What will never be the Bush legacy

According to Trudy Rubin, it looks like Iraq is finally quieting down. What a difference the last year or so made when GW had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing what was necessary to put plans into place to keep the Iraqi invasion/occupation/war from going on forever. That was General Petraeus’ plan of counter insurgency. Given time, yes it began to show some successes. Given time, yes it made possible a religious faction—the Sunnis to turn on Al Qaeda in Iraq—hellbent on creating a civil war that would drain American resources and military prowess by keeping us stuck in the middle of it. And it seems to me, that GW was more than happy to allow Al Qaeda to set the stage for what was fast becoming a major middle eastern foreign policy blunder. But it took Gen. Petraeus’ counter insurgency plan, 3 parts diplomacy and 1 part use of military forces to slowly begin to turn things around in Iraq.  Why?

Maybe wars are ego boosting, but you can’t keep fighting them forever.  Nor start new wars when you haven’t resolved the last one.  And while it would seem a hard job to move men and equipment, plan out strategies for invasions; it is much harder work to plan out what the invading nation must be prepared to do during the occupational stage of the “conquered country.”  What does it want for a gvt?  What does it want for laws?  What does it want for the people?  To put it bluntly, an invader can always set up a new king, but he is still imposing his rule and his will on that people.  If the people aren’t ready, they will rebel.  And yes, there can be outside groups who will take advantage of the situation, as did Iran and Al Qaeda.  Without diplomacy, you are more likely to have a war against the invaders and a civil war with the people who bought what the invader was selling.  And GW went into Iraq without a diplomatic plan to be had.  As a consequence, he cost more lives, displaced more people and created a situation on the ground in Iraq that became inevitable for its drawing of “foreign fighters,” and Al Qaeda forming an operational group who’s sole purpose was to wreak havoc on GW’s grand schemes.  But then they could, because of the diplomatic mistakes or even the lack of any diplomacy what so ever from the civilian arm of this operation, that which was headed up by J. Paul Brenner.

Why did we need the military to come up with a diplomatic plan when guys like Ambassador Ryan Crocker should have done so?  Let’s put it bluntly, that the military isn’t exactly trained in nation building, they aren’t trained to be diplomats, they aren’t trained to be leaders in the crafting of democratic philosophies.  They are trained to fight in wars.  Once the war was supposed to be over with, then we should have seen an emergence of a diplomatic force sit down and talk with all parties and work out what a post invasion nation would look like.  In short, bringing the matter to the people what they would want for the future of their nation.  We did not choose to do that.  Perhaps there is nothing glamorous or ego boosting about the much harder work of having to  deal  with the people you injured or killed in order to take out its gvt as to what sort of future they want and whether they will accept it from you.  But only diplomacy can stop a war and diplomacy done the right way could even perhaps prevent one.  Especially when the former gvt was as hated as Saddam Hussein’s rein of terror happened to be.  Diplomacy among all factions, offering something even to “the hated Sunnis,” might have gone a long way to preventing a civil war from erupting.  One of the first factors of diplomacy, acknowledging that something must have failed if a conquered people are now taking up arms against you and allying with an unsavory enemy.  The second factor of diplomacy would be to immediately work toward doing what was necessary to bring such alliances and groundwork for a civil war to a halt.  The third, would be to recognize just how hard the second really is and persist in creating the framework for which it would be possible to create peace.

That we now see this, yes.  But it had to happen in spite of GW and not because of any brilliant decisions on his part or that of his administration.  And in the meantime, even his surrogates, apologists, administrative talking heads sowed considerable doubts about how well the diplomatic efforts via the U.S. Military would even work.  Perhaps because they liked war too well?  Or because they wanted from Iraq the economic assurances that only a source of oil would bring?  With the election of Barack H. Obama to the U.S. Presidency, a man who says that he will not allow U.S. Troops to stay in Iraq indefinitely; we are seeing a sea change in Iraq now, that might have happened in 2004 or even 2005.  GW didn’t want the war to end.  As a consequence, we may suffer more economically because of the impossibly high war debt that Iraq has incurred.  That if we had used all resources in Iraq from the get go, from military might to diplomatic resources, we may have gotten out sooner and not been responsible for the human carnage that had occurred in that nation after the invasion.  Iraq won’t be GW’s vindication.  It won’t be part of the history that sees GW in a much more favorable light.  And Iraq has effectively ruined two nations, Iraq and the U.S.

