Guy Gets On a Plane With Explosive Underpants....

Watching DHS Director Janet Napolitano being interviewed by CNN's Candy Crowley about this attempted terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound plane the other day should make you cringe whether you hail from the left or the right. Why? Several reasons:

1) Napolitano doesn't seem at all disturbed by this total breakdown in airport security, and even goes so far as to say that "the system worked." Really?? In what way? In fact the system did NOT work and Napolitano should have said so. The only reason that plane didn't blow up is because some other passengers tackled the guy, much like with Richard Reid a few years ago.

2) Napolitano goes on to defend the fact that the terrorist had not been placed on a narrow "watch list" that would have prevented him from boarding the plane, despite the fact that the man's own father called DHS a month ago and warned them about him. So again, agency not competent, she should have the guts to say so and vow to make it better, rather than to sit there and crow about how everything worked. NOTHING WORKED.

3) Napolitano also revisits the familiar liberal mantra of, "well there's nothing to suggest that he was working with anyone" in order to avoid having to state (another) obvious point that this was an attempted terrorist act. Liberals always come back to whether or not a terrorist had connections to Al Qaeda; whether he consulted with other people, or conspired with them to do the act, before it "qualifies" as an act of terrorism. WHY?? What possible difference does it make? It is the ACT and its PURPOSE that determine whether it was terrorism. Not whether a bunch of bad people were involved or just one. The purpose of this act was to destroy an American plane; kill American civilians; and strike fear into the hearts of travelers. That is terrorism, by definition. It matters not one iota whether this idiot consulted with a single other person. The exact same was true of Major Hassan, the lone terrorist in last month's Army base shooting.

4) Candy Crowley could not have been more accomodating. Her questioning was not adversarial in any way. Despite Napolitano's non-sensical answers, Crowley's follow-up questions were asked in a very respectful tone, almost as though she were trying to coach Napolitano through the interview. This was not an interrogation, this was a Good Morning America-type interview where all parties were on the same side. Napolitano should have been grilled, both for DHS's poor performance in this case, AND for her moronic answers to questions. CNN failed, displaying its liberal bias yet again. Would Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday have let her off the hook this easily? NO! And no interviewer should have, whatever their political persuasion.

Liberals get into power and people get killed. It's pretty much that simple. They appear to have no ability to accurately self-assess, and the mainstream media accomodates them. The whole thing is disgusting.

Give Democrats a Year and They Can Ruin the Country

Somehow, the Democrats in Congress -- not just the liberal ones, but ALL of them -- are on the verge of passing health care "reform," despite many months of angry debate, grassroots political activism, and political will that is so reckless that it's stunning. Either the Democrats are what conservatives like me say they are -- insane, out of touch, and about to lose their jobs -- or they are what Obama says they are -- courageous and effective doers of the people's will. There is no middle ground, here. They are going way out on a left-dangling limb and expecting the country not to punish them for it. We will see who was right in November 2010.

Democrats have begun to move the country far to the left in just the 11 months since Obama took the presidency.

• They passed the second half of a horrible idea (Bush 43 passed the first half), the TARP bailout plan, a $700 billion stimulus-turned-slush-fund boondoggle that tripled the country's deficit in a single year for virtually no benefit.
• They passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change "Cap and Trade" bill in the House, a bill that will raise costs on every sector of our current energy infrastructure, which will adversely impact all Americans.
• Obama himself signed an executive order legalizing the production of human embryos for scientific research.
• Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, has granted civilian rights to terrorists housed at Guantanamo Bay and is working to bring them to a prison in Illinois and to trial in Manhattan, where they will infect the country with their hateful ideology.
• They are in the midst of passing a 2000+ page health care "reform" bill into law that will impose major regulations on an industry that comprises more than 1/6 of the American economy.

