Europe reacts…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to its own immigration (“migrant”) crisis. It seems that some of the countries with more lenient policies are trying to pressure the others into being more like them:

Interior ministers from all 28 EU states will meet in Luxembourg on September 14 to address the current crisis. In the mean time, the debate will continue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on other EU nations to do more to assist those seeking refuge; meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius lashed out at eastern states for taking harsher measures against the flow of migrants.

…Both Merkel and French President Francois Hollande are expected to propose a series of new universal regulations, including the construction of new processing centers and the institution of quotas for all EU member states. They have, however, floated the idea of creating a list of “safe countries”; those seeking asylum from those countries would be automatically turned away.

Germany has threatened to reintroduce controls at their own borders if other countries don’t fall in line with plans along the lines of those floated by Merkel and Hollande.

I wonder how many members of the EU might be regretting the day they joined it by now. Relinquishing aspects of your sovereignty might not be such a good idea after all.

What was that novel again? Called The Camp of the Saints, it was a 1973 book by Frenchman Jean Raspail in which:

…Third World mass immigration to France and the West leads to the destruction of Western civilization. Almost forty years after publication the book returned to the bestseller list in 2011.

I have never read it; never even had heard of it until a few months ago, and have no idea whether it’s any good or not. The immigrants in the book are from India rather than the Middle East or Africa, but the plot sounds interesting, to say the least:

The Camp of the Saints is a novel about population migration and its consequences. In Calcutta, India, the Belgian government announces a policy in which Indian babies will be adopted and raised in Belgium. The policy is reversed after the Belgian consulate is inundated with poverty-stricken parents eager to give up their infant children.

An Indian “wise man” then rallies the masses to make a mass exodus to live in Europe. Most of the story centers on the French Riviera, where almost no one remains except for the military and a few civilians, including a retired professor who has been watching the huge fleet of run-down freighters approaching the French coast.

The story alternates between the French reaction to the mass immigration and the attitude of the immigrants. They have no desire to assimilate into French culture but want the goods that are in short supply in their native India. Although the novel focuses on France, the rest of the West shares its fate.

Near the end of the story the mayor of New York City is made to share Gracie Mansion with three families from Harlem, the Queen of the United Kingdom must agree to have her son marry a Pakistani woman, and only one drunken Soviet soldier stands in the way of thousands of Chinese people as they swarm into Siberia.

Well, I think our leaders—such as the mayor of New York—would always be able to erect a personal firewall. But the entire scenario, and the photo at Legal Insurrection, is too close for comfort. The moral question—how far need we go to alleviate the world’s suffering, and how best to protect ourselves while we try to be at least somewhat humanitarian—is a crucial one, and getting more crucial every day.

[NOTE: It also reminds me of an Indian film I saw in the early 70s, made by Satyajit Ray and called “Distant Thunder.” The film didn’t deal with international migration, but it explored the same issues of compassion versus protection. Interestingly enough, it was made in the same year that The Camp of the Saints was first published, 1973. The Wiki description of the film goes like this:

The film is set in a village in the Indian province of Bengal during World War II, and examines the effect of the Great Famine of 1943 on the villages of Bengal through the eyes of a young Brahmin doctor-teacher, Gangacharan, and his wife, Anaga. Ray shows the human scale of a cataclysmic event that killed more than 3 million people. The film unfolds at a leisurely pace that reflects the rhythms of village life, but gradually shows the breakdown of traditional village norms under the pressure of hunger and starvation.

Well, yes—but that’s not what I remember most, which is the last scene or a scene that occurred close to the ending. I’m doing this from a memory that’s over 40 years old, about a film I only saw once, so I could be wrong. But what I recall is that the lead character, an aristocratic and originally arrogant guy, who has watched with his wife in growing horror as things degenerate all around him, decides in the end to take starving villagers into his own home. Some of the reviews mention an amazing and harrowing last scene but none describe it, so I’m not sure if it’s the one I recall or something else. From looking at the reviews now, I can see that the film almost certainly comes down on the side of compassion (which is what I remember as well), but that it’s not presented as being quite that simple. I’d like to view it again, and have had it sitting in my Netflix queue literally for years, but it seems to be unavailable anywhere.]

