Access To Birth Control Is A Fundamental Component Of Climate Survival

Any morally acceptable pathway to prevent catastrophic global warming includes broad access to affordable birth control for the world’s women. The conservative war on birth control is a war on women’s rights, and thus on the rights of us all. Manmade global warming is one of the most troubling symptoms of economic and social injustice around the planet, and the ”countries in the developing world least responsible for the growing emissions are likely to experience the heaviest impact of climate change, with women bearing the greatest toll.” Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson discussed at the Durban climate conference last December:

In addressing climate resilience, Robinson stressed the importance of focusing on health and burden impacts of climate change. One of the keys is access to reproductive health for women.

Good grief. Is there a class Lefties attend to learn to write like that, like Marxist Magniloquence 101? Anyhow, this goes back to one of the Warmist’s biggest issues: reducing the global population. And, interestingly, this ties into what Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted, namely, reducing the number of minorities, which is what happens when birth control is spread around to much of the developing world, particularly places like the African continent. You want racism? That’s racism! Planning based on the doctrine of eugenics.

The more world leaders focus on giving women and girls the tools of empowerment — access to family planning, education, and the political and economic system — the better future all of us will have.

A world where women and girls have more power is a healthier world.

That’s interesting, since Liberals get the vapors when Conservatives talk about liberating women from being 2nd class citizens as they are in much of the Islamic world. But, really, this is all about spreading abortion on demand around the world. Cheaply. Which is where the asterisk in the headline comes in: liberals think contraceptives, sterilization (Sanger loved the thought of sterilizing Blacks and defectives a hoot), and abortions should be free, and, by free, I mean “someone else pays.” Liberals never seem to want to pay for anything themselves. That’s why they loved Obama’s insurance mandate, as Someone Else would pay for their condoms and birth control pills, and screw what the constitution says about religious freedom.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

The study has however become much celebrated in Green/Left quarters, with the ineffable Monbiot in the vanguard. Monbiot’s entry into the discussion has however energized a few ripostes from conservatives, with the most amusing point being that after Leftists telling us for decades that IQ scores are meaningless they suddenly have done an 180 degree turn and treat them as highly meaningful!

I thought I might add something to what I regard as the two best conservative responses to the original article. The first is in The Telegraph and makes a number of good points, all of which are worth reading.

I want to say more about just one of them: The point that IQ was measured during childhood (10 or 11 years of age) and that such measures are unreliable. That is however a matter of degree and of purpose. They are accurate enough to be a useful guide to who will benefit from a selective (more demanding) education, for instance.

An interesting aspect of scores at that age, however, is what I call the chimpanzee effect. In brief, this effect is that dummies mature faster so a relatively high score in childhood can lead to a relatively low score in adulthood. So it is quite possible that the high scorers in the data used by the Canadian authors became relatively low scorers later on. So if the high scorers in that body of data were later found to be liberals, it is quite possible that the same people were dummies in later life! So the data could be said to show the opposite of what the authors claim. The data could be said to suggest that it was the liberals who were the dummies.

That is all just speculation, however, The truth is that the data are incapable of telling us which way around it went at all.

That little point is really just a bit of fun, however. The second article by statistician Briggs is by far the most pointed. Briggs had a strong enough stomach to read the whole article. And when he did, he basically found that the authors had misrepresented their results. The correlations with IQ were in fact negligible. They were statistically significant but statistical significance is only a correction for small sample size and the sample sizes in the data used by the Canadians were large.

So statistical significance is irrelevant. It is other forms of significance we have to look at. Let me put it this way: What the Canadians found was (roughly) that out of 100 high IQ people, 51 would be liberals and 49 would be conservatives. Such a near-even split means of course that IQ is essentially irrelevant to ideology, or is not a socially or scientifically significant predictor of ideology.

