Pounding The Podium

Somedays I feel like I write for the Huffington Post, and that is really not a good feeling.  But before I shut down for the evening I tend to check out a few of the more left leaning sites like Huffington Post, Newshounds, Media Matters, etc., probably not a good idea as it is after 1:00 in the morning and here I am pounding the keyboards.

One of the editors over on “I Hate The Media” says that his biggest complaint about me (and he has several) is that I read something that makes me mad and then I sit down and write about it.  Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t.  Probably a better way to write satire which I have stayed away from a little bit lately is to think on it a day or two before committing it to paper (or computer memory, or what have you).

Anyway, he is probably right, in fact I am sure he is.  But this is not about satire, this is about I am mad dammit and here is why I am mad (you know – good blogging!!!).

Okay, tonight I am mad at Andy Ostry of Huffington Post for his contention that the “Republicans Once Again Shamelessly Exploiting Terrorism  for Political Purposes” which happens to be the title of his latest Huffington Post article.

In example, we of course have the case of “US Army Major Malik Nadal Hassan, who Republicans are demanding be called a terrorist for killing 13 people in what they claim is the first act of terrorism on U.S. soil since the September 11, 2001 attacks”  Ostry goes on to contend that “Any mentally ill Muslim can walk into a supermarket and yell “Allahu Akbar,” as Hasan had before opening fire on his fellow soldiers, but does that in and of itself make him an Islamist terrorist rather than simply a violent fringe lunatic? Does this give license to Republicans to frame the debate with reckless, irresponsible and incendiary rhetoric?”

Ostry’s statement reminds me of a textbook I had in college so many, many, many years ago – the fact that I remember after so many years the name of the book “The Big Umbrella” by   I was fortunate enough to find a website about the book which was originally released in 1972 (Ouch!!) here is an excerpt that should provide a good example of why the above paragraph by Ostry brought it to mind

“During the last generation a big umbrella was opened. Beneath its huge, over-arching expanse you now find people with the most diverse problems and difficulties. Under its shadow they have been gathered together according to the novel idea that nearly everybody who is having problems, regardless of what his difficulties may be, is sick. The name of this umbrella is Mental Illness. This umbrella was designed and opened by Charcot and Freud and others who worked with them. Until their time, “illness” meant physical illness. But they stretched the concept of illness until it pertained to nearly any and every sort of difficulty in life.’

Apparently now if one is to believe Ostry, the “Big Umbrella” described above has now been extended to include Muslim extremists.

One wonders (at least I do) how we would prove the fact that the extremists who crashed airliners into buildings with such devastating effect were in fact terrorists and not as Ostry contends “mentally ill” and a ‘violent fringe lunatic’ as very little evidence remains to test Ostry’s theory on.  Perhaps that is just the Conservative Republican in me being “reckless, irresponsible and incendiary” sorry.

Later in his writings, Ostry finds a supposed like thinker in Matt Duss of ThinkProgress who put it: “The definition of terrorism is not ‘any violence by any Muslim anywhere at any time for any reason’.”

In what I would term fanciful editing, Ostry leaves out the results of the train of thought that Duss began on the matter of what terrorism is, because that leads into the left’s belief that Hassan’s actions were no better or worse than the U.S. and its allies are routinely guilty of as stated in Glenn Greenwald’s article on the subject which says “But that — along with the repellent claim that saying ”Allahu Akbar” is “suggestive of terrorism,” rather than suggestive of someone who is Muslim (obviously the same thing in the minds of the people claiming that) – is exactly what seems to be driving discussions of this attack.  It’s likely that there will always be a lack of clarity about exactly what motivated Hasan — some combination of mental instability, religious fervor and political conviction — but, regardless of motive, the only way to define an attack on soldiers as an act of “terrorism” is to indict ourselves in the same way.”

So apparently we are the same thing as the Muslim extremists, and we do the exact same things.  That explains Bernie Goldberg’s remarks on the Factor last night where he basically warned us to watch out for “all those Christian suicide bombers” and how many times has a guy shouted out “Praise Jesus” before shooting up a bunch of unarmed Muslim soldiers.  Why it is exactly the same thing.

Not only is the left mired deep in deadly “political correctness” they are still hoping that the Barrack Obama world apology tour will bring about world peace.   In the words of Doctor Phil “How’s that working our for ya?”

