Okay, the whining has started once again. 

This time, the left is promoting the view that the Bush Administration is attempting to “construct a phony reality in news coverage” and “will do pretty much anything to shape reality to fit its agenda” (Minneapolis StarTribune, February 18, 2005).  The liberal press is offering that view based on recent revelations about a so-called “planted reporter” by the name of Jeff Gannon.  They throw in Armstrong Williams, Michael McManus, and Maggie Gallagher, describing them as “hired guns” that have been paid to help the Bush Administration.  Terrible, they say.  How could an administration stoop so low as to pay people to support its positions?  Maureen Dowd (New York Times, February 17, 2005) is outraged.  According to her the Bush Administration is “waging a jihad against journalists—buying them off so they’ll promote Administration programs…”

Well, so sad.  What goes around comes around.  The liberal press has been bashing President Bush and his administration from the beginning of his campaign in 1998. Print and electronic media outlets have employed people who have done nothing but promote the leftist agenda.  In order to support their views they have misinformed, misinterpreted, and lied.  President Bush was and is up against an extremely powerful media machine that has been joined and supported by the Hollywood elite, as well as by liberal college and university professors.  Our secondary school and university youth are being brainwashed.  On a daily basis, casual political observers are being misled or blatantly lied to by the leftist press.  At least once during every Hollywood awards ceremony, Americans are confronted by anti-war, anti Bush, or anti-American rhetoric.  The media machinery did what Gore and Kerry could not do and nearly defeated President Bush in both of the last two elections. 

Given the incredible bias that we all know exists within the media, does it surprise anyone that the Administration would try to balance the perspective a bit?  Does it surprise anyone that the Administration would try to level the playing field?  Who would not do the same?  Who would not face discrimination with strong voices that seek to make the truth known? 

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the reality that what is fair is fair.  When the media becomes balanced, then the Administration will no longer need to take drastic and creative steps to level the field.  Until then, more power to the Administration and more power to President Bush.

Recently, I took a trip by plane.  Yes, they are crowding more people into those airplanes than every before.  And yes, airport security continues to negatively color the entire “flying experience”.  I am not a fan of being stuffed into an airplane like a sardine in a can.  However, I AM a fan of airport security.

Given a very tough task, the screeners are doing, for the most part, a good job.  Despite an occasional error (e.g., allowing a woman to accidentally bring a butcher knife through the checkpoint), they seem to be keeping bad guys and their weapons off the airplanes.  Many improvements have been made.  The new federal screeners are a bit more polite than their predecessors.  The systems that they have put in place seem to be fairly efficient.  Still, the screeners continue to spot check a relatively large number of people that probably pose no risk to the flying public. 

Anyone who has flown since 9/11 has seen at least one child, business person, pilot, or elderly woman be stopped, taken aside, and searched.  This waste of time and energy is not the result of screeners trying to “mess” with the public.  They are just following protocols set by the government.  Unfortunately the government has created protocol simply to prevent any appearance of “profiling” any specific race, religion, or nationality.  That is the part of the entire response to terrorism that I still don’t understand.   

Profiling is a normal part of every day life. Anyone who values life and property profiles.  We make decisions every day about who to talk to, who to let handle our cash, who to let into our homes, and who to employ.  We make those decisions based upon observable facts, history, and our own instincts.  In other words, we profile on the basis of the information available to us in order to increase the odds that we and our families and friends remain safe.  It is about common sense.  In its attempt to avoid being labeled as biased against any single subgroup, the government of the United States is creating protocols that fly in the face of common sense and that put Americans at risk.

The following was adapted from a “history test” forwarded to me by a friend.  (Apparently, the author of the “test” is anonymous.  If anyone knows his or her identity, please let me know so I can give appropriate credit.)   

-In 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

-In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by two thirteen year old Caucasian girls.  No wait, that act too was committed by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

-In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

Is it just me or is there a pattern here?

Obviously, no one is saying that all Muslims are terrorists. The point is that so far, most terrorist acts have been committed by young Muslim males with fanatical views and a desire to destroy everything with which they disagree.  It is time for the government to give screeners the green light to do their jobs in the most effective way possible.  As the writer of the “test” noted, it is time to stop worrying about whether or not we might offend people, particularly when those people are fanatics who are intent on killing us.  It is time to stop “conducing random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winning and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim males between the ages 17 and 40 alone because of profiling.”  Let’s keep it simple and allow the good guys to catch the bad guys.

Joe Soucheray, a radio host in Minnesota, often talks about the concept of “linking.”  Linking is taking one concept and connecting it to another.  When we are able to link two or more “euphorian” (i.e., liberal) concepts we move a step closer to understanding and explaining the liberal “mystery.” Let’s take a closer look at one possible link.

An article in the Minneapolis StarTribune (February 8, 2005) discusses a possible link between autism and asthma or allergies in pregnant women.  The article credits all research and analysis to Lisa Croen of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. 

According to the article, the Centers for Disease Control reports that more than 17 million Americans have asthma and that this prevalence is, “…increasing by as much as 75 percent since the 1980s.”  Meanwhile, the article states that “…an estimated 1.5 million Americans have an autistic disorder with the incidence growing by 10 to 17 percent a year at least since the early 1990s.” 

