Leadership, not race, will decide Atlanta mayoral run-off

The dead-tree drive-by media in Atlanta, as predicted here and here, has beaten the racial drum incessantly since Mary Norwood (46%) failed to garner the required 50% plus one votes to avoid a December 1 run-off against runner-up Kasim Reed (36%).

The latest insult to Atlanta voters cites MSM polls showing a strong inclination for people to vote for those of their own race. Who knew? I would remind folks that the AJC’s pre-Election Day polls had Norwood winning outright with Reed 20 points behind in her dust.

I’ll bet that polls would also show that most Atlantans prefer Democrats of any color and that Republicans resent being trashed by a former Republican depending on them for votes. But for the media to report on such matters would require “journalists” to avert their gaze from skin pigmentation.

Media that thinks Jim Crow still rules Dixie needs to eat crow

How fascinating do they find the variations on “one-drop” rules for legal marriages under Jim Crow? I wish they would join us in the 21st Century of Shirley Franklin’s landslide re-election victory four years ago. Maybe they missed that election in which white and black voted for color-blind leadership.

If the media would get over their obsession with black and white, they would also note that neither Reed nor Norwood have once appealed to voters based on racial solidarity. In fact, they have both explicitly denounced a Clark-Atlanta university appeal to same and have both stressed issues and leadership abilities in this race.

The AJC might also look at its own poll and note that the margin of victory on Election day was less than the percentages of assumed racial voting and that we can expect, based on their own poll, that from 15-25% of voters will vote across racial lines.

Racial culture has changed but media still projects their own racism

It used to be the case many black city majority elections, that the winner had to appeal to race. Any such appeals today would most certainly ensure defeat if one candidate so indulged while the other stayed on the high ground the drive-by media ignores.

I continue to remain convinced that much of the drive-by media projects their own racism onto We the People, assuming we share their monochromatic view of the world. They still live under Jim Crow and I only hope one day they are made to eat crow.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Headline you never see: Republicans block census citizenship question

Another you never see: Democrats block Census citizenship question.

The reason you never see the first question as an MSM news headline is that Republicans don’t object to asking the people being counted to determine the apportionment of the political power in this country among the States, the following question on a census form:

“Are you a U.S. citizen?”

The reason you never see the second question as a headline is that when Democrats, voting in the Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Senate, make it illegal to ask such an obviously relevant question, their PC-police allies in the Drive-by media, acting as an “accessory after the fact”, takes the Fifth, and refuses to name the Democratic actors in the original crime with the generic headline:

“Senate blocks census US-citizenship question”

“Senate”?

Are the Democrats proud of their vote or not and are we also not permitted to ask them questions not on a census form?

Given the vile excuse for journalism most Americans depend on, is it any wonder that so many have yet to discern the stark differences between the parties on economics, common sense immigration policies, defending the country and law and order in general.

So many members of the “World’s Oldest Political Party” are either: simply unaware of how many of their representatives simply do not share their values (and work to directly undermine their values with their votes in Congress) as opposed to the conservative acts they put on during campaigns; or, are in denial. I realize now that I was in denial about that party until I left it in 2000, but I digress.

Even Barack Obama gave the wink and nod to the far left while purposefully sounding conservative in the campaign, but the champion frauds can usually be identified today as “Blue Dawgs”. Not one of 60, too Yellow to ask a simple question, Dawgs in the Senate turned blue enough not to cower to the PC police and lobby for illegal immigration.

I haven’t heard the President asked his position on this question. But does anyone really wonder? The Rule of Law means nothing to some dogs, no matter the color.

And just hearing of all the alleged eye and ear witnesses to radical anti-American statements made by the Muslim-convert shooter before today’s shooting at Fort Hood, it is obvious that the PC-police are hazardous to the health of the United States military and America itself.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The 9.8% of Americans that are unemployed and the 90.2% that are either employed or have given up looking, are told that the Great Recession is over. Don’t believe a word of it or find a new word to describe the trouble we are in as a nation.

I wrote last year that no matter who was elected President that we, as a people, would have our character tested to the nth degree by the economic consequences of the Fannie Mae-Dem Congress/Fed weak dollar era of the past 10 years, as well as the private and public debt run up over the last 25 years.

I expected the recession to get this bad for this long and worse, and I expected a filibuster-proof Dem Congress (that started sending investors on strike when they took over Congress in 2007 with the promise of more regulations and higher taxes, all with the votes of Senator Barack Obama) combined with a left wing Dem President (whose father’s dreams were Marxist) to make things worse.

I was right, but, partially because I don’t expect ObamaDems to have a supply-side epiphany and give up the socialist Utopian dream any time soon, I must express my support for a number of measures they have advocated or discussed  that pertain to the economy and the Reagan-described safety net for the truly needy, as well as a number of foreign policy moves that deserve all Americans’ support.

It would have been nice if the Stimulus bill had been more than safety net relief and government growthulus. I would have favored a mass shovel-ready public works bill, but the ObamaDems chose instead to save and create state and federal bureaucrat jobs instead with the public works plan consisting mainly of signs that announce potholes are being filled by the Recovery Act. Nice signs. It appears that most of the puny funds for actual public works were delayed until the Summer of ‘10 (and election year). Go figure.

But, during times of recession and depression, the safety net does need shoring up, and for that reason, and to keep money flowing in the economy to keep a pulse going, I do favor:

1. Extension of unemployment benefits;
2. Extension of COBRA health insurance subsidies for those that have involuntarily lost their jobs through no fault of their own and need to continue health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions;
3. Extension of the Home-buyer tax credit (with the proviso that no one be allowed a credit larger than their total federal tax bill, inclusive of FICA), which Georgia’s Junior Senator, Johnny Isakson (R-GA) has championed; and
4. Small business lending initiative.

I understand the problems caused by Fannie/Freddie coercion of bad loans, but don’t see a tax credit (Conservatives are still for tax reductions, right? And you do note my proviso above?) unaccompanied by lowered credit standards and federal guarantees as in any way a continuation of same.

I would note that I oppose a separate program of mortgage conciliation that does seek to save homes for those that can’t afford them. Thankfully, that program has done very little and has the left wing of the Dem Party angry with Obama.

I would also note that I am not one of those that is angry at banks for not making lots of loans to businesses just now, despite TARP. The reason for the lack of loans is the bad economy and the dim prospects for profits from which loans could be paid back.

For the record, this Reaganite supply-sider favors supply side income, cap gains and estate tax cuts; as well as regulation cuts that would allow expanded oil and natural gas exploration and oil refinery and nuclear power plant building. But, I don’t expect that even those policies would lift the economy in a meteoric way until people save awhile and re-build their wealth before taking new risks. Which is an argument for, not against, Obama’s small business loan initiative.

We need to support the few things ObamaDems propose that will stimulate the economy, so I do.

And in the mostly embarrassing and disgraceful foreign policy wasteland of betrayals to freedom and rule of law-loving Honduras, Eastern Europe and Iranian dissidents we do see two bright spots: Pakistan is fighting the Taliban/al Qaida on their own initiative and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repudiated the Palestinian refusal to negotiate with Israel until they ceased all third bedroom additions to houses with newborn babies on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Yes, we know that Obama still deems such improvements to be “illegal”, but we are happy Prime Minister Bebe Netanyahu got a quarter.

Tomorrow, DeVine Law Gamecock returns to the column topic cornucopia of bad ObamaDem policies!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The racists in this drama are the media

No matter how incessantly the Drive-by media talks about white and black voters, the change in the relative fortunes of frontrunner Mary Norwood and runner-up Kasim Reed is about leadership qualities, and not the relative pigmentation of their skins.

Less than 48 hours ago, polls showed Mary Norwood might be able to garner 50% plus one vote and succeed Shirley Franklin as Mayor of Atlanta. Then the only poll that matters reared its head (Norwood 46%, Reed 36%), and it turns out that many Northern Atlanta voters in mostly Republican areas came in less enthusiastically than expected for their supposed Buckhead champion. She now faces a run-off against surging Kasim Reed.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is already peddling the racist line that is par for the course that has them regularly referred to as the Urinal-Constipation.

Don’t believe a word of it.

This conservative Republican knows better, which is why I announced my support for Reed yesterday.