It is up to the Iraqis to begin to heal and then move their nation forward.  We can provide the humanitarian assistance, we can offer new ways of thinking, but they must take the necessary steps to rebuild themselves and a nation.  As for the healing of this country, let us hope it begins with a new president who must add new debt to take care of the people he has been elected to govern.  Perhaps our own healing will begin there.

A theme for an era?

Jonah Goldberg couldn’t be more wrong about the defining theme of the Bush era. There are in fact several themes…

The disaster era

It didn’t start with 9/11/2001, it actually started with the Sea/Tac earthquake in Washington state. Oh really, there was actually a political issue involved with that? There was. GW in fact had decided to eliminate the federal programs that required earthquake proofing of homes and businesses as “too expensive” for one and “unworkable” for another.  Yet, in the above described earthquake, and only as a result of the federal requirements, was serious damage limited on those buildings that had indeed been earthquake proofed. February 2001 would define how the Bush era would really be.  I quite frankly don’t care to govern a country that elected me to serve.  It was after all, how GW felt about governing Texas!

Business special interests before all others

It was said by Sidney Blumenthal in a book of his what President Bill Clinton tried to do in his last term in office and that was to freeze the assets of purported terrorist groups. But in the anti-Bush screeds that Goldberg claims “fizzled,” one claimed that GW had proceeded to unfreeze those assets because the business groups and various investors argued that they should be able to invest anywhere in the world that they chose.  The question remains, did this active decision by GW to cater in the early months of his presidency to business interests aid terrorists in the attack against this nation?  A failure of his administration in particular to heed the warnings of the CIA about Al Qaeda in the months preceding 9/11/2001 make that tragedy a fact?

How about Enron? Until it became known that Enron was behind the power blackouts that rolled through California and forcing the closure of businesses in the state, envronmentalists were accused of being the people who had created this mess.  But not Enron.  Enron was of course invited by Veep Cheney to sit on a task force for energy development in this nation.  Only because Enron ultimately went bellyup (because they didn’t ultimately get federal grants from the failure of Congress to pass an energy bill so we are told) did federal investigators begin to discover the massive problems to include fraud that Enron had created.  Only after the fact, did the GW administration implement some sort of regulation of the marketplace to “cure” any more Enrons from happening.  But not really.  Not when by 2008 we find a financial crisis of world-wide proportions engulfing jobs—lost; businesses—closing, banks and other lending companies—merging, federal bailouts—for companies deemed too big to fail.  And among the final nail in the coffin of self-government in the marketplace, the investment fraud of Bernie Madoff and all that happened to the people who trusted the fellow with their money.

The wars

If anything could divide a nation more, not the invasion of Afghanistan, because the Taliban gvt was after all harboring a deadly international terrorist organization, Al Quada, but rather, Iraq.  Before you assure the stability of the country you have invaded and by force remove its gvt; the decision is made to enter another country and by force remove its gvt.  For reasons of course that ultimately get debunked for the most part in the years that follow.  We pour so much of our resources into Iraq that we are factually neglecting the needs of American citizens and even further, enabling the Taliban and Al Qaeda to re-organize.  How about that one?  We don’t want Iraq to be a “failed state.”  But we don’t invest just as heavily in Afghanistan and more than assure that it could indeed be a failed state.

