The Victorians were really the ones to turn what had become a drunken and oftentimes riotous holiday (sort of a winter Mardi Gras) into something more approximating the "peace and goodwill among men" that are at the holiday's Christian roots. And yes, the day itself was a Christian usurpation of a pagan holiday celebrating the winter's solstice. But all of this, a mere portion of Christmas' convoluted history, is part of the cultural complexity that makes a holiday what it is. It doesn't merely exist because some small group of people (I am talking here about Karenga and his handful of cronies at Kwanzaa's inception on Dec. 26th, 1966 and not about the Black American population-- don't even try to interpret my words that way) say that it did. To draw an equivalency by paralleling the contrived origin of Kwanzaa with the long and complex history (and the accompanying cultural resonance and feelings) of other more readily accepted holidays is nonsense.

Riley denies that Kwanzaa is an alienating holiday, designed to be segregationist. "I don’t buy many conservatives’ claims that Kwanzaa is a racially divisive holiday, unless one is prepared to argue the same for St. Patrick’s Day (which is practically its own very-secular holiday here in Chicago)."

Oh, I think I can claim Kwanzaa is divisive without arguing against St. Patrick's Day. Let's go ahead and use the words of Karenga while doing it. Let's briefly establish Karenga's mind-set with some quick facts about Karenga. To begin, he helped establish the United Slaves Organization (US) in 1965, a radical black nationalist-- or "cultural nationalist" as Karenga would describe it at the time-- group.

In the late 60s (the actual dates seems fuzzy and ranges from 1967 to '71-- the book is copyright itself is '67) Karenga wrote and published The Quotable Karenga edited by Clyde Halisi and James Mtume. Important research detail: To qualify all this I have to state that I have no idea as to the source of this PDF link in this entry-- the source blog does not allow uninvited visitors like myself to its homepage. I do believe this to be a genuine scan, while the book itself is hard to find (I'm not paying $300 for it on Alibris) and a bit mysterious (Karenga himself does not list the 30 page book on his own webpage), the cover scan of the PDF matches an actual first edition of the book and much of the material within the scan jibes with my own research on Karenga including the "Seven-fold Path of the Blackness" on page 5. So I want to be absolutely clear that I am arbitrarily accepting this PDF as genuine without knowing anything about the source. Important research detail UPDATED 12/10/10 & this still applies now 12/26/12: The link to the PDF of The Quotable Karenga is down after less than a year. This is very unfortunate. I've run several web searches and have been unable to find another source without actually purchasing the booklet from Amazon for nearly $50. I can assure you that the quotes I relate are 100% accurate from the booklet.

Contained within the 30 pages of the book(let) are gems like these that attempt to both divide black from white and to unify black at the exclusion of white. *note all page references are the book pages and not the PDF file's pages.

"There is no such thing as individualism, we're all Black. The only thing that saved us from being lynched like Emmet Till or shot down like Medger Evers was not our economics or social status, but our absence." Page 1-- the first quote of the book.

"If we could get a nigger to see how worthless, unimportant, and weak he is by himself, then we will have made a contribution." page 2

"Black people aren't superior or inferior to one another, but complimentary. We are all on the same level but in different categories." page 3

"The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black." page 5

"Thinking Black is thinking collective minded." page 5

"Individualism is a white desire; co-operation is a Black need." page 5

"Black values can only come through a black culture." page 6

"Man is only man in a philosophy class or a biology lab. In the world he is African, Asian, or South American. He is a Chinese making a cultural revolution, or an Afro-American with soul. He lives by bread and butter, enjoys red beans and rice or watermelon and ice cream." page 6

"To talk Black is to start talking 'we' instead of 'me.'" page 7.

"We want integration-- integration of dark and light Black people." page 16

"We should not be blamed for talking separation. Racism in America has already decided this. We just want to be separate and powerful, not segregated and powerless." page 18

"Brothers must watch out for whites who are rebelling against their own society and uses the wave of Black revolution to push their cause." page 29

"White people can't be Black peoples friend. A friend is your alter-ego and a reflection of yourself." page 30

"All whites are white. White doesn't represent a color it represents a mentality that is anti-black." page 30

"To say the white boy would wipe us out if we moved against him is to say he is bad. Why would he wipe us out if he were not bad?" page 30-- the last entry.