Whatever happened to Scott Walker?

The New Neo Posted on by

He was my early favorite, a fighter who had been remarkably successful in a blue state. Yes, he’s a low-key Midwestern-nice kind of guy, but I thought he’d pick up the pace when he started campaigning for president.

But Scott Walker really hasn’t come across well so far. The term “lackluster” keeps appearing to describe his performance in the first debate. He seems to have a lower energy level than most of the others, and that’s part of it.

But Ben Carson is very laid-back, and he did quite well in the first debate. Walker didn’t just seem low-key; he seemed neither articulate nor sharp about what he was saying, too much of which sounded more like slogans and prepared sound bites than especially thoughtful commentary.

Walker’s youth could be an asset, but he almost looks too young, even though he’s not; he’s 47, and one of the most experienced candidates on the stage. But somehow his experience hasn’t yet translated into force and command. The other word besides “lackluster” that keeps coming to mind is “callow,” which means “immature and inexperienced” and is exactly the opposite of what Walker actually is. But it’s how he’s come across so far, unfortunately for him.

He’s getting lost in the shuffle. In addition, he’s flubbed some policy points he tried to make. One was his seemingly back and forth stance on illegal immigration and especially birthright citizenship, and the other was his muddled statement about abortion to save the life of the mother (see this). Still another was his recent declaration that seemed to be making the extreme statement of advocating a wall on the Canadian border but may have merely been a poorly-worded attempt to say we need to talk about tightening security there as well as Mexico.

Unlike Fiorina, Walker benefits from CNN’s rules for the next debate, which weight older polls more heavily than I think they should be. At some point, however, he going to have to become more clear in his message and more forceful in his delivery, or he’ll find himself out of the running. A campaign is a marathon, and appealing on a national level is different than on a state level.

Obama says “there’s not a smidgen of evidence” that’s he’s anti-Semitic

The New Neo Posted on by

Whenever Obama uses the word “smidgen”—watch out, methinks he doth protest too much.

Remember when?:

In his remarks denying anti-Semitism, Obama was apparently responding to Ben Carson, who said this:

Some, including GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, have gone as far to suggest the deal makes Obama an anti-Semite.

“I think anything is anti-Semitic if it’s against the survival of a state that is surrounded by enemies and by people who want to destroy them,” Carson said this month on Fox News Sunday. “And to sort of ignore that and to act like everything is normal there and that these people are paranoid is anti-Semitic.”

As for my take on it, Obama has made it clear that he admires some Jews—leftist Jews—and he admired the state of Israel and its leaders as long as it was run by the left. I wrote about that a few months ago here:

Lastly, we have:

“Throughout his tenure, Oren believed he was uniquely well-equipped to explain Israel to Americans and America to the Israelis. But how to explain a president who recently said that the Israel he admires is the Israel of kibbutzim and Golda Meir ”” a ludicrously rosy and unrealistic image of the Jewish state on par with wanting to look like Disneyland’s Main Street USA?”

But if Obama’s statement is true, it’s really no mystery at all. Obama is first and foremost a man of the left. The left used to love Israel during its early years, when Israel was a leftist country founded by leftists, and the kibbutzim were part of that movement. Meir herself was a leftist through and through…

For Obama, I doubt he’s an anti-Semite in the same vein as Jimmy Carter, who really does seem to have some deeper hatred for Jews. Maybe there’s no love lost, but Obama has no particular problem with Jews as long as they are on the leftist reservation and revere him sufficiently, and are willing to sacrifice themselves and Israel for the leftist cause.

Denali’s not just a river in Egypt

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a mountain in Alaska that’s been known as McKinley for about 100 years.

