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From hate crime laws being mis-used by eager prosecutors to a reminder that terrorists are an ever-present threat, Liberals had a bad week

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Last week saw a number of events that undermined Liberals’ grasp of the world as they see it, from the actual world. It wasn’t pretty.

The beginning of the week saw Liberals, and many others, wondering if the hate-crime conviction of a Rutgers student spying on his homosexual roommate as an act of justice or a misapplication of the law.

At a minimum, this was not one of the “sexier” crimes committed against a gay person, and proponents of hate crimes knew it. In short, it turned out to be an immature college student using today’s technology (thank God I was in college 25 years ago and not now) to spy on and make fodder of his roommate. It’s not a leap to think that if the roommate was heterosexual and had an encounter with the opposite sex, a similar treatment would have been applied.

But lo, eager prosecutors, perhaps caught up in the heat of the moment, but more likely with an agenda, pressed ahead with “hate crime” charges that a sympathetic jury bought. Look for one or more of the prosecution team to run for office here in the great northeast.

Then came the tragic story of a 16-year old black boy being shot by a self-deputized Gary Cooper in a gated community in Florida last month.

It appears that the local police department fumbled by not investigating the matter fully and charges of a severe nature could well come out of it. But many of the usual political discourse suspects are trying to pin a racist label on this crime and while such may have been a motiviating factor, much of what has been revealed shows that the shooter was a wannabee sheriff, perhaps someone who aspired to being a policeman but had to settle for a mall security guard slot and watching John Wayne western movies.

Finally, France saw a 12-day killing spree by self-avowed terrorist Mohamed Merah who murdered 7 people in the name of the Palestinean cause (which has renounced him and his actions).

Forgive the seeming skiddishness but such action in a western country is too close for comfort, despite Liberals saying that it is time to leave the War on Terror half way around the world in Afghanistan as it is over, unwinnable, or whatever. It does not appear that the terrorists will simply “get the hell off the battlefield and declare victory.” They will follow and try to destroy us. And one must wonder what the “weak-at-the-knees” approach that the Obama administration has re-inforces the brazenness of terrorists.

All of which leads to a resounding refutation of the gospel according to Liberals. In their world, most inter-racial crimes against a person of a protected class is a per se hate crime, regardless of the facts. But reality quite often says otherwise and when hate crimes prosecutions are inappropriately used, the law’s legitimacy is diluted.  And Liberals’ belief that we can just unilaterally end, or minimize, the War on Terror by exiting theatres without downside is sorely misplaced; we face an unyielding and re-calcitrant enemy just as we did in 1944; force is the only language Islamo-fascists understand and adhere to.

As Mr. Obama is a card-carrying Liberal who holds such sorely-placed assumptions, voters would do well to keep such in mind when entering the ballot-box this Fall.

-I.M. Windee

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George Clooney recognizes what is heresy to Liberals: the United Nations is useless except for observing International Days of Recognition

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In an interview last week with actor and sporadic activist George Clooney shown on Meet the Press today, he discussed his recent trip to Sudan and the mass murder that the Sudanese government is committing upon a portion of its people that have broken off from the country.

Mr. Clooney, no Liberal wallflower and an unabashed supporter of President Barack Obama, stated that the government was performing ethnic cleansing. He went on to warn that if the war inside Sudan heats up the stakes will be “very high in terms of human life.” Thus, he called for “crisis diplomacy that needs to be interjected now” to avoid such a catastrophe.

But then he went on to utter comments that, if one closed their eyes and didn’t recognize his voice, would swear that it was a dreaded conservative speaking. To wit, Mr. Clooney suggested “military intervention……either through NATO or through–unilaterally” but then conceded that such would not happen. Amongst other reasons for inaction, Mr. Clooney said “the [United Nations] Security Council will always have someone that will veto [military action].” When pressed if he wanted to run for political office to enact change, he said that his position as an unelected civilian allows him to “actually have an opinion and it may not fit what the U.N. wants………..and I can say, “This is what I think is right” and stand by it.  And so I think it’s a lot easier than running for office.”