Beyond these examples, reading through this work cover to cover leaves little doubt as to where Karenga stands in terms of racial integration and makes clear his view of the both the established and desired relationship between blacks and whites. So now, I believe, we have a decent idea of Karenga's mind-set at the time of Kwanzaa's inception on Dec. 26, 1966 (remember The Quotable Karnega was copyrighted in 1967). Taking these quotes into account it's a bit hard to believe that when Karenga says "We must institute holidays which speak directly to the needs of Black people," (page 5) that he is suggesting that Kwanzaa is something that should, in any manner or way, be inclusive to whites or any other peoples. There is really is no way that Kwanzaa can be anything else but divisive.

Riley brings up St. Patrick's Day, again offering some sort of equivalency between this traditional Irish holiday and one that was contrived in 1966 by Karenga. Just to restate Riley writes: "I don’t buy many conservatives’ claims that Kwanzaa is a racially divisive holiday, unless one is prepared to argue the same for St. Patrick’s Day (which is practically its own very-secular holiday here in Chicago)."

Well, I can't make any claims to possessing intimate knowledge of Chicago's St. Patrick's Day celebrations. While I've been to Chicago several times in my life, I was never there on St. Patrick's Day. However, where I grew up (in Southern California) St. Patrick's day was basically wearing some article of green clothing to grade school so you didn't get pinched (do they still do that?), having Irish-themed meals, and stapling paper shamrocks to the classroom walls. When I got older, the St. Patrick's day celebrations pretty much became drinking green beer and spirits at the local "Irish pubs" dotting Los Angeles and San Diego. There was never any particular exclusivity (my wife was always served with the same courtesy as I was) and the make-up of the crowds were racially mixed-- no I wasn't keeping count, but I can assure you that it was never even close to all white. Any recent attempt by some bigot or white supremacist to make St. Patrick's Day a racially exclusive holiday a) has not been popular enough to make into my general knowledge (and I don't think I'm all Pollyanna on the subject), and b) is not the fault of the holiday itself.

Yes, you can argue that St. Patrick's Day is exclusive in the sense that it is an Irish holiday. That's right. It's origins are that of an Irish holiday. The same can be said of Hanukkah a Jewish holiday, or Ramadan a Muslim holiday, or Diwali an Indian holiday. Describing a holiday as "exclusive" simply because of its place of origin cannot be thought of as equivalent to describing Kwanzaa-- a holiday arbitrarily invented by a black separatist/nationalist that was intended, from its very inception, to be racially exclusive. I'm sorry, but they are just not equivalent in this manner.

Now, let me address Kwanzaa being an anti-religious holiday. Riley writes, "Critics charge that Kwanzaa sets up Christmas as a 'white' holiday, and thus isolates blacks from others. One of my aunts calls Kwanzaa a 'devil’s' holiday, designed to undermine the gospel of Jesus Christ among blacks. [...] I don’t see the holiday as anti-Christian, but I’m not religious."

Whether Riley is religious or not, I think that she should be comfortable coming to the conclusion that Kwanzaa is anti-Christian after we, once again, examine the nature of Karenga's beliefs as reflected in his own words, and what he writes about the purpose of Kwanzaa.

In The Quotable Karenga, Karenga's antipathy toward American mainstream religion is evident as these following excerpts (a mere sampling) demonstrate.

"Christianity is a white religion. It has a white God, and any 'Negro' who believes in it is a sick 'Negro.' How can you prey to a white man? If you believe in him, no wonder you catch so much hell." page 25

"Jesus was psychotic. He said if you didn't believe what he did you would burn forever." page 25

"We are Gods ourselves, therefore it is not good to be atheistic or agnostic. To be an atheist is to deny our existence and do be agnostic is to doubt it." page 26

"The time we spent learning about Jesus, we should have spent learning about Blacks. The money we spend on church should have been spent on our community and the respect we gave to the Lord should have been given to our parents." page 26

"If you realize how human Jesus was you'd see he was no God." page 26

"Next thing Christianity deal with is spookism which is a degeneration of spiritualism." page 26

"They taught us Christianity so we could be like Jesus-- crucified." page 27

"Jesus said, 'My blood will wash you white as snow'. Who wants to be white but sick 'Negroes', or worse yet-- washed that way by the blood of a dead Jew. You know if Nadinola bleaching cream couldn't do it, no dead Jew's blood is going to do it." page 28

This next quote probably best illustrates Karenga's contempt of Christianity:

"The Christian is our worse enemy. Quiet as it's kept it was a Christian who enslaved us. Quiet as it's kept it's the Christian that burns us. Quiet as it's kept it's a Christian that beats us down on the street; and quiet as it's kept, when the thing goes down it'll be a Christian that's shooting us down. You have to face the fact that if the Christian is doing all this there must be something wrong with Christianity." page 27.

