Immature?

I'm sure everyone has been following the drama which has unfolded in the last few days concerning General McChrystal and his comments in Rolling Stone, which ended up forcing his resignation and effectively ending his distinguished career. Let me first say that those of you who know me know that I am a former member of the United States Army, so I know a little more about a soldier's responsibilities than, say, Robert Gibbs. That being said, the general was wrong, and he shouldn't have said what he said. Like it or not, Barack Obama is the commander-in-chief of the Unites States' armed forces, and we have a long and proud tradition of civilian control of our military. He had no other choice but to resign, and if he hadn't, Obama would have had no choice except to fire him.
All that being said, I have a few problems with the way it all went down. First of all, the character assassination on the part of this White House was an obvious attempt to make sure that the people would understand what a "rogue" McChrystal was, so his firing would be justified. However, for Robert Gibbs to stand up there in front of the nation and claim that General McChrystal was too "immature" for command not only goes way over the line, but is perhaps one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard come out of the mouth of a press secretary. Here is a man who has devoted his entire adult life to the service of his country. He is a decorated combat veteran who has expertise in "special ops", or in other words, he's done the dirty stuff. He's seen blood, and he has risen through the ranks until achieving the rank of a general officer. Immature? All I can say to Mr. Gibbs is, "How dare you!" He should be ashamed of himself and he should have apologized to this man who, due to his long and distinguished service should be referred to as a hero. The American people will decide this eventually. Will they support Obama and his cronies, or will they come to realize that it is really this administration which is peppered with immature men who never truly left their adolescence behind them? The first test comes in November, but in the meantime, study the pictures and come to your own conclusion. They depict President Obama in a candid moment, Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, and General McChrystal.

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste!

I've been thinking a lot about Barack Obama's lackluster response to the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. If you recall, it was almost two weeks before he declared that it was possibly something of "national significance", and as of yesterday it's been over 50 days and he STILL hasn't talked to the CEO of BP. His reason for that was that he felt that the CEO would tell him, "what he wanted to hear", and that he wasn't about "words, but action". Now, as has been pointed out, he had no problem talking to the leaders in the banking industry. He had no problem discussing the automobile industry's woes with the leaders in that field. Yet why wouldn't he talk to the head of a company which, by the administration's own admission, controls the technology with which this disaster might be stopped? Why not coordinate action with this person? After all, aren't these the two executives in charge, one of BP and the other of the United States?
This administration used the crisis of the recession to nationalize the automobile industry. It used the same crisis to basically nationalize the banks and impose huge new taxes on the financial sector. Obama has installed pay "czars" to monitor the pay in the financial sector and in effect decide who makes what. If this isn't Socialism (or even Communism), then what is? Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, was overheard prior to these actions saying that you should, "...never let a good crisis go to waste". This administration didn't let the financial crisis (which may have been overblown for political purposes and got out of hand because of it) go to waste--they used it to nationalize several industries. On top of that, through hook and crook they rammed a health care bill down the throats of Americans which enabled them to grab control of one sixth of the American economy in addition to the fields they had already usurped.
I'm starting to wonder if Obama has let this spiral out of control for the same reason--so the people in his administration can grab more power and control. They are already taking control through executive fiat--banning offshore drilling and the like, and now they are pointing to this disaster as the reason for more intrusive and power-grabbing legislation, the so-called Cap and Trade bill. This bill would impose huge new taxes on the American people and give the Obama administration sweeping new powers to regulate everything from automobile emissions to backyard grills, along with the powers to police those activities.
Take it one step further, however, and you can't help thinking that maybe there is even something more sinister afoot. Think about this: all of the states being affected by the spill are "red" states or, in other words, Republican leaning. By overwhelming majorities the people in these states reject Barack Obama and his policies. Could he be using this crisis to destroy their livelihoods and cause them to become dependent on government? I can't believe that a country which can put a man on the moon and map the human genome and develop vaccines and build aircraft which are invisible to radar can't cap an out of control oil well. Maybe we can. Maybe we just don't want to. Even as the governments of the affected states are calling for a resumption of drilling and a return of the people's lifestyles, the federal government, led by Barack Obama, continues to shut down operations in the Gulf and the financial viability of the people who live there. Maybe they are planning how to set up the soup kitchens or maybe this president hasn't yet decided whose "ass to kick". Whatever the reasons, it's becoming obvious that this administration isn't letting this crisis go to waste either.

