Monday, April 29, 2013

Our True Enemy: Political Correctness

Our True Enemy: Political Correctness:
America has again had to face the reality of terrorism hitting our streets. The Boston Bombing was another wake-up call that we are under attack and the enemy walks among us, yet we are not supposed to admit who the enemy really is, at least not out loud.  We have a President who thinks that by ignoring the enemy, we will be a safer nation, like most of his other beliefs, he is totally wrong.

“I rise today to express grave doubts about the Obama Administration’s counter-terrorism policies and programs,” said the freshman congressman from Arkansas. “Counter-terrorism is often shrouded in secrecy, as it should be, so let us judge by the results. In barely four years in office, five jihadists have reached their targets in the United States under Barack Obama: the Boston Marathon bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square Bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and in my own state—the Little Rock recruiting office shooter. In the over seven years after 9/11 under George W. Bush, how many terrorists reached their target in the United States? Zero! We need to ask, ‘Why is the Obama Administration failing in its mission to stop terrorism before it reaches its targets in the United States?’”      Congressman Tom Cotton

Here is a reprint of one of my first articles, it remains true as long as Obama is in office.
When I was a kid back in the 1950′s and 60′s I watched a lot of World War II movies, mainly because back then, all the movies that were on T.V. were from the 1930′s and 40′s and many movies from the 40′s were war movies. In the early 1960′s there were quite a few war movies produced, not on T.V. but in the movie theater. As you all know one of our foe’s during the war was Japan. Hollywood made no bones about putting down the Japanese soldiers and making fun of them whenever they could. I remember seeing pictures of the famous ToJo who was their leader at the time. All the pictures as well as the cartoons had him as a funny character with squinty eyes, glasses, buckteeth and mustache. The picture of him was everywhere and why not, he was our enemy. You see we hated our enemies back then.
Fast forward to present times. Remember September 11, 2001? Muslim radicals killed 3,000 Americans that day. That day we had a new enemy. Muslims. Not all Muslim people are bad, just like not all Japanese people were bad during W.W. II. However, something is different, now we are not allowed to say anything bad about our enemies. Even though Muslims attacked us and killed Americans, we cannot make jokes about them, draw cartoons about them, paint them in an unfair manner because that would be insensitive and might hurt their feelings. It is no wonder we are losing respect around the world. America is becoming a joke to the rest of the world. We have a president that will not call terrorist attacks a terrorist attack; we now have to call it man made disasters. Why? Because we might offend someone. We have an administration that refuses to admit we have a Muslim problem in the world. Just look at the Fort Hood shooting, look how many soldiers were killed, again by a Muslim, but it was not a terrorist attack, according to the Obama administration it was work place violence. If that was not so sad it would be laughable. It seems that we have to bend over backwards to please our enemies. God forbid we might offend them.
There, we have two generations with different enemies. One Japanese, the other Muslim. Who handled the enemy better? Well I’ll give you a hint. They were called the greatest generation. And they were too. I do believe we have lost all common sense in this country. We have come to a point where we have to treat our enemies like they are our friends, no matter what they do. God forbid we should hurt their feelings. The left just does not realize that ignoring terrorism does not make it go away, it just emboldens the terrorists and makes the situation worse. We should be allowed to hate our enemies, we should not be forced to make nice nice with people who are trying to kill us. Our true enemy is Political Correctness.
My latest book “What Kind Of Society Are We Leaving Our Kids”  Click Here
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This is one man’s opinion.

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Grassley: Anyone Voting for Current Immigration Bill Would ‘Be Buying a Pig in a Poke’

Grassley: Anyone Voting for Current Immigration Bill Would ‘Be Buying a Pig in a Poke’:
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that anyone voting for the Group of Eight immigration proposal as written would “be buying a pig in a poke.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Grassley is ranking member, began weighing the lofty bill to arise from bipartisan negotiations.
“But this isn’t going to be the issue that comes up on final passage. In fact, the group of eight said that this was only a starter. They know it’s going to be amended in committee,” Grassley said Sunday on Bloomberg.
“Maybe even some of those group of eight think it needs to be changed someplace. And so we don’t really know what we’re going to be voting on. But I know that from one respect, we ought to be legislating and not delegating. And this bill delegates too much authority to the secretary of Homeland Security.”
The senator said whether the bill evolves into something he could support depends on the amendments.
Among the provisions Grassley supports are the national eVerify to screen current workers and the H1-B visa to bring higher skilled workers.
“The bottom line of it is there’s been some fraud in it, or maybe some incentives or not enough care, to take care of out-of-the-country companies hiring people and outsourcing jobs. I think we ought to prevent the outsourcing of jobs, do it in a way that provides the necessary professional help that we need that H1-B is, and then make sure that – that there’s a good faith effort,” he said. “And those are legal terms that has to be in the bill that every company in America makes a good faith effort to hire an American before somebody emigrates here for that purpose.”
Grassley said Republicans shouldn’t support the bill simply in a quest to win Hispanic votes.
“I think it’s very important for us to pass this bill from the standpoint of our sovereignty and our borders being secure. I think it’s very important that we advance our economy, as immigration can advance our economy,” he said.
“I think this is a very necessary thing for us to do that opens the door to various minority groups within the United States. But what’s really going to win over people coming here from other countries is economic opportunity. And I think Republicans have a philosophy that does well in that way. That we’re – that we respect their family values, their work ethic and their spiritual values. And it seems to me that we have a lot to learn from these very immigrants, a lot to learn.”

