When I went to bed Thursday night, I fully intended that my next post would be about 1) the previous day's votes defeating proposed gun controls, and 2) President Obama's reaction to those votes. But like everyone else, I learned Friday morning that one of the Boston Marathon bombers had been killed and a manhunt was underway to find the other, so that next post (i.e. this one) has turned into a catchall about multiple events from recent days.
The Pursuit
One of the major takeaways from 9/11 was a lack of collaboration between federal agencies. The response to the Boston Marathon bombings is not a perfect analogy because 1) it involved a combination of federal, state, and municipal agencies, and 2) it was a response to something rather than an attempt to stop that something from happening in the first place. Nonetheless, it gives us reason to believe that our public officials have acted on the lessons of 9/11.
The coordination between the FBI, BATF, Massachusetts State Police, Boston Police Department, Watertown Police Department, and several campus police departments was so seamless and effective -- especially when you consider that it had to come together without planning -- that it was far beyond anything I have ever witnessed. Every person involved, from the chiefs to the agency heads to the beat cops on the street, deserves every ounce of our respect.
Leadership
It is hard to mistake me for a Democrat, and if you went policy by policy comparing my positions to those of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, I suspect we would come out looking like adversaries. But you gotta give credit where it is due and Patrick was superb over the past week. Handling himself like a statesman instead of a politician, he always spoke with calm and confidence; always projected assurance to a population that needed it; never hogged the spotlight or took credit; and always deferred to others when their areas of knowledge exceeded his own. It was easy to imagine him being president.
The Him-Haw
When news of the bombings first broke, I have no doubt that most Americans processed it by telling themselves that the perpetrators could be anyone. But I also have no doubt that most Americans, based on crystal clear history, also told themselves there was a better than fifty percent chance the perps were Muslim.
Not so with the American press. Ever eager to speculate that not-yet-identified terrorists are anything other than the most likely culprits, the MSM's scribes and yappers fell all over themselves telling us that the bombers were probably right wingers and/or Republicans and/or Christians and/or U.S.-born and/or NRA members and/or white people in general. The operative and obvious common denominator was "not Muslim."
As we now know, the MSM scored on the "white people" part of their wish list -- but missed on everything else, most notably the "not Muslim" part that was their greatest wish. So after learning that the Tsarnaev brothers were in fact Muslims, they quickly started to gloss over that inconvenient truth by seizing on the brothers' Chechen ethnicity and telling us that most Chechen terrorists are nationalists, not religionists, whose main beef is with Russia.
But of course they failed to share some facts that cast doubt on their "Chechens aren't Islamists" claim. For starters, there are the simple facts that the majority of Chechens are Muslims and that Muslims tend to view the world in terms of contrasting religions, not contrasting nations (the latter is obvious to anyone with a fraction of a brain who has followed current events at any point in my life). There is also the fact that the ire of supposedly "nationalist" Chechens is aimed specifically at Russian Christians. It is incredible how people addled with political correctness manage to not notice things that stare them in the face.
The Petulant President
So Barack Obama surrounds himself with the aggrieved parents of children who perished at Sandy Hook, and uses them as props to guilt people into supporting gun control legislation that would not have prevented the killings at Sandy Hook, even according to its own authors...Then he has the audacity to accuse the legislation's opponents of playing politics, when in fact it was those opponents who suggested something that actually could help (namely, a revisitation of public policies regarding the mentally ill)...And to top it off, Obama was far more animated when lambasting those opponents that he has ever been when discussing terrorists...Pathetic.
The Hypocrite President
And while he was lashing out over the defeat of those gun control measures, Obama spoke specifically of the Manchin-Toomey Amendment by saying he could not fathom how elected senators could vote against something that was supported by 90 percent of the American people...Um, should somebody remind Obama that it was him and his congressional allies -- each and every one of whom was elected to office -- who voted for Obamacare in spite of the fact it was opposed by 90 percent of the American people?...And while that somebody is at it, should he remind Obama that senators are supposed to base their votes on whether something is constitutional, not whether it is popular?
Gosnell
America's laws are a train wreck of irreconcilable contradictions as they pertain to abortion, and the MSM is so wedded to one side of the abortion issue that it censors and discredits itself with its (non)reporting. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when it comes to the murder trial of "Doctor" Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist, the MSM has censored itself into oblivion.
I usually prefer not to use scare quotation marks, or the term "abortionist," because both tend to bring emotion and implication into a discussion while removing objectivity. However, they are perfectly valid to use in the case of Gosnell. I have never subscribed to the notion that a baby in the womb this month is any less human than it will be after it leaves the womb next month, but even those who disagree with me on that point should be revolted by the goings-on in Gosnell's so-called clinic. Here is how the clinic was described by Mark Steyn:
(I)t involves large numbers of fully delivered babies who were decapitated and had their feet chopped off and kept in pickling jars...one of the "clinic"'s "nurses" testified that she saw a baby delivered into the toilet, where his little arms and feet flapped around as if trying to swim to safety. Then another "women's health worker" reached in and, in the procedure's preferred euphemism, "snipped" the baby's neck -- i.e., severed his spinal column.
