The Fruit Of The Boom

January 4, 2010

A few days ago over at The Corner, Jonah Goldberg posted a simple blog post titled “Fire Napolitano.” He’s right, of course. Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano has been singularly unqualified for her office from the beginning. Michelle Malkin has an excellent post on Napolitano’s year-long record of idiocy and incompetence.

The new outcry for Napolitano’s head is because of her insistence that the “system worked” because a plane didn’t explode on Christmas day (she later retracted the statement when she found out that people were paying attention). The fact that Homeland Security had nothing to do with stopping the bombing, and that the very fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was allowed to board a plane in the first place demonstrates a clear failing of the system is lost on Napolitano. From her insistence that acts of terrorism be officially referred to as “man-caused disasters” to her smearing of conservatives and returning veterans as potential terrorists down to this asinine insistence that the system operated as expected on Christmas Day, Napolitano has demonstrated time and again that she is simply over her head. Homeland Security is not the department for political buffoonery, and Napolitano’s continued position as the head of that department can not help but reflect a lack of seriousness on Barack Obama’s part when it comes to protecting the nation.

But there is also a larger truth here, which is that the War on Terror has been infected with the poison of politics since September 12, 2001. While George Bush was right in prosecuting the war, there have been too many concessions in the name of political correctness.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab apparently had his bomb sewn into his underwear, in a style similar to Richard Reid’s shoe bomb. Because of Reid, all passengers boarding planes are required to take their shoes off. Because of a thwarted bombing plot a few summers ago in London, we can now no longer carry more than three ounces of liquids, shampoos, soaps, perfumes, colognes, etc. One wonders whether people will now be expected to drop their pants or lift their skirts in the aftermath of the attempted Christmas bombing. The usual suspects in Congress are already talking about how we need to make more widespread use of the X-ray machines that see right through your clothes and display your naked body on a screen for the security people at the airport to peruse. Arlen Spector was on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace suggesting that passengers all be frisked with a simple pat down.

Again, this is idiocy borne of the simple refusal to publicly acknowledge what we all know to be true: the terrorists are dark-skinned Muslim men, single, in their 20s and 30s, and traveling alone. Instead of doing the rational thing and casting more suspicion on those who fit the profile, we are insisting that little old ladies and young children be inconvenienced in the name of almighty political correctness.

Will this approach inconvenience some perfectly well-intentioned, law-abiding Muslims? Yes, it will. They should deal with it, and save their anger for those jihadists who brought this down on their heads.

The fact is that profiling was a commonsense tool used by police until someone thought to attach the word “racial” to the technique, and brought politics and heated issues of race to the mix. But racial profiling goes on all the time. Ask any cop in Harlem 30 years ago if they were on the lookout for white drivers at certain street corners and after a certain time of night.

The current school of thought is that when bad people do bad things, everyone needs to be held under suspicion so that we don’t single out any particular group or ethnicity. Because of this latest attempted attack, airlines are now forbidding people to use the plane bathroom with less than an hour to go in the flight, and are also forbidding people to cover themselves with blankets during that final hour. One can’t help but wonder what the result will be if one of these dark-skinned, Muslim men, between the ages of 20 and 40, traveling alone, manages to insert a pound of C4 into his rectum. We’ll all be submitting to cavity searches so that we can continue to feel really good about not profiling potential terrorists.

And that’s the really dirty secret of the whole charade: we are refusing to use commonsense profiling techniques so that we can prove to ourselves that we are not racist, and that everyone has the same equal chance of being a terrorist. We’d rather feel good about ourselves than protect national security.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Health Care And The Continuing Crisis

December 21, 2009

Well, Harry Reid has managed to bring to life the title of P.J. O’Rourke’s great book, A Parliament Of Whores. All the special deals for states with Democratic Senators (paid for with your money), all of the secrecy and back room shuffles have paid off for the Majority Leader from Nevada. The victory is likely to be pyrrhic, however. The bill is hugely unpopular by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, and because it was enacted on strict party lines there is no way they can blame the Republicans. The Republicans weren’t even consulted on this travesty of legislation, with the exception of an attempted wooing of Olympia Snowe, the RINO from Maine who put herself out there under the lamppost with the rest of them.

