Iceberg Dead Ahead!
Douglas W. "Popeye" Frederick
Pelosi's victory for women
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi scored a giant gain for feminism last
weekend. In shoving her controversy-plagued healthcare reform bill to
victory by a paper-thin margin, she conclusively demonstrated that a woman
can be just as gritty, ruthless and arm-twisting in pursuing her agenda as
anyone in the long line of fabled male speakers before her. Even a basic
feminist shibboleth like abortion rights became just another card for Pelosi
to deal and swap.
It was a stunningly impressive recovery for someone who seemed to be coming
apart at the seams last summer, when a sputtering, rattled Pelosi struggled
to deal with the nationwide insurgency of town hall protesters -- reputable,
concerned citizens whom she outrageously tried to tar as Nazis. Whether or
not her bill survives in the Senate is immaterial: Pelosi's hard-won,
trench-warfare win sets a new standard for U.S. women politicians and is
certainly well beyond anything the posturing but ineffectual Hillary Clinton
has ever achieved.
As for the actual content of the House healthcare bill, horrors! Where to
begin? That there are serious deficiencies and injustices in the U.S.
healthcare system has been obvious for decades. To bring the poor and
vulnerable into the fold has been a high ideal and an urgent goal for most
Democrats. But this rigid, intrusive and grotesquely expensive bill is a
nightmare. Holy Hygeia, why can't my fellow Democrats see that the creation
of another huge, inefficient federal bureaucracy would slow and disrupt the
delivery of basic healthcare and subject us all to a labyrinthine mass of
incompetent, unaccountable petty dictators? Massively expanding the number
of healthcare consumers without making due provision for the production of
more healthcare providers means that we're hurtling toward a staggering
logjam of de facto rationing. Steel yourself for the deafening screams from
the careerist professional class of limousine liberals when they get
stranded for hours in the jammed, jostling anterooms of doctors' offices.
They'll probably try to hire Caribbean nannies as ringers to do the waiting
for them.
A second issue souring me on this bill is its failure to include the most
common-sense clause to increase competition and drive down prices:
portability of health insurance across state lines. What covert business
interests is the Democratic leadership protecting by stopping consumers from
shopping for policies nationwide? Finally, no healthcare bill is worth the
paper it's printed on when the authors ostentatiously exempt themselves from
its rules. The solipsistic members of Congress want us peons to be ground up
in the communal machine, while they themselves gambol on in the flowering
meadow of their own lavish federal health plan. Hypocrites!
And why are we even considering so gargantuan a social experiment when the
nation is struggling to emerge from a severe recession? It's as if liberals
are starry-eyed dreamers lacking the elementary ability to project or
predict the chaotic and destabilizing practical consequences of their
utopian fantasies. Republicans, on the other hand, have basically sat on
their asses about healthcare reform for the past 20 years and have shown
little interest in crafting legislative solutions to social inequities. The
usual GOP floater about private medical savings accounts is a crock --
something that, given the astronomical costs of major medical crises, would
be utterly unworkable for families of even average household income.
International models of socialized medicine have been developed for nations
and populations that are usually vastly smaller than our own. There are
positives and negatives in their system as in ours. So what's the point of
this trade? The plight of the uninsured (whose number is far less than
claimed) should be directly addressed without co-opting and destroying the
entire U.S. medical infrastructure. Limited, targeted reforms can ban
gouging and unfair practices and can streamline communications now
wastefully encumbered by red tape. But insurance companies and the
pharmaceutical industry are not the sole cause of mounting healthcare costs,
and constantly demonizing them is a demagogic evasion.
How dare anyone claim humane aims for this bill anyhow when its funding is
based on a slashing of Medicare by over $400 billion? The brutal abandonment
of the elderly here is unconscionable. One would have expected a Democratic
proposal to include an expansion of Medicare, certainly not its gutting. The
passive acquiescence of liberal commentators to this vandalism simply
demonstrates how partisan ideology ultimately desensitizes the mind.
Last week's startling gubernatorial victories by Republicans in Virginia and
New Jersey were routinely dismissed as local aberrations by the liberal
media or inflated as referendums on President Obama by the conservative
media. But voters were clearly revolting against the deranged excess
spending of government at both state and federal levels. So it was as much a
protest against Congress as against the White House.
Obama sure needed a lift and got it from Pelosi. The administration has
seemed to be drifting lately. Obama has dithered for months about a strategy
for Afghanistan -- another rats' nest we should pull our troops out of
overnight. Then there was the bizarre disproportion in Obama's flying to
Denmark to flog a Chicago Olympics yet not having time to make it to Germany
to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall -- which suggests a frivolous
provincialism as well as ignorance of history among the president's
principal advisors. And Obama's muted response to last week's massacre at
Fort Hood has exposed ambiguities and uncertainties in the U.S. government
and military about how to respond to homegrown militant Islam. The
presidency is a heavy burden -- a prize that can become a curse.