Gosnell is not charged "only" with killing fully born babies, but with causing the death of an adult who was one of his patients. Gosnell's case is also rife with allegations that public health officials choose not to inspect abortion clinics for political reasons. This case obviously has very lurid details that would normally be expected to attract media attention, but the MSM has ignored it for ages and thereby kept the general public unaware of it.
If these kind of allegations were leveled against a hospital with a maternity ward, it would be front page news that would captivate the country and receive international commentary. But because it happened at an abortion clinic and the MSM does not want to say anything that might appear to give credence to any of the beliefs held by people who are pro-life, the MSM has chosen to neither see nor hear any evil.
And as I have gone on longer than I anticipated, I am going to call it a morning. Until next time, take care.
The Him-Haw
When news of the bombings first broke, I have no doubt that most Americans processed it by telling themselves that the perpetrators could be anyone. But I also have no doubt that most Americans, based on crystal clear history, also told themselves there was a better than fifty percent chance the perps were Muslim.
Not so with the American press. Ever eager to speculate that not-yet-identified terrorists are anything other than the most likely culprits, the MSM's scribes and yappers fell all over themselves telling us that the bombers were probably right wingers and/or Republicans and/or Christians and/or U.S.-born and/or NRA members and/or white people in general. The operative and obvious common denominator was "not Muslim."
As we now know, the MSM scored on the "white people" part of their wish list -- but missed on everything else, most notably the "not Muslim" part that was their greatest wish. So after learning that the Tsarnaev brothers were in fact Muslims, they quickly started to gloss over that inconvenient truth by seizing on the brothers' Chechen ethnicity and telling us that most Chechen terrorists are nationalists, not religionists, whose main beef is with Russia.
But of course they failed to share some facts that cast doubt on their "Chechens aren't Islamists" claim. For starters, there are the simple facts that the majority of Chechens are Muslims and that Muslims tend to view the world in terms of contrasting religions, not contrasting nations (the latter is obvious to anyone with a fraction of a brain who has followed current events at any point in my life). There is also the fact that the ire of supposedly "nationalist" Chechens is aimed specifically at Russian Christians. It is incredible how people addled with political correctness manage to not notice things that stare them in the face.
The Petulant President
So Barack Obama surrounds himself with the aggrieved parents of children who perished at Sandy Hook, and uses them as props to guilt people into supporting gun control legislation that would not have prevented the killings at Sandy Hook, even according to its own authors...Then he has the audacity to accuse the legislation's opponents of playing politics, when in fact it was those opponents who suggested something that actually could help (namely, a revisitation of public policies regarding the mentally ill)...And to top it off, Obama was far more animated when lambasting those opponents that he has ever been when discussing terrorists...Pathetic.
The Hypocrite President
And while he was lashing out over the defeat of those gun control measures, Obama spoke specifically of the Manchin-Toomey Amendment by saying he could not fathom how elected senators could vote against something that was supported by 90 percent of the American people...Um, should somebody remind Obama that it was him and his congressional allies -- each and every one of whom was elected to office -- who voted for Obamacare in spite of the fact it was opposed by 90 percent of the American people?...And while that somebody is at it, should he remind Obama that senators are supposed to base their votes on whether something is constitutional, not whether it is popular?
Gosnell
America's laws are a train wreck of irreconcilable contradictions as they pertain to abortion, and the MSM is so wedded to one side of the abortion issue that it censors and discredits itself with its (non)reporting. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when it comes to the murder trial of "Doctor" Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist, the MSM has censored itself into oblivion.
I usually prefer not to use scare quotation marks, or the term "abortionist," because both tend to bring emotion and implication into a discussion while removing objectivity. However, they are perfectly valid to use in the case of Gosnell. I have never subscribed to the notion that a baby in the womb this month is any less human than it will be after it leaves the womb next month, but even those who disagree with me on that point should be revolted by the goings-on in Gosnell's so-called clinic. Here is how the clinic was described by Mark Steyn:
(I)t involves large numbers of fully delivered babies who were decapitated and had their feet chopped off and kept in pickling jars...one of the "clinic"'s "nurses" testified that she saw a baby delivered into the toilet, where his little arms and feet flapped around as if trying to swim to safety. Then another "women's health worker" reached in and, in the procedure's preferred euphemism, "snipped" the baby's neck -- i.e., severed his spinal column.
Gosnell is not charged "only" with killing fully born babies, but with causing the death of an adult who was one of his patients. Gosnell's case is also rife with allegations that public health officials choose not to inspect abortion clinics for political reasons. This case obviously has very lurid details that would normally be expected to attract media attention, but the MSM has ignored it for ages and thereby kept the general public unaware of it.
If these kind of allegations were leveled against a hospital with a maternity ward, it would be front page news that would captivate the country and receive international commentary. But because it happened at an abortion clinic and the MSM does not want to say anything that might appear to give credence to any of the beliefs held by people who are pro-life, the MSM has chosen to neither see nor hear any evil.
And as I have gone on longer than I anticipated, I am going to call it a morning. Until next time, take care.
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