Now we come to “racism”. The correlations between conservatism and racism were more substantial. Briggs rightly detects the flaw in that. The correlation is between WHAT THE AUTHORS SAY is conservatism and racism and there is no external validation of either measure. So all I want to do is draw attention to something I set out long ago: That even eminent Leftist psychologists have NO IDEA what conservatism is. A much noted paper in the field even identified Stalin, Khrushchev and Castro as conservatives! Can you get any madder than that? So it is no wonder that when they use their questionnaires to predict how people will vote, they find that “conservatives” AS IDENTIFIED BY THEM are just as likely to vote Democrat as Republican (for instance). How clueless can you get? What is going on of course is that Leftist psychologists swallow hook line and sinker of Leftist propaganda about conservatives. They believe that conservatives really are as Leftist propaganda describes them. It would appear that they never bother to talk to any actual conservatives to find out what they really think.

By contrast, I am a conservative so a questionnaire that I devised based on a thorough knowledge of what conservatism actually is, did what the Leftist questionnaires could not: Provided a substantial prediction of vote. See here. So once again the arrogance and ignorance of the Left has led them to a false understanding of reality and scientific work that is futile and useless. The work by the two Canadian authors certainly tells us NOTHING about the correlations with conservatism. I have written more extensively elsewhere about the relationship between conservatism and IQ.

For reference, the Canadian study is: “Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact” by Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

(Politico) President Barack Obama — in an act of hypocrisy or necessity, depending on the beholder — has reversed course and is now blessing the efforts of a sputtering super PAC, Priorities USA Action, organized to fight GOP dark-money attacks.

Pure hypocrisy, and, what the hell is “dark-money attacks”? Looks like Glenn Thrush is offering up stealth raaaaacism.

On Monday morning, Obama reviled the “negative” tone of the super PACs, a dominant fundraising source in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. But by the evening, word leaked to POLITICO that Obama had offered his support for Priorities USA Action, which thus far has raised a fraction of what GOP-backed groups have raked in.

Obama’s top campaign staff and even some Cabinet members will appear at super PAC events. The president himself will not address super PAC donors, although there’s nothing to legally prohibit the president, first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden from expressing their support for the group — as GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has done for his own pet super PAC.

But, Mitt has never complained about Super PACs, especially since Team Obama has talked about raising $1 billion for the 2012 election as a stated goal.

Over at the re-coronation website of Mr. 1%, they are officially rationalizing the need for Super PACs for Obama, where

We will not play by two sets of rules

Interesting. Syria plays by a different set of rules. So does North Korea, Al Qaeda, and Iran. Canada has different rules, as does England, France, and Greece. Does this mean we should play by those rules because they do?

The (Citizens United) decision has accelerated a dangerous trend toward a political system increasingly dominated by big-money interests with disproportionate power to spend freely to influence our elections and our government.

Jim Messina writes that this is a “dangerous trend”, so, instead of the POTUS leading and refusing to take their money and help, having railed against them for over a year now, he’s going to capitulate and become part of that “dangerous trend”. The rest is rationalizing the need for Obama to dump his year long whines against Super PACs, because they have “accepted the reality of the law as it currently stands” and it’s “consistent with the law.”

Meanwhile, other Super PACs established for the sole purpose of defeating the President—along with “nonprofits” that also aren’t required to disclose the sources of their funding—have raised more than $50 million. In the aggregate, these groups are expected to spend half a billion dollars, above and beyond what the Republican nominee and party are expected to commit to try to defeat the President.

Well, yeah, that’s the point of an election: defeating the other campaign.

With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

This from the guy who wants to raise a billion dollars. The guy who disabled the credit card verification system during the 2008 election. The guy who has the backing of super rich guys like George Soros and Peter Lewis. The guy who has the backing of all the unions. Hollywood. The teachers. Lawyers. 90% of the news media. All the people sitting on welfare being taken care of by the Central Government. The companies which he has purchased. Sounds like unilateral disarmament, eh?