Mary Norwood blew it by being equivocal about her Republican past. Mary must have forgotten that conservative Republicans are proud to be so, and proud of the candidates they have supported at least beginning with Ronald Reagan. Mary Norwood also must have forgotten that most all voters appreciate strength, leadership and honesty in an executive leader.

Kasim Reed did not forget this. He knows who he is, what he stands for, and is proud of it. Bravo!

I left the Democratic Party nine years ago last summer, and so I have major problems with many of the positions of Reed, and Norwood for that matter, given her apparent liberal conversion in the 90s. But liberal/conservative doesn’t matter that much the more local the race, and Reed is conservative on all the right issues for the City of Atlanta.

Mary Norwood’s only chance, if she has one, is to come clean on her past and turn out more of her supporters in the run-off than Reed.

But no matter who wins this race, Atlanta’s reputation matters most to me, and I don’t trust the simplistic, operationally racist, Drive-by media to be able to look past the skin color of the voters and the candidates. It makes me wonder if the purveyors of the racism charge are projecting their own racism, or that of their own institutions, onto others.
 

Atlantans can, have and will, and they see major differences between Reed and Norwood under their respective skins. Let’s let the coverage and conduct of this race leading to the run-off be an indictment of the racist media, and not Atlanta.

Atlantans are too busy for that kind of hate. After all, we have a city to run.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Atlanta remains a city too busy to hate, which fact caused the Rooster oracle to realize he wasn’t too busy to end his Sabbatical for an Election Day prognostication.

This I-85 South Carolina native has loved the Capital of Dixie since childhood. His brother was even born at Crawford-Long Hospital when the family moved to Bolton Drive during a Southern Railway shutdown of its Hayne (train repair) Shop in Spartanburg.

Our first love was the Braves (Mike DeVine Law Gamecock even loves the Braves more than his beloved USC Fighting Gamecocks for God’s sake), followed closely by the Falcons, Hawks and even, the now defunct, Nick Papadakis-led soccer team, the Chiefs. We loved Coca-Cola, the Varsity, Tech and the world’s busiest airport.

But mostly, we loved the home of Martin Luther King, Jr. that made great racial progress while also electing white and black mayors that fostered the growth of one of the great American cities.

This conservative Republican has been impressed with the governance of Atlanta for the last eight years by a non-racial, competent mayor named Shirley Franklin.

But we are most impressed now with the current campaign to succeed the term-limited City leader, for the non-racial conduct by all the candidates. Has their been some petty partisan party bickering even in this, officially, “non-partisan” race? Yes, after all, these are politicians, not candidates for sainthood.

But none of the campaigns have focused, at all, on the race of their opposing candidates, despite some puny attempts by two local college professors, and other outliers, to try and get blacks to gang up on the white poll leader.

Atlanta is a mature city focused on who can get the job done, and it appears to be moving towards that color-blind, judge by the content of one’s character goal of Martin Luther King.

Cockstradamus (pictued above) believes that this majority black Democrat city is about to elect a white woman for the first time, partially due to the resentment of many for the Georgia Democratic Party (and admitted Democrat candidates) attacks against Mary Norwood, that claim she is a closet republican.

Cockstradamus thinks that many black and white Democratic and independent voters resent the implication made by the GA Dem Party that they are mindless lemmings waiting for direction from on high.

We also note a possible affirmation of our apathy is good theory, given the likelihood of a low turnout. Atlanta has been hit hard by the Great Recession in terms of jobs lost, budget problems and crime. Yet, they seem to believe that all four of the major candidates are up to the job, and so are too busy to vote, so busy are they trying to make a living.

One thing is for sure: They are too busy to hate any candidate because of their race.

Atlanta, you make me proud. Gamecock would lean to voting for Kasim Reed if he weren’t viewing the Big City election from Clarkston and the Stone Mountain of Georgia, but we will flock to Manuel’s to celebrate the election, no matter the winner, because the real winner is….

Atlanta, the greatest city in America.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Post-2000 conservative epiphany, I have come to realize that many of the leaders of my former Democratic Party must not really care for the poor given their denial of the poor boats lifted by Reaganite supply side economic policies and given their continuing advocacy of proven failed liberal policies since the 1960s.

[See * at end of column for background.]

Even while an activist Democratic Party official, I mostly refused to acquiesce in the liberal line that Republicans didn’t care about the poor or that they would take away the checks form the poor, old and disabled.

But I can’t help but think that many Democrats care much more power gains through victim dependency given their history since JFK was assassinated and especially given their support for a Cap and Trade energy tax that would directly and drastically lower the standing of living of the poor and middle class by making it impossible for them to afford many of the necessities of life.

We saw last summer what $4/gallon gasoline did to lower income families, by forcing choices between driving to one’s job or having enough money to feed the children.

Make no mistake, even if I thought that man’s use of and breathing out of carbon could cause the shoreline to receded, I would not favor a draconian assault on the modern world and return to a green Dickensian world or horse manure-filled streets and buck stove smoke-filled air in London.

But the whole man-made global warming (MMGW), now conveniently known as “climate change” (as if) since the earth has cooled since 1998 (thus calling into question whether there is an non-man made global warming taking place), is a crock. My client, The Sun, in the inter-galactic case styled as The Sun v. Al Gore et al, warms the earth; not cow flatulence and Chevrolets. In fact, half of the Eastern Seaboard was under the Atlantic for 10,000 years, tens of thousands of years before the first Corvette rilled off a Dearborn, Michigan assembly line.

Hence, my initial disgust with South Carolina Republican (btw, the first DC GOP office-seeker I ever voted for) Sen. Lindsey Graham’s agreement with Sen. John “I served in Vietnam” Kerry (D-MA) on the “reality” of “climate change” (Well, we all have to agree there is climate change every day, hell every minute…but they mean global warming and say so in the column).

The Pink Flamingo objected to my harsh judgment of Lindsey, despite his history of sticking McCain-like pointy sticks in fellow Republicans eyes so as to secure co-starring roles on TV network Sunday Shows. We do recall that Graham spoke to La Raza during the illegal immigration amnesty debate and called all the opponents of the bill “racists”? I remember. I also know that when LG gets something right, like the war, he can be the best advocate on your side, but I digress. Here is the very specific (I like that) retort from SJR (link above):

The following paragraph from the NYTimes is being constantly ignored. You might want to pay a little attention to it. To come from John Kerry it is extremely revealing:

“…Failure to act comes with another cost. If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration will use the Environmental Protection Agency to impose new regulations. Imposed regulations are likely to be tougher and they certainly will not include the job protections and investment incentives we are proposing…”

There are at least two trains of thought on the danger of a President Barack Obama extra-constitutional Czar-like overreach in making law via new regulatory interpretations of existing statutes related to the EPA, CWA, ESA with respect to energy and environment restrictions on carbon as a pollutant and FDA with respect to tobacco.

Firstly though, whether or not a Cap and Trade bill would absolutely prevent unitary executive action would depend upon whether any new statute directly repeals existing vague language with respect to environmental protections, clean water and endangered species laws already in effect.

I doubt any new statute would deter Obama’s impatient regulators. After all, these folks have been waiting their whole lives to “fundamentally change” America (to use Obama’s campaign rhetoric - yes, he only used that specific phrase once before Axelrod schooled the Boy Prince…) and were frustrated when Bill Clinton triangulated with Newt and when Gore used to be the next President of the United States.

But, I should mention that many scholars think that the regulatory threat is a Red Herring since any attempts to increase carbon regulations via executive action would get tied up in the courts for many years.

In any event, that argument by the senior senator from the Palmetto State strikes me as more make weight, since Graham religiously asserts his faith in the fundamental premise of MMGW and in his support for a Cap and Trade tax on the energy that created the modern world and which tax is a sinfully regressive tax on the poor in the purchase of food and transportation to their jobs. It would eliminate any “luxury” like a weekly trip to any Grandmother living more than 30 miles away.

But, challenged to re-read the Kerry-Graham news deemed fit to print, I did find that I was pleased with a number of fundamental truths that Graham got a far left liberal to agree to, in writing no less. Yes, the truths are vaguely stated and offered as measures for merely tempering the effect of the NEW TAX on the American standard of living, but welcome, nonetheless, and quite useful for future debates.