Michelle Malkin’s doing a bang-up job detailing the sleazy corrupt deals that went into making this nightmare a reality. You can read her full posts here and here, but allow me to provide a brief synopsis:

  • Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu was given $100,000,000 of taxpayer money for her vote.
  • Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson sold his vote for some mealy-mouthed anti-federal spending on abortion language and a promise that the Federal Government would pay Nebraska’s increased Medicaid fees forever…thus putting the onus of collecting these fees on the other 49 states.
  • Massachusetts and Vermont also received special deals similar to the one for which Ben Nelson sold his soul
  • Connecticut will be getting $100,000,000 to build a hospital as a payoff to Senator Chris Dodd
  • Non-profit insurance companies will be exempt from paying the billions in taxes the other insurance companies will have to pony up…a gift for Ben Nelson (boy, he’s good at this) and Michigan Senator Carl Levin
  • Our one out-of-the-closet Socialist in the Senate, Vermont’s own Bernie Sanders was given a $10,000,000,000 gift of socialized medical clinics.
There are more, which you can see with all appropriate links on Michelle Malkin’s site.


While there is some solace in the notion that this bill could have been even worse by including a public option, that comfort is extremely cold when we consider just how bad this bill is. It is the equivalent of standing in middle of an earthquake and saying, "At least it’s not raining."

It will cost the taxpayers of this nation trillions of dollars, it will increase taxes, it will cause health insurance premiums to rise, it will leave approximately 23,000,000 people uninsured, it creates a completely unconstitutional mandate on the citizenry to buy a privately offered service.* The bill takes a bad situation and makes it markedly worse. In a stroke of genius, Congress has made sure that the worst effects of the bill won’t be seen until safely into Barack Obama’s second term.

So the question then becomes…why? Why pass this bill that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, does not solve the acknowledged problem?

Remember, the problem was an estimated 30 million people without health insurance. The whole notion of health care reform was based on the task of covering those people (whether they wanted it or not). But this bill leaves 23 million people uninsured, and it places all sorts of restrictions on the insurance companies that effect the 85% of the country that is currently happy with their insurance.

What Congress has done is pass a bill that does not address the condition it was supposed to address, and screws up the system for everyone else. And they’re happy about this. They think it’s “historic” as if “historic” was a synonym for “wonderful.”

So again…why?

The answer is simply this: the Democrats know that in 2009 there is no way they can achieve their real goal: a 100% takeover of the entire health care system, from providing insurance to managing hospitals to mandating how many physicians get to practice in each specialty. Their reason for wanting socialized medicine is also simple: create a class of people that depend on you, and they will never vote you out of office. There’s a reason why people refer to Social Security and Medicare as “the third rails” of politics…touch them and you die.

The reason there is no stomach for socialized medicine in America is precisely because 85% of Americans are happy with their medical plans. We know that it could be better, and that costs are too high, but we don’t wait months for an MRI, and we sure as hell don’t want government bureaucrats looking to cut costs at our expense or the expense of our loved ones.

The new health care plan is going to make that 85% of Americans very upset. For the Democrats and other Statists, this is the sound of opportunity knocking.

What the Democrats are doing here is creating a real crisis where only a problem currently exists. A state of crisis gives them the excuse for even more reforms in order to "solve" the very crisis they created. Obama’s consigliere Rahm Emmanuel said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” By creating a continuing crisis, the Democrats can continue to “address” the issue in ever more intrusive ways.

Health care reform didn’t work the first time? That’s because there was no public option.

The new Public Option is insufficient? Add billions more taxpayer dollars. Everyone knows that Washington’s solution to broken systems is to throw money at them.

There are still uninsured? Increase the scope of the public option.

The private insurance companies can’t compete with a taxpayer-subsidized system that sets the rules? Increase the scope again to include those whose insurance companies have gone under.

Why before you know it, America is looking down the barrel of socialized medicine. Only now it’s an "entitlement," a brand-spankin’ new "third rail" for hapless politicians to lose their office.

When this bill was passed, Iowa Senator and proponent of socialized medicine Tom Harkin rushed to the microphone to reassure the liberals and progressives who are complaining that this bill doesn’t go far enough. This bill, Harkin assured them, was not a mansion, but it was a "starter home." There will be plenty of time, he purred, for revisions.

…we can add additions and extensions to it as we go on in the future. It is not the end of health care, it’s the beginning.

That’s just what I’m afraid of.

*Back in July, I wrote a piece here that suggested an individual mandate might be a good idea. I covered my bets a bit by stating that there were likely considerations I had missed when I wrote the piece. Since then, I have come to realize that the concept of the Federal Government insisting the citizens of the country buy a product or service is 100% unconstitutional. I haven’t changed the original post because that wouldn’t be ethical (although I do change posts for grammar and spelling at times), and I stand by most of what I wrote that day. But the more I thought about the issue the more I realized that I no longer believe in the individual mandate.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Blame Canada

December 10, 2009

Generally speaking, I like our neighbors to the North. They’re so darn nice. And even if Canada is where Mark Steyn was put on trial for publishing an article critical of Islam, and where waiting lists for CAT scans stretch around the block, and where French is considered a second language if not the first…well, darn it, they make great beer and that goes a long way in my book.