U.S. Spent $3.3 Billion in Fraudulent Unemployment Claims in 2011, Media Mum

U.S. Spent $3.3 Billion in Fraudulent Unemployment Claims in 2011, Media Mum:
With all the media panic about sequestration, one would think a study finding billions of dollars of fraud in a government program would be national news.
Apparently not, for with few exceptions, a report published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve last week finding $3.3 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims in 2011 got almost no attention:
read more

New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies - National Conservative | Examiner.com

New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies - National Conservative | Examiner.com

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left's race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act--enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy. The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

A Plea to the West

A Plea to the West:
Not all ideologies and religions are created equal.  Subsets of religions can benign - or deadly.
Moderate Muslims send a message to the west to please head their warnings about radical Islam.
We cannot any longer afford to allow our mainstream media, our educational institutions and our civil society associations to wallow in political correctness and, intentionally or not, give cover to the Islamists in our midst through public relation exercises, such as inter-faith dialogue.
As Muslims we understand much more than anyone else how multiculturalism has become a cover for Islamist penetration of the West. As Muslims, we have the inside knowledge of the extent to which Wahhabi teachings and Islamism have together undermined what was once a rich and tolerant culture within Islam.We recognize that after decades of Wahhabi subversion, this sounds apologetic and quaint.
Moreover, as Muslims, we found ourselves accepted in the West with immense generosity, kindness and without any discrimination by the majority of the population. Many of us carry deep physical and psychological wounds of bigotry and violence directed against us as Muslims by other Muslims driven to fanaticism by Wahhabi and Islamist teachings. As survivors of Muslim violence against Muslims, our gratitude in finding refuge and a new home in Canada and elsewhere in the West is immeasurable.
Only when it becomes certain that the West will not any longer tolerate the preaching and practice of Islamism will we witness increasing numbers of Muslims stepping forward publicly to repudiate those imams and religious leaders in our mosques and mosque-related institutions who have been instrumental in pushing Islamism among Muslim youth and radicalizing them for jihad or mass terrorist operations.
Sadly, although it is human nature, fear is an intangible reality that is holding the majority of Muslims in the West back instead of taking responsibility to spear-head the drive to defeat Islamism.
We want to advise our compatriots that the Muslim world is presently in an upheaval of historic proportion, as Europe once was as Christendom was in the transition from the pre-modern to the modern world of liberal and secular values.

Friday, April 26, 2013

What Our Kids Aren't Taught

What Our Kids Aren't Taught:
Bill Bennett gave a very interesting and wise address today at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He reflected on American education 30 years after the “Nation At Risk” report. Bill has kept up with the research and had insightful things to say about choice, content, unions, and other issues.

The heart of his talk, though, or the part that struck me most forcefully anyway, was about the failure to impart our history and culture to our kids. He noted that only 22 percent of students scored proficient on a recent NAEP test on civics, and only 18 percent scored proficient in history. There are Americans, he said, with long bloodlines in this country who are nonetheless strangers to it, because no one had taken the time or the trouble to teach them that “In the long story of inhumanity and misery that is human history, the American achievement stands high and unique, and it’s worth knowing.

The speech is here.

FRC In the News: April 26, 2013

FRC In the News: April 26, 2013:
Preventing Future Gosnells
Anna Higgins, Director, Center for Human Dignity at FRC, wrote an article on Townhall.com about the current Gosnell case and other incidents where “choice” has cost precious lives. Higgins also points out the need for more media coverage and awareness. She states:
“Perhaps we have become so accustomed to accepting abortion as a “choice” rather than the death of a unique human being that infanticide has become simply a natural and acceptable extension of the “abortion right.” This Pennsylvania abortion facility is not the first, nor will it be the last, to be revealed as unsafe and unsanitary. In fact, many facilities around the country have been found to be in violation of basic health and safety standards. Just last week a Planned Parenthood in Wilmington, Delaware closed its doors when two employees released statements that the facility was performing abortions in an unsafe and unsanitary manner. The local TV station covered this story extensively, to their credit. However, these violations continue to go largely unreported in the media. Every American should be incensed that he cannot trust the media to cover, in a neutral manner, serious events affecting human rights without heavy pressure from the public and from Congress. We are constantly bombarded with stories of celebrities and athletes, yet this important story – the perpetration of violence against children – was largely ignored. We must remain vigilant and demand that all stories affecting our families and our values be given fair coverage.”
The Loss of Right and Wrong: What’s Worse Than Being Mean?
Rob Schwarzwalder, Senior Vice President at FRC, wrote an article featured in Religion Today about the current decrease of morality in the culture. Schwarzwalder challenges his readers stating:
“Moral incoherence is growing. Adultery is not wrong, merely unwise (or liberating, depending on one’s personal point of view, which to challenge is arrogant, not to mention mean). Confiscation of property and wealth, aka theft, is not wrong if performed by government entities, but good luck if you get caught stealing a car. Murder is a capital offense unless its victim is a 9-month-old unborn child, her life ended in an antiseptic “clinic.” Christians must continue to appeal to the conscience, to make reasoned arguments, to tell stories that subtly explain moral truth. Persuasion is a multi-pronged endeavor. And we must wed grace with truth as we make our case. We just need to be prepared for looks of uncertainty, amazement and even hostility from our peers and not to assume that our basic moral assumptions are theirs. There has never been a time when being a Christian in America has been, for so many, so very peculiar.”
Does Reason Still Matter?
Rob Schwarzwalder’s article featured in First Things addresses the need for truth, which is Christ and His teachings. Schwarzwalder shows how this truth impacts policies such as marriage. Schwarzwalder says:
“The sticking point in all of this is that when it comes to contested issues of moral value, one side wins and the other loses…such socio-moral issues as abortion on demand, the nature of marriage, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty offer us no intermediate policy outcome. Christians, then, should make their arguments carefully, winsomely, graciously, and firmly, in the hope that “the law written on the heart” will overcome emotional prejudice, intellectual laziness, and moral compromise. When we lose, we have no choice but to keep making our arguments. We are called not to political success but faithfulness to God. If we are attacked because we’ve spoken or acted like jerks, then we need to repent, seek forgiveness, and better wed truth with love. But if we suffer for Jesus’ sake, for the faith once delivered and the truth revealed with finality, we are blessed, not cursed.”

The Collapsing of the American Skull

The Collapsing of the American Skull: One of the most ingenious and effective strategies of the Left on any number of topics is to frame the debate and co-opt the language so effectively that it becomes all but impossible even to discuss the subject honestly. Take the brothers Tsarnaev, the incendiary end of a Chechen family that in very short time has settled aunts, uncles, sisters, and more across the map of North America from Massachusetts to New Jersey to my own home town of Toronto. Maybe your town has a Tsarnaev, too: There seems to be no shortage of them, except, oddly, back in Chechnya. The Tsarnaevs' mom, now relocated from Cambridge to Makhachkala in delightful Dagestan, told a press conference the other day that she regrets ever having gotten mixed up with those crazy Yanks: "I would prefer not to have lived in America," she said.