The “good news” admissions by Kerry (link above) for the Left are that new on- and offshore oil and natural gas drilling and nuclear power can be part of the answer to our energy needs. They actually mention our need to end dependence on foreign oil; energy efficiency and pollution control.

Sign me up for all that. One wonders if they noticed how we cleaned up America’s air and water from 1970-2009 while greatly increasing the emission of carbon. The fact is that their Cap and Trade bill hinders all of those goals.

I especially liked these paragraphs from the Old Gray Lady aka The Times:

Second, while we invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar, we must also take advantage of nuclear power, our single largest contributor of emissions-free power. Nuclear power needs to be a core component of electricity generation if we are to meet our emission reduction targets. We need to jettison cumbersome regulations that have stalled the construction of nuclear plants in favor of a streamlined permit system that maintains vigorous safeguards while allowing utilities to secure financing for more plants. We must also do more to encourage serious investment in research and development to find solutions to our nuclear waste problem.

Third, climate change legislation is an opportunity to get serious about breaking our dependence on foreign oil. For too long, we have ignored potential energy sources off our coasts and underground. Even as we increase renewable electricity generation, we must recognize that for the foreseeable future we will continue to burn fossil fuels. To meet our environmental goals, we must do this as cleanly as possible. The United States should aim to become the Saudi Arabia of clean coal. For this reason, we need to provide new financial incentives for companies that develop carbon capture and sequestration technology.

In addition, we are committed to seeking compromise on additional onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration — work that was started by a bipartisan group in the Senate last Congress. Any exploration must be conducted in an environmentally sensitive manner and protect the rights and interests of our coastal states.

Implicit in the suggested go slow approach so as not to threaten jobs and the burden on the poor, discussed elsewhere in the column, is that this is not a real crisis.

Thanks for that admission most of all! We now have a major liberal Democratic Party leader on record. Let’s use it to kill Cap and Trade; enact supply side tax and regulation cuts; open up expanded oil and natural gas exploration; and build nuclear power plants and oil refineries.

Kerry is all for it. Thanks Lindsey.

* [This column was inspired by regular R412 commenter, SJ Reidhead aka SJR The Pink Flamingo, who objected to my harsh criticism of Lindsey Graham's co-authorship of a NYT editorial suggesting a left-right compromise on a Cap and Trade Bill before the international community meeting on the issue this month in Copenhagen, Denmark. A portion of this column will appear in an upcoming column I am working on for this week that cites some DeVine conservative agreements with the ObamaDems on particular matters.]

See also Dr. Roy Spencer’s An Expensive Urban Legend.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Given recent Cap-and-Trade Bill leaks, it appears neither care very much about living standards when compared to their love of being liked by Beltway Global Warming Religious elites

Last week we documented the exposure of the faux global warming consensus and the collapse of the affluent society fetish post $4/gallon gasoline.

Yet, in the middle of a Great Recession with the fall of the American Dollar driving gasoline and heating oil prices back towards $3/gallon, we hear rumors that some of the Evan Bayh-led Blue Dawg Democrats that have courageously kept the Pelosi assault on American prosperity energy tax bill out of Harry Reid’s hands, together with Lindsey Graham and other moderate (read: enamored of receiving invites to Georgetown liberals’ cocktail parties) republicans, may be ready to compromise and pass this wicked legislation:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has turned his back on the latest science, economics, the Republican Party, and American national security, by announcing his new partnership with Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to find “the winning formula” to pass global warming cap-and-trade legislation.

Graham is now touting his view that man-made global warming fears are real and can be “solved” by passing Congressional cap-and-trade legislation. Graham teamed up with Sen. Kerry to write an October 11 New York Times op-ed explaining that the GOP and Democrats should “work together to address an urgent crisis facing the world.”

We guess that the real crisis in Middle America losing jobs by the millions isn’t “cool” enough for Senators seeking co-starring roles on Sunday Shows.

The real climate change catastrophe is what they and their “international community” liberals want to do as a response to the now proven false global warming crisis:

We have “less than 50 days” to save the planet, declared Gordon Brown last week, in yet another desperate bid to save the successor to the Kyoto treaty, which is due to be agreed in Copenhagen in six weeks’ time. But no one has put the reality of the situation more succinctly than Prof Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most distinguished climatologists in the world, who has done as much as anyone in the past 20 years to expose the emptiness of the IPCC’s claim that its reports represent a “consensus” of the views of “the world’s top climate scientists”.

In words quoted on the cover of my new book, Prof Lindzen wrote: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly exaggerated computer predictions combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.”

Such is the truly extraordinary position in which we find ourselves.

Thanks to misreading the significance of a brief period of rising temperatures at the end of the 20th century, the Western world (but not India or China) is now contemplating measures that add up to the most expensive economic suicide note ever written.

How long will it be before sanity and sound science break in on what begins to look like one of the most bizarre collective delusions ever to grip the human race?

It appears that Brits asked to pay more taxes based on the fraudulent theory are now balking, and I suspect that any Democrat (whether yellow or blue) or Republican (whether named Lindsey or not) that were to assault poor and middle class living standards with an energy tax bill, would find that the real catastrophe for them would be losing their cush jobs in Washington, D.C.

[update at 4:13 pm EST]

From R412:

Comment #2

Okay Mike, who put out the political hit on Lindsey.  This is not what I expected of you.

This is what is in the NYTimes article, BUT everyone is ignoring it.

“Failure to act comes with another cost. If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration will use the Environmental Protection Agency to impose new regulations. Imposed regulations are likely to be tougher and they certainly will not include the job protections and investment incentives we are proposing.”

Great and fair question and am glad you asked, as it shows the need for me to be more comprehensive and will, therefore update the column forthwith!

smile

Yes, I read that, but that assumes Obama is not already using the EPA’s vague language and sup ct and bush admin gift of carbon as pollutant (which they didn’t even need given the vague language of the statute) or that he would be deterred from using same if the Congress passed some law so weak on the issue from the libs perspective and thus, exonerating of Graha.

I am not so convinced.

Moreover, it does not justify Graham’s mindless acquiescence or dare we fear actual belief in the fauz science that is used as a front for the socialists turned greenies to attack capitalism.

The correct position is to have the courage to attack the PC climate police, esp now that it doesn’t take any courage given the debunking of the science and the turn in the public’s indulgence of this fetish.

Lastly, I would PREFER that ObamaDems own a carbon tax bill that takes effect NOW, as so great would be the immediate suffering and the resulting HUE and CRY, that we could win a filibuster proof majority that even Lindseys couldn’t stop.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

 The extended sabbatical of the most famous living poultry oracle left the freezing temperature locale of Gore’s latest Global warming conference and arrived at the World’s Largest Cocktail Party last night in Jacksonville, Florida for the real climate change known as Dixie. (see also global warming happens every Vernal Equinox and Summer Solstice…)

[This column also serves as a special Halloween guide to all the characters that regularly contrubute to Mike gamecock DeVine's blogs and columns for The Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Minority Report, Race 4 2012, Redstate, Patriot Room, Town Hall, and Examiner.com.]

Braves-Gamecock (pictured above) called his brother in the announcement of dawns to discuss the usual Saturday religious services from late August thru Pearl Harbor Day known as College Football and to see if Cockstradamus (pictured below) wanted to end his prognostication pause with a bark for the Dawgs against the Gators.

We regret that the chicken who predicted the creation of Huckabee on FNC continues to keep future visions to himself, but did get an earful of crowing concerning all the grief the Cocky version of Jimmy the Greek took for the two years past when he called the whole global warming aka climate change supposed consensus and political power a “fetish” of the spoiled affluent society that would evaporate with $4/gallon gas and the Great Recession, not to mention any suggestion that they give up Le Seur peas for the Bi-Lo brand lest we lose 50 feet of Manhattan Island in 50 years.

The American public cares not a whit about it anymore.

This year, we have seen more and more scientists have the courage to speak truth to government grant-giving power as my client in the case of The Sun v Gore has allowed the Earth to cool for 11 years.