According to today’s Huffington Post, Obama’s financial wizard, Mr. Turbo Tax himself Tim Geithner may be in serious trouble.  According to Huff Po “A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner — then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation’s Treasury Secretary — responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs”

The report was scathing in it’s criticism of Geithner both in terms of his actions on some issues and inaction on others.  Huffington Post also reported that “There is no question that the effect of FRBNY’s decisions — indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG — was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG’s counterparties,” the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said.

Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia got full value for their derivatives contracts with AIG, and taxpayers got the bill. In total, $27.1 billion of public money was transferred to companies that did business with AIG.”

Hmmmm, not being an accountant myself I can only say that does not sound good, it almost hearkens back to the days of old, I think it was this March when calls for Geithner’s resignation were long and loud on Capitol Hill

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Politico actually ran the following article on calls for Geithner’s resignation over his handling of AIG  “Should he stay or should he go? That was the topic being hotly debated on the Hill Wednesday as a partisan battle shaped up over the fate of embattled Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.  Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) kicked it off early, becoming the first member to publicly call for Geithner’s head.  “I’ve had serious concerns about Secretary Geithner from the moment he was nominated. In the months since, he has shown us time and again why he was the wrong choice for this critical post,” Mack wrote in a statement. “This week’s news on the AIG bonus scandal is but the latest fiasco under his watch, and he has lost the confidence of the American people. Quite simply, the Timothy Geithner experience has been a disaster. … Timothy Geithner should either resign or be fired for the good of the country.”

Obama stuck up for the embattled Geithner through his previous problems, but should it prove good timing to blame Geithner for all the financial troubles the administration is currently having then we will soon  find Geithner keeping company with the crowd currently cooling their heels under Obama’s bus.  Stay tuned!!

By Patrick Michael

Read more at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/16/aig-bailout-government-ov_n_359919.html

If you just need a good laugh check out the following video on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL-Oj1rQ-c

I am currently working on an in depth article on SEIU and environmental groups and came across this great article by Michelle Malkin.  More proof that great minds do indeed think alike!!

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/16/seiu-thugs-vs-the-boy-scouts/

Just read his Bio at Huff Post “Geoffrey Dunn is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. Dunn has produced and directed more than a dozen award-winning documentary films, including Dollar a Day, 10¢ a Dance: A Historic Portrait of Filipino Farm Workers in America; Miss…or Myth?; and the recently completed Calypso Dreams.

Dunn is the author of Santa Cruz Is in the Heart and Chinatown Dreams: The Life and Photographs of George Lee. He also wrote the original screenplay for the feature film Maddalena Z. Dunn earned a Ph. D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was the recipient of an Excellence in Teaching award in 2001″.

Hard to imagine that a life that seemed so full of promise has been reduced to being a “I hate Sarah Palin” hack for the Huffington Post.  I mean who has a full time job hating Sarah Palin (besides Geoffrey Dunn).

Geoffrey Dunn despite being in his more advanced years displays a childlike glee in anything that casts disparagement on Sarah Palin, and apparently gives him cause to write another “article” and cash another check.

For those of you who think it impossible that an “award winning” writer and filmmaker could possible sink so low, check out a listing of his blog entries,(which follows)  does this list seem a little slanted?  It’s hard to believe that the left is not worried about Palin (right – not much) when they employ people like Dunn to write negative articles about her on a full time basis.

In all honesty, Dunn is also in the process of writing a whole book of Palin bashing.  Seems like someone has a fixation.

Palin Lifts From Gingrich in Anchorage Speech

CNN’s ticker provided the following blurbs from the King of Astro Turf David Axelrod concerning Sarah Palin’s book.

“Going Rogue,” the forthcoming memoir of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may already be a bestseller but the former Republican vice presidential nominee won’t be getting a royalty from one Democratic politico.

Instead of purchasing his own, Obama adviser David Axelrod tells CNN he will borrow the much anticipated book from another veteran of the Obama campaign.

“I think I’ll borrow [former Obama campaign manager David] Plouffe’s copy,” Axelrod said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “I don’t see why we both have to buy one.

“Once he’s done with it maybe he can summarize it for me or lend it to me and I’ll give it a look.”

Asked whether he thought President Obama wants to read Palin’s new book, Axelrod chuckled and said “I think the president’s pretty busy right now. I don’t know that that’s on his immediate reading list.

“He’s reading reams of papers related to the many issues that he has to confront so I’m not sure that will be at the top of his list right now.”

