Showing posts from September, 2017

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End the NFL

An Army recruit starts off with a salary under $20,000. Thousands of active duty military personnel are on food stamps. Millions of veterans rely on them to feed their families and themselves. That’s how we treat the best of us. Here’s how we treat the worst of us. An NFL rookie’s minimum salary is $465,000. And the majority of NFL players are usually bankrupt a few years after retirement because they blew through most of their money. Dozens of NFL players are arrested every year on charges ranging from murder to rape to animal abuse. 2017 was a banner year for the NFL with three times as many arrests as last year. Along with the usual drunk driving and disorderly conduct arrests, there were 7 arrests for assault/battery, 6 for drugs and 5 for domestic violence. The Seattle Seahawks announced that they weren’t going to “participate in the national anthem” because of the “injustice that has plagued people of color in this country”. While they lost that game, they are one of th

The Democrats' Dolchstosslegende

The Democrats went into the election certain that they were going to win. The New York Times rated Hillary’s chances at 93%. The Huffington Post raised that to 98%. That was still too modest for Obama campaign manager David Plouffe who predicted a 100% likelihood of Hillary winning. It wasn’t strategy or statistics that made the Dems think that victory was certain. It was ideology. Obama had spent two terms telling them that they were on the “right side of history”. The more the Dems swung left, the closer to the right side of history they were. Their leftist views were naturally superior. They were based on science while their opponents were superstitious buffoons. They were enlightened while their enemies were bigots. They were smart and conservatives were dumb. Delusions of superiority had convinced them that Republicans couldn’t win an honest election. When Bush won, it was because his brother and the Supreme Court had rigged the election. The Republican victories that swept mu

Did Obama Spy on America to Protect Islamists?

After months of denials, the pretext for Susan Rice’s eavesdropping on Trump officials has finally been made public. It had been widely known that Obama’s former National Security Adviser had contrived to unmask the names of top Trump officials who had been spied on by the administration. And the same media that still treats Watergate as the Great American Scandal had claimed that there was nothing “improper” in an Obama loyalist eavesdropping on members of the opposition party. Every time Obama Inc. was caught eavesdropping on opposition politicians, it presented its spin in a carefully packaged “scoop” to a major media outlet. This time was no different. When Obama Inc. spied on members of Congress to protect its Iran nuke sellout, it packaged the story to the Wall Street Journal under the headline, “U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress”. The idea was that Obama Inc. was “legitimately” spying on Israel, that it just happened to intercept the conversations of some members of Congr

Hillary's Anti-Presidential Campaign

Three creatures on earth are impossible to get rid of: lice, cockroaches and Clintons. Hillary Clinton spent a third of her miserable adult life trying to get into the White House. Now the nation’s failed Harridan-in-Chief is determined to spend her remaining years blaming everyone, from Matt Lauer to the Electoral College, for having to live out the rest of her life in flat broke poverty in the eleven rooms of her Georgian Colonial mansion (and the neighboring mansion in their cul-de-sac too). Current ‘blamees’ include the FBI, millions of white people, sexism, the Russians, Russian sexism, Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Joe Biden, Matt Lauer and the Electoral College. And probably the starting lineup of the Denver Broncos. You’ll have to buy the book for the full list. But What Happened, Hillary’s spiteful magnum opus, does actually answer its titular question. Hillary happened. Hillary Clinton is a terrible person. Her politics are terrible. She’s a nasty creature whose hat

How 9/11 Made Me What I Am

“In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate,” a terrorist declares on the Flight 93 cockpit recording. That’s followed by the sounds of the terrorists assaulting a passenger. “Please don’t hurt me,” he pleads. “Oh God.” As the passengers rush the cabin, a Muslim terrorist proclaims, “In the name of Allah.” As New York firefighters struggle up the South Tower with 100 pounds of equipment on their backs trying to save lives until the very last moment, the Flight 93 passengers push toward the cockpit. The Islamic hijackers call out, “Allahu Akbar.” The Islamic supremacist term originated with Mohammed’s massacre of the Jews of Khaybar and means that Allah is greater than the gods of non-Muslims. Mohammed Atta had advised his fellow terrorists that when the fighting begins, “Shout, 'Allahu Akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” He quoted the Koran’s command that Muslim holy warriors terrorize non-believers by beheading