The bluest thing the Blue Dawg Democrats (leader pictured) have ever done, to date, is to block the cap and trade tax assault on the poor, middle class and small business bill in the Senate. Yes, we hear that Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants to give up his senate seat by compromising on the bill and are sure ObamaDems may well accommodate him and defy the public if they can sneak this monster thru. And yes, we are even more sure that Lawless Obama will usurp the power of Congress if they don’t make this law, by simple executive regulatory fiat that is hidden and creeps all over American living standards just in time for Obama, Pelosi and Reid to have been re-elected, before it kills trips by the poor to see grandma 35 miles away lest they can’t keep the gas on to stay warm amidst the climate change, but I digress.

Cockstradamus was right.

Now, here is hoping the Dawgs upset Tebow-Nation and eventually get half a brain and end the annual trips to same. Earth to Georgia: gators can take a bus to Athens!

And of yes: USC Fighting Gamecocks (gamecock pictured, courtesy of The Minority Report) volunteer to beat Tennessee.

DeVine Law (pictured above) and Foghorn Leghorn (pictured below) approved.

Remaining questions and issues: Thank God that neither Supreme Court nor Bush Administration didn’t mention chicken breath when they labeled CO2 a “pollutant”;…

more links will be added here all weekend

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

This column has a column topic section titled “pitchforks“, so ubiquitous has been President Barack Obama’s “Chicago Way” tactics to “clear the field” of opposition to his policies.

Obama has long practiced clear the Field politics as opposed to honest debate against opposition, going all the way back to the leaking of his senate opponent’s confidential sealed divorce records. The first such utterance specifically to unleashing a pitchfork wielding populist mob against opponents as President was this exchange with bank CEOs in April:

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation, and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Tomorrow night is an occasion celebrating the most famous wielder of a pitchfork, variously known by the appellations of Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub and, most famously, The Devil.

The most recent folks to be pricked by ObamaZebub’s pointed stick have been doctors, insurance companies, and, most famously the evil Television equivalent of evil Talk Radio, i.e. Fox News Channel. But why have the pitchforks been sicked on a non-broadcast cable news outlet that garners but a fraction of the audiences of the CBS, NBC and ABC (all in the tank for ObamaMessiah) news, individually and combined?

Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times recently risked sustaining steel-pointed, fork-shaped injuries when he reported:

By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn.

Read the whole column that reports on behind the scenes meetings between FNC’s Roger Ailes and White House adviser David Axelrod, as well as Obama’s meetings with his advisor’s and see if you can think of any President we have ever had with such thin skin and less confidence in his message?

I couldn’t.

The fear that the Drive-By media is being shamed into actually covering news that doesn’t fit their preferred story lines is welcome news for anyone that cares about this nation’s electorate being informed.

Examiner.com has never been in the tank for any politician. We don’t do drive-by hits. We examine the facts and report. And if we have a point of view, left or right, we say so.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Harry Reid must be as slimy as Tom Daschel was in the Democratic Party Cloakroom

The conversion of former Georgia Lieutenant Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller from Yellow Dawg Democrat to the DINO (Democrat in name only) that endorsed President George W, Bush for re-election at the 2004 GOP convention began with his first encounter of the glazed-over, in denial lying eyes of “Bush-lied” fellow Democrat Senators in caucus meetings on Capitol Hill in 2003-4.

So disgusted with the un-patriotic, US-enemy emboldening speech and actions of the Democratic Party after mass stockpiles of WMD were not found in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, that he stopped attending their meetings. But Senator Miller, appointed by Roy Barnes, then Democrat Governor of the Peach State, to complete the term of Paul Coverdell after his death, never got so disgusted that he changed parties.

Joe Lieberman is younger than Zell Miller and making bold, unprecedented moves against the party he has caucused with for his entire career, even considering the fact that he is, technically an “Independent Democrat” and not the plain vanilla variety after the World’s Oldest Party tried to defeat him for re-election after he dared to support a Republican Commander-in-Chief while his nation was at war. The wars, we might add, that the vast majority of democrats voted to launch, support and fund for years, but I digress.

Has any senator since the late 1950s or early 1960s announced his intention to filibuster major legislation proposed by his own Majority Leader, until Senator Lieberman announced his intention to filibuster the Harry Reid version of ObamaCare less than two hours after the senior senator from Nevada proposed it earlier this week? Could any conservative Republican had made a more categorically conservative argument against ObamaCare than this:

“We’re trying to do too much at once,” Mr. Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”

I will not argue that Joe’s statement is unique as compared to statements regularly made my conservative Republicans, because we have many in the GOP that do so. But Lieberman, unlike Republicans that regularly disagree with their party and who go out of their way to reach across the aisle to Democrats, only very rarely gets invited to co-star on the Sunday Shows to be praised as courageous.

Yet, who has displayed more of the kind of career threatening courage memorialized in JFK’s Pulitzer-prize winning book: Lieberman or McCain?

Did the GOP run a candidate against him in his last party primary? Was he ever deprived of power within the caucus? Has their been an absence of McCain or his “vice-president” Lindsey Graham on Sunday TV before Noon? I think not.

The junior senator from Connecticut continues:

Mr. Lieberman added that he’d also oppose a bill that includes Mr. Reid’s provision for states to “opt-out” of the public program “because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line.”

Lieberman was not content merely to threaten one filibuster. He felt compelled to issue a pre-emptive strike against the tricks the Dems have up their sleeve to try and fool the public into letting the nose of the socialized medicine camel under the free market tent.

Was Lieberman content merely to pronounce on the ubiquitous issue of the day? Not on your life. Yesterday:

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012.

“I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I’m going to call them as I see them,” Lieberman said in an ABC News “Subway Series” interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System.

Lieberman infuriated fellow Democrats in 2008 by supporting Republican presidential nominee John McCain as well as congressional candidates Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

Joe Lieberman has always distinguished himself from the blood-sucking vampire in need of a stake through its heart that we all know as the National Democratic Party, especially on national security and values issues (with the glaring exception of abortion, regretfully).

The Senate Cloakroom for donkeys must be reaching a stultifying level of disgust for Joe to defy his “leaders” in such brazen ways, and given the tenor of his conservative rhetoric, one has to wonder if he might be ready to cross the aisle as Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords did in 2002.

This conservative Republican rooster is ready to crow with joy if he does.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Henry Troutman, Jr., the son of the founder of the Atlanta law firm that became famous as Troutman Sanders in legal circles throughout the South and beyond, passed away at the age of 86 this week at his Hilton Head Island, S.C. home.

Troutman Sanders was intimately involved in all of the great legal and economic events of the past century that made Atlanta the great city it became and is today. Of special note, one of its former partners and good friend of mine, Hank Purvis (age 79 and father of Atlanta’s Democrats Examiner) fashioned the first deed of property unattached to the Earth that allowed for economic development above-ground, especially including the Centennial Park area.

Topics on which DeVine Law Gamecock (pictured) desires comments and debate:

Judicial Recusals

I do not generally favor judicial recusals unless a particular judge has a personal interest in the outcome of the case either due to a current close relationship with one of the parties; family relationship or monetary interest. I do not consider there to be a conflict of interest when an appellate judge, especially one on the U.S. Supreme Court, is asked to consider a lower court decision upon which they participated.

After all, one of the main reasons they are chosen is to render their opinions on the law.

So, it was with great disappointment when John Roberts refused to hear a critical executive war powers case, that he had ruled on while on the DC Circuit Court, soon after he was confirmed as The Chief Justice of the United States.

Some conservatives have recently suggested that newly appointed Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor recuse herself from considering the seminal appeal of a gun rights case seeking to apply the Second Amendment to the states, as it has to the federal District of Columbia. This suggestion is not based on her participation in the lower court case on appeal, which was from a different circuit; but, rather on a similar case from her circuit that she participated in. I would not call for her recusal even if she had participated in the Chicago case, even though I am certain she will vote against my position favoring incorporation of the right to bear arms to the states.

What say my legal colleagues?

Alito replacement of O’Connor historic

Given all the cases upon which retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the deciding 5th vote, I would argue that her replacement by Associate Justice Samuel Alito is and will be one the most consequential in history, unless one of the other conservatives is replaced by President Barack Obama in the near future.

Alito has already participated in free religious speech and church/state cases that have reversed many of O’Connor’s onerous tests that formed much of the basis for the assault pf religious free speech in the public square. Many local school districts have already gotten the message and have stopped being as intimidated by the ACLU.

