What significance does the number 71 have in relation to President Barack H. Obama?
Take your time.
It isn’t a trick question.
No, it’s not the number of “trillions” that will comprise the national debt once he’s done bankrupting the nation’s future. No, it’s not the number of times he used the words “I” or “me” during his recent “Fall of the Berlin Wall” pre-recorded speech. It isn’t the number of people turned in by fellow citizens during President Obama’s “Please Snitch on Anyone Who Talks Bad About My Health Care Plan” initiative earlier this year. It isn’t the amount of apologies he’s issued for the sins of his own country. It isn’t the amount of teleprompters he has in tow whenever he speaks. It isn’t the amount of times he has bowed to foreign heads of state. It isn’t even how many states he thinks make up the United States.
It is, in fact, the number of vehicles that made of Barack Obama’s motorcade as he traveled from Beijing airport.
Seventy-one!
Of course, I’m no climactic virtuoso (like, say, Al Gore or Leonardo DiCaprio), but unless those cars were powered by an army of hamsters under the hood, I’m guessing that motorcade must’ve been a veritable orgy of greenhouse gas emissions.
Not that it matters to me, mind you, but isn’t that one hell of a carbon footprint?
How many misfiring synapses does it take to enable one to come to the conclusion that moving incarcerated terrorists from a detention facility in Cuba to the mainland United States is a good idea? Uprooting human debris hell-bent on destroying America from a perfectly functioning maximum security military installation so that they can be locked up in America is the embodiment of absurdity. Where else but from the muddled minds of liberals could such thinking come? Where else but from the left could such a plan be born?
President Obama has said that Gitmo’s mere existence has served as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. Thus, in Obama-speak, it stands to reason that once these terrorists are transported to the American mainland, recruitment for the terrorist organization will begin to fall off, right? Those who would have thought nothing about strapping bombs across the chests of their children to kill infidels will rethink their positions if the enemies of America could actually be moved here. Osama bin Ladin’s heart will surely soften once these jihadists are living in the midwest.
Makes sense, no?
Setting aside whatever anti-Bush motivations there are concerning this obsessive need among Obamacrats to close Guantanamo Bay, proponents of the terrorist transplant plan claim that it will also be a huge economic boost.
If [the Thomson Correctional facility] is acquired by the federal government, [it] would be run as a supermax facility housing federal prisoners. A portion of it would be leased to the Defense Department for a “limited number” of Guantanamo detainees — about 100, according to Durbin. About 215 prisoners are now at Guantanamo.
[Senator Dick] Durbin’s office has been quarterbacking the potential sale of the prison through a series of meetings between the White House and [Governor Pat] Quinn, who is looking to generate revenues for the cash-strapped state.
According to an economic impact analysis by the Obama administration, the federal purchase and operation of Thomson could generate $1 billion for the local economy over four years and create between 2,340 and 3,250 jobs.
Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. Everybody wins, yes?
Here’s the problem.
Every one of those jobs is a government job. That means every one of those employees’ salaries would come at the taxpayers’ expense. That means all of that money would be sucked out of the economy first before it is redistributed in the form of paychecks.
Stimulating.
Durbin and Quinn called the possibility of opening such a facility in their state “a dream come true.”
That’s three thousand new jobs that can be added to the billions and billions of new jobs that have already been created by this administration.
Can they stop badgering him with these incessant questions about Afghanistan? Is there nothing else to talk about? Do these mainstream media one-trick ponies realize the war there is not the only topic on planet Earth? Do they not understand that their one-dimensional appraoch to journalism is going to irritate the big man to no end if they keep pestering him about it?
It must be incredibly difficult for President Barack Obama to have to deal with persistent nagging from belligerent elements of the press corps (no doubt Limbuagh-dispatched insurgents) about his plans for Afghanistan when there are other matters to tend to, such as how good he looks and how cool he sounds. It must baffle him to no end trying to figure out how the right-wing managed to infiltrate the mainstream media. Who else but they would keep hassling him about this? A trip to Asia is no place to discuss foreign policy, especially when there are heads of state yet to bow to, apologies yet to be made, and American soldiers in harm’s way yet to blow off.
In Shanghai yesterday, the President’s panties were, indeed, in a twist as yet another tedious inquiry about Afghanistan came at him.
President Barack Obama made no effort to conceal his irritation when his press corps used the first question of his maiden Far East trip to ask what was taking him so long on Afghanistan.
Jennifer Loven of The Associated Press had asked: “Can you explain to people watching and criticizing your deliberations what piece of information you’re still lacking to make that call.”
“With respect to Afghanistan, Jennifer,” the president scolded, “I don’t think this is a matter of some datum of information that I’m waiting on. … Critics of the process … tend not to be folks who … are directly involved in what’s happening in Afghanistan. Those who are, recognize the gravity of the situation and recognize the importance of us getting this right.”
The cool president’s heated response reflected second-guessing from the press and Pentagon about a process that has spanned eight formal meetings with his war cabinet, totaling about 20 hours.
The White House has been deliberately portraying the process as thorough, emphasizing the opposing views the president has considered, as a way of positing a contrast with President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
How exasperating it must be for Barack H. Obama. The press is so captivated, so bedeviled, with the damn war, they’re completely missing these golden presidential photo opportunities. Does the press corps ever think of anything besides itself?
David Alexrod, White House senior advisor, blames this obsession with trying to get Obama to act presidential and take a decision about Afghanistan as a symptom of the “A.D.D. policial culture.”
Yeah, it’s us.
Where was this “thorough” deliberation process when the monumental failure known as the Stimulus Bill became the law of the land in about thirteen nanoseconds?
The fact is, Afghanistan – like everything else with Barack OBama – is still all about George W. Bush.
Obama knows that the moment any kind of decision on Afghanistan is taken, the war becomes his. And the moment he owns it, he can no portray himself as a victim.
Remember how critical it was that Congress pass the Stimulus Bill? Remember how vital it was for the country’s well-being? Remember how its passage was essential to preserve America’s very existence? There wasn’t a moment to waste. It was so urgent, by golly, that there wouldn’t even enough time for anyone to sit down read the thing. Action had to be taken as soon as humanly possible, lest disaster strike. The United States, after all, was on the brink of complete and utter collapse.
Remember how quickly President Obama announced that he’d be shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba after taking the Oath of Office? His inaugural waffle hadn’t even gotten cold yet before he was telling the world that the splendidly effective, incredibly efficient, perfectly secure terrorist prison would have to be shut down. Mind you, Obama had no alternate plan for the terrorists, nor was he ever able to convey a coherent reason for closing the facility. Nonetheless, he acted swiftly.
Remember when the President said, in regard to the threat of global warming, that “the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear”? Remember how he explained that “few challenges facing America — and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change”? Without a shred of evidence anywhere to support the hysterical belief that increasing CO2 levels are killing the Earth - and with thousands and thousands of years of evidence showing that climate does, in fact, change of its own accord - Obama didn’t spare a second beginning his full frontal assult on “climate change.”
He can be an impulsive bugger at times.
Obama wasted no time in facilitating the government takeover of auto makers. He didn’t hesitate to put the kibosh on the Eastern European missile defense shield. He thought nothing of saying that a recession was the wrong time for corporate profits. He was (and still is) quick to apologize for his own nation on foreign soil. Without a moment’s dithering, he was postive he couldn’t be sure when human life begins, yet knew enough to err on the side of killing the unborn. He was quick to condemn the Cambridge Massachusetts Police Department for “stupidly” handling the arrest of his race-obsessed friend, Professor Henry Louis Gates, without knowing the facts. He has instinctively rolled over for Iran, while alienating America’s allies.
And let us not forget ObamaCare.
In the mere blink of an eye he is prepared to create the most astronomicaly crippling debt this, or any other, nation has ever seen. Without as much as a batting eyelash, he is more than ready to saddle generation after generation with tax burdens unheard of in American history. Without breaking a sweat, he is eager to expand the federal government to levels that would have garnered a tip of the hat from FDR.
And yet …
When it comes to the war in Afghanistan – the fight he called the “war of necessity” – he just can’t seem to figure it out. Despite months and months to come up with a plan of action for what he said repeatedly was the central front in the fight against Al Qaeda, he just doesn’t know. Despite recommendations from the best military minds in the world, he just can’t seem find it in himself to do much of anything but wait. With American soldiers in harm’s way waiting for their Commander-in-Chief to finally act the part, President Obama says he wants to take it slow and come up with the best solution. So far, he’s rejected all proposed plans up to this point.
What the hell?
Afghanistan was Obama’s easy call, remember? This was the fight that America needed to be focused on all along, right? This was the “good war,” wasn’t it?
And yet, less than two weeks away from Thanksgiving, still nothing.
No, he’s not trying to steal a peak at a shoe-top teleprompter, nor is he offering the Emperor of Japan a closer look at his cool hair cut.
Yes, I know photos of this moment are making the rounds in cyberspace this weekend, as they ought to be.
People need to take a good look at this image.
Frankly, there really isn’t a whole heck of a lot I could say or add that hasn’t been done elsewhere far more eloquently or cleverly than I could.
The fact is, the President of the United States – this country’s head of state – has been caught, once again, bowing to another nation’s head of state. And although it isn’t a sign of disrespect not to do so, the most powerful man in the world keeps volunteering to show off his scalp to anyone who’ll look. It isn’t just embarrassing. It isn’t just inappropriate. It is absolutely unnecessary. Barack Obama isn’t a traveling business executive respecting the cultural landscape of his host country. He is not an ordinary civilian traveling in Japan with a tour group. He is the damn President of the United States. He bows to no one.
Or, at least, that’s how it should be.
And no, this wasn’t a little tiny tip of the head. This wasn’t a modest gesture done out of respect – which would have been unnecessary anyway, given that the two men also shook hands. This was an acquiescent, obsequious, servile full-body bend-over unbecoming of the President of the United States.
Americans simply do not bow to foreign monarchs. Period.
Personally, I think this latest bow may be a bit deeper than the one Obama offered to the Saudi King in April.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in reacting to the pathetic and irresponsible decision taken by the Obama administration to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorists to civilian court, reminded us all, in an interview with Neil Cavuto of Fox News, what the 9/11 attacks really were:
This was an act of war. One of things I thought we learned from September 11th is that we were in a state of denial before September 11th. We went through this once before in 1993. We had terrorists attack the World Trade Center. We did not recognize it as an act of war. We tried them in the Southern District in New York. It did no good.
President Barack Obama is following through on his promise to undo everything Bush by gradually emptying out the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
What better way to do it than to yank terrorists from the security of Gitmo and send them to an American city to face a jury not comprised of their peers? And what better place to bestow rights onto those who are not entitled to them than in New York City?
As disgusting as this is – and, I assure you, it doesn’t get more reprehensible than conferring Constitutional rights on terrorists – it should come as no surprise to anyone.
52.7% of your fellow countrymen voted for this.
While he was still a candidate, then-Senator Barack Obama was talking constitutionality – which in itself was (and still is) enough to send the short hairs on the back of my neck to attention. He launched an attack against then-Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her position on the so-called rights of terrorist suspects, referencing Palin’s comments in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last summer.
She said (referring to then-Senator Obama):
Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay … he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America … he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights?
Obama’s response:
First of all, you don’t even get to read them their rights until you catch ‘em. They (the Republicans) should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later. My position has always been clear: If you’ve got a terrorist, take him out. Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take ‘em out.”
Obama saw himself as defending the Constitution (in some sick, twisted way) as he went after Governor Palin, supporting the issuance of rights to terrorist suspects because, as he put is, “we don’t always have the right person.”
If this wasn’t the atomic alarm of all alarms, then nothing ever could have been.
