Archive for March, 2008

How Long Untouchable?

Monday, March 31st, 2008

     Presidential children have historically been off limits to any form of criticism. That is, at least until George W. Bush’s family took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The media was somewhat subdued in their coverage of the Bush twins, but not exactly following of protocol.

     One thing the Clintons were emphatic about (and “Clintons” includes the main stream media, one big, happy “family”) was the absolute protection of Chelsea. I never had a problem with that formula, as I believe that the kids should remain off-base. But what about after the kids become adults?

     Again, I think they are entitled to their dignity and privacy despite the fame (or notoriety, as the case may be) bestowed upon them by virtue of being a “first child”. But when they utilize the recognition that would have been otherwise nonexistant but for their own doing, I equate that with an open-door policy. They have invited us in for a tour of their souls, so hands-off no longer applies.

     However poorly the Clintons may or may not have performed as parents, they have done a magnificent job at one thing; raising an only child who is just as radically opposed to her country as her Mom and Dad. They must be so proud. This is evident in the recent acceleration of her involvement in her mother’s campaign. Now the question is, if Chelsea is going to actively work on her mother’s election campaign, as an adult, should she remain a protected species?

     My conclusion is no, for if Chelsea is permitted to say whatever she wants unfettered on behalf of Hillary, it will be akin to a mother using her child as a shield, and I for one want no part of a President that would engage in any such practice. One thing that has emerged quite clearly as a result of Chelsea’s recent stumping is a palpable desperation on the part of the Clinton campaign.

     Yet another trait in a President that is undesirable; putrid cowardice, coupled with virtually no sense of shame.

     It rather reminds one of Dr. Zachary Smith from the ’60’s television show Lost In Space. It’s also a title that quite adequately describes not only the trajectory of Hillary’s campaign, but also the platform of the entire Democratic Party.

-Woody

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Lethality Legal While Government Prospers

Monday, March 17th, 2008

     If I were to tell you that it would soon be legal to buy poison for your own personal consumption, as long as you could afford the price, you may think I’d gone ’round the bend. But that’s just what the government is already doing. They are not only allowing it, they’re seeking to make even more money from the practice. The state of New York, for example, is considering doubling the tax on a pack of cigarettes.

     The government has stated time and again that tobacco is a lethal substance that kills its consumers. Because they care so much for the health and well-being of their constituents, they feel the need to do all that they can to make us stop smoking. The problem is, they need to make some coin while they do it. How could such a benevolent entity warn us that we are literally killing ourselves while they reach into our pockets for loose change?
    
     One would think that the governments both large and small would make such a deadly product illegal immediately and arrest and incarcerate anyone caught with it in their possession. It’s done with narcotics, why not with tobacco (which, incidentally, is more addictive than most narcotics)? Some will say it’s because a person under the influence of a narcotic poses a potential danger to others around him. Fair enough, but I say that if the reports are to be believed, smokers pose an imminent danger to those around them. So again, why not cigarettes?
    
     Here’s why; because people would revolt and it would cost the government money to battle a rebellion as well as jailing and feeding the prisoners. The solution is to keep making cigarettes ever more expensive and yes, helping some to quit, but the pool of hold-outs left buying the smokes continue to die while becoming an increasingly smaller pool of revenue. The government continues to count their bounty while these people die.
    
     Think about it, people. If cigarette smoke is really so toxic and deadly, how on Earth can the government blatantly allow its continued use? It is not yet illegal to smoke, but the places available to do so are shrinking. Still, it is still permissable, albeit for the time being, to walk down the street and enjoy a cigarette. What would happen if some was walking down the street swinging a truncheon, knocking people off of their feet? He would be arrested for assault, right? Again, if reports are accurate, and second-hand smoke is so abominable, why is it not dealt with more harshly?
    
     Something is out of kilter, and yet no one sees it or bothers to question it. Anti- smokers applaud like seals whenever any punitive measure is launched against smokers, but they never question the methods.  Imagine if you were one of the victims of the fellow with the truncheon. Would you not think it very much more than odd if a policeman came along and slapped him with a hefty tax, rather than haul him off to jail?
    
     Smokers and non-smokers alike should be united in opposition to any more taxes on tobacco. For the last time, if we are to believe that it is as lethal as they insist it is, we should be likewise united in our outrage that the government is allowing our loved ones to be systematically slaughtered by smokers.
    
     Demand that tobacco be deemed a banned substance at once and made illegal to own. Either government will address our concerns and comply, or be forced to admit that tobacco is not nearly as deadly as thought.
    
     Talk about a win-win scenario.
-Woody 

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Change – Obama Style

Saturday, March 15th, 2008
Contributed by my friend, SleeplessByTheSea
Change – Obama Style 

Does America Really Want Change?