This is Barack Obama in a nutshell: no principles.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Politico) The issue of race and American politics, never far beneath the surface during Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, is making a loud, overt and surprisingly early appearance in the 2012 presidential race.

And no one knows — least of all Obama himself — what impact the race card, always a wild card, will have on the president’s reelection prospects.

I’ll suggest it backfires, particularly if Team Obama and their sycophants attack Romney’s Mormonism.

In the past several months, Newt Gingrich has drawn sharp criticism for labeling Obama the “food stamp president” and for suggesting poor kids in New York’s majority-minority school system burnish their work ethic by picking up mops. First lady Michelle Obama bridled at the perception that she’s an “angry black woman.” Obama’s Chicago-based campaign has pushed back against stories that he’s more or less given up on the white vote.

Except, Newt wasn’t just talking about Black people: the majority of food stamp recipients are Caucasian. Michelle Obama is the one who brought up the angry black woman thing in order to create racial division. And Team Obama was the one who said they had given up on the white vote.

But nothing has illustrated the potentially explosive political impact of race — an issue that Obama has downplayed throughout his career — like the firestorm around the image of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her finger at the first black president of the United States.

If there were any illusion that 2012 would be the post-racial election most Americans hoped for, it vanished with that single shake of a finger and 30 seconds of sniping lost to history in the turbine roar of Air Force One.

Got that? The duly elected Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, is an evil racist simply because she wagged her finger in the face of a disrespectful half-black President. By that definition, we could call Obama a sexist, since he was disrespectful to Brewer and walked away.

But, what else does Obama have to run on? He certainly can’t run on his record. He doesn’t like to talk about his signature legislation, the Stimulus and Obamacare. He can play with the economic numbers all he wants, but people are hurting, and things are not getting better. The housing industry is still a major mess. Real world prices are rising. Disposable income is very low. Consumer confidence is low. There are historic numbers of people who have given up on the job market. The recession supposedly ended in June, 2009, yet, here in 2012, nothing seems to have changed.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

So what is still going on at Duke can reasonably be extrapolated to at least the Humanities departments of America’s universities and colleges. And that is not pretty.

One of the Lacrosse players who was NOT accused by the pathetic Crystal Gail Mangum was nonetheless caught up in the blast and suspended by the university at roughly the same time as the other players. He is now suing. As you can read here, Ryan McFadyen is arguably the person who behaved with greatest honor in the whole affair. He certainly behaved with greater honor than prosecutor Nifong or Durham police — who tried to suborn him into giving false evidence. There is another glimpse of his character here.

And when McFadyen refused to be intimidated into giving false evidence, Nifong and the police must have realized that he had put them into a dangerous position. Fabricating evidence is a crime with severe penalties. So they immediately went all-out to blacken his name. And that blackening still shows up today in that he has become something of a hate figure to many.

So he is now suing over that defamation and the illegal and improper behaviour of all concerned in the matter.

The trial has however produced some document disclosures that reveal the full depth of the moral depravity of senior Duke U officials. The documents contain bombshell emails from Duke President Brodhead and others suggesting that Duke’s primary concern was to protect its PR, even if that meant sacrificing innocent students.

In documents submitted February 3 by Plaintiffs’ lawyers, President Brodhead is quoted in an email sent very early in the case to other Duke staff:

“Friends: a difficult question is, how can we support our lacrosse players at a devastatingly hard time without seeming to lend aid and comfort to their version of the story? We can’t do anything to side with them, or even, if they are exonerated, to imply that they behaved with honor. The central admin can’t, nor can Athletics.”

And Joe Alleva, then of the Duke Athletic Dept., also testified during his deposition on January 20, 2012, that he made positive and truthful statements about Plaintiffs and their teammates’ character at the University’s press conference on March 28, 2006.

Mr. Alleva testified that he was “crucified” immediately afterwards for making those statements by President Brodhead himself and in front of the Crisis Management Team, all of whom knew how “off-message” Mr. Alleva’s truthful, positive statements about plaintiffs were.

