Category Archives: Race Relations

Hey America, Here Comes the Sun!

Posted on by Standard 2

buh-byeBUH-BYE Sanctuary Cities.
BUH-BYE Political Correctness.
BUH-BYE Corrupt DOJ and Loretta Lynch.
BUH-BYE ObamaCare.
BUH-BYE Gay takeover of the military.
BUH-BYE Radical Muslim immigrants.
BUH-BYE Planned Parenthood money from taxpayers.
BUH-BYE Iran nuclear program.
BUH-BYE Jay Z and Miley Cyrus.
BUH-BYE Trans-Pacific Partnership and NAFTA.
BUH-BYE Black Lives Matter.
BUH-BYE Global Warming Scams.
BUH-BYE Export-Import Bank.
BUH-BYE Bushes.
BUH-BYE Clintons.
BUH-BYE Obamas.
BUH-BYE Huma, Podesta, Brazile, Warren, Jarrett, Wasserman-Schultz.
BUH-BYE Steve Deace, Erick Erickson, Glenn Beck, Michael Medved.
BUH-BYE Fake endangered species scams.
BUH-BYE College Safe Rooms.
BUH-BYE Wall Street Cronies.
BUH-BYE Koskinen and IRS Abuse.
BUH-BYE Late-term abortions.
BUH-BYE Lying mainstream media.
BUH-BYE Ridiculous government spending and debt.
BUH-BYE Identity politics and race-baiting.
BUH-BYE United Nations stomping on our sovereignty.
BUH-BYE Welfare and food stamp abuse.
BUH-BYE Pampered athletes and entertainers who abuse our flag.
BUH-BYE Liberal judges.

HELLO Merry Christmas.
HELLO Regular Budget Process.
HELLO New small businesses.
HELLO Energy independence and industry.
HELLO GDP growth.
HELLO Border security.
HELLO Safe and appreciated Police.
HELLO Real business men and women who will straighten out the mess in DC.
HELLO Separate boys and girls bathrooms and locker rooms.
HELLO Jobs.
HELLO Inner cities that won’t look like a permanent war zone.
HELLO Constitution.
HELLO Soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen and women who can wear the uniform proudly again.
HELLO Educators who have been hiding in fear of politically-correct peers.
HELLO Respect from other nations and their leaders.

THANK YOU Original Tea Party founders and members who started the fire.
THANK YOU Union guys who finally said enough is enough.
THANK YOU Black and Hispanic voters who had the courage to break out.
THANK YOU Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
THANK YOU James O’Keefe.
THANK YOU Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, Mike Pence, Gen. Flynn, Newt Gingrich, Dr. Ben Carson.
THANK YOU Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mike Gallagher, Laura Ingraham, Larry Elder, Lou Dobbs.
THANK YOU Heritage Action, AFP, Tea Party Patriots, Freedom Works, and conservative groups.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

LiRockin' On the Right Sidettle darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right!
Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right!

Here Comes the Sun – George Harrison (with Paul Simon)

 

 

The “Unsung Heroes” Help Poor and Minorities – Hillary Calls Them “Deplorables”

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hvac%20contractorI was visiting with my young HVAC guy after he installed a new air conditioner in one of my rental houses.  Actually, it was more like negotiating than visiting.  He said he gave me a good deal, and I chuckled,  “I know you did, but I have to go through the routine.”  I was happy to write the check – he more than earned it.

Then he said something that gave me pause.  “I know you guys can afford to pay me, but you know a lot of the people I work for can’t.”

We live in South Carolina.  It’s hot.  Air conditioning is not a luxury, it is a necessity of life.  I know people lived in the South before air conditioning, but honest to God, I don’t know how.  We moved here from Montana where we built a new log home and didn’t even consider putting in air conditioning.  This is different.  In South Carolina I would put air conditioning right up there with food and shelter.

He told me about a service call he made last month to repair an air conditioner for an African American grandmother with five kids in her house that belong to her daughter, who is a heroin addict. “She told me about her utility bills, and other bills, and taking care of the kids, and doing it all on $500 a month from the county plus food stamps.  It was 96 degrees.  I knew she couldn’t afford to pay me, so I just ‘ate’ the bill. ”

I have not felt very good about my country lately.  There’s a lot of ugly stuff going on.  But this young man did a lot to restore my confidence in our future.