The Dixie Chicks “imploded” according to Goldberg, never mind their anti-GW views re Iraq but rather that “red-blooded Americans” were prepared to more than boycott people who were brave enough to challenge our going to war for all the wrong reasons or even no reason at all.  Revenge was what drove a lot of reactions to the Dixie Chicks telling the world from the wrong stage what they thought of GW’s foreign policies, revenge against people “not like us” and those they thought might sympathize with “the enemy.”  Or fear.  I saw more embracing of “socialism” from the time the Dixie Chicks put democracy in action by the GW supporters themselves, how dare anyone criticize the “dear leader” syndrome.  “Freedom fries,” the pouring of fine French wines into the gutters were more elements of socialism being put into place.  Because after all, foreign gvts such as France, didn’t want to kowtow to the “dear leader’s” infinite wisdom about Iraq.  And if the argument then was that France and etc. had prior business arrangements with Saddam Hussein, well, we did too, as Haliburton and etc. stood to benefit by an invasion of that nation.

Homeland insecurity and the war on the middle class

Lou Dobbs of CNN does a lot of ranting and raving about illegal aliens crossing our borders and drug wars along our borders.  This is legitimately a cause for concern.  But an equal cause of concern that Dobbs did not choose to discuss was the presumption of GW that Americans were deemed such a threat that if they made a phone call to Aunt Emily vacationing in Spain, their calls could be monitored.  More time and resources could be spent on fearing Americans as to why they could be calling out of country than fearing what businesses hiring illegal immigrants for the cheap labor that they provide might just invite.  Well, from what Dobbs was to disclose, quite a lot of problems, to include Social Security fraud and violent crime.  On the other hand, cheap labor cost American jobs.  As did outsourcing for “cheap labor.”  The war on the middle class accelerated to the point that at the close of the GW era, we have businesses closing now, not just because of the hellbender the financial institutions went on, but also because the jobless spend no money.  The Bush era can ultimately be defined as an all out effort to

Cripple or destroy the great nation of the United States of America

As he did his own businesses in the years before he entered gvt.  If GW has low approval ratings now, in the final days of his never really existed administration, an administration after all that Goldberg now complains did not have much of an impact—actually it did, in the most negative manner possible, it is because of all of the above.  Any president’s gvt will have an impact, but we will remember better those who provided something positive to the nation; Reagan had of course.  Or who stood out as a beacon or a lightning rod, which credit most definitely is one to give to Clinton.  But if an administration actively fumbles and doesn’t correct the problems it creates unless dragged kicking and screaming into having to do so.  Actively retaliates against fellow governing bodies by deciding that it doesn’t have to abide by the rules that its oath establishes it must obey.  Applies a Nixonian concept that when you are prez, nothing you do is wrong.  Then we finally have a name for this era and it can be called the “National Nightmare.”  And it will take time to heal from this nightmare.

The Spokesman-Review said it best

Two days before Yule, the Spokesman-Review has an editorial headlined “Petty move hurts poor.”  This describes the head of U.S. Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt who wants to put in place a rule that will enable persons of conscious to deny certain medical services [such as abortions and contraceptives] to their patients.  Quite frankly, if I for one did not care to offer medical prescriptions to patients out of religious objections, then why would I bother entering the medical field at all?  Seems to me that this is less about conscious than scoring political points over divisive issues such as contraceptives and abortion.  Move into the medical field, and try to force a change in how it does business by saying that “my conscious is being infringed upon” unless I can get big government to act on my behalf.  How about the patients that “my conscious” will ill serve?

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The United States already has laws that protect health care workers from being involved in abortions.  The Civil Rights act of 1964 protects workers from discrimination based on religion.  HHS acknowledges this, but says the rule is needed to raise awareness.  There are easier ways to do this than forcing more than a half-million clinics, hospitals and health care centers to certify compliance or risk losing funds.

