Face it. If you (or your culture) is not Muslim, then you will always be an enemy of the religion of peace. Historically, the Islamic world has been at war since its inception. As of right now, there are approximately 30 wars/insurgencies/brush fires going on in the world (as quoted by the very liberal Playboy magazine), and about 28 of them involve muslims.
You say Islam, I say bellicose.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Monday, November 07, 2005
And the hits just keep on coming.
Riots continue in France, and the violence is spreading.
A big-wig in the Muslim community, apparently equivalent to the HMFIC of the Islamic faith in France, was approached by the government to assist them on stopping the violence. What was his response? He told the government that it needed to be very careful on how it selects its words, or the violence would continue or get worse!
Hello! Does anybody see the problem with this? This is an organized religion. This Islamic leader is supposed to have the ability to stop the rioting, to pull his followers of the "religion of peace" back to the fold. What does he do? He veils a threat in a statement that is supposed to help.
The worst thing of all is that these riots were precipitated by two moronic youths who thought they were being chased by police (they weren't) and clearly were too stupid to 1) read, and 2) understand just what the heck electricity can do to you.
Where's Louis Farakhan and his distaste at the violence in Europe? Louis? Hello?
A big-wig in the Muslim community, apparently equivalent to the HMFIC of the Islamic faith in France, was approached by the government to assist them on stopping the violence. What was his response? He told the government that it needed to be very careful on how it selects its words, or the violence would continue or get worse!
Hello! Does anybody see the problem with this? This is an organized religion. This Islamic leader is supposed to have the ability to stop the rioting, to pull his followers of the "religion of peace" back to the fold. What does he do? He veils a threat in a statement that is supposed to help.
The worst thing of all is that these riots were precipitated by two moronic youths who thought they were being chased by police (they weren't) and clearly were too stupid to 1) read, and 2) understand just what the heck electricity can do to you.
Where's Louis Farakhan and his distaste at the violence in Europe? Louis? Hello?
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Paris rioting
The rioting in France continues. France, the land of "we will all be equal" and "we are all one." The land of socialized projects. Muslims are rioting and destroying the very country that has welcomed them.
Now, a band of muslim youths SET FIRE to an elderly woman. Where is the outcry? Where is the demands for action and accountability? You can bet if it had been several white kids setting fire to a black woman that the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al "I make shit up" Sharpton, and Kanye West's of the world would be screaming that it was the racist white factions in America that made these kids do it.
Now, a band of muslim youths SET FIRE to an elderly woman. Where is the outcry? Where is the demands for action and accountability? You can bet if it had been several white kids setting fire to a black woman that the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al "I make shit up" Sharpton, and Kanye West's of the world would be screaming that it was the racist white factions in America that made these kids do it.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Mars Blackman - Moron
Louis Farakhan believes that the racist US government deliberately destroyed the dike that flooded the poor black areas of New Orleans. Spike "I blame whitey for everything" Lee agrees. I find it interesting that racist black people are not called racist by the popular media.
Click the above title for an external link.
Click the above title for an external link.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Time for politics
The following excerpts are from www.moorewatch.com. I find these to be interesting.
The first is a good example of why I don't believe in socialized medicine, such and France and Canada. If state-funded medicine were so good, then why do Canadians come to America for treatment?
A fourth generation Kiwi has renounced her citizenship after a year-long battle with the Immigration Service over getting residency for her husband of 32 years.
Mari McGuire says she is ashamed to be a Kiwi.
McGuire’s husband, American folk singing star Barry McGuire, has been refused permanent residency because the service says his age - 70 - and heart condition would make him a burden on the health system. McGuire, who had a US No 1 hit in 1965 with the anti-war song Eve of Destruction, has a pacemaker.
The couple’s $1 million-plus home - built on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula north of Auckland 18 months ago - goes up for auction today. They will return to California.
The issue of health screening for immigrants was highlighted last week by a Sunday Star-Times article which revealed a deaf South African girl, allegedly killed by her father, had also been classified a possible burden on the state.
The Immigration Service is introducing tougher health screening for migrants aimed at weeding out those with TB and HIV, but also anyone who could be a burden on the state, including children with developmental delays and people with dementia.
The second is about Michael Moore, who I believe is a complete dipshit, and can now add hypocrite to his list of accolades.
PORCINE provocateur Michael Moore likes to portray himself as a working-class man of the people, but a new book exposes him as a “corporate criminal, environmental menace and racist union-buster.” In “Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy,” Peter Schweizer reveals that Moore, who has been vociferous in his criticism of defense contractor Halliburton, has bought and sold hundreds of shares of Halliburton stock — and that of other defense contractors — through his private foundation.
Moore, who has claimed he doesn’t own a “single share” of stock, has also invested heavily in HMOs and pharmaceutical giants, the targets of his next movie, “Sickos.”
Moore also likes to rail against what he calls rampant racism in the United States and the fact that supposedly no one hires blacks for good jobs. Schweizer points out that “out of the 134 producers, editors, cinematographers, composers, and production coordinators Moore hired, only three were black.” And not one African-American lives in the ritzy Michigan enclave where Moore has a $1 million mansion.
And while publicly championing unions, Moore has been quite anti-union in his own business dealings and had several clashes with the Writers Guild.
The first is a good example of why I don't believe in socialized medicine, such and France and Canada. If state-funded medicine were so good, then why do Canadians come to America for treatment?
A fourth generation Kiwi has renounced her citizenship after a year-long battle with the Immigration Service over getting residency for her husband of 32 years.
Mari McGuire says she is ashamed to be a Kiwi.
McGuire’s husband, American folk singing star Barry McGuire, has been refused permanent residency because the service says his age - 70 - and heart condition would make him a burden on the health system. McGuire, who had a US No 1 hit in 1965 with the anti-war song Eve of Destruction, has a pacemaker.
The couple’s $1 million-plus home - built on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula north of Auckland 18 months ago - goes up for auction today. They will return to California.
The issue of health screening for immigrants was highlighted last week by a Sunday Star-Times article which revealed a deaf South African girl, allegedly killed by her father, had also been classified a possible burden on the state.
The Immigration Service is introducing tougher health screening for migrants aimed at weeding out those with TB and HIV, but also anyone who could be a burden on the state, including children with developmental delays and people with dementia.
The second is about Michael Moore, who I believe is a complete dipshit, and can now add hypocrite to his list of accolades.
PORCINE provocateur Michael Moore likes to portray himself as a working-class man of the people, but a new book exposes him as a “corporate criminal, environmental menace and racist union-buster.” In “Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy,” Peter Schweizer reveals that Moore, who has been vociferous in his criticism of defense contractor Halliburton, has bought and sold hundreds of shares of Halliburton stock — and that of other defense contractors — through his private foundation.
Moore, who has claimed he doesn’t own a “single share” of stock, has also invested heavily in HMOs and pharmaceutical giants, the targets of his next movie, “Sickos.”
Moore also likes to rail against what he calls rampant racism in the United States and the fact that supposedly no one hires blacks for good jobs. Schweizer points out that “out of the 134 producers, editors, cinematographers, composers, and production coordinators Moore hired, only three were black.” And not one African-American lives in the ritzy Michigan enclave where Moore has a $1 million mansion.
And while publicly championing unions, Moore has been quite anti-union in his own business dealings and had several clashes with the Writers Guild.
My kingdom for a stone!
Well, I've been drinking water and lemonade like it was going out of style, and I've still not seen any kidney stone in my urine. Peeing into this little strainer the hospital gave me is getting old; I doubt I will be using it after tomorrow. There is a good chance that I pissed it out the same night I came home from the hospital and just didn't realize it. I was hopped up on narcotics, and when I got up in the middle of the night (twice) to pee, I'm sure my sight aligment and sight picture (you know, pecker aligned with strainer and both aligned to toilet) had much to be desired, so I might have already flushed it.
By the way, have you ever read the side effects of certain narcotics? One of them is constipation. Let me tell you, it has been two days, and I have yet to give birth to baby brown!
I have a 90% chance of having another kidney stone. This is probably punishment for looking at porn!
By the way, have you ever read the side effects of certain narcotics? One of them is constipation. Let me tell you, it has been two days, and I have yet to give birth to baby brown!
I have a 90% chance of having another kidney stone. This is probably punishment for looking at porn!
Monday, October 31, 2005
Are you kidney-ing me?
So, it's a beautiful Sunday morning. The morning temperature of 40 degrees was rapidly climbing to a high of 72. Not a cloud in the sky. Life is good. About noon, I have the urge to pee. So I go the bathroom, and not much comes out. "Nothing to worry about," I say to myself. About 15 minutes later, the same urge, with the same results. And so on, and so on.
Huh! Could I have come down with a urinary tract infection? Not common in men, but it does happen, and it gives the urge to pee. I tell the wife, who is a paramedic, and she asks if I have any pain, and I tell her no. She says that it sounded like a UTI, and welcome to her world.