How was Obama able to reach the conclusion that Osama bin Ladin was a terrorist without affording him access to the legal protections outlined in the Constitution? What criteria was he using to make that determination? How could Obama want to “take out” bin Ladin without granting him his Constitutional rights?
And if I am being obtuse here, then allow to me ask the question the other way. Wasn’t Sadam Hussein a terrorist? Or, at the very least, the leader of a state that sponsored terrorists? Didn’t we “take him out?”
Of course, it would have been interesting for someone at the time to point out that Obama supported the Washington, D.C. handgun ban, which is unconstitutional.
Kettle meet pot.
And now, more than a year later, the circus of all circuses – one that will needlessly cost the American taxpayer tens of millions of dollars – will begin only blocks from where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood. The Attorney General, Eric Holder, will seek the death penalty against the five men who have already said – repeatedly - they want to die. (At least they’re on the same page). The courtroom will serve as a stage from which these reprehensible terrorists – war criminals – will be given the opportunity to spew their hate, justify the murders of nearly three-thousand innocents, and hide behind the Constitutional protections afforded them by the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
Absolutely disgraceful.
If undoing the endless malignancies of the Bush era means putting American lives in danger, so be it.
It’s been floating around the internet for some time now. Some attribute its origins to a “definition of contemporary terms” contest held at Texas AM a couple of years ago. Others say it is older than that.
Personally, I don’t care how “old” it is; I still find it incredibly funny and most appropriate.
I was reminded of it while listening to Dr. Laura’s radio program on Wednesday. Someone sent this in to the show, via e-mail. Much to her credit, she read it on the air.
It’s worth repeating.
And for those of you who haven’t heard it before, be sure to read it more than once.
So then, what is the definition of “political correctness?”
Political correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
All it takes is shining a spotlight on liberals, and affording them the opportunity to step out from the security of their abstractions, to get people to open their eyes. Once lefties are forced to go beyond bumper sticker rhymes and pretty protest signs and actually elucidate the details of their destructive plans and schemes, Americans begin to see the light.
For years, the notion of having the federal government responsible for the health care of the American people, to many, didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Inasmuch as most folks didn’t invest too much time or energy digging into the matter, on its surface, it really didn’t sound particularly offensive. As a concept, it simply didn’t trouble most to think of someone else (i.e., the federal government) footing the bill for their health care costs. In fact, since November, 2001, Gallup consistently found that a majority of Americans believed that health care was the responsibility of the federal government.
That is, until now.
For the first time since Gallup began asking the question eight years ago in an annual poll, more Americans now say that health care is not the responsibility of the federal government.
How about that?
For eight years, Gallup has been posing the following question:
Do you think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have heath care coverage, or is that not the responsibility of the federal government?
In this year’s poll, 50% said no, compared to 47% who said yes.
As recently as three years ago, nearly 7 in 10 Americans said that it was the responsibility of the federal government to provide health care coverage for all Americans.
The reason behind this shift is unknown. Certainly the federal government’s role in the nation’s healthcare system has been widely and vigorously debated over the last several months, including much focus on the “public option.” These data suggest that one result of the debate has been a net decrease in Americans’ agreement that ensuring all Americans have healthcare coverage is an appropriate role for the federal government.
If I may be so bold …
The reason is pretty clear to me: Liberals have had ten months to yak about it – and thus expose it for unsustainable, liberty-eroding, financial disaster that it is.
To that end, I invite all ObamaCare-supporting liberals – from the garden variety, off-the-rack, big-government types to the slobbering post-Clinton, anti-Bush, transformation-happy, Marxist wanna-bes – to keep finding hot microphones to speak into. I encourage all socialized-medicine enthusiasts who have made a lifetime’s work out of repeating insipid platitudes and vapid bromides (without ever having to fully explicate their feel-good, pie-in-the-sky utopian aspirations) to continue yapping into any camera they can find.
There are those who go out and create things and those who have contempt for the people who do. There are those who innovate and those who castigate. There are those who believe in the power of the individual and those who put their faith in the state. There are those with common sense and those who are liberal. There are those who understand that climates fluctuate (and always have) and those who thrive on the hysteria of believing the planet is soon to be trampled by carbon footprints.
Enter Lord Smith of Finsbury – British Labour party politician, former cabinet member, former Member of Parliament, Chairman of the Environment Agency, meteorological academician.
In the great big world of pretend, the certainty of a planet on the brink of ruination due to out-of-control carbon emissions is a somber one. In the land of make believe, there is nothing more serious, no greater threat to humanity – not terrorism, not war, not economic strife. All roads lead to polar bears adrift on blocks of ice.
Finsbury knows something must be done.
According to this cerebral powerhouse, all British citizens should be allotted an annual carbon ration – a kind of carbon credit card – which “will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.”
There would, of course, be penalties for those who exceed their carbon emission limits.
It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity.
Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using. If their “carbon account” hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits.
Those who are frugal with their carbon usage will be able to sell their unused credits and make a profit.
How would such a thing work? Would someone who reached their carbon emissions limit be forbidden by the government from, say, buying more gas for their car? And if that someone’s budget doesn’t allow for the purchase of more carbon credits, is that someone out of luck? Can he or she no longer work? Will the green shirts come swooping in on their environmentally friendly bikes and haul that someone away? Will taxes be raised so more money could become available, via government grants and loans (or welfare), to the people who cannot afford to buy more credits?
Is leftism an inherent disease or is it spread through casual contact?
An Environment Agency spokesman said only those with “extravagant lifestyles” would be affected by the carbon allowances. He said: “A lot of people who cycle will get money back. It will probably only be bankers and those with extravagant lifestyles who would lose out.”
However, some have criticised the move as “Orwellian” and say it will have a detrimental impact on business.
Let’s say, for instance, you brought your car to a local mechanic and ultimately wound up getting horrible service. Aside from the aggravation and frustration, you’d probably feel as if you’ve been swindled out of your hard earned money.
Now for the sake of this discussion, let’s say that a year later, despite your better judgment, you decide to give that mechanic one more try, only to have a similarly negative experience. In both instances, the customer service was dreadful and you were made to feel like an inconvenience. To top it off, you were overcharged and made to wait far longer than you should have.
Would you ever go back?
How about an accounting firm charged with balancing the books for your small business? Let’s say for three years running, the firm had so mismanaged your ledgers – and ultimately your tax returns – that the IRS decided to audit you.
Do you stick with them, figuring the fourth year to be the one where everything will finally be set right?
Or do you kick them to the curb (which you probably should have done two years ago)?
And what about the federal government?
Let’s say they passed into law a $787 billion Stimulus bill that was supposed to, by definition, “stimulate” economic growth by creating as many as 3.7 million new jobs across the country. And let’s say after nine months or so, with only a percentage of the money “infused” into the economy, the federal government started claiming that their hyper-spending was working – that the money they “invested” in America was saving or creating a whole lot of jobs, just as promised.
And let’s say not too long after the federal government made such a claim, news reports started coming out refuting those government assertions as being “wildly exaggerated.”
Not “marginally incorrect.”
Not “inappreciably erroneous.”
Not “slightly off.”
But “wildly exaggerated.”
And let’s say that during this time period, unemployment figures were still on the rise.
And let’s say those miscalculations by the federal government were only one in a long line of grossly inaccurate claims made by them, ultimately costing the taxpayers trillions of dollars, creating an endless labyrinth of government bureaucracy, and rewarding inefficiency with more of the people’s hard earned money.
Would you then feel confident enough to trust them to run your health care delivery system?
(Keep in mind that the current government-run health delivery systems – Medicare and Medicaid – have been disgustingly mismanaged by the same federal government).
On one hand, President Barack Obama is now claiming that his Spendulous Bill has saved or created one million jobs. One million jobs. All the while, the unemployment rate is as high as it’s been in one-quarter century … and rising.
On the other, the Boston Globe – not exactly a buttress of conservatism – says that the messianic claims being peddled by Bammy, at least in Massachusetts, are “wildly exaggerated.”
While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.
…
One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’
…
In other cases, federal money that recipients already receive annually – subsidies for affordable housing, for example – was reclassified this year as stimulus spending, and the existing jobs already supported by those programs were credited to stimulus spending.
…
“There were no jobs created. It was just shuffling around of the funds,’’ said Susan Kelly, director of property management for Boston Land Co., which reported retaining 26 jobs with $2.7 million in rental subsidies for its affordable housing developments in Waltham. “It’s hard to figure out if you did the paperwork right. We never asked for this.”
Other examples from across the country illustrating the fairy-tale that is the Obama Million-Job-Farce include two Colorado child development centers that reported saving or creating 292 jobs. In actuality, the vast majority of the money was used to give cost-of-living raises. In all, only three new jobs were created.
In Washington, 34,500 jobs were supposedly saved or created – 24,000 of which were teaching positions. Stimulus money was used to cover paychecks, hence the claim of having “saved” the jobs. Unfortunately for the Bammy-Number-Crunching Machine, none of those jobs were in danger of going away because the money needed to cover those salaries would have come out of the state general fund. Those teachers were already contracted to finish the school year.
In Danville, Virginia, $35,000 is said to have created or saved 50 jobs. That’s quite a claim. In truth, the money didn’t create a single job – nor did it save any – but it did improve fifty already existing jobs. It went for raises, training, and playground repair.
In the Columbus, Ohio School District, where 36 school administrators were supposedly on the brink of being laid off, it turns out that no one was on the brink of being let go. There were only two options for officials to choose from on the form they were required to fill out for receiving stimulus money: “created” or “saved.” Since the jobs already existed, the only choice left was “saved.”
Stimulus money is said to have saved the jobs of 473 teachers in North Chicago. Unfortunately, the district only employs 290 teachers.
As talk show host Mark Levin said on his radio program yesterday, if Barack Obama were on the witness stand and made the million jobs claim under oath, he’d be a perjurer.
And yet, the federal government will somehow suddenly get it right and be trusted to manage the health care needs of Americans.
I’ve got a whole lot of “hip hip hoorays” stashed away in a special place, most of which have remained unused since November 4th of last year. They’re easily replenished when the need arises, but it really hasn’t been necessary for a year or so.
Admittedly, there have been a few oases in an otherwise barren landscape of leftist flapdoodle. On occassion, over the course of ten months, I have been able to let out a few fist-pumps here and there – such as when House Republicans unanimously voted against the Obama stimulus package, or when tea party attendees vigorously voiced their opposition to runaway government spending, or when town-hall meetings gave anti-ObamaCare protestors a place to have their concerns heard, or when Republicans won the governorships of two states (including New Jersey) on Election Day.
For the most part, however, my fist-pumping inventory remains in tact, itching to be summoned.
Indeed, for lovers of liberty, it is a backwards time. Not only is the President hell-bent on making sure government will grow as large as conceivably possible in the shortest amount of time, but he just can’t seem to find a kind word to say about his own country – other than it somehow found a way to negotiate through two centuries of injustice and elect a black man to the top spot.
But what makes this time in history all the more remarkable is the fact that people like me (haters, dividers, self-absorbed kitten-kickers) are finding that when we do pull out a “hip hip hooray” it is more often than not being directed at the President of France than the President of the United States – and that just downright defies the laws of existence.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, you’ll recall, sent the panties of the left into an atomic twist with his pro-America chatter after his election in 2007. It was he who said he wanted to “reconquer the heart of America.” It is he who said he loved America and her values. It is he who said, referencing the Americans who fought in World War II, “The children of my generation understood that these young Americans, 20 years old, were true heroes to whom they owed the fact that they were free people and not slaves. France will never forget the sacrifice of your children.”
