Mainstream Conservatives

Funding the Tories: Payback time for David Cameron

/11 Comments/in , /by

There are not many people who think their mantel would be improved by a bronze bust of British Prime Minister David Cameron, but Ukrainian oligarch Alexander Temerko appears to differ. He shelled out an eye-popping £90,000 for such a figurine at a Conservative Party fund raising auction in London in 2013. It was a small fraction of the £474,555 he has poured into the party coffers — an investment that has paid off many times over.

For he now has the ear of the Prime Minister and enjoys membership of the PM’s “inner circle” Leadership group. Co-incidentally his offshore wind energy company benefited from at least £4.5 million of taxpayers’ cash through the Department for Business’s Regional Growth Fund and, last but not least, his generosity did not hurt his application for British nationality, which was granted.

This last must have been a relief because it effectively puts him beyond reach of the Russian authorities which have been trying to get him extradited to face fraud charges over the dismantling of the oil giant Yukos. This was in the lawless Wild West atmosphere of 1990s Moscow  when Temerko was at the centre of a network of what has been described as a Jewish oligarch mafia.

He was in a good place to benefit as deputy chairman of the Yukos under his friend and oligarch boss Mikhail Khodorovsky.  Then Khodorkovsy fell afoul of Vladimir Putin and was imprisoned for fraud, and Temerko took over the running of the oil giant.

In 2004, however with the authorities closing in, Temerko fled to the UK. A British court rejected an extradition attempt as politically motivated. Ever since, Temerko has devoted himself to cosying up to the Conservative Party and not just on his own behalf. Bronze busts and fund raising dinners apart, Mr Temerko also allegedly exercises a discreet influence by directly supporting Members of Parliament who also happen to be supporters of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI).

Four of Temerko’s MPs have been identified.  Three of them, James Wharton, Michael Ellis and Guto Bebb can be seen departing for Israel in the picture below from the CFI website. The trip involved military briefings about Iran’s military capacity. Of particular interest is the Welsh MP Guto Bebb who has made three trips to Israel since 2011, all paid for by CFI, and has also been a guest at an AIPAC function in Washington D.C where he listened to speeches from the Israeli Prime Minister and defence minister.

Read more

Obama’s State of the Union Address (Edited and Abridged)

/13 Comments/in , , /by

First draft.

Not for release (but leaked through a bizarre email accident to Nick Griffin)

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, Suckers:

We are 15 years into this new century. Nearly fifteen years covering up the truth about how 9/11 gave your real rulers the excuse to drag a new generation of poor young kids and middle-class taxpayers into fighting two long and costly wars; six years of a vicious recession cause by my banking friends who have made ordinary people spread across our nation and the world pay for their greed and corruption. It has been a hard time for many – and it’s going to get a lot worse yet.

For tonight, we turn the page. Tonight, after another dismal year for America, the bankers are making money again. We’re creating low-paid, insecure jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. (Applause.) So many people have totally given up on finding real work that our unemployment statistics are now lower than before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating with useless degrees and gigantic millstones of debt than ever before. …

Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over, just in time to get stuck back into Iraq. (Applause.) Six years ago, nearly 180,000 American troops served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands have come back in body bags or without limbs, so we salute the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in this 9/11 Generation who has served to make mega-profits for the military industrial complex and to further the goals of Israel’s foreign policy. (Applause.) We can’t see any other reason for your service. … Read more

Martin Luther King was a “Conservative Republican”

/22 Comments/in /by

That’s what $arah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Bennett and a whole bunch of other conservatives would have you believe. They tell us that King stood for freedom, liberty and limited government.

Conservatives love to proclaim “Bull Connor was a Democrat! And Martin Luther King was a Republican!”

Here’s just a few examples:

Martin Luther King Jr Was a Conservative Republican

Martin Luther King’s Conservative Legacy from the conservative Heritage Foundation

The Conservative Virtues of Dr. Martin Luther King from the Heritage Foundation and William J. Bennett, the Book of Virtues author

Houston group says Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican

And don’t miss this, from a Black conservative:

King recognized the tyrannical nature of the government, and he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain, Allen West, and many others in an attempt to free not only blacks this time, but the entire nation from the very same government that was oppressing blacks during King’s lifetime.

Well, if there’s been any presidential candidate on a major party ticket who believed in those things since World War II, it was Barry Goldwater. And he was the nominee of the Republicans, allegedly King’s own party. So surely Martin Luther King must have voted for Barry Goldwater, right?

Uh, no.

Read more

A Critical Look at Rush Limbaugh, Part Two: Conservatism in Crisis

/35 Comments/in , /by

Rush Limbaugh has claimed at various times to be “a conservative first and a Republican second.” He also espouses principles like the “power of truth.” But what he has done over the past quarter-century has often been inconsistent with that idealistic persona, and conservatism has suffered for it, as has the country.

Following the election of the first non-White President of the United States in 2008, Rush Limbaugh expressed ambivalence about George W. Bush, one of the most despised U.S. presidents of all time. On the day after the election of the first Black president, Limbaugh fumed:

Well, my friends, the new tone has finally come home to roost. … Conservatism did not lose last night. Conservative was not on the ballot. The Republican Party has not sought to be conservative since the new tone was initiated by the Bush administration in 2001. [Rush Limbaugh, 5 November 2008]

The Republican Party was now in trouble because under George W. Bush, whom Limbaugh had supported, the party ceased to be conservative. Read more

The Republican Donor Class Hopes to Avoid a Populist Nominee

/32 Comments/in /by

In my “Race and the 2014 election” I discussed the continuing racial polarization of America and how the Republican Party has become the party of Whites — that Whites of both sexes and all social classes and age groups are voting Republican. This includes the White working class, despite the fact that the White working class does not favor the plutocratic policies of the Republican donor class. Commenting on the 2014 Congressional elections, I sketched the argument that a more populist Republican candidate that appealed to the White middle and working classes could win.