<snip>
http://salon.com/news/opinion/camille_paglia/2009/11/10/pelosi/index.html
--
--
Popeye
"If one does as God does enough times, one
will become as God is." -Dr. Hannibal Lector.
www.finalprotectivefire.com
http://picasaweb.google.com/Popeye8762
Scott
message news:hbednWwgFolb02fX...@supernews.com...
> Pelosi's victory for women
> http://salon.com/news/opinion/camille_paglia/2009/11/10/pelosi/index.html
It's going to be fun to see the lefties polish that turd and the mess they
made electing a spineless bagman to office.
Still no decision on Afghanistan.
Must be Bush's fault Obama cant make a Presidential decision, seeing how he
is so busy with playing golf, posing for cheesy photo ops and playing
celebrity.
Greg Mossman
> "Douglas W. "Popeye" Frederick" <Pop...@finalprotectivefire.com> wrote in
>
> > Pelosi's victory for women
>
> It's going to be fun to see the lefties polish that turd and the mess they
> made electing a spineless bagman to office.
>
> Still no decision on Afghanistan.
>
> Must be Bush's fault Obama cant make a Presidential decision, seeing how he
> is so busy with playing golf, posing for cheesy photo ops and playing
> celebrity.
Obviously Obama wants to avoid the kind of hasty and corrupt
"presidential" decision that got us mired in Iraq and practically
ignored Afghanistan for 8 years. Finally someone is not only paying
attention to our domestic problems but actually doing something about
them.
As Popeye's article states: "Republicans, on the other hand, have
basically sat on their asses about healthcare reform for the past 20
years and have shown little interest in crafting legislative solutions
to social inequities. The usual GOP floater about private medical
savings accounts is a crock -- something that, given the astronomical
costs of major medical crises, would be utterly unworkable for
families of even average household income."
Besides, what are you bitching about, at least he hasn't taken your
guns yet.
"A woman was killed and two of her co-workers were injured when the
woman's estranged husband opened fire Tuesday at a drug-testing
laboratory in suburban Portland before turning the gun on himself,
police said. The woman who was killed was identified as Teresa Marie
Beiser, 36, of Gladstone. Her husband, Robert James Beiser, 39, died
of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said."
Douglas W. "Popeye" Frederick
by Ann Coulter
11/11/2009
The massacre at Fort Hood last week is the perfect apotheosis of the liberal
victimology described in my book "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their
Assault on America."
According to witnesses, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan entered a medical facility
at Fort Hood, prayed briefly, then shouted "Allahu akbar" before he began
gunning down American troops. Now I don't know which to be more afraid of:
Muslims or government-run health care systems.
President Obama honored the victims by immediately warning Americans not to
"jump to conclusions" -- namely, the obvious conclusion that the attack was
an act of Islamic terrorism. As conclusions go, it wasn't much of a jump.
But the mainstream media waited for no information -- indeed actively
avoided learning any information -- before leaping to the far less obvious
conclusion that the suspect's mass murder was set off by "stress."
The day after the slaughter, The New York Times ran one editorial and two
of three op-eds asserting as much -- which was at least one more than the
Times usually runs about psycho-killer soldiers going on rampages.
Two days after the mass shooting, the Times' laughably predictable
headlines about the Fort Hood bloodbath were:
-- "Preliminary Inquiry Finds No Link to Terror Plot"
-- "Painful Stories Take a Toll on Military Therapists"
-- "When Soldiers' Minds Snap"
The Los Angeles Times jumped to the exact same conclusion, running an
article on the massacre titled: "Fort Hood Tragedy Rocks Military as It
Grapples With Mental Health Issues." Time magazine followed suit, posting an
article titled: "Stresses at Fort Hood Were Likely Intense for Hasan."
Inasmuch as Maj. Hasan had never been deployed overseas, much less seen
combat, liberals seem to have discovered the first recorded case of
"pre-traumatic stress syndrome."
Their point was: The real victim of Fort Hood was Maj. Hasan. Indeed, all
Muslims were the victims that day.
The media quickly set to work assembling lachrymose accounts of taunts
Hasan had been subjected to in the military for being a Muslim, the most
harrowing of which seems to have been his car being keyed at his off-base
apartment complex.
I suppose we should be relieved that liberals weren't claiming Hasan
snapped because of the dimming prospects for a health care bill by the end
of the year.
The evidence for the manifestly obvious conclusion we were supposed to
avoid jumping to is rather more extensive.
According to numerous eyewitness accounts, Hasan denounced the "war on
terror" as a war against Islam, said Muslims should attack Americans in
retaliation for the war in Iraq, defended suicide bombers and said he was
"happy" when a Muslim murdered a soldier at a military recruiting center in
Arkansas earlier this year.
