Carl Langley Speaks Out

The following letter from local scribe Carl Langley appeared in the Aiken Standard today. To read the several comments made on his letter go here

 How far do we go with diversity?

In the awful aftermath of the shooting deaths of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, by a Muslim serving as a major in the U.S. Army, I was shocked at the words of the Army's top general, George Casey.

Gen. Casey's words, in which he declared that the shootings would not deter the military on its path to diversity, would have been better left unsaid. He should have spent his face time on television deploring the act of a mad man.

I watched with my mouth agape as Casey said diversity is building a strong society and a strong military. I ask him if diversity isn't now being given priority to building, training and maintaining the kind of military service needed to keep this country safe in a hostile world.

Gen. Casey should have limited his time to expressing his condolences to the families of those murdered and promising that the military would extact justice and retribution for this awful crime.

Watching Casey tap dance around the awful catastrophe at Fort Hood and go to mouthing the preachments of a society now being driven by liberal thought and speech at every level was too much for me.

I served in the Army long ago and am proud of my grandson who serves today as a captain in the same branch. I gave thanks that my grandson wasn't in the Fort Hood building that became a slaughterhouse.

While I agree that we have become a polyglot nation and must adapt to this changing world, promoting diversity is no excuse for the failure of Casey's army, or any other organization, to weed out those with religious and political agendas that drive most of them insane.

In the liberal world, conservatives, Tea Party protesters and those who disagree with the president and his administration are the real terrorists. Not so the Muslim radicals who are out to exterminate anyone who does not submit to Allah.

Because of this leap into diversity, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who coldly shot down and murdered 13 people, is being referred to as the "alleged shooter." Can you imagine that? Here's a man whose killing spree was witnessed by dozens, included among them the more than 25 he wounded, and he is referred to as the "alleged shooter."

Here is a classic case in which liberalspeak or legal speak takes precedence over the obvious facts.

Considering the current sad state of affairs in the American justice system, let me offer that the trial of Hasan will be a long time coming because of the Byzantine maze that has been built into the justice system, both inside and outside the military.

This Hasan case will be around for a long time. During the coming months and years he will be lionized by Muslim radicals around the world, even here in this country, as a hero who stood against the infidels. They will be aided by American news media, especially People magazine and the like, who will clamor for a chance to tell his story, complete with pictures. Today's seniors will be long gone before justice is done in this case, if ever.

But back to Gen. Casey. After listening to his comments about the killings of his soldiers, I am left wondering who he is taking his orders from and who is clearing his commentary. I must assume it is some bureaucrat in the Defense Department.

I am among those who believe that if diversity continues at the expense of common sense we are likely to lose our nation, the anchor of, for the time being, the free world.

Carl Langley

Aiken

Frank Gaffney: The Speech We Need

This is a terrific photo of President Obama. Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy suggests a speech for the President to deliver tomorrow night at West Point:

 Frank Gaffney: The Speech We Need

President Obama's much-anticipated speech at West Point Tuesday night  constitutes an opportunity with the potential to be as strategically momentous as Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972.  Mr. Obama is in a unique position to tell the truth about the nature of the enemy we confront, not just in Afghanistan but worldwide, and thereby put the effort to defeat that enemy on a sound, coherent and supportable footing.  Will he rise to the occasion?More

Amazing Collection

Follow this link to an amazing collection of cartoons. I get a lot of email but these are all edgy and new. Enjoy!

http://gopbriefingroom.com/index.php?topic=16744.0

Healthcare Comments by Jim Wetzel

The following letter from Jim Wetzel appeared in the Aiken Standard on November 26 .

Future looks poor for health care
11/26/2009 12:33 AM
By Jim Wetzel
Future looks poor for health care

The current controversy over the recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force as to breast cancer health care is only a harbinger of more serious consequences that might come to pass. I speak to the ominous shadow of medical care rationing cast by the Task Force that could come to fruition under the ObamaCare program.

That report is not about proper health care; it's about health care spending based upon what the panel considers to be life benefits versus costs in doing breast scans. In recommending the banning of mammograms for 40- to 50-year-old women, the report's data supports the conclusion that cases of breast cancer will go undetected in that group, to a consequence related to the individual case. If that consequence happens to be death from a lack of proper treatment, it puts money over the value of life and government as the arbiter of continued life.