Alleva was the one who later told Duke lacrosse coach Pressler that “it’s not about the truth” any longer; that the case was about the interest groups and the integrity (reputation) of the university. (Hence the title of coach Pressler’s book, “It’s not about the truth”).

Or as Robert K. Steel (then chairman of Duke’s Board of Trustees) said in explaining why Duke would not be defending its falsely-accused students: “Sometimes people have to suffer for the good of the organization”. More details here

You would think that all the exposure of their moral depravity might have created some caution among Duke faculty about race-related matters. It does not appear to have done so. Just a few days ago I ran a large excerpt (scroll down) from an article which summarized the Arcidiacono affair. I will simply refer readers to there for a treatment of that little explosion of rage and hate. See HERE for the full article. Having their warped view of America threatened is intolerable to Duke’s Leftist Mafia.

No Leftist will admit it of course but I cannot see why Duke should be regarded as atypical. I don’t think there is anything especially poisonous in the air at North Carolina. I think we have seen coming to the surface at Duke what is smouldering away beneath the surface at most of America’s universities and colleges. They are true heirs of Stalin and the ghastly Soviet Union. They are a nest of vipers.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Recently the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced that it was no longer going to be offering funds and grants to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion mill operator. This decision has sent Planned Parenthood over the edge of both sanity and civility with a new fundraising letter that dispenses with its past staid talk about women’s healthcare and goes straight for thuggish threats of retaliation, finger pointing, and attacks on other women.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, a well known breast cancer-fighting charity, decided to withhold further donations to the abortion provider for several reasons, one of which is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Congress for violating various state abortion laws.

Last month the Associated Press reported Komen’s new criteria and why it is excluding PP. “Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities,” the report said. “According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.”

The foundation gave more than $569,000 to Planned Parenthood in 2010.

As to the charges against Planned Parenthood that are pending in the congressional investigation, you might recall the stellar work of Lila Rose whose videos brought to our attention that Planned Parenthood was violating state laws by ignoring requirements to report child abuse and rape while pushing abortions on minors.

But Planned Parenthood apparently isn’t taking this lying down. They aren’t just lamenting Komen’s decision, they are getting mad.

In a fundraising letter emailed to supporters, the abortion provider proved themselves to be less a “healthcare” organization, and more the ideologically driven advocacy group that detractors say they are. The email is blunt and asks supporters to sign onto the extremist rhetoric and send it on to others. Most interesting, the letter doesn’t just attack opponents in general but specifically attacks women that oppose Planned Parenthood.

Here is the text of that shockingly harsh letter: (CLICK HERE for a screen shot of the letter)

This is for all the anti-choice, anti-women people out there.

Listen up.

You can spend every minute of every day trying to force the rest of us to live by your ideology. You can go after federal funds for health care and pressure private organizations like the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to stop funding breast cancer screenings for poor women. You can try to make it impossible to get birth control.

But you know what you can’t do? You can’t win. You can’t break us. Planned Parenthood isn’t just a family of organizations. It’s a movement. It’s women and men of all ages who believe that health care — including reproductive health care — is a basic human right. We are millions strong. We are everywhere. We act, we give, and we do whatever it takes to make sure that Planned Parenthood is there for the women, men, and teens who rely on them.

Know this: When you go after Planned Parenthood and the people they serve, you go after ME. I stand with Planned Parenthood. I stand with them against anyone who wants to stop women from receiving the health care they need. I stand with them today, tomorrow, and for as long as I need to.

I don’t now about you but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fundrasing letter like this supposedly emanating from a “health care” organization. Imagine if a hospital or other medical organization sent such a letter as this to its customers.

Also amazing is the bald attack on women who don’t agree with PP. This also proves that they aren’t an organization interested in women, but one only interested in women that agree with their ideologically extreme position on abortion.