All of these moves have been far-left in nature, and done almost entirely without any kind of Republican support. In the case of health care reform, it's also being done with polls showing that Americans are against its passage roughly 2:1. All of the bills have been very important, not minor ones, affecting gigantic pieces of our economy (in the cases of Cap & Trade and Health Care) or by changing sides on a moral issue (in the case of embryonic research)

I've already written my thoughts on the embryonic stem cell research, which is morally repugnant and scientifically unnecessary. For an administration that claims to be beholden to whatever Science says, they selectively ignore it when it doesn't fit their politics.

Cap & Trade will increase the costs of energy for everyone by forcing non-renewable energy producers to pay money to renewable energy producers. These new costs will of course be provided by energy consumers. That means higher taxes/less disposable income for you and me, plus many companies moving operations to other countries, where energy costs are lower. (This, by the way, is the true aim of these proposals and their backers: A global socialist village)

Health Care "reform" is a scary monstrosity that will increase the number of people who own health insurance, but at the cost of increasing premiums, fewer doctors, fewer insurance companies, and degrading health care quality every year.

The American people see this going on, and must say to themselves as 1-in-10 of them sit at home looking for a job, "what in the hell are these fools doing??" As well they should. The Democrats won themselves both houses of Congress last year, and the presidency, and at a time when the president-elect was the most liberal ever elected into office. This "Perfect Storm" has manifested itself in the debacle we now find our country in: A deep recession with no real signs of recovery in sight yet, and with all kinds of new taxes on their way in the coming years.

To add insult to injury, the liberals' talking points on all these issues have been stupid, and the same, for all of them. Basically they are that anyone who is disagreeing with them is either lying or scare-mongering, or both. When the public disagrees with them, such as on health care reform, it's because "hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising have been directed against them" to misinform the public about the bills. With the Democrats, it's never an honest debate that they're engaged in. It is, instead, always an issue of the do-gooder Democrats being badmouthed by those evil, lying Republicans. I heard this today even from senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), normally a pretty reasoned voice I can respect.

In short, the Democrats are running this country into the ground. Furthermore, they show no signs at all of letting up anytime soon. They are increasing taxes; lowering the quality of medical care; nudging companies out of the country; nudging older doctors out of the profession and undergrad students away from pre-med; and doing nothing whatsoever to stimulate private-sector job growth.

So the real question to me is, when do they pay? Do they get stopped before the country comes completely apart? How far gone will we have to get before people boot these idiots out of office and stop Obama in his tracks? Must we really wait until November 2010? I mean, considering the damage they have done between January 20th, 2009, and December 20, 2009, can we really afford 11 more months?

New Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Go Active

The descent toward Hell continues for America, led by President Obama. Reversing an executive order of George W. Bush's that restricted the use of embryonic stem cells for research to around 20 existing "lines" of them, Obama has created a storm of activity using new lines of embryos. According to the Washington Post today, scientists are falling all over themselves to get at the new lines, with almost 300 lines submitted for approval.

"This is the first down payment on what is going to be a much longer list that will empower the scientific community to explore the potential of embryonic stem cell research," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins. "Today's announcement is the first wave."

"We've been waiting with bated breath to get started," said George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston

"This is what we've been waiting for," said Amy Comstock Rick of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which has been leading the lobbying effort to loosen the federal restrictions. "We're very excited."

This is so wrong on so many levels. First, these are human lives they are experimenting on. They have to destroy human lives for their research. Second, these are federal dollars, my money and your money, being used to pay the scientists to do the research/killing. Third, not a single successful treatment has ever emerged from all the research done on embryonic stem cells, despite gigantic amounts of money being spent on this research. All the breakthrough treatments have come from adult stem cell research, to which no one has any objection.

And the icing on the cake, as if all that weren't enough, is that this research is totally unnecessary now that scientists have learned how to synthesize them from adult stem cells. A couple of years ago, scientists trying to figure out how to research embryonic stem cells without killing human beings discovered how to "reprogram" adult stem cells to behave exactly like embryonic ones. So using actual embryos is totally and completely unnecessary. This is one area (of many) where President Obama and his leftist friends in the Congress, who claim to be all about "science" driving all their decisions, in this case are completely ignoring the science - for what reason I have no idea - in favor of doing things the original way, which is morally wrong and scientifically unnecessary.