Memorials of Grief

It was around the time of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, that memorials stopped being remembrances of virtue, and became therapy sessions. The old statues of determined men gave way to empty spaces to represent loss. Their lessons of courage and sacrifice, were replaced by architecture as therapy session, clean geometrical shapes, reflective pools and open areas in which to feel grief at what was lost and then let go of it. September 11 memorials have inevitably followed this same pattern, empty spaces, still pools of water groves and names tastefully inscribed in row after row. How do you tell the Ground Zero memorial from the Oklahoma City memorial? The Oklahoma City memorial has one reflecting pool and the September 11 memorial has two pools. There is no larger meaning to these memorials and there isn't supposed to be one. A hundred years from now they will be nothing more than giant pools surrounded by trees with nothing to say.  These new memorials are not about teaching

The Real Victim

Kenny Herring was very angry over a neighbor’s barbecue fire. It was early in the morning in St. Louis. Kristy Lynn Thompson, Kenny’s wife, handed him a large butcher knife. And then Kenny tried to make mincemeat out of his neighbor. When the cops came, the neighbor had stab wounds on his face and torso, and defensive wounds on his arms. Kenny’s butcher knife pierced his left lung. But Kenny still wasn’t done. He waved the knife around and stabbed an officer in the arm. And was shot and killed. Thompson was arrested and charged with assault and criminal action. It’s not an unusual story. This is what police officers do a lot of the time when they make “housecalls” in St. Louis, Baltimore, Oakland and Detroit. It wasn’t the first time the cops had been forced to respond to “domestic disturbances” at Kenny’s place. But now it would be the last. What happened on Ridge Avenue was bad. But it could have been much worse for the victims of Kenny’s violent rampage. The victim has

All The Statues Must Go

Back in May, a New Orleans statue of Joan of Arc was tagged with “Tear it Down” graffiti. Why Joan of Arc? Any famous historical figure is by definition controversial. Joan is a French national symbol, but Shakespeare depicted her as a malicious witch. The French Quarter where the statue stands is a mostly white neighborhood. France was dealing with a controversial election. This is what happens when you open a can of historical, religious and nationalistic worms. The war on Confederate memorials quickly escalated into attacks on Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Memorial was vandalized in Washington D.C. and in Chicago, a statue of Lincoln was burned. Abraham Lincoln fought the Confederacy. But from a black nationalist perspective, Lincoln and Lee were both racist white devils. And to the left, they both embody white supremacy. What began with tearing down General Lee, escalated to vandalizing statues of Junipero Serra. Serra was an 18th century Catholic priest who set up missio

An Allahu Akbar August

"I thought mad dogs foamed at the mouth, galloped, leaped and lunged at throats, and I thought they did it in August." To Kill a Mockingbird In Roanoke, Virginia, Wasil Farooqui had attacked a couple with a knife while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”. His targets, a Muslim man and his non-Muslim girlfriend, had been swimming in the pool and were behaving immorally by Islamic standards. The Pakistani attacker had recently traveled to Turkey and was suspected of trying to join ISIS. His male victim had been cut “all over his body, including his neck.” Wasil’s lawyer fought hard to keep jurors from hearing about the “Allahu Akbar” part of the attack because it would play on stereotypes. He brought in a professor to testify that, “Allahu Akbar” is used to “express praise or appreciation.” But the judge made his decision and jurors will hear the grim sound of Allahu Akbar in the courtroom just as Wasil’s victims did. The defense in this case, as in almost every other Muslim ter