Airline Sequester Fix Exposes Dem Hysteria

Airline Sequester Fix Exposes Dem Hysteria:
Our long national nightmare is finally over. After a week of experiencing some delays at many major airports, Congress acted in the last 24 hours and passed a bill that will allow the Federal Aviation Agency to bring back air controllers from the furloughs that were forced upon them by the budget sequester. The legislation gives the secretary of transportation the ability to manage the ample funds left to the FAA to perform essential services. Of course, that is exactly what Republicans have been asking their Democratic congressional colleagues and the White House to do for the entire federal government since the sequester went into effect. Since it would mitigate the effects of the sequester and end any talk of a budget deal that would raise taxes, the president and his party have refused to consider any such commonsense measure. But the idea of forcing their constituents to stand in line at security checks at airports was too terrible to contemplate, and the Democrats finally gave in after a week on this one point.
This episode demonstrates two basic facts about the entire sequester controversy.
One is that the pain being inflicted on some people as a result of across-the-board, rather than targeted, cuts is entirely unnecessary and can almost immediately be remedied by the Democrats getting down off their high horses and agreeing to GOP demands to extend the same courtesy granted the FAA to the rest of the government.
The second is that the white flag the Democrats quickly ran up on the FAA furloughs illustrates they know they’ve failed to convince the country to pressure Republicans to give in on tax increases in order to create a grand budget deal.

It should be conceded that the sequester is a stupid idea and one that the White House—which suggested it in the first place and resisted efforts to lessen its effects until now—is right when it says that it should never have been put into effect. As our Max Boot has written many times, its effect on the U.S. military is especially unfortunate and Congress should have acted to exempt the Pentagon from it months ago.
But if most of the public isn’t exactly up in arms about the sequester, as President Obama expected they would be, it also shows they understand that a bloated federal budget needed trimming. The sequester cuts are a mere drop in the bucket attempting to bail out the ocean of government debt. But as some conservative Republicans who have learned to love the sequester are pointing out, it was the only way anyone has found to make actual cuts—rather than reductions in the amount of increase in spending—in recent memory.
The point is every federal agency, including the military, could, if allowed the flexibility given the FAA, reduce expenditures without compromising their ability to perform the basic functions the public expects it to handle. As Rich Lowry pointed out in his latest Politico column the FAA holdup was entirely unnecessary:
The head of the FAA, Michael Huerta, says he has no choice but to disrupt the nation’s aviation in implementing the sequestration. He has to find $600 million in cuts in an agency with a $15 billion budget within a Transportation Department with a $70 billion budget. Only 15,000 of the FAA’s 47,000 employees are air traffic controllers. Yet he is furloughing controllers such that on Monday more than 1,000 flights were delayed. …
The FAA should be able to manage with a little less. Its operations budget has doubled since 1996. The agency got along just fine in 2007, even though it had fewer controllers than today and less money, while handling more air traffic. Even with sequestration, the FAA overall has slightly more funding than under President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget request.
Democrats have been trying to sell the country on the idea that the sequester is an evil that was mandated by the takeover of the House of Representatives by a group of Tea Party extremists. But rather than storming Congress to force them to bow to the president’s demands for more taxes in a grand budget deal, the public has yawned. Whatever they think of Republicans, most people think forcing the government to make do on less—as they have been forced to do in hard economic times—is a good idea. Rather than hurting the GOP, the sequester has helped it.
If the president was counting on the budget helping him lay the groundwork for a Democratic takeover of Congress in 2014, he was mistaken. The hysteria they’ve tried to feed on this issue has fizzled. It’s time for him to acknowledge that error and start negotiating with Congress rather than trying to dictate to it.

