Quiz time on this beautiful summer day to start the Memorial Day weekend.
Who is the racist?
Is it Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who posed as black and even scored a post as an NAACP official — to the wonderment of her red-haired parents? We thought she had enjoyed her 15 minutes of shame but now this poster child for identity politics has been charged with criminal welfare fraud.
Dolezal legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016. Now she (gender legally not changed, apparently) is accused of stealing $8,847 in food and child care assistance dating back to August 2015. More here.
Ms. Whatever her name, race or serial number said she “identifies” as black, which is as good a reason as any to discontinue any and all designations of race on all official and unofficial forms. Meaningless at best, harmful more likely.
Or is our racist of the day Mr. Donald Trump? The liberal illuminati assure us the President is a secret Klansman with bespoke white sheets and monogrammed hoods.
Thursday 05-24-18, Trump pardons the first black heavyweight boxing champ, Jack Johnson, convicted by an all-white jury in the Jim Crow era (1913) for transporting a (white) woman across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Here is the line in today’s Wall Street Journal report that struck me:
Congress had moved previously to pardon but that no president had ever signed it, and [Trump] was eager to do so.
Not Barack Obama in eight years? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
Killer quote of the day: “The president credited Sylvester Stallone for bringing the Johnson pardon to his attention. Members of Congress including John McCain have been pushing for the move for years and lobbied then-President Barack Obama when he was in office.” Attending the ceremony in addition to Rocky I through VIII were Jack Johnson’s descendants and two recent boxing champions, Lennox Lewis and Deontay Wilder.
It’s a chess match, not a drag race
Great minds think alike but Ann of Althouse beat us to it. Morning headlines read that the Trump/Lil’ Kim parlay is off. Ann notes that “Trump’s antagonists are enjoying themselves over the break in the momentum toward a North Korean deal.” Her blog reproduces a spate of gleeful Washington Post headlines depicting the cessation of negotiations. The New York Times is no better. Get a load of this hyperbole:
• “Trump’s Relationship with North Korea Just Got More Dangerous”
• “How Trump Got Outplayed on North Korea”
• Think Military Strikes Could Stop North Korea? Try It and See
• “The Off-Again Meeting with North Korea,” by The Editorial Board. “President Trump now needs to corral his renegade advisers and resist the name-calling to get diplomacy back on track.” If you say so, liberals. But probably not.
This is Trump Derangement Syndrome in its hospice phase. Ann observes:
The process isn’t over, and I assume it’s a deal-making dance in which breaks like this a part of the process. Isn’t that what Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal and has talked about innumerable times? Trump haters shouldn’t exult over his failure until they see how this ends. And maybe even then, they shouldn’t exult. Don’t we all want a better, safer world? Or is seeing Trump fail better?
Probably the latter, according to the Eisenhower-era mainframe here at the Werkes. The Resistance, which includes the Times and the Post, have too much invested in overthrowing the President. But we thought the same thing, Ann: Lil’ Kim moved his bishop a while back and now Trump has moved his knight. International negotiations don’t start at the table! They start with the size, shape and location of the table! History, people! Indeed, this morning the Wall Street Journal advises:
“Trump, Shifting Tone, Tweets Hopefully about North Korea.
Tweet marks another reversal in tenor of rhetoric as two countries move
toward possible nuclear summit.”
Speaking of the Trump-deranged news media, how is it that they give a pass to prosecutors? Why is it impossible that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign, as Trump insists? Wisconsin knows how rogue prosecutors operating in secret can abuse civil liberties. Rousting private citizens in pre-dawn raids on their homes for the supposed crime of “colluding” with their elected government officials in furtherance of their shared political beliefs. That is a crime?
Turns out that LBJ (why are we not surprised?) sicced the CIA and the FBI on Barry Goldwater in the 1964 campaign, with spies and wiretaps, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The indentured servants here at the Manor identify as Bokonoists, the unlettered field hands as Ruritanians, and the white lab coats at the Policy Werkes are ENIACs, version 1.2.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend and remember the fallen who preserved our freedoms.
Police advocates last week presented each of 20 alders and Mayor Soglin with copies of Heather Mac Donald’s book, War on Cops. The gift is intended as 
Pretty much demolishes the “Cops Out of Our Schools” argument here. The Madison school board committee that has been considering expelling EROs from school is strangely quiescent. Its chairman, Dean Loumos, had said the committee would will hold four listening sessions for public comment in April to respond to its final recommendations. April has come and gone and May is expiring and no public hearings? Nor do we see any future meetings scheduled.
Over the weekend, Nicolás Maduro was reinstalled as the Cuban-style socialist president of Venezuela, a resource-rich country rapidly sliding into a hunter-gatherer economy. Not that the election was free or fair, either. It was run on the Cuban model.
Written by an associate professor of poly sci at Roosevelt University (located in greater Chicago and “committed to social justice”), It’s Time to Fight Dirty argues, in 
The unemployment number for the month of April is out and it is an astoundingly low, can-you-believe it 2.8%. This is in territory called “full employment,” people.