“I usually don’t charge somebody like that,” he said.   “I mean, you see what’s going on, and you just have to do what you can, you know?  I don’t mind giving up my labor, I can always just work harder.  But the cost of parts keeps going up and up.  I have hundreds of dollars in parts in these repair jobs.”

My HVAC guy is your average American small business owner.  He works long, hard hours.  He invests most of his profits in tools, a truck, paying his help, and keeping up his education and certification.  In the hot summer he works around the clock.  If somebody needs help at 9:00 pm, he answers the phone.   He didn’t go to college.  He goes to church every Sunday, but half the time he is on a service call that afternoon.  His kids don’t have fancy tennis shoes, and he can’t afford the time or cost of a Disney cruise.  Yet he is one of the “Deplorables” Hillary Clinton looks down on.  Even worse, he owns a business – which, to Democrats, makes him a greedy, selfish racist who got rich on the backs of the poor.  He’s the guy Obama sneered at:  “You didn’t build that business.”

The truth is, he DID build that business, and he cares a hell of a lot more for the poor, and minorities, than Hillary Clinton does, or Barack Obama, or anybody who votes for them and their Democrat friends.

And yes, he said, “I am going to vote for Donald Trump.”  He told me he had not voted for years, but this time he has to.  “The first thing I heard Trump say was, ‘I am paying for my own campaign, nobody bought me, and I can’t be bribed.’  That was all I needed to hear.”  And that certifies his status as one of Hillary’s “Deplorables”.

The sad thing is, the grandmother whose air conditioning repair bill he ‘ate’, and the addicted mother, and most of their friends and relatives, and all of the liberals who pretend to care about them but never do anything about it, are going to vote for Hillary and the Democrats.

The Deplorables out there doing real acts of charity and love every day, and not asking for anything in return – they are the unsung heroes.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

While others long to steal the spotlight
You work your magic quietly
‘Cause your not in it for the glory
The love you give comes naturally

Unsung Heroes – Terri Clark

Here’s one of my favorite country artists, Terri Clark from Medicine Hat, Albera.  Give a listen.

No More Immigration Until We Fix Anacostia

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anacostia-school

photo by Chris Roberts, American Renaissance

It was a short drive from my hotel in Washington, DC’s toney National Harbor district to the Capitol.  But we were stuck in heavy traffic on I-295 into downtown.  My Uber driver slid to the outside lane and hit the exit.  “I have a quicker way to get downtown,” he said.  That was fine with me, although I really wasn’t in a hurry.

Within minutes we were smack in the middle of the Anacostia ghetto.  We might as well have taken the exit to Mars.

I live in South Carolina, in a comfy suburb across the lake from Charlotte (NC).  My town seems to me like normal America.  My trips to the city can sometimes take me through areas that are not exactly high-rent districts.  But they don’t look or feel anything like Anacostia.  Over the years I’ve been through the barrio on Figueroa in LA,  I have cruised around South Chicago, I’ve seen some of the underbelly of Detroit.  I thought I had seen some of the ugliest armpits our nation has to offer.  But Anacostia was an eye-opener.

We drove through mile after mile of liquor stores, check-cashers, and raggedy store-fronts, each decorated with young black men (and a few women) leaning against them.  It was 10:00 a.m., and clearly none of the Anacostia folks had anywhere to go or anything to do.  Some chugged beers, a few shared doobies openly on the street, and here and there were clusters of guys who appeared to be negotiating their next big deal.  It was so totally foreign, I gaped out the passenger window in dropped-jaw amazement.  I must have looked like a zoo animal to them.  A boarded up dilapidated cafe, an elementary school unfit for the rats that live there, a rehab clinic doing brisk business.  A muscular young guy jogging and shadow-boxing, Rocky-style.  A wheelchair-bound young woman rolling up to a grubby corner drug store.

I’m not one who notices race first, but the segregation was jarring – there was not a single face that was not African-American.

My Vietnamese immigrant driver pretended to be oblivious to the bizarre scene, but his eyes saw what mine did.  “It nicer across freeway,” he repeated several times in broken English.