"I am not a crook"

Richard Nixon, as most people know, was forced from office by the Watergate scandal. Just as a quick refresher, it was called this because the Democratic National Committee had an office in the Watergate complex which was broken into by operatives of the Republican party. Nixon had nothing to do with the original crime. However, once he found out, instead of coming clean and firing those involved, he became involved in a cover-up, which is a crime also known as obstruction of justice. Presidents can be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors", and Nixon was on the way to having that happen, as the opposition party (the Democrats) hounded him and beat the drums on this story for almost two years. Rather than face that, he decided to resign, and did so in 1974.
Now, 36 years later, another president, Barack Obama, has put himself in danger by possibly engaging in criminal activity. In Pennsylvania, Representative Joe Sestak, who was running against Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, claimed he was offered a job by the White House if he would quit the race. He turned it down, and went on to defeat Mr. Specter. This is a violation of a federal law called the Hatch Act, which among other things specifically prohibits "use of official authority or influence to interfere with an election." However, President Obama isn't foolish, so after months of stonewalling by the President's spokesperson, the White House finally issued a statement saying that it was actually Bill Clinton who offered Sestak the job. Hmmm. Didn't anyone notice it odd that Obama and Clinton had lunch earlier on the same day of this announcement. Is this just coincidence or did they need to get their stories straight?
Now it comes out that Andrew Romanoff, a candidate for the Senate running against the party favorite Michael Bennett in Colorado, was also offered a job to quit the race. "The White House acknowledged Thursday that deputy chief of staff Jim Messina suggested that Romanoff drop his bid against incumbent Michael Bennet, and suggested that he seek one of three possible government jobs." (Russ Britt writing for Market Watch today). So now there are two people who have been offered jobs by the White House. (I wonder how many more there are we don't know about). The president's spokesperson has said the president knew nothing of these offers, although the first one also involved Rahm Emmanuel, the chief of staff, and the second the deputy chief of staff Jim Messina.
That the Hatch Act has been violated is unquestioned. But what was Barack Obama's part in all of this? If he had Bill Clinton cover for him, he is guilty of obstruction of justice. If he knew about either offer, he is guilty of conspiracy to violate a federal law. Both of these are crimes. One is a felony. We have been assured by the president's spokesperson that "nothing inappropriate happened", although he won't be clear on exactly what did happen. But once, long ago, we were also assured by our then president that, "...the American people need to know that their president is not a crook. And I am not a crook." It wasn't true then. Is it true now?