The New Paternalism

The New Paternalism:
Paternalism is having a good run these days.
An MSNBC host promotes her network by declaring that “children don’t belong to their parents,” insisting that the community, and especially the government, has to be responsible for all kids. In a follow-up promo, Melissa Harris-Perry doubled down by declaring that all Americans, especially kids, have the “right to … healthcare, education, decent housing and quality food at all times.”
A Howard University student told Sen. Rand Paul after his speech there that he wants “a government that is going to help me.”
We’ve also been treated to a couple of academic heavyweights cheering for the nanny state. President Obama’s former regulation czar Cass Sunstein writes in the New Republic that government paternalism “is your friend.” And Bowdoin sociologist Sarah Conly argues in the New York Times that we should all be grateful for Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban and various other forms of paternalism that we (ahem) enjoy.
This is all so shocking though because it comes from liberals and in reality, championing the state as nanny, father, mother, controller is about as illiberal and anti-democratic as it gets.
Sunstein argues that we should be grateful for government mandates on automobile emissions because the consumer is going to benefit “in the form of gas savings” over the life of the new car. Perhaps we should forgive the man in the ivory tower, but Sunstein is ignoring the obvious reason car buyers have rejected voluntary purchases of higher gas mileage, and lower emissions cars: They cost much, much more. Since the Obama administration wasn’t happy with the private market “nudge” consumers were getting to buy the more expensive, lower emissions cars it legislated a shove by making lower-emissions cars a requirement.
Sunstein also has the audacity to claim that smokers are “happier” to pay exorbitant taxes to feed their habit because “smokers tend to be less happy because they smoke. When they are taxed, they smoke less and might even quit, and they are better off as a result.” President Obama obviously ascribes to this nanny state logic since his new budget proposes a $0.94 increase in cigarette taxes to just under $2.
As George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux points out in his review of Simpler, Sunstein’s new book on this topic, “the author assumes without much reflection” that these “nudges” can actually turn out to be unethical or even unconstitutional as a federal appeals court found in the case of FDA-approved warning labels that included grisly images of cancer-ridden lungs.
Conly argues that no one should be against Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban because really, how can it be bad to prevent people from indulging in a 16-ounce syrupy beverage? After all, society as a whole ends up paying for that overindulgence in the form of higher health care demands and costs, so why not just force people to be healthier in the first place?
Conly says that objections to the soda ban are based on a “false” understanding: “We have a vision of ourselves as free, rational beings who are totally capable of making all the decisions we need to in order to create a good life. Give us complete liberty, and, barring natural disasters, we’ll end up where we want to be. It’s a nice vision, one that makes us feel proud of ourselves.”
Conly declares that social science, behavioral economics and psychology have all proven beyond doubt that this notion of our infallible ability to make good choices is wrong. She and Sunstein have both argued that due to various “scientifically” proven “biases” we are unable to make the best decision every time. And since individuals are lousy at choosing what is in our own self-interest–for our long-term health and well-being–we should therefore have some decisions taken out of our hands completely or given limited choices between government-approved options for the betterment of ourselves and society as a whole.
Aside from the skin-crawly nature of this type of argumentation, doesn’t it seem obvious how infantilizing and anti-democratic this all is? Sunstein and Conly, Harris and the Howard student are all saying that individual adults can’t operate their lives effectively or successfully because they may make poor decisions on occasion. Instead we are supposed to cede our right to make free choices? Is this the reason our founders established a representative democracy?
The answer to both is no, and here are the reasons why.
First, our nation was founded to be a liberal democracy, where our right to the “pursuit” of happiness is protected. Not achieving happiness, mind you, but the means to trying to achieve it. As Niall Ferguson just reminded us Margaret Thatcher defined the “British inheritance” as “a man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master… They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.” America’s “inheritance” is the same.
Second, we didn’t need science to tell us that humans make mistakes and don’t always choose what is best for themselves or others. But whoever supposes that government is any more efficient, effective or better able to discern what is in an individuals’ best interest? No reasonable paternalist could argue that government is completely reliable when it comes to objectively defining problems, without bias or special interests, deciding on the best course of action and then perfectly implementing those policy choices. Please.
Finally, government paternalism offends me as a parent. One of the biggest responsibilities my husband and I took on when we had our kids is to teach them moral, practical, and civic lessons. But at some point, we know we will have to trust that we’ve done as much as we can to inculcate those values, and we will trust our children with the freedom to decide on their own. We will let go, in other words. We don’t expect that our kids will have it easy or that they won’t face disappointments and suffer the pain of mistakes. But that is how they will learn and how they will grow to be adults.
The new paternalists are like parents of eternal toddlers; they never want to let go. Sunstein and company simply don’t trust that individuals can be left to decide what is best. They prefer to believe that they–and only they–have the keys to a “happy” life and that it is only government that can reliably deliver that happiness. Besides the debilitating dependency this has already inculcated (how many receiving food stamps and disability checks admit they are scared to give it up?), it has lower expectations for what it means to be a responsible member of society. When you lower expectations, you get lower outcomes.
Abby Wisse Schachter is a Pittsburgh-based writer and blogger. Her web site is captainmommy.com.

Louie Gohmert: Boehner Has Concerns about the Tea Party, So I Have Concerns about Him

Louie Gohmert: Boehner Has Concerns about the Tea Party, So I Have Concerns about Him:


As the Tea Party Caucus has been holding meetings to reassess the group’s future, Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas pointed to “weak leadership” and “a lack of vision” in the House as the reason for tensions within the Republican party. “The speaker has had concerns about the Tea Party, which causes me concerns about the speaker – so what can I say?” Gohmert told Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto last night.

Breitbart Vindicated – NY Times Confirms Massive Fraud in Pigford

Breitbart Vindicated – NY Times Confirms Massive Fraud in Pigford:
Nice Deb
Joel Pollak, Big Government: NYTIMES CONFIRMS: MASSIVE FRAUD AT USDA IN PIGFORD; BREITBART VINDICATED:
So very convenient that this comes out five months after the election, and over a year after Andrew Breitbart’s death.
The New York Times reported Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has likely enabled massive fraud in the Pigford series of legal settlements, in which black, Hispanic, female and Native American farmers have claimed to be victims of past discrimination.
The cost of the settlements, which could exceed $4.4 billion, is the result of a process that “became a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees,” the Times notes.
Among those influential members of Congress was then-Senator Barack Obama, who made Pigford payouts a priority in exchange for political support for his 2008 presidential campaign among a coveted group of black voters in the rural South, the Times reports.
As president, Obama continued to support payouts for new groups of claimants while abandoning a review process that had been used to fight fraud. The aim was “buying the support” of minorities, according to the Times, while middlemen created a “cottage industry” in defrauding the government.
The Times investigation, led by reporter Sharon LaFraniere, vindicates the late Andrew Breitbart, for whom Pigford became a crucial issue in demonstrating the cynical use of racial politics by the institutional left to hurt the very people they claimed to be helping. Breitbart directed investigations of the Pigford fraud and championed the cause of the original black farmers in the lawsuit, arguing that many of them had been left behind while opportunistic lawyers and fraudulent claimants looted the federal treasury in exchange for votes and support.   MORE







Assaulting Innocuous Christians and Coddling Terrorists

Assaulting Innocuous Christians and Coddling Terrorists: America’s political and cultural left is, step by step, demonizing and marginalizing Christians and Christian values, to the point that even the congenitally apathetic should be concerned.

Fox News’ Todd Starnes reports (http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/military-blocks-access-to-southern-baptist-website.html) that the U.S. military has blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website on an undetermined number of military bases because it supposedly includes “hostile content.” Just a few weeks before, as noted in this space, an Army briefing labeled evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as religious extremists.
The information about the Southern Baptist Convention’s website surfaced when an ...

Worst. Political. Class. Ever.

