A Hero Recognized

Mark Noonan54 Comments

From a White House press release:

On May 16, President Barack Obama will award Specialist Leslie H. Sabo, Jr., U.S. Army, the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry.

Specialist Sabo will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroic actions in combat on May 10, 1970, while serving as a rifleman in Company D, 3d Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division in Se San, Cambodia.

On that day, when he and his platoon were ambushed by a large enemy force, Specialist Sabo immediately charged the enemy position, killing several enemy soldiers.  He then assaulted an enemy flanking force, successfully drawing their fire away from friendly soldiers and ultimately forcing the enemy to retreat.  While securing a re-supply of ammunition, an enemy grenade landed nearby.  Specialist Sabo picked it up, threw it, and shielded a wounded comrade with his own body – absorbing the brunt of the blast and saving his comrade’s life.  Although wounded by the grenade blast, he continued to charge the enemy’s bunker.  After receiving several serious wounds from automatic weapons fire, he crawled towards the enemy emplacement and, when in position, threw a grenade into the bunker.  The resulting explosion silenced the enemy fire, but also ended Specialist Sabo’s life.  His indomitable courage and complete disregard for his own safety saved the lives of many of his platoon members.

Specialist Sabo’s widow, Rose Mary Sabo-Brown and his brother, George Sabo, will join the President at the White House to commemorate his example of selfless service and sacrifice.

We are a nation as long as we can find men like Sabo among us.

What is Fairness?

Retired Spook117 Comments

Arthur Brooks new book, The Road to Freedom, is causing quite a stir, and hearing an interview of Brooks this week reminded me of an essay last fall that was inspired by Brooks previous book.  The essay dwelled on the philosophical difference in the way the concept of fairness is viewed by Conservatives and Liberals.

There are basically two ways to define “fairness” in an economic sense where there is mal-distribution of income. One