Obama has decided to rename it with its native American name. This has made Alaskans happy and Ohioans furious, and although I don’t have a dog in that race, Obama’s action perturbs me because it’s just another executive overreach of his (albeit a relatively minor one), meddling in a controversy that should rightly be resolved by Congress.

Next up, the city in which he started his political career, Shikaakwa, meaning “wild leek” or “place of the skunk.”

When you think about it, the US actually has a lot of official place names that originate in native American words, or approximations of them.

Maybe it’s time to popularize and bring back Lenapehoking:

It stretched from modern-day Delaware to western Connecticut and Long Island and included parts of eastern Pennsylvania, all of present day New Jersey, and the southern counties of New York State, including Rockland, Orange, Westchester, and Putnam Counties, Nassau County, and the five boroughs of New York City. Along with New York City, Newark, Trenton, Princeton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Delaware, Atlantic City, and numerous other urban and suburban areas are in Lenapehoking today, as are the Jersey Shore, Pine Barrens, the Sourland Mountains, the Delaware Valley, and perhaps some parts of the Catskills, Poconos, and the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

There is no universal agreement among scholars regarding the autonym of Lenape territory. Some believe the area the Lenape inhabited was called Scheyischbi, or ‘the place bordering the ocean’. According to some people, the Lenape called this territory “Lenapehoking” (lÉ™nape haki-nk), meaning ‘in the land of the Lenape’. This assertion has gained widespread acceptance and is found widely in recent literature on the Lenape, including in the websites of purported Lenape people. Ray Whritenour, a philologist, says that the term does not appear in any sources from the 18th century, but is a modern name coined by Nora Thompson Dean (Touching Leaves Woman) in 1984, in order to provide the archaeologist/author, Herbert C. Kraft, with a convenient term for the area once inhabited by ancestors of the Lenape people.

And I think we can all agree that Webster Lake in Massachusetts should be abolished to make room—lots and lots and lots of room—for Lake Chaubunagungamaugg, or better yet, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg:

The lake’s name comes from Nipmuc, an Algonquian language, and is said to mean, “Fishing Place at the Boundaries — Neutral Meeting Grounds”. This is different from the humorous translation, “You fish on your side, I’ll fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle”, thought to have been invented by Laurence J. Daly, editor of The Webster Times.

Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg (/ËŒleɪk tʃəˈɡɒɡəɡɒɡ ËŒmé¦nˈtʃɔːɡəɡɒɡ tʃəˌbÊŒnəˈɡʌŋɡəmɔːɡ/), a 45-letter alternative name for this body of fresh water, is often cited as the longest place name in the United States and one of the longest in the world. It is not spelled correctly on the sign bordering Connecticut.

Today, “Webster Lake” may be the name most used, but some (including many residents of Webster), take pride in reeling off the longer versions.

This lake has several alternative names. Lake Chaubunagungamaugg is the name of the lake as recognized by the U.S. Department of the Interior, however, many area residents, as well as the official website of the town of Webster, consider the longer version correct.

Algonquian-speaking peoples had several different names for the lake as recorded on old maps and historical records. However, all of these were similar in part and had almost the same translation.

The poet Walt Whitman loved American place names, and in his poem “Starting from Paumanok” (a reference to the native American name for Huntington, Long Island, the town of his birth) he wrote:

On my way a moment I pause;
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the Present I raise aloft””Still the Future of The States I harbinge, glad and sublime;
And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.

The red aborigines!
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names;
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla;
Leaving such to The States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names.

O expanding and swift! O henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious;
A world primal again””Vistas of glory, incessant and branching;
A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far””with new contests,
New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.

These! my voice announcing””I will sleep no more, but arise;
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

Certain sections of that remind me of none other than Obama—the use of the word “audacious,” for example, and much of those last two stanzas and particularly that last line. “Unprecedented waves and storms,” indeed.