Block after block, my state of mind shifted from shock to amazement to concern.  By the time we emerged from Anacostia and re-entered the “normal” world, I was despondent.  How the hell did this happen?   Why hasn’t anybody done anything about this?  We can’t just leave these hopeless people and this God-forsaken mess like it is.

There is no excuse for this kind of scene in the United States of America.  Whoever gets elected in November had better take a good hard look at what’s going on in Anacostia, and Detroit, and South Chicago, and LA.

I could bore you with all of the tried-and-failed stock solutions to poverty and blight.  But you’ve heard plenty of empty promises over the years, from the left and the right.  More welfare is not the answer – it hasn’t worked and it never will.  Telling people to get to work isn’t it either – there are no jobs for the totally unskilled and unschooled people of the Anacostia ghetto.  This won’t get better until the American people decide it is unacceptable, move in, and get after it.

My trip through the ghetto brought home one message loud and clear.  We had better not waste another dollar or another ounce of labor or another drop of compassion on opportunistic foreign immigrants until we bring Anacostia back to normal America.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

It’s survival in the city
When you live from day to day
City streets don’t have much pity
When you’re down, that’s where you’ll stay

In the City – Joe Walsh

 

 

Hillary and the Liberal “Basket Wars”

Posted on by Standard 1

photo by Chris Ayers

For the past several weeks, every time I drive down Tyvola Road in Charlotte I suffer a temporary case of road rage.  I’m not angry at other drivers.  What makes me flipping furious is the big church reader board sign that says, “STOP KILLING, DISRESPECTING BLACK PEOPLE”.

My visceral reaction is always the same:  “Are you talking to ME?”

I assure you, I have never killed black people.  And I have never disrespected black people.  At least not any more than I have disrespected white people or yellow people or red people who don’t deserve my respect.

So why do I have a sign in my face, demanding that I stop killing black people?  How does anybody who doesn’t know me assume I am a racist?  Or a murderer?  Or both?  And what about the other tens of thousands of people who see that sign every day?  How many of them kill black people?

I am so sick of being called a racist that sometimes I think I should become one just so I wouldn’t be so damn mad about being falsely accused of it all the time.  That sign doesn’t apply to the 99.9999% of the people driving by who don’t kill black people.  So what’s the point of sticking it our faces?  You don’t say, “Thank you for not killing black people.”  You just accuse us all of doing it.

hillary-shadesAnd now, just to top it off, the Democrat candidate for president of my country calls me a “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic DEPLORABLE.” 

Well here’s the thing.  I know a lot more about you, Hillary, than you know about me.  You must feel threatened, because every time a liberal feels threatened he or she falls back on false accusations, name-calling and race-baiting.  Your Chicken Little “everybody is racist” game has Martin Luther King turning over in his grave.  Thank God the American people, and especially our African-American brothers and sisters, are finally catching on to your evil, self-serving, manipulative treachery.

photo by liberalrev.comAnd let’s be clear.  This is not a black-on-white attack.  My black friends accept me as an American brother just as I do them.  In fact, almost every black guy I meet is as politically conservative as I am.  No, this is the work of political hack liberals, like Dr. Chris Ayers, pastor of Wedgewood Church, who only see people in categories – white, black, gay, straight, rich, poor, and then pits them against each other.  Hillary calls these categories “baskets”.  And she lumps everyone who doesn’t vote for her into a big basket called “Deplorables” and labels us with every vile characterization she can think of.

Despite the accusations, all of us who drive on Tyvola Road, and all of us who won’t vote for Hillary, are saddened by any untimely deaths of black people.  And white people.  And gay people and innocent Muslim people, and soldier people and truck driving people and Russian people and all people.  We are normal, compassionate human beings. When are the liberals going to knock off the “basket wars” and let us be a big, happy basket of Americans?

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

She’ll hang the baskets on the walls
Don’t you know I’ve seen it all before
She’ll hang the baskets on the walls
But I’ve seen it all before, heard the slamming of the door
Come summer, come fall
Come winter, there’ll be baskets on the floor

She’ll Hang the Baskets – Cake

This tune is a little bit obscure, but a cool song by one of my favorite newer bands. Sorry, no live recording.