This is an amazing admission as virtually all Liberals, especially President Obama, believe that the United Nations is the sole legitimate imprimatur for any and all actions in response to bloodshed such as this.

This has proven to be a deadly assumption.

The United Nations, successor to that highly successful organization known as the League of Nations which oversaw the rise of Adolph Hitler, is basically a representative club of all of the countries of this world. Any substantive action, including military, needs approval from its “security council” which consists of, amongst other countries, China and Russia.  Invariably, when attempting to punish or deter a country’s actions, such country will have some kind of tie (military, economic or otherwise) to a security council member which will influence the member to block any kind of substantive action. Some recent examples of U.N. fecklessness resulting in mass death were the 1990s genocide in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and most recently the navel-gazing that is occurring as Bashar Asaad is slaughtering his own people. Thus, the standard U.N. response to most events that require substantive and material action is to issue a finger-wagging denunciation (this is on a day when the U.N. is feeling particularly perky) but usually just a flaccid promise to “continue to monitor events” and then, sometime thereafter, have a moment of silence for those who were slaughtered in part because of the U.N.’s inaction. Given Mr. Obama’s foreign policy track record, it is understandable why he feels a kinship to the U.N.

But one should not think that the U.N. does nothing. Quite the contrary. While not quite rising to stop mass human conflicts, it does observe international days such as International Mother Earth Day, World Television Day, and International Mountain Day.

And while Mr. Clooney may not persuade many of his Liberal colleagues about the ineffectiveness of the U.N., he can claim to add another act to his list of public services: somewhere, those notorious unilateralists, former Ambassador John Bolton and Vice-President Dick Cheney, are smiling and feeling vindicated.

-I.M. Windee

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A World Without Barney Frank and Bank Fees. Is that Possible?

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I re-financed my jumbo mortgage (ok, everyone who has taken out a mortgage thinks their’s is “jumbo” regardless of the size).

I admit, I am in a hybrid situation. I have the “rich uncle” who assisted me into the American dream of debt several years ago.  Now, with rates much lower, it was time to pay a lower interest rate.

So I e-mailed my benefactor and suggested that I was on the market for a better rate.  An e-mail or 3 over the matter transpired and voilà, a deal was struck.  A 25% reduction in the rate.

No paperwork, just e-mails.

No Loan Application Interview in which I meet a loan officer, a total stranger, and bare my soul to him, pleading why I should make him money.

No pile of paperwork that few, if any will look at. No form to say that I ever had an alias name (in this life or a past one). No form giving the lender permission to look at my tax returns for income that I have long ago spent, and will spend in the future. No form stating my assets which could well be significantly different in value by the time of closing. No HUD statement that, while a nice recitation of the transaction, is probably only looked at in detail by the person who prepared such. And no other superfluous forms that were solely created to prevent a misguided and politically ambitious state attorney general from suing my lender.

No credit analyst to answer to explaining every seeming credit transgression I ever had (I truly thought I had paid Columbia House!). And no credit analyst who is trying to prevent the next financial crisis or, worst yet, go back in time and prevent the last one.

No less-than-friendly mortgage administrator to plead with to get the paperwork, that I look to eagerly, finalized some time in the next 2 years (yes, I’m glad to hear about your upcoming vacation, sorely deserved no doubt, that’s been the only thing on your mind but can we get closure on this?).

And no Fees!  Fees that would pay for the layers of regulation (yes, government oversight has a cost) and bureaucracy as well as to pad the lender’s bottom line, as if paying several points above what the lender pays for money is not enough. No application fee (the e-mail cost my lender nothing). No loan origination fees (A fee to pay interest to you?). No appraisal fees (the same appraisal process used prior to the housing meltdown?). No commitment fee (I have to pay a fee for the lender to get into a transaction that benefits the lender?). No processing fee (I think I’m getting dizzy). No document preparation fee (…and dizzier).

While mine is a hybrid case on one end of the spectrum, it would seem that the average borrower is on the other end of a spectrum that needs to be re-calibrated to a more reasonable level of paperwork, and consequent fees, regardless of what Barney Frank and his regulatory behemoth cabal says.