Then I come across an incredibly wrong-headed and stupid thing like this editorial from Canada’s national newspaper advocating a world-wide ban on families of more than one child and I think to myself, “Darn it, is the sweet, creamy, delicious taste of Molson Brador really worth having idiots like this in my hemisphere?”

My first thought upon reading this was that it was some Swiftian modest proposal, but I read it again and if satire is the medium, the message is lost. What I think we really have here is the fully unhinged environmentalist mindset. The Malthus lovers had a vogue in the early 1970s, but their fears were as nonsensical as the worries about the coming ice age that also got a lot of play before it didn’t happen because of global warming. Or something.

So here we go again, with the environmentalist nutcases like Canada’s own Diane Francis, trying to tell the world that the only solution to our problems is to stop breeding. Diane goes as far as wishing for a world with roughly half our current population:

This would have immediate positive effects on the world’s forests, other species, the oceans, atmospheric quality and living standards.

Once again the environmentalist crazies fail to appreciate the real solution: people are not the problem, Diane. People are the solution to the problem.

But there’s more at work here than simple environmentalism. I’ve been saying for years that the environment is just a new, trendy face on the same old enemies of freedom. Fortunately, dear Diane spells it out for us:

None [of her proposed “solutions”] will work unless a China one-child policy is imposed. Unfortunately, there are powerful opponents. Leaders of the world’s big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control. And most political leaders in emerging economies perpetuate a disastrous Catch-22: Many children (i. e. sons) stave off hardship in the absence of a social safety net or economic development, which, in turn, prevents protections or development.

Now read between the lines. What can be done about those “fundamentalist religions” (by which she means Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Hindi, Buddhism, and Islam)? Clearly they can’t continue to advocate for “procreation” if we’re trying to save the planet. Government will, of course, have to pass this law over the objections of these religions, thus eradicating the separation of church and state here in America. What darling Diane is really wishing for here is a method of silencing religion (like is done in her favorite nation, China).

Then there’s the second half of her paragraph: “Many children (i. e. sons) stave off hardship in the absence of a social safety net or economic development.” The solution here is also implied. We need an ever-larger social safety net provided by…c’mon, guess who…the Government. Only if the Government takes care of our needs will we be willing to welcome daughters in Diane’s brave new world.

Oh, Diane, you look green all over but your true colors are shining through, and they’re as red the maple leaf on the Canadian flag.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Harry Reid Gets It Backwards (As Usual)

December 7, 2009

So Harry Reid has come out of the lunatic closet and compared the opponents of health care reform to those advocating for the continuation of slavery, the opposition to women’s suffrage and civil rights.

Congratulations, Harry! You have won the award for the single stupidest statement made by a politician in 2009.

“Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ‘slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right,” Reid said Monday. “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ‘slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.'”

He continued: “When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn’t quite right.

“When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today.”

My God, the idiocy of this man is overwhelming.

First off, it was Republicans who ended slavery. It was also Republicans who fought to overcome a filibuster sponsored by then-Democrat Strom Thurmond for the Civil Rights Act.

It sounds like things aren’t going particularly well behind the doors that Reid closed to Senate Republicans. This sort of shrill, hyper-partisan buffoonery is a pretty good indicator that Reid’s losing what few marbles he ever had. I can only wonder how Democrats like Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and Dem-leaning independent Joe Lieberman feel about being cast as modern day Simon Legrees? And all you people out there…you know, the majority of Americans who don’t want this health care reform? Well, now you know what the Democrats really think about you when they’re behind closed doors. You should remember it at election time next year…if this is what Reid feels he can say in public, imagine what he thinks about you in private.

But there’s a larger point here and Reid has it completely backwards. This is a man who feels that a government takeover of 1/6 of the US economy will somehow free people when, in fact, it will do the opposite. A government that provides all that we have can take all of that away at any time. Making more people dependent on government for the necessities of life is a type of slavery. While it lacks the whips and chains, forcing people to look to the government to meet their needs is every bit as condescending, emasculating, and crippling as iron shackles. Slaves were the property of their owners; government-run health care makes those who accept it wards of the state. Reid views the American public as infants, children who need to be looked after from womb to tomb. His motives may be beneficent, but the end result is the same as slavery, creating a segment of the population who depend on you for everything while you sit in your Senate office growing fat off the fruits of their labors.

