Farewell 2009

A lot of people, including myself, will be glad to see the last of 2009. It has been a year of fears and terrors, economic recession and emotional depression, political hardball and hard court presses, where reality couldn’t live up to unrealistic hopes and hero’s were tarnished and cut down from their lofty perches. No, not much good occurred in this ninth year of the new millennium.

2009 nonetheless began with hope and optimism even in the midst of the continuing financial meltdowns. No matter your political affiliations you had to be touched and inspired by this great country which has become color blind after a history of injustices. You could understand the tears streaming down the upturned faces alit with hope and optimism when Obama was sworn in.

And yet Obama has turned into a fun house illusion. It is part arrogance and part inexperience and the combination has resulted in a multitude of errors. Perhaps the greatest is that he simply has yet to become the President. Oh he may sit in the Oval Office but he does so as a usurper. He still is playing the roles he knows best – Community Organizer, lawyer, Chicago politician, Ivy League alumni and always the mantle of being black in America lies across his shoulders instead of the mantle of the presidency.

The surprising thing is that this man, who can inspire with his speeches, has actually turned out to be cold and distant without his teleprompter. It feels as if he is treating this country as some lawyerly experiment; setting up new policies giving untold power to the government in the supposed goals of helping the citizens. And yet has any of this truly helped? What has his stimulus package stimulated other than more work for the bureaucrats but none for the people?

Somehow Obama has managed to offend both the left (Guantanamo Bay still holds prisoners, increased action in Afghanistan) and the right (health care, stimulus packages) and everyone in between with the handouts to the financial giants. Time and time again he misjudges situations – siding with his friend and calling the police stupid, going to plug Chicago for the Olympics, going to the climate convention which ended in complete failure by the participants to agree with anything measurable, not going to the memorials for WWII etc. etc.

There was an overall undercurrent of disgust and anger running through the citizenry this year. People were appalled by the ACORN debacle when up and down the Eastern coast employees of the ACORN organization showed their lack of respect for the law with their disgraceful and disgusting fawning over the alleged pimp and Madame who were trying to purchase a house for illegal underage prostitution.

After watching the inept Congress try to destroy the democracy this country was founded on people finally rose up and said “Enough!” The Tea Parties, ignored for the most part by the main stream, were a true phenomenon harking back to earlier times of rebellion by the people, of the people and for the people. Average citizens had reached the tipping point and their anger and frustration had evolved into action.

Yet Congress continues to blindly push through their agendas. In their arrogance they justify their actions with the rationalization that they know what is best for the country even if it is at odds with what the majority believe. And the politician who dares to question this is both threatened and bribed by Reid or Pelosi who are willing to do whatever it takes to pass their bills. And yet they wonder why 65% disapprove the job Congress is doing.

The year began with the US President refusing to use the word terrorist or even concede that we are at war. Absurdly, he even won a Nobel Peace Prize for no explicable reason. Obama was to be the start of a glorious new era, an anti-Bush era, where everyone now loved America because we had a President who cared and could feel their pain, so to speak. The only problem is that no one told the terrorists that they no longer existed and that there was no war.

We end the year with what an increase in terror attacks for it doesn’t seem as if these fanatics got the word. They didn’t realize that Bush was gone and Obama, a man who once lived in a Muslim country, was now America’s President. In fact, world leaders didn’t seem to understand that in Obama, the U.S. now had a President who, unlike the warmongering Bush, was willing to let bygones be bygones. Or perhaps they did. For recently the head of Iran and China and Russia and Venezuela and oh so many other countries are giving us more troubles and simply aren’t playing nice even though we are led by a man who told them that he wants to be friends.

For someone who has always been able to see the silver lining in any situation, I must admit to being hard pressed to find even a silver thread in this past year. Perhaps the best I can do is to say that the best thing about 2009 is that it is now over!

Names do matter

After Nidal Malik Hasan killed and wounded our soldiers at Fort Hood, some woman being interviewed said with a straight face “I wish his last name was Smith.” And for me, that summarizes all this PC stupidity.

People just won’t admit the fact that a large group of radical Muslims want to incite terror and kill us. Liberals are so afraid of being politically incorrect that they simply refuse to face reality. Wake up America! It’s not ‘Smiths’ or ‘O’Brians’ or ‘Yamamoto’s’ who have issued jihads or holy wars against us. It’s people with Arabic names. It’s people who are Muslim’s. It’s people who hate our way of life and the very freedom for which we stand.