-I.M. Windee

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Liberals Resort to their Typical Smoke-Bomb Tactics to Confuse the Public

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The government-mandated contraceptive skirmish heated up this week with what started out as filling in the regulatory blanks to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

As contraception falls under what pro-choice supporters call “women’s reproductive rights,” the crown jewel of which is abortion, it is no surprise that both sides are not only massing for battle but also throwing themselves full-bore into it.

But as with all debates in which sides know the weakness of their argument, this one also has shrill disinformation coming out of the discussion.

Some facts, and not distortions, would be a good thing.

The Obama administration policy just issued requires organizations to cover the cost of  contraception, but does not require religious establishments to cover the cost.  However, employees of religious establishments can still obtain contraception  from the health care insurance company. Senator Roy Blunt introduced a bill that would allow organizations to refuse covering the cost of  contraception in employee health plans by citing moral and religious  reasons.

Thus, this is about having an institution that finds contraception, and by extension anything else, morally repugnant, and not forcing it to partake in such (i.e. purchase of contraception insurance or the like).

Of course, Liberals act as the Cerberus of all their causes; no compromise no matter how reasonable.

Thus, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, mis-characterized the “Blunt  amendment” as an effort to ban contraception. “Glad we voted down [the Blunt Amendment], 51-48, but close vote shows how high the  stakes are for women…”

The ever-befuddled and tongue-tied Mitt Romney stated Wednesday in an  interview that he did not support the amendment, but then retracted that statement when he realized that the primaries were not over and he had conservatives to assuage.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, also a New York Democrat, wrote an op-ed stating “Instead of coming together to fix our economy and strengthen the middle  class, the Senate is considering a measure so extreme that it would allow any  employer — religious or secular — to deny their employees coverage of any  preventive service, including contraception, mammograms –anything the employer  deems unfit to be covered.”

It’s a rule of thumb that you can tell the weakness of an opponent’s argument when they distort the other side’s position, as Democrats were so artfully doing in this case.

No reasonable person, nor I, is re-arguing the seminal Supreme Court privacy case of Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 that established the “right to marital privacy” that allowed use of contraception. But just as Liberals painted the impeachment of Bill Clinton as being “all about sex,” so too are they trying to confuse the matter and make it seem that this is solely about women’s reproductive rights.  In fact, it is about women’s reproductive rights as interacting with the rights of religious institutions. And as with many of these situations, there will be a winner and a loser. In this case, President Obama has chosen women’s reproductive rights over religious rights. Fair enough: that’s what the courts and elections are for.

But there are several lessons to be (re-) learned.

First, Liberals will distort the facts or their opponent’s argument to achieve their goal. It’s a take-no-prisoners approach which, given the infirm position that they usually occupy, is understandable.  It reminds of the late Senator Moynihan’s oft-used phrase “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” Clearly, Liberals, if not many politicians, violate this.

Second, the shrill level that our discourse has gotten into must be reversed. Our politicians must stop trying to demonize their opponents just because of differences in opinions and philosophies. And no matter what each side says, both are guilty of such. Watch MSNBC on any given night and they are firebombing anyone who remotely disagrees with their  ultra-Liberal positions.  Then, of course, salutarily saying that we should all work in a bi-partisan fashion. And Rush Limbaugh got involved this week in this discussion with inappropriate remarks which he has since apologized for.

Finally, the radioactive politics of women’s reproductive rights clearly is not for the faint of heart. Recently, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation found such out when they tried to extricate themselves from Planned Parenthood. Not unlike a scene from The Godfather, Komen found out that once you are part of “the family,” you can never leave.

The over-arching issue of this debate is the intrusion of Obamacare into our lives (as is with most of Mr. Obama’s legislation, despite what he says in his re-election mode). It’s fair to say that this contraception issue is but one of many that the public will “discover” about Mr. Obama’s nanny-state initiatives.

-I.M. Windee

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Mr. Obama Disagrees with a Basic and Time-Tested Tenet of Economic Physics

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Last week, President Obama used his weekly address to acknowledge the rising cost of  gasoline.

