Pounding The Podium

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:

People have been asking about Spooky, my Jack Russell Terror.  So I am posting his picture for a little bit.

The terror of squirrels everywhere!!!

If you are anything like me, you stared at the Health Care vote numbers on C-Span (because nobody could have sat through Geraldo on Fox) and wondered, why in the world is that ‘1′ under Republican and ‘Aye”  why in the world would any Republican vote for this travesty of a bill?

Well, the answer seems to be that President Obama and the White House put a full court press on Congressman Anh Cao similar to the one that they had utilized successfully on Senator Snowe.   According to Cao he had several meetings with President Obama and White House staff in the weeks leading up to the vote.

I initially started this column just to highlight next years race between the former head of Hewlett Packard Carly Fiorina and Barbara (call me Senator) Boxer.  Then I got wrapped up in the latest Barbara catastrophy, the climate change bill and her efforts to ram it through the senate.  If you thought that the health care bill was bad, wait until you get a peek at this 900 page monstrosity. Just the fact that it is being sponsored by Barbara Boxer and John Kerry should scare you to death!

Barbara, is keeping with the Obama administrations policy of doing everything except that which is crucial (like Afganistan, jobs, etc.) as quickly as possible because otherwise we will not have a shiny new Climate change bill to impress all of the world with in Copenhagen this December.   Boxer has already ramrodded this bill through commitee (with NO Republican support) and is determined that it get in front of the Senate as quickly as possible.

Today, Kerry reminded Republicans that 2008 Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain called for strong, mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and that Senator Graham has joined Democrats in this year’s fight. “We can rediscover bi-partisan progress once again,” he said.

Wow, so Senator Graham and John McCain both like it?  Can we vote for it right now?  Please, that is like Barbara Boxer’s famous you-tube video where she admonishes the leader of the Black Chamber of Commerce that another black man likes the health care bill, so why doesn’t he?  {Note:  If a Republican said something this stupid, he/she would be villified on every leftist media source possible, which is quite a few media sources}

Kerry continued “Chairman Boxer and I are determined to see this Congress pass a strong climate bill for the President to sign,” said Kerry. “This is and has always been a big lift, but heading into Copenhagen, we have momentum on our side.”

Environmentalists are pleased with the bill’s advancement. Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “This clears the way for full Senate action on clean energy and climate legislation that will put Americans back to work, reduce our reliance on foreign oil and create a healthier future for our children. Americans are united around these goals. It’s time for the full Senate to act.”

Now one of the other big buttons that the left is going to keep pushing is the “Green Jobs Button”, because most Americans are not really going to give a rat’s ass about impressing people in Copenhagen, but before you jump on the “Green Jobs” bandwagon, look at the bill a little closer.  Two of the organizations that stand to benifit (and actually the only ones that I know of) from the Green Jobs bonanza are Blue Green Alliance a national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations dedicated to expanding the number and quality of jobs in the green economy. With partners USW, Sierra Club, CWA, NRDC, LIUNA, SEIU, AFT and UWUA, the Blue Green Alliance is uniting eight million people in pursuit of good jobs, a clean environment and a green economy. Yes, you read it right, SEIU.

The other organization is Green for all, the Green for All Academy (according to it’s website) does four primary things:

• identifies, recruits and trains leaders from low-income communities and communities of color across the United States to deliver, in their own voices, key “green jobs” messages about the opportunity of a clean energy economy and the importance of climate protection;
• develops materials, tools and trainings that inspire people to join the movement for an inclusive green economy;
• supports our leaders as they spread this message in their communities by holding regular conference calls, hosting an online community, delivering powerful tools (e.g., reports, videos, curricula) to help them lead their communities, and placing them in leadership positions in local and national conferences and other fora; and
• helps leaders organize members of their communities to influence public opinion and public policy, and support green economy solutions.

Does any of this sound familiar??

Well, where as Blue Green Alliance is associated with SEIU, Green For All is associated with the Apollo Alliance  you know, the ones associated with ACORN?  Our country is being taken over by Community Organizers.

More on this story later, if you want to read more on the subject, check out the websites below:

http://www.seiu.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&tag=Blue%20Green%20Alliance&limit=20

http://www.bioneers.org/conference/sessions-events/energy-action-coalition-and-green-for-all-green-collar-jobs-advocacy-and-impleme

Most of you who know me know that I have heart issues, that being the case I don’t watch C-Span    too much.  But tonight with the Abortion amendment and the Health care bill going up for a vote, I just could not help myself.

Soooo, what do I see – the attack of the weasel’s.  If you watched Cspan or have the misfortune to be represented by him, Bruce Brailey D in Iowa is pictured to the left.  Old Bruce gave an impassioned speech about how bad the Republican bill was because it did not address “Patient Safety” and he talked at length about how important patient safety was – heck he even held up books to prove his point.  What you didn’t hear Bruce talk about was ‘tort reform’, which is something that you may have heard a lot more about than patient safety.  Why no tort reform?  It is estimated that tort reform could have a huge impact on the deficit, reducing it by BILLIONS of dollars.  I just can’t understand why Bruce would not be in favor of it…that is until I look at his campaign contributions.

It seems that Lawyers and Law Firms like our boy Bruce..  a lot!  $168,000 plus!  Of course this could have something to do with the fact that he was a trial lawyer and head of a trial lawyers association, and who benefits from a lack of tort reform??  Your right, trial lawyers!

Making him even more lovable is his rating by the Right to Life association of ‘0′ and his rating of “F” by the National Taxpayers Union.  You can review his statistics and standings at these two sites:

http://www.votesmart.org

http://www.opensecrets.org

I’ve printed out his list of contributors below for your review.