You Might Be a Liberal

by C Edmund Wright

  Now I hate to quibble, but isn’t a suicide bomber actually the opposite of those diving on a grenade?

  And while we’re on the subject of Islam—that well-documented religion of peace—Hasan apparently agreed with Bin Laden’s PR department that what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq is occupation. Further, the U.S. military is just a bunch of infidels. Hasan has indicated he was in favor of our losing the wars in both theaters. He has much in common with Democrat Senator Patty Murray in this regard.

  But I have to ask, can’t we all grow up for a minute and ask just what sense does it make to have Major Hasan in our military? For crying out loud, “don’t ask, don’t tell” should not apply to the notion of whose side you are on!

  In reality, though, this was not even a case of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ No one had to ask Major Hasan to tell people what he believed. He was against the war in Iraq, against the war in Afghanistan, and allegedly verbally pro-Allah as he was gunning down unarmed American soldiers.

  Imagine if an American officer in World War II had shouted “Heil Hitler” as he killed unarmed soldiers. Would there be any soul-searching debate about “pre-traumatic stress syndrome” and other gobbledygook? And if his name were Schmidt—oddly close to Smith, actually—would Diane Sawyer be in a snit?

  Of course, this would never have happened in WWII. Things are different today. Somehow our military remains the best in the world while accommodating all kinds of fast-track programs for psychiatrist-officers whose names sound a lot like those on the roster at Gitmo, while ignoring the detail that they might be anti-American.

  And that’s the real story here. He was not named Smith. He didn’t act like a Smith or talk like a Smith or have allegiances like a Smith. He was so un-Smith-like that someone should have noticed. Or more to the point, our military should not be so eaten up with political correctness that the many who did notice were forced to shut up about it. This was so utterly predictable, which is to say, utterly preventable.

  And the Army and the FBI knew enough to have prevented this, but they did not. Indeed, the FBI had caught on to the fact that Hasan was in regular email contact with radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki nearly a year before the mass shooting. This email contact included messages in which Hasan expressed support for suicide bombers, and one in which he said, “I would assume that a suicide bomber whose aim is to kill enemy soldiers or their helpers, but also kills innocents in the process, is acceptable.” Yet the FBI—like the Army—concluded that Hasan had contacted the cleric merely “to research Islam.” This is the Army and the FBI that liberals have given us. You would think, if mere mundane research of Islam included acceptable collateral damage and a discussion of suicide bombers, that maybe the Army and the FBI would quit calling Islam “a religion of peace.”

  This is not to say folks named Hasan should not be in the military, though that rule would not hurt my feelings. I would say that it just might be a good idea if they held onto some mundane, Smith-type attitudes, like perhaps being pro-American. This is not discrimination. All soldiers, regardless of their name, should be pro-American, at a minimum. Surely this is logical.

  Of course, what else is predictable is how the media covered the story. In the words of an NPR report, “We know he took his faith seriously, but we can’t say for sure that was a factor.” Right. That’s exactly what they say about anyone who bombs an abortion clinic, as we know.

  It got so bad with our Jurassic media that reports confirming Hasan as a follower of Islam were as rare as were the media confirmations that both Eliot Spitzer and Bernie Madoff are Democrats.

  Equally predictable was our President—who is also not named Smith, by the way. As you remember, Barack Hussein Obama was giving “shout-outs” to folks at a speech related to native Americans at the Department of the Interior shortly after the news of the Fort Hood tragedy broke. This is not George Bush rapidly finishing a two-minute story to the school kids he was already in front of after hearing the horrific news of 9-11 whispered into his ear. No. This was a President who had time to delay, cancel, or at least reprogram a very non-crucial photo op in light of the news.

  The only thing missing was Jeremiah Wright hootin’ and hollerin’ about “America’s chickens” and high-fiving. I mean, God bleep America, we deserved it, didn’t we? At the very least, Obama’s reaction can charitably be characterized as cold. And not cool at all.

  But no liberal government tale is complete without the final politically correct white wash of what went wrong. And, unfortunately and surreally, that is the case here, as well. The official FBI report that was issued in the summer of 2012 is as troubling as it is contradictory. It makes the 9-11 commission look positively thorough by comparison.

  The FBI admits that agents in Washington were alerted to the emails by the FBI’s San Diego office, and yet they did nothing. Why? The agency “expressed fears that questioning Hasan might jeopardize his military career.” This is unbelievable. We can’t question a potential suicide bomber because we might hurt his career track! Is there any doubt that our American empire is near an end?

  Agents in San Diego were told the matter was “politically sensitive” and that the FBI’s Washington office “doesn’t go out and interview every Muslim guy who visits extremist websites.” Well damn. Maybe they should!