What I find remarkable is that only now does the Spokesman-Review offer up the sort of challenge to truly big gvt in action only late into the GW presidency and overall administration that its editors couldn’t find in their hearts to do over an entire 8 years.  Indeed, the S-R endorsed a fellow fully intent on “knocking over the funiture on his way out the door,” twice.  I would further add, that GW spent all of 8 years knocking over the funiture with no more than a few weak challenges from the Democratic opposition.  Now with an incoming Democratic administration, GW basically wants to get his revenge on the voters for taking him and his party to the cleaners on 4 November 2008.  And that is through a set of last minute rules that intentionally complicate domestic policy for his successor.  One of which, truly had the S-R up in arms.

Leavitt’s press release signals that he’s aware of the complications that could arise, but he doesn’t make any tangible effort to address them.  He urges health care providers and patients to have upfront, frank conversations about delicate matters, but the ruling doesn’t require that.  In fact, it doesn’t even say objecting caregivers have to deliver complete information or suggest options.

“They can just refuse and walk away.”  On something other than “delicate matters” say beyond rape that leads the victimized women to seek emergency contraceptives; how about a heart patient v the Christian Scientist?  A person’s life that requires complete information, that if it were refused, just because the person charged with offering it objected on the basis of religion, could cause another person’s death.  Would in fact the Christian Scientist so opposed to handing out chemicals to prolong a person’s life care to have instead a death on his or her conscious?  Telling a fellow to pray away his heart condition, that sufficient faith in God will heal him would put this Christian Scientist in the same category with a doctor who’d refuse to perform the necessary medical assistance when a woman is suffering a miscarriage.  After all, he doesn’t want to dirty his hands with an abortion.  With a good possibility of having the woman’s death on his hands.

I agree with this editorial.  People of conscious need to remember that their patients are human and not after all ideological experiments.

Why not call it a blizzard

We had what we thought were the mother of all winters. This was last January when snow accumulations began to pile up until the snow itself had reached a record of at least 5 feet in depth. Then it took a while to melt off. And further, it took a long time, months, before it got warm enough for people to get out in their gardens. I’d guess you would say, since spring started so late that it was a good thing that fall itself started even later. Whereby, we didn’t have any real snow to speak of throughout November. Come December, and the temps started changing drastically a week or so in.

We had a bit of snow icing the ground a week back with temps suddenly dropping into the teens, to about 0°. Then we get the mother of all snowstorms. To put it bluntly, in one night, and depending on the location, we get upwards of 4 feet of snow. Reminds me of the winter of 68/69 with heavy snows and extremely cold weather following. Yeah, looks like there could be a 40 year repeat. Where the local weathermen are saying that temps could drop below 0° in the next week. Just in time for Yule.

Had to love ol’ Lou Dobbs today. He was taking note of Las Vegas, Nevada having more than an inch of snow on the ground at the same time as the rest of the Northwest was getting hammered with a stinker of a severe weather pattern. Mr. Dobbs was taking the time to declare a political point of view about global warming and I can certainly appreciate the fact that he doesn’t agree with the theory, not when one is shoveling and trying to clear out the consequences of a severe weather pattern. But, if you are dependent on meteorologists who are going to say exactly the positions that the boss wants to hear, then you aren’t going to much address general climate patterns that affect the world globally and how those climate patterns can do some particularly strange things. That is, according to the global warming theory. I already discussed extremely heavy snows in January of 2008 and a spring in Kootenai County that was slow to arrive. Now, toward the ending of the year, we have a record accumulation of snows that more typically happen in the midwest. Yes, over time, North Idaho can get accumulations of snow. But rarely have I seen an Idaho blizzard that dumps more than a foot of snow in a span of hours. Between the afternoon of the 17^th and the 18^th afternoon, about 24 hours, we got at least 4 feet of snow in the Dalton Gardens area.

The whole idea of global warming is that you can get quirky and even extremely severe weather. Well, then I would have to suggest that Idaho for one has seen quirky weather (yes, Virginia we can get tornadoes here) and extremely severe weather, such as I just described.