Karenga has directly said that "Christianity is a white religion," so I think we can safely make the logical step forward that he would view Christmas as a white holiday. Given Karenga's penchant for separating black and white, again amply evidenced by (and directly stated within) his own words, we can therefore presume that his intention at setting up Christmas as a white holiday is indeed to"isolate blacks from others."

As Scholer points out in his essay, Karenga said as much himself. "Thus, Karenga explained in his 1977 Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice, 'Kwanzaa is not an imitation, but an alternative, in fact, an oppositional alternative to the spookism, mysticism and non-earth based practices which plague us as a people and encourage our withdrawal from social life rather than our bold confrontation with it.' The holiday 'was chosen to give a Black alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.'"

No matter how not religious one may be, the fact that the creator of Kwanzaa is a black separatist with an obvious antipathy for Christianity and states that Kwanzaa is "a Black alternative to the existing holiday" gives ample evidence to the critics' "charge that Kwanzaa sets up Christmas as a 'white' holiday, and thus isolates blacks from others."

Yes, Karenga has backed away from this position more recently as Scholer notes. "Since then, the holiday has gained mainstream adherents, and Karenga has altered its justification so as not to alienate practicing Christians: 'Kwanzaa was not created to give people an alternative to their own religion or religious holiday,' he writes in Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture, published in 1997." This more recent statement is, as can be clearly seen, a lie. Karenaga has written publicly that Kwanzaa was an alternative to, in his directly stated view, "white" Christianity.

I'm not really going to address Riley's aunt's claim that "Kwanzaa [is] a 'devil’s' holiday," but perhaps you should keep this characterization in mind as I later write about some of the facts of Karenga's history of violence and mental illness.

I'll put up Part Two tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!!

Wishing everyone a very merry Christmas.

 

 

 

Economic Numbers that Keep Me Up at Night

Own it, buddy

I ran across this while perusing the internet today. All I can say is surely things cannot continue like this.

Read the whole piece , but here's some excerpts from Zero Hedge's "75 Economic Numbers From 2012 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe" (h/t Ace of Spades):

#1 In December 2008, 31.6 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, a new all-time record of 47.7 million Americans are on food stamps. That number has increased by more than 50 percent over the past four years, and yet the mainstream media still has the gall to insist that “things are getting better”.

#2 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

#3 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming

#5 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year. [You don't here much about this number in the media-- shocker! Back in the '80s that's all we heard about.]

#6 Median household income in the U.S. has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

#7 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

#8 The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been under 59 percent for 39 months in a row.

#9 In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same place.

#14 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

#18 The Pew Research Center has also found that 85 percent of all middle class Americans say that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.

#19 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.

#20 Right now, approximately 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

#29 Barack Obama has been president for less than four years, and during that time the number of Americans “not in the labor force” has increased by nearly 8.5 million. Something seems really “off” about that number, because during the entire decade of the 1980s the number of Americans “not in the labor force” only rose by about 2.5 million.

#30 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#31 According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.

#32 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

#33 Right now, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.

#39 One survey of business executives has ranked California as the worst state in America to do business for 8 years in a row.

#40 In the city of Detroit today, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty, and close to 50 percent of all adults are functionally illiterate.

#43 If you can believe it, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year.

#44 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

#53 One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.

#54 If you can believe it, one recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.

#61 Nearly 500,000 federal employees now make at least $100,000 a year.

#62 In 2006, only 12 percent of all federal workers made $100,000 or more per year. Now, approximately 22 percent of all federal workers do.

#65 U.S. taxpayers spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on the royal family. [Well those junkets to Spain and Hawaii ain't cheap you know.]

#66 Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began. [Again ignored by the MSM. Too busy pushing Obama's policies I guess...]

#73 Amazingly, the U.S. national debt is now up to 16.3 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

#74 During the first four years of the Obama administration, the U.S. government accumulated about as much debt as it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that George W. Bush took office.
 

There you go people. That's why we voted in Obama again. Not because the press and media elites swoon over him, but because that he's just so fiscally in the know.

Sorry, Segues Are Just Not Intimidating...