We Have the Death Penalty--Let's Use It

While I think that the budget deficit is the #1 threat to the future of this country, crime isn't far behind. If you look closely at the statistics, they are shocking. A woman is raped every two minutes in this country, someone is murdered every forty-nine minutes. The cost of crime in this country is estimated to be close to ONE TRILLION DOLLARS per year when all the costs are figured in--police costs, trial costs, medical costs, lost wages and the like. But beyond that, crime has changed the way we live. When I was a child, we thought nothing of taking off all day long on our bikes, and our parents' only admonition to us was to "be home by supper." There were no worries. America was a different country then.
Some people will argue that the crime percentages, when looked at on a per capita basis, are very close to where they were 50 or 60 years ago, and that really, then, the dangers were the same then but we just didn't realize it. In one way this is true, but it overlooks one very important factor. If the per capita rate is roughly the same but the population has doubled, well then, that means there are twice as many criminals. Since our land mass isn't increasing, this also means that the number of predators per square mile has doubled as well. Don't believe me? Run a check of registered sex offenders living within a 5 mile radius of your house. After you see that map, you'll lock your children in the house and throw away the key.
There are anywhere from fifteen to twenty thousand murders per year in this country. In a country of 300 million, that's really not a lot, but think of it this way. This means that in three years more Americans are murdered than were killed in all of Vietnam. By any definition, this is a war. There are real casualties. Some people have decided that society is their hunting ground, a place where they can act out their deepest and darkest fantasies of rape and murder.
The point is this. If the density of criminals continues to increase, then all parts of the country will eventually resemble our inner cities as far as how dangerous it is to live there. I have a very simple solution, and it's already in place. It's called the death penalty. We have it and we need to use it.
The people who commit murder and mayhem in this country have, in my opinion, lost any rights they had. We need to give them a fair trial and if they are found guilty of rape or murder, we need to execute them immediately. Oh, we could put in safeguards to make sure they got a fair trial, maybe one appeal to a higher court, but then we need to punish them with the ultimate deterrent--their death.
People will say that if we do this, we will execute an innocent person sooner or later, and they would probably be right. That would be terrible, I agree, and I would hate to be that person. But we could really reduce that by only allowing the death penalty when there is irrefutable evidence, such as DNA, or the perpetrator being caught in the act. Other convictions could be given life in prison with NO parole. We also need to ask how many innocent people are killed each year by repeat offenders. The answer is way more than would accidentally be executed. I know this from personal experience. Many years ago, someone close to me was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. She was kept alive for five days while the freak tortured her and raped her over and over and, after tiring of abusing her, shot her in the face and killed her. It turned out he had been arrested for a previous murder, found innocent by reason of insanity, sent to a mental institution where he was "cured" and released into society. He kidnapped my friend a couple of days after his release. If he had been executed, she would be alive today.
This brings me to another question--why can't we execute someone who is "mentally incompetent"? They were competent enough to commit a heinous crime. If they don't understand they're about to be executed, so what? Then they won't be scared. Sounds humane to me.
These types of violent criminals are a cancer in our society. Like cancer cells, if you root them out and kill them, eventually the cancer will be cured. However, also like cancer, if you allow any to live, sooner or later the problem will grow back and eventually kill the patient. Unfortunately, in my metaphor, the patient is our society.
So if we start executing these maggots, eventually there won't be any more murderers and rapists, and if there are a few left over, they will be too scared to try anything. Our prisons will be emptied of the most violent and depraved, and they can get back to the business of trying to rehabilitate those convicted of lesser crimes.
If I were to ever run for president, one of my platforms would be that there would be a bloodbath if I was elected. However, it would no longer be a bloodbath of the innocent, but one of the guilty. Within three years, I would promise, your wives, sisters, daughters and girlfriends would be able to walk down any street in America at any time of the day or night with no fear. That would be my goal, and I think the people would support it.
One final point. The reason the death penalty doesn't work as well right now is because there is no connection between the crime and the punishment. When a person is executed 15 or 20 years after a crime is committed, there is no linkage, and sometimes the perpetrator actually becomes a "victim" in the eyes of the press.
To support my various contentions, I need only point at Richard Allen Davis.
He is the man who was convicted of kidnapping Polly Klaas from her home during a slumber party. He took the beautiful little twelve year old girl, savagely raped her, then strangled her to death. He had many previous convictions, including kidnapping with the intent to rape, assault, robbery, attempted kidnapping and the like. His rap sheet went back more than twenty years. What was he doing a free man? Had he been executed after the first kidnapping and rape attempt, rather than being sentenced to 25 years then released early, that beautiful girl would be alive. So what did this monster do in court? When his sentence was read, he gave the finger to the court and the judge and intimated that Polly had been sexually abused by her father. Oh, yeah, he abducted and murdered this little girl in 1996. As of this writing, he still has not been executed.

In Defense of Barack Obama?

The latest drumbeat is that Barack Obama isn't engaged enough concerning the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which is decimating plant and animal life along the Louisiana and Alabama coasts. It now threatens Florida and possibly the Atlantic seaboard. The argument goes that Obama hasn't shown anger, or he hasn't shown compassion, or he hasn't done enough to "plug the damn hole". I have a problem with this. This is a disaster of the nth magnitude, and it isn't in one man's power to fix it. Oh, yes, he could show more engagement than he has. And he could be a little less politically tone deaf and lay off the parties and the rounds of golf while this is happening. But really, there is nothing he himself can do to go plug the damn hole. Do we expect him to put on a diving suit and descend to 5000 feet and cap the out of control well? Of course not.
The current and growing backlash at Obama himself, however, is of his own making. George Bush could no more stop a category 5 hurricane from destroying New Orleans, a city built BELOW the water level of two great bodies, than Barack Obama can cap an out of control oil well. Yet Obama and the Democrats hammered away at Mr. Bush relentlessly about Mr. Bush's inability to stop that disaster. They portrayed him as a man not up to the job of the presidency if he couldn't handle Katrina's destruction. So Mr. Obama and the Democrats are the ones who set the bar so high that now even things beyond the president's control are considered the president's responsibility. So, looking at it from that perspective, Mr. Obama deserves all the negative press he is now getting concerning his inability to do anything about this catastrophe. It is his Katrina, but only because he defined it that way.
Oh, one other thing. Is the aftermath of Katrina now fixed because Obama became president? Of course not. Do you know how much of the $700 BILLION stimulus bill was earmarked for rebuilding New Orleans? You got it--$0! So, in his bashing of Bush and all that followed, Obama not only set the bar so high that he is now feeling the wrath of the people (and the media--finally!), but he has shown himself to be a hypocrite who can get elected shouting about someone's inability to repair the damage from a natural disaster, but who then does nothing about it himself.