He went on to take his wrath out on those who have suggestions to address the matter: Republicans.  “We hear the same thing every year,” Mr. Obama said about the them. “Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling.”

Well…uh…yes, Mr. President. That’s how it works. When supply runs low, and prices increase as a result of anemic supply, the answer to alleviate the price spike, as well as address unfilled consumer demand, is to create more of a supply.

And this law of economic physics is not something new, let alone contrived by a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” The power of supply and demand was understood to some extent by, amongst others, early Muslim economists, John Locke in his 1691 work Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money, and Adam Smith in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations.

It is also ironic that Mr. Obama, a former community organizer, does not appreciate the virtue of supply.  After all, his mission as such was to increase the supply of people to the cause(s) he was espousing.

The President went on to say “Well, the American people aren’t stupid. It’s a bumper  sticker. It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge. It’s a strategy to  get politicians through an election.”

Perhaps there are politicians using the spike in gas prices for political gain. But by Mr. Obama’s logic, keeping the supply low, and prices high, is not only a bad strategy for the country but also one to not get politicians through an election.

-I.M. Windee

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Whether President Obama Likes it or Not, the War on Terror is Far from Over

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Late this week, federal agents arrested a man who they allege planned to carry out a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol. The individual was arrested as he walked from a parking garage near the Capitol building  carrying an automatic pistol and bomb vest, both (thankfully) rendered inoperative by FBI agents performing an undercover sting operation on him.

This is serious stuff and not just from the alleged wild imagination of Dick Cheney.

Had this attempted terrorist met actual enablers and not FBI agents, this could have been a Pearl Harbor, of sorts, in U.S. history.

And it comes on the heels of President Obama’s exit from Iraq 2 months ago, impending exit from Afghanistan and proposed drastic reductions in defense spending under the justification that we have achieved our goals.

Hardly.

As President George Bush was bitterly derided for his “Mission Accomplished” banner shortly after the Iraq invasion, so too must Mr. Obama be held accountable for declaring the end of hostilities in the War on Terror well before they are actually over (the phrase “declare victory and get the hell off the battlefield” comes to mind). And at least Mr. Bush, supposedly the intellectual inferior to Barack Obama, learned from his mistakes and corrected such with the the Surge in 2007.

After 3 years, it is evident that Mr. Obama is uneasy, unprepared, or both, when addressing foreign policy matters. His comfort zone is clearly domestic politics and redistributing wealth by pitting the rich versus the poor.

But the world in which he was elected President is one that does not allow him to be just a domestic issues President. Whether he likes it or not, one of his charges, in addition to many others, is Protector in Chief.

The arrest this week of an attempted terrorist who would’ve dealt unimaginable horrors on this country is an issue that all Presidential candidates this year, especially our sitting President, must address.

No matter how much Mr. Obama wants, the mission is hardly accomplished.

-I.M. Windee

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Ms. Houston and Joe Paterno Remind Us That We are All Human

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Today, Whitney Houston died. While it has not been reported yet, it is likely that the direct or indirect cause of her death was drugs.

My only brush with fame, aside from knowing myself, was holding the door for Ms. Houston at the Berkeley Carteret Hotel in Asbury Park, New Jersey some 25 years ago.  It was 4 seconds I’ll never forget.

I would not even begin to state how good a voice she had: just YouTube her songs and realize for yourself.

But Ms. Houston was human, and with such status came not just an extraordinary voice but also a weakness: drug abuse.

The last 10 years saw her succumbing to erratic and somewhat incoherent behavior that can only be attributed to someone who was under the influence of unprescribed substances.

In a sense, we can say the glass was more than half full in that she passed the magical death age of 27 years for many pop stars: she outdid Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, amongst others, by 21 years. And music, as well as our lives, are all the richer for such. But in the end, despite a voice and talent to use such that made her stand out from the rest of us, she contended with and lost to the same demons that many of us face.

As Joe Paterno also recently reminded us, being super-human in one aspect of life does not necessarily make us perfect in all others.  We must be careful as not to deputize our “heroes” for more than they can handle, as the disappointment to ourselves can be more than we wish to bear.

