A stunning amount of nonsense is being spewed by the MSM about the similarities between President-elect Obama and Abraham Lincoln. The simultaneous eruption of these stories in so many places clearly indicates that the Obama publicists have been at work. Consider this credulous gushing from The Washington Times (which once upon a time would have known better):

Mr. Obama’s entire inaugural celebration constitutes a massive homage to Lincoln, considered one of the country’s greatest presidents and the most eloquent chief executive ever….Some might shy away from using Lincoln as a measuring stick, but Mr. Obama appears to relish the parallels…The official theme of Mr. Obama’s inauguration is “A New Birth of Freedom,” a phrase taken from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address…The train trip taking Mr. Obama from Philadelphia to Washington to be sworn in Tuesday tracks the final leg of Lincoln’s own train trip from Springfield to Washington for his first inauguration in 1861…At Tuesday’s inaugural ceremony, first lady Michelle Obama will hold the Bible used by Lincoln in his first inauguration in March 1861 while her husband takes the oath of office from Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Mr. Obama will be the first president to take his oath on the 1,280-page Bible printed in 1853 since that day. [In ways great and small, Obama parallels Lincoln,  [January 17, 2009]]

(VDARE.com emphasis)

Obviously, WASP traits like reserve and self-effacement are not going to be part of the new Administration (predictable, I guess, considering the pattern of appointments so far announced).

But apart from the sacrilegious poor taste shown by Obama and his managers, the question has to be asked: are they serious? Do they know what Lincoln actually did?

Even allowing for the fact that most of the crowd around Obama are the sort who think America was founded at Ellis Island and that the Statue of Liberty doggerel is part of the American Constitution shouldn’t they have some idea Lincoln had consequences?

Apart from plunging the country into by far the bloodiest war in its history–in which virtually only Americans died–and ruining for almost a century what had been a very prosperous section of the country, Lincoln was guilty of doing so mainly for the financial and political gain of his Northern cronies. As luminously and I believe conclusively demonstrated by Tom Dilorenzo in
The Real Lincoln, Lincoln’s central interest was breaking the South’s preference for low tariffs and cheap British manufactured goods. The objective was protection for Northern manufacturers and the funding of lucrative infrastructure projects–“Internal Improvements”. Slavery alone was not enough to motivate the war–which is why he tried to dodge the issue when he took office. He only fully gave in to the fanatical abolitionists when the war effort was faltering.

Every other country which abolished slavery did so without war.

So what is meant by all this Lincoln trumpeting? Are we being told that Obama intends another massive economic transfer from one group to another, engineered by reckless use of state power? That the ends justify the means? Is the battering of founding-stock Americans the objective? (Pre 1860, unlike the North, the South had had little immigration for a several generations.)

The Lincoln myth is essentially a fraud perpetrated on the credulous and the emotional. The Obama myth is also a fraud, as Steve Sailer has exhaustively demonstrated in America’s Half Blood Prince. But unfortunately, Steve also found the truth:

Obama …moved to Chicago to work as an ethnic activist to help the impoverished black community wring more money and services from the government. That government money was wrecking the morals of the housing-project residents never comes up in Obama’s book. (P136)

…community organizing had its upside: Obama made a name for himself and networked with what has become his political base: the social services industry. (P137)

The basic social problem that both Farrakhan and Obama want to alleviate is that, on average, blacks have less money than whites. Farrakhan‘s plan to create a separate black-only capitalist economy in which blacks could not be cheated by whites out of the hard-earned wealth they would create is doubtful on various grounds…..

In contrast, Obama’s plan to get more money for blacks from whites by further enlarging the already enormous welfare / social work / leftist charity / government / industrial complex is both more feasible in the short run, and, personally, more fun for someone of Obama’s tastes…insulting whites in the Black Muslim manner is counter-productive, because whites will have to pay most of the bills. (P157)

Steve envisages that Obama will become much more radical in his second term. I am not so sure we will have to wait. Those who remember the sudden emergence of Hillary Rodham Clinton after the’92 election and the massive Health Care Battle which followed will find the stories of “Barack Hussein Obama” being sworn in significant.

One of the accused in the case mentioned below is Richard Bordelon, a member of the Canoga Park Alabama Gang whose “gang name” is “Psycho.” How crazy do you have to be to get that nickname in a gang of violent killers?

I used to know an ex-alcoholic, ex-lumberjack who told me that when he was a lumberjack, his nickname was “Psycho.” I said “Excuse me, do you mean that you were so crazy that the other lumberjacks called you ‘Psycho’?” (Lumberjacks are crazy. Not as crazy as day laborers, but crazy, and given to practical jokes which may involve dynamite, chainsaws, and double-bitted axes.)

He reassured me–it had been at the “biker bar in town” that he’d gotten that nickname, but the point remains that this Bordelon fellow must be pretty crazy to make Latino gangsters call him “Psycho.”

Laurence Auster points to this story, which he says “gives so little information it hardly ranks as a news story.”[TV station says black man was murdered for racial reasons, without giving race of the perpetrators]

Racial motivation in Canoga Park murder?
Thursday, January 15, 2009

By Miriam Hernandez

CANOGA PARK, Calif. (KABC) — It is a shocking crime in which an African-American man was allegedly murdered because of his race, and two men and a juvenile are under arrest.

Canoga Bowl is a place for fun, but that all changed three nights before Christmas. James Shamp, a beloved employee, was murdered.

“My heart felt like somebody put a stake through it,” said Shamp’s friend Ellen Eckard. “And I just — I still can’t believe it.”