Worst. Political. Class. Ever.:
Pretty much everybody knows Obamacare is a disaster. I mean, everybody who has an ounce of sense. Obviously, that excludes a lot of rank and file Lefty Democrats who think Obamacare is actually a fix or a cure for something, but most of those people are simple dolts anyway. But, apparently there’s plenty of agreement on both sides of the Congressional aisles that Obamacare is an unworkable albatross. How do we know this? Because Democrats and Republicans are negotiating some way to exempt Congress from Obamacare.
Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.
The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides…
The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer — in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty.
Plus, lawmakers — especially those with long careers in public service and smaller bank accounts — are also concerned about the hit to their own wallets.
In other words, unless they can exempt themselves from Obamacare’s exchange requirements, health costs for the Congressional employees will rise so much that they won’t be able to afford it.
So, both Democrats and Republicans clearly realize that Obamacare, if implemented in Congress, will kill jobs and raise health insurance costs. Is their solution to repeal Obamacare and save the rest of the country that same burden? No. Of course not. Their solution is to see how they can exempt themselves from the law. The rest of us, who have to live with it? Tough cookies, proles. Health care costs money. Deal with it.
I guess my only question is, why are we not not dragging members of Congress—of both parties—naked and screaming from their offices for a good tar and feathering?
The Republicans may make pleasant mouth noises about repealing Obamacare, but they will never do it. Even if they passed a bill, it’d die in the Senate or get vetoed by the President. So, knowing that, their fallback position is, "Well, let’s at least see if we can get ourselves exempted from it."
Both parties in Congress know Obamacare is an unworkable, unaffordable disaster, and their response is to just give a big "F you" to the American people. And, as far as I can see, the American people are just…gonna take it, tug their forelocks, and say, "As you wish, m’lud." As far as I can tell, the majority of Congress is composed of people so stupid it’s a wonder that they can think clearly enough to walk erect. And yet we keep electing them, and doing what they tell us to do. That idiot from Georgia, for example, who complained in a Congressional hearing that if we send too many marines to Guam the island will tip over and capsize…he got re-elected by his idiot constituency.
We really do deserve the total crapstorm that’s headed our way.
~
Dale Franks
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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Bonuses for VA execs … a great waste of money

Bonuses for VA execs … a great waste of money: WSBTV.com has the story about how VA executives in Atlanta received bonuses despite issues within their realm of responsibility. Despite the scandal engulfing the Atlanta VA Medical Center, Channel 2 Action News has uncovered the VA’s top executives have been pocketing large salary bonuses. Those salaries are being paid with tax money and the tax money of [...]

The Boston Bombing: The Nonsense Grows, or Let's Call the Elephant a Poodle

The Boston Bombing: The Nonsense Grows, or Let's Call the Elephant a Poodle: We all knew it would come. It had been there all along. Of what do I speak? You already know: the continuing liberal desire to live in a fantasy world, one scripted by Hollywood hacks, and sustained by the soothing hallucinogenic teas brewed by academia and the media.

We see that our Canadian friends have arrested a couple of--Surprise!--Muslim loons apparently plotting to blow up the New York to Montreal train. The preliminary information shows a possible AQ involvement and a link back to Iran.

This possible link to Iran, of course, has the liberal "experts" in an uproar. There are many stories and comments out there, denying or minimizing that possibility, this is one--there are many others.  The comment boards are full of pontificating libs pointing out to us Neanderthal conservatives that AQ is Sunni and Iran is Shia and "They hate each other! Positively hate each other! No way would they work together!"

Rubbish.

There is a long history of AQ taking refuge in Iran and operating from there. Sunnis and Shias are quite able to kill each other and to work together to kill us. They work together in "Palestine" against Israel, they work together in Latin America raising money, and they both love killing westerners all over the world.

The libs who argue that such Sunni-Shia cooperation is not possible also would have seen it as impossible for the racist Imperial Japanese and the racist Nazi German regimes to cooperate, or for the Communist Soviet Union and the Nazi Germans to do so. Spain's Franco and Cuba's Castro also had excellent economic and diplomatic relations. Let us also not forget, for example, that the Communists in France cooperated with the Nazi occupiers by turning in non-Communist members of the Resistance. These things happen.

The world of politics and political religion does not always keep to the Hollywood script.

Air Traffic Slowdown is Manufactured Crisis

Air Traffic Slowdown is Manufactured Crisis: President Obama is clearly playing a nasty political game with the air traffic controller furloughs that have forced severe airline delays across the country.

The Boston Bombers And The Dark Side of Diversity

The Boston Bombers And The Dark Side of Diversity:
Topic: 
On Topic
 [See also "The Alien In Hokie Nation"—Buchanan On The Dark Side of Diversity,  about the Immigrant Mass Murder at Virginia Tech.]

Krauthammer on Syria: 'What’s At Stake Here Is Whether Anything This President Now Says Is Believable'

Krauthammer on Syria: 'What’s At Stake Here Is Whether Anything This President Now Says Is Believable':
With the revelation that Syrian President Bashir al-Assad has used chemical weapons on his people, folks on both sides of the aisle are wondering if Barack Obama will keep his word that this is the red line that if crossed would require American action.
On Fox News's Special Report, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said Thursday, "What’s at stake here is whether anything that this president now says is believable around the world."
read more

United Airlines CEO: Obama's FAA sequester furloughs "irresponsible"

United Airlines CEO: Obama's FAA sequester furloughs "irresponsible":
The backlash against Obama's phony sequester war on the American people has begun.

From the Chicago Tribune:
The CEO of United Airlines said Thursday that the furloughs of air traffic controllers due to budget cuts have caused a significant disruption to the world's largest carrier.

"We are disappointed that the FAA chose this path that maximizes customer disruptions and damage to airlines instead of choosing a less disruptive method to comply with the budget obligations," CEO Jeff Smisek said on a conference call after the release of the carrier's first-quarter results. "Our professionals in our network operations center are working literally around the clock to minimize the impact of the FAA's irresponsible actions."

The furloughs that started Sunday take about 10 percent of the nation's air traffic controllers off the job at any time. This has led to increased spacing in between planes taking off and landing to ensure safety, but that move is leading to more delayed flights.

But the reductions haven't been across the board, and Smisek said that's made the effect very difficult to predict. He likened the cuts to thunderstorms that pop up without warning and can wreak havoc on airline operations.
Related posts:

(Video) Cramer rails about pilot who tells passengers to call Congress about sequester

Obama's phony sequester war on the American people

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“THIS IS WHAT REVOLUTIONS ARE MADE OF!” Mark Levin BLASTS Congress for trying to exempt themselves from Obamacare

“THIS IS WHAT REVOLUTIONS ARE MADE OF!” Mark Levin BLASTS Congress for trying to exempt themselves from Obamacare: marklevinshowpromoMark Levin was livid when he found out that Congress ...