This is not the first time that Axelrod has expressed a lack of interest in all things Palin. Back in July, on the eve of Palin resigning as Alaska’s governor, Axelrod said he did not spend time thinking the former Republican vice presidential hopeful’s next move.

“I can tell you with absolutely honesty,” Axelrod said in July, “that when I sit around with my political friends . . . there’s very little or no discussion of Sarah Palin.”

“And I really have no idea what Gov. Palin is going to do,” the Obama aide told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King. “She’s entering private life now. We wish her well and it’s up to her to decide what role she’s going to play in the future. She’s got plenty of advice, I’m sure. She doesn’t need mine.”

TRANSLATION:

The last thing that President Obama needs is to be reminded of Sarah Palin, he can barely sleep now worried about what she is going to say about him next (personally I hope she says something about him learning how to stand for the National Anthem, that would be good).

And whenever David Axelrod starts out a sentance with   “I can tell you with absolutely honesty” watch out for the the lightning strike from heaven.  Although he may be telling the truth when he says  “that when I sit around with my political friends . . . there’s very little or no discussion of Sarah Palin.”   But that would only be because they are afraid to speak the name.

Well, it all begins to make some sort of sense now.  Frank Rich is writing about the horror of Fort Hood, or from his take on it the horror of the right being horrified by Muslim extremists, just shows how screwed we are on Afghanistan.

In fact, according to Rich the military’s inability to foresee this action basically means we need to get out of Afghanistan right now!!  Give me a moment while I try to illuminate how on earth Mr. Rich arrives at this conclusion.

First of all, Rich ridicules the right (surprise, surprise) for it’s attacks on the Fort Hood shooter as a terrorist and then goes on to say “Whether he was an actual terrorist or an unfathomable mass murderer merely dabbling in jihadist ideas, the repeated red flags during his Army career illuminate a pattern of lapses in America’s national security. Whether those indicators were ignored because of political correctness, bureaucratic dysfunction, sheer incompetence or some hybrid thereof is still unclear, but, whichever, the system failed.”

Here Rich like most left wingers finds it convenient to avoid speaking about political correctness and who the champions of political correctness might be, other journalists (who apparently have more courage then Rich) state “The cold, hard truth is political correctness has not only run amok, it is now clearly responsible for a murder rampage on our turf at one of our top military bases,” writes the columnist David Ruthenberg at Oklahoma’s EnidNews.com. “That is terrorism, and PC thinking made it possible.” he is joined by others such as “Liberal scribe Joel Mathis at RedBlueAmerica who  agrees. “As much as it pains liberals like me to admit it … political correctness probably played a role in letting Maj. Nidal Hasan continue his career in the Army,” he writes”

Of course this is far from Rich’s take on the situation “Fort Hood didn’t happen in isolation” he states “It unfolded against the backdrop of Obama’s final lap of decision-making about Afghanistan. For all the right’s jeremiads, its own brand of political correctness kept it from connecting two crucial dots: how our failing war against terrorists in Afghanistan might relate to our failure to stop a supposed terrorist attack at home. Most of those who decried the Army’s blindness to Hasan’s threat are strong proponents of sending more troops into our longest war. That they didn’t mention Afghanistan while attacking the entire American intelligence and defense apparatus in charge of that war may be the most telling revelation of this whole debate”

So basically Rich’s position is that it was the ‘rights’ particular brand of political correctness that was at fault.   Well now everything is perfectly clear, but just in case it’s not Frank Rich continues to spell it out for us.

Rich contends that the right misses the boat on McChrystal’s evaluation as he primarily wanted the 40,000 additional troops to win over Muslims.  “As their Fort Hood rhetoric made clear, McChrystal’s most vehement partisans don’t trust American Muslims, let alone those of the Taliban, no matter how earnestly the general may argue that they can be won over by our troops’ friendliness (or bribes). If, as the right has it, our Army cannot be trusted to recognize a Hasan in its own ranks, then how will it figure out who the “good” Muslims will be as we try to build a “stable” state (whatever “stable” means) in a country that has never had a functioning central government? If our troops can’t be protected from seemingly friendly Muslim American brethren in Killeen, Tex., what are the odds of survival for the 40,000 more troops the hawks want to deploy to Kabul and sinkholes beyond?”