Shamp was emptying trash when he was allegedly targeted by the Canoga Park Alabama Gang. The reason: He was black. [More]

The story doesn’t give much detail, but it does name the street gang the accused belong to, the Canoga Park Alabama gang. (The accused are Richard Bordelon, AKA “Psycho.” Martin Sotelo, AKA “Outlaw,” and a juvenile, who the press unwilling  or forbidden to name, known as “Youngster.”)

When I heard that that the gang was called “Canoga Park Alabama” I had a momentary fear that that they might me displaced white Southerners, (this would have been a much bigger story) but actually the gang started out as social club for Valley farmworkers in the 1930’s, and has morphed into a 500 member Latino street gang with a history of violence and crime. [From social club to street gang |Canoga Park Alabama, once a Valley farmworkers group, has been targeted in L.A.'s gang crackdown.|Some question its actual threat. By Amanda Covarrubias and Richard Winton, Los Angeles  Times,March 21, 2007]

Their actions are part of the pattern of “ethnic cleansing” that Latinos are applying to American blacks who live near them, see Brenda Walker’s coverage of the Jamiel Shaw murder, among many others.

Three theories about why reporter Miriam Hernandez didn’t say this:

1. She assumes everyone knows Canoga Park Alabama is Hispanic, like everyone knows the Mafia is Italian.
2. She doesn’t assume that, but is constrained by the AP Style Guide from disclosing it to the readers, because it’s not “relevant.”
3. Her name is Miriam Hernandez.

A professor at the Yale Medical School named Sydney Spiesel writes in Slate:

About this time every year, the CDC issues its annual statistical report about sexually transmitted diseases in the United States. The surveillance report for 2007 has just come out (it takes about a year to compile and process the statistics). It is long—almost 170 pages—and, as usual, disquieting. Our uncomfortable feelings about sexuality have caused STDs to be stigmatizing …

Now, I’m not a doctor, but it’s my impression that rather than our “uncomfortable feelings about sexuality” that “have caused STDs to be stigmatizing,” it’s more the oozing sores.

Later on the good doctor notes, without specifying any facts, “the very different case rates between ethnic groups.” He doesn’t explain what those differences are, but looking in the government report, I find that it looks like STD rates are quite similar to crime rates in their racial ratios. For example, the CDC says: “In 2007, the gonorrhea rate among black men was 26 times higher than that in white men,” although that is anomalously high–the usual black-white ratio for the various diseases is more like 8 to 1, with the Hispanic to white ratio typically in the 2 or 3 to 1 range, and Asians the same or healthier than whites.

In Slate, Spiesel asks plaintively:

Are the germs really ethnically and geographically prejudiced?

Haven’t the germs heard about Obama yet? We live in an era of post-racial transcendence. Get with the times, germs!

With the world celebrating the calm heroism of Capt. Chesley Sullenberger who piloted his powerless jetliner into a safe landing in the Hudson River near Times Square, I wanted to recall the 1991 story of a less admirable captain of a sinking ship and the magician who took command after he fled. From People:

On Saturday evening, Aug. 3, [1991] as a 50-mph gale buffeted their ship, passengers aboard the Greek cruise liner Oceanos gamely made their way to the main lounge for the evening’s entertainment. No sooner had they settled in than the lights went out. The 492-foot ship, suddenly without power, tossed in high seas off South Africa’s aptly named Wild Coast. For 361 weekend tourists, one of the most harrowing nights of their lives had just begun. The Oceanos was sinking.

Disgracefully, many of the 184 crew members clambered aboard the lifeboats ahead of some of the passengers and paddled to the safety of tankers and trawlers that had drawn nearby. At daybreak on Sunday, South African Air Force helicopters joined the rescue operation. But to the astonishment and anger of the 217 passengers still aboard, Capt. Yannis Avranias grabbed the second chopper off the ship. With no one clearly in charge, an unlikely hero emerged among the remaining crew: Robin Boltman, 31, the ship’s magician.

Giving the performance of his career, Boltman entertained and calmed passengers throughout the pitch-black night. In the morning he ascended to the bridge and maintained radio contact with rescuers. Finally, at 11:30 A.M., after all other passengers and crew had been removed to safety, Boltman was lifted from the ship by a helicopter. At 1:45 P.M. the luxury liner nosed into the Indian Ocean and disappeared under the waves. [More]

Steve Sailer will be on The Political Cesspool with James Edwards at 9:00 PM Central Time and Midnight Central Time. You can listen live here, and if you miss it, the shows are archived here.

On a recent trip to Washington, Mexican President Felipe Calderon met with outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush (on January 13th) and President-Elect Barack Obama (on January 12th).
The article Obama Planea Reunir a Familias de Migrantes [El Universal, By Sergio Jimenez, January 14th, 2009] reports that:

The president-elect of the United States, Barack Obama, promised president Felipe Calderon to achieve a comprehensive migratory reform that would include family unification.

The Mexican president described Obama’s stance on the issue:

Calderon reported that, despite the obstacles and difficulties in Congress and U.S. public opinion, Obama committed himself to advance in the fulfillment of a migratory law for all, without exceptions, that covers the situation of the Mexicans that are in that country.

As for raids and roundups of illegal aliens, Obama says they need to be examined. According to another El Universal piece,Ordenará Obama Revisar Redadas a Migrantes [El Universal, January 13th, 2009]:

The president elect of the United States, Barack Obama, said that his government would examine the roundups of illegal aliens, because he wants to be sure that that policy functions “in a humane manner.”

However, Obama didn’t make a firm commitment either :

Nevertheless, Obama did not make clear if his government would suspend this type of operation, according to the second part of an interview with the president elect, broadcast this Tuesday by the Univision channel.