And now, Mr. Sarkozy, well prepared for the slings and arrows that will inevitably come his way, says that burqas have no place in French society.
Sarkozy says all beliefs will be respected in France but says “becoming French means adhering to a form of civilization, to values, to morals.”
Sarkozy said Thursday during a speech on national identity that “France is a country where there is no place for the burqa.” France has a large Muslim community but only a small minority of French Muslim women wear burqas, common in Afghanistan, or other face-covering veils.
Sarkozy said in June that burqas would not be welcome in France. Since then a parliamentary panel has been looking into the possibility of banning them in public.
Sarkozy is talking assimilation, and I like it. Sarkozy is talking values, and I applaud him. He’s talking about preserving the dignity of women, and nothing is more relevant.
He deserves a huge “hip hip hooray.”
That every feminist group in all of God’s creation is not erecting statues to Mr. Sarkozy – or President Bush, for that matter – or organizing rallies in his honor, or having coffee mugs made with his likeness, is almost a travesty. Sarkozy has the courage to say what needs to be said. What could be more pro-woman that to speak out against such an oppressive symbol?
But is a national restriction on wearing burqas in public the right thing to do?
Can it be justified?
I am certainly no expert on French culture, but isn’t an outright ban a bit too much?
Isn’t that a line better left uncrossed?
On one hand, it cannot be disputed by reasonable minds that to cover one’s face is to conceal one’s humanity. To do so is a representation of subservience with no other purpose than to eradicate a woman’s identity. It is designedly alienating and subjugating. It’s objective is to strip away dignity. It is demeaning.
In short, the burqa is not a benign religious symbol. Rather, it is a prison.
In fact, let me further my position by saying that women who wear burqas in this country should be made to remove them when required by law, like, for instance, being photographed for a driver’s license. The human face is, after all, the best and most efficient way to be identified.
On the other hand, I have a difficult time justifying the governmentally-imposed injunction of a piece of clothing simply because I (and others) find the practice utterly contemptible. While I personally view the wearing of burqas as not only a slap in the face to the women hidden by them, but a kick in the groin to the society providing the freedom to do so, is that enough to condone a governmental prohibiton?
Where, then, does it end?
Of course, I pose this question as an American, using this nation’s promise of liberty and religious freedom as my catalyst. It means nothing in the context of what should or should not happen in France – a nation that has long ago gone the way of Europe as a whole, all but abandoning its religious past. Conditions are obviously different in that nation than they are here. The assimilation of foreigners takes on a much different dynamic in France than it does in the United States.
America remains the most accommodating nation on Earth – including her acceptance of Muslims.
Still, I applaud Nicholas Sarkozy. His mission is to protect his country from her enemies, including those radical Muslims elements that mean to inflict it irreparable harm. That mission also includes preserving the French system of values and morality. That he has the courage to denounce the dehumanizing aspects of a foreign value set is more than worthy of a “hip hip hooray.”
Earlier this week, President Barack Obama spoke with Jake Tapper of ABC News.
Tapper: Do you think it’s appropriate to have a threat of jail time for those who refuse to buy insurance?
Obama: You know, what I think is appropriate is that in the same way everybody has to get auto insurance – and if you don’t, you’re subject to some penalty – if you have the ability to buy insurance, and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everyone else to subsidize you, there’s nothing wrong with a penalty.
To begin with, the federal government does not mandate that drivers carry automobile insurance.
Second, automobile insurance is required only if one chooses to drive. It is up to the individual whether or not they do so. Driving is not mandated by the government. Those, for example, who live in major metropolitan areas with no need for a car are not required, by law, to purchase automobile insurance.
It’s a fairly simple concept.
Third, the very idea that President Obama – or any leftist – would suddenly have any objection to the practice of one group subsidizing another is about as comical as listening to Rosie O’Donnell discuss foreign policy, or Michael Moore offer advice on grooming.
Where exactly does this indignation come from? And how can anyone take it seriously?
Sane-minded, clear-thinking Americans are now to believe that Barack Obama, all of a sudden, opposes subsidies?
What?!
The entire damn health care bill is a multi-trillion dollar subsidy plan!
Finally, answer the bloody question, Mr. President.
Say it this way: “Yes, I think the threat of jail time is appropriate.”
Tapper: As the Senate puts its final bill together, they should know, does the President think jail time is an appropriate–
Obama: I’m not sure that’s the biggest question that they’re asking right now. I think I put out the principal that penalties are appropriate for people who try to free ride the system and force others to pay for their health insurance.
And if it isn’t the “biggest” question they’re asking, so what? Isn’t it a fair inquiry, even if it’s the second biggest? Or the fifth biggest? Isn’t it even just a little bit appropriate for lawmakers to know whether or not American citizens are subject to being arrested and thrown in the can for not purchasing health insurance?
To hear America’s most leftist president ever – a man who believes redistribution of wealth is a moral obligation – talk about punishing people who “free ride” the system is downright creepy. Maybe that gap in the time-space continuum I keep talking about has finally appeared. Perhaps the earth has a slipped off its spindle. Maybe I’m stuck in a medically induced coma.
In truth, it is President Obama who is forcing Americans – even those yet to be born – to pay for the health insurance of others.
And do these “appropriate penalties” apply to illegal aliens? Public housing dwellers? Welfare recipients?
Fair questions, no?
So, to summarize … In Bammy’s world, law abiding Americans should be incarcerated because of his socialist, government-solves-all-problems vision for the United States. Hard working, tow-the-line, free citizens of the United States should be thrown in jail because Obamacrats believe the greatest health care delivery system in the world should be completely turned on its head to more resemeble ineffective, heavily-rationed European models.
One can only imagine the quandaries and complications that the most powerful man in the world must face on a daily basis. This goes way beyond having to decide which teleprompter to read from or how many waffles to eat before shooting hoops. This is exponentially more complex than crafting new and interesting ways to blame his own country for the ills of the world or deciding what is and isn’t terrorism. When one is both President of the United States and water walker, the challenges are prodigious – far beyond the likes of those that mere tea baggers and anti-government extremists must contend with.
-“Should I mention myself only once or twice in my Fall of the Berlin Wall Commemoration speech?”
-“Isn’t it important to describe how *I* felt after the Fort Hood “tragedy”?”
-“When do I tell everybody that it is their pleasure to have me as their supreme leader?”
It isn’t easy.
And thanks to everyone’s favorite whack-job totalitarian, President Barack Obama’s got even more decisions he’ll have to deal with.
It will be very interesting to see how the President - the man who launched a thousand indecisions – responds to an ultimatum given him by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Speaking in Istanbul at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Iranian president said that it was up to US President Barack Obama to realize his motto of “change”.
“The support of both Israel and Iran can’t go hand in hand,” he was quoted as saying by IRNA. “No change is made unless great choices are made.
“We would welcome the changes, and wait for big and correct decisions to be made… We will clasp any hand that is extended sincerely toward us, but changes should be made in practice.”
No doubt, it will please Ahmadinejad to no end knowing that President Obama is, in fact, all about change.
And hope, too.
And transformation.
In fact, helping things to fall into place for Bammy and his cooler-than-cool enlightened foreign polcy cats, is Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, William Burns, who, on Tuesday, told the Middle East Institute in Washington that the “U.S. recognizes the Iranian regime’s “right” to nuclear power, does not seek regime change and is ready for more talks with Iran.”
(This thing practically writes itself).
Said Burns:
We seek a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. We do not seek regime change. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. With our partners in the international community, we have demonstrated our willingness to take creative confidence-building steps, including our support for the IAEA’s offer of fuel for the Tehran research reactor.
Okay.
And then pretty flowers will bloom everywhere, fuzzy bunnies will prance across the rolling fields of brotherhood, beautiful puffy clouds will waft whimsically across skies of endless blue, and all the people of the world will join hands and sing songs of love and peace.
For some reason, I hear the following play out in my head:
Okay, Mr. Child Molestor. I have to run to the store. I’m trusting you to watch my kids because you said your child raping days are behind you, and you’re not even interested in pre-teens anymore. I believe you. I believe in second chances. I’ll be back as soon as I can. The girls’ room is upstairs, second door on the right. They’ll probably just sleep righ through. There’s soda in the fridge.
You see my point.
The real question is … why stop at Israel and Iran?
Why not present the always-ready-to-negotiate Barack Obama with a choice between secular government and Sharia law? Or between Islam and Christianity? Or between Holocaust and Holocaust denial?
I thought I’d kick off my Thursday morning with a little poll jabber.
As you may or may not know, the Presidential Approval Index is tabulated by combining the percentages of people who strongly approve of the President with those who strongly disapprove. Rasmussen currently has President Barack Obama’s Approval Index at -10 (30% strong approval, 40% strong disapproval). In recent times, his rating has dipped as low as -13 (last Wednesday), and has gotten as “high” as -7 (Saturday).
Overall, his less-than-impressive Approval Index has been fairly consistent for months now.
For those keeping score at home, the President hasn’t had a positive rating since June 29th. (The highest of his presidency occurred two days after his inauguration when he hit +30).
Can you say “decisive trend?”
And if the ouster of two Democrat governors last week wasn’t enough of an indicator, Rasmussen shows that Republican candidates continue to expand their lead over Dems in the Generic Congressional Ballot. The lead is now six points.
Not bad.
Even those who claim no affiliation with either of the two major parties are favoring the GOP by 23 points.
Ouch, donkeys.
Still, as I wrote about yesterday, in a world where former President Bill Clinton and his perceptions actually have some relevance, we conservatives – or “tea baggers” as he called us – are “inflamed” because Democrats are “winning.”
Whatever you say, Mr. Hillary.
While other polling firms appear to show different results on the generic ballot, Real Clear Politics explains the differences in survey samples and question ordering, stating “if you are asking which pollsters have it right, I’d probably put my money on Gallup-Rasmussen.”
And as far as Pelosi-ObamaCare is concerned:
Over the weekend, Democratic leaders said the House’s passage of health care reform legislation was an historic moment. But public opinion remains unchanged: 45% favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, and 52% oppose it.
That 45% will shrink, guaranteed.
Some other things of note in the Rasmussen poll:
-6 in 10 Americans think the massacre at Fort Hood last week needs to be investigated by the military as a terrorist act.
-Only 46% approve of the President’s overall performance.
-Two-thirds of Americans are against any law that would ban the sale of big screen TVs for the purpose of saving energy.
-1 out of 1 contributors to this blog think the Presidential approval numbers are way too high.
During yesterday’s Veterans Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetary, as the President of the United States laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, the First Lady of the United States was photographed wearing some sort of underoos-fan belt hybrid outfit. While most went with the traditional dark color scheme - it was after all a cemetary – Mrs. Obama went hyper-crayola, like she was on her way to be photographed for the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.
Honestly, is that an inner tube wrapped around a bath robe?
The destructive, lethal idiocy that has deluged this country in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Fort Hood last week is beyond repugnant. For almost a week now, from every corner of the fainthearted, bend-over-and-take-it mass media complex there has come an astonishingly embarrassing exhibition of weak-minded, namby-pamby, Lucy Van Pelt pop-psychology rationalizations as to why Nidal Malik Hasan might have opened fire on innocents, murdering thirteen.
It is confounding.
Hasan could have had a neon sign plastered to his forehead that read, “This is a terrorist attack!” and the mainstream media would have a panel of analysts discussing what Hasan meant by the word “is.”
If ever there has been such a ubiquitously loathsome display of weakness from Americans in recent times, I am not aware of it.
Courage – and dare I say, truth – clearly has no place in the mainstream media.