Bombers' Mosque In Boston A Factory For Terrorists

Bombers' Mosque In Boston A Factory For Terrorists: Homeland Insecurity: The New York Times thinks the Boston bombers "self-radicalized" on the Web. But it didn't look at their mosque, which has churned out other terrorists, too. USA Today, on the other hand, did look at their mosque -- the Islamic Society of Boston -- and found "a curriculum that radicalizes people," according to a local source quoted in the paper's investigation. "Other people have been radicalized there." In fact, several ISB

Deportation Must Be On The Table For Immigration Reform To Work

Deportation Must Be On The Table For Immigration Reform To Work: Deportation has become a near-taboo word. Yet the recent Boston bombings inevitably rekindle old questions about the way the U.S. admits, or at times deports, foreign nationals. Despite the Obama administration's politically driven and cyclical claims of deporting either a lot more or a lot fewer noncitizens, no one knows how many are really being sent home -- for a variety of reasons. There are not any accurate statistics on how many people are

Furlough ObamaCare Folks, Not Air Traffic Controllers

Furlough ObamaCare Folks, Not Air Traffic Controllers: Corruption: The administration furloughed federal workers whose absences would cause the most pain to the public. ObamaCare officials, meanwhile, are still at work, though they should have been the first ones sent home. In an effort to sour the public on the automatic cuts of sequestration, and try to get the voters to blame Republicans for the deal that was President Obama's idea, the administration has furloughed air traffic controllers --

More Than a Decade Past 9/11 and the System Still Does Not Work

More Than a Decade Past 9/11 and the System Still Does Not Work:


By Alan Caruba

It is axiomatic that we will never know how many terrorist plots against America our vast law enforcement and counterterrorism network of federal agencies have thwarted. We do know, however, about its latest failure, the brothers Tsarnaev.

We know, too, that political correctness allowed Nidal Hassan to serve in the U.S. Army until he killed thirteen victims at Fort Hood. We know of the Times Square bomber whose bomb failed to detonate as was the case with the Underwear bomber. Others have been arrested and convicted.

After 9/11 a commission recommended that U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies be permitted to communicate with one another, sharing information about people and plots. The result is huge lists of people suspected of potential terrorist intentions. The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list is a data storehouse that feeds a series of government watch lists, including the FBI’s main Terrorist Screening Database and the Transportation Security Administration’s “no-fly” list.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of names on these lists and nothing seems to trigger the process by which we can identify who among them will be the next bombers.

Meanwhile, in Congress, an effort is being made to pass another immigration bill that would add millions more to our population from among those who came here illegally, often for no more reason than a better life, but among them are surely those—Muslims—who may experience “sudden jihad syndrome”, self-radicalizing for the purpose of killing Americans. Others arrive here already radicalized with the same intent.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration and some in Congress are trying to pass new gun control laws that will make it more difficult for Americans to arm themselves for self-defense, hunting, and sport shooting. Americans are responding by buying weapons at a record pace. You can bet there wasn’t a household in Watertown, Massachusetts that didn’t want access to a gun while the search was on for the surviving bomber.

There are thousands employed by the federal agencies charged with protecting us and there are special anti-terrorism task forces in police departments in our major cities. They have a daunting task, but at the same time there are those in our State Department who are allowing anyone applying for visas to come here, to overstay, to become citizens, and to plot terrorist crimes against us. There is, in addition, a general failure to protect our borders, particularly our southern border.

And there is a “sequestration” that arbitrarily limits the budgets on which border control and other enforcement options depend. Instead of prioritizing our needs, Congress has made us more vulnerable. Instead of cutting billions in wasteful programs, Congress dithers.

Something is terribly wrong when Russian authorities can contact various elements of our government multiple times to warn about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, taking the warnings to the FBI and CIA without success.

As a FBI spokesman explained, “There was a concern he might have some kind of ties to terrorism. We did everything legally that we could do with the little bit of information we had. After we did, we found no derogatory information.” He came here from Chechnya, a hotbed of Islamic terrorism! The information the FBI could not find was available to anyone who accessed his Internet posts. Both he and his brother were on welfare so, in effect, we were paying for their lives here. Both were on watch lists.

Something is terribly wrong when we admit not only potential terrorists, but others who arrive without sufficient education or skills to contribute to the welfare of the nation, when colleges and universities cannot recruit potential terrorists fast enough to study here.

There is something terribly wrong when the first thing President Obama said of the Boston Marathon bombing was “not to jump to conclusions” and then took several days to finally utter the words “terrorism” and “terrorists” for the first time since he campaigned in 2008. You could count the number of people on one hand who didn’t immediately think of Islamic terrorism upon news of the bombings.

The threat of Islamic terrorism is not restricted to just our nation. It is worldwide and, in Europe, there are nations taking affirmative action to restrict Muslims from immigrating and passing laws regarding their behavior in their nations in recognition of the threat they pose. There is a “war on terrorism”, but it is more accurately a war being waged by Muslims against us and others.

In America, however, the government for the past four years has sought to eliminate any references to Islam and terrorism from its official documents and has instituted political correctness as a national policy. We have a CIA director who refers to terrorism as a “tactic”, not a strategic threat.

We have a President whose father was a Muslim and who lived in Indonesia as the adopted son of a Muslim. His outreach to Muslims has been a failure. His foreign policies have seen the spread of Islamic radicalism. His response to the Benghazi attack was a fabric of lies.

A person of interest, a Saudi, Abdul Rahman Alharbi,  picked up immediately after the bombing, was on a watch list and yet he was almost instantly deported so that no intelligence could be secured from him. The State Department process by which Saudis can secure a visa to the U.S. has recently been streamlined.

The obvious conclusion is that our system for identifying and dealing with the threat of Islamic terrorists is so huge that even the agencies charged with addressing it are unable to “connect the dots” and there is little desire to deport those who should not have been allowed entry.

There are steps that could be taken, but the sheer weight of bureaucracy and administration policies is making taking those steps impossible. The current system is not working. The endless blather about “diversity” threatens the nation’s security.