We’ve all heard the chants. We’ve all heard the battle cry from the campaign trail…change, change, and more change. Is that What America wants? Then I would have to assume that they want a change for the better.

Those that Have been falling into line behind Barak Obama are in the wrong line. That line is going backwards. Forty plus years backwards. We’ve by now all heard the outrageous sermons by Obama’s Preacher. We’ve heard him damning America. We’ve heard him try to stir hate over slavery that took place here, and ended over 143 years ago. It’s those that want to hold on to that hatred that need to change! We know now that Obama attended that church, and considered himself an active member there for the last 18 plus years. He was married in that church. His children were baptized in that church. The Obama’s took their children to those sermons. Yet, it wasn’t until yesterday, Friday March 14, 2008, that Barak Obama came to realize what was being preached there? Give me a break! Just exactly how stupid does Barak think we are. Obviously he does not give us much credit. His denouncing of a man he embraced as his friend and minister for 18 plus years, only after the media spreads around his agenda, leaves no doubt that Barak’s unnamed plans for change were not for the betterment of this nation. On the contrary.

This nation has come so far, healing from our past treatment of black people. They have the same opportunities as any other race in this country. You don’t have to look far, to see just how many of them have risen to the top. Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Michael Steel are only a few in the political scene. There are many more in the entertainment world, such as Bill Cosby, Denzel Washington, the list is long. In our own communities we have many people of color that have taken advantage of what this country has to offer, and have made the best of it. Sure there are still people with very little…but they are not all black. They never were all black. We’ve always had poor white people, too. We always will. There will always be an element, that cannot quite pull themselves out of their poverty. That doesn’t make the country bad.  This Country fought a Civil War to end this kind of mindset.  Let’s not discount all of those that gave their lives for that cause.

Poverty isn’t racist. And neither is the American dream. The worst thing in the world for people that are struggling, is to give them an excuse. They need to be inspired to do better…..to get and education….to help themselves, and to accept a helping hand, without a chip on their shoulder. The need to believe in themselves, not hear that they are being mistreated. Those that embrace the mindset of racism and division, do far more harm to their own race, than any person from another race could ever do.

Barak Obama could do more for the black people that were encouraged by the rants of Rev. Wright of hate and division, if he would encourage them to pursue their dreams with hard work, and determination, than he will ever do, by continuing to let them believe they are being stymied by their government. But, I’ve never heard that out of Obama, have you? No, on the contrary. We’ve even heard his wife claim, that she was never before proud of her country, until they embrace Barak for change. Yet, she was afforded a wonderful education, in some of the nicest schools in the land. She has not had a bad life in this country. She doesn’t look like she’s hungry or cold. If she, or others that feel so badly about this country, why haven’t they looked for a better life somewhere else. The last I looked, our borders were still wide open, to come and go.

Barak Obama has left too many questions in too many minds. His chants of change, and yet no detail. That alerted many suspicions. No one was quite sure what his agenda was. Was it his muslim ties? Was it his church, that honored Farrakhon. It clearly has never been revealed to date. Yet his followers seem clueless to his empty messages.

If Hillary Clinton or John McCain were campaigning with such an empty message, they’d be out of the race over night. Why was it Obama was getting such a free pass, until the media brought out this church into the light?

How many of you want to back-track to the racism before the 60’s? How many of you really believe that white people are superior to blacks? I do not. I never have. I believe we are all God’s children, and that we are all blessed to be here….where the only superior colors are red, white and blue…..not a skin color.

Shame on Wright, and those like him, that do their best to take advantage of a church pulpit to incite hate.

Shame on Obama, for bringing it into our presidential race. If he really wanted to make a change for the better here, now, after this, he would step down, and vow to fight this kind of mindset, and sell the opportunies of this nation. But, he won’t. He’s not man enough. Black, or White.  And he’s certainly not presidential.

 

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Seditious Behavior

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Most clear-thinking people will eventually acknowledge, despite their vociferous protestations against any particular subject, that free speech is a precious thing and should be protected. We may wish that someone who is spouting nonsense with which we disagree would shut up, but not many would endorse a law that would force them to do so.  

     There are people and groups who do now and always have loathed the military. They have every right to their opinions no matter how twisted I may view them to be, but that right becomes seditious action when it is intended to directly impede the work of the military. Apparently shame is a thing of the past.
    
     Code Pink and those sympathetic to their cause have been busily harrassing the military recruiting center in Berkeley, California since it opened in January of last year. Chanting and singing in protest is one thing, but when the protesters blocked the entrance for three hours, there should been a police intervention. Of course, the protesters would have been screaming about oppression and the loss of their civil right to protest. That would have been pure bunk, however.
    