With an ever-growing profusion of evidence making it abundantly clear that the murderous rampage undertaken by Hasan was a genuine act of Islamic jihad, the ever-tender, overly-feminized, feelings-obsessed American media chooses to travel the road of the least offensive. In the name of objectivity, they continues to explore a host of alternate possibilities that might have led Hasan to kill.
It’s that “let’s keep an open mind“ approach to reporting the news that will, presumably, keep angry Muslims from coming after journalists.
The “religion” angle is just too easy – merely a construct of Jesus-loving, xenophobic, gun-obsessed anti-Muslim types.
the terrorist, Hasan
Despite the fact that every arrow, every indicator, every investigation, every report, every stitch of evidence, everything that has been uncovered relating to the killer Hasan suggests – nay, dictates – that terrorism is the correct way to describe the Fort Hood attack, the alphabet and cable channels, along with the liberal print media, continue to maintain their fairness (i.e., gutlessness).
This fatalistic need to obscure the realities of the world in order to safeguard the feelings of others – all in the name of political correctness – will, undoubetdly, be the undoing of this country. The enemy will come from within. Expect many more than the thirteen who were murdered at Fort Hood to die as our most important and sacred institutions (e.g., the military, the free press) are crippled by those who do all they can, at the expense of what is right and just, to ensure Muslims are not offended.
Personally, I don’t give a damn how many Muslims get offended.
I don’t.
In matters of national security, I don’t give rat’s nipple who gets insulted. I’m only interested in making sure this nation is secure from her enemies, foreign or domestic.
Period.
If, as leftists and other children want us to believe, Muslims are so incapable of understanding that no one on my side of the aisle thinks that all practitioners of Islam are terrorists, then that’s just too bad. If, in the view of the Left and other terrified puppies, Muslims are ill-equipped to comprehend that those of us willing to speak the truth do not – and never have – lumped all Muslims together, then there’s nothing more that can be said or done to change it. Time and time again, to the point of utter frustration and intellectual exhaustion, conservatives have bent over backward to explain to the world that we are not anti-Muslim. We have done back flips to prove that no one on the right believes the entirety of Islam supports terrorism.
We are anti-evil, no matter where it comes from.
But it’s not been good enough.
The fact is, the greatest threat to freedom in the world today is radical Islam – and all indications are that Hasan was a radical islamist.
There simply is no movement of radical Baptists commiting thousands upon thousands of acts of terrorism across the globe in the name of Jesus Christ. Or Methodists. Or Catholics.
That the incredibly obvious is now being expelled and disregarded so that the feelings of a few may be potentially spared – at the expense of human lives – is deplorable and unforgivable.
I, for one, am not willing to see the security of this nation compromised, or the safety and well-being of those who defend her imperiled, for the sake of not affronting a group of people.
I am sick to death of hearing from the Left how intolerant Americans are. I am fed up with having to read and hear from ungracious, spineless pensmiths and pundits how much they fear reprisals and retribution from angry Americans (i.e., the right wing).
It is all complete, unsubstantiated nonsense.
Where was the anti-Islam uprising after September 11, 2001? Where were the anti-Muslim reprisals after the London attacks? Or the Madrid bombing? How many acts of revenge against mosques took place in America after the first World Trade Center attack in 1993? How many bodies littered the streets in retaliation to any number of jihadist terrorist plots uncovered here in the United States?
Do leftists ever think beyond the initial “feel good” fix that defines their approach to the world? Is there solace among leftists in knowing that even though thirteen were murdered at Fort Hood, they can at least rest well knowing that they’ve not offended a single Muslim?
I don’t know what it is, but put a lefty President in the White House, and Americans will start to feel bad about themselves and their country.
Like a narcotic, the initial euphoria of a “hope and change” candidate can make many feel incredibly good. Pie-in-the-sky notions of a national rebirth, where abandoned ideals are at long last tended to, where the promises of humanity arc across the overcast American sky signaling a new post-everything era while waves of optimism flow over disenchanted, dance like sugarplums in the heads of many.
We saw this after the election last year. With Barack Obama’s victory, many said they were finally proud to call themselves Americans.
But once the high wears off, and the bumper stickers are torn off all the Subarus, the crash can be harsh, even cruel. The doldrums that ensue can be pervasive. True, there may be little hits – little fixes – here and there that temporarily bring some people up from the pits, but ultimately, nothing helps. Nothing has changed. Government just hasn’t done enough.
It’s all too familiar.
Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press, in telling the story of how Americans seem to be in “a funk,” broke out a Jimmy Carter-era nugget to describe the state of the American people – malaise.
Talk about a flashback.
The term itself is a stomach turner, particularly for those of us who remember the disastrous tenure of peanut politics.
However, it appears to be entirely accurate.
The latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows that Americans grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, continuing slippage that has occurred since Obama took office as the year began.
They were more pessimistic about the direction of the country. They disapproved of Obama’s handling of the economy a bit more than before. And, perhaps most striking for this novice commander in chief, more people have lost confidence in Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan over the last month. Overall, there’s a public malaise about the state of the nation.
As President Obama’s jobless “recovery” continues to drive the unemployment rate higher and higher, and as tax payer “stimulus” dollars continue to fund the study of radioactive rabbit feces and inner city doorknob replacement, almost 6 in 10 Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction – a five point uptick from last month. Only 46% approve of the messianic handling of the economy – down four points from last month.
And while the New York-23 congressional race, according to Democrats, was the tell-tale sign that Americans enthusiastically embrace Obama-style liberalism and its big government ideology (their gubernatorial losses in Virginia and bluer-than-blue New Jersey not withstanding), half of the country (in this poll) gives a thumbs down to ObamaCare.
Astronomical debt, wishy-washiness with troops in harm’s way, zero proof that the stimulus has accomplished anything, weakness in the face of our enemies … what’s not to love?
Last Saturday, President Barack Obama not only referred to me (and millions of others like me) as one of the “teabag people,” but also as an “anti-government extremist.” (Admittedly, there was strange kind of honor in that). He did so behind closed doors after he made his much publicized visit to Capitol Hill to encourage House Dems to vote for the two-thousand page Pelosi-ObamaCare debacle that eventually wound up passing by five votes later that evening.
After a slew of “hip-hip-hoorays,” a little back-patting, and some congratulatory spit-swapping, focus soon turned to the next hurdle in America’s transformation – the Senate.
And who better, only three days after the “historic” House vote, to talk up the positives of a government-run health care system to a room full of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Senators than the husband of the Secretary of State himself, Mr. Hillary Clinton?
And so it was that yesterday, Bill and the gang did lunch.
To Clinton, however, people like me (and millions of others like me) weren’t just “teabag people,” as Bammy called us. We were actual “tea baggers” – a term with a diversity of colorful and quaint meanings.
Making it all the more interesting was the assertion that the “tea baggers” – according to the first black President – were all “inflamed.”
(Ouch).
And why?
I’ll get to that in a moment.
Carol E. Lee and Carrie Budoff Brown of the Politico write:
With the issue he has positioned to be his crowning achievement as president at a crossroads, Barack Obama once again called on his former rival to help him follow through.
Former President Bill Clinton told a room full of Democratic senators Tuesday that passing health care reform — which he failed to do 15 years ago — is not only a moral issue but also “an economic imperative.”
Clinton argued that even “the most cold-hearted person” ought to support health care reform simply from an economic standpoint. He reminded Democrats of the political momentum their failure to pass reform in 1993 delivered the House of Representatives to the Republicans the following year.
“The point I want to make is: Just pass the bill, even if it’s not exactly what you want,” Clinton told Democrats. “When you try and fail, the other guys write history.”
Actually, Bill, when Democrats fail, America wins … but that’s a separate issue.
And so the question of the hour is: Why are the tea baggers inflamed?
The answer: Because Democrats are winning.
That’s right, in case you weren’t paying attention to reality – or someone slipped a rather strong hallucinogen into your Ovaltine – the Democrats are winning, according to Number 42 … and I, as a tea bagger, am inflamed because of it.
(I had a line about selling some ocean front property in Wyoming, but it’s slipped my mind).
Not only are Democrats winning now, they have been winning since the health care debate began.
Think back to the spring and summer for a moment.
Whether it was the overwhelming turnout of limited-government, budget-conscious Americans at tea parties all across the country, or the exuberance of spirited protestors who showed up at town-hall meetings to voice their oppostion to ObamaCare, the real reason they did so, according to Mr. Bill, was because the Democrats were (and still are) winning.
(And because they were inflamed).
Honestly, it must be something hard wired in liberal DNA that makes them think this way.
It’s appears to be a universal affliction, although I refrain from jumping to any conclusions.
Still, the evidence is hard to resist.
For instance, in the recesses of the liberal brain, although temperatures have been dropping across the globe for several years now – and NOAA lists last month as the third coldest October on record – global warming still threatens the planet.
To a leftist, although every bit of evidence available points to the Fort Hood killer being a radical Islamist carrying out jihad, it is unclear whether or not religion was a factor in the mass murder.
It is therefore no surprise (or it shouldn’t be) that although the President’s poll numbers continue to plummet, and support for the Obama agenda continues to flounder, and with Democrats getting bounced in last week’s elections (hello New Jersey), and with a huge majority in the House that still saw the health care bill pass by only five lousy votes, Democrats are clearly winning.
General George Casey, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, made the following statement on Sunday in regard to the Fort Hood terrorist attack:
Speculation could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers and what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here. It’s not just about Muslims, we have a very diverse army, we have very diverse society and that gives us all strength. But again we need to be very careful about that.
If necessary, take a moment to read it again – particularly the phrase, “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.”
There can be no mincing words here. It is a despicable thing for an officer in the United States Army to say.
Call what happened at Fort Hood terrorism (as I do). Call it an act of war. Call it what you will. But with all due respect to General Casey and his honorable service to this nation, he is dead wrong on all accounts – and an embarrassment.
To begin with, calling the mass murders at Fort Hood, Texas a “tragedy,” as I wrote late last week, is a profound disservice to the thirteen dead and twenty-nine wounded. Indeed, it is an insult to the memory of the fallen. As a “tragedy,” the act becomes more random, more arbitrary, more illogical. As a “tragedy,” blame effectively shifts from being squarely on the shoulders of the murderer to being attributable, at least in part, to outside forces beyond his control; it gives evil enough room to wriggle off the hook.
The fact is …It was not an act of chance. It was not an accident. It was perfectly logical in its lethal perversity. It was a deliberate, pre-meditated act of evil, fuelled by a dangerous ideology.
But more imprtant than Casey’s mislabelling of this terrorist act as a “tragedy,” is his disturbing take on diversity in the military.
Again the quote:
What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.
Common sense demands that the general must have misspoken, because no officer in the United States military can truly believe such a thing.
General Casey is saying that a little less diversity in the military is worse than having innocent soldiers killed.
He’ll take dead soldiers over shrinking diversification.
To him, slain military personnel are more acceptible than decreasing varieties of ethnicities and skin tones in the service.
How could anyone in their right mind honestly believe that?
What the hell kind of thinking is that?
DISGRACEFUL.
First of all, diversity means that everyone - regardless of skin color, ethnicity, sex or religion - is held to the same standard; and it is clear from the abundance of reports that have come out since the shooting spree on Thursday that the killer, Hasan, was not treated as any non-Muslim would have been had he or she been involved in highly questionable activities.
The man tried to contact Al-Qaeda, for heaven’s sake – and we knew about it.
Political correctness planted the seeds of murder that took place at Fort Hood last week.
Second, diversity is not where the strength of the military – or America herself – lies. The United States does not thrive because of its diversity.
It is absolute nonsense.
Indeed, America is comprised of a diverse population, but it is the singularity of America’s value system – what she stands for – that epitomizes her real strength.