Alito promises to be the tie-breaking vote on many abortion; eminent domain and other issues.

Thurgood Marshall was the greatest lawyer of the 20th Century and second only to MLK himself in his contributions to civil rights in America

I recently re-read Juan William’s biography of the late justice Marshall, who, it turns out, resented the media’s attention to and status afforded to MLK, but mostly to Malcolm X.

I don’t blame him, as related to X. After all, Malcolm was  a hater in a hateful cult most of his career and never achieved anything tangible and significant legally or socially. maybe he would have, had he lived longer after his post-Mecca pilgrimage epiphany that Allah calls him to love all people. But he didn’t. I would say that some of his actions did reveal the racism of Northern Whites, but much more so that of racist blacks.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

There is a rift in the Black Hollywood director community, but the real rift is the same as in the liberal-conservative, redstate-bluestate, Southern/anti-southern divides.

Tyler Perry of House of Payne and movie character Madea fame appeared on 60 Minutes this week to respond to criticism from Spike Lee:

“We’ve had this discussion back and forth. When John Singleton [made Boyz in the Hood], people came out to see it. But when he did ‘Rosewood,’ nobody showed up. So a lot of this is on us! You vote with your pocketbook, your wallet. You vote with your time sitting in front of the idiot box, and [Tyler Perry] has a huge audience. We shouldn’t think that Tyler Perry is going to make the same film that I am going to make, or that John Singleton or my cousin Malcolm Lee [would make]. As African-Americans, we’re not one monolithic group, so there is room for all of that. But at the same time, for me, the imaging is troubling and it hearkens back to ‘Amos n’ Andy.’”

I only vaguely remember “Amos and Andy” as a child. Many people I know and respect that were never racist loved the show. I have never seen a whole episode of House of Payne, but I have seen Tyler Perry portray “Madea” in a video of the play “Madea Goes to Jail”, staged in here in Atlanta, and was blown away by how real it was and how conservative were the values it transmitted.

So, it was with great anticipation that I watched Perry’s response on CBS this past Sunday:

“I would love to read that [criticism] to my fan base. All these characters of mine are bait, bait to get people talking about God, love, family, and faith. You know, that pisses me off. It really does. Because it’s so insulting. It’s attitudes like that that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist and that’s why there’s no material speaking to them, speaking to us.”

“All these characters are bait, disarming, charming, make-you-laugh bait, so I can slap them into situations where they can talk about God, love, faith, forgiveness, family, any of those things,” says Perry.

And it is in the resentment of Lee and others concerning the “characters” that really reveals what underlies the spite. It reminds me of liberal criticism of some supposed caricatures of black folks that the critics lambasted as racist due to the big lips and other features of the drawings.

Turns out the drawings were accurate depictions of the black subjects, and it made me suppose that maybe many liberal blacks and whites harbour personal disgust (racism?) with respect to certain blacks. And this Lee/Perry episode makes me think that much of the spite directed at Perry’s characters is based on anti-Southern bigotry.

As Perry essentially says in his interview (see it all here), these folks exist, whether NY, Boston or Hollywood likes it or not. Most are in the South, but many are up north and out west as well.

And for conservatives, they are ripe for the picking to turn blue states red, much as my earlier column on Jason Whitlock’s apology to Rush Limbaugh shows as well.

Madea totes a gun to protect herself, her home and and her loved ones. Even in a perfect world the police usually arrive after the innocent are victims. Perry’s Atlanta while too busy too hate, ain’t a perfect world. But many in Atlanta and elsewhere are about building a more perfect union from the same Judeo-Christian principles that the Founders relied upon.

Spike Lee resents that fact almost as much as he resents non-politically correct un-reconstructed Southerners and Blacks.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Jason Whitlock has long been one of this Rush Dittohead’s favorite sports and social commentators, so it was with much chagrin when he wrote a column during the recent Rush-NFL Rams-bid controversy repeating false racist statements to Limbaugh and his Excellence in Broadcasting “network”. But I am not surprised that the Kansas City Star reporter has redeemed himself:

Let me first apologize to Rush Limbaugh.

Last week in explaining why NFL commissioner Roger Goodell needed to put an end to Limbaugh’s latest publicity stunt, I attributed racially insensitive quotes to Limbaugh that I read in two Missouri newspapers, saw on CNN and confirmed through a Google search. Prior to posting the article, I never found a denial of these quotes by Limbaugh, and had no reason to believe those statements were not true.

It was unfair to Limbaugh. And I regret that. I’ve commented on some of his earlier controversies. I’ve long been an admirer of his broadcasting skills.

It’s nice to read a real apology without the “in case anyone was offended” caveat, isn’t it.

I regret to say that Whitlock still doesn’t totally “get” what Rush is all about given later comments in the mea culpa that equate some of Rush’s commentary to the “divisive” antics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, but when one considers that much of Rush’s shtick is almost an inside joke for regulars, he can be forgiven. Moreover, when one reads the following from Whitlock, one realizes that he truly is of a conservative bent and open minded:

For the most part, I’ve never taken his political commentary all that seriously. There are virtually no modern-day political figures that I take seriously. Politics and politicians are too dishonest and too controlled by financial influences for my taste. I’ve never participated in American politics. I’ve never voted.

I am not right wing or left wing, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. I’m not beholden to any political agenda. An examination of my work at FOX Sports.com, the Kansas City Star and/or any of the places I’ve worked previously would reveal a free-thinking, hardcore independent.

I dislike and distrust everybody equally.

For the most part, doesn’t that attitude warm a conservative’s heart? it does mine, although given his overall philosophy, I wish he would vote because I think he would usually get it right!

My experiences with Whitlock have been almost totally positive over the years. He, like Limbaugh, was driven from many mainstream media sports talk shows due to his refusal to give race hustlers and thugs a pass. He also went to Jena, LA during that “noose” controversy:

The proof is in my work. As sports columnist, I went down to Jena, Louisiana on my own dime because I wanted to understand the Jena Six controversy. The way the “mainstream” media and Al Sharpton told the story made little sense to me. My suspicions were confirmed after visiting Jena. I wrote a long column for the Kansas City Star explaining how a little-known white minister — Alan Bean — crafted the Jena Six narrative, spoon-fed it to specific, liberal-leaning media members/outlets and watched from the sidelines as his totally one-sided, inaccurate narrative became accepted as fact by virtually all major media organizations.

I pay a price for my independence. I know what it feels like to be unfairly called a racist. It happens to me almost every week after one of my columns. Depending on the topic or the conclusion I reach, black and white people take turns arguing that I hate black or white people.

My point is some days I’m sympathetic to Limbaugh’s plight. He’s a push-the-envelope entertainer. His parody song “Barack The Magic Negro” is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on radio. It’s not racist. It’s genius.

Whitlock goes on to express some misguided views of much of Rush’s work, but I am not holding him responsible for fully understanding Rush. Whitlock is not a perfect man, and for that matter neither is Rush nor this crowing rooster, but Jason is about the same business as Rush: truth. Whitlock finds it more often than not, and has the Rush-like courage we need in this culture.

Whitlock joins other courageous black commentators like Juan Williams, Steve Smith and many black NFL players defending Rush. Had Rush’s white business partners had 48 hours more patience, I’ll bet the Rams would have been theirs.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns and Race 4 2012 website.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Bullying of CEO Ken Lewis and pay “guidelines” for non-TARP banks prove ObamaDems don’t care if TARP funds are repaid

DeVine Law had planned to weigh in on the ongoing debate over the constitutionality of executive branch “czars” since dueling Pro & Con (Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson vs. David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey) columns on the subject appeared in my October 1 edition of the AJC. 

I concluded, at the time, that Rivkin/Casey had the better argument in the all-Republican debate that President Barack Obama’s czars did not exercise the ”significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States” that U.S. Supreme Court precedent determined is required for U.S. Senate confirmation under the ”appointments clause” of the U.S. Constitution.

But as the end of October approaches I am persuaded that the Halloween masks of Czar#1 (Obama) thru Czar#33 (and counting) need to be removed, given the specter of thuggish Czarist “pitchfork” threats against TARP and non-TARP companies, akin to those leveled in the Chicago Way against Bankers last April:

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation, and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

 Persuasion, Coercion and Lawmaking

The “czar” that made the above thuggish mobster-type threat against Bank of America’s (BAC) CEO Ken Lewis, after he jokingly complained about rumours of draconian cuts in executive pay, didn’t have to be confirmed by senators. He was chosen by the Electoral College!