In any case, what we seem to be seeing here is the last bit of a veneer of legitimacy ripped from Planned Parenthood. It is now fully embracing its ideological drive toward infanticide and has cast away any pretext that it is at all interested in mere healthcare. With this letter Planned Parenthood is admitting that it is a “movement,” not a healthcare provider.

I made some technical remarks about her research on 24th. but readers may also be interested in an alternative to her kneejerk reaction to the old “white Australia policy”. See here for a more philosophically sophisticated look at the issues involved

A PERTH professor whose study found people who fly Australian flags on their cars are more racist than those who don’t, says she has received over 70 critical emails which include demands that she go back to her “own country”.

Brunei-born University of WA Professor Farida Fozdar [Judging by the name she is ethnically an Indian Muslim], who moved to Australia when she was seven, said she was shocked by the national reaction to her study which also spread as far India and the United States.

“Some emails have been quite polite and I’ve been able to reply and we’ve actually had quite a positive interaction out of it which, I really really value,” Professor Fozdar said.

“But some are straight out lots of swear words and suggesting that I should go back to where I came from.

“I’ve also had a couple of emails from people implying that I’m the Grinch that killed Christmas and that now nobody is going to fly a flag because they think it shows that they’re racist.”

Professor Fozdar, a sociologist and anthropologist, said that although the study was reported “relatively accurately” in the media, some people have misinterpreted its findings.

“What has struck me most is that the media has reported the research relatively accurately in most cases, perhaps apart from some headlines, but people have taken it up in the wrong way,” Professor Fozdar said.

“People have taken it as though I was saying that anyone who flies a flag on their car for Australia Day is racist and that flying the flag generally is a racist thing to do and that certainly wasn’t what I was saying.”

Professor Fozdar said the study revealed flag-flyers were significantly less positive about Australia’s ethnic diversity than “non-flag flyers” but that the attitude is not shared by all Australians.

“The fact that there were significant differences doesn’t mean that everybody who flys the flag feel negative towards minorities but it means that a larger proportion of them did compared with people that weren’t flying flags,” she said.

Professor Fozdar said many people ignored her findings that the majority of both flag-flyers and non-flag flyers, interviewed by her research team, felt positive about Australia’s ethnic diversity.

“But that’s not what gets picked up by people,” she said. “That statistic was there, in a lot of media reports, but people took out of it that I’m saying they shouldn’t fly a flag for Australia Day because it’s racist and that we shouldn’t celebrate Australia Day. “That was just nowhere in the research and so that is what has surprised me.”

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes

Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact

Gordon Hodson et al.

Abstract

Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.

SOURCE

What the article ignores is that the mental gymnastics required by political correctness are considerable. A simple soul who sees a lot of black crime is likely to have a low opinion of blacks and say so. But, as is often said, some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual would believe them. And concluding that chronic black criminality is all Whitey’s fault is one such idea. So all the study really shows is that brighter people are more able to absorb the counterintuitive but politically correct cult that the elite have made normative in society. Only simpler people take their views from observable reality.

And we must also note that we are talking here about ADMITTED attitudes. And where some attitudes are much decried — as are racially-denominated attitudes — the truth of any admissions can only be speculated on. It could well be that attitude to blacks (say) is the same at all levels of IQ but only the simpler members of society are foolish enough to admit what they really think.

I could go on but I think it is already clear that this study proves nothing.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

(Rasmussen) Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, coming off his photo finish with Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses, is now in second place among Republican voters in the race for the party’s 2012 presidential nomination.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, taken the night after the caucuses, shows Romney again in first place with support from 29% of Likely Republican Primary Voters, followed by Santorum with 21%. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the pack in late November with 38% of the vote, now runs third with 16%. Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the third place finisher in Iowa, picks up 12% of the vote, up from eight percent (8%) in the previous survey.