Commemorating - via video - the fall of the Wall (and himself)
Could it be that the reason President Barack Obama did not show up in Berlin yesterday to commemorate the twenty-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was that there was no way to work in his name enough times during the ceremony to make it worth his while? Is it presumptuous to speculate that the real reason the leader of the free world chose not to visit Berlin on Monday was that he was afraid a deceased Republican President would get more mention – and thus, more of the spotlight – then he? Or could it be that if he were called upon to say something, that it might be necessary to have to speak well of his own country? (God forbid).
Perhaps if some young Obamacrat with initiative looking to score points with the big man could have worked in an Obama souvenir table by Checkpoint Charlie, or maybe set up a big screen multimedia presentation of Obama’s best teleprompter reads by the Brandenburg Gate (made available on DVD with bonus footage), maybe the President would have graced the proceedings with his presence.
Unfortunately, try as they might, the same master spinsters and political craftspeople who could make Barack Obama convince enough Americans that he was a moderate during the campaign season last year simply could never make the fall of the Berlin Wall be all about Barack Obama.
No one is that good.
Hence, a “no show” in Germany.
Toby Harnden, US Editor for the UK Telegraph, says that because the Berlin Wall commemorations were not Obama-centric, his absence was predictable.
He writes:
There was one world leader absent for today’s commemorations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Surprisingly enough, it’s President Barack Obama, who found time last year to give a campaign speech there last year, which Der Spiegel summed up as “People of the World, Look at Me”.
The White House has cited a packed schedule, though looking at it he had nothing much on yesterday (brief chat to reporters about healthcare – by far his biggest priority) and just blah briefings and a bill signing today until a meeting this evening with Benjamin Netanyahu. This time, Der Spiegel has reported it as “Barack Too Busy”.
But Obama is, of course, making time to trot over to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in December. Didn’t seem to have too much of a problem clearing the diary for that – though his acceptance of the prize and decision to give another soaring, historical, epoch-marking etc etc speech there will be looked back on as a colossal political mistake and sign of hubris.
…
Whatever the reasons, it’s another revealing mistake by Obama. This deserved to be marked by more than just a proclamation penned by a staffer.
To be fair, the President – although not in person – did manage to have his voice heard in Berlin through a pre-recorded video message in which he was able to return equilibrium to the universe by affording himself the opportunity to talk about himself. True, he had nothing to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but as he has shown time and time again since seizing the public’s attention back in 2007, there cannot be a single moment of any kind, in any context, anywhere in the world today, that does not involve or revolve around him in some way.
He’s good like that.
Said Obama:
In a Berlin under siege, President Kennedy said, “Freedom is indivisible. And when one man is enslaved, all are not free.” Few would have foreseen that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg, or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.”
He then went on to explain that it really wasn’t all that difficult to feed five thousand hungry people with five loaves and two fish. It just took some fancy finagling.
One other thing to note is that our current President did not once mention the name of Ronald Reagan during his echoey, pre-recorded excursion into narcissism. It’s akin to talking about Super Bowl III without ever mentioning Joe Namath, or discussing the history of baseball and neglecting to mention Babe Ruth.
There’s no question about it; when anyone in the public eye (particularly politics) decides they’re going to take a page from the “Idiot’s Guide to Being a Monumental Idiot” and break out the brutally tattered but always readily available race card, I’m all over it. I’ve littered this blog with endless examples of liberals (and other children) making melanin an issue of absurd importance. From Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman, when someone goes racial, I make mention of it. As a conservative, if there is anything less significant to me in the grand scheme of things than the color of someone’s skin, I’ve yet to find it.
The grooming habits of eleventh century Byzantines hold more relevance for me.
Thus, in the name of intellectual honesty (and fairness), when someone on “my side” of the aisle says asinine things – particularly when it comes to matters of race – I am obliged to shine a light on it and crack some GOP skulls.
Enter the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele – who apparently believes that white Republicans are afraid of blacks. Or afraid of him, specifically.
He said so while speaking with Roland Martin on TV One’s Washington Watch over the weekend.
Here was the exchange:
Martin: But your candidates got to talk to them. One of the criticisms I’ve always had is Republicans — white Republicans — have been scared of black folks.
Steele: You’re absolutely right. I mean I’ve been in the room and they’ve been scared of me. I’m like, “I’m on your side,” you know, so I can imagine going out there and talking to someone like you, you know, who [says] “I’ll listen.” And they’re like “Well.” You know, let me tell you. You saw in Christie and you saw in McDonnell a door open because they went in and engaged. McDonnell was very deliberate about spending…
Martin: Right.
Steele: I mean, Sheila Johnson was on his team. I mean, that was a big deal. That’s because he engaged her and she helped navigate him through that relationship.
Enlightening – in a narcissistic, unproductive, neanderthal sort of way.
So, if I’m to understand … Michael Steel has actually been in the room with “them?”
And he knows “they’ve” been scared of him?
How exactly could he tell?
They were already white, so what other indications were there?
Did they walk on the other side of the room when they saw him coming?
Most importantly, how on God’s green earth is it good for the Republican Party to have its own chairman dump on his fellow party members the moment he hits a forum hosted by a liberal’s liberal like Roland Martin? Why would he so effortlessly throw members of his own team under the bus? Because the “shoot-your-own-when-in-the-enemy-is-looking” approach worked so well for John McCain? Because making liberals salivate by feeding their archaic perceptions of Republicans helps the party grow?
Mr. Steele, I can assure you … neither I nor my fellow conservatives are “afraid” of you because you’re black. Or because we may be white. Or because you sounded almost tweenish with your multiple use of the word “like.”
What we are afraid of is you may not be the right man for this job. Period.
Remember Daniel Patrick Boyd? You may recall he was the North Carolina contractor who, along with a group of others (including two sons), was planning a “violent jihad,” which included an attack on the Quantico Marine Base. He was a Muslim convert who was also involved in planning a series of terror attacks internationally.
If his name doesn’t ring a bell, don’t feel too bad. He wasn’t an angry Christian targeting an abortion clinic, so the story had a shelf life of maybe eighteen seconds.
How about the name Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad? If not (which is quite likely), perhaps you will recall the incident associated with him. In June of this year he shot up a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office, killing an American soldier. Afterwards, he claimed he was justified because of what Americans were doing to Muslims in the Middle East.
Since he wasn’t an angry American white man setting off a bomb somewhere, the chances that this story would snag more than a day’s worth of coverage was slim-to-none.
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad
Remember the story of the Bronx, New York terror plot – the one where four home grown Muslim terrorists planned on shooting down military planes and were arrested as they planted what they thought were bombs at two synagogues? How long did that story stick around with the mainstream media?
Since there was no way to cloak the role of Islam in that particular terrorist scheme, it isn’t surprising that after a day or two, it became a page twenty-five afterthought, lest the Muslim community be insulted or provoked.
Certainly many will recollect the Fort Dix terror plot. That should have been, by anyone’s measure, a huge story – particularly when three Muslim immigrant brothers, Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka, were convicted of planning an al-Qaida-inspired attack meant to kill hundreds of American soldiers on the New Jersey military installation.
It wasn’t.
It went away in short order as newspapers filled with stories of how screwed up Afghanistan was thanks to George W. Bush.
Ask anyone with even an elementary knowledge of current events to recall any of these domestic terror plots and, more likely than not, you won’t elicit many responses.
Sadly, they’re buried way below the fold of America’s collective consciousness.
But now, with thirteen people dead and twenty-nine injured at Fort Hood, Texas – and every indication in the world that the murderer, Nidal Malik Hasan, acted as a radical Islamic terrorist - the morally weak, fainthearted American media (in conjunction with the American Leftocracy) cannot sweep the details of this horrific incident away under the rug as they would like. Thus, as long as the news cycle demands that this story be covered, they will continue to avoid the obvious as long as humanly possible – that radical Islam almost certainly played the defining role in the Fort Hood mass murder.
Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera, for example, went as far as saying that, for all we know, it could have been a bad headache that made the terrorist, Hassan, kill.
Yes, he really said that.
And no, he doesn’t believe that for a second.
However, Rivera is one the overwhelming majority of journalists who live in a world where clarity is routinely sacrificed for being inoffensive.
(I wonder how many throbbing-headed individuals in human history have actually resorted to mass murder. I’ve found that, generally speaking, bad headaches are debilitating).
On his radio program today, Dennis Prager played a clip from MSNBC’s show Hardball that aired Friday, where host Chris Matthews introduced a segment with Nihad Awad from the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) this way:
Welcome back to Hardball. The investigation into that massacre at Fort Hood yesterday is still ongoing and it’s unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting.
…
What motivated this killing yesterday? And we may not know that ever.
Really?
So, in light of every stitch of evidence available to him, in light of every report pointing in that direction, Mr. Matthews believes we may never ever know what motivated these murders?
I guess this Hasan is a real puzzle.
If everything that is known right now about Hasan – including the fact that, for years, he has been making anti-American comments in public; that he has openly professed to being pro-terrorist; that he has posted commentary online in support of suicide bombings; that he has incontestable ties to radical Islam; that he has likely had contact with terrorists; that he has been heard to say on numerous occasions that he is a Muslim first and an American second; that he was heard to shout “Allahu Akbar!” (God Is Great) before slaughtering innocents - is not enough to suggest that religion might have been some sort of factor in what happened at Fort Hood, what exactly would be?
What other “clues” would need to be in place for the murderer, Hasan, to be seen by the gutless American media as an Islamic terrorist?
A t-shirt?
Even Anwar Aulaqi – the radical imam, now in Yemen, who preached at the Virginia mosque where Hasan was known to have attended – posted the following at his website:
Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.
Obviously, Aulaqi believes that Hasan’s shooting spree had something to do with religion. Why else would he praise Hasan if this was not a terrorist attack in the name of Islam? When, pray tell, will Chris Matthews criticize Aulaqi for jumping to conclusions?
Somehow, in the flummoxed brains of the American leftist, to accept the reality that there are radical Muslims who commit atrocities such as the Fort Hood massacre – and do so in the name of Islam – is to say that all Muslims are terrorists. It’s how they think. It’s a charge the Left makes against conservatives regularly – that we on the right believe all Muslims are terrorists. But no one on my side of the aisle has ever said it, nor do we believe it. It isn’t an issue. Rather it is they on the Left who avoid the topic all together in fear of offending Muslims, even when the Qur’an is slapping them repeatedly across the chops.
Of course, lefties often go on and on about white racism in America – especially where the opposition of Barack Obama’s policies are concerned – but never once have any fear of offending all whites, or lumping all Caucasians together.
Validation is a good thing – particularly when it comes from the President of the United States. I’m not certain I would have ever been able to summon the nerve to openly admit that I am, in fact, an anti-government extremist, but thanks to President Hope-and-Change, I now know I have the courage to own up to it. I know I need not shy away from it any longer. If gratitude could be measured in terms of minutes, I have fifty years worth of thanks I’d like to lavish on the President.
(Standing up).
Liberation can be quite liberating.
Yes, my name is Andrew Roman and I am an anti-government extremist.
(Hugs all around).
During his Saturday visit to Capitol Hill to encourage donkeys to vote for the government-run health care bill, President Unity showed why he is, in fact, President of all the American people – inlcuding me. He demonstrated with keen insight the accuracy of what leftists and other children have been saying all along – namely, that those who divide the American people live on the right.
It’s where hate thrives, prejudice blossoms, and bigotry prospers.
While conservatives tear apart, Obamacrats unify.
Jackie Calmes of the New York Times describes what Bammy’s visit on Saturday was like:
Mr. Obama, during his private pep talk to Democrats, recognized Mr. (Bill) Owens election (New York-23) and then posed a question to the other lawmakers. According to Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who supports the health care bill, the president asked, “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit” Democratic voters “and it will encourage the extremists.”