As a psychologist, I have seen a remarkable increase in the number of children with autism.  Autism is a neurological disorder that used to be fairly rare.  My physician friends report a similar increase in the number of people with either asthma or allergies.  Many researchers and writers have said that the increase in both is just a result of better diagnosis. 

The Croen study found that the presence of asthma or allergies in an expectant mother may boost by up to 50 percent the chances that her child will show symptoms of autism.  The study does not try to explain the correlation.  So where is the "link"?

Politically correct liberals have done everything in their power to clean up our indoor and outdoor air.  When we live in a near-sterile environment, we become increasingly susceptible to allergens and various bacteria because they become “foreign” to our day-to-day life.  At some point, our susceptibility to normal elements of our environment leads to medical disorders such as asthma and allergies.  When we develop asthma and allergies we often are given medications that help us maintain some level of comfort in our lives.

Truth be told, all medications have side effects.  They are unnatural elements added to our bodies to realign our body chemistry, or in this case, to destroy other elements from which we cannot protect ourselves.  One of the side effects of some medications is to bring about factors that create an unsafe environment for a fetus.  Sometimes, one of those factors may impact the developing fetal neurology. 

Autism is a neurological disorder. 

The point of all this?  When I was a child growing up in the projects, no one had asthma.  We all rode in the car with one or two parents who smoked incessantly and who didn’t open the window.  We all played in the dirt and mud and dipped into the slime of the swamp to pull out unsuspecting creatures that we kept in our pockets until we could get them into a jar at home.  None of us had heard the word “antibacterial agent.” Most of us had never heard of autism.  At that time, the state in which I lived had one “home” for autistic children, housing about 40 children at any one time.  Today, it is a very different story. 

My premise is simple.  The politically correct far left has created an environment that has insulated us from life.  When we are confronted with natural elements that are unique to our overprotected bodies, our bodies will react.  Those reactions lead some of us to take drugs that injure our children. It remains an open issue whether it is the intent of the far left to kill us through political correctness or whether the destruction is just a by-product.

My “link” has yet to be proved.  I hope that Lisa Croen will take up the cause.  I also hope that if my link proves true, the far left will go away and leave normal people alone. 

In an editorial in the New York Times (February 7, 2005), Thomas L. Friedman wrote the following:

RIEDMAN0207

“As someone who believed, hoped, worried, prayed, worried, hoped and prayed some more that Iraqis could one day pull off the election they did, I am unreservedly happy about the outcome -- and you should be, too.

“Why? Because what threatens America most from the Middle East are the pathologies of a region where there is too little freedom and too many young people who aren't able to achieve their full potential. The only way to cure these pathologies is with a war of ideas within the Arab-Muslim world so those with bad ideas can be defeated by those with progressive ones.

“We can't fight that war. Only the Arab progressives can -- only they can tell the suicide bombers that what they are doing is shameful to Islam and to Arabs. But we can collaborate with them to create a space in the heart of their world where decent people have a chance to fight this war -- and that is what American and British soldiers have been doing in Iraq…

“But wait -- not everyone is wearing a smiley face after the Iraqi elections, and that is good, considering who is unhappy. Let's start with the mullahs in Iran. Those who think that a Shiite-led government in Iraq is going to be the puppet of Iran's Shiite ayatollahs are so wrong. It is the ayatollahs in Iran who are terrified today…The Iraqi Shiites just gave every Iranian Shiite next door a demonstration of what real "Islamic" democracy is: it's when Muslims vote for whomever they want.

Then there is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This Charles-Manson-with-a-turban…claims to be the leader of the Iraqi Vietcong -- the authentic carrier of Iraqis' national aspirations and desire to liberate their country from "U.S. occupation." In truth, he is the leader of the Iraqi Khmer Rouge -- a murderous death cult.

“The election has exposed this. Because the Iraqi people have now made it clear that they are they are the authentic carriers of their national aspirations, and while, yes, they want an end to the U.S. presence, they want that end to happen in an orderly manner and in tandem with an Iraqi constitutional process.

“In other words, this election has made it crystal clear that the Iraq war is not between fascist insurgents and America, but between the fascist insurgents and the Iraqi people.

“…whatever you thought about this war, it's not about Bush any more. It's about the aspirations of the Iraqi majority to build an alternative to Saddamism…By voting the way they did, in the face of real danger, Iraqis have earned the right to ask everyone now to put aside their squabbles and focus on what is no longer just a pipe dream but a real opportunity to implant decent, consensual government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world.”

The future of Iraq lies with the Iraqis.  We have given them the opportunity to decide that future.  Most Republicans realize how critical this war is for the future of Iraq and to the future of the world.  I can only hope that the left will catch up, put political motivations aside, and join the rest of us who wish the best for Iraq and for its future as a democratic nation.

7300 Hits!!!

Hello everyone. 