The poem is a fragment of Leaves of Grass, a book of poetry that you may recall featured somewhat prominently in the relationship between Obama’s Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Of course, you may only remember the cigar. But me? I choose to remember the poetry.

Would you live forever?

The New Neo Posted on by

Randomly, I came across these two quotes only two days apart while researching completely different things.

The first is from a post by Richard Fernandez:

One didn’t intellectually convince people to attack the German lines. One led them – a wholly different thing.

“Daly is popularly attributed in Marine Corps lore as yelling, ‘Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?’ to his men during the Battle of Belleau Wood. Daly later told a Marine Corps historian that his words were ‘For Christ’s sake men – come on! Do you want to live forever?’”

It was just a couple of days earlier that I had come across the following in a 1989 review of the book Self-Consciousness by John Updike, which offers this Updike quote from the book:

Now I have long since, in deference to my emphysema, given up smoking, even the smoking of little cigars that, after I broke the cigarette habit, used to get me through the stress of composition. Also, I have given up salt and coffee in deference to high blood pressure and alcohol in deference to methotrexate. The big-bellied Lutheran God within me looks on scoffingly. ‘Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben?’ Frederick the Great thundered at his battle-shy soldiers – ‘Dogs, would you live forever?’ ”

I wondered whether Daly was aware of the Frederick the Great quote, and when I went to Daly’s Wiki page, interestingly enough, the Frederick the Great quote popped up there, too:

An earlier use of a similar phrase is attributed to Frederick the Great: “Lads, do you want to live forever?” (German: Kerle, wollt ihr ewig leben?), addressing retreating Prussian troops at the 1757 Battle of Kolé­n.

Note the daintier form: lads instead of dogs. I bet that “dogs” is correct, though; “lads” just seems impossible in such a context—and, if said, would have been far less memorable.

Daly seems to have cleaned up his own quote, too. But again, I have a sneaking suspicion that “sons of bitches” was almost certainly the original.

Note that both purported originals use a dog metaphor. Are dogs so very cowardly? I thought many of them tend to be rather brave, especially if dealing with danger to their owners or their pups.

The NY Times writes a hit piece on Clarence Thomas…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and Orin Kerr tells us the ways in which the Times has distorted the truth in order to make Thomas look bad (many of the comments there are worth reading, too).

Most liberal Democrats long ago absorbed and swallowed whole the party line on Thomas as a stupid person, and have no idea about the shaky ground on which they base this very firm belief. I would wager if I polled 100 people I know, they would nearly all agree that Thomas is a dullard or worse. This Times article is merely a small refresher course for them, in case they had forgotten, and a way to give a new and spiffy pseudo-scientific shine to their long-entrenched convictions, as well as to school a younger generation who might have missed some of the earlier lessons.

Sheriff’s deputy murdered in Texas

The New Neo Posted on by

Expect more of this sort of horrific crime:

A man shot a uniformed sheriff’s deputy “execution-style” while he fueled his patrol car in the Houston area, killing him instantly, authorities said.

Deputy Darren H. Goforth, 47, was returning to his car after pumping gas Friday night.

The gunman walked up from behind him and opened fire for no apparent reason, Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman said.

When Goforth fell to the ground, the gunman stood over him and shot him some more, authorities said. He died at the scene.

“He was literally gunned down in what appears to be an unprovoked, execution-style killing,” Hickman said. “I have been in law enforcement for 45 years, I have never seen anything this cold-blooded.”

The article does not mention the race of the men, which is in indication that the perpetrator was black and the victim white. This would not be an incidental fact, either; it is likely that it is very much a part of the motive for the crime, and therefore relevant.