  So what is the result of this scathing FBI report? Nothing. No one so much as lost a pension check. Director William Webster, in one of the most nonsensical statements ever uttered by a government employee, admitted that “the agency’s probe of Hasan in the run-up to his shooting spree was belated, incomplete and rushed—and influenced by an unhealthy dose of political correctness.” And what was Webster’s prescription for this bungling? ““We do not believe it would be fair to hold these dedicated personnel . . . responsible for the tragedy that occurred months later at Fort Hood.”

  There you have it. It would not be “fair” to hold anyone responsible for the deaths of 13 American soldiers merely because they were incompetent, riddled with crippling political correctness, or perhaps even in cahoots with the enemy. This is from the man who once said “security is always seen as too much until the day it’s not enough...” I guess after 40 years of hanging around the liberal mecca of Washington D.C., investigating a soldier who emails radical clerics about suicide bomber protocol would be considered “too much.

  YMBAL’S #33

  If you can relate to the guys in the cast of “Project Runway”…

  If chants of U-S-A, U-S-A send you scrambling for your remote to turn off the Olympics…

  If you don’t pay any Federal taxes and yet are still convinced that you are paying for Mitt Romney’s tax cuts…

  If you’ve ever complained about an Olympic gold medal champion being “so, so, so into Jesus”…

  If you are obsessed with Mitt Romney’s tax returns but have no curiosity whatsoever about how Harry Reid became wealthy working for government all his life…

  If you’re a vegetarian yet support wind turbines because the 40,000 birds a year they kill is “relatively low”…

  If you think everything Republicans say about Obama’s anger towards business owners and Republicans is “niggerization”…

  If you think the IPAB is some kind of new Apple product…

  If you are looking forward to Obama doing “the same thing in every industry” that he did for General Motors…

  If you are the mayor of a major city and have ever been sued by your own police department…

  If you routinely refer to Israel as that “Zionist regime”…

  If you think y’all will be put back in chains…

  If you think Joe Biden is a smart man who simply suffers from “phrasing distractions”…

  If you are “anyone who would not suggest” that Obama has tried to divide the country…

  If you really really want Obama to dump Joe Biden but cannot bear the thought of ever agreeing with Sarah Palin on anything…

  If yo
u were deeply conflicted on how to process the incident where an LGBT volunteer carried a gun and some Chick-fil-A take out into the offices of the Family Research Council’s headquarters and shot a security guard…

  If your understanding of free market economics comes from college professors who have never experienced earning a living in one…

  If you don’t know that the Republican Medicare plan does not impact anyone over fifty-five years old in any way…

  ...you might be a liberal. (YMBAL)

  “The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need. It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation.”

  —Franklin D. Roosevelt

  “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions, rather than their results. We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions. The people who go around talking about their ‘soft heart,’—I admire them for the softness of their heart, but very often it extends to their head as well.”

  —Milton Friedman

  34: THE PAIN OF BAIN? TRYING TO ‘SPLAIN TO THE INSANE

  If you think a company exists to give your spouse health care for life…

  An inherent danger posed by liberals is that, at times, they will take a conversation so far off the path of logic that normal people find it almost impossible to steer it back on course. By doing this, liberals sometimes get conservatives to unwittingly accept some part of a ridiculous premise, because those same conservatives are so baffled by the outrageous aspects of the initial liberal attack. Such is the case with the now infamous “cancer ad” of the summer of 2012.

  With this ad, produced by a pro Obama Super PAC, political discourse and advertising surely hit an all time low. Unfortunately, proper political response hit an all time low, as well. Now, of course, you know the cancer ad. It pretty much blamed former CEO Mitt Romney and Bain Capital for the cancer death of the wife a former employee of a former company that was a former Bain corporate investment.

  To quickly recount, the ad featured the tale of former steel worker Joe Soptic. In an unrelated fun fact, Soptic just happens to be a long time Democrat operative. It’s a small world, after all. The ad informs us that Soptic’s wife tragically died of cancer in 2006 “after Soptic had been laid off” from a company Bain Capital was trying to rescue. And by “after Soptic had been laid off,” I mean long after, and yet the ad clearly linked the lay off and the tragic death. The ad does not bother with the following minor logistical details: Joe was laid off in 2001 when his plant closed. His wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, and died shortly after that. Moreover, Soptic was laid off because he had voluntarily turned down an offer of a buy out earlier. Now at the time of his lay-off, Joe’s wife was employed elsewhere, and she had her own health insurance.

  So if you’re having a hard time connecting the dots to Mitt Romney here, you are not alone. Frankly, it should not matter if the dots do connect, but more on that in a minute.

  Meanwhile, the dots actually do get even further apart. The decision by Bain to shutter this plant was made long after Mitt had departed day-to-day involvement with the company. The man calling the shots at the time was a big time Obama supporter. So if you’re scoring at home, a company Mitt no longer worked for shut down a company that Mrs. Soptic never worked for, based on the decision of a big liberal CEO who never supported Mitt in the first place. A few years later, Mrs. Soptic is fired from a business unrelated to Mitt or Bain in any way, and does not secure other health coverage. Several years after that, she contracts cancer and passes away.