“Outside Views”

(from)Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, Dec. 10

(republished to the Spokesman-Review “Outside Views”) U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, an intrepid prosecutor, made a name by securing a conviction of I. Lewish “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, in the Plamegate scandal.  This arrest shows that Fitzgerald’s reputation as a no-nonsense prosecutor with a commitment to combating public corruption is well-deserved.  He also successfully prosecuted Blagojevich’s predecessor, GOP Gov. George Ryan, on influence-peddling charges.

Fitzgerald said he ordered the arrest to stop what he described as a “political corruption crime spree.”

The complaint offers ample evidence of this, including the charge that Blagojevich threatened to withold state assistance to the Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field unless certain members of the paper’s editorial board were fired. The company filed for bankruptcy protection last Monday.

If Tribune management was playing ball with Blagojevich, it will be a black mark on the record of Sam Zell, the real estate magnate who has owned the newspaper for the past year.  But it seems clear that the newspaper’s editorial board pulled no punches.  The board suggested that the Legislature investigate impeaching Blagojevich over an unrelated matter in September, one of several editorials that prosecutors say enraged the governor.

It is clear from this example, and other “Outside Views” the Spokesman-Review editorial board published, that various newspapers were prepared to nail Gov. Blago with the corruption that he had undeniably engaged in and did not demand an accounting from President elect (what did he know and when did he know it) Barack H. Obama as CNN for the past week has been demanding that he do.  Simply because the various newspapers, unlike CNN, don’t play games of “guilt by association.”  Gov. Blago was the fellow who engaged in the crime, therefore he is the one who needs to be held to account.

Here is another remarkable element that came out of CNN and most specifically, from the mouth of Wolf Blitzer.  Blitzer of “The Situation Room” and “Late Edition” wondered who it was that blew the whistle on Gov. Blago that led to his being investigated by Fitzgerald at all.  Well now, maybe Blitzer need look no further than his compatriots in the news media.  If a Gov.s actions become a matter of public record and prove to be sufficiently bad enough for an editorial board to begin demanding an impeachment, then I would certainly suggest that U.S. Attorneys’ and/or their staff, can read the newspapers and get interested in investigating what did Blago do and when did he do it?  In this case, where there was editorial smoke, there was indeed fire.  Why couldn’t Blitzer see the obvious?

The Governor Blago problem is Gov. Blago’s problem

Black and white photo of dogs in back of truck

At least the crew of CNN was honest enough to admit that the news media was driving the story on Gov. Blago of Illinois as of 11 December 2008. But the real sweetheart talking to Tony Harris one of CNN’s Newsroom anchors made the argument that Obama needed to put to rest certain questions about Gov. Blago’s corruption activities. My question is why? Gov. Blago is the dude who was trying to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat. Blago was prepared to shake down people who received gvt funding for the care of children. Blago wanted to get the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune fired. As for U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald, he made it a public statement the first day as to Obama’s personal lack of involvement. What exactly is Obama supposed to answer to?

During the campaign, there was no question that McCain/Palin wanted to make much of Obama’s past associations, how “troubled” they were by such associations, with the ultimate agenda of exploiting William Ayers, Rev. Wright and etc. to pole vault their way into the White House. But it didn’t work, did it? They lost. Now, we have a news media, even in the face of the fact that Gov. Blago is the man who did the dirty and he alone can expect to go to prison if convicted; regardless of that fact, the news media insists that President elect Obama must answer for Gov. Blago! Why? So let us ask this question, when presidents have been embarrassed it is because members of their immediate family—sons, daughters, sisters or brothers—were embarrassing them with acts of wrong doing. Clinton’s brother after all, got caught up in a DUI charge. Bush’s (41) son got caught up in the Silverado S&L scandal. Carter’s brother Billy got caught up in something sleazy. When it is a member of your family, it is reasonable to insist that you answer for their misbehavior. But when it is a Gov. Blago, who has no relation to the President elect, who most certainly acted on his own and went neck deep into behavior both corrupt and obscene, shouldn’t Gov. Blago answer for himself? I would certainly think so.