“Teabag” people?
“Anti-government” people?
Such couth. Such class.
Well done, Mr. President.
I assume his teleprompters were out for an electronic high colonic when he once again afforded his unscripted elegance a chance to shine.
If being a “teabagger” means that one is against saddling future generations with trillions and trillions of dollars of debt to “fix” a system that was not broken to begin with, sign me up.
If being an “extremist” means that one does not support the dependency of the American people on government-run health care, I’m there.
If being “anti-government” means that one is on-board with the Founders vision of this nation as one of limited government – which would, by definition, be impossible with a federal takeover of 16% of the American economy – then wrap me in a right wing label, attach an “ist” or a “phobe” to my name, call me a hateful, uncompassionate bastard and begin the personal attacks.
And by the way, their names were Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton – and they were anti-government extremists.
There are reports that Nidal Malik Hasan, the man who murdered thirteen at Fort Hood, Texas last week, attended the same Virginia mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers in 2001. This would have happened during the period when a radical imam, Anwar Aulaqi, was preaching at the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va.
Aulaqi told the FBI in 2001 that, before he moved to Virginia in early 2001, he met with 9/11 hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi several times in San Diego. Al-Hazmi was at the time living with Khalid al-Mihdhar, another hijacker. Al-Hazmi and another hijacker, Hani Hanjour, attended the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Virginia in early April 2001. In his FBI interview, Aulaqi denied ever meeting with al-Hazmi and Hanjour while in Virginia.
Of course, it is imperative that the American public continue to refrain from jumping to any conclusions.
There may be other factors to contend with that the rest of us may be missing. Perhaps he was bullied as a child. Maybe he adored his mother and hated his father. It could be that he wasn’t allowed to have a Big Wheel as a boy. Maybe the other kids wouldn’t let him play in any reindeer games.
Regardless, we need to relax and let the facts come out.
While Hasan’s ties to the Virginia mosque are obviously of tremendous relevance – and as all the details surrounding the Fort Hood terrorist attack become known – it is the Associated Press article itself that draws my attention.
To begin with, the article’s opening sentence is profoundly troubling:
The alleged Fort Hood shooter apparently attended the same Virginia mosque as two Sept. 11 hijackers in 2001, at a time when a radical imam preached there.
The “alleged” shooter?
So, it is possible that the individual who shot thirteen people dead and injured twenty-nine was not Nidal Malik Hasan? It could have been someone else?
And what about Sergeant Kimberly Munley, the officer who took down the killer, Hasan?
If Hasan is “alleged,” I hope Munley is being held in jail until it can be confirmed who the “shooter” actually was. Or did she “allegedly” shoot Hasan? Or did she shoot someone else? And if so, was that shooting “alleged?”
And are the dead “alleged” until the shooter can actually be confirmed?
Is the entire incident “alleged?”
(And does this shirt make me look fat?)
The article’s next line is equally troubling:
Whether the Fort Hood shooter associated with the hijackers is something the FBI will probably look into, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
The FBI will “probably” look into whether or not the terrorist, Hasan, had any associations with the 9/11 hijackers who attended the same mosque as he??
Probably?
Given that I am obviously a novice when it comes to criminal investigations, law enforcement and matters of national security, wouldn’t it nonetheless seem to be an automatic to look into it?
While the steam is still rising from my coffee cup, a quick question …
Is it not reasonable to ask why the leader of the free world, President Barack H. Obama, could not find a few spare moments in his tireless, transformative itinerary to make a an appearance in Berlin, Germany to commemorate the twenty-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall?
It would somehow seem appropriate.
I understand that trying to bring the javelin throw to Chicago is a huge deal.
I accept that traveling to Copenhagen to attempt to save the planet from evil, carbon-emitting humans is a top priority.
I know that the freeing of oppressed people doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot to a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, but I think it’s a fair question.
That it was technically a slim margin of victory really doesn’t matter at this point.
I’ve already read on multiple blogs and websites a good deal of commentary taking a slightly optimistic spin on “how close” the vote was, and how it was “closer than expected.”
Blah, blah, blah.
It may make for interesting speculation on what lies ahead in the Senate, but the fact is, the bill passed the House – and the United States of America is that much closer to a screwing it shan’t recover from.
It is impossible to overstate it. This was bad. Very bad.
There’ll be a heavy bombardment of self-congratulatory kibbitzing from the left for a while, but attentions will now turn toward Harry Reid and the Senate – where the margin for error will be far less than the small but workable cushion Nancy Pelosi had to work with last night. Indeed, she lost 39 Dems, but ultimately, she could afford it.
Last night, the House of voted 220-215 in favor of the measure that has long been the central focus of the national dialogue – health care reform; and for the life of me, I cannot figure out how on Earth anyone with even a marginally functioning brain could have voted for this thing in good conscience. What the hell were these people thinking? There have been a myriad of detailed studies and analyses, even from non-conservatives, showing how passage of such a monstrosity would not only be an unprecedented financial disaster, but would unquestionably lead outright to a system of government-run health care – which, of course, is precisely what Democrats want.
Anyone who believes that the donkeys don’t want the government to run the health care show in America should invest a few moments researching the matter on You Tube, or visit any number of conservative blogs who have done the work the mainstream media won’t. There are a host of Dems who are on the record as saying that their ultimate goal is to see a single-payer (i.e., government-run) system in place – including the President.
Dems are not the least bit interested in preserving competition in health care. If they tell you they are, they’re lying.
Do those who are now applauding this debacle as some sort of moral victory for America realize that there is not a single government entitlement – absolutely none – that has ever run at or below projected costs? Not one! The federal government has shown itself time and time again to be a maximum of inefficiency in how it runs almost everything. It couldn’t even handle Medicaid and Medicare, and yet 220 members of Congress – including one dumb Republican (Joseph Cao, Louisiana, who won his seat running against the indicted one, William Jefferson) – believe that this time it makes perfect sense to hand over 16% of the economy to the feds?
This morning, Dems are jumping for joy, slobbering all over each other, exchanging hugs, congratulating themselves – all together sickening. The word “historic” is being bandied about as if the Berlin Wall has come down again.
I’m not sure they’re wrong.
America is one step closer to being forever transformed, just as the President so desperately wanted.
The President of the United States is calling on Americans to refrain from drawing quick conclusions in the aftermath of the shooting spree that saw 13 innocents murdered at Fort Hood, Texas on Thursday. He is asking that citizens not use their God-given common sense to formulate any sort of opinions on the horrific event that saw an officer of the United States Army shout “Allahu Akbar!” (God Is Great) just before opening fire. He is hoping that Americans can back off, take a deep breath and ignore all the news reports, videotapes and eyewitness accounts that suggest – putting it mildly – that the killer is an Islamic radical.
Sure, I’m willing to entertain the possibility that Nidal Malik Hasan was simply a jilted boyfriend, or angry about the Phillies losing the World Series, or furious that his DVR failed to record Thursday’s episode of “The Office,” but there just isn’t a whole of evidence pointing in those directions.
The president made the comments as the commander of Fort Hood, the US’s largest base for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, quoted witnesses as saying the suspected gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, shouted the Muslim declaration “Allahu Akbar” – God is great – as he opened fire. Speaking at the White House, Mr Obama said: “We don’t know all the answers yet, and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.”
Is the President honestly asking the American people to refrain from “jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts”?
Seriously?
I’m falling off the davenport trying to control my laughter.
This is the same man who, at a press conference, condemned a Massachusetts police department for its “stupid” handling of the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates without knowing any of the facts.
This is the same man who, without a single fact or stitch of evidence to back it up, declared the “global warming” debate a settled issue - and is fully prepared to inflict serious damage to the American economy in defending that “conclusion” with crippling greenhouse gas emissions legislation.
This is also the man who promised that every bill that made its way through Congress would be available for review by the public for five days.
It hasn’t exactly been all fruit cups and Cool Whip for our President in recent times. In the name of rescuing America from it’s Bushtopian past, Barack Obama has managed to pass some exorbitant spending bills through Congress – which you will recall were earmark-free (except for all the earmarks). But other than saving billions and billions of jobs through his Spendulous Bill, nothing else really seems to be falling into place for him. Whereas at one time, he sent shivers up the legs of the adoring masses, he now seems to be sending shivers down the spines of concerned, liberty-loving Americans.
His “What The Hell Happened?” check list is ever-growing.
Despite Democrat control of both houses of Congress, he’s just not getting the needed love regarding two of his biggest domestic initiatives: government-run health care and anti-global warming legislation.
Despite assurances that the era of Bush is dead, he’s failing to command too much respect from America’s adversaries either, although the President seems determined to perfect the art of perpetual negotiation until such a time that Iranian nuclear bombs can do all the talking.
Of course, Tuesday’s Election Day results – which according to Democrats meant nothing except for Bill Owens victory in the New York-23 race – weren’t exactly a big wet kiss on the lips of liberalism either.
But can there be anything more disheartening, more dejecting, than having a long time bed fellow stab you in the back? Can there be anything so painful as having an old buddy take a machete to your jugular?
Et tu, media?
NBC Chicago, not exactly a bastion of conservative discourse, posted an article by Robert A. George in which he ripped the President for the way he handled himself yesterday in front of the nation after the Fort Hood massacre.
He writes:
President Obama didn’t wait long after Tuesday’s devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.” Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms.
Dr. Joe Medicine Crow, incidentally, did not win the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Even his teleprompters are turning against him.
Did the president’s team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on — and the initial words coming out of their president’s mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.
…
If the president’s communications apparatus can’t inform — and protect — their boss during tense moments when the country needs to see a focused commander-in-chief and a compassionate head of state, it has disastrous consequences for that president’s party and supporters.
Bloggers are calling it Obama’s “My Pet Goat” moment – a reference to George W. Bush and they way he reacted (or didn’t react) on the morning of September 11, 2001 after hearing news of the terrorist attacks in New York. (Keep in mind that from the time the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trace Center to the time he addressed the nation, only 26 minutes had passed. The Pentagon hadn’t even been hit yet).
One Pro-Bam blogger at the great Say Anything blog, who goes by the name of Sparkie Arbuckle, sarcastically wrote:
(Obama’s) too calm under pressure. It’s inappropriate. Why not flip out more, cry, wail, and beat himself out of sympathy?
Liberals are cute when they think they’ve seized upon a brilliant point.
It would have been appropriate – and presidential – to have the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces step up to the podium, with the entire nation watching, and act like the matter of thirteen dead Americans held a little more relevance than offering “shout-outs” to a Congressional Medal of Honor winner (who, by the way, didn’t even win that medal). It would have been the right thing to do to forego the three minutes of self-absorbed “I-love-to-hear-my-own-voice” ishkabibble and immediately acknowledge the deaths of American service people at the hand of a cold-blooded killer on American soil. It would have made sense to see the President of the United States put some of that fabled articulacy and poise to work when it was needed most.
However, this is Barack Obama – a disengaged, detached messiah who is still having a difficult time understanding why his mere presence doesn’t ease the pain.
And by the way …
The amount of time President Bush spent in that classroom after Andy Carr leaned over and told him about the second plane was actually five minutes, not seven, as is regularly peddled by the left. (It’s hard to give the anti-Bushees too much credence when simple, easy-to-verify facts like this are missed). President Bush’s Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was standing in the back of the classroom holding up a pad of paper on which he had written “Don’t say anything yet.” A look at the video tape from that morning shows the President acknowledging Fleischer. One can also see from watching the uncut video tape that once he knew about the second plane, the President’s focus had all but shifted from the school children to the situation at hand. (Incidentally, the children were reading to him, not the other way around – another little detail that is regularly missed by the anti-Bush brigades). He became contemplative, clearly collecting his thoughts. Above all, he did not panic. He did not leap out of his chair. He did not react hastily. He was out the door in just a few minutes and addressing the nation within twenty minutes. He behaved in a most Presidential manner. No one thought any different at the time.