So now we come to the heart of the matter.  “In a week of horrific news, it was good to hear at the end of it that Obama is dissatisfied with the four Afghanistan options he has been weighing so far. The more time he deliberates, the more he is learning that he’s on a fool’s errand with no exit. After Karzai was spared a runoff last month and declared the winner of the fraud-infested August “election,”

There it is, we are supporting a failed regime who hate us in Afghanistan and need to leave immediately.  Funny, but I thought that we were fighting the Taliban, not as Rich states dying for the corrupt Afghanistan government.

So now we are supposed to believe that Obama’s habit of doing nothing rather than implicating him as non-decisive really shows us what a brilliant President he is.  That explains so much, now we know why he has also done nothing about jobs.  And come to think of it, when Obama does try to do something that is when things go horribly wrong, witness health care, witness climate change, witness czars.

But all of these things pale in comparison to Frank Rich’s view that we abandon the mission in Afghanistan, the one that the Greatest President ever called the “Right war at the right time”.  I just wonder if our enemies feel that one of their own can bring down the mighty American military, how much will Rich’s ‘cut and run’ strategy embolden the enemy?  If one such attack on American soil can destroy our countries will to fight, what about 1,000 such attacks?

And what does ‘cutting and running’ say to those who have fallen?   What message does it send to their families who believed that their sons and daughters were fighting to stop an enemy that needed to be stopped?  How does Rich’s plan effect them?  Surely the left will say that Bush left Obama such a mess that no one could have won there.  But is that true, or just something that the left will say to make itself feel better?  Just a reminder to Frank Rich and those like him, Bush is not the President and he has not been for quite some time.  Were he still in the White House would these same pundits be praising him for doing nothing?  Probably not.

Huffington Post, not to be outdone by anyone when it comes to hating on Sarah Palin is all over the advanced copy of her book.  Reportedly they found someone to read it to them right away and came out with some scathing criticism.  Why just read this:

“Peppered throughout<the book> are a stream of insulting descriptions of Schmidt and others of the “professional political caste.” Schmidt is “grim-faced” and “cool.” The campaign handlers had a “jaded aura” about them. Palin writes: “But I did notice… funny things [about the handlers] that even Piper commented on — such as tumbling out of the bus in a pack, lighting cigarettes as they went so it looked like a walking smoke cloud with legs.”

I honestly had to re-read this paragraph three times looking for the ‘insulting descriptions’ do you mean that the Huffington Post considers Palin’s description of Schmidt as “grim-faced” and “cool” insulting?  This from the Huffington Post who did not use the words insulting for Alan Grayson’s depicting former Vice President Cheney as a “Vampire” or his use of the term “Whore” to describe a female who was a former Enron lobbyist.  it’s a good thing Grayson didn’t say that Cheney was “cold” or “grim-faced” as Huffington Post would have no doubt had some harsh words for him then.  What a bunch of hyprocritical loons.

There is nothing worse than having to argue with a guy who likes jazz and golden retrievers and worse yet writes a sensible sounding column.  But where Mike Elk and I shear off in radically different directions is at the point where he believes that only Union organizing can stop Sarah Palin’s ascending to the presidency.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Mike Elk is a union organizer who has also worked as a staffer on the Obama-Biden campaign his recent article “Liberal Elitism will make Sarah Palin President – How only Union Organizing Can Stop It” gets kudos from me for admitting that Liberals are elitists or to quote Elk “indeed very elitest”.  Elk’s goes on to explain how the actual “working class” union members feel a disconnect from Liberals as the liberals tend to be vastly more educated thant the “70 percent of Americans that never graduate from college”.

This is where Elk starts to loose me he talks about the only communication that liberals have with actual workers in “real life” is going to McDonalds and asking for fries – hmmmm okay.  So most conservatives work at McDonalds?  Elk’s apparently considers his fellow liberals even more snobby than he is, as he says in the following  “Such snobbery was expressed to me in an email recently sent to me from a Democratic media strategist who said the message of the day was, “Conservatives face a choice about the future of their movement: Will they come to the table to get things done or ’stick with the angry people’?”

So Mr. Elk manages to sound like a snob while talking about what snob liberal elitists are and then he goes on to talk about Sarah Palin who he says “… indeed represents all the rage of the working class that liberals of this country are trying to quiet down. Many liberal elites engaged in revisionist history say that McCain’s defeat was caused by Palin. However, anybody who actually worked on the Obama campaign like I did knew that McCain’s defeat was caused by the financial crisis and McCain’s baffling response and coddling of Wall Street.”