Lewis, who had already agreed to work for $2 for 2008-2009; invested millions of his own money in stock after the credit crunch and who was coerced to go thru with the Merrill Lynch deal after learning of their massive debt; has now been rubbed out by Obama’s pitchforks and forced to resign.

It seems that Lewis committed the unpardonable sin when he miraculously turned the Merrill deal into a profit-maker for BAC, thus frustrating the Obama-Geithner goal of nationalizing the banks. Earlier this year, Lewis also tried to return all of the TARP funds that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Obama’s Tax-cheat Treasury Chief-in-waiting had forced BAC to take, alleging the bank was “insolvent.” The problem with that allegation is that BAC has never missed one payment to creditors.

Therefore, before Obama had appointed the first czar, this government had already crossed the line between persuasion from the Bully Pulpit of the executive branch and its execution of the laws responsibilities to the usurpation of the lawmaking responsibilities of Congress and the coercion of Judicial mandates interpreting the law.

One might want to go back as far as the Fannie Mae gangs of Democrats that coerced banks to make loans to those that could not afford them since the late 1990s for earlier coercions as well. One might want to re-visit attempts by President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain to break democrats’ filibusters that kept Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with the czar-like power to guarantee the toxic loans that, combined with Democratic Party policies after they took over Congress in 2007, that introduced us to the Great Recession Obama’s Rahm Emmanuel now uses as the crisis to justify the end of the rule of law and free market capitalism, but I digress.

Special Master please, not Czar

I chuckled two weeks ago when I saw that AIG was “asked” by Kenneth “Pay Czar” Feinberg, to reduce scheduled contractual bonuses. Asked? Then the chuckle reached belly-laugh this past week when Feinberg “announced” that all TARP recipients pay would be cut by 90%. No word on AIG et al’s answers after being asked and no word if pitchfork releases were threatened.

Feinberg says that these cuts are a “balance” of public outrage vs. making it more likely that the TARP companies pay back the loans from the taxpayer. He also “hopes” that the best employees of these companies won’t leave for better pay with non-TARP companies.

Feinberg was appointed by President Obama as “Special Master” on executive pay, and Feinberg insists that he not be referred to as a “czar”. But “master” is a term of art used by the Judicial Branch to refer to judges that make impartial  decisions based on law and equity.

We missed his judicial appointment and the only jury we saw was one man with large ears not listening to We the people, nor the Congress. Had Obama been listening, he would have remembered the U.S. Senate’s refusal to pass the 90% tax on AIG months ago and had he been listening to We the People, he would have washed away that Big Government Kool-Aid taste with Party Tea.

So you see, whether Obama’s czars are unconstitutional or not (even if the Roberts-Alito Supreme Court would declare them so), the problem of the ongoing transition from a Republic and the Rule of Law to Obama’s preferred rule by men won’t be solved.

Not a Slippery Slope? The slope done slipped.

We are also told by Master Feinberg not to fear a slippery slope that would have the federal government determine salaries in non-TARP funds-receiving companies. Yet, the very day cuts of 50-90% in TARP company pay are announced, Obama’s government issues suggestions for ALL banks and the FEd has now followed.

All this comes after Obama took over GM and Chrysler that now function as premium day care for the UAW workers with no work to do making cars no one wants to buy.

Had they cared about “saving” GM and BAC, (and about taxpayer money being paid back) they would have let GM survive in bankruptcy and let BAC pay their money back months ago. So the Obama motive in the present circumstance is made clear by their takeover of GM and refusal to accept BAC’s money: Obama wants to own BAC and keep GM as a permanent taxpayer funded Democratic Party operation.

Feinberg speaks of having CEO and other executive pay tied to long-term stock options, and  that would be fine if Boards of Directors weighed such a choice in the free market against similarly-situated firms with whom they compete.

But Obama, like czars, mobsters and Chavez-like dictators, eschews competition. He prefers to clear the field with Valentine’s Day brass knuckle massacres akin more to Halloween tricks after he takes the treats.

He was ACORN’s lawyer after all, even if he is loathe to admit it, and we can’t count on clearing any more ACORNs absent prostitution ring revelations.

We the People must wield votes in 2009-2012 like pitchforks

Don’t count on any action from a Congress, either, as some of their Blue Dawgs try blocking the cap and trade energy tax assault on the poor and middle class as Obama uses executive bureaucratic interpretations of the law to begin imposing such tax without their Blue Dawg representation.

We face a lawless gang in Washington whose czars may not face Senate scrutiny, but whose head Czar and his party ObamaDems will face We the People scrutiny in Novembers hence.

It has always required courage for conservatives, branded by the Drive-bys as criminals for being Republicans, to oppose the liberal status quo. The Chicago ways of Obama has made a Rush-like courage even more necessary given his pitchfork intimidation tactics.

Fortunantly, when the pitchfork thug ObamaDems slipped down the slope, they landed on Tea Partyers heads, who are poised to play Eliot Ness.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns and Race 4 2012 website.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Once a person convicted of a crime has been released from jail, prison or a half-way house while on probation or parole, that person should be allowed to live anywhere they can afford, subject only to restrictions concerning proximity to the specific victim(s) of their crime.

My interest in this subject was piqued by an excellent column by my fellow member of the bar, Bob Barr and his recent “Sex Offender Vagabond” column in the AJC in which he expertly analyzed Georgia’s law that restricts sex offenders from living within 1000 feet from schools and other places children congregate. Even before the 1000 feet applied to bus stops, about the only place those subject to the law could legally live in Georgia is an uninhabited barrier island in the Atlantic.

Barr also graciously got DeVine Law up to speed on Georgia Supreme Court rulings that have limited the scope of the Georgia statute, at least with respect to real estate owned by convicts, but I want to expand on Barr’s following conclusion:

“…passing legislation piling on endless restrictions and burdens on those who already have served prison terms and who remain subject to extensive monitoring, is neither responsible nor effective.”

The idea that these residency restrictions protect children is ridiculous. The best deterrent is a long prison sentence. I would have no problem with a life sentence of sexual offenses accompanied by assaults and batteries of high and aggravated natures.

Barr also rightly identifies a problem with lumping consensual teen sex with adult child molestation, but my objection to the residency restrictions is much broader than this flaw in the law.

Lastly, as a veteran criminal defense attorney that has tried and many sex offense cases, I would remind that these types of cases are among the ones that are most often falsely alleged, and so I do not favor any general, massive increase in penalties (unless the acts are corroborated by physical injuries).

DeVine Law welcomes comments and debate.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The press has chosen to exercise their First Amendment freedom via cowardice and Drive-by hits against conservatives to protect their liberal, Democratic Party ideological allies. Big Business, including the NFL, and too many Republicans have also chosen the easy, cowardly path for too long as well, lest they become the focus of the PC-police.

The result of the above is a morally obtuse culture mostly devoid of men with chests, in which those that dare challenge the racial/social orthodoxy have their characters assassinated at the first sign of chest puffing.

Rush Limbaugh has a chest and Courage is the most important virtue

The latest victim of the leftist racists and the cowards is Rush Limbaugh, who dared to dream of being a minority owner of the St. Louis Rams. False quotes were disseminated by the Drive-bys with CNN and others to justify their character assassination but, make no mistake, the real animus against Rush were accurate, non-racist quotes that didn’t comport with the Left’s transmogrified definition of “racist” that dare to treat blacks as the equals of whites, i.e. fair game for fair criticism, parody and satire.

The cowards in this case were NFL owners, their league’s commissioner, and, especially, Dave Checketts, the majority partner in the group seeking an NFL franchise, who had sought out Rush’s participation in the first place knowing that a controversy was likely to arise but who had assured Limbaugh that he would stick with the effort despite same.

Checketts is a man without a chest and it appears that had he shown even the slightest staying power, given the defenses of Rush from many prominent black men, including liberals like Juan Williams (man with a chest), it is very likely that the controversy would have faded.

