The Pew Research Center reports that a growing number of African-Americans believe they’re worse off than they were five years ago. No surprise, given the doom-and-gloom coverage of racial issues these past years from the media. Less than half think their future is going to be any better.

Two thirds say there’s a growing difference of values between poor and middle-class blacks. Most believe there’s widespread discrimination; especially when applying for a job or seeking housing. But here’s an interesting tidbit that won’t get much press. The majority of African-Americans — 53 percent — say that they themselves are mainly responsible for their position in life.

This acknowledgment marks a new trend that has emerged in the last decade, according to Pew.

And there’s another study, this one compiled by the Brookings Institution on incomes. Minorities are hardest hit — even though incomes rose for blacks and whites, on average. Income rose most for women — white women and black women. White men suffered stagnation, and the income among black men actually dropped.

The reasons cited for lack of progress among blacks are familiar: African-Americans get inferior education, from inferior government schools, in the Democrat-controlled cities the majority live in. They face workplace discrimination in those “blue” cities. And there are too many single-parent families in the blue-city homes they live in.

In short, we have another report card on liberal, blue-state social policies … and once again — we’ve got failing grades!

Pete Wehner, who used to work in the White House (he was on Karl Rove’s staff, number one behind Rove) has a piece today on Huckabee.

It’s at National Review Online, and he also wants to take issue with the first two paragraphs of Huckabee’s essay that he wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine, particularly the claim by Huckabee that we’re too mean around the world; we’re trying to dominate the world, and we need to be more like a top high school student, modest about our abilities and achievements, generous, and then we will be loved. If we keep dominating people, we’ll be despised, and “the Bush administration’s arrogant and bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad.”

Now, understandably, Mr. Wehner, is a former member of the president’s staff working with Karl Rove. So keep that in mind as I share with you just some brief comments from his essay today.

“The fact is that the United States has sacrificed an enormous amount of blood and treasure to help other nations. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong and even offensive.” This animus against the US. “We have, for starters, liberated more than 50 million people from two of the most repressive regimes in modern history (the Taliban and the Baathist police state in Iraq).” That doesn’t count all the others that have been liberated over the course of our existence. “The global AIDS initiative qualifies as among the most humane and generous acts in the history of American foreign policy. We give billions in additional foreign aid, including the enormous generosity America displayed in helping Indonesia and other nations in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami … The United States, while imperfect, ranks as perhaps the most benevolent superpower (to say nothing of its status as a benevolent nation) in human history.

Unlike past empires, we are using American power and influence for great good instead of as a means of advancing oppression.

“Beyond that, the belief that if we are modest and generous we will be ‘loved’ by other nations, and that anger at America is based on our attempts to ‘dominate,’ is both naive and foolish. Some nations (like Cuba, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and others) will oppose us because they are totalitarian states that hate our efforts to curb their ambitions and advance freedom and self-determination. They are not the loving kind. Other nations (like France under Jacques Chirac) will oppose us because they can’t stand the idea of a unipolar world and want to counterbalance it. And other nations (like [the ChiComs] and Russia) will oppose our efforts to end genocide in Darfur and keep Iran from gaining nuclear weapons because of their economic interests. Memo to Mike Huckabee: Sometimes we are despised for all the right reasons” — Pete Wehner.

That’s just an excerpt from his piece at National Review Online today.

If you really want the world to love us, really want the world to love us, stop foreign aid. Just cut ’em off! You’ll see every country on this planet look at us with love, affection, open arms. They’ll come begging on bended knee.

I guarantee you, it will never happen, but it would make us the most loved nation on the face of the Earth

MERRY CHRISTMAS… AND HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.

FROM: FRUSTRATED INC.
PHANTOMLADY

Blog on Christmas vacation till Dec 28. Family comes first, Love to all.

Nancy Pelosi lashed out at Republicans, saying they want the Iraq war to drag on and are ignoring the public’s priorities.

“They like this war. They want this war to continue,” said Pelosi.

Madam Speaker, you, of all the great competence in the House of Representatives, let me tell you what we want. When I say we, I mean the American people.

We want to win.
We want victory. We don’t put timelines on it.
We’re in the process of winning!

The surge is working, and once again you attempt to undermine the very progress that you have sought to impede from the get-go. If you’re going to run around, Ms. Pelosi, and you’re going to say Republicans like the war, then can we also assume that Democrats like killing babies?

I know the answer to this, but speaking of Ms. Pelosi and, nevertheless, why is the war no longer on the front pages or leading the broadcast news? We know the answer, but is it not still a disgrace? The libs are never, ever, held to account, not for those efforts of theirs to lose the war, not for their disastrous entitlement and welfare policies, not for their monopoly control of public education.

Never, they are never, held to account...

Simple Question: why is this?