Mere steps from where the former World Trade Center existed, Muslims are seeking to build a mosque. Al Gore has sold his television channel to Al Jazeera. There are school books and teachers in our schools that blame America for the hatred directed against the nation. The Transportation Safety Agency is contemplating letting people bring knives onboard planes.

The system is not working.

© Alan Caruba, 2013
Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

“This is Murder and It Must be Stopped”

“This is Murder and It Must be Stopped”:
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen brings murdering abortionist Kermit Gosnell to the Congressional House floor's attention...
HT: Weasel Zippers

There Is No Doubt About Obama Now

There Is No Doubt About Obama Now:
If there is any doubt in your mind about what Obama’s intentions have been, well wonder no more. There are many who believe that Obama truly wants to run this country into the ground, in his own words he has said that he wants to “fundamentally transform” our country, there should be no doubt that is exactly what he is doing.
We are all still feeling the effects of the mortgage meltdown that Bill Clinton started, when he launched a massive campaign of social engineering. Clinton thought that the mortgage industry was racist, (Jesus, do the Liberals know any other word?) Therefore, he decided to force banks to lower their standards for minorities, so that they can qualify for mortgages. Why minorities are not insulted because of that I will never understand, but that is another story for another day. Because of that bit of genius, millions were unable to pay their sub-prime loans, and they took the banks down with them. The housing market and the economy, are still recovering from that Liberal debacle. Now all those minorities that could not afford the house to begin with, are worse off now than when they started, because their credit is now shot, Liberal policies always do more harm than good, when will people learn?
In comes Obama with his new master plan, ignoring the lessons of the housing bubble, Obama has rehired many of the Clinton people who inflated it in the first place, pursuing the same misguided policies that try to force people into homes they can’t afford in the name of fairness. One banking official, ex-BB&T CEO John Allison, predicts that because of these policies, “There will be another incredibly destructive crisis in our financial system in the next 10 to 15 years.” The administration is launching sub-prime 2.0.
“It’s particularly galling that the people who are using the crisis to extend regulation are the same ones who sponsored the government policies that created the crisis,” said Peter Wallison, former member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a government group created to look into the causes of the 2008 crash. Thanks to a failure of accountability, the same social engineers who caused the crisis have wormed their way back into power. Moreover, they are doubling down on their monstrous mistakes, inviting another housing calamity.
Only a Liberal would dust off a failed policy and call it a good policy, a policy that almost collapsed the American economy. However, we have to look at who we are dealing with, a President that was voted the most Liberal Senator in 2007 and has turn farther left since he has won re-election. I don’t know about you, but this says only one thing to me, he wants the collapse of America. Let’s face it; his policies so far have done nothing to bring back the economy, as a matter of fact, they have prevented our economy from growing, by instituting Obama-Care and a wave of new taxes and Government regulation.
Obama’s seemingly intent, is to bankrupt our nation, how can we perceive any different, after five years in office, his excuse for not having the economy turned around is that it “was the worst recession since the great depression,” how much longer is America going to believe his B.S. I still say the only way to get this economy turned around is to get rid of Obama and all his Liberal policies, we have a chance in 2014.
I want to bring up one thing, because I know it angers Liberals. George Bush tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie because he saw what a disaster it was becoming, but was stopped by the Democratic majority, had he been successful, we might not have had the housing melt down. Eat that Liberals.
My latest book “What Kind Of Society Are We Leaving Our Kids” is now available.  Click Here
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Air Traffic Control Crisis Deliberately Engineered by Obama

Air Traffic Control Crisis Deliberately Engineered by Obama: In keeping with Obama’s policy of never letting a crisis go to waste even if the crisis has to be engineered, the ongoing air traffic control problem was deliberately and unnecessarily created by the government:
This week the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began furloughing each of its air-traffic controllers for one day out of every 10 to achieve roughly $600 million in savings this fiscal year. The White House dubiously claims that the furloughs are required by the sequester spending cuts enacted in 2011.
Capitol Hill Republicans say the White House is ...

Is Obama Following The Communist Blueprint?

Is Obama Following The Communist Blueprint?:
Obama Communist SC 300x240 Is Obama following the Communist Blueprint?
On January 10, 1963, Congressman Albert S. Herlong (D. Fla.) read the ACP’s 45 declared goals into the Congressional record (Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963.)
Here are some Communist Party goals. Compare them to Barack Obama’s and you decide if he is trying to destroy America.
Note: some goals have been omitted to save space.
Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind.
Get control of the schools. Use them for socialism and Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
Infiltrate the press. Get control of editorial writing, policy-making positions. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
Continue discrediting American culture.
Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
Break down cultural standards of morality in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion.
Discredit the American Constitution [as] inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs…
Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
Belittle, discourage the teaching of American history.
Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
Discredit the family as an institution.
Herlong eventually became a Republican saying the Democrats had left him - he didn’t leave them.
This is a hard copy blueprint of where Barack Obama is taking us and how he will get us there. His mentor, Saul Alinsky, would be proud of the destructive nature of his political “son”; but this scares me to my bones.
The entire list of the ACP’s 45 goals for destroying America can be found here.
Photo credit: SS&SS (Creative Commons)
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Political correctness has replaced self-preservation.

Political correctness has replaced self-preservation.:
NRO
Thomas Sowell
Britain’s late prime minister Margaret Thatcher said it all when she wrote that the world has “never ceased to be dangerous,” but that the West has “ceased to be vigilant.”
Nothing better illustrates her point than the fact that the West has imported vast numbers of people who hate our guts and would love to slit our throats. Political correctness has replaced self-preservation. The Boston Marathon killer who set a bomb down right next to an eight-year-old child is only the latest in an ongoing series of such people.
Senator Patrick Leahy has warned us not to use the Boston Marathon terrorists as an argument against the immigration legislation he advocates. But if we are not to base our laws on facts about realities, what are we to base them on? Fashionable theories and pious rhetoric?
While we cannot condemn all members of any group for what other members of their group have done, that does not mean that we must ignore the fact that the costs and dangers created by some groups are much greater than those created by other groups.
Most members of most groups may be basically decent people. But if 85 percent of group A are decent and 95 percent of group B are decent, this means that there is three times as large a proportion of undesirable people in group A as in group B. Should we willfully ignore that when considering immigration laws?
It is already known that a significant percentage of the immigrants from some countries go on welfare, while practically none from some other countries do. Some children from some countries are eager students in school and, even when they come here knowing little or no English, they go on to master the language better than many native-born Americans do. But other children from other countries drag down educational standards and create many other problems in school, as well as forming gangs that ruin whole neighborhoods with their vandalism and violence and cost many lives. Are we to shut our eyes to such differences and just lump all immigrants together, as if we were talking about abstract people in an abstract world?  MORE





How Muslims should address terrorism

How Muslims should address terrorism: Washington Post:

Muslims have a problem. Uncle Ruslan may have the answer.