“One man with courage makes a majority” - Andrew Jackson

It doesn’t take much to win over a majority of We the People, as Rush’s history and that of precursor’s to past conservative Republican victories (but I repeat myself as there are hardly any non-conservative GOP victories).

The Silent Majority carried Nixon to victory, and re-election in a landslide, when he dared to challenge liberal orthodoxy and take courageous actions to push back the communists in Vietnam.

Ford, Bush41, the late-90s GOP and the mid-2000s GOP lost when they moved to the center.

Reagan had the courage to identify evil empires, tax collectors for the welfare state and welfare queens on the way to landslides; Gingrich attacked corrupt Democrats to take over the Peoples’ House for the GOP the first time in forty years; and Bush43 overcame the Bushlied Era to re-election while killing terrorists by the thousands after tax rate cuts.

Rush, attacked as a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe since going national in 1988 played a major role in the Gingrich Revolution and Bush43’s re-election, all the while increasing his record-breaking radio audience every year despite health setbacks and ubiquitous attacks.

Conservatives win when then show courage against the Left in the media and against the Democratic Party. They lose (see McCain) when they surrender to their dishonorable friends on the left. A large percentage of Democrats will vote for Republicans with chests puffed against liberal democrats.

Has the Democratic Party no shame?

The two parties are not interchangeable, even on issues that the GOP has failed on. ObamaDems first budget deficit of $1.8 TRILLION is three times as large as Bush43’s worst of $400 Billion. (Moreover, Bush43’s worst deficits were passed by Democratic majority congresses - including then Senator Obama - after they re-took control in 2006).

The shamelessness of the Democratic Party has no equal, whether it pertains to their embrace of murderous Mao supporters and/or 911-truthers in the Obama administration; race-baiting poverty-pimps that pretend 21st Century America is barely removed from the Jim Crow South; pretending to be hawks on Afghanistan just to win an election and discredit the Iraw War most all of them voted for; re-defining coup d’etats so they can back despots in Honduras, Cuba and Venezuela; or lionizing Bill Clinton as some sort of moral giant, never once asking him any tough questions about his moral failures.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and “courage”

One of the main themes of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic, which echoes Burke and MLK, is that the “good” plantation owners enabled the longevity of the evil institution of slavery as the best example of how evil triumphs not primarily due to the acts of evil men, but rather due to the inaction of good, yet cowardly men.

Otherwise, how could the concept of courage that required courage in 1860 to speak out against slavery some how, in 2009, require that one have courage to speak out against false race-baiters or to make obvious criticisms of wicked, criminal behavior?

The NFL says that Rush’s statements are too “divisive”, including ones that merely cited obvious media bias that a black quarterback do well and that thuggish behavior hurts the image of the league. Yet, wouldn’t it have been good for the league had Falcon’s owner Arthur Blank made some “divisive” statements to Michael Vick years ago objecting to his posse of lowlifes accompanying him to his late arrivals at training camp and on game days?

Blank was afraid to criticize a black man for behavior that would have gotten a white man suspended.

We saw in the Limbaugh affair an exercise of arbitrary power akin to what we fear from a too powerful government. Our culture is sick, and the only way in can be cured is thru courage.

Courage is the indispensable virtue required to stop America from Slouching inexorable towards Gomorrah. Absent courage, the majority of We the People will continue to settle for filing mere Minority Reports.

More DeVine examinations on race.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

From the diaries by Erick

Rush dares to judge all by the content of their character and that threatens the race industry

Raised by parents that were instrumental in integrating the races in my South Carolina hometown in the 60s and 70s, I was receptive in my youth to the Democratic Party’s rhetoric of racial inclusion. I practiced affirmative action in my law firm in the 80s and became a party official; but almost from the beginning of my political activism there was some unease with my liberal associations.

Fellow democrats giggled about an empire Reagan correctly denounced as evil; ignored the success of tax cuts; and hired mostly white paralegals. As a very young county party chairman I was appalled at hostility to people of faith by my party elders, as well as the unfair demonization of Republicans as racist and uncaring for the poor.

I admit at this time that I suffered from extreme, classic Democratic Party class envy and that later on, my reluctance to change parties while still in my hometown was due partly to this and cowardice, but I couldn’t deny that among the legal community and members of my church, it was invariably mostly the Republicans that actually hired blacks.

Read More →

Furman Bisher retires after 59 years as Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports columnist

But first, the main story that made Braves-Gamecock sports’ Week Six of the College Football season a happy one:

USC 28 Kentucky 26 and Ramblin’ Wreck 49 Seminoles 44 (But we think Coach Bowden should be able to decide when he retires)

A Coup d’etat by any other name?

Honduras followed the rule of law in ousting a president that was openly breaking the law in the streets and inciting riots. The US soccer team played by the rules and outscored Honduras.

To Obama, these are coups.

President Barack Obama continued to turn the screws on a former loyal ally (They are still loyal to concepts known as “freedom” and the “rule of law) from the George Washington-Bush 43 era) by ousting the Honduran soccer team from the World Cup via Obama’s new definition of a coup d’etat:

Sunday was a day to remember for the American soccer faithful. The USA returned to the FIFA World Cup for a chance to redeem themselves after the horrendous pratfall that was Germany ‘06.

A Casey brace, a Landon Donovan winner, and a missed penalty by Honduras striker Carlos Pavon sealed the Yanks’ 3-2 victory over Los Catrachos in San Pedro Sula.

So how was this seemingly legal, by the rules victory a coup? For the answer, one needs to review Obama’s application of the term to the ousting of the former President of Honduras earlier this year:

What Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) heard in Tegucigalpa:

In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military “coup” that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it has created.

After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders from Honduras’s government, business community, and civil society, I can report there is no chaos there. There is, however, chaos to spare in the Obama administration’s policy toward our poor and loyal allies in Honduras.

That policy was set in a snap decision the day Mr. Zelaya was removed from office, without a full assessment of either the facts or reliable legal analysis of the constitutional provisions at issue. Three months later, it remains in force, despite mounting evidence of its moral and legal incoherence…

America’s Founding Fathers—like the framers of Honduras’s own constitution—believed strong institutions were necessary to defend freedom and democracy from the ambitions of would-be tyrants and dictators. Faced by Mr. Zelaya’s attempted usurpations, the institutions of Honduran democracy performed as designed, and as our own Founding Fathers would have hoped.

Read the whole column as well as DeVine Law’s analysis.

A Sports Legend Retires

2:44 pm October 10, 2009, by Furman Bisher

Editor’s note: This is Furman Bisher’s final column for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Read more:
–Past columns. His last one is below. Read his first one including his moving tribute to his late son and several others.
–Photos of his career. Even one where he’s playing football.
–Video: Bisher reflects on his very first column for the paper

It was April 15, income tax day, in 1950 that this all began. Usually, such a run as this rarely ever carries on this long. Perhaps my act has worn thin. Perhaps I have over-stayed my time. But to an old warrior such as I, it isn’t easy finding an appropriate ending place.

My mind wanders back to the Falcons’ first flirtation with glory. They led the Dallas Cowboys into the shadows of a Sunday afternoon in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, 60,222 fans in a state of exhilaration, a division championship a breath away when the defense broke down. It was over and a city was left heartbroken.

It had been such a colossal event that even …

Continue reading Transcontinental memories of ’so many fun’ mark the end »

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tributes to this historic sports writer that covered Bobby Jones and was instrumental in bringing professional sports to Atlanta:

Steve Hummer column and excerpt:

When Bisher began in Atlanta, Joe Louis was still fighting and boxing was king. When Louis died, Bisher had the authority to lament in print: “Then they lowered him into the ground, and that is all that remains of the great fighting man, except a memory that shall become a national resource.”

In that one venue, look at how the landscape has evolved on the day of Bisher’s departure. Boxing has given way to ultimate fighting, men rolling around in cages.

With Bisher retired, there is no one left who has had such an impact on his craft — especially in the South — as measured by the stack of awards at his door or the reverence of those who followed him.

Inexplicably, AJC.com hasn’t posted a column in Sunday’s paper by its former editor Jim Minter that recounts the story of how Bisher invited Charlie Finley, then the owner of the Kansas City A’s, to Atlanta to try and persuade him to bring his MLB team south. When Finley saw the confluence of Interstate’s I-85, I-75 and I-20, he told Furman that if the city would build a stadium there, he would bring the Athletics to Atlanta.