As the school teacher Sandra Kay Daniels recalls:
I was very pleased with the way it was handled – that he took a few moments to gather himself. It wasn’t this gigantic amount of time … I didn’t vote for him, but on that day, at that moment in time, I very easily could have. That was the first time I could think of, in his short tenure in office, where he looked Presidential to me. He made a good decision to stop and think and respond rather than react to the terrorism. If terrorism is supposed to strike terror in the hearts of men, you didn’t see it on him at that point in time.
And the actual name of the book is “The Pet Goat” … not “My Pet Goat.“
The title only became relevant when liberals began reconstructing history – and they couldn’t even get that right.
Assuming for a moment I were elected King of the World, the first edict issued would be to ban the use of the word “tragedy” in describing the horrific murders that took place at Fort Hood yesterday afternoon.
If ever there was a misuse of the word, this is it.
This was not a mudslide or an earthquake. It wasn’t a tornado or a typhoon. There was no twenty car pileup on a blizzard-ravaged road.
It was a murderous shooting spree that cost thirteen innocents their lives and injured as many as thirty. It was a ghastly execution of wickedness from a very bad man.
It was an act of evil.
Second, with emerging reports of the murderer as a man increasingly disgruntled with America’s involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan – and one whose name is said to have appeared on several radical internet postings about suicide bombings – it is not unreasonable to look into the man’s connection with radical Islam.
Third, with reports that the murderer shouted out the love call of the suicide bomber, “Allahu Akbar!” (God is Great) before unleashing his terror on innocents, it is not unreasonable to pursue the angle that yesterday’s deadly rampage was an act of terrorism.
However, ours is a world where a cold blooded killer, such as the human debris who committed these murders, is referred to as a “shooter” or “gunman” – not a “murderer,” or even a “killer.”
It is a world where people are called upon to begin “healing” long before they’ve finished grieving.
It is an age where the “circumstances” that drive the evil-doer to commit the crime are explored at length, while the innocent dead are counted before being discounted.
We live in an era where there exists a pervasive unwillingness (or fear) to label the evils of our time.
It is both frightening and sickening.
Incidentally, the Fort Hood mass-murderer’s name is Nidal Malik Hasan. Many news outlets didn’t even bother to report that for several hours, even after it was confirmed.
He is also a Muslim.
Had Mr. Hasan been called Bobby Ray Jones or Thomas Alan Smith (or something equally Anglo), and was wearing a “Jesus Is Lord” t-shirt when he shouted “Praise Jesus!” before shooting up an abortion clinic or a Planned Parenthood office, there wouldn’t be enough fiber-optics in all the cable television lines in all the world to handle the coverage it would be given. A new channel would have to be created. Additional satellites would have to be launched to accomodate the load. The murderer would have become a household name by the time Keith Olbermann hit the screen at 8:00PM.
Definitionally, how is yesterday’s mass-killing not an act of terrorism?
Like a big-government liberal salivating at the thought of siphoning more of my paycheck, or an Obamacrat pecking incessantly at my liberties, it’s been gnawing at the sensibilities of clear-thinking Americans for the better part of ten months. It is imperative, the American people have been told time and time again, that health care reform happen as soon as humanly possible. It’s something that needed to happen yesterday, so the story goes; and if not for the racists and money-hoarders on the other side who use talk radio as the vehicle to spread their vitriol, everyone would be already be covered with top-flight, inexpensive, world-class health-care.
According to Washington’s Holey Trinity - Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid - the American people cannot afford another nanosecond of having to deal with the current capitalist, greed-uber-alles health care delivery debacle that leaves millions and millions to die while fat cat insurance companies roll in the dough. Recall that the health care “crisis” was recently called a “Holocaust” by Florida Congressman Alan Grayson. Recall that those who spoke out against the government takeover of health care at town-hall meetings all across America were said to be swastika-carriers by the Speaker of the House.
(You gotta love that German National Socialist imagery).
As critical as the passing of a health care reform bill is supposed to be to the welfare of the American people, none of it (oddly enough) is to actually be implemented until either 2013 or 2014, depending on the version of bill. (So much for urgency). Three years, it seems to me, is a mighty long time, especially when a “crisis” as far-reaching as this is afoot, but I’m obviously missing something. Still, considering the “seriousness” of the situation, potentially, we’re talking about alot of dead bodies littering the streets.
Proponents of Democrat health care reform have been feeding the American people the notion that all plans to completely overhaul the system are not only going to save trillions and trillions of lives, but it will be cost-effective. In fact, according to the Holey Trinity, it won’t cost Americans an extra nickel.
Senator Harry Reid
Of course, being one of the unsophisticated lock-steppers awaiting his daily marching orders from my talk radio overlords, that never made an iota’s worth of sense to me – nor did it to tens of millions of Americans who spent the better part of the summer and autumn speaking out in opposition to such a blatant erosion of liberty. It ate away at common sense. Without increasing the amount of doctors in the country while (supposedly) adding thirty million Americans to the insurance rolls, the idea that costs would not increase was about as coherent as Joe Biden sober.
Making things all the more deceptive for clarity-loving, clear thinking Americans was the fact that, according to all versions of the bill, revenues for the overhaul would begin to be collected almost immediately.
In short, taxpayers would begin footing the bill now, while the health care “Holocaust” would be allowed to fester for three years under the Pelosi version of the bill (four years under Reid’s version) until the actual rescuing of suffering Americans by the federal government could begin.
Naturally, members of the exalted Trinity (and their mouthpieces) would find every opportunity to gravitate toward hot microphones demanding that those of us in the skeptic’s camp do the math and see that over the next ten years, everything, indeed, checks out cost-wise.
“We’re telling you, it all works out,” they would say.
“Here’s a calculator, do the math. It’ll cost no one a penny extra,” they would contend.
“Look at how things shape up over an entire decade! Your concerns are unfounded!” they would claim.
But here’s the reality of the situation: The only way to conduct an honest analysis of the costs of the Holey Trinity’s attempt to nationalize the American health care system is to run the numbers for a ten year period that includes both spending and revenue collection.
And when the real numbers are crunched … it is not pretty.
Benjamin E. Sasse & Jefferey H. Anderson, in comparing the House version of the bill with the Senate version of the bill, write in the New York Post:
Each bill is routinely “scored” for its 10-year costs from 2010-19. Yet this includes several years when the spending wouldn’t yet have kicked in. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fully 99.9 percent of the Pelosi bill’s costs would hit from 2013 onward. Similarly, 98.3 percent of Reid’s spending would come after 2014.
If you start the tally when the bills’ spending would actually start, then the bills’ real 10-year costs become clear — and are remarkably similar.
The CBO reports that, in their true first 10 years, the House bill would cost $1.8 trillion, and the Senate bill would cost $1.7 trillion. Pelosi would raise Americans’ taxes by $1.1 trillion over that period, while Reid would hike them by $1 trillion.
…
And the House bill would siphon about $800 billion from Medicare to spend it elsewhere, while the Senate bill would suck out about $900 billion.
And if we discount the bills’ claims to divert hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare (which is already on the edge of insolvency), the CBO says the House bill would raise our national debt by about $650 billion in its real first decade, while the Senate bill would up it by $740 billion.
So, the bills would either sock older Americans by taking huge sums of money from Medicare — or hit future generations with huge tax hikes to cover the shortfall.
Whether it’s our grandparents or our grandchildren, someone is going to pay.
If there aren’t alarms blaring in your head after ingesting those nuggets, it may be time to have a work crew brought in to clear away any cranial cavity blockages.
Numbers have a funny way about them.
Is there anyone who truly believes that the elderly are not going to have their health care substantially rationed under government-run health care? Or that future generation upon gfuture eneration will not be paying for this mess long after the Holey Trinity have moved on to the next world?
Count on both.
Seniors will see their health care – to the tune of $900 billion – quite literally, given to someone else. In other words, benefits will be extracted from a segment of the electorate that is not particularly smitten with President Obama – seniors – and redistributed to that portion of the electorate that still is – the young and the poor.
The only thing as certain as the astronomical costs and sub-par medical care this bill will bring is the fact that not a single member of Congress will ever trade in his or her own health care plan for anything they bestow upon the masses.
And so it shall be that the tree that will soon sit on the front lawn of Capitol Building in Frankfort, Kentucky will be officially referred to as a “christmas tree.” It has been confirmed that the imbecilic term “holiday tree” is being dropped.
It has kind of a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
Christmas tree.
(That sound you hear may be the armies of the ACLU mobilizing).
A spokeswoman for Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear says he’s calling the tree on the Capitol’s front lawn a “Christmas” tree this holiday season. A statement from the administration last week sparked Christmas consternation by referring to the yet-to-be-chosen evergreen as a “holiday” tree.
Some Christians were perturbed by the terminology.
Spokeswoman Kerri Richardson says the administration received a steady stream of e-mails and phone calls about the “holiday” tree. She says it’s always been a Christmas tree to the governor, and it will be this year, too.
The governor is inviting critics of the “Christmas” tree to a lighting ceremony Nov. 30.
I expect all non-Christians in Kentucky to be rounded up and sent to Tinsel And Garland IndoctrinationCamps - also known as You Will Obey Jesus Realignment Centers - by November 25th.
The problem with the Constitution, aside from it being a document of negative liberties, is that in order for it to be applied correctly to today’s ever-changing, ever-transforming America, it requires learned men and women to put it all in context for us. The Constitution, ever-breathing and ever-flexible, can only make sense if the most nuanced among continue to negotiate their way through the emanations and penumbras of its two-century old text and explain to the rest of us what it really means.
One may liken the Constitution to a mansion – or castle – with an abundance of secret passages and hidden rooms in which one may potentially find lots of hidden treasures. In those terms, one can begin to understand the basis of the liberal relationship with that document.
It lives.
Sometimes, however, mere interpretation isn’t enough. There are times when actual words are cited from the Constitution that, somehow, managed to elude over two-hundred years of scholarly review and casual perusal.
It’s convenient, not unlike finding a twenty-dollar bill outside of the Off-Track-Betting place.
Barack Obama’s Senate replacement in Illinois, Roland Burris, is apparently one of those men with the unusual talent to see things that aren’t there.
Not dead people, but words.
Burris must never have watched School House Rock with his children when he was a younger man. My guess is he’s probably not revisited the Constitution in many years.
Curiously, his version of the Preamble contains more words than the one I know.
When asked by CNSNews.com what specific part of the Constitution authorizes Congress to mandate that individuals must purchase health insurance, Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) pointed to the part of the Constitution that he says authorizes the federal government “to provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.” In fact, the word “health” appears nowhere in the Constitution.
“Well, that’s under certainly the laws of the–protect the health, welfare of the country,” said Burris. “That’s under the Constitution. We’re not even dealing with any constitutionality here. Should we move in that direction? What does the Constitution say? To provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.”
Wait, it gets better.
James O’Connor, Burris’s communications director, later told CNSNews.com that although the word “health” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, the senator was referring to the Preamble of the Constitution which says the following:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Burris’s comment “indicates his belief that the term ‘general welfare’ can be interpreted to include the health and well-being of American citizens, and health care in general,” said O’Connor.
Under such an interpretation, the federal government would, thus, have the power to do whatever the hell it felt like doing in the name of promoting the “general welfare.”