 

 

Illegal Immigrants: Don’t Rock the Boat

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rock the boatAt breakfast this morning my daughter was relating a conversation she had with a neighbor-friend who is a third-grade teacher at a predominantly Hispanic public elementary school.  They were discussing the problems caused by the extensive federally-required testing of third graders – the loss of instruction time, the stress for students and teachers, the declining scores.  Then the teacher made a startling observation.

“It’s not just the testing that’s a problem, ” she told my daughter.  “I have a room full of kids who don’t value education.  That’s because they come from families who don’t value education.”  She said nobody at home speaks English, so the children have no interest in learning English, or much of anything else, at school.  They don’t see anything at home that connects education to success in life or anything positive.  “They act out all day.  Our classroom is chaos, and we are not allowed to discipline because the school is afraid of legal action.”

Another friend of mine is a kindergarten teacher who teaches entirely in Spanish.  Her students receive no English instruction.  She reports the same lack of discipline and respect in her students, and suffered a serious physical attack by one of them.  Her administration warned her to not report the incident to police or other authorities.

Both of these talented young teachers are now questioning the wisdom of their career choices.

After breakfast, I flipped through the Sunday morning news shows, landing on the Fareed Zakaria GPS report about discrimination.  He pointed out that many more schools are now segregated than were before Brown vs. Board, and went on to say performance and outcomes in these “minority” schools is much worse than in “desegregated” schools.  He carefully avoided one critical detail.  The segregation in today’s schools is English-speakers vs. non-English speakers.  American-born vs. (mostly) illegal aliens.

The other Sunday news shows all had the obligatory segments with talking heads explaining how Donald Trump has no chance to be elected president because he offended Hispanic voters by saying Mexican criminals have come across our open border. The news producers shelved the video showing protesters at a Trump rally assaulting police while waving Mexican flags.

My sensibilities were a little bit rocked by all this turbulence before my third cup of coffee.  I had to say: this is just not working.

We can not leave our borders unprotected any longer.  We can’t continue to pretend that these are only poor “refugees” wanting to celebrate America, to do the jobs we won’t do, and to help raise the tide that floats all boats.  The boats that were already here are taking on water.  We don’t have enough jobs for our own citizens.  Our schools and support systems are sinking under the weight of foreigners, many of whom have no intention of assimilating.

I’m not a bigot or a selfish meanie.  I’m not broad-brushing Hispanics or any other minority as terrible people.  I’m not saying no more immigration, ever.  All I’m saying is, what we’re doing now – unfiltered, uncontrolled mass immigration driven by liberal public benefit programs – is not working.  It has to change before the boats all tip over.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

Rock the boat, don’t rock the boat baby
Rock the boat, don’t tip the boat over
Rock the boat, don’t rock the boat baby
Rock the boat

Rock the Boat – the Hues Corporation

 

Mixed Emotions When Mexican Driver Kills Mexican Child And Flees Back to Mexico

Posted on by Standard 1

photo courtesy Charlotte Observer

I have been following a story in the Charlotte, NC news for several days now which still grips my attention for a variety of reasons.  I find myself wrestling with my reactions to each development, and trying to sort out the implications of the profound change Charlotte, and much of America, has gone through in recent years.

I write this post not to make any particular point, but rather to illustrate how our emotions are manipulated by the politically-correct news media.

The tragedy began when a mother was crossing a street in East Charlotte with her young son and daughter in hand.  The girl let go and darted across the street, and her six-year old brother followed.  He was hit by a beat-up white work van.  The driver, identified by witnesses as “a Hispanic man in his mid-thirties with curly black hair,” stopped briefly, saw the child lying gravely injured on the street, and then sped away.

Like any parent, my first reaction was horror at the sudden death of a child, and sympathy.  Immediately following that was my suspicion and anger that the driver is probably an illegal immigrant.

A year ago Charlotte’s political leaders chose to declare it a “sanctuary city”, one of hundreds  of cities across the country that refuses to turn illegal immigrants, including criminals, over to federal authorities for processing and deportation.  Since then Charlotte has attracted growing numbers of Hispanic illegals, and the crime statistics have tilted heavily in their direction.