  Naturally, Mitt is to blame for Mrs. Soptic’s tragic death. I imagine George W. Bush and Halliburton are also in there somewhere. Please remember that this associative equation is brought to you by the same liberal geniuses who have never noticed any causal relationship between drilling moratoriums and high gas prices.

  The entire episode was breathtaking on may levels, and yet so typical of liberal political hacks when they start to get desperate. That it might have worked on some people shows a typical trait of liberal voters, which is that their intellects are in neutral while their emotions and self-righteousness are in over drive.

  What makes it frightening is that not only was the ad itself a new low in tone, factuality and logic, the response from many conservatives was almost as bad. In what may be the weakest political attack response ever, Romney advisor Andrea Saul blithely said that had Mrs. Soptic lived in Massachusetts, she would have been covered by Romney Care. With political instincts like that, it comes as no surprise that prior to working for Romney, Ms. Saul had been part of the disastrous John McCain and Charlie Crist campaigns. What’s wrong, Mitt, were all the Wunderkind advisors from Dole / Kemp and Bush / Quayle too busy?

  Now you may be wondering why we’ve wandered off on a bit of a rabbit trail and jumped on a Republican strategist in a book about liberals. I am so glad you asked. Many Republican strategists are themselves liberal, and many others willingly accept the liberal premise in every argument. The same is true of many Republican office holders, as well. The pathetic Andrea Saul fits somewhere in that equation, which is why she immediately bought the premise that Mrs. Soptic’s health care should be the responsibility of someone else, thus her death must be the fault of someone else. Let me translate her response: Mitt and I can be good liberals too! There is no other possible explanation for her responding the way she did, unless she is just deeply stupid. I submit that the most inexperienced Tea Party spokesperson in the history of the movement would have never made such a colossal blunder.

  Another factor, of course, is the insidious nature of all campaigns that insists on nearly worshipping the named candidate, and that includes never, ever admitting to a mistake. Thus Saul obviously harbors the need to defend Romney Care, and BAM—this self defeating response is the natural inclination. And yet, there is as even more dangerous trap the liberals planted for conservatives in this episode.

  That trap is getting caught up with the question of when Mitt was at Bain and when he wasn’t, and whether or not the cancer ad was just an out and out lie. Well, of course it was, but that’s not the point. I mean, in normal times that would be the point, but these are not normal times and this is not a normal ad and the liberals in charge now are not normal liberals. The point is this: so what if Mitt was at Bain at the time? So what if it was his personal decision to pull the plug on this company?

  Have we let the liberals drag us so far off the course that we are going to simply buy into the notion that companies bear responsibility for their workers’ spouses’ health care five years down the road? This is ridiculous. If we buy this notion, then we have just rewritten the mission statement for every present and future American business. That mission is now to provide healthcare at all costs. Oh, if you can produce some steel or some meals or some thing-a-ma-jigs along the way, even better. But health care is the end all, be all.

  Which, when you consider that Obama Care is also going to do that, you begin to realize that liberals live in a world full of the incessant need for more “teachers, fire fighters and cops,” as well as free condoms and transgender health needs. Of course, many liberals do think that anyway, which is why I can’t figure out if this cancer ad was the dumbest thing they’ve ever done, or the smartest. If they have co-opted us into this premise, it may well be the smartest thing they’ve ever done.

  Which brings us to the supposed justification for running this ad in the first place. Every attack on Mitt’s record at Bain, including the stupefying attacks from the Gingrich and Perry camps in the primary season, are said to be fair game because Romney is using his private sector experience as the basis for his bona fides. Thus, when he lays folks off at Bain, it supposedly proves that he is not a job creator.

  Excuse me?

  On this score, I got into some very heated arguments with
some inside-the-Beltway consultants over the Bain attack ads, especially that socialist manifesto “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” film. This film was purchased and promoted by some associates of mine. Their justification was the liberal argument about Bain and jobs. Keep in mind that these are professionals who were working for a Super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich. And yet, they bought into the theory that since Bain laid people off while Romney was in charge, Romney is not a job creator. The liberal model had been accepted. This particular template was that the proper role of any business and any CEO is to hire or at least retain workers under any conditions and for any reason.

  Taken a step further, this thinking indicates that any decision to ever down size or outsource is a bad decision. It is de facto evidence that you cannot be trusted as a job creator. What in the name of Walter Williams were these people thinking? Such ideas could be talking points right out of Occupy Wall Street. Worse still, you might hear the same thing from Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz. And yet, this was considered a wise strategy by consultants working for candidates who were ostensibly running to the right of Romney. It was, of course, a miserable failure.