That’s a point made by Jazz Shaw at Hot Air, who does a rewrite of the article, imaging what would have been written if the races had been reversed. He adds this statement from a press conference held by the police (in which it remained unclear whether a person already apprehended for the crime is a suspect or merely a “person of interest” at this point):

Also, the speakers at the presser had quite a few pointed comments not just for the community, but for the nation. The District Attorney called out those who would foment an atmosphere of violence against law enforcement officers and said that this murder was an “attack on the fabric of society.” (A point which I’ve made repeatedly here, but it’s good to hear from a D.A. behind a podium.) The Sheriff also stepped up to the plate and said that the “rhetoric” had gone too far. He stated that “we’ve heard about Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter, well”¦ cop lives matter too.” He went on to say that it was time to stop with such divisive speech and simply agree that “lives matter.”

I predict that, when and if he is caught, the perpetrator in this murder will be found to share an orientation and motivation with his predecessors. I wrote about those predecessors here:

You remember that in the early 70s a war against police began, a war in which police were gunned down by cold-blooded killers with a racial/political agenda and a convict past. The assailants were members of various black militant groups, mostly offshoots of the Black Panthers, such as the Black Liberation Army (BLA), which specialized in racially-motivated cop killings.

It was almost inevitable that the furor against police officers that’s been whipped up over the Brown and Garner deaths would end in some person or persons deciding that killing a cop would be just the thing. Whether Brinsley was crazy or not””and he may have been””and a lone wolf or not, even crazy people can be sparked to violence by an atmosphere of orchestrated hatred.

There is also evidence that Brinsley was not a lone wolf, however, but instead may have been a member of a group known as the Black Guerrilla Family. The Family shares similar antecedents with the BLA, including a prison genesis and a stated leftist/socialist/Marxist philosophy.

Probably the most famous police officer ambush case was that of partners and Vietnam vets Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie, which occurred in January of 1972. Witnesses and an investigation indicated that they were shot in the back by BLA members as the officers walked down the street on their beat, and then shot again multiple times as they lay dying and the murderers had grabbed their service revolvers. The murders of Foster and Laurie caused a furor because they were part of a war on police, but also because both were well-liked, young, handsome, left young grieving wives and a great deal of fear in the NYPD, and because they were good friends and an interracial team (Foster was black and Laurie white). There was a 1974 book and a 1975 movie about the heinous crime, and although there were suspects (some of which have died or been killed in the ensuing years), no one has ever been tried for their murders.

The atmosphere today resembles the feeling that was in the air back in the early 70s, and that is most definitely not a good thing. This mood could be felt building and building prior to the murder of Ramos and Liu, and the fear is that it will keep on building. Today, unlike in the 70s, even our leadership””and by that I mean Barack Obama (who consorts with the likes of Al Sharpton), Eric Holder, Bill de Blasio, for example””fans the flames of the hatred in ways subtle and not-so-subtle.

Unfortunately, I see no reason to believe that this murder will be the last of its kind.

Another stroll down memory lane

The New Neo Posted on by

From an October 2012 post of mine:

One thing I believe is that, if Romney loses this election, the right will start tearing itself apart in anger. That’s another thing the left banks on, and””if indeed some of the polls are being rigged to favor Obama at present””it would also be one of the goals of such deception: to demoralize the right and cause the usual circular firing squad to begin. I already see some evidence of it in articles and comments from the right that accuse Romney of not wanting to win, of not going on the attack enough (as though that would elude the negative media spin), of not doing whatever it might be that the brilliant armchair strategists would be doing if they were running for president, an election they of course would win by dint of their brilliant strategy. If Romney loses, the RINO theme will rise again undiminished, and the hatred of the “Republican establishment.”

My opinion of what’s going on is quite different: if the American people re-elect Obama despite his failures, lies, betrayals, immaturity, gaffes, arrogance, destructive foreign policy, demonstrated leftism, small-mindedness, lack of leadership, executive power-grabs, fiscal irresponsibility, and a host of other negatives I may have forgotten to list but which have been operating for the last four years, then it will prove that the American people have fundamentally changed in the direction they want this country to take, and it will require some major upheaval to reverse that trend. We can’t wait around for the perfect candidate; a good-enough candidate like Romney should be good-enough to beat Obama, and if that’s not possible it says more about the country than the candidate.