Then let us take a look at it this way, you are now President Reagan. There is a hypothetical situation going on that not only is bad news for the state of California but also very embarrassing for Reagan’s party, because the dude who replaced Reagan in the office of Governor has engaged in very creative acts of corruption, and is also a Republican. When it was Reagan, and had such an event unfolded, would the news media insist that Reagan answer for a GOP Governor, one he may or may not have prior professional working relations with? No. And no Kennedy serving in the Senate had to answer for political misdeeds in the state of Massachusetts which they represent, neither at the state or local level. Why must Obama answer for a Governor that represents the entire state of Illinois and not “Chicago style politics.” Because the news media I suppose wants to be troubled by even casual linkages between Obama and other politicians such as Blago, where they were never troubled by this before. Now isn’t that amazing?

The COLB conspiracy

It has come to my attention whether it is a thread on http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/opinion/ or http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo/ where a discussion has been generated as to whether President elect Barack H. Obama is even American with questions raised about his birth certificate and its authenticity.  A matter of opinion presented links to newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune that has so far refuted the claims of a fake or forged Certificate of live birth.  And Slate ran a series of links about the various new lefty groups who don’t want to believe that Obama does have a legitimate COLB and even further pursue lawsuits insisting on finding out what is already obvious and public knowledge.  As for those who post to the above-mentioned blogs, they whine that if Obama would just provide the “proof.”  Hey, I believe he did.  And because he did, they now whine about how it was “faked.”  The fakery debunked and they go in pursuit of a fairy tale of how he was actually born in Kenya.  Even if that were indeed so, his mother is American.  I fail to find how Obama would be less American given the fact that his mother was born in this country.

There was never any question about McCain’s American status even though it was proven that he was born in another country, in this case, Panama.  You are born anywhere in the world to people who are citizens of the U.S., you are automatically a citizen of the U.S.  That’s the law.  Or there would be real problems for children of American diplomats serving in other countries.  Just as it was also questioned, how about people in the Armed Services serving as well in other countries, women  who are members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines who get pregnant should immediately return stateside to deliver?  Well now, perhaps this issue would not be raised if both of Obama’s parents had been U.S. born.  At the same time, perhaps Ms. Obama would not have given her son this heartburn if she hadn’t taken him to Indonesia and ultimately married yet another dadblasted furriner.  But Ms. Obama had ultimately died before she was to know that her son would ultimately run for the presidency.  Were any of these new lefties aware of the fact that many Americans do marry foreigners?  Some Americans have gone on to live in foreign nations with their spouses and renounced American citizenship altogether.  Or retained dual citizenship.  In Obama’s case, Mom Obama did travel with him out of country, did marry and lived with an Indonesian native.  But once that marriage was over with, returned with her son state side, put him in the primary care of her parents and Barack Obama basically grew up in the actual place of his birth, Hawaii.  According to Chicago Tribune and Slate, the only time Mom took her son to a foreign country, was to Indonesia.  There was no record anywhere that Mom took her son to Kenya, or traveled at any time to Kenya to give birth there.  Indeed, according to both sources, even after Obama was born in Hawaii, after Obama sr had left his wife and infant son, he was still stateside for years afterwards.  Which would certainly argue that Mom would have no incentive to travel to Kenya or to give birth to Barack in that African nation.  Not when dad was still around to see his son periodically if that was his choice.  So, why are there still arguments, lawsuits?  Only the Gods know.

Teaching compassion makes you a Nazi?