In Ms. Houston’s iconic song “Greatest Love Of All”, she sings “Everybody searching for a hero, People need someone to look up to, I never found anyone to fulfill my needs, A lonely place to be, So I learned to depend on me.”  Perhaps she was (unknowingly) telling us that the best hero is not the one who is the reality show star or someone whose indiscretion went viral on the internet resulting in an undue fame, but someone far closer to home: ourselves, if we are willing to rise to the occasion.

Thank you for all of the musical pleasure you brought and may you finally rest in peace, Ms. Houston.

-I.M. Windee

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Mr. Romney needs to soil his hands with the “Vision Thing”

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This past Tuesday’s Republican primary results in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri not only re-affirmed an otherwise splintered, if not cranky, Republican electorate but also foreshadowed what will not just be the costliest Presidential general election campaigns, but one that could well be devoid of real debate over the direction of this country. And of all candidates to indicate such scenario, it was Mitt Romney.

After Rick Santorum ran the table Tuesday, Mr. Romney and his campaign promised to spend heavily on coming contests to regain his frontrunner status for the Republican presidential nomination.

Such a position betrays several weaknesses in Romney the candidate.

If spending were a panacea to this and any problem, federal, state and local governments would’ve placed this country into economic Nirvana several years ago, if not sooner.  We’ve had a blowout in spending, Greek style, to no avail for this country, thanks to lousy policies.

So, too, does Mr. Romney face such a similar situation: he has spent heavily compared to other candidates and finds himself losing primaries.  The answer, again, is the lousy (or in his case, lack of) policies. Spending more money to trumpet such will just dig the proverbial hole deeper and give aid to his primary opponents, if not President Obama.

Alternatively, Mr. Romney could, as he has done prodigiously in the past, go on a full-bore attack on his fellow Republicans.  Aside from violating Ronald Reagan’s “Eleventh Commandment” of “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” it takes away from the real debate that should be occurring for this campaign: the size and role of government in people’s lives whether via taxes or regulation.

Since the time this campaign heated up, Mr. Romney has proven to be anything but a visionary when it comes to where this country should go.  From defending his misguided Romneycare to fumbling the debate that predictably arose, after the release of his tax returns, over taxation and the beneficial place of the wealthy in our economy, Mr. Romney has led from his heels. Perhaps he thinks he is the rightful heir to the Republican nomination, having paid his dues in prior elections, and thus need not provide the kind of ideological and policy leadership, a la Reagan, during the primaries. But “vision” is a tough thing to turn on and off and, worse, if Romney has little if any (except for not being President Obama), he will be emulating that last vision-less one-term President, the befuddled George Herbert Walker Bush who infamously mocked such as “the vision thing.”

Mr. Romney is also exercising cognitive dissonance if he thinks he will be able to outspend the mega money-machine known as the Obama re-election campaign.  Mr. Obama opted out of federal election spending restraints in 2008 as he had a gusher of money that overwhelmed another befuddled Republican candidate, John McCain.  Despite reports that the President and his Super-PACs are having difficulty raising money, Liberals will not go down without a fight this Fall so look for the tsunami of cash to wash in under the mellifluous singing of Barbra Streisand at Democratic fundraisers.

Which leads us back to what candidate Romney, still the likely nominee for the Republicans, should do to become President Romney, and a good one at that.  Discard the knee-capping approach towards Newt Gingrich and now likely Santorum.  Pick up a copy of “Reagan: A Life in Letters” and read such over the weekend, along with texts of the many speeches he made over his career.  Then adopt the Gipper’s positions.

Mr. Romney has never been especially warm to Mr. Reagan and his policies even though he has, in salutary manner, aligned himself with the great President.  But as the country is yearning more and more for a conservative candidate who will move us away from the nanny-state that is all Mr. Obama is willing to offer, Governor Romney will need to discover, and espouse, Reagan conservatism if he doesn’t want to further distinguish himself from Mr. Reagan by giving a concession speech on election night this November.

-I.M. Windee