Sigh.

The other day I also came across this post from January, 2012, a year prior to the start of Obama’s second term. I’ve shortened it a bit, but this is essentially what was published back then.

I start with a mention of a quote from commenter “foxmarks,” who wrote:

“Barry’s [Obama’s] rhetoric is a -100, but as the Progs fairly argue, he has governed as a moderate Republican. His laziness has led me to no longer fear a 2nd term. Obamacare will either lead to my desired systemic correction or be overturned by the Supremes. I have zero faith that Congress will repeal and replace with anything that honors individual liberty and market-based pricing. I don’t want mere repeal, I want a catastrophic defeat at the hands of economic reality or legal principle.”

Here’s my response to “foxmarks” in that January 2012 post on the question of whether Obama would govern as a moderate in his second term, and on whether there was reason to fear:

Obama is a politician, and although he’s no genius he’s a smart man, smart enough to have been at least somewhat strategic in his decisions during his first term. Unless you think he really is a moderate Republican in his secret heart, there is no reason to suppose he will govern moderately in his second term, when he will no longer have any need to appeal to independents in order to be re-elected.

It is logical to assume that he will see his second term as an opportunity—perhaps his last—to accomplish what he could not in his first. That can be done not only by legislative means but by executive fiat. His power to veto the legislation passed by a most-likely-Republican Congress that will almost certainly not have the numbers to override him will remain intact, and he will exercise it. He will be setting foreign policy and appointing Cabinet members and czars, and they will be setting domestic policy as well.

And, of course, he will most likely be appointing one or several liberal Supreme Court justices, who will remain in office for life.

It makes no sense to assume that Obama will be too lazy to exercise these prerogatives in a second term when the opportunity presents itself. I have little doubt that he still adheres to a left-wing ideology, and has merely been thwarted in achieving most of what he desired in his first term (although Obamacare was a fine start). A second term will present a golden opportunity.

So far there have been no new SCOTUS justices in Obama’s second term, although it may be that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will resign before he’s through if she thinks a Republican has a good chance of winning in 2016. As for the rest—well, unfortunately, it has turned out that way, hasn’t it?

Double sigh.

The child is father of the man

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a wonderful story of a 13-year-old boy’s calm courage, and the love between a father and son. As the father says:

We had a pretty solid relationship with each other before this happened,” Finlayson said, “but it’s definitely concrete now, or granite, maybe, is the way to put it.”

[NOTE: The title of this post is taken from Wordsworth:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.]

And, speaking of words…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the University of Tennessee at Knoxville has an “Office for Diversity and Inclusion.” The head of what’s referred to as the “Pride Center” there has decided to encourage students to use so-called gender-neutral pronouns such as “ze, hir, hirs, and xe, xem, xyr” instead of those extremely offensive ones we’ve all come to know and love.

The world has gone mad. It’s been happening slowly for a long, long time, but now it’s reached critical mass:

We should not assume someone’s gender by their appearance, nor by what is listed on a roster or in student information systems,” Donna Braquet, the Director of the University of Tennessee’s Pride Center said. “Transgender people and people who do not identify within the gender binary may use a different name than their legal name and pronouns of their gender identity, rather than the pronouns of the sex they were assigned at birth.”

For the first week of classes, Braquet is also asking teachers to ask everyone to provide their name and pronoun instead of calling roll. “The name a student uses may not be the one on the official roster, and the roster name may not be the same gender as the one the student now uses,” ze said.

“These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new,” Braquet said. “The she and he pronouns would sound strange too if we had been taught ze when growing up.”

Braquet said if students and faculty cannot use ze, hir, hirs, xe, xem or xyr, they can also politely ask. “’Oh, nice to meet you, [insert name]. What pronouns should I use?’ is a perfectly fine question to ask,” ze said.