About three in the afternoon, this pain starts around my bladder area and radiates around to where my left kidney is. I was driving at the time, and the pain made it very difficult to drive, and the pain was getting worse. I got home and told the wife, who said that it sounded like I was passing a kidney stone and needed to go to the hospital.
I don't like going to the hospital. I don't like being treated. I don't like the medical bills (I have very shitty insurance). One in four people admitted to a hospital don't check out. But...I'm in a lot of pain so let's go! We walk out to the car, and the pain miraculously stops! Whoohoo, I must have passed it into my bladder! I tell the wife I am fine and don't need to go to the hospital. She smirks and says that it is not over. I tell her I am fine; better than fine. So we go back into the house. She watches TV while I play a game on the computer.
About an hour later, the pain rapidly returns, worse than before. When my wife sees me grab for my left side, she gets dressed without a word and walks me to the car. Now I am in writhing, terrible pain. The wife remembers that she has to pass one of her work stations on the way to the hospital, so she leaves me with an ambulance. The crew pokes me twice to get an IV, and then gives me a pain medicine that doesn't work worth a damn. Now the pain is mindnumbing, and has worked further down my lower back and was making my bladder area hurt.
At the hospital, the ER doctor recognizes me (my job requires me to visit the ER a lot) and immediately gives me some morphine. Sweet God in Heaven! What a wonderful drug. Now my wife is laughing, because I have a lopsided, shit eating grin. A cute phlebotomist comes in to draw my blood, and I find myself looking down the top of her shirt, which causes my wife to start laughing. About 30 minutes after the first morphine shot, the pain comes back. The pain is so horrible that I would have gone homo if you had told me that smoking a bone was the only way to make it quit. More morphine!
Anyway, a CT scan later, and it seems that I have a 2mm stone moving about. So, I have to change some of my dietary habits, since I'm 90% likely to get another one, and right now I'm peeing through a mesh screen to try and capture this stone.
I have a newfound understanding for those who have suffered from this.
Huh! Could I have come down with a urinary tract infection? Not common in men, but it does happen, and it gives the urge to pee. I tell the wife, who is a paramedic, and she asks if I have any pain, and I tell her no. She says that it sounded like a UTI, and welcome to her world.
About three in the afternoon, this pain starts around my bladder area and radiates around to where my left kidney is. I was driving at the time, and the pain made it very difficult to drive, and the pain was getting worse. I got home and told the wife, who said that it sounded like I was passing a kidney stone and needed to go to the hospital.
I don't like going to the hospital. I don't like being treated. I don't like the medical bills (I have very shitty insurance). One in four people admitted to a hospital don't check out. But...I'm in a lot of pain so let's go! We walk out to the car, and the pain miraculously stops! Whoohoo, I must have passed it into my bladder! I tell the wife I am fine and don't need to go to the hospital. She smirks and says that it is not over. I tell her I am fine; better than fine. So we go back into the house. She watches TV while I play a game on the computer.
About an hour later, the pain rapidly returns, worse than before. When my wife sees me grab for my left side, she gets dressed without a word and walks me to the car. Now I am in writhing, terrible pain. The wife remembers that she has to pass one of her work stations on the way to the hospital, so she leaves me with an ambulance. The crew pokes me twice to get an IV, and then gives me a pain medicine that doesn't work worth a damn. Now the pain is mindnumbing, and has worked further down my lower back and was making my bladder area hurt.
At the hospital, the ER doctor recognizes me (my job requires me to visit the ER a lot) and immediately gives me some morphine. Sweet God in Heaven! What a wonderful drug. Now my wife is laughing, because I have a lopsided, shit eating grin. A cute phlebotomist comes in to draw my blood, and I find myself looking down the top of her shirt, which causes my wife to start laughing. About 30 minutes after the first morphine shot, the pain comes back. The pain is so horrible that I would have gone homo if you had told me that smoking a bone was the only way to make it quit. More morphine!
Anyway, a CT scan later, and it seems that I have a 2mm stone moving about. So, I have to change some of my dietary habits, since I'm 90% likely to get another one, and right now I'm peeing through a mesh screen to try and capture this stone.
I have a newfound understanding for those who have suffered from this.
Monday, October 17, 2005
I'm such a slacker
Ever have those times when you are really busy, but at the same time can't specifically say what is keeping you busy? These past couple of weeks have been like that. Between work, teaching, and family obligations, I have hardly had any time for myself.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
??
I love this! From another blog that had me rolling:
Inner Peace.
By following the simple advice I heard on a Dr. Phil show, I have finally found inner peace. I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me and we could all use more calm in our lives.
Dr. Phil proclaimed that the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see things I started and hadn't finished; and before leaving the house this morning I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a bottle of Stoli, a package of Oreos, the remainder of both Prozac and Valium prescriptions, the rest of the cheesecake, two pints of ice cream, some saltines and a box of chocolates.
And you have no idea how fucking good I feel.
Inner Peace.
By following the simple advice I heard on a Dr. Phil show, I have finally found inner peace. I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me and we could all use more calm in our lives.
Dr. Phil proclaimed that the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see things I started and hadn't finished; and before leaving the house this morning I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a bottle of Stoli, a package of Oreos, the remainder of both Prozac and Valium prescriptions, the rest of the cheesecake, two pints of ice cream, some saltines and a box of chocolates.
And you have no idea how fucking good I feel.
BOHICA!
Look. Another dick-stompin' hurricane bears down on the United States. Rita is as big and as nasty as Katrina, and it is headed for areas as heavily populated as New Orleans. But wait! What's this? People in Texas are leaving! They learned from that clusterfuck in New Orleans that they needed to leave. None of that I'm-on-welfare-and-living-in-subsidized-government housing-so-I'll-just-continue-letting-the-government-babysit-me problems. No mayor trying to push the blame on other people because of piss-poor planning.
Naturally, the better planning done by Texas will be twisted by the Democrats, liberals, and NAACP (one of the biggest racist organizations out there) into a race/politics issue, because it was Bush's fault that Katrina formed and hit The Big Easy.
Watch and see...
Naturally, the better planning done by Texas will be twisted by the Democrats, liberals, and NAACP (one of the biggest racist organizations out there) into a race/politics issue, because it was Bush's fault that Katrina formed and hit The Big Easy.
Watch and see...
Thursday, September 15, 2005
And she's outta here!
Well, Hurricane Ophelia has come and gone. Actually, right now she is just off the Outer Banks of NC, but at least she's away from me. It rained pretty good last night, and we had winds come through the area running about 60-70 MPH. I lost a shingle on the roof. We lost power in the city in the major business area, and some asshats took advantage of the "darker than a bag of assholes" night to break into several businesses to steal (maybe they were from New Orleans, and I have to refer to them as "finders").
We are still getting outer feeder bands, but all we really have to worry about is some low-area flooding.
Another notch in my hurricane belt!
We are still getting outer feeder bands, but all we really have to worry about is some low-area flooding.
Another notch in my hurricane belt!
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Hurricane Ophelia
Ok. Hurricane Ophelia is about 150 miles south of where I live right now. It is raining fairly heavy, and the winds are gusting to about 30 miles per hour. Forecasters are saying that this thing is going to beat up on us for about two days before it gets out of here. There must be something about this damned county.
Look at a map of the US. Find the NC-SC border at the coast. Now, you will notice immediately north of the state line is a small concave coastline, followed by a second, slightly larger concave coastline. On that second coastline, you can see a river in the very middle of it. That is where Onslow County is. Since 1996, we have endured Hurricanes Bertha, Fran, Bonnie, David, Floyd, Isabel, and Charley.
Unlike the local and state authorities in New Orleans, we know what to do. I'll update after the hurricane passes.
Look at a map of the US. Find the NC-SC border at the coast. Now, you will notice immediately north of the state line is a small concave coastline, followed by a second, slightly larger concave coastline. On that second coastline, you can see a river in the very middle of it. That is where Onslow County is. Since 1996, we have endured Hurricanes Bertha, Fran, Bonnie, David, Floyd, Isabel, and Charley.
Unlike the local and state authorities in New Orleans, we know what to do. I'll update after the hurricane passes.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Who to blame??????
I read the following at another blog, and I felt that it needed to be repeated here. Some folks are better at putting thoughts similar to mine on paper. This gentleman is one. Enjoy!