The two remaining Republicans in the race, Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, each earn four percent (4%), marking essentially no change from late November. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

That’s a huge jump for Santorum, who was sitting at 4% at the time of the last poll. Mitt jumped up from his previous 23%. The question for Santorum is, can he keep it going, or will he be the flavor of the week? Particularly when some are calling him weird for bringing his dead baby home. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg puts it thusly

There is much I don’t like about Rick Santorum’s ideas, but the story of how he and his wife dealt with the tragic death of their baby is not something that bothers me. Pete Wehner has an appropriately indignant post, quoted below, about the attacks on Santorum over this issue (and he summarizes the sad story as well), but it strikes me as indecent to criticize the loving, if discomfiting, behavior of people who have just suffered the worst possible tragedy known to humankind. In in a different context (while discussing this column, about a father who made the ultimate sacrifice for his child), Pete pointed me to a quote from Euripides in which he described the death of a child as “the grief surpassing all.”

Santorum has been attacked by all manner of Democrat operatives, such as Alan Colmes and Eugene Robinson, and, yes, I do find it a little weird, but, then, it’s really not my business how he and his family handle their grief. It’s also kinda weird for parents to keep their child’s bedroom exactly as it was for years, if not decades. Many people, including commenters at Goldber’s article, and while listening to Jason Lewis, say “well, would you do it?” Here’s another question: how will the American voting public perceive personal attacks on a man and his family who were grieving for the loss of their baby? Personally, I think they will find it inappropriate, insensitive, and disgusting, and the attacks will backfire.

Oh, and when it comes to Ron Paul, well, shocker of shockers, his supporters released a video attacking Jon Huntsman for speaking Chinese and adopting a Chinese girl. It’s a typical Paulian assault on Huntsman personally. Some have called this “racist“. Huntsman has called on Paul to disavow the ad. Surprise, he hasn’t. You stay classy, Paulians!

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Each year, with the onset of Christmas, we are treated to another gauzy, fluff piece about how great Kwanzaa is by yet another PC spewing columnist. This year, among many others, we find aggrandizement such as that in The Record from New Jersey with, “Kwanzaa sheds light on pride, heritage; Celebration of African-American culture spreads,” and the Huffintgon Post with its titled, “Kwanzaa Detroit 2011: Events Celebrate Holiday’s 7 Values .” We even find such helpful sites as TeacherPlanet.com’s, “Kwanzaa Resources for Teachers.” Yes, the world is filled with celebratory lionization of Kwanzaa.

Several years ago, the Houston Chronicle got in the act with a piece by Leslie Casimir titled “Learning about Kwanzaa from the holiday’s creator.” This one, though, was a bit off the usual track of the how-great-is-Kwanzaa theme because this particular piece celebrated the inventor of the faux holiday, Maulana Karenga, himself. So, instead of merely celebrating this manufactured holiday Casimir amazingly made a hero of the rapist, race monger and violent thug who created it! To Casimir, Kwanzaa creator “Maulana Karenga” was a hero.

Casimir waxed all a’glow about how wonderful Karenga was and her column found a gullible parent who, with kid in tow, went to see the man at a local community center.

Thomasine Johnson needed to get the record straight about Kwanzaa, a cultural holiday steeped in African traditions that celebrates family, ethnic pride and community.

With her 11-year-old grandson in tow, the Missouri City interior designer on Saturday brought her video camera to S.H.A.P.E. community center to hear from Father Kwanzaa ” Maulana Karenga ” in the flesh.”

But just like the manufactured holiday he invented out of whole cloth, this “Maulana Karenga” is also a false front created out of fluff and nonsense. As it happens this supposedly great man’s real name is not really “Maulana Karenga,” but is instead Ronald McKinley Everett, AKA Maulana Ron Karenga. We’ll soon see that subterfuge, reinvention and smoke-and-mirrors are “Karenga’s” stock in trade.

Casimir gave us her version of the history of this “holiday.” It has only a short history, at that.