  When asked about his faith, Boston bombing suspects’ uncle did something remarkable.
What he did is say the bombers brought shame on his ethnicity and faith.  He was unreserved in his criticism of them.  In doing so he was so much more convincing than any CAIR representative I have seen.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate group

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate group:
In the distant past, the Southern Poverty Law Center was once a legitimate civil rights organization.
Sadly, it is now a complete farce and a left-wing political machine, labeling everyone to the right of David Brooks a “hate group.”
Well, by its own standards, the SPLC is clearly a hate group, as domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins admitted in a videotaped interview that he was inspired to shoot up the Family Research Council’s headquarters by the SPLC’s hate rhetoric.

No boundaries, big problem | Right Wing News

No boundaries, big problem | Right Wing News

One of the consequences of abandoning a standard by which right and wrong can be judged is our increasing inability to mete out punishment that fits the crime. In fact, too often we weigh extenuating circumstances rather than guilty actions.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: A Product of an All-American Left-wing Education?

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: A Product of an All-American Left-wing Education?: That the older Boston bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, became a terrorist strikes one as disturbing. That younger brother Dzhokhar also...

Conciliatory FBI Policies Toward Islamism Hampered Probe Into Boston Bombers, Experts Say

Conciliatory FBI Policies Toward Islamism Hampered Probe Into Boston Bombers, Experts Say:
By Clash Daily / 23 April 2013 / 17 Comments

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s failure to recognize political Islam as a driver of jihadist terrorism is partly to blame for the FBI not identifying one of the Boston Marathon bombers in 2011 as a security risk, according to U.S. officials and private counterterrorism analysts.  The FBI revealed last week that it was warned by a foreign government in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed Friday, was tied to “radical Islam” but the FBI was unable to confirm the links.  “The fact is religion has been expunged from counterterrorism training,” said Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism specialist with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The FBI can’t talk about Islam and they can’t talk about jihad.”

Added Patrick S. Poole, another counterterrorism specialist, about FBI policies on Islam: “I have zero doubt it affected their investigation of Tsarnaev.”  A U.S. official said FBI policies of playing down Islamic links to terrorism resulted in the FBI not identifying Tsarnaev, 26, or his brother, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, who was charged with last week’s bombing, as Islamist terrorists....To Read More....

The Demise of Evil

The Demise of Evil:
Evil should not surprise Americans. We’ve seen it so many times
and in so many degrees and variations — in those who tolerated
some people having to sit in the back of the bus, in children who
torment animals, in bankers who knowingly sold junk financial
products and helped to destroy the economy and in men who set bombs
in front of innocent bystanders at a marathon. The list is almost
endless for those who look.
But still it shocks, as if the concept is unfathomable, as if 19
men didn’t kill thousands of innocent Americans only 12 years ago.
And as if the Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell on trial
for murdering children born alive is some kind of fluke of
history.
I was reminded of this reading the many news reports about
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two men accused of the Boston
marathon bombings. So many described the pair as “normal” young
men, especially Dzhokhar, the younger of the two Russian-born
Chechen brothers.
One classmate of the 19-year-old Dzhokhar at University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth told Politico, “He was a pothead, a normal
pothead. I couldn’t even imagine him being mad at someone, let
alone hurting someone.”
Another told a USA Today reporter, “He was really
social and hilarious. He was one of those people who would crack
one joke and make your night.”
Really? Was that all there was to him? I wonder if any of his
fellow party goers asked him about the things that mattered to him
or his deepest desires. None of the quotes that I have seen about
him speak to that side of the young man who reportedly confessed to
planting two bombs with his brother that killed three people and
injured more than 200 and assaulting and killing a police
officer.
To be fair, of course it is shocking when someone you know does
something terrible. But it is as if collectively we do not
understand that evil exists except for the moment it happens or as
an event to cover, not as something present in human nature
itself.
Turn on the news or watch any sitcom and this becomes
immediately apparent. All lifestyle choices are equal in American
culture as are all faiths, which has almost silenced substantive
discussions about the largest issues in life for people living in
fear of being labeled a racist, homophobe, or hater.
Our language reflects this decision to suspend critical thought.
Many news outlets, for example, no longer use the term “illegal
immigrant.” Among the reasons for the change is that interest
groups find the term dehumanizing and lacking in diversity. The
Associated Press (AP) said it is changing its widely used
“Stylebook” because “’illegal’ should describe only an action, such
as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”
Likewise the government does not like to label people or actions
with terms that could provoke questions about the non-judgmental
dominant worldview. That is why the murder of 13 innocents at Fort
Hood by Maj. Nidal Hasan in 2009 is classified as “workplace
violence” instead of a terrorist attack despite his screaming of
“Allahu Akbar” during the massacre and despite the numerous emails
found between him and the radical American-born cleric Anwar
al-Awlaki.
This divorce of moral significance from the words we choose
likely will not end soon.
One in three under 30 claim no religious affiliation and so many
of the rest of us view faith as a means to self-fulfillment rather
than a worldview with right and wrong.
But no matter how hard we try to erase judgment from our
vocabulary and culture, it cannot eliminate the dark side of human
nature. And because our language reflects how we think and vice
versa, as George Orwell noted in “Politics and the English
Language,” understanding, anticipating, and ultimately labeling
evil will become more difficult for Americans.
“If you see something, say something” is a good idea for
identifying suspect bags, but what will be the strategy for
identifying suspect minds in the U.S. when “evil” has been removed
from the “AP Stylebook”?