Fulton County Stadium was built there but Finley had already fled Missouri for Oakland, California. Milwaukee brought Hammerin’ Hank Aaron to Georgia, and the rest is history.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Columbus discovered us, and thank God for it

Happy Columbus Day!

And yes, there are good reasons to be happy. For the chain of events that resulted in the creation and evolution of the greatest nation the world has even known includes the discoveries of Christopher Columbus in 1492 as essential and as Exhibit A for proof of the reasons we became the Shining City on a Hill.

I was motivated to write this blog when I read a column by Uruguayan writer for Progressive Media Project, Eduardo Galeano:

Who were the savages?

Perhaps the most revealing episode in the history of the Americas occurred in 1563 in Chile. Indians besieged the fortress of Arauco, depriving the Spanish of food and water, yet Captain Bernal refused to surrender.

From the stockade he screamed out, “There will be more and more of us!”

“With what women will you make them?” the Indian chief asked.

“With yours. We will make them bear children who will be your masters.”

The invaders called the original Americans idolaters and savages because the indigenous people believed that nature is sacred and that we are the brothers and sisters of all those with feet, paws, wings, or roots.

Today, with nature defiled and war and brutality rampant, who is the true idolater, the true savage?

Do you see that word “Today” at the beginning of the last paragraph?

Does this not crystallize the Left’s ignorance or willful denial of history and hatred of The United States and Western Civilization quite well.

Mr. Galeano, do you not know that both the “gentle” people you describe on Hispaniola and all other peoples that have ever walked the Earth have continually engaged in war and brutality since Eve bit the apple, or, if it helps, since an ape became man?

And do you suggest that the West engage in massive de-population to the level of The Americas of the 15th Century?

You scoff at what Columbus imagined about the New World and where he thought he was, yet romanticize the ignorance of the people Columbus discovered.

The big picture you don’t see is that Columbus discovered America as the first step in ending the ignorance.

Neither the people Columbus encountered nor the civilization Columbus represented was innocent and both engaged in savagery.

But shouldn’t the civilization of Columbus be proud that we found them rather than indulge in some romantic notion that had Europeans not crossed the Great Pond, the peoples of the Americas would have re-created Eden, or, if it helps, created a utopian Marxist state?

Centuries before Columbus’s 1492 voyage, Europe was like Hispaniola in that year. And just like the Apaches and the Comanches, they killed each other in wars of conquest.

The fact of the matter is that Native American tribes tried to win their wars against colonists. They lost.

Deal with it.

And keep on enjoying the posh life we all have, due, in no small part to the courage of people like Columbus who weren’t content to sit in Ivory Towers and criticize the ignorance of others.

Columbus took action to reduce the ignorance. And you and I are the better for it.

[See also an excellent series of columns on Columbus by Sean O’Donnell of Examiner.com

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Vang Pao spent most of his 79 years putting his life on the line against communists even after Democrats in Congress betrayed Laos in 1975

I understand why the Nobel Committee award their most prestigious award to President Barack Obama. He has brought peace to many, especially including communists, fascists and terrorist sheltering dictators from Venezuela to Libya to Iran. The fear that an American cowboy might upset their tent poles is no more.

When the wanted dead or alive fear still lived, the Peace Prize went to those that criticized President George W. Bush, especially those Americans that lambasted their nation’s leader on non-American soil. For example, Al “[Bush] betrayed our country. He played on our fears” Gore famously fought for the kind of peace that comes from solitude at home when one can’t afford gasoline to go anywhere, but I digress.

But what if the Nobel Prize actually was awarded to people that risk their very lives for peace? Peace being defined as the kind that is enjoyed when evil is defeated, rather than the kind the Nobel Committee seems to prefer that exists under tyranny or in the grave.

The Nobels have gotten it right at times. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. come to mind. My nominee, like them has also spent time in prison and was recently released:

A federal grand jury in California investigating an alleged plot to overthrow the government of Laos has dropped charges against a leading figure in the nation’s Hmong community, the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento said Friday.

The grand jury’s decision absolves 79-year-old Vang Pao, a former major general in the Lao army who is revered by the Hmong refugees he helped resettle in the U.S. and labeled a hero by Vietnam War veterans.

Charges remain against 10 others, including a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and were added against two new defendants.

While Pao expressed relief that charges against him were dropped, his attorney said he’s frustrated that his former co-defendants remain under indictment on charges the defense has insisted were exaggerated.

“We’re glad the government has finally paid attention and recognized that Gen. Vang Pao is innocent,” said his attorney, John Keker. “We’re disappointed that the case, a very unfair sting operation, is continuing against some good people.”

U.S. Attorney Lawrence G. Brown declined to comment other than in a written statement.

“Today’s charging decisions are the culmination of a comprehensive investigation of the charged plot and review of all evidence that has been gathered,” he said.

Hundreds of supporters have rallied outside the federal courthouse in Sacramento during each of Pao’s court appearances since charges were brought in 2007. The defendants have argued that they were entrapped and believed they were being recruited by the U.S. government to fight communists, as they had been during the Vietnam War.

“Oh, thank God the charges were dropped,” said the Rev. Sharon Stanley of Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries, who works with Hmong. “I feel strongly that given the long history of the United States and our CIA’s recruitment of General Pao and the Hmong communities, that his decision is an appropriate one.”

Former CIA Chief William Colby once called Pao “the biggest hero of the Vietnam War,” for the 15 years he spent leading a CIA-sponsored guerilla army fighting against a communist takeover over the Southeast Asian peninsula.

I have long held the Hmong in a special place in my heart due to my former executive assistant. This is a portion of a 2006 column entitled “Only conservatives still true to JFK’s ideals” that relates to today’s award of the Peace Prize:

“I don’t care about the people of Iraq.”

I was shocked when that statement was made to me last year by a Democrat friend.

I shouldn’t have been!

That quote pretty much sums up the moral bankruptcy of modern-day liberalism and my former party today.

The sentiment expressed in that quote is consistent with the giggles I heard from fellow liberal Democrats in 1983 in reaction to President Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech.

I was also shocked then. I shouldn’t have been!

The best reason for why I should not be shocked occupies the receptionist chair in my SouthPark office.

She is a descendant of the Hmong people of Laos who were allies of the United States until the government of South Vietnam fell in 1975. Massive slaughter of millions followed at the hands of the North Vietnamese communists and Cambodia’s Pol Pot. More than 300,000 Laotians, mostly Hmong, fled. But thousands of Hmong continued to fight against the evil of communism; hundreds of their guerrilla fighters surrendered only last month.

In 1975 I was an idealistic teen animated by the “Bear any burden for the cause of liberty” rhetoric by President John F. Kennedy, complimented by the “Love they neighbor” rhetoric of Jesus Christ, but quite ignorant of the details of the Vietnam War. I was a self-identified liberal anxiously awaiting my 18th birthday so that I could actively participate in my grandfather’s party.

Eyes averted from slaughter

Sadly, almost from the beginning of my political activism, I had to reconcile the irreconcilable, i.e. the rhetoric of JFK with the reality of the words and actions of the flower children of the 1960s and the McGovernites who took over the party. Democrats cut off funds from our South Vietnamese allies, averted their eyes from the slaughter and celebrate their role in “ending the war” as one of their greatest accomplishments even to this day. I shamefully averted my ears from the liberal Democratic giggles at Reagan’s notion of good and evil until the summer of 2001.

The “conservative epiphany” came as a result of confronting what I knew in my heart was true as I read Reagan’s letters and speeches and books about his long war against communism. Reagan cared so much for the oppressed that he even deemed the policy of containment to have immorally sentenced half the globe to slavery. He told the so-called “realists” in 1981 that henceforth, American policy toward the Soviet Union would be “We win, they lose.”

This was the liberal I had been looking for.

Did liberals stop caring about the oppressed when their hero was assassinated in 1963 or when they faced the draft board in 1968?

I recently wrote of liberal blindness to Mao’s slaughter on the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Chinese Communist Party.

Real peace is brought by freedom fighters and there are none more deserving than Pao and those like him, especially those in the armed forces of the United States that upset the “peace” of Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Iran’s mullahs, and UBL’s safe haven with the Taliban.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.