Created in 1966 by Karenga, a professor of black studies at California State University at Long Beach, Kwanzaa was born out of the black freedom movement of the 1960s, when the Watts riots rocked Los Angeles. It starts the day after Christmas and ends on the first day of the new year.

I love how Casimir employed the euphemism “black freedom movement” for the group that Ronald McKinley Everett “Karenga” belonged to when he created Kwanzaa. In the 60s, “Karenga” was in an organization called US (as in “us” — blacks — against “them” — whites), a black power militant group that he founded, one that frequently clashed in violence with police and even other black power groups. Members of his group even killed two Black Panthers in 1969.

Sounds like they really cared about “freedom,” eh? And what a role model for the kiddies. Yes, kindly professor Maulana Karenga. What a great guy.

Casimir seemed not to understand why people would doubt this man, though.

Still, many people don’t know much about Kwanzaa or the elusive Karenga, who shuns giving interviews to the mainstream press.

Well, it’s not surprising that he doesn’t want to give too many interviews what with his disgusting record as a violent felon and sexual criminal and all. You see, Karenga has a long criminal record. A look at his real history finds that in 1971 Everett served time in jail for assault. By then Everett had changed his name to Maulana Ron Karenga and began to affect a pseudo African costume and act the part of a native African — even though he had been born in the USA.

It wasn’t mere assault Karenga was convicted of, either. It was the sexual assault and torture that he perpetrated against some of his own female followers. The L.A. Times then reported that he placed a hot soldering iron in one woman’s mouth and used a vise to crush another’s toe, of all things.

As writer Lynn Woolley wrote of Professor “Karenga”:

And so this is Kwanzaa. The militant past of the creator is now ignored in favor of the so-called seven principles of Nguza Saba ” principles such as unity, family and self-determination that could have come from Bill Bennett’s “Book of Virtues.” The word “Kwanzaa” is Swahili, meaning something like “fresh fruits of harvest.”

No one remembers the part about “re-Africanization” or the sevenfold path of blackness that Dr. Karenga once espoused. Hardly anyone remembers the shootings, the beatings, the tortures and the prison terms that were once the center of his life. It’s just not PC to bring that sort of stuff up now that Kwanzaa is commercialized and making big bucks.

But, Casimir offers us Karenga’s prattle anyway, treating it as the advice of a sage:

“As part of the black freedom movement, we were using this to return to our history and culture,” Karenga said.

He spoke to a crowd of about 100 people ” young and old ” at the Third Ward community center, headed by Deloyd Parker, an avid promoter of Kwanzaa’s Afrocentric traditions and beliefs.

“We have to wake up that history, we have to remember ourselves in a more expansive way,” Karenga said. “To liberate ourselves as ghetto dwellers.”

In a day when the black middle class numbers in the millions and when more whites than blacks voted for a black man for president, for “Karenga” to claim that blacks are still relegated to the “ghettos” smacks of race baiting and trying to “keep hope alive” so that he can continue to cause hatred between whites and blacks.

Sadly each year the Old Media is all too happy to assist him in that “holiday” endeavor.

Happy Kwanzaa, indeed!

But maybe not everyone is fooled by the faux holiday created by a criminal? This year, for instance, Kalamazoo, Michigan decided to dispense with its public Kwanzaa celebration. In fact, few cities worry over much about this so-called holiday.

Even some African Americans are not fooled into accepting Kwanzaa. As Jenice Armstrong from Philadelphia wrote in 2010, the “truth is that Kwanzaa has never caught on with the majority of black Americans.”

Of course if it weren’t for an Old Media establishment that had given this Karenga’s criminality a wholesale whitewashing, this faux holiday could never have gained the little traction it got in the first place. Put it this way, imagine if famed Ku Klux Klan member David Duke had created a holiday. Do you think the Old Media would have happily sold his creation to a misinformed public without mentioning Duke’s personal history? Not a chance, and rightfully so.