Once again, President Obama shows his true colors and supports the wanton destruction of innocent human life. It's reprehensible; indefensible; repugnant; not to mention gravely sinful. He and all these idiot scientists who are so giddy at the prospect of being able to rip up human embryos - on federal taxpayers' dimes - are headed straight to Gehenna.

Conservatives are making a huge stink about the possibility that abortions could be funded with tax dollars in the new health care legislation. Can't we muster up some strong opposition to using the same dollars for this, which is just as bad?

Backlash Shmacklash

UPDATE: Since I wrote this, even more egregious examples of willful blindness in the media (big surprise) have started to appear. NewsBusters reported on 2 participants on today's "Inside Washington" whose comments made it clear that the shooter's Muslim religion was just a coincidence, that it had nothing to do with the shootings or its motivations. Not only that, but one of the two, Newsweek's Evan Thomas, made a comment that the shooter's Muslim status would "inflame" the right, inciting them to - what, write columns like mine? What are you worried about, Evan? Does the right have a history of personally attacking people they disagree with? Oh yeah, that's the Left. My bad. Dirtbag.

Wake. Up. America.

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Reactions, now, from people in the newspaper about the shooting at Ft Hood the other day, and more information about the shooter, a Muslim who reportedly was shouting "Alahu Akbar" as he shot up the place. Beautiful. There were reactions from the shooter's family members, who all expressed dismay and amazement that this person they thought they knew would do such a thing. And there were reactions from local soldiers who were not there but who had served at Ft Hood in the past.

Most interestingly, there were reactions from local Muslims, and the reactions are a mixed bag. On the one hand, they are pretty universally outraged and condemn the acts of violence. On the other hand, they all are supposedly nervous about an anti-Muslim backlash because of this. In fact, I'm not sure which these interviewees were more upset about: The shooting itself, or the possibility of being (unfairly) targeted by other citizens.

Missing from these reactions was anyone lamenting the fact that, once again, we have a Muslim at the center of the shooting rampage, shouting "God Is Great!" that well-known Muslim phrase, and the message that someone within Islam should be loudly condemning such violence in the name of Islam. No one I have seen has done so yet. Instead of whining about an unfair backlash - which has never happened despite decades of Muslim violence in the world - peaceful Muslims should be focused on eliminating Islamic violence.

If any objective disinterested third party were to look at the statistics alone for terrorism in the world (and I think this shooting qualifies), they would find very quickly that Islamic violence accounts for the vast majority of it; I would bet upwards of 95%. Again, to any fair observer, this suggests that there is something about Islam that promotes violence. People of all religions should be upfront and honest about these facts, in order that as a society we may deal with them. Peaceful Muslims ought to be at the forefront of this battle, arguing that the Islamists who promote such violence in the name of that religion are wrong to do so, and that such people should be marginalized and ostracized. If they cannot do that, for whatever reason, then they should either leave that religion or stop complaining about the possibility that Muslims could come under heavier scrutiny because of the above facts.

If we can't face this threat honestly, in the end we will lose, without question. The sooner we all acknowledge the real threat and start taking real, politically-incorrect, steps to deal with it, the sooner we will be on the road to success against the terrorists.

When Are We Going To Learn?

Sitting here before bed watching the news out of Texas tonight about this shooting at Fort Hood, I get to marvel at the ridiculousness of news anchors, both on Fox (Shep Smith & Greta) and CNN (Anderson Cooper), as they try to interview relatives and neighbors of this shooter without the benefit of a teleprompter telling them what to say. It reminds me of the local news guys, back when I watched local news, every time there was any kind of earthquake here in Southern California, who would get on camera, hair disheveled and tie half-done, vamping for what seemed like hours about the seriousness of the quake (regardless of its size) and talking to people on the telephone who called in to get on the news program and describe what it felt like - to people who were also in it. "It was sort of a rolling motion, Paul, and then for a few seconds there was some jolting!"