Who’s really interested in freedom here? I maintain it’s not Harry Reid.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more. And now Hot Air weighs in.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Kevin Jennings And The Radical Agenda Of Sex

December 7, 2009

Michelle Malkin is highlighting this terrifying report from Gateway Pundit about Kevin Jennings, the “Safe Schools Czar” appointed by Obama. If this doesn’t force Jennings to step down, I truly tremble in fear for my country.

Briefly, an organization named the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which was founded by Kevin Jennings, maintains a reading list for school kids. Jennings’ creation of GLSEN seems to be the reason that Jennings was appointed by Obama. According to Jennings’s bio on the U.S. Department of Education’s site, GLSEN is the one aspect of his career that distinguishes that career. GLSEN’s goal is to “make schools safe for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

But the fact is that Jennings is an avowed homosexual activist who is looking to promote an acceptance of homosexuality among children as young as kindergarten age.

The reading list (there are three actually, K-6, 7-12, and a list for teachers) is appalling. For K-6 (that’s kids aged 5-11), the reading list includes books like: And Tango Makes Three:

This tale based on a true story about a charming penguin family living in New York City’s Central Park Zoo will capture the hearts of penguin lovers everywhere. Roy and Silo, two male penguins, are “a little bit different.” They cuddle and share a nest like the other penguin couples, and when all the others start hatching eggs, they want to be parents, too.

Then there’s How My Family Came To Be: Daddy, Papa, and Me:

A boy recounts the story of how his family came to be in a cheerfully illustrated book for young children.

The Different Dragon:

In this bedtime story, one of young Noah’s mothers (emphasis mine) takes him through an adventure through a bedtime story about a dragon that dares to be different. Follow this story as Noah learns a lesson about character and expectations.

The Harvey Milk Story:

This biography of the first openly gay elected city official in the U.S. introduces young readers to one of the greatest figures in modern LGBT history.

Marvin Redpost: Is He A Girl?

When Casey Happleton tells Marvin that if you kiss your elbow you’ll turn into a girl, Marvin doesn’t believe a word of it. Then Marvin kisses his elbow by accident and starts to feel very strange. He wants pigtails and starts dotting his i’s with little hearts. Could Casey be right? Or is it all in Marvin’s head? You decide!

There’s plenty more, here, but Gateway Pundit is rightfully emphasizing the grades 7-12 list.

From Gateway Pundit:

We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview.

There are plenty of excerpts available here, but here’s a sample from the book Queer 13, a series of nostalgic reminiscences about seventh grade:

Soon I was spending a great deal of time hanging out in shopping malls and cruising the rest rooms for sexual encounters. My rest-room exploits started to be a great burden on my mind. The better part of the year was spent making deals with God, asking for a sign, then ignoring and rationalizing everything I perceived to be a sign, praying for forgiveness, and being obsessed with raging hormones and a seemingly endless supply of dicks. I believed that it was all part of a test by God to see if I was a sinner. I was.

I had known before that something was up, and that I was attracted to men, but this toilet thing was a whole new realm of sin and Satan, a new level that I had never before imagined. The following years were spent praying for forgiveness and trying to purge my homosexuality through prayer and Bible study. While my classmates wondered what sex was like, content to masturbate over pinups, I was out there having my cock sucked and my ass fucked. These were grown men I was tricking with. Some were nice, grateful for a young boy to have their way with. Some were harsh and mean. There were a few nasty encounters, brutal and painful experiences, near-rapes, but through it all, I never thought that I had the ability to say no.

I was scared about what I was doing, scared of God’s judgment and of being caught in all those rest rooms and parks, but I really did enjoy those sexual encounters. That feeling of doing it to them and them doing the same for me was just too damn good.

Charming, isn’t it?

I’m not interested in censoring books. I don’t care if these authors want to write explicitly pornographic books about their sexual histories, whether homosexual, heterosexual, or what they’ve been up to all by themselves. I don’t even care if consenting adults want to read them. Maybe there’s even some literary merit to some of them, as you could make the case for a novel like Fanny Hill. I strongly doubt it, but I’ll concede the point.

What is truly appalling is two-fold: 1) GLSEN is recommending these books to children between the ages of 5-17; 2) the founder and former Executive Director of GLSEN, Kevin Jennings, is now a very highly-placed official at the Department of Education, and from all appearances it was his tenure at GLSEN that got him the job. And although Jennings stepped down from his job at GLSEN a year ago, this reading list was mostly created when he was the Executive Director.

So there it is. A “Safe Schools Czar” who believes that children should be reading books filled with explicit representations of homosexual sex and masturbation. The question that needs to be put to Barack Obama is simply this: Do you agree with Kevin Jennings and, if not, why does he still work for you in this capacity?

UPDATE: Hot Air has joined the chorus. With a Monty Python video!

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Posted by Blaknsam

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