“Conservatism,” it would seem is to treat everything you disagree with as Nazism.  Let’s put it bluntly, I am not old enough to have been able to say what it was like to have lived in this country during World War II.  My late father did know what it was like to have fought during that war.  Those who fought Nazi Germany and the Axis powers were fully aware of the atrocities wrought during those terrible years.  What you do even unto the least of these…you do even unto me can hardly equate with concentration camps and crematorias.  But, in the mind of Thomas Sowell, it does.

Seems his latest beef with high schools, colleges and universities is the (old) left imposing some strange new value that is totally alien to the American way on young people receiving an education.  Young people who can’t graduate unless they engage in “community service.”  And that as long as they are somehow “coerced” into community service; they are in fact being denied freedoms.  Sowell decides that there are community services being aimed at people who don’t deserve a helping hand:  those who refuse to work and those with drug habits.  Then again, I would have thought that community service, giving something back to the communities in which you live, was a moral value worth aspiring to.  Silly me.  Or that it might teach personal responsibility.  If you have to deal with a guy homeless by choice, a vagrant who refuses to work, you can decide if you would really like to live his miserable existence or if you would rather aspire to making a better future for yourself.  If you had the first hand experience of taking a hard cold look at the miserable lives of drug addicts, they too would set the example of what not to be.  Then again, there must be something wrong with the idea that working with sinners and teaching them the ways to improve their lives, as that puts you in line with “Nazi style thinking” even as it deprives you of freedom.  In which case, the Gospels, which I’ll assume that Sowell has surely read, are “Nazi style thinking.”

Christ did not advocate that the purely lazy should get a helping hand.  But, I highly doubt that Christ would have cast instant judgment on a man who had just lost a job, a family driven from their homes because of natural disaster or home foreclosures, bad economic times that force them to seek charity from food banks or to keep food on the table, to obtain food stamps.  Christ would have seen a need for compassion toward those people struggling just to make it and often losing.  Found in the bible, a poor man who sat at the gate of a rich man’s house.  This poor fellow you can think of as an “aggressive panhandler” because he was begging for scraps of food and money.  He was also a terribly ill person.  Daily, the rich man passed him by without so much as a look, didn’t even care to give the “aggressive panhandler” the time of day and generally heaped scorn on the sort of trash that would dare to pollute his pristine gate. But, the “aggressive panhandler” eventually died.  Eventually, the rich man did too.  Guess where the “aggressive panhandler” ended up?  At peace in the arms of God and the rich man?  Cast into the outer dark.  Oh yeah, “Nazi style thinking” to be sure.  But then we also see where the rich man’s freedom to make up his own mind got him, don’t we?  He was free to choose to act against one of the firm rules of religion, acting compassionately.  For failing in his moral obligations, according to Christ, he was also appropriately punished.

If the so called (old) left is introducing “community service” as some kind of foreign concept into an American way of thinking, then I purely have to wonder what by definition Sowell thinks the American way is?  If fires drive people out of their homes in California, where are they expected to shelter, how do they obtain clothing, what about food?  Don’t communities come together and provide for those in immediate need because of such an emergency?  Yes, they do.  Why not teach young people that yes you are your brother’s keeper?  Yes, you do have some responsibility for the welfare of your neighbor.  I can think that there could not be a better means of teaching moral responsibility within an educational backdrop than a community service that eradicates trash out of parks where children go to play, cleaning up overgrown landscapes and turning them into parks for people to enjoy, helping the frail elderly with their driveways and sidewalks when a heavy snow falls.  A few of many examples where real community service would not only be an acceptable idea but also truly aids and teaches young people something of value.  Would you harm someone you did something for?  I would think that the act of doing something for another person is the greatest sign of respect that anyone could show.

Well, Sowell wants to call the idea of “respect” an act of Nazism; then he does have a problem.  Until of course, he doesn’t receive any because of his off the wall truly new left views.  Then of course, you are free to agree with him, anytime.  But if you do not, then it becomes bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, whine and groan.  Only a new radical would turn something positive, young people learning how to act on the behalf of the unfortunate, into something ugly.  (Republished in the Spokesman-Review 4 December 2008)

A better teaching of moral values within an educational setting than those the religious radicals insist on politicizing.  Family values, for one.