First of all, the Preamble, in and of itself, carries no legal weight. It neither grants nor limits the power of the federal government. Rather, it exists to state the purpose of the document to follow. At the time of the Constitution’s creation, the Preamble was, quite literally, an afterthought.
But even if, in Senator Burris’ world of pliable interpretations and magical authorizations, the Constitution’s Preamble had substantive legal significance, the phrase “general welfare” does not mean that the federal government is obliged, either legally or morally, to provide healthcare to its citizens. It does not mean “welfare” in the sense that we have come to know it – namely, government entitlements.
Far from it.
It simply means that unless something applies to everyone, instead of to specific segments of the population or special interest groups (i.e., the uninsured), it is not within the federal government’s authority to involve itself. The term “general” means that it applies to the whole group, rather than individual subgroups.
It does the heart good to know that our elected officials are so in tune with the document they are there to “support and defend.”
Should I, on the morning after the New York Yankees win their twenty-seventh world championship, comment on what I knew was a foregone conclusion since August? Should this admittedly bitter New York Mets fan – and season ticket holder – even bother taking the time to acknowledge something that I would have easily bet the mortgage on in early September? Is it even worth my time, as a feverish fan of New York’s other baseball team, to sit down and say something about the most heralded franchise in all of sports who, once again, brought home the gold?
It is.
But briefly – and then I’ll move on.
As a life-long, bona fide, stat-happy baseball freak – and one who surprisingly wrote nothing about the game all season long – it seems remarkable that I would not comment in some context on the Yankees World Series victory last night. After all, I live in New York City. It’s all anyone is talking about this morning. And I am about to endure several agonizing days of non-stop Yankee bombardment in every conceivable form, from every conceivable corner imaginable.
Not that it shouldn’t happen.
It should.
A World Series victory is a big deal, especially in a baseball town like New York.
Every Yankees fan should revel in it, as I know I would have had the Mets won a championship.
At every turn, from every newspaper, from every pair of lips, in every store, on every corner, on every radio station, it will be “Yankees, Yankees, Yankees.” It is the cross I bear as a fan of a team who will always do everything it can to live up to the monicker of “New York’s second best baseball team.”
The fact is, the New York Yankees deserved to win it all – just like the Philadelphia Phillies deserved to be the National League pennant winners.
Without question, the Yankees are the best team in baseball.
(My fingers ache just typing that).
I do admit, as a die-hard Mets fan who bleeds orange and blue, that there was a definite sick pleasure in seeing the hated Philadelphia Phillies lose. That they have a team that is chock full of the type of gritty, in-your-face, down-and-dirty clutch ball players I wish were playing in Queens doesn’t change the fact that their loss was particularly sweet.
I can’t help but feel that way.
Yes, I like it when they lose, just like they take great pleasure in watching the Mets and their fans suffer – as we did all throughout this horrifically agonizing, injury-riddled, disaster of a season. (To be quite frank, even perfectly healthy, the Mets would not have been as good as the Phillies).
But did it have to be the Yankees?
I concede that this little missive is born out of emotion, rather than rationality. I’ve no real reason to hate the Yankees – other than I was raised by Brooklyn Dodger fans who lived their lives rooting for a team that always, save for once, came in second to the mighty Yankees.
National League baseball is in my blood.
But the Bronx Bombers are, after all, a New York City team. That should count for something come World Series time. If the Mets cannot represent the city in the post-season (which they regularly don’t, despite being in the nation’s number one market), I should be able to summon the maturity to throw my support behind the big boys in the Bronx.
But I don’t. Or I can’t. Or I won’t.
On one hand, I have no problem saying that if I never see another Yankees champion for the rest of my days on this Earth, it will be too soon. On the other, I know that jealously doesn’t become me – and to suggest that there isn’t even just an electron’s worth of jealousy mixed in somewhere is intellectually dishonest.
No, as a Mets fan, I don’t long for twenty-seven world’s championships. I don’t ache for a team with a history as rich and storied as the Yankees’. (I’m perfectly happy with my own team’s history). I don’t wish for a slew of retired numbers and Hall-of-Fame inductees as extensive as the Bombers’. I don’t even want a uniform as classic and awe-inspiring as the Yankees’ famed pin stripes.
But how about just one lousy championship?
One?
Is 1986 going to be it?
(Too much emoting. Steady now. I digress.)
Indeed, my hatred of the Phillies is greater than my hatred of the Yankees – but not by too much. Perhaps only my disdain for the Atlanta Braves and their annoying third baseman (Chipper Jones, who actually named his child, Shea, after the stadium in which he so excelled) trumps them both.
In short, it was very difficult for me to get into, let alone enjoy, this year’s Fall Classic. Choosing between the “worst of two evils” didn’t seem to be enough of a motivating factor to get me into the series.
However, in reading many of the online screeds and scribbles from dejected Phillies fans this morning – and something that historically seems to be a common theme among cry-baby Mets fans – is the notion that the Yankees championship is less legitimate somehow, or less worthy of recognition, because they “bought” it. Since the beginning of their remarkable run in 1996 as a perennial playoff contender, this has been the big knock against the Yankees – their ability to “buy” championships – or at least, “buy” contenders. Because they spend tons and tons of money on putting championship-caliber team on the field, and because most other teams simply haven’t the capacity to do the same, it somehow makes their accomplishments less authentic or a sham.
Sure, they spent a boatload of money on building this championship team.
So what?
They’ve not done anything illegal. They’ve worked legitimately within the guidelines of the rules of Major League Baseball to build their franchise’s success.
One can certainly be a proponent of the salary cap, like exists in the National Football League, but that’s a separate issue. Indeed, it’s a very legitimate topic, and one worthy of discussion, but it is irrelevant to what happened during this six-game series between the Yankees and the Phillies. (Personally, in purely theoretical terms, I would find the limitation of a salary cap more interesting). Certainly, the Phillies could have beaten a team with a larger payroll – as the Marlins did in 2003 when they beat the Yankees, and the Diamondbacks did in 2001 when they beat the Yankees, as the Phillies themselves have done over the past three years against the hated Mets when it’s counted most. Yankee fans will (quite correctly) tell you that spending money doesn’t guarantee a championship, as the years 2001 through 2008 showed, although it cannot be denied that it can do much to keep a team a contender.
It’s the way it is. Deal with it. Stop whining about it.
The fact is, there is not a Mets fan in all of God’s creation who would turn down and reject a World Series championship if their team spent the amount of money the Yankees did.
Not one.
Not a single Mets fan would be caught dead declaring a championship less legitimate had their team’s front office spent the amount of green the Yankees had – nor would any team.
Text book hypocrisy.
Who among us would look down on a World Series championship had their own team the ability to spend as the Yankees do?
Not one.
Go ahead and hate a team because of a long-standing rivalry. Go ahead and hate a team because it was passed down from your Dad’s generation to do so. Go ahead and hate a team because you hate some of their ball players. Go ahead and hate a team because their fans are arrogant and annoying. Go ahead and hate a team because every time they play you, they clobber you. Go ahead and hate a team because you hate the way their stupid uniform looks. Go ahead and hate a team because their loud-mouthed second baseman pisses you off (primarily because he backs up his smack talk). Go ahead and hate a team for any number of reasons, but don’t start in with money.
Believe me, in the world of professional football, I despise the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins for reasons that have nothing to do with money.
So, congratulations to the New York Yankees for another championship. If you are a Yankees fan, go out and enjoy the parade, buy your “World Champions!” gear, rub it in the face of every Mets fan who is still trying to figure out why Carlos Beltran didn’t at least swing the bat once in that final at bat in 2006, and wave your “We’re Number One!” banners proudly.
President Barack Obama and his party may have taken it on the chin last evening, but when it comes to defying the laws of science (i.e., walking on the water), and defying the tenets of reason (i.e., health care costs will not go up despite adding tens of millions to the insurance rolls), no one can touch him.
Add to that list, his ability to defy the laws of mathematics.
I admit to not knowing much about the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council. It doesn’t come up in conversation much here in New York City’s forgotten borough, Staten Island – although my Big Apple tax dollars are being funneled that way, so perhaps I should pay better attention.
A quick look at their website reveals that they are an “advocate for the poor since 1965.” Their mission statement says, in part, that they are “making the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 a reality in Southwest Georgia by helping socially and economically disadvantaged persons help themselves through a variety of programs.”
Good for them.
For those keeping score at home, there are a total of 508 people employed by the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council.
That’s 508 total jobs.
But thanks to President Obama’s magical, all-healing, all-curing, all-saving $787 Stimulus Package, a total of 935 jobs were saved there.
That’s 935 jobs.
Yes, President Obama somehow saved 427 more jobs than actually exist at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council.
Now that is success.
I know there is no Nobel Prize for Mathematics, but there needs to be one.
Brett J. Blackledge and Matt Apuzzo of the Associated Press write:
The Georgia nonprofit’s inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government’s latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an “extensive review” to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.
About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.
That type of accounting was found in an earlier AP review of stimulus jobs, which the Obama administration said was misleading because most of the government’s job-counting errors were being fixed in the new data.
The administration now acknowledges overcounting in the new numbers for the HHS program. Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery office, said the Obama administration was reviewing the Head Start data “to determine how and if it will be counted.”
But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.
“If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job,” HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.
Huh?
I didn’t realize that giving someone a raise qualifies as having saved that job. Is that the same accounting technique that counts someone who may have been out of work for even one day as being included among the millions who have no health care insurance? Or those who smoked cigarettes for even six months as a teenager as being included among those who died from cigarettes?
And what does a “portion of your job” mean?
I’m confused.
Did the Stimulus Plan only save fractions of jobs? And if so, wouldn’t that mean that there were actually more than 935 jobs to begin with that enabled a total of 953 jobs to be saved in a place that really only employs 508?
And what if someone didn’t get a raise, but remained employed. That doesn’t count as a “saved job”?
We should ask President Obama. He’ll know what to do.
To deny my disappointment in Doug Hoffman’s loss last night in New York’s 23rd Congressional District race would be to deny reality. Right up to the end, despite the embarrassing debacle created by the Republican establishment up there, I still went on record as predicting a victory for the conservative, Hoffman. Without question, it would have been the fairy-tale cherry on top of an already scrumptious election night cake. Perhaps it was wishful thinking on my part, but ultimately, it was a letdown.
I can’t lie.
Yet, on the morning after, setting aside my disappointment – with an otherwise glorious election night in the books, and at the risk of coming off like a cable news channel spinmaster - it may be more productive to think of the entire New York-23 affair as a victory of sorts for conservatives, and an opportunity for a lesson to be learned by Republicans (if they’re willing to pay attention).
For those in New York’s 23rd District who embrace the idea of fiscal responsibility and smaller government, Doug Hoffman’s candidacy gave them a genuine voice. For those who believe that such things as traditional marriage and protecting the unborn actually matter, Doug Hoffman’s run for office finally gave them validation. For those who believe that the individual - and not government - is central to America’s success, Doug Hoffman was their man.
Despite his four-point loss, I still have to take a “hip-hip-hooray” out of petty cash for common-sense conservatism.
The entire mishandling of the situation by the GOP in upstate New York – including the endorsement of the Democrat (and winner) Bill Owens by the sham-Republican drop-out, Dede Scozzafava – only reinforces the fact that conservatism, when embraced by Republicans, will win them elections. It is not a difficult concept to grasp.
For those who went out and pulled the lever for Doug Hoffman, the election was not about personality or glitz. It was not about fashion or star-power. It wasn’t even about party.
For them, it was an election propelled by issues.
What a novel concept.
What a motivator.
So, while the top of my post election-day cake is a trifle bare this morning, it still tastes a little like victory.
A short one-question quiz.