Thoughts on Katrina
Okay, I've decided to put up one big post that covers a lot of ground, just so everyone knows where I stand in the issues surrounding FEMA, the Prez, and the hurricane disaster.For the past week the blogosphere has been filled with every scrap of information available. Pundits have thrown together timelines of events to support their own personal ideas of who should have done what and when it did or did not take place. Certain commenters on this blog have pointed to these timelines as "proof" that some of my assertions have been "wrong." The problem is that there are people on the left who have compiled their own timelines, and those "prove" that Bush is mostly to blame. The information we have right now is often completely contradictory. As soon as one news outlet publishes a story, five minutes later another publishes a different story that makes the opposite claim. Both sides then latch on to each of these contradictory stories as incontrovertible evidence that the other side is wrong. The point here is that until there is some kind of open, bipartisan, Congressional investigation into the Katrina disaster, none of us are ever going to have an accurate timeline of anything. We're trying to make broad assumptions based upon the tiniest shreds of anecdotal evidence, given by ass-covering politicians and biased media outlets, and this is not a good idea. So rather that point to specific news reports as "proof" that what I believe is real, I'm going to speak more in broad terms, about the larger issues and concepts. The proof will come during the investigation, and that might take years. For now, I want to try and look at the big picture, rather than try and build some kind of evidentiary case based upon rumor, speculation, and innuendo.
Read the rest of this post...
Blame After 9/11, I read a comment on another blog (I forget which one) which covered the issue of who to blame for the attacks. It said something to the effect of, “When it comes to the issue of who to blame for 9/11, the issue of blame is so widespread that trying to actually assign blame is in itself an exercise in futility.” I feel much the same about New Orleans. We can quibble all we like about who did what and when, but the one thing that is obvious to anyone is that our system failed, and failed miserably. When I refer to the system I don’t just mean FEMA, I mean everyone, from the local first response units to the mayor to the governor to FEMA to Bush. Nobody comes out of this smelling like guest room soap.
Since the hurricane first hit, the left has been going apoplectic trying to find any way it can to blame Bush for the disaster even taking place at all. “If only the evil fascist Bush hadn’t diverted crucial funds away from levee projects to finance his illegal war for oil against the peace-loving citizens of Iraq!” The problem here, as I stated in a post a few days ago, is that no matter what Bush did, the left will always look at the opposite and claim that it was what he should have done. For example, after 9/11 the focus was on response to terrorism, and in that respect money for disaster relief was indeed given with more of a terrorism interest attached to it. In hindsight, this might not have been the most appropriate thing to do. However, the last time I checked it was still the Congress who controlled the purse strings, and if money was diverted to the wrong area then it is their hands who have blood on them, not Bush. But let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that Bush had made levee reinforcement a top priority, and then a terrorist had released a biological agent on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. The next day, Michael Moore and MoveOn and the rest of the left wing would have been wailing that Bush didn’t do enough to protect us from terrorism, choosing instead to focus on levee reinforcement, which undoubtedly was done to enrich his big-time donors in the construction and shipping industries. Right now our government spends a miniscule amount of money searching the sky for dangerous asteroids. If a massive asteroid were found tomorrow to be on a collision course with Earth, Michael Moore would claim that it was Bush’s war on terrorism that caused the government to lose focus on interplanetary debris. Conversely, if Bush made asteroid protection a priority, then his detractors would show that he was wasting money on something that had a relatively low chance of actually occurring.
In a system like ours, where we have scarce resources which have alternative uses, you have to make your best guess as to where those resources will be needed, and then legislatively disburse them accordingly. Our focus on terrorism was probably misguided, but we only say that now because we’re dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane and not a low-yield nuclear detonation. If our focus on terrorism had prevented or mitigated a terrorist attack, then Bush and the Congress would be getting praise for their foresight (from everyone except the left, of course). So as far as blame for the flooding goes, trying to lay this entirely at Bush’s feet is totally irresponsible and nothing more than rank partisan idiocy.
Local Government The first response for a disaster is, and should continue to be, the local government: the city emergency organizations, the police, the first department, the medical system, and so on. Every city can and should have a solid, cohesive disaster response plan. It seems at this point that while New Orleans undoubtedly had some kind of plan, its implementation when it counted was sorely inept. One of the main examples of this is the behavior of so many of the New Orleans police. Not to smear the entire organization, which undoubtedly has many heroes and truly selfless individuals, but with images of some police looting a Wal-Mart, and reports of others abandoning their posts, the failure of the police to maintain order is a huge factor which contributed to turning New Orleans into the island from Lord of the Flies.
Then there is Mayor Nagin. Of all the people involved, I truly feel the sorriest for him. Politically inexperienced, I think he was thrown head-first into the kind of catastrophic situation that he, like most residents, never thought would ever actually arrive. They called Katrina the “doomsday scenario” with good reason. While a direct hit from a Katrina-like storm was a statistical inevitability, nobody truly anticipated, even just a few months ago, that doomsday was about to take place. Then, when it did appear as if it might happen, I think there was a large degree of reticence on his part to honestly recognize and deal with it. Why? For exactly the same reasons I described above with Bush, criticism with the benefit of hindsight. If Nagin had evacuated the city days before the hurricane was due to arrive, and then the hurricane had subsequently taken a turn and made landfall in Texas, his political detractors would then claim that he made the wrong decision. By waiting until the last minute, when an evacuation was really too late, he took a gamble that turned out wrong. If he waited until the last minute, then the hurricane totally missed New Orleans, he would be being praised for his calm demeanor and for not throwing the citizens of New Orleans into a panic with an unnecessary evacuation. It’s all hindsight.
State Government Of all the people involved, the main share of the blame, I feel, should be directed towards Gov. Blanco. It appears that her main concern in the days leading up to the hurricane’s arrival was her perception of being “in charge.” She wanted to be able to take the credit for her leadership, which explains her refusal to relinquish control of the rescue efforts to the federal government until it was largely too late. After the devastation began, her leadership was totally incompetent. Compare the amount of devastation and destruction in Louisiana with that in Mississippi. The leadership of Mississippi governor Haley Barbour stands in stark contrast to that of Blanco. Barbour was prepared, with a plan ready to go, and it shows. While Mississippi took more damage than Louisiana, they didn’t have a fraction of Louisiana’s problems, and I attribute this entirely to leadership at the state level.
The President Recently my detractors have accused me, repeatedly, of trying to “get” the president, despite my repeated—and consistent—statements to the contrary. JimK made the observation that since the majority of my posts lately have concerned Bush, this was the impression people were getting, whether or not it had any factual basis. I think that might be a fair assumption on his part. My focus on Bush the past few days has been primarily a response to the immediate circle-the-wagons mentality of so many people on the right, trying to immediately insulate the president from any and all liability. This in itself was a reaction to the immediate let’s-blame-Bush attitude of the radical left. (Clearing up this misperception is one of the main reasons for this post.)
My main criticisms of Bush in this instance are simple. First off, I think the record has shown that both FEMA head Michael Brown and DHS head Michael Chertoff are totally incompetent, and should have been immediately removed from their positions and replaced by someone with experience in managing disasters and/or coordinating massive, complicated efforts. Putting as the head of FEMA someone like Giuliani or Tommy Franks would have inspired confidence in the people that Bush was on top of the game. He did none of these things, instead relying on his same tired old good old boy Texas charm, referring to Michael Brown as “Brownie” and telling the world that he’s doing a “heck of a job,” despite all evidence being to the contrary.
Some have suggested that there might be a hell of a lot more going on behind the scenes with “Brownie” that we don’t know a lot about, and I think that might indeed be the case. But one of the jobs of a leader is to project leadership. After 9/11 Bush did this admirably. As far as I’m concerned, Bush’s ground zero bullhorn admonition that “the people who knocked these buildings down are going to hear all of us soon” ranks up there with FDR’s post-Pearl Harbor pledge to bring the Empire of Japan “to its knees.” In return, Bush was rewarded with the highest sustained approval ratings of any president in American history. Leadership counts, and the public projection of leadership is vitally important. In recent months or years, Bush has failed miserably at maintaining the public projection of leadership, and for it he has been rewarded with some of the lowest approval ratings ever. As the storm barreled towards the Gulf Coast the president went to a fundraiser in San Diego. Now, as a practical matter, who cares? What else could he have done as far as the storm went? But as a point of leadership it was an asinine thing to do, because it implies that he doesn’t care, and his critics subsequently use this against him.
A strong projection of leadership and concern would mitigate so many of the president’s problems. For example, rather than go to San Diego, what if Bush had gone to Houston, and set up a mobile command center of some kind, so he could be close to the storm and monitor things? And what if Bush had held a press conference before the storm, stating that the areas about to be hit contained some of the poorest people in the country, and that he wanted to make sure that the federal government was on hand and ready to meet their emergency needs? In real terms, this isn’t substantively different from what Bush did. Air Force One is a mobile command center in and of itself, so it’s not like he was actually out of the loop. But he didn’t project anything resembling an image of caring or compassion or leadership. (Think Giuliani in the days after 9/11.) Bill Clinton, for all his faults, was a master at the projection of leadership. Whether he had the leadership or not it always appeared as if he did, that he truly cared, and like it or not, this is what people want to see from their leaders. Bush, I am sure, cares deeply, and has no idea how to express it.
Allow me to illustrate my point. Say you are trying to get a girl to marry you. In order to woo her you buy her little gifts, tell her you love her, pay attention to her, and so on. Once she is convinced that you truly care about her, she accepts your proposal. Now, in truth you might not care about her at all and seek only to marry her for her money, but your outward projection of caring is all she has to go on, and she bases her decision entirely on how you act and appear. Conversely, say you truly did love and care for this woman, but were so uncomfortable and bumbling at expressing yourself that she found you distant and aloof, and thus chose not to marry you. The fact that you truly did care about her mattered less because she did not get the outward expression of love and affection she craved.
Appearances count, often times much more than reality. It’s a sad fact but it’s a fact nonetheless, and Bush simply does not realize it. Clinton was a master. Being seen as a leader is just as important as actually being one, and Bush’s lack of any real type of leadership skills caused him to totally drop the ball and lose any momentum whatsoever. By firing Brown he would have shown that, in the face of an emergency, he wasn’t afraid to take the tough steps necessary to get the job done. Instead we get told that Brownie is doing a heck of a job.
This is why I am so disgusted with Bush. He had a chance to rally the country behind him, to be the face of everything that is great about America, and he was an abject failure at it to all but his most staunchly partisan supporters.
The Federal Government What can I say about the federal government, by which I include FEMA, that I haven’t already said? Rather than focus on the specifics of how the federal government failed, I want to discuss what I think its role should be.
The federal government cannot and should not be the first responder in times of emergency. That responsibility should fall on the local and state governments. That being said, there are certain times when only a body like the federal government has the power and ability to coordinate a massive relief effort. This was one of those times.
Longtime readers of this blog know that I am a staunch federalist, a believer in the true separation of powers and the sovereign rights of states. That notwithstanding, there are times when the federal government can and should step in and supersede this sovereignty. This is well established in law. The concept of martial law has been around since the beginning of government. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Indeed, in New Orleans right now there is a standing shoot-to-kill order for looters. In the legal sense looters are really only committing petty larceny or burglary, and would be subject only to a short prison sentence if arrested, tried, and convicted. Right now they run the risk of an immediate death sentence carried out Judge Dredd-style. “I am the law.” In a non-emergency situation I think the vast majority of us would have been horrified at the thought of empowering the state to immediately execute suspected petty criminals, but you’ll hear very few complaints of the shoot-to-kill order under these circumstances.
My point is that while laws are essential to order, and for maintaining protection from an all-too-powerful state, they should not be a death sentence. This is the impression that I get from the Katrina disaster. There were no clear lines delineating who was in control of what, or who had the responsibility for performing specific rescue tasks, and so on. And while we can all quote various legal decisions and umpteen laws governing this sort of thing, it absolutely cannot be denied that the system, for the most part, failed. And when the system fails, I expect the leadership to step in and get the job done, which in this case was saving lives and maintaining order. When it became apparent that Blaco and Nagin were not up to the task, the federal government should have stepped in, assumed control, and began giving orders.
Which would you rather have, a president called before Congress to explain why he broke the law to save lives, or why he sat idly by while people died because he did not have the statutory power to do certain things? As I’ve said many times over the past few days, George W. Bush is the President of the United States of America, the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on the planet. Saying, “Well, I couldn’t do anything because the so-and-so act of 1964 did not give me the power to do anything” is a flaccid, pathetic excuse.
Going Forward We obviously cannot have a system were the president, at the drop of a hat, can assume these sorts of dictatorial powers. This is exactly how Hitler came to power; he created an emergency, assumed emergency powers, then refused to relinquish them. So I am not for a second in favor of simply granting the federal government the power to do as they please. That notwithstanding, we need a major reform of the system that recently failed us so.
First off, we need to start from scratch. There needs to be a clear, concise, easily-understood chain of command for dire emergency situations. It needs to be exactly the same for all states, so that the procedure is exactly the same whether you’re dealing with a Louisiana hurricane or a California earthquake or a low-yield nuclear detonation in a major American city. For example, we could implement a system by which disasters are assigned one of three ascending levels of severity. At the lowest level, say a flooding or localized earthquake, the local government would be in control, with FEMA providing assistance as needed. The middle level would be for a standard hurricane, like the kind that usually hit our shores. In these instances FEMA and the state would be roughly parallel in their contributions. The top level would be reserved for severe emergencies, like a major catastrophic earthquake or a terrorist strike or a Katrina-level hurricane. In these the federal government would step in and use any and all powers at its disposal to get the job done.
This, I feel, should be implemented via a constitutional amendment. This way there are no lawsuits or legal wrangling that can impede the process, as there would be if a law were simply passed by Congress. The very process by which an amendment has to go through would show that there was broad support among both the federal and state legislatures. Nobody can complain like they do now about the PATRIOT Act that a fascist cabal rammed the legislation through to enact some kind of hidden agenda to take over the country.
This type of reform is necessary, vital to national security, and should be pursued at the earliest opportunity. Osama bin Laden is sitting in a cave somewhere watching CNN and laughing his evil ass off. Because, as Newt Gingrich said, if this is the best the United States can do when we had over a week to prepare, just how well are we going to react when something unexpected happens?
Thoughts on Katrina
Okay, I've decided to put up one big post that covers a lot of ground, just so everyone knows where I stand in the issues surrounding FEMA, the Prez, and the hurricane disaster.For the past week the blogosphere has been filled with every scrap of information available. Pundits have thrown together timelines of events to support their own personal ideas of who should have done what and when it did or did not take place. Certain commenters on this blog have pointed to these timelines as "proof" that some of my assertions have been "wrong." The problem is that there are people on the left who have compiled their own timelines, and those "prove" that Bush is mostly to blame. The information we have right now is often completely contradictory. As soon as one news outlet publishes a story, five minutes later another publishes a different story that makes the opposite claim. Both sides then latch on to each of these contradictory stories as incontrovertible evidence that the other side is wrong. The point here is that until there is some kind of open, bipartisan, Congressional investigation into the Katrina disaster, none of us are ever going to have an accurate timeline of anything. We're trying to make broad assumptions based upon the tiniest shreds of anecdotal evidence, given by ass-covering politicians and biased media outlets, and this is not a good idea. So rather that point to specific news reports as "proof" that what I believe is real, I'm going to speak more in broad terms, about the larger issues and concepts. The proof will come during the investigation, and that might take years. For now, I want to try and look at the big picture, rather than try and build some kind of evidentiary case based upon rumor, speculation, and innuendo.
Read the rest of this post...
Blame After 9/11, I read a comment on another blog (I forget which one) which covered the issue of who to blame for the attacks. It said something to the effect of, “When it comes to the issue of who to blame for 9/11, the issue of blame is so widespread that trying to actually assign blame is in itself an exercise in futility.” I feel much the same about New Orleans. We can quibble all we like about who did what and when, but the one thing that is obvious to anyone is that our system failed, and failed miserably. When I refer to the system I don’t just mean FEMA, I mean everyone, from the local first response units to the mayor to the governor to FEMA to Bush. Nobody comes out of this smelling like guest room soap.
Since the hurricane first hit, the left has been going apoplectic trying to find any way it can to blame Bush for the disaster even taking place at all. “If only the evil fascist Bush hadn’t diverted crucial funds away from levee projects to finance his illegal war for oil against the peace-loving citizens of Iraq!” The problem here, as I stated in a post a few days ago, is that no matter what Bush did, the left will always look at the opposite and claim that it was what he should have done. For example, after 9/11 the focus was on response to terrorism, and in that respect money for disaster relief was indeed given with more of a terrorism interest attached to it. In hindsight, this might not have been the most appropriate thing to do. However, the last time I checked it was still the Congress who controlled the purse strings, and if money was diverted to the wrong area then it is their hands who have blood on them, not Bush. But let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that Bush had made levee reinforcement a top priority, and then a terrorist had released a biological agent on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. The next day, Michael Moore and MoveOn and the rest of the left wing would have been wailing that Bush didn’t do enough to protect us from terrorism, choosing instead to focus on levee reinforcement, which undoubtedly was done to enrich his big-time donors in the construction and shipping industries. Right now our government spends a miniscule amount of money searching the sky for dangerous asteroids. If a massive asteroid were found tomorrow to be on a collision course with Earth, Michael Moore would claim that it was Bush’s war on terrorism that caused the government to lose focus on interplanetary debris. Conversely, if Bush made asteroid protection a priority, then his detractors would show that he was wasting money on something that had a relatively low chance of actually occurring.
In a system like ours, where we have scarce resources which have alternative uses, you have to make your best guess as to where those resources will be needed, and then legislatively disburse them accordingly. Our focus on terrorism was probably misguided, but we only say that now because we’re dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane and not a low-yield nuclear detonation. If our focus on terrorism had prevented or mitigated a terrorist attack, then Bush and the Congress would be getting praise for their foresight (from everyone except the left, of course). So as far as blame for the flooding goes, trying to lay this entirely at Bush’s feet is totally irresponsible and nothing more than rank partisan idiocy.
Local Government The first response for a disaster is, and should continue to be, the local government: the city emergency organizations, the police, the first department, the medical system, and so on. Every city can and should have a solid, cohesive disaster response plan. It seems at this point that while New Orleans undoubtedly had some kind of plan, its implementation when it counted was sorely inept. One of the main examples of this is the behavior of so many of the New Orleans police. Not to smear the entire organization, which undoubtedly has many heroes and truly selfless individuals, but with images of some police looting a Wal-Mart, and reports of others abandoning their posts, the failure of the police to maintain order is a huge factor which contributed to turning New Orleans into the island from Lord of the Flies.
Then there is Mayor Nagin. Of all the people involved, I truly feel the sorriest for him. Politically inexperienced, I think he was thrown head-first into the kind of catastrophic situation that he, like most residents, never thought would ever actually arrive. They called Katrina the “doomsday scenario” with good reason. While a direct hit from a Katrina-like storm was a statistical inevitability, nobody truly anticipated, even just a few months ago, that doomsday was about to take place. Then, when it did appear as if it might happen, I think there was a large degree of reticence on his part to honestly recognize and deal with it. Why? For exactly the same reasons I described above with Bush, criticism with the benefit of hindsight. If Nagin had evacuated the city days before the hurricane was due to arrive, and then the hurricane had subsequently taken a turn and made landfall in Texas, his political detractors would then claim that he made the wrong decision. By waiting until the last minute, when an evacuation was really too late, he took a gamble that turned out wrong. If he waited until the last minute, then the hurricane totally missed New Orleans, he would be being praised for his calm demeanor and for not throwing the citizens of New Orleans into a panic with an unnecessary evacuation. It’s all hindsight.
State Government Of all the people involved, the main share of the blame, I feel, should be directed towards Gov. Blanco. It appears that her main concern in the days leading up to the hurricane’s arrival was her perception of being “in charge.” She wanted to be able to take the credit for her leadership, which explains her refusal to relinquish control of the rescue efforts to the federal government until it was largely too late. After the devastation began, her leadership was totally incompetent. Compare the amount of devastation and destruction in Louisiana with that in Mississippi. The leadership of Mississippi governor Haley Barbour stands in stark contrast to that of Blanco. Barbour was prepared, with a plan ready to go, and it shows. While Mississippi took more damage than Louisiana, they didn’t have a fraction of Louisiana’s problems, and I attribute this entirely to leadership at the state level.
The President Recently my detractors have accused me, repeatedly, of trying to “get” the president, despite my repeated—and consistent—statements to the contrary. JimK made the observation that since the majority of my posts lately have concerned Bush, this was the impression people were getting, whether or not it had any factual basis. I think that might be a fair assumption on his part. My focus on Bush the past few days has been primarily a response to the immediate circle-the-wagons mentality of so many people on the right, trying to immediately insulate the president from any and all liability. This in itself was a reaction to the immediate let’s-blame-Bush attitude of the radical left. (Clearing up this misperception is one of the main reasons for this post.)
My main criticisms of Bush in this instance are simple. First off, I think the record has shown that both FEMA head Michael Brown and DHS head Michael Chertoff are totally incompetent, and should have been immediately removed from their positions and replaced by someone with experience in managing disasters and/or coordinating massive, complicated efforts. Putting as the head of FEMA someone like Giuliani or Tommy Franks would have inspired confidence in the people that Bush was on top of the game. He did none of these things, instead relying on his same tired old good old boy Texas charm, referring to Michael Brown as “Brownie” and telling the world that he’s doing a “heck of a job,” despite all evidence being to the contrary.
Some have suggested that there might be a hell of a lot more going on behind the scenes with “Brownie” that we don’t know a lot about, and I think that might indeed be the case. But one of the jobs of a leader is to project leadership. After 9/11 Bush did this admirably. As far as I’m concerned, Bush’s ground zero bullhorn admonition that “the people who knocked these buildings down are going to hear all of us soon” ranks up there with FDR’s post-Pearl Harbor pledge to bring the Empire of Japan “to its knees.” In return, Bush was rewarded with the highest sustained approval ratings of any president in American history. Leadership counts, and the public projection of leadership is vitally important. In recent months or years, Bush has failed miserably at maintaining the public projection of leadership, and for it he has been rewarded with some of the lowest approval ratings ever. As the storm barreled towards the Gulf Coast the president went to a fundraiser in San Diego. Now, as a practical matter, who cares? What else could he have done as far as the storm went? But as a point of leadership it was an asinine thing to do, because it implies that he doesn’t care, and his critics subsequently use this against him.
A strong projection of leadership and concern would mitigate so many of the president’s problems. For example, rather than go to San Diego, what if Bush had gone to Houston, and set up a mobile command center of some kind, so he could be close to the storm and monitor things? And what if Bush had held a press conference before the storm, stating that the areas about to be hit contained some of the poorest people in the country, and that he wanted to make sure that the federal government was on hand and ready to meet their emergency needs? In real terms, this isn’t substantively different from what Bush did. Air Force One is a mobile command center in and of itself, so it’s not like he was actually out of the loop. But he didn’t project anything resembling an image of caring or compassion or leadership. (Think Giuliani in the days after 9/11.) Bill Clinton, for all his faults, was a master at the projection of leadership. Whether he had the leadership or not it always appeared as if he did, that he truly cared, and like it or not, this is what people want to see from their leaders. Bush, I am sure, cares deeply, and has no idea how to express it.
Allow me to illustrate my point. Say you are trying to get a girl to marry you. In order to woo her you buy her little gifts, tell her you love her, pay attention to her, and so on. Once she is convinced that you truly care about her, she accepts your proposal. Now, in truth you might not care about her at all and seek only to marry her for her money, but your outward projection of caring is all she has to go on, and she bases her decision entirely on how you act and appear. Conversely, say you truly did love and care for this woman, but were so uncomfortable and bumbling at expressing yourself that she found you distant and aloof, and thus chose not to marry you. The fact that you truly did care about her mattered less because she did not get the outward expression of love and affection she craved.
Appearances count, often times much more than reality. It’s a sad fact but it’s a fact nonetheless, and Bush simply does not realize it. Clinton was a master. Being seen as a leader is just as important as actually being one, and Bush’s lack of any real type of leadership skills caused him to totally drop the ball and lose any momentum whatsoever. By firing Brown he would have shown that, in the face of an emergency, he wasn’t afraid to take the tough steps necessary to get the job done. Instead we get told that Brownie is doing a heck of a job.
This is why I am so disgusted with Bush. He had a chance to rally the country behind him, to be the face of everything that is great about America, and he was an abject failure at it to all but his most staunchly partisan supporters.
The Federal Government What can I say about the federal government, by which I include FEMA, that I haven’t already said? Rather than focus on the specifics of how the federal government failed, I want to discuss what I think its role should be.
The federal government cannot and should not be the first responder in times of emergency. That responsibility should fall on the local and state governments. That being said, there are certain times when only a body like the federal government has the power and ability to coordinate a massive relief effort. This was one of those times.
Longtime readers of this blog know that I am a staunch federalist, a believer in the true separation of powers and the sovereign rights of states. That notwithstanding, there are times when the federal government can and should step in and supersede this sovereignty. This is well established in law. The concept of martial law has been around since the beginning of government. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Indeed, in New Orleans right now there is a standing shoot-to-kill order for looters. In the legal sense looters are really only committing petty larceny or burglary, and would be subject only to a short prison sentence if arrested, tried, and convicted. Right now they run the risk of an immediate death sentence carried out Judge Dredd-style. “I am the law.” In a non-emergency situation I think the vast majority of us would have been horrified at the thought of empowering the state to immediately execute suspected petty criminals, but you’ll hear very few complaints of the shoot-to-kill order under these circumstances.
My point is that while laws are essential to order, and for maintaining protection from an all-too-powerful state, they should not be a death sentence. This is the impression that I get from the Katrina disaster. There were no clear lines delineating who was in control of what, or who had the responsibility for performing specific rescue tasks, and so on. And while we can all quote various legal decisions and umpteen laws governing this sort of thing, it absolutely cannot be denied that the system, for the most part, failed. And when the system fails, I expect the leadership to step in and get the job done, which in this case was saving lives and maintaining order. When it became apparent that Blaco and Nagin were not up to the task, the federal government should have stepped in, assumed control, and began giving orders.
Which would you rather have, a president called before Congress to explain why he broke the law to save lives, or why he sat idly by while people died because he did not have the statutory power to do certain things? As I’ve said many times over the past few days, George W. Bush is the President of the United States of America, the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on the planet. Saying, “Well, I couldn’t do anything because the so-and-so act of 1964 did not give me the power to do anything” is a flaccid, pathetic excuse.
Going Forward We obviously cannot have a system were the president, at the drop of a hat, can assume these sorts of dictatorial powers. This is exactly how Hitler came to power; he created an emergency, assumed emergency powers, then refused to relinquish them. So I am not for a second in favor of simply granting the federal government the power to do as they please. That notwithstanding, we need a major reform of the system that recently failed us so.
First off, we need to start from scratch. There needs to be a clear, concise, easily-understood chain of command for dire emergency situations. It needs to be exactly the same for all states, so that the procedure is exactly the same whether you’re dealing with a Louisiana hurricane or a California earthquake or a low-yield nuclear detonation in a major American city. For example, we could implement a system by which disasters are assigned one of three ascending levels of severity. At the lowest level, say a flooding or localized earthquake, the local government would be in control, with FEMA providing assistance as needed. The middle level would be for a standard hurricane, like the kind that usually hit our shores. In these instances FEMA and the state would be roughly parallel in their contributions. The top level would be reserved for severe emergencies, like a major catastrophic earthquake or a terrorist strike or a Katrina-level hurricane. In these the federal government would step in and use any and all powers at its disposal to get the job done.
This, I feel, should be implemented via a constitutional amendment. This way there are no lawsuits or legal wrangling that can impede the process, as there would be if a law were simply passed by Congress. The very process by which an amendment has to go through would show that there was broad support among both the federal and state legislatures. Nobody can complain like they do now about the PATRIOT Act that a fascist cabal rammed the legislation through to enact some kind of hidden agenda to take over the country.
This type of reform is necessary, vital to national security, and should be pursued at the earliest opportunity. Osama bin Laden is sitting in a cave somewhere watching CNN and laughing his evil ass off. Because, as Newt Gingrich said, if this is the best the United States can do when we had over a week to prepare, just how well are we going to react when something unexpected happens?
Monday, September 05, 2005
New Orleans: It's Their Fault
I was sent the following by email. Look at it objectively, and it makes complete sense.
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski
Sep 02, 2005
by Robert Tracinski
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Kanye West
Anybody see Kanye West's little rant? Not that I really know or give a shit who Kanye West is, of him I can say this: What a shithead.
Friday, September 02, 2005
You have got to be kidding me! Typical cries of racism.
Now, there are blacks who are screaming that the slow response to New Orleans is because most of the victims are poor and black. Are you kidding? Wynton Marsalis (sp?) and members of government are complaining that the government isn't doing enough because the victims are mostly black. If it had happened in Charleston, aid would have been sent right in.
Let's analyze this. The black population is very large in New Orleans. Therefore, the black population most likely have been electing black officials for local, state, and federal positions. Now, it is the responsibility of the local and state agencies to have a plan in place for disasters. I'm sure Charleston has a plan in place. My county has a great plan in place, and aid would quickly respond, and that is with a large black and Hispanic population. So, one could say that the lack of preparedness and slow response afterwards is the fault of the black population, since they are the ones who elected their officials.
There are black people complaining that the media is being racist, since they keep showing black people doing the looting. The talking heads who stoke the fires of racism say that they aren't looting, but are trying to survive. When I saw the videos of black people stealing boxes of sneakers and electronic items, I'm sure that it wasn't because they were trying to survive. I did see videos of white people stealing, but since the population is mostly black, it would stand to reason that most of the stealing is being done by blacks!
I have not seen them, but I would guess that the roving gangs of armed thugs are black. I'm confident when I say that most of the rapes were committed by blacks (on blacks).
Then, there is the derision some have shown over the word refugee. One talking head proclaimed, "They are not refugees. They are American citizens." Hey, dumbass, look up the word. Refugee: One who flees in search of refuge, as in times of war, political oppression, environmental destruction, or religious persecution.
I am not a racist person, but my life experiences have led me to the conclusion that some of the most racist people I've ever met are, in fact, black. I work in a profession where I see many lazy people who abuse and manipulate the system. When a white person is caught, or is denied some form of social service, he/she goes about their business. Many a black person will cry racism. To those screaming that racist governments aren't taking care of them (another social handout), I ask them: Are black people not capable of evacuating? Are black people not capable of preparing for a disaster?
I am ready, willing, and able to contribute money for hurricane relief. But every time I hear an accusation of racial bias, it just makes me hang onto my money even longer.
Let's analyze this. The black population is very large in New Orleans. Therefore, the black population most likely have been electing black officials for local, state, and federal positions. Now, it is the responsibility of the local and state agencies to have a plan in place for disasters. I'm sure Charleston has a plan in place. My county has a great plan in place, and aid would quickly respond, and that is with a large black and Hispanic population. So, one could say that the lack of preparedness and slow response afterwards is the fault of the black population, since they are the ones who elected their officials.
There are black people complaining that the media is being racist, since they keep showing black people doing the looting. The talking heads who stoke the fires of racism say that they aren't looting, but are trying to survive. When I saw the videos of black people stealing boxes of sneakers and electronic items, I'm sure that it wasn't because they were trying to survive. I did see videos of white people stealing, but since the population is mostly black, it would stand to reason that most of the stealing is being done by blacks!
I have not seen them, but I would guess that the roving gangs of armed thugs are black. I'm confident when I say that most of the rapes were committed by blacks (on blacks).
Then, there is the derision some have shown over the word refugee. One talking head proclaimed, "They are not refugees. They are American citizens." Hey, dumbass, look up the word. Refugee: One who flees in search of refuge, as in times of war, political oppression, environmental destruction, or religious persecution.
I am not a racist person, but my life experiences have led me to the conclusion that some of the most racist people I've ever met are, in fact, black. I work in a profession where I see many lazy people who abuse and manipulate the system. When a white person is caught, or is denied some form of social service, he/she goes about their business. Many a black person will cry racism. To those screaming that racist governments aren't taking care of them (another social handout), I ask them: Are black people not capable of evacuating? Are black people not capable of preparing for a disaster?
I am ready, willing, and able to contribute money for hurricane relief. But every time I hear an accusation of racial bias, it just makes me hang onto my money even longer.
New Orleans
The events that are currently happening in New Orleans are definitely terrible. What is even worse are those individuals who are screaming that the federal goverment is not doing enough to help them. Some are saying that if they die it is because the government ignored them.
Now, let's look at this objectively. Local, state, and federal officials gave notice for over two days that people needed to leave the area. IT WAS A MANDATORY EVACUATION! The whiners chose to stay. New Orleans is a city BELOW sea level, NEAR the sea, next to a large lake that sits HIGHER than the freakin' city! What do you think would eventually happen if you lived there? It is not the federal government's problem. Blame should be put on the local and state governments. The local and state governments allowed people to develop and live in this flood prone area. Computer models in the 90's showed what would happen if a Category 4 hit the area. So, the local and state governments should have had the resources available and on standby for this event.
Now, the federal government should help, but they should not shoulder the blame. Blame the people who chose not to leave.
Now, let's look at this objectively. Local, state, and federal officials gave notice for over two days that people needed to leave the area. IT WAS A MANDATORY EVACUATION! The whiners chose to stay. New Orleans is a city BELOW sea level, NEAR the sea, next to a large lake that sits HIGHER than the freakin' city! What do you think would eventually happen if you lived there? It is not the federal government's problem. Blame should be put on the local and state governments. The local and state governments allowed people to develop and live in this flood prone area. Computer models in the 90's showed what would happen if a Category 4 hit the area. So, the local and state governments should have had the resources available and on standby for this event.
Now, the federal government should help, but they should not shoulder the blame. Blame the people who chose not to leave.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Cindy Sheehan, part 2
More on Cindy Sheehan, as printed in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The personal argument
by Debra J. Saunders
Sunday, August 21, 2005
VACAVILLE’S Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan who died in combat in Iraq, became a public figure when she demanded a second visit with President Bush so he could answer her questions: “Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?” She had set up camp near the president’s home, until a second tragedy—her mother’s stroke—caused her to leave Thursday.
By the time that happened, Sheehan, who has made her personal situation the issue and has hurled so many personal insults at others, was complaining that the protests are “not about me,” they’re about the war.
Not true. Cindy Sheehan never asked Bush to meet with other mothers of those who have died in Iraq. She has never tried to represent those mothers of slain soldiers who support the war. What’s more, while many thoughtful critics of the war exist, Sheehan personifies the me-me-me focus of the anti-war movement. And that corner doesn’t think.
Note how Sheehan refuses to look at the war as anything but the spawn of President Bush. She won’t acknowledge that the newly elected Iraqi government doesn’t want U.S. troops to leave yet. She simply repeats the same old anti- war movement slogans: Bush lied. Bush killed her son. Last week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Sheehan how she reacted to an Internet plea by two Iraqi dentists to stop calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Cooper read the words: “You are free to go and leave us alone but what am I going to tell your million sisters in Iraq? Should I ask them to leave Iraq, too? Should I leave, too? And what about the 8 million who walked through bombs to practice their freedom and vote? Should they leave this land, too? Your son sacrificed his life for a very noble cause? No, he sacrificed himself for the most precious value in this existence; that is freedom,” they wrote.
Asked for her thoughts, Sheehan could only protest that she wasn’t programmed to answer that question: “Well, Anderson, we’re still—we’re getting away from what, what the president said when he went to Congress and asked for the authority to invade Iraq. He said (the U.S. needs to invade) because they had weapons of mass destruction, and he said because there was a link between Saddam (Hussein) and al Qaeda, and those have been proven to be wrong.” In short: Bush lied, and that’s the reason America and its many allies went to war. She also opposes U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Afghanistan “is almost the same thing.” Sure, except that al Qaeda was linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, who was hiding behind the Taliban in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001. It’s not even remotely the same thing.
It feels as if the far left has come down with a case of mass amnesia. To believe this, one would have to forget that, other than Howard Dean, every major Democratic candidates running for president in 2004—Dennis Kucinich doesn’t count as major—voted for the resolution authorizing force in Iraq. Sen. John Kerry, who began his career denouncing politicians who vote for a mistake of a war, also voted for the war resolution. Like other senators who had served on the Senate Intelligence Committee he had access to reams of information. His running mate, John Edwards, also on the Intelligence Committee, voted for the resolution.
What is more, potential future Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., voted for the resolution. And if she believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, it wasn’t because “Bush lied.” Her own husband, when he was president, explained that he was bombing Iraq because in 1998, “Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.” Bush didn’t just utter the word “yellowcake” and magically the Senate was in a trance that made John Kerry and Hillary Clinton dutifully vote yes.
They looked at the evidence, and they endured years of watching Hussein in action. They knew that he had advanced his nuclear program beyond intelligence estimates before the Persian Gulf War. They then voted for a resolution that said, in part, “in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq’s continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in ‘material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations’ and urged the president ‘to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations’.” That context is missing in action at Camp Casey.
The personal argument
by Debra J. Saunders
Sunday, August 21, 2005
VACAVILLE’S Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan who died in combat in Iraq, became a public figure when she demanded a second visit with President Bush so he could answer her questions: “Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?” She had set up camp near the president’s home, until a second tragedy—her mother’s stroke—caused her to leave Thursday.
By the time that happened, Sheehan, who has made her personal situation the issue and has hurled so many personal insults at others, was complaining that the protests are “not about me,” they’re about the war.
Not true. Cindy Sheehan never asked Bush to meet with other mothers of those who have died in Iraq. She has never tried to represent those mothers of slain soldiers who support the war. What’s more, while many thoughtful critics of the war exist, Sheehan personifies the me-me-me focus of the anti-war movement. And that corner doesn’t think.
Note how Sheehan refuses to look at the war as anything but the spawn of President Bush. She won’t acknowledge that the newly elected Iraqi government doesn’t want U.S. troops to leave yet. She simply repeats the same old anti- war movement slogans: Bush lied. Bush killed her son. Last week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Sheehan how she reacted to an Internet plea by two Iraqi dentists to stop calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Cooper read the words: “You are free to go and leave us alone but what am I going to tell your million sisters in Iraq? Should I ask them to leave Iraq, too? Should I leave, too? And what about the 8 million who walked through bombs to practice their freedom and vote? Should they leave this land, too? Your son sacrificed his life for a very noble cause? No, he sacrificed himself for the most precious value in this existence; that is freedom,” they wrote.
Asked for her thoughts, Sheehan could only protest that she wasn’t programmed to answer that question: “Well, Anderson, we’re still—we’re getting away from what, what the president said when he went to Congress and asked for the authority to invade Iraq. He said (the U.S. needs to invade) because they had weapons of mass destruction, and he said because there was a link between Saddam (Hussein) and al Qaeda, and those have been proven to be wrong.” In short: Bush lied, and that’s the reason America and its many allies went to war. She also opposes U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Afghanistan “is almost the same thing.” Sure, except that al Qaeda was linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, who was hiding behind the Taliban in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001. It’s not even remotely the same thing.
It feels as if the far left has come down with a case of mass amnesia. To believe this, one would have to forget that, other than Howard Dean, every major Democratic candidates running for president in 2004—Dennis Kucinich doesn’t count as major—voted for the resolution authorizing force in Iraq. Sen. John Kerry, who began his career denouncing politicians who vote for a mistake of a war, also voted for the war resolution. Like other senators who had served on the Senate Intelligence Committee he had access to reams of information. His running mate, John Edwards, also on the Intelligence Committee, voted for the resolution.
What is more, potential future Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., voted for the resolution. And if she believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, it wasn’t because “Bush lied.” Her own husband, when he was president, explained that he was bombing Iraq because in 1998, “Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.” Bush didn’t just utter the word “yellowcake” and magically the Senate was in a trance that made John Kerry and Hillary Clinton dutifully vote yes.
They looked at the evidence, and they endured years of watching Hussein in action. They knew that he had advanced his nuclear program beyond intelligence estimates before the Persian Gulf War. They then voted for a resolution that said, in part, “in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq’s continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in ‘material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations’ and urged the president ‘to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations’.” That context is missing in action at Camp Casey.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Shut up, you glory hound!
Casey Sheehan was an American soldier. He volunteered to serve in the United States Armed Forces. The basic purpose of any Force of Arms is to kill people and break things. Sometimes, members of our Armed Forces are killed doing their job. It is tragic, and it is terrible, but never forget that Casey Sheehan died as a volunteer in the service of his country. One should expect that when you join the service, you will eventually be put in harm's way and could possibly be killed. The Armed Forces is more than just a free ride through college.
Casey Sheehan was an American soldier. He died in the service of his country, and he should be remembered as a patriot. He should lie in honored glory, and be remembered for his sacrifice and service. I say "should," because Casey Sheehan will always be remembered as the dead soldier with the whining bitch mother who thinks she's more special than other folks who have lost loved ones in Iraq and demands a meeting with the President. Hello!? You already had that meeting! Remember? You said that he was kind and sympathetic. Now, you say he was unkind and uncaring. Were you lying then, or now? Either way, you have no integrity. There must be a reason why your husband wants a divorce, and the entire Sheehan family has shunned you.
I give you the following excerpt from an interview with this clueless woman:
MATTHEWS: Can I ask you a tough question? A very tough question.
SHEEHAN: Yes.
MATTHEWS: All right. If your son had been killed in Afghanistan, would you have a different feeling?
SHEEHAN: I don’t think so, Chris, because I believe that Afghanistan is almost the same thing. We’re fighting terrorism. Or terrorists, we’re saying. But they’re not contained in a country. This is an ideology and not an enemy. And we know that Iraq, Iraq had no terrorism. They were no threat to the United States of America.
MATTHEWS: But Afghanistan was harboring, the Taliban was harboring al-Qaida which is the group that attacked us on 9/11.
SHEEHAN: Well then we should have gone after al-Qaida and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan.
MATTHEWS: But that’s where they were being harbored. That’s where they were headquartered. Shouldn’t we go after their headquarters? Doesn’t that make sense?
SHEEHAN: Well, but there were a lot of innocent people killed in that invasion, too. … But I’m seeing that we’re sending our ground troops in to invade countries where the entire country wasn’t the problem. Especially Iraq. Iraq was no problem. And why do we send in invading armies to march into Afghanistan when we’re looking for a select group of people in that country?
So I believe that our troops should be brought home out of both places where we’re obviously not having any success in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and that’s who they told us was responsible for 9/11.
Cindy Sheehan, shut your damned mouth and quit pissing on the memory of your dead son.
Casey Sheehan was an American soldier. He died in the service of his country, and he should be remembered as a patriot. He should lie in honored glory, and be remembered for his sacrifice and service. I say "should," because Casey Sheehan will always be remembered as the dead soldier with the whining bitch mother who thinks she's more special than other folks who have lost loved ones in Iraq and demands a meeting with the President. Hello!? You already had that meeting! Remember? You said that he was kind and sympathetic. Now, you say he was unkind and uncaring. Were you lying then, or now? Either way, you have no integrity. There must be a reason why your husband wants a divorce, and the entire Sheehan family has shunned you.
I give you the following excerpt from an interview with this clueless woman:
MATTHEWS: Can I ask you a tough question? A very tough question.
SHEEHAN: Yes.
MATTHEWS: All right. If your son had been killed in Afghanistan, would you have a different feeling?
SHEEHAN: I don’t think so, Chris, because I believe that Afghanistan is almost the same thing. We’re fighting terrorism. Or terrorists, we’re saying. But they’re not contained in a country. This is an ideology and not an enemy. And we know that Iraq, Iraq had no terrorism. They were no threat to the United States of America.
MATTHEWS: But Afghanistan was harboring, the Taliban was harboring al-Qaida which is the group that attacked us on 9/11.
SHEEHAN: Well then we should have gone after al-Qaida and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan.
MATTHEWS: But that’s where they were being harbored. That’s where they were headquartered. Shouldn’t we go after their headquarters? Doesn’t that make sense?
SHEEHAN: Well, but there were a lot of innocent people killed in that invasion, too. … But I’m seeing that we’re sending our ground troops in to invade countries where the entire country wasn’t the problem. Especially Iraq. Iraq was no problem. And why do we send in invading armies to march into Afghanistan when we’re looking for a select group of people in that country?
So I believe that our troops should be brought home out of both places where we’re obviously not having any success in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and that’s who they told us was responsible for 9/11.
Cindy Sheehan, shut your damned mouth and quit pissing on the memory of your dead son.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Friday, July 29, 2005
Cool air, finally!
Man, was it hot the last few days. The sun was shining, it was humid, and the thermometers were showing 100 degrees, with a heat index of 115. Nothing working out in it, wearing a black uniform with a t-shirt and ballistic vest, along with long black pants! It got so hot this past Wednesday that the A/C in my new patrol car could not keep up with the heat.
It's only 85 degrees today. A veritable cold front.
It's only 85 degrees today. A veritable cold front.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Uh, oh!
How about that? He wasn't muslim! I reckon people will now know not to wear a heavy coat, flee, and jump over a turnstyle at a train station! It was still a legitimate shoot, in my opinion.
Friday, July 22, 2005
You gotta love Muslims
Ok. More bombings in London. More MUSLIM bombings in London. London police investigate. Wind up pursuing muslim male in heavy coat IN THE SUMMER who refuses multiple commands to stop. Muslim male in heavy coat IN THE SUMMER runs towards crowded train station. Ok, let's back up. Please recall that the muslim bombers bombed public transportation. Now, muslim man, fleeing, refusing commands to stop, wearing a heavy coat IN THE SUMMER, runs into train station, and fights the police, gets his ass waxed by multiple police gunshots. Justifiable shoot if I've ever seen one. Unfortunately, man had no bombs hidden under his heavy coat that he was wearing IN THE SUMMER. If you were the officers, what would you have done?
Anyway, after all of the terror in London, what concerns the London Muslim community? The following is a quote from BBC: "The Muslim Council of Britain calls for the police to explain why the man at Stockwell Station - described as Asian in appearance - was shot dead.
A spokesman says Muslims are concerned police may have a "shoot to kill" policy in force." Well, when a Muslim male is fleeing police while wearing a heavy coat IN THE SUMMER and flees towards a crowded train station, then the answer should be, "You bet your ass!"
Typical Muslim response.
Anyway, after all of the terror in London, what concerns the London Muslim community? The following is a quote from BBC: "The Muslim Council of Britain calls for the police to explain why the man at Stockwell Station - described as Asian in appearance - was shot dead.
A spokesman says Muslims are concerned police may have a "shoot to kill" policy in force." Well, when a Muslim male is fleeing police while wearing a heavy coat IN THE SUMMER and flees towards a crowded train station, then the answer should be, "You bet your ass!"
Typical Muslim response.
Friday, July 08, 2005
Not much use for Muslims
This is going to shock some people, and some are going to call me a bigot, but I'm just going to have to come out and say it: I have no use for the religion of Islam. Why?
The Muslim world went bug-fuck nuts when American soldiers allegedly desecrated copies of the Koran. They wanted justice, death to the Americans, burned flags, etc. Typical shouts of "Jihad!" They bitched when Americans showed up with aid for the tsunami victims, because they didn't want "American influence." Too bad more of them didn't drown.
Where was the Muslim outrage when the bombs went off in London?
Where was the Muslim outrage when the bombs went off in Madrid?
Where was the Muslim outrage when the bombs went off in Bali?
Where was the Muslim outrage when those pussies killed all those kids in the school in Beslan?
Where was the Muslim outrage when 9/11 happened?
Where was the Muslim outrage when the beheadings happened on TV?
Where was the...oh, hell, you should get the idea by now.
Every time I hear that a Muslim gets whacked, I feel like stepping outside, yelling Allah Akhbar, and letting rip a whole magazine from my AR-15. Hell, they do it all the time!
Maybe we do need a Jihad. We could eliminate them once and for all.
The Muslim world went bug-fuck nuts when American soldiers allegedly desecrated copies of the Koran. They wanted justice, death to the Americans, burned flags, etc. Typical shouts of "Jihad!" They bitched when Americans showed up with aid for the tsunami victims, because they didn't want "American influence." Too bad more of them didn't drown.
Where was the Muslim outrage when the bombs went off in London?
Where was the Muslim outrage when the bombs went off in Madrid?
Where was the Muslim outrage when the bombs went off in Bali?
Where was the Muslim outrage when those pussies killed all those kids in the school in Beslan?
Where was the Muslim outrage when 9/11 happened?
Where was the Muslim outrage when the beheadings happened on TV?
Where was the...oh, hell, you should get the idea by now.
Every time I hear that a Muslim gets whacked, I feel like stepping outside, yelling Allah Akhbar, and letting rip a whole magazine from my AR-15. Hell, they do it all the time!
Maybe we do need a Jihad. We could eliminate them once and for all.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Entertainers
I have always had a problem with entertainers who use their status as stars to try to influence people to take a certain stance in politics. These entertainers present themselves as enlightened individuals who are supposedly more socially and politically adept just because of their star status. Trust me when I say this: Ben Affleck and Barbara Streisand are no more enlightened than your next door neighbor. It is bad enough that the general media is already liberally biased, but they then plaster our "enlightened" entertainers all over their respective media to further their political point of view.
One only has to take a cursory glance at the last two elections to see how our Hollywood elite can make asses of themselves. Ben Affleck toured the country with John Kerry, hoping his "star" power would tilt votes. Ben should have spent more time taking acting lessons (Gigli, anyone?). Alec Baldwin said that if Bush beat Gore, he would leave the country. Well, I'm still waiting, you pompous ass! Plenty of airplanes available! Johnny Depp has no problem criticizing and badmouthing his own country while living in France (sorry, don't mean to snicker), but he sure as hell doesn't have a problem making good old fashioned American money.
Now, all of these so-called entertainers are holding a worldwide concert to influence the richer countries of the world to stop poverty in the poor countries. Well, isn't that nice. If these entertainers are so worried about the starving children, why don't they donate their millions to the cause? How hypocritical can you get? "Look, I just bought a $20 million home in Beverly Hills, and now I'm going to sing some songs to try to influence people to support poor, impoverished people." Many people are starving because of overcrowding. A little birth control now and then would be nice. Famine is nature's way of controlling populations. Now, we wouldn't want to disrupt nature's natural course, would we? Many millions starve because of their own governments, or the lack thereof. Now, here's an interesting dilemma: To feed these people, do we interfere, or even overthrow, their government? That would require military force, which would cause all of these bleeding hearts to gasp in horror! How dare the US use military force to push it's will on another country!? Remember Somalia in 1993: US soldiers were there as part of a disfunctional UN force (don't get me started on the UN!) trying to feed the poor, starving Somalis, and they repaid our kind generosity by trying to shove it up our ass!
Help the starving people in other countries? Who cares. Let's worry about our own people at home.
One only has to take a cursory glance at the last two elections to see how our Hollywood elite can make asses of themselves. Ben Affleck toured the country with John Kerry, hoping his "star" power would tilt votes. Ben should have spent more time taking acting lessons (Gigli, anyone?). Alec Baldwin said that if Bush beat Gore, he would leave the country. Well, I'm still waiting, you pompous ass! Plenty of airplanes available! Johnny Depp has no problem criticizing and badmouthing his own country while living in France (sorry, don't mean to snicker), but he sure as hell doesn't have a problem making good old fashioned American money.
Now, all of these so-called entertainers are holding a worldwide concert to influence the richer countries of the world to stop poverty in the poor countries. Well, isn't that nice. If these entertainers are so worried about the starving children, why don't they donate their millions to the cause? How hypocritical can you get? "Look, I just bought a $20 million home in Beverly Hills, and now I'm going to sing some songs to try to influence people to support poor, impoverished people." Many people are starving because of overcrowding. A little birth control now and then would be nice. Famine is nature's way of controlling populations. Now, we wouldn't want to disrupt nature's natural course, would we? Many millions starve because of their own governments, or the lack thereof. Now, here's an interesting dilemma: To feed these people, do we interfere, or even overthrow, their government? That would require military force, which would cause all of these bleeding hearts to gasp in horror! How dare the US use military force to push it's will on another country!? Remember Somalia in 1993: US soldiers were there as part of a disfunctional UN force (don't get me started on the UN!) trying to feed the poor, starving Somalis, and they repaid our kind generosity by trying to shove it up our ass!
Help the starving people in other countries? Who cares. Let's worry about our own people at home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