The After Party (CNN) Try the in denial party

Letter to the editor in the Sunday, 30 November 2008 Spokesman-Review:

GOP lost me

Kathleen Parker’s column of Nov. 21 was right on the mark.  I was a Republican most of my adult life and even an active campaigner for Republican candidates, beginning with Barry Goldwater.

In my last Republican Party caucus, a fundamentalist minister brought a good selection of his congregation to the caucus.  They insisted on discussing only such issues as “Satanists kidnapping homeless children off Spokane streets to use in their dark rituals.”

That turned out to be the year the Washington Republican convention nominated Pat Robertson for president.  Since that time, I have never been able to vote for any candidate who was willing to put a “Rep.” or “GOP” after his name.

Richard L. Hubbard
Spokane

I had written about Kathleen Parker at the time it had come out.  After the GOP had suffered a crushing defeat on 4 November 2008, Parker had come out and literally said that religion in politics was one of the things that was destroying the Republican party.  Right, such as the above writer had described.  Satanists were grabbing homeless kids off the streets of Spokane for their dark rituals, but the fundamentalist preacher and his congregation didn’t bother addressing why these kids were homeless to begin with and what might be done on their behalf.

“The After Party.”  CNN now hosts the (old left) v the misnamed “conservative” (new) left.  You know, the religious interests that Hubbard (above) had heartburn over.  The kind of people who would say that it is entirely wrong for gvt to get involved in the regulating of businesses, guns and their creeds of dictating to God what he should be saying at any time.  But not wrong to impose gvt on those who may just disagree with them.   Amy Holmes and etc. of the religious views faction of the (new) left thought that Republican leaders such as Bobby Jindall were competent, popular and of course “pro-life.”  Uh huh.  Defined by whipping up fear of the “shadowy other,” “pro-life?”  Let’s put it bluntly, that in the last 8 years, the American people had a belly full of fear being whipped up against the “shadowy other.”  Not that it helped them when it came to loss of jobs, loss of homes, disasters (inclusive of Katrina) that did not see immediate federal relief.  Sloppily managed wars and homeland security.  The catering to certain business interests at the expense of others.  No real enforcement of consumer safety regs when it came to the importation of foods and durable goods, mainly out of China.  You want cheap, so the FDA and other gvt regulatory agencies heads were prepared to whine, then you get what you pay for.  There will be additional costs added to make a quality (and safe) product.  Well now, perhaps people wouldn’t mind paying for quality.  A few additional dollars on the goods beats thousands of dollars a day in the hospital beds because of poisoned food and toys at any time.  No, engaging in fear of the “shadowy other” that marked even the 2008 campaign wasn’t what the voters were interested in as they saw home values plummet, schools suffering the consequences of “No Child Left Behind,” wages stagnating at best, more jobs literally disappearing.  In 2008, they wanted answers, not ideological driven us v them wedge issues.

But in the “After Party,” Amy Holmes and etc. wanted the wedge issue driven us v them to continue.  To be the standard fare of any re-emergent GOP in its political future.  Well excuse me, but anti-abortion sentiments does not guarantee airport security as the world continues to be threatened by acts of terrorism.  It does not guarantee that bailouts to banks such as Capital One will be used to its intended purpose.  Precisely, unfreezing the credit market so that the business aspects of the economy can secure those so very necessary jobs.  Being against abortion will not reduce why more people may be on the path toward homelessness, in need of food stamps and charity.

Just as opposition to gay marriage and stem cell research will not repair infrastructure or improve education.  It will not assure that America becomes the leader in cutting edge technology for the 21^st century.  It will not train people toward new made in America jobs.  Basically, this kind of thinking marginalizes the new religious left and those who cater to that special interest baggage.