The problem, of course, is the donor class:

What the Republicans need is a candidate who would cultivate the nurse on her second shift et al. rather than the Chamber of Commerce/Wall Street Journal/ Adelson–Zuckerberg, pro-immigration, pro-wars for Israel crowd where the big Republican money comes from. (The Wall Street Journal  refers  to the anti-open borders folks in the GOP as “the yahoo wing.”) Romney likely could be president now if more Whites who were turned off by Romney’s plutocratic image had voted (“Race and the 2014 election” see also “A Party of Plutocrats Has No Future”).

Given the obvious reality that the interests of the donor class are wildly different from those of the White base, the donor class has come up with a strategy to avoid input from the base during the GOP primaries: Decide on a consensus candidate before the primary season and thereby short circuit the entire process. Read more

A Critical Look at Rush Limbaugh, Part 1 of 2

/48 Comments/in , /by

Part One: “Pursuit of Excellence” vs. Getting Along by Going Along

With his millions of listeners, and the many imitators who in turn influence millions more, Rush Limbaugh has been a major force in shaping American politics for a quarter of a century. Recently when Charles Schumer spoke on the Senate floor about the impending announcement of Obama’s “executive action” benefiting illegal aliens, he specifically referred to Rush Limbaugh as the critic who had been causing the public to regard it as an amnesty. Whether or not one has any respect for Limbaugh, he and the nature of his influence are worth evaluating.

When he began his afternoon radio-show on the ABC Radio Network in 1988, Rush Limbaugh seemed to be a fresh populist voice from Middle America. The most conspicuous fact about him, what was probably most important in winning a loyal following, was his flamboyant rejection of White guilt, especially White male guilt. Limbaugh portrayed a calculated pomposity (behind which he seemed genuinely humble) and ridiculed those who would cow the White man with demands of sensitivity for this or that victimhood-group. At times he could even be “racially insensitive” (although not quite as much as Bob Grant, who aired after Limbaugh locally on WABC during the early years and habitually referred to Negro criminals as “savages”). David Letterman’s quip, “Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have,” which Limbaugh adopted and has repeated thousands of times over the years, is emblematic of Limbaugh’s overall theme of flamboyantly defying and rejecting guilt — especially in the form of demands to show sympathy for various victimhood-groups.

Most of Limbaugh’s targets for insensitive treatment were relatively safe to ridicule — homeless people, feminists, ecologists, sexual deviants, et al.

Regarding Blacks, he would make frequent criticisms, but always maintaining a certain ambiguity — if nothing else, with the pretense that Blacks were potentially equal and could do as well as Whites if only the government would stop setting back their progress by helping them. (Is there anybody who does not understand that the supposed harm done to Blacks is not the real concern there?) It may have been necessary to maintain some ambiguity in his outward attitude toward Blacks in order to continue as a commercial broadcaster touching in a controversial way on racial issues. There can be little doubt that the reason why Limbaugh has retained a Black call-screener for many years is that it creates an impediment to labeling him a racist, despite whatever attitudes might become apparent in his broadcast. Read more

O’Reilly plays to White stereotypes of Blacks

/24 Comments/in /by

Mainstream conservatives like Bill O’Reilly (if one can call O’Reilly a conservative at all given his support for the immigration amnesty/surge bill) love to appeal to the implicit Whiteness of their audience. Part of that is to show film clips of Blacks behaving badly (not for the first time). As the U.S. anxiously (or eagerly, depending on your point of view) anticipates riots in the wake of the verdict in the Ferguson, O’Reilly aired this video of Jesse Watters interviewing people about an incident in Philadelphia where a 68-year-old (Black) teacher was body slammed by a student. We see him lying supine on the floor, unconscious.

Like Black on White crime, it’s not the sort of thing that is reported in the New York Times or on PBS. (Indeed, it’s doubtful O’Reilly would have touched it if the victim had been White.) The video contains all the negative stereotypes Whites have of “inner city” Blacks. Drugs are said to be rampant in the schools. Teachers are said to be not teaching and the principal is aloof from it all. Violence against teachers is commonplace, but we are told that it is less than last year (but three in the last month!). In the past year there have been incidents of fire setting, weapons brought to school, drugs use at school, and forced oral sex. The students who are interviewed speak in Ebonics, and two students say the teacher had it coming. One of the school employees has dreadlocks and does not exactly convey an academic image.

After the interviews, O’Reilly asks Watters about the ethnic breakdown of the school and is told it is 100% Black and that the school is in a poor, violence-prone neighborhood, implying that the causes are environmental. He concludes by saying it happens everywhere and results from people not being “held accountable for their actions,” and at other times he has blamed Black family patterns. These people are clearly victims of a bad environment.

But of course, it’s not a general problem. It’s a problem specific to Black America. And it’s far deeper than being held accountable. Suspension and expulsion are not deterrents for people who have no interest in school.

O’Reilly’s White audience understands that O’Reilly is on their side—that he is standing up for White America against the forces of darkness. Great for the ratings. But he can keep the money flowing because he stays safely within the bounds of political correctness by conforming to the blackout on race realism in the mainstream media.