... even with armed Chinese police on them aiming guns.

Obama Nominates Kerry For Sect. of State

A blast from the past.

And this is a surprise or something?

From the AP:

"President Barack Obama on Friday nominated Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, one of Washington's most respected voices on foreign policy, as his next secretary of state.

"The move is the first in an expected overhaul of Obama's national security team heading into his second term.

"As the nation's top diplomat, Kerry will not only be tasked with executing the president's foreign policy objectives, but will also have a hand in shaping them. The longtime lawmaker has been in lockstep with Obama on issues like nuclear non-proliferation, but ahead of the White House in advocating aggressive policies in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere that the president later embraced."

 

So Kerry was pushing for helping the Islamic hardliners who are currently trying to pull Egypt back into the Middle Ages, and for aiding Al Qaeda's allies who killed our people in Benghazi. Got it.

 

Thanks AP!

 

 

Gallup: To Stop Shootings, Americans Focus on Police, Mental Health



CLICK TO ENLARGE

This Gallup poll (h/t Instapundit) will of course be ignored by Dems, Obama, and the MSM.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Check out the Democratic percentage for those supporting a ban on "assault ans semi-automatic guns." 61%

Is there any doubt Obama and the rest of the usual suspects will push for a ban as soon as possible?

Disgusting: Obama Invokes Sandy Hook to Push Tax Plan

Well, Obama has reached another low in his dismal performance as a president. And it is a performance. He has no actual idea how to behave as a president.

During a press conference he had this to say:

It is a deal that can get done, but it is not going to be -- it cannot be done if every side wants 100 percent. And part of what voters were looking for is some compromise up here. That’s what -- that’s what folks want.

They understand that they’re not going to get 100 percent of what they want. And for some reason, that message has not yet taken up on Capitol Hill. And when you think about what we’ve gone through over the last couple of months -- a devastating hurricane, and now one of the worst tragedies in our memory, the country deserves folks to be willing to compromise on behalf of the greater good and not tangle themselves up in a whole bunch of ideological positions that don’t make much sense.
 

Yup. This coming from the man who has not once negotiated in good faith during this entire period.

And let's look at what Obama is essentially saying. He's saying I'm the middle-of-the-road guy and the Republicans are clinging bitterly to their nonsensical ideological stances-- despite the deaths of 20 children and seven or so adults. Why these Republicans are just evil if they don't give me everything I want. Think of the children!

God, Obama is such a whiny brat! I just cannot stomach his crap today. Dead children are just so much political ammunition for this guy. Four more years of this arrogant socialist? Really? *sigh*

Fast and Furious Gun Found at Scene of Mass Murder

Those pesky old Obama/Holder authorized guns just keep popping up at murder scenes. This time five were murdered.

From CBS News:

Another weapon from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency's controversial Operation Fast and Furious was recently recovered at a Mexican crime scene, CBS News has learned. Congressional investigators say the crime scene was likely where a recent shootout took place between reported Sinaloa drug cartel members and the Mexican military, in which Sinaloa beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed.

According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the Justice Department did not notify Congress of the Fast and Furious firearm recovery in November, even though Grassley has requested an accounting of weapons that surface from the case. During Fast and Furious, ATF allowed more than 2,000 weapons, including giant .50-caliber guns, to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels and other criminals. Other so-called "gunwalking" operations by ATF let hundreds more guns hit the street. Most of them have never been recovered.

The latest known recovery is a Romanian AK-47-type WASR-10 rifle. It was picked up at a crime scene Nov. 23 in Ciudad Guamuchil, Sinaloa, Mexico. That's the same area and weekend of the shootout involving Flores Gamez's death. A trace report shows the rifle was purchased by Uriel Patino, the Fast and Furious suspect who allegedly bought more than 700 weapons while under ATF's watch. Records show Patino bought the rifle and nine other semi-automatic rifles at an Arizona gun shop March 16, 2010.

[...] 

Two other Fast and Furious AK-47-type rifles were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010. In September 2011, ATF estimated that Fast and Furious weapons had been recovered at eight violent crimes in Mexico. As CBS News has reported, guns trafficked under ATF's watch in a separate investigation were also used in the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico in February 2011. The families of both Terry and Zapata are suing government officials for alleged negligence and related claims.

Gosh, I wish the media had covered this better before the election-- and maybe even not allowed Obama to blatantly lie and say that Fast and Furious was a Bush operation that Obama so nobly stopped. I guess they were all too busy at his campaign rallies or something...