We need to recognize that we can no longer sit back and enjoy our freedoms. Our freedoms and way of life are being attacked. And not just with bullets. They are using our very own freedoms and courts to shelter and advance their malignant religious rules and laws. Already there are examples of how they are trying to corrupt our country with their extreme laws. At least some reporters are starting to investigate the murder of Muslim women who dared to be Americanized. Women who only wanted to dress like Americans, get an education, be more than the wife to a radical Muslim husband who believes he has the right to kill his wife without facing any penalties by his culture. In fact, why aren’t more women libbers taking up the cause of these Muslim women? They were sure quick to go after radical Mormons who illegally had multiple wives. Yet they are suspiciously quiet while radical Muslim men abuse their wives and daughters in the name of Allah and the Koran.

Perhaps a part of the problem is that we are a country of nice people. It is almost impossible for us to understand that radical Muslims could treat their women that cruelly. And then there is the little fact that millions of strangers want us dead. Liberals refuse to believe this. They think maybe if they could talk to them, sit down and listen to their leaders, perhaps even understand where they “are coming from” that they could then find some common bonds that will lead to understanding and acceptance. Wrong. Sure they will sit down and talk, their leaders might even make promises to be better in the future. And then at the earliest opportunity they will find a way to kill our soldiers and blow up innocent bystanders with their suicide bombers and ignore their promises.

When the world doesn’t act in a manner that Liberals approve of then Liberals end up turning issues inside out arguing that enemies are friends and friends are enemies? Words no longer mean what we were taught and they give nicer names to things that threaten them so as to feel better. They will insulate themselves by believing that they are superior to other Americans and that their greater intelligence allows them to see the “big picture” and understand the other side. They will always argue that a minority is at the mercy of the oppressive white man. Ironically, most Liberals won’t believe the stereo types of the "abused" minority but will quickly embrace any negative stereo type of the rest of us. And the scary part is that this group is who is running our country today.

Now we had a man of Arabic background, a Muslim, go on a shooting spree killing unarmed soldiers. I had hoped that perhaps our military hadn’t been quite as corrupted by political correctness such as our universities, media and local schools have been. This episode with Fort Hood demonstrates just how wrong I was. Political correctness, fear of upsetting a minority, worrying about playing fairly; it is this stupidity that allows a US soldier like Hasan to go so far as to communicate with al Qaeda and email with a radical imam. Not only was his outrageous conduct tolerated but this traitor was even promoted and sent to Fort Hood. Why did no one stop him? How many more unstable Muslims are there in our military? And better yet, does the FBI or military have what it takes to finally go after these men now?

What makes it doubly hard is that much of the hatred begins and ends in their temples. Radical Imams preach against the godless Americans, raise their children to despise us and our way of life, imprison their women into a life of servitude and encourage their young men that killing Americans is not only right but will give them eternal gratitude when they give their life for the cause. And these temples are not just found overseas. They are here in America, too.

Of course not every Muslim temple harbors radicals. But we need to stop the PC bullshit and admit that yes, some of them are our enemies. We need to be penetrating these temples, putting in taps and all that espionage stuff and letting the FBI do their job; rather than being persuaded by liberals and the ACLU start that we are being prejudicial and unfair to this religion. We need to recognize that there are cores of truth in stereo types. We need to take action if someone is showing questionable actions, such as this Hasan had without worrying that some ACLU lawyer will come after you.

And maybe the first step is to call things by their right names. When Nidal Malik Hasan began killing unarmed soldiers it was a terrorist attack; Hasan was literally creating terror and fear and not a “man made disaster” which is what our Homeland Security Secretary Janet Naplitano would have you call it. That’s right. A terrorist attack is supposed to be called a man made disaster. It would be laughable if it weren’t so, well, terrifying.

Short Retort

The debate escalated yesterday surrounding the fate of Guantanamo Bay and its terrorist inmates. As the President seems determined to close this facility then let’s close it and move the war criminals stateside. Yes, these inmates will have greater freedoms and more access to both the other inmates and the press, who I am sure, will glamorize these criminals and conveniently forget that the terrorists plotted to destroy our country. On the other hand, I bet that there will be more cases of the terrorists meeting “accidents” and being injured if not killed while in these stateside jails then the likelihood that they will attract other inmates to their twisted views of America.

In the future, knowing that this facility is closed, then our military should first interrogate any terrorists they capture (waterboarding optional) and then be “forced” to kill them as the terrorists “try to escape”. No Gitmo then no future inmates. It’s as simple as that.