     To make matters worse, we now have elected officials encouraging this sort of behavior.  The Mayor of Berkeley and the City Council have branded the Marines as “unwanted intruders” and have been supportive of the protestors. If nothing else, why aren’t they supportive of the rights of the Marine Corps’ free speech? And an even bigger question would be, why aren’t the liberal protestors out there to support the rights of young men and woman to choose whether to join the military?
    
     Pro-choice is not the same without all that make-up, people. Here’s how elected officials view abortion clinics.  From the AG of Massachusetts:
“Attorney General Martha Coakley said yesterday that a new law restricting antiabortion activists from standing within 35 feet of an abortion clinic’s entrance did not violate their right to free speech.”
    
     Of course, liberals will claim that having clinics blown up justifies the tighter security and the usurpation of the rights of abortion foes to be vocal in their opposition. Then they will dismiss the bombing of the Times Square Recruiting Center as a need for the same security of the Berkeley recruiting center. Someone needs to tell them that they can’t have it both ways. And if the Massachusetts Attotney General’s position has any merit at all, we should be free to tell the Berkeley protestors to shut up. Especially since the very people that they hate so much are responsible for their right to free speech.
-Woody

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Why Contested Games Are Not Replayed

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

    Michigan and Florida willfully violated the rules set forth by the Democratic party and agreed to by the candidates prior to the beginning of the primary season. Now they want to re-write those rules mid-game in the name of “fairness to the voters”.  Consider:

      Your team has lost, and you’ve seen the replay over and over again. You grow more livid every time you make yourself suffer the outrage of seeing the referee, once again, cost your team the game. Finally, the sports writers’ pugnaciousness bears fruit and the league is forced to admit they erred on the call. Ah, vindication is sweet. Or is it?
    
     So what happens now? Surely the game is replayed and your team has a fair chance to win, as you originally believed they would have, right? No. No, you’re left feeling that a game has been wrenched from your grasp and a damnable injustice has been done, and it will not be undone.
    
     It’s a matter of history that cannot be corrected, for the original conditions can never be duplicated in order to provide the same conditions that would have reaped the outcome that should have been. It could be weather or it could be an injury to a key player that would render a redux moot. So the loss stands.
    
     Howard Dean now says that a fair solution would be to have Florida and Michagan have a new vote in the primaries, based on the tight delegate counts for Obama and Clinton. What is not taken into account is the absence of Kucinich (D-OH) and Edwards, the former Democratic senator from South Carolina. Yes, they were on the ballot in Florida, but they did not campaign there because they knew the rules made it a waste of time. And in Michigan, they did not even have their names on the ballot.
    
     So what to do? Do we simply seat the delegates from those states, or have another vote? Do we bring now meaningless candidates back in the event of a re-vote? And what if these two states had abided by the rules in the first place; would either Kucinich or Edwards still be viable candidates? Or do we reset everything back to the beginning of the primary season?
    
     The entire dynamic of the primary process has already been set in stone, and it cannot be undone with any modicum of fairness to the voter. There is not enough time to bring all of the candidates back to do the whole thing over. So what’s left? Sure, there will be much wailing over the alleged “disenfranchisement” of the voters of Michigan and Florida, but if they had followed the rules from the beginning, none of this would be cause for conversation.
    
     The remaining candidates should reject Michigan and Florida’s delegates as they originally pledged. Pure and simple…
-Woody

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“Evil” Israelis Kill Again

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

    Do a Google search for…oh, just click the link. A simple Google news search for anything on Hamas launching a wave of rocket attacks yields such headlines as this:

    
     Sure, the articles mention (somewhere in the 4th or 5th paragraph) that the strikes were in response to Hamas rocket attacks, but why weren’t those rocket attacks news before Israel’s response?  
    
     Here’s one of my favorites:
Israel has stepped up its response to a wave of rocket attacks launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza across into southern Israel. One of the attacks killed an Israeli civilian Wednesday. Israeli officials have threatened a major ground invasion if the attacks do not cease. Tens of thousands of Palestinians rallied in Gaza Friday to denounce Israel’s deadly air strikes.
  

 

     Maybe they should have been protesting the Hamas rocket attacks from civilian neighborhoods before Israel got pissed off.

Here’s another one:

 

JERUSALEM – Fourteen Palestinians, including at least five civilians, died late Friday and early Saturday in escalating Israeli-Palestinian fighting that renewed threats of an Israeli invasion of Gaza and clouded peace efforts. A baby and two teenagers were among the dead.  (First paragraph)

Hamas said the baby, Malak Karfaneh, died just before midnight Friday in an Israeli strike on Beit Hanoun, a northern town where Palestinian militants often launch rockets at Israel. But local residents said one of those rockets fell short and landed in the area of the baby’s house. (Fourth paragraph)

 

 

 

     Why aren’t they protesting HAMAS killing the baby???

-Woody

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