Resource:

ABC: Pelosi: Republicans “Like” the War in Iraq

Mrs. Clinton on CNBC yesterday afternoon with Maria Bartiromo, who said, “Where was Congress during all this?” This is about the mortgage crisis. “Where was Congress during all this? We had a lot of nonbanks in on the scheme with crazy proposals, no documentation, no interest for several months. Did Congress understand what is going on here?”

HILLARY: No. And under the Republican Congress, they didn’t want to understand, you know, the ostrich head was in the sand. You didn’t have an administration who paid attention to the early warning signals, you didn’t have a Congress that cared about it. And the net result is, as I say, everybody shares the responsibility. If something is too good to be true, it is too good to be true.

You were in the Congress! What were you, a bystander? She can’t do anything right. The dirty little secret is, Congress authorized — I don’t care which one — Congress authorized and demanded these loans be made to people that couldn’t afford them if the rates went up.

You know, one question. There are four different kinds of mortgages out. The subprime is just one.

How come only one group is being assisted here with this freeze in mortgage interest rates? How come people who could afford to pay the rates when they went up are not being helped? How come only the people who couldn’t afford to pay the rates are being helped? Well, we understand this. But Mrs. Clinton, she didn’t know about the subprime thing. Nobody told her. She was probably lied to about it, never saw any intelligence on the subprimes. Well, she saw the intelligence, but thought it was cooked and lied about and so forth.

Next question really heats up here when the Maria Bartiromo goes after her on taxes.

BARTIROMO: You’re talking about letting the Bush tax cuts expire. How do you justify this situation, when you’ve got people under pressure, and just the thought that they’re going to be paying more taxes, they may pull in their —

HILLARY: Well, since my husband and I are in that bracket, I don’t feel pressured. We’re going to do stimulus for the vast majority of Americans, and part of the way we’re going to pay for it is by letting those tax cuts on the wealthiest of Americans expire. Now, we have to look at every set of conditions. I don’t know what is going to be happening in the economy in January 2009. Up until then we have a very different philosophy and attitude in this administration, and lots of people who come on your show who, you know, are gung-ho, protect the tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans, that will not work if the economy slows down. You need to get money in the pockets of tens of hundreds of millions of Americans, and that’s what I intend to do.

Tens of hundreds, did she say, tens of hundreds of millions of Americans need to get the money in the pockets? She’s really thinking China because that’s where she gets money from. She’s really thinking China here because we don’t have tens of hundreds of millions of people in this country.

But how about this: “How do you justify this situation when you got people under pressure –“ “Well, since my husband and I are in that bracket, I don’t feel pressure.”

They just can’t stop telling everybody how rich they are. She can’t do anything right.

Bartiromo finally says, “You know what, Senator, it’s not just the rich who own stock. We have 100 million –“

HILLARY: I’m not saying anything about stocks. I’m saying —

BARTIROMO: Capital gains tax goes away. How does that impact the economy?

HILLARY: Well, the capital gains tax, I’m talking about the upper income tax brackets. You know, capital gains I think we may have to nudge a little bit, but depending, again, on the conditions.

Capital gains for the upper brackets?

There’s one capital gains rate, and it applies to everybody. That’s right.

Not with her. Maybe she’ll keep the capital gains rate at 15% for people who have no capital gains and raise it to whatever on her dreaded rich, the income bracket that she and her husband enjoy.

BARTIROMO: “You know what, Senator, it’s not just the rich who own stock.”

HILLARY: I’m not saying anything about stocks. I’m saying —

BARTIROMO: Capital gains tax goes away. How does that impact the economy?

HILLARY: Well, the capital gains tax, I’m talking about the upper income tax brackets. You know, capital gains I think we may have to nudge a little bit, but depending, again, on the conditions. I am going to look at the economy as it is. But I think it is, as I probably evidenced to your viewers, amusing, that we would have had these tax cuts, which I have benefited from, and people in my income tax bracket have benefited from, and the rest of the economy is stalled. So we have to take a look at the economy as it really is, and I think that calls for considering stimulus on a broad-base level.

And the effort to lie and convince people that we’re in a slowdown and near a recession continues to justify raising taxes. That’s right,she’s saying the entire economy is stalled, not for the rich. The economy is stalled for people like her and her husband and their income bracket.

What was it she said? Well, the capital gains tax I have benefited from and people in my income tax bracket have benefited from, and the rest of the economy stalled. So she didn’t say rich. She said the people in her income tax bracket.

It’s what she means.

I know, capital gains cuts, save the economy, the nineties, responsible for the deficit shrinking more than anybody imagined now. But apparently the economy is not doing well for anybody but the rich.

Hey, if that’s the case, would somebody explain Wal-Mart to me? Would somebody explain Kmart? Is there still a Kmart? Would somebody explain how these stores are doing so well.

Don’t tell me the rich go in there.