Equally maddening is listening to the alleged shooter's cousin, on the phone with Shepard Smith, trying to reassure everyone watching that his cousin, Major Nidal Hasan, a 40-year-old Army psychiatrist, really is a patriotic American who loves his country and would never hurt a fly. He goes on to start offering lame excuses for the man, saying that Hasan was trying desperately to get out of the military because being deployed in the Middle East was "his worst nightmare," and that he had been dealing with some harassment issues because of his Islamic faith. Somehow this all seems legitimate to this nitwit cousin.

Here is reality: this lifelong Muslim either volunteered to serve in the Army or was paying off years of payments the Army made on his behalf for his college and medical school costs. Nobody put a gun to his head. And if you're either stupid enough or unethical enough to let the military pay for your education only because you think they'll never deploy you into a war zone, then at least don't complain about it or, as his cousin stated, try to pay off the military to let you out of your contract and think that's fair. Stay quiet so no one else knows how pathetic you are. And news flash, Cuz: A few hours after the guy kills 12 people and wounds dozens more in a shooting spree is maybe not the best time to go around claiming he's a pacifist.

CNN showed surveillance footage from a convenience store that morning, where the American-born-and-raised peaceful Muslim bought coffee, dressed head-to-toe in a white head piece, robe and pants, and slippers. Even the CNN commentator had to admit that this is not typical garb in the U.S. At a time when most of our military is fighting wars against Muslim insurgents and terrorists, is that really the message you want to send at an Army post? In Texas? And you really expect not to have anyone make a comment about it? Then when you get your marching orders to go overseas, you go on a shooting spree and kill a dozen people, wounding several dozen more, and still your family has the audacity to suggest that you were the victim, and that the soldiers who victimized you targeted you - unfairly - because of your religion? When does the lunacy end??

The Pattern Is There - Use It
How many incidents like this have to happen - a shooting by a disgruntled Muslim - before everyone (Liberals included) finally wake up and admit that maybe Islam isn't such a peaceful religion after all? That it maybe makes sense to really examine the religion and what it teaches, and to start putting up a stronger guard against Muslims, especially those like this guy, who reportedly complained bitterly several times about America's presence in the wars in the Middle East.

Leftists like Rosie O'Donnell, Chris Matthews, and others have made statements that Christianity is at least as big a threat to the world as Islam. Chris Matthews just last month said, closing out his show on that oh-so-fair-and-balanced MSNBC, "The closest thing to the Taliban in this country is the [Christian] Religious Right." Never do they provide any evidence, and never are they challenged. No, every time I turn on the news and start to hear a story about some targeted violence in the world, it's not a Christian who turns out to have perpetrated it; it's a Muslim. Why is that so hard for people to admit?

This is not to say all Muslims are at fault. Reportedly about 10-20% of the world's Muslims empathize with the "Islamists," those extremists who perpetrate these acts of violence. But 10-20% of a billion people is a gigantic number of dangerous people. The point here is that it's not reasonable for law enforcement or the military, or airport security, to go around watching everyone; they should pay particular attention to Muslims. Instead of trying to ignore the warning signs or profile of these fanatics, we should be figuring out how to ignore the 90% of peace-loving Muslims and target the 10% of dangerous ones. This will not be comfortable, perhaps, but it's foolish not to do.

Who's Right About Islam?
In a talk I listened to a few years ago about Islam, the speaker made a comment that stuck with me: "Muslims are not peaceful because of Islam. Muslims are peaceful in spite of Islam." Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-raised Muslim woman who has become internationally recognized because of her speaking out against Islam, has made similar comments regarding talk of "reform" of Islam, much like the Protestant Reformation of Christianity 500 years ago. Sultan, Pope Benedict XVI, and others I've heard, have said they don't believe such a reformation may be possible, partly because the words of Mohammed are to be taken literally, not interpreted, and that leads a proper reading of the Koran to advocate precisely what the Islamists advocate. That is, the dangerous Muslims in the world are the ones who "get" Islam as it was intended.

It's high time for the peaceful people - of ALL religions, including Islam - to stop pretending that Islam itself has no role in this violence and instead work to flush out the extremists.