Stranger still, he wasn't auditioning for his own show on MSNBC when he
made these statements.
Hasan shared a "spiritual adviser" with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Imam
Anwar al-Awlaki, whose unseemly enthusiasm for jihad got him banned from
speaking in Britain, even by video link.
A few years ago, Hasan delivered an hour-long PowerPoint lecture to an
audience of doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, arguing that
non-Muslims should be beheaded and have burning oil poured down their
throats.
He had tried to contact al-Qaida, and at least one U.S. intelligence
official says the Army knew it.
Despite being well aware of Hasan's disturbing views and conduct, the Army
did nothing.
Far less offensive speech has been grounds for discipline or even removal
from duties in the military. In the aftermath of the Tailhook scandal, for
example, two Navy officers were reprimanded and reassigned after putting up
a sign with the words of a nursery rhyme altered to include a vulgar sexual
reference to liberal congresswoman Patricia Schroeder.
But a Muslim Army doctor can go around a military installation somberly
advocating the beheading of infidels, and the girls running the military
treat him like he's Nicole Kidman and they're press junket reporters.
The Army's top brass, Gen. George Casey, responded to the military's
shocking decision to keep a terrorist-sympathizing Muslim in the Army by
announcing: "Our diversity ... is a strength." And I thought gays couldn't
openly serve in the military.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims moved to the top of liberals' victim pantheon on
the basis of having slaughtered 3,000 Americans. Muslims were "victims" of
Americans' displeasure with them for the biggest terrorist attack in world
history. The only American deserving of more coddling than a Muslim is the
first African-American president.
So, now any dyspeptic expression toward a Muslim is grounds for calling in
a diversity coordinator. And when the "victim" attacks, as at Fort Hood, the
rest of us are supposed to feel guilty because Hasan's car got keyed once.
As with all liberal "victims," it is the victim who is massively guilty.
Scott
With just a little luck, he will share John Allen Muhammad's fate;
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/11/virginia.sniper.execution/
Mark Foley
> "Douglas W. "Popeye" Frederick" <Pop...@finalprotectivefire.com> wrote in
>
> > Pelosi's victory for women
>
> It's going to be fun to see the lefties polish that turd and the mess they
> made electing a spineless bagman to office.
>
> Still no decision on Afghanistan.
>
> Must be Bush's fault Obama cant make a Presidential decision, seeing how he
> is so busy with playing golf, posing for cheesy photo ops and playing
> celebrity.
A shame.
How I long for the days when the President would show his manhood by
clearing brush and impulsivly invading a country for no reason. Then
expect the cost of that endavour to never show up on the books.
Greg Mossman
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091129/ap_on_go_co/us_tora_bora_bin_laden
WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S.
troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders
made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist
leader with massive force, a Senate report says.
The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at
his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences
beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for
today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal
strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.
Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic
majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John
Kerry, as President Barack Obama prepares to boost U.S. troops in
Afghanistan.
The Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate
has long argued the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-
Qaida leader and top deputies when they were holed up in the
forbidding mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan only three months
after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Although limited to a review of military operations eight years old,
the report could also be read as a cautionary note for those resisting
an increased troop presence there now.
More pointedly, it seeks to affix a measure of blame for the state of
the war today on military leaders under former president George W.
Bush, specifically Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary and his top
military commander, Tommy Franks.
"Removing the al-Qaida leader from the battlefield eight years ago
would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," the report
says. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to
Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who
continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics
worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity
that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the
future of international terrorism."
The report states categorically that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora
when the U.S. had the means to mount a rapid assault with several
thousand troops at least. It says that a review of existing
literature, unclassified government records and interviews with
central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear
that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora."
On or about Dec. 16, 2001, bin Laden and bodyguards "walked unmolested
out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal
area," where he is still believed to be based, the report says.
Instead of a massive attack, fewer than 100 U.S. commandos, working
with Afghan militias, tried to capitalize on air strikes and track
down their prey.
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the
most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on
the sidelines," the report said.
At the time, Rumsfeld expressed concern that a large U.S. troop
presence might fuel a backlash and he and some others said the
evidence was not conclusive about bin Laden's location.
Douglas W. "Popeye" Frederick
possible to circumvent the intent of Congress," Issa said in a statement.
"Taxpayers should not have to continue subsidizing a criminal enterprise
that helped Barack Obama get elected president. The politicization of the
Justice Department to payback one of the president's political allies is
shameful and amounts to nothing more than old-fashioned cronyism."
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/11/republican_blas.html
Scott
"Mark Foley" <t...@ultrafark.com> wrote in message
news:6c8a487d-8867-42b7...@33g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
<plonk>
http://nationaljuggernaut.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-cartoon-seemed-far-fetched-in-1948.html