Another Historic First Under Obama: United States Dropped from Top 10 Most Prosperous Countries

Congratulations! Obamanomics in action! Well, that and an increase in poverty, homelessness, and taxes, the devaluation of the dollar, the shrinking incomes of the middle class...

From Small Business Trends (h/t Instapundit):

"The London-based Think Tank Legatum Institute recently offered empirical evidence of what many Americans have been thinking lately. Our national well-being is slipping.

"Over the past four years, prosperity has increased around the globe, while it has remained stagnant in the United States, the Legatum Institute reports. As a result, the Institute ranked the United States 12th out of 142 countries on its 2012 Prosperity Index, putting the country outside the top ten for the first time."

Heckuva job Light-bringer (Lucifer)! Heckuva job!

In the Wake of Sandy Hook, "Tolerant" Leftists Publicly Call for the Murders of the NRA President and Members

Predictable.

From Freedom Outpost:

What once would have been unthinkable to blast out into public seems to be becoming more normal via things like Twitter and Facebook. Below are a selection of Tweets that are clearly anti-Second Amendment and even calls for the murder of the National Rifle Association President David Keene, along with NRA members.

Click to Enlarge

 

Ah, yes. The Left proudly showing it's true embrace of intolerance with cowardly calls for violence-- once again. This is now so common that it's quite tiresome.

Obama Unleashes Regulatory Rules-- Post-election Naturally

Well, you wouldn't expect him to do it before a tightly contested election, would you?

From the AP:

While the "fiscal cliff" of looming tax increases and spending cuts dominates political conversation in Washington, some Republicans and business groups see signs of a "regulatory cliff" that they say could be just as damaging to the economy.

For months, federal agencies and the White House have sidetracked dozens of major regulations that cover everything from power plant pollution to workplace safety to a crackdown on Wall Street.

 

The rules had been largely put on hold during the presidential campaign as the White House sought to quiet Republican charges that President Barack Obama was an overzealous regulator who is killing U.S. jobs.

 

But since the election, the Obama administration has quietly reopened the regulations pipeline.

 

In recent weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rules to update water quality guidelines for beaches and other recreational waters and deal with runoff from logging roads. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, meanwhile, has proposed long-delayed regulations requiring auto makers to include event data recorders - better known as "black boxes" - in all new cars and light trucks beginning in 2014.

 

The administration also has initiated several rules to implement its health care overhaul, including a new fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions.

Some GOP lawmakers fear the worst.

 

Obama has spent the past year "punting" on a slew of job-killing regulations that will be unleashed in a second term, said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. With the election over, it's now "full speed ahead" for federal rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions, requiring cleaner gasoline and putting controls on drilling for oil and natural gas, said Inhofe, the senior Republican on the Senate Environment Committee.

 

"Under an Obama EPA that has earned a reputation for abuse, American families will be subjected to a regulatory onslaught that will drive up energy prices, destroy millions of jobs and further weaken the economy," he wrote in a 14-page report on expected EPA regulations for 2013. The report predicts an influx of regulations that "spell doom for jobs and economic growth."

 

Obama wouldn't doom us to paying more for less, would he? I mean gas prices would have to be around $3.50 per gallon, and last month's deficit would have to be the worst November deficit in history. Uh oh.

Green Industry Implodes

So how are those Green stimulus dollars working?

Not very well, actually.

From The Business Insider (who also provided the chart above):

A stock index that exclusively lists renewable energy companies in down 98 percent since fall of 2008, reports The Washington Times).

The RENIXX tracks the world´s 30 largest companies in the renewable energy industry. They are given a weighting in the index is based on the market capitalization.
Companies in the index include First Solar, Suntech and Trina Solar.

The index closed last week at 159.36 points.

Compare that with its all-time high of 1918.71 in December of 2007.
 

Ouch. But then buoying up badly run businesses with bad products  to offer is not really the way to go.

New York Public School Puts Up Ugly Mural of Obama

I mean a seriously ugly mural. Look at that thing with its teeth. Obama looks like a cross between the Nosferatu and Burgess Meredith's version of The Penguin in it.

From Breitbart:

Port Washington, New York is one the most liberal areas in the country. And high school students at the local Paul Schreiber High School are being subjected to left-wing propaganda: as they walk through one of the main corridors, they see a giant mural of President Obama's face.