We opened this little enterprise in mid-Agust of 2004.  As you all know, this is a very small blog.  We have no ads; no photographs, and only one or two entries per week.  Even given these limitations, people keep tuning in.  Since August, we have had more than 7300 hits. 

I know that 7300 is a very small number compared to the big guys.  I know that Michael Moore eats more cheeseburgers than that in a week, that Teddy Kennedy drinks more martinis than that in a weekend, and that Nancy Pelosi receives more botox injections than that in a single evening.  Still, I am pleased with 7300 hits and want to thank you for stopping by! 

Lets keep up the good fight.  With the weight of the mainstream media behind the opposition, it is important that all of us little guys continue to speak out, whether through blogs, newspaper editorials, talk-shows, or one-to-one.  Winning the election was just the beginning.  If we all do our little part we can defeat those who want to destroy America. 

As for that opposition...it has seen the enemy and it is itself and it is crumbling.  Its problem is that it doesn't recognize that fact.  The best the Democrats could do was bring out Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to "rebut" the President's State of the Union Address. 

After the emotional moment when Mrs. Norwood (mother of slain soldier Byron Norwood) was embraced by Safia Taleb al-Suhali (Iraqi voter and leader of the Iraqi Women's Political Council), there was hardly a dry eye in the chamber.  The moment underscored the remarkable success of the Iraqi people and of our nation in seeing the election to fruition.  Reid and Pelosi made no real acknowledgement of the moment, continuing to naysay and to offer nothing by way of solutions for the problems faced by America and the world.

The success of a two-party system depends on the ability of both parties to offer solutions.  The electorate will decide on the solution it believes will be the most sucessful.  In the first five years of the 21st Century, only one party is offering solutions.  The other is in "yes-but" mode or, "no" mode, or even worse, "you-are-an-idiot mode".  Until the Democrats can put up a better opposition than Reid and Pelosi, they have little hope for success. 

And that brings us back to the beginning.  Lets keep up the fight against the naysayers who said that the elections would never happen; that the "insurgents" (i.e., terrorists) would kill thousands of potential voters; and that America is an occupying force that should get out of Iraq now.  (Interestingly, Teddy Kennedy who was one of those who uttered that bit of brilliance has been relatively invisible since.  Could it be that even the Democrats realize that having him front-and-center is a deficit?...as if Reid and Pelosi aren't??)

Thanks again for your support.  Keep checking in.  I will keep writing and I will keep checking your sites as well. 

Remember that old song, "And The Beat Goes On"?  Well, the left goes on as well. Like the Energizer Bunny.  And just about as annoying.

Ward Churchill believes that three thousand people killed in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 deserved to die because they were engaged in capitalism. 

As one response to the terrorist threat, President Bush lead America into war in Iraq, thereby protecting America, focusing the conflict in the Middle East, and simultaneously helping to bring democracy to that region.  After the fact, Barbara Boxer called Condoleezza Rice a liar because, in her mind, the only reason specified for that war was the issue of WMD.  When told that there were at least seven other reasons specified in the Congressional resolution that she voted on, she said she had really read it. 

As the war against terror has continued, Michael Moore, well known self-promoter and socialist denied that a terrorist threat exists and that the idea was made up to support the imperialistic policies of President Bush.  He was supported in that view by Al Franken and Jeanine Garafolo, well known democrat intellectuals. 

Now, we have the frosting on the cake.  That frosting is presented by that well known ethicist and moralist, Senator Teddy Kennedy.  Senator Kennedy stated that the “insurgents” (i.e., terrorists) in Iraq are fighting for the same thing being fought for by coalition forces:  the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people (George Will, New York Times, 2/1/05).  He failed to recognize the fact that the goal of the terrorists is to control the people of Iraq (and the rest of the world)…not to help them gain control over themselves.

I can’t help but wonder just what has come of the Democratic Party that I supported in 1960.  What has become of the common sense and rationality that was the cornerstone of the JFK Democrats? The far left lives on…the far left that contributed to the collapse of American resolve during the Vietnam War and thereby contributed to the unnecessary deaths of thousand upon thousand of American troops and Vietnamese civilians.  It lives on in the form of “educators” who have brainwashed our youth, the Hollywood elite who believe that acting and singing provides special insight about right and wrong, leftist media “personalities” whose nightly diatribes against our nation continue to weaken American resolve, and politicians who beat the “blame America first” drum.

Churchill, Boxer, Moore, Franken, Garafolo, and Kennedy look in the face of terrorists and see well meaning youth just trying to have a say in their lives…just like the anti-war protestors of the 1970’s wanted their say.  They also see a chance to make political hay, undermining, for political purposes, a President who is trying to protect America while bringing order to the world. 

And there lies the key.  In actuality, the far left is very willing to put the overall security of our nation behind its own narrow agenda.  Even more frightening is that the narrow agenda of the far left calls for changes in America that will turn it into a socialist nation that promotes mediocrity and welfare for all. 

Lets go, people.  It is time to challenge the far left; to build upon our victory in 2004; and to take back America.  Winning the election in 2004 is not enough. The battle rages on.  

I have said this many times before…NOW IT IS GETTING SERIOUS.