After the 9/11 attacks, Americans were promised that the World Trade Center would be re-built and the Deutsche Bank Building, damaged by same, would be torn down. Almost eight years later, neither task has been accomplished. So what’s this got to do with the cap-and-trade bill? Plenty.
For Barack Obama, it has become woefully apparent that some meddling is “more equal” than other meddling. Ordinary Iraqi citizens protesting totalitarianism and getting killed for it? Let’s wait and see what happens. Honduras ousting a president attempting to illegally re-write the Country’s constitution? Illegal and a “terrible precedent.”
Mary Bono Mack (CA); Michael Castle (DE); Mark Kirk (IL); Leonard Lance (NJ); Frank LoBiondo (NJ); John McHugh (NY); Dave Reichert (WA); Christopher Smith (NJ).
According to Osama Bin Laden, one of the principle reasons for the perpetration of the 9/11 atrocities was to cripple the American economy. He and al Qaeda needn’t have bothered. A feckless Congress and a clueless president are more than up to the job.
The ABC television network has decided to drop the apparently over-burdensome pretense of being an unbiased news source. Next Wednesday, they’ll be broadcasting from inside the White House, presenting America with president Barack Obama’s vision for nationalizing health care. Dissenting voices? Off limits.
Does anyone remember when liberals were champions of human rights and freedom? I don’t mean their infatuation with their PC domestic agenda, such as gay marriage or amnesty for illegal aliens. I mean the JFK, “I can assure you that every degree of mind and spirit that I possess will be devoted to the long-range interests of the United States and to the cause of freedom around the world” kind of freedom. So what’s president Barack Obama’s response to thousands of Iranian protesters putting their lives on the line against a totalitarian regime? He doesn’t want to “meddle” in Iran’s affairs.
And so reality gives way to appeasement and moral equivalency. The extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust, the primary impetus for the founding of Israel, is “no better or worse” than the Palestinians’ self-inflicted culture of psychosis in which any attempt to build a functional, coexisting society has been trumped by their multi-generational desire to annihilate the Jewish state.
The American left will never accept the idea that liberating Iraq was a good thing for one over-riding reason: our failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Yet as this administration is forced to grapple with an out-of-control North Korea and a nuclear ambitious Iran, Iraq offers an example of the difference between symbolism and substance: of the three countries, the only “axis of evil” member that is no longer a nuclear problem is Iraq.
A question for Colin Powell, Tom Ridge, Newt Gingrich and all the other so-called “big tent” or “moderate” Republicans: have you all been in a coma for the last two elections?
The margin was “razor-thin,” but a Democratically-controlled Senate (59-40, awaiting the Coleman/Franken result which will likely make it 60-40 Democrat) rejected the Obama administration’s plan to bring Gitmo terrorists to the United States. The vote was 90-6.
Few things are more fascinating to me than the American left’s continuing attempt to disconnect cause and effect with regard to the war against Islamic terror.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) has decided to switch political parties. Republicans are reportedly devastated–which goes to the very heart of the problem with that political party.
In its latest sop to the far left, the Obama administration is going to release hundreds of photos showing U.S. troops ostensibly mistreating prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The true number of pictures runs into the thousands. Why release some, but not all? According to Fox News, “(the Pentagon) is choosing not to include the substantial number of additional photos submitted as evidence, many of which did not lead to disciplinary action.” Translation: pictures which don’t show America in the worst possible light don’t make the cut.
With the kind of 20/20 hindsight that only “progressive” thinkers possess, demands are being made to prosecute those who authorized the use of coercive interrogation techniques on hardened terrorists. Too bad those of us who believe in protecting America couldn’t engage in the same kind of “after the fact” choices. Maybe some of us would choose the alternative to waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: letting Los Angeles suffer the same kind of attack New York and Washington D.C. did on September 11, 2001.
Perhaps the most profoundly troubling story of the year emerged last week, in a combination of reporting by Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. It speaks volumes about the ambitions of progressive power-seeking, and the attempt to impose a worldview on America by the most direct means available–whether we like it or not.
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”–Winston Churchill
According to the conventional wisdom, one of the main reasons we’re in dire economic straits is because people are defaulting on their mortgages. One of the excuses we’re hearing for these defaults? Buyers didn’t read the details of their mortgage contracts, and were unaware that their payments could go up in the future.
Can we all stop kidding ourselves now–or are we going to keep pretending this so-called stimulus package is something other than the apex of corruption, mindless ideology and self-interest run amok?
Early last week, Kentucky was ravaged by an ice storm that paralyzed the state. 700,000 people were left without power. As of yesterday, more than half remained that way. Thousand of residents remained stuck in shelters, forced there after they ran out of food, water and power. 16 people were reported dead from traffic crashes, hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning caused by improperly used generators. And despite the fact that the storm happened last Tuesday, FEMA earliest expected arrival was last Friday–three days after the fact. Question: where’s the mainstream media headline that goes something like this–”President Hosts Super Bowl Party While Kentucky Residents Freeze?”
When I was a kid I enjoyed watching “The Three Stooges.” Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine we’d have their equivalent in charge of America’s finances.
In all things political, there is symbolism and there is substance. Nowhere is it more dangerous to substitute the former for the latter than in the arena of national security. President Obama wants to close Guantanamo Bay, other foreign prisons and limit CIA interrogation techniques? Go right ahead–as long as you’re willing to live with the consequences, Mr. President.
According to Fox News, California had the greatest net outflow of residents for the year ending July 1, 2008. New York was number two. I suppose the fact that both of these states have massive amounts of government–and massive amounts of government debt–is merely a coincidence.
Moral relativism is a bankrupt philosophy which allows its adherents to see a certain amount of virtue in evil and a certain amount of vice in goodness, based on the idea that tolerance and fairness to all sides are the highest attributes of “enlightened” thinking. In reality, it is moral cowardice by another name. And nothing brings more moral cowards out of the woodwork than the Arab-Israeli conflict.
While Americans can be divided into many subgroups, the economic downturn has produced the most salient division of the current time: the “Exposed American” and the “Insulated American.”
If the year 2008 has revealed anything, it is this: no society can function properly unless there is a general agreement about what is right and wrong. Unfortunately, right and wrong are now largely held hostage by political ideology: conservatives and liberals have vastly different ideas about what constitutes ethical behavior. Is there common ground? Try these few for starters:
Long ago I wrote a column regarding what I called a “tipping point” between the wants and needs of the public sector versus the private sector in New York. I said the unions and special interest groups there were so politically powerful that they would eventually control government, and ordinary New Yorkers would pay through the nose as a result. That time is now.
In a previous column I did short commentaries based on current events. I’ve decided to call this approach “Quick Hits.” Hopefully, you’ll enjoy reading this type of column as much as I enjoy writing it. Onward:
Is there any system of governance or economics that can withstand rampant corruption or self-entitlement? While there are numerous examples of odious people who could be used to illustrate the point, one man will suffice: Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain.