It’s really kind of easy to believe that the liberal elite despite their dismissal of Palin do have a real and abiding fear of her running again.   Witness the NYT/AP article today that ‘fact checks’ her newly released book “Going Rouge”, the NYT chastise Palin for such sins as seeking out reasonably priced hotels for the most part, but then for splurging on one once with her daughter.   My guess would be that most politicians would have the exact opposite record (ie, splurging on hotel rooms except for that one time that they went crazy and were frugal).

Regardless, the fact that the left’s attack dogs are out early and often are a very good sign of their fear.  In the short time since I started writing this article MSNBC,  The AP, Newsweek, etc., have all jumped on the Palin attack train.  And she sure draws some critisicm.  She is villified by people such as Debbye Turner Bell for calling her own husband “good looking” as this (in Turner Bell’s opinion) is not “Presidential” unlike our President and his Presidential remarks like “The police acted stupidly” not a very high bar there is it?

Whose fault is it anyway?  Of course I am talking about the Fort Hood shootings.  If I hear another left wing pundit feign indignation with the ‘right wing hysteria’ and push the blame for these horrific murders off on (choose one):  PTSD, Pre PTSD, The Army, Harrasement, Insensitivity, The Victims, President Bush, The Heat in Texas, The War(s) themselves, etc., etc., etc., I am going to scream.  Actually, I think I have screamed one or two times already.

I wonder how much time the media spent during World War II (after Pearl Harbor that is) trying to show how Hitler, Mussolini, or Tojo were just misunderstood men who were probably picked on as children.  The ones who did engage in such sophomoric behavior would have in all likelyhood only done so once.

But today’s media is emboldened to say the first idotic thing that crosses their mind, with no real worries about reprecussions as long as they keep their feet planted firmly on the left side of the fence.   Indeed the more outlandish the theory, the more the journalist theorizing it’s possibility is regarded as a ‘rebel‘ and ‘brave’ with a ‘fresh‘ outlook.  It is almost as if the population today is beyond shock and disbelief at anything expressed by the media.  They are unfortunately more likely to accept even  the strangest theory as gospel if John Stewart states it as fact,  rather than type it in an Internet search engine and look for themselves.

It angers me to no end that 80% of media stories about the Fort Hood atrocity refuse to use the word “terrorist” or mention the religion of the said terrorist.  But let someone who spent 3 days in the Army shoot someone and the headline will no doubt read “Former soldier commits murder” it has happended time and time again, so apparently our veterans and policemen .are not entitled to the same respect and benifit of the doubt that we provide our enemies.

I just have to mention here that I have been diagnoised with PTSD, which I never knew I had.  Fortunately for me I saw a Nurse Practioner named Kelly at the VA who was very caring and angelic and talked me into seeking counseling through the VA.  This counseling really did save my life, certainly not because I had any intention of harming others, but I was personally giving thought to harming myself as I was very depressed.

My Psychologist (who I highly suspect of being a liberal) is none the less a great guy.  Now he works at the VA and has to hear REAL cases of PTSD from veterans from World War II forward.  And I could no more see this man going crazy and killing Veterans than I could see Alan Grayson and Van Jones calling me up for lunch one day.

The fault with Fort Hood lies at the feet of radical Muslims who preach hate, who preach that the West is the Great Satan, who preach that murderers are really heros, who preach that those who cannot be converted must be killed, who preach the jihad.

Is Political Correctness at fault as some have suggested?  Why of course it is, but let’s talk about where political correctness comes from.  Who demanded after 9/11 that Muslims not be targeted or profiled by the military, FBI, CIA or any other group responsible for identifying those who plan attacks against the United States?  The same people who want to treat Fort Hood as a tradgedy that has nothing to do with terrorism.  These are coincidentally the same people who want to protect the rights of the terrorists while at the same time prosecuting those responsible for protecting us.

Blaming the military is all well and good, but blaming the military without remarking upon how the military became the poster child of the political correct is disingenious.

Maybe ending terrorist and ending political correctness are not mutually exclusive.

James Rucker is the co-founder of Color of Change  the group that has requested advertisers to boycott Glenn Beck.   Robert Murdoch the owner of Fox News recently stated that he thought that Glenn should not have said what he did about the President, but agreed with Beck’s opinion of President Obama.

So James writes an open letter to Robert Murdock, reproduced here: