Don’t Apologize for ME Anymore, Mr. Obama

Thomas Friedman in New York Times, September 25, 2012.

In “Backlash to the Backlash” Mr. Friedman tells us that “moderate” Muslims are disavowing and condemning the recent violent acts of Al Qaeda members who were purportedly insulted by a 14-minute film parody on the internet. He seems to suggest that this backlash-squared to some degree atones for or makes more bearable the deaths of 4 Americans and thousands of Arabs?  Well, since not one rational person ever said that ALL Muslims are evil, it makes no sense to suggest that if millions of them disavow evil, it exculpates or otherwise has any relevance to the thousands of Muslims who are evil.

Our war isn’t against Islam, per se, and this article knocks down a straw man while making the obvious and unrelated point that “not all Muslims are bad.” Our war is against a sect that despises freedom and the modern norms of the West. That sect’s culture is rooted in Islam and 99.999% of its adherents are Muslims. It is not important to know what percentage of Muslims are good or evil, since all peaceful people of every race, color and creed are against murder regardless of the number of the murderer’s brethren who practice the same religion more peacefully and without committing murder.

“Yeah, but his mom was a sweet woman” is hardly a defense of, say, Stalin or Charles Manson. And, during the Jerry Sandusky ordeal, I don’t recall anyone asking Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier to assure us that they do not employ pedophiles on their staff.  Evil is Evil.  Full Stop.

I do not hold all Muslims responsible for the acts of murder committed by their estranged, deranged brethren, and their denial of complicity in those acts is insulting, obnoxious, unmoving and irrelevant.  Likewise, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, claiming to speak on behalf of America, assure the world that I and my fellow Americans had nothing to do with making the 14-minute video, but we, the United States, are sorry for it nonetheless.

Don’t apologize for any of us anymore, Mr. Obama.  Speak for yourself.

Leftists Fear Some Success Stories, Cheer Others

The commentary from the left about Mitt Romney’s financial success and tax rate causes me to wonder:  How do they really feel about success in America?

Dear Leftists,

Is Mitt Romney’s version of success acceptable to you?  After a comfortable childhood and an Ivy League education, he spent 25 years building wealth for himself, his family, and his partners.  He supported and created business enterprises that employ thousands, enabling them to buy food, clothes, housing, medicine and education for their families.  He has given exceedingly generously to the Mormon Church and other charities.  He is 65, wealthy and running for the presidency at a point in his life at which most men would prefer to coast to the finish line.

Or, is Barack Obama’s life a better version of successful?  He and Michelle, we’re told, paid off their student loans just 8 years ago, so he was not financially successful before he made his way up the political ladder.  Now he’s the President of the United States, after serving in the Illinois state senate and briefly in the US Senate.  He has made millions from two autobiographical memoirs (yes, two, already – he turned 51 this summer) and assuredly will make millions more when he is relieved of his duty as commander in chief of the US military.

Or, let’s take Bill and Hillary Clinton; maybe you admire their version of success.  Their combined resumé contains Ivy League law school degrees, a law firm partnership (after her husband was elected governor), a stint as a congressional committee lawyer, three terms as the governor of Arkansas, two as the President of the United States, one and 1/2 terms in the US Senate, the title First Lady of the US, and four years as Secretary of State.  Sometime between her ‘First Lady-ship” and her service in the Senate, she made millions from a book deal.  After his presidency, Mr. Clinton cashed-in big with book deals and on the lecture circuit.  The couple are in their mid-60s and reportedly has a net worth in excess of $100,000,000, and they can’t seem to grow tired of being political celebrities.

Or, maybe your version of success is Sheldon Adelson’s humble beginnings followed by enormous self-made wealth.  Mr. Adelson was born in 1933 to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who lived in a Boston suburb.  After selling toiletries, he opened a charter bus business.  Later he created billions of dollars of wealth for himself and numerous investment partners in the convention and casino businesses that employ thousands of people who support their families with the paychecks they earn from those businesses.  He’s 78 years old, has donated 100s of millions of dollars to various charities and recently has spent some of his fortune to express his views about certain political matters, i.e. to exercise his First Amendment rights.

________________

So, we have a couple of guys who made loads of money in the private sector contrasted with a couple other guys (+ one wife each) who, we’re told, decided to forego big-money careers and pursue a life of “public service” (a.k.a. exercising power over other people’s lives) and then, upon reaching the pinnacle of that version of career success, turn their rolodex and access to power into a money machine that lines their pockets while they produce nothing but noise and hot air.

The American left praises and reveres the public-service version of success.  They treat the other version with suspicion and disdain and constantly insinuate that, where there’s private success, there’s likely much malfeasant activity.

Want to know how a person’s mind works?  Notice what they fear and what they cheer.

What do you fear/cheer?

I say “Three Cheers for what the Leftists’ Fear!”

And, Cheers!

The movie of the year

Click here > 2016; Obama’s America

Dreams from My Father – Chapter 3 Comments

Our future president describes his childhood – sometimes with vivid memories told in eloquent terms, other times struggling with long lost memories.  His father enters the plot with a month long visit that is described with resentment and fondness.  Our author can’t seem to pick a theme – sort of depends on the mood he’s trying to create on any given page.  (Click on link below for commentary on Chapter 3.)

Chapter Three

Mr. Hope and Change delivers chaos as he leads from behind

To suggest that a 14-minute movie clip is the cause instead of the excuse for the acts of war we are witnessing in the Middle East is to reveal a shallow mind.  More to the point, it reveals the shallowness of the Obama administration’s thinking and approach to the events in general.

The events in northern Africa reveal a deep flaw in Barack Obama’s world view.  Our president and his cronies genuinely believed they had reached a milestone, had completed their “lead from behind” mission when Qaddafi and Mubarak were dethroned.  The Arab Spring was not the beginning of a democratic revolution, it was MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

You see, they HOPED that once CHANGE happened, after the evil, wealth-hoarding tyrants had been shoved aside, democratic, socialistic nirvana would fill the void.  The tyrants’ respective country’s vast resources would be more fairly distributed and, voila, peace and prosperity would break out all over.  Instead, as any thinking person would have predicted,  anarchy, violence and mobs have rushed into that power vacuum, and those events have left them scratching their heads, at a total loss for what to do next.

The model should have been Ronald Reagan and Poland.  These people in Washington have no understanding of history or of human nature.  Freedom and individual rights, protected by a government with only enough power to protect them, not take them from its citizens, are the only forces that have ever led to human progress.  These clowns believe good outcomes can be planned and programmed by an all-powerful government, as long as it is elected by a majority vote.  We know better.

Hope and Change – Lead from behind.  Same things > Fundamental failures based on a fatally flawed world view.

Obama’s Oslo acceptance speech commentary. – YouTube

During his acceptance speech (Nobel Peach Prize, of course) President Obama reveals the level of his disregard for his predecessors, particularly George W Bush.

Mr. Obama, we want the keys back.  You don’t know what to do with the power of your office except that which perpetuates your power.  That’s not what the Oval Office is intended to be.  Move out.

via Obama’s Oslo acceptance speech commentary. – YouTube.

Are we at war? Will Obama Decide?

So, based on the FB traffic this morning, it appears that once every year on September 11th, we’ll all be patriots, hold hands, proclaim “We’ll never forget” and sing “God Bless America” in unison. Then, for the next 364 days, we’ll scream at each other about the stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ll let idiotic public figures tell us over and over that Bush Lied, US soldiers are dying in vain, bankers are crooks, Republicans are racist misogynistic homophobes, ‘access’ to the condom/family-planning aisle at CVS is a civil rights issue, Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is alive, blah blah blah . . . and let them pretend they’re offering us a rational, sophisticated political debate as they fight for the microphones, cameras and political power over our lives.

Here’s how I see it with regard to the national security question on our minds on 9/11: President Obama, if, as your every insinuation suggests, you believe it was an error for President Bush to initiate military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, then have a modicum of dignity and courage – order all the troops home immediately, since you think their mission is illegitimate.  If you do not issue that order, you must have the decency to defend your predecessor and the wisdom to issue the orders necessary to WIN the war – instruct the Army to obliterate the enemy without mercy – that’s how a country wins a war at least cost of blood and treasure. There is no rational position between those two options. Your attempt to have it both ways disgusts us and demeans the office you’ve held IN VAIN for 1,695 days. MAKE UP YOUR MIND OR GIVE US BACK THE KEYS TO THE OVAL OFFICE. You’re wasting our national resources and abusing the power of your office to rob our liberties. In short, you are diddling with our national charter and our very lives. We’ve had enough.

Or, as I asked in January 2010 – Are we at war or should we surrender? (Link to YouTube video below.)

Are we at war? – YouTube.

The Mark-up. Chapter 2.

In Chapter 2, we get a revisionist’s interpretation of a child’s memories of a period of time spent in a place far away from and very dissimilar to the country Barack Obama governs.

Click below for the interlineated Chapter 2.  (PDF file – give it a few seconds to upload.)

Dreams From My Father – Chapter 2, Edited Version