In support of the sanctuary city stance, Charlotte news outlets do not identify illegal immigrant criminals as such.   A respected African-American business owner was recently murdered in my Charlotte suburb by a Honduran laborer, and the fact that the killer was here illegally was never reported by the Charlotte press. But since the murder occurred on the South Carolina side of the lake, the Rock Hill (SC) Herald reported that federal immigration and customs officials were involved.

Here’s where the bouncing emotions and questions come in.  My “I’ll bet the driver is an illegal” reaction to the hit-and-run incident probably matches the vast majority of my neighbors. If he is here illegally, the driver likely has no insurance, perhaps no driver’s license.  Even though it was clearly an accident, and the driver is doubtless torn with guilt, his entire life in the USA is clandestine, so he had to run.  I feel sorry for him.  Wait, no I don’t, he fled the scene of a fatal accident.  I noticed that the child’s family is also Hispanic, and I can’t help but wonder if they are also here illegally.  But so what?  The child’s death is no less tragic.  The boy’s family told reporters they want the driver found and prosecuted.  Would the Charlotte police have turned him over to ICE if they had caught him?

The driver has now been identified as Juan Antonio Quintanilla-Garza, and the press will only report that Charlotte police believe he is “out of state.”  The words “out of the country” would be too revealing.  Quintanilla-Garza probably left corrupt, backwards Mexico to try to help his own family.  He became a criminal in the process.

The accident was not caused by illegal immigration.  It could have happened to anyone, by anyone, anywhere.  But it became more than an accident when the driver took off.  And the flood of illegal immigrants to our country, plus the disproportionate incidence of crimes by illegals, plus the inexplicable “sanctuary city” policies that enable and protect illegal immigrant criminals all combine to scramble our emotions into an omelette of anger, fear and frustration.

It’s not about racism. It’s about borders, and security, and economics and enforcing the laws. And in the middle of it all is a dead kid.

What a mess.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

You’re not the only one
With mixed emotions
You’re not the only ship
Adrift on this ocean

Mixed Emotions – Rolling Stones

 

Angry? No, I Just Want A Change!

Posted on by Standard Reply

smelly-diapers1I’m tired of being called “angry” by the media, the liberals, and the wannabe Republican presidential candidates.

I’m not angry.  When a baby has a full diaper, is Mom angry?  Is the baby angry?  Is everybody around the baby angry?  No, they just want a change.  They can’t stand the smell anymore.  They are uncomfortable with the way things are.  It is obvious that things can’t stay the way they are.  They all require a change and they demand it.  I’m not angry.  I just can’t stand the smell any more.  I’m motivated for a change.

I’m also tired of being called a racist.

I’m not a racist.  Just because I think Americans who were born here, who cut out Washington and Lincoln silhouettes in grade school, who still get teary-eyed when somebody sings a heartfelt rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, should not lose their precious jobs to foreigners who don’t even want to learn our language, let alone become Americans – that does not make me a “racist.”

And I’m tired of being called “stupid”.

I’m not stupid.  No, I don’t believe for a second that our cars and washing machines and toasters are destroying the earth that God created and has kept spinning for the last 5 billion years or so.  NASA says it’s not true.  31,000 scientists say global warming is a hoax, and the data “proving” man’s inhumanity to Earth has been manipulated and contrived for nothing more than personal profit.  Carbon emissions and greenhouse gases have been around forever – forest fires, volcanoes and sun spots cause way more crap in the atmosphere than man could ever aspire to.  So stop calling me a “science denier” and “stupid”.

One more thing – I’m tired of waiting for the people who are supposed to be on my side to stop calling me names that were once only found in the liberals’ playbook.   I never thought I would hear Republicans calling me – a long-time advocate and supporter of conservative principles – angry and racist and stupid.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

I was a lonely soul
I had nobody till I met you
But you keep a-me waiting
All of the time
What can I do?

Tired of Waiting For You – the Kinks

Here’s a cool old clip of brothers Ray and Dave Davies and the Kinks.  They impressed the hell out of me when I was in junior high and still top the list of all-time great garage bands.  The Davies brothers are famous for their epic sibling battles – fortunately, they haven’t killed each other yet, and still put out some great music.