 Conservative students believe the mural has created tension, and an uneasy learning environment. A group of Schreiber students, led by sophomore Jacob Bloch, have begun to take a stand against the mural.

"There is no denying that the Republican minority of students feels intimidation while walking down Schreiber hallways." Jacob said in an email interview. "We feel, quite frankly, that we are in a hostile environment in Schreiber, politically speaking. We do not see a free learning environment, where students can develop their own political ideas. What we do see, are students walking down the hallways, and seeing liberal ideas as right, and conservative ideas as wrong."
 

 I wonder if this pro-Left bias is really just particular to this single. I don't know. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there are a few more public schools that have a Leftist bias. Crazy me.

Consumer Confidence Drops Dramatically in December

Will we hear about this on the evening news? Unlikely.

From Market Watch (h/t Tom Blumer at BizzyBlog):

Consumer sentiment took a giant step back in December, as the looming fiscal cliff made its first measurable dent on the public’s psyche.

The preliminary University of Michigan-Thomson Reuters consumer sentiment index fell to 74.5 from 82.7 in November.

That’s far below the 82.0 expected in a MarketWatch-compiled economist poll, eliminating four months of gains and also representing the biggest one-month drop since March 2011.

The report took some of the shine off a better-than-expected jobs report in November, as U.S. stocks pared their gains.

Sentiment is still stronger by around 6.5% from the levels of December 2011, but that gain is down significantly from the nearly 30% year-on-year improvement seen in November.

The movement in the report came overwhelmingly on the expectations side, where the subindex tumbled to 64.6 from 77.6 in November.
 

It's Bush's fault... or something. How about greed? Racism?

Pro-Union Mob Violence in Michigan

Douglas Geiss' money quote: "There will be blood"

Not long after Michigan State Rep Douglas Geiss, a Democrat, threatened that "there will be blood" (video here) if Michigan passes a "right to work" bill, a pro-union mob tore down the Americans for Prosperity tents while attacking several occupants (video here).

It's all part of the New Tone, I guess. Get for ready for more political violence. It's definitely on the way with a president who indulges in class warfare while huddling behind charges of critics' racial bias.

UPDATE:

Apparently the Michigan House Democrats were so proud of Geiss' heated rhetoric (or so anxious to instill fear) that they tweeted his quote--  then deleted the tweet following the outbreak of actual violence. You can't do that people. Ah, twitter... as I've said before its slogan should be "Speak up. Only the people at your table know you're an asshole."

Screenshot via Dana Loesch

UPDATE 2: "There will be blood."

Steven Crowder was sucker punched by a man wearing a union jacket with the name Tony Cxxxxxx embroidered on it. (Video here) and (longer video here). As can be seen in both videos Crowder did nothing to provoke a violent response. Just another union man out to talk over political differences I guess...

Michelle Malkin has a load of videos depicting union thuggery in Michigan, including the classic American phrase: "Leave us alone or we’re coming for you." Nice. Check it out here.

Majority of Democrats Feel Positively about Socialism

A real shocker following Obama's reelection...

From Gallup:

"Additionally, Democrats have roughly similar reactions to capitalism (55% positive) and socialism (53%), while Republicans are much more positive about the former than the latter, by 72% to 23%, respectively."

I can't wait to see the 2013 and 2014 results of a the same poll. Own it.

North Korean Government Reports Finding Unicorn Lair

Was this actual unicorn also found at the site?

A unicorn lair in North Korea? Sure. Why not?

From the Telegraph:

The quite unbelievable claim of the discovery of the unicorn lair belonging to King Tongmyong, founder of the ancient Korean kingdom Koguryo was made by the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences.
 

The lair was apparently found 220 yards fro[sic] a temple in the capital, Pyongyang.
 

"A rectangular rock carved with words "Unicorn Lair" stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392)," the report said.
 

"The temple served as a relief palace for King Tongmyong, in which there is the lair of his unicorn."
 

The report was also used to make a more serious point about the North's claims of dominence over the South.
 

"The discovery of the unicorn lair, associated with legend about King Tongmyong, proves that Pyongyang was a capital city of Ancient Korea as well as Koguryo Kingdom," it said. 

I just love the proof that it's a unicorn lair-- a rock that actually says "Unicorn Lair." Well, I'm convinced.

And just more proof that all of what has ever been historically good and noble in the Korean society happens exclusively in the North. Yup. Cast iron proof. No doubt.