This is serious because the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force is designated as a decisional participant in the ObamaCare scheme. On the basis of accounting exercises and impersonal assumptions, it will make recommendations, as it has done here, based upon costs and group data. The individual and his doctor will not be considered or even play a role. If a person dies because of their recommendations, it will be of no consequence to them; but the death will be of consequence to the person who dies and to his family and society.

The sum of this is that under ObamaCare, it is likely that if you are over 80 (even 70 if the health budget is tight), and you come down with an event that can't be cured with a couple of aspirin, you may find that you have crossed the government's cost-effectiveness line and be disqualified from further care.

The lesson is that if women under 50 can be scratched from mammograms at the whim of a health panel, a person over 80 with a bad health report and subject to the same whim, could find himself sliced from the rolls and made toast.

Jim Wetzel

Aiken

Honduras-Finally we are on the right side!

  Honduras's Democratic Solution

Why The Obama Administration Is Right To Support Sunday's Election

(WASHINGTON POST 28 NOV 09)

A BREACH has opened among those countries that have sought to resolve the political crisis in the Central American nation of Honduras. One group is focused on restoring democracy to the country, through support for a national election scheduled for Sunday. A second faction places priority on putting ousted president Manuel Zelaya back in office -- even though few Hondurans want him back and his legal term expires in just two months. To its credit, the Obama administration is leading the support for the democratic option, even though that means departing from its policy of seeking consensus with the region's big powers.

Elections have often been used to restore constitutional order in unstable countries; they brought a peaceful end to Augusto Pinochet's right-wing dictatorship in Chile and to the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. In the case of Honduras, the election solution is particularly appropriate, since one had been scheduled before Mr. Zelaya was arrested and illegally deported from the country in June. The candidates for president were chosen by a legal and orderly democratic process, with high participation; the vote will be supervised by an independent tribunal also established before the crisis.

Polls show that Hondurans are eager for the elections to occur. They have little taste for Mr. Zelaya, who embraced the leftist populism of Hugo Chávez while in office and was trying to follow the Venezuelan's model for dismantling democratic institutions. Last month, Mr. Zelaya accepted a U.S.-brokered deal that endorsed the elections while providing for the Honduran Congress to vote on whether to restore him to office for the remainder of his term. Yet when he was not immediately returned to power, Mr. Zelaya repudiated the plan. Now he and his supporters claim the election must be regarded as illegitimate, because Congress will not vote on his status until next week. Hondurans understandably wonder whether Mr. Zelaya's intention all along was to disrupt a democratic process that will send him to a well-deserved retirement.

Unfortunately, Mr. Zelaya has the backing not only of Mr. Chávez and his satellites but also of governments such as Brazil -- with which the Obama administration hoped to forge a regional partnership. The lesson of the Honduran crisis is that the United States cannot always pursue such multilateralism and also support democracy. Too many Latin American governments are more interested in backing leaders who share their political inclinations than in upholding the rule of law. While loudly denouncing the "coup" against Mr. Zelaya, they have ignored the rigging of elections and the violent suppression of opposition by fellow leftists. In rejecting their attempt to nullify Honduras's democratic vote this Sunday, the Obama administration has taken a relatively isolated stance -- and a correct one.

The Great British Climate Fraud

Human Events has published an excellent piece on "Global Warming," The first few paragraphs are posted below including a link to the entire article. Please read it and pass it on. The Wall Street Opinion Journal Online also has an illuminating story. We have been Gored!

The Great British Climate Fraud

by  James Delingpole

11/24/2009

It has been described as the "greatest scientific scandal of the modern age." The story broke last Thursday when a person unknown -- some say it was a hacker, others an inside-leak job -- broke into the servers at Britain's Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and published at least 61megabytes of confidential data on a Russian website.

 Despite efforts in liberal quarters to play the story down as a criminal issue of no great consequence, the blogosophere almost instantly recognized it as political dynamite: perhaps even the final nail in the coffin of Al Gore's increasingly expensive theory that the world is rapidly overheating due to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).

Why? Because the Climate Research Unit in the windswept fenlands of Eastern England -- together with its sister unit in the West of England, the Hadley Centre in Exeter, Devon -- is one of the primary information sources used by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).more 

Lindsey Graham destroys Eric Holder

The following youtube videoshows Lindsey at his best. There is a very good commentary on this showdown at the Powerline Blog.