“Ze said.”

Remember Julia Sweeney and “Pat” on Saturday Night Live? In this sketch, Linda Hamilton’s character gets creative about the questions she asks trying to find out Pat’s gender:

Probably wouldn’t be allowed on TV these days.

[NOTE: The title of this post refers back to the title of the post right under it.]

Mere words

The New Neo Posted on by

Now we know what the Virginia killer alleged were the racist words that had supposedly been uttered three years earlier by Alison Parker, whom he decided to finally murder:

The 24-year-old white reporter, who was murdered on live TV along with her cameraman, used the phrases as an intern at ­WDBJ TV in Roanoke in 2012, according to an internal complaint filed by Flanagan, who was black.

“One was something about ”˜swinging’ by some place; the other was out in the ”˜field,’” said the Jan. 21 report by assistant news director Greg Baldwin, which refers to Parker as Alison Bailey (her middle name).

Parker was never disciplined over the remarks, but Flanagan never forgot them.

On this and other blogs on the right, you know how we sometimes joke about the fact that during the Obama era every other word seems to have drawn an accusation of “racist!!”? (I’ve written posts on the subject, such as for example this one back in 2008 where I talk about allegations that “socialist” is just a code word for “black.”) The left has been overreacting—and encouraging people to overreact like this—for years, even before Obama became became president but even more during his candidacy and presidency. It got to the point where literally any criticism of Obama was racist by definition.

So although Flanagan’s allegations read like a Saturday Night Live script or something out of The Onion, they were not. His starting point was the program set by the left in their definition of what’s racist, and in his anger and paranoia he took it many steps further. “Swing,” “field,” racism? No wonder he was making accusations of racism virtually everywhere he went. No wonder he felt angrier and angrier, if he had defined provocation down to that extent.

So, was Flanagan “crazy”? I haven’t a clue, really, but it doesn’t sound it to me. He was angry and paranoid (although there’s no evidence that he was a paranoid schizophrenic), and certainly violent at the end. Would treatment have helped him? Again, I haven’t a clue, but my guess would be “no.” And although everybody knew that he was the first two (angry and paranoid), and he had threatened people in various ways, I don’t think it was fully appreciated that he would become murderously violent. But even had it been foreseen, what could anyone have done? The rules for civil commitment in Virginia don’t seem to cover a case such as his, and in any event the police who witnessed what was previously his worst outburst (years prior to the murders) didn’t seem to think further action was needed.

People can rail all they like about how this guy was an explosion waiting to happen, and it’s obviously true. But that doesn’t mean there’s a solution. You can’t lock him up when he hasn’t committed a crime and is merely weird and angry rather than obviously crazy.

As I wrote yesterday, I think that people at the station who had been threatened should have taken out a restraining order against him, and that should (if still active) have kept him from the legal purchase of a gun for the duration of the protective order (although in Virgina it seems it wouldn’t have, because non-domestic restraining orders don’t seem to be covered). However (and it’s a big “however”), even all of that, if working smoothly, wouldn’t have kept him from getting an illegal gun or from using a different sort of weapon to hurt or kill, and any restraining order would have expired and needed to be renewed indefinitely to be effective. Restraining orders are a very weak tool, and I don’t know that we have another one.

[NOTE: The story of the victim who lived, Vicki Gardner, here:

“Then he shot three times at my wife, and she was trying to dodge everything,” Tim Gardner said, recalling what his wife told him. “He missed twice, and then she dove to the ground and curled up in a ball, and that’s when he shot her in the back.”

Vicki Gardner was unlucky, and then she was very very lucky. Unlucky to be there in the first place. Lucky that Flanagan missed twice (I heard on some news station that she was purposely ducking and moving around in order to avoid being shot in the head, where he was aiming), and then lucky that the shot in the back was no worse than it was.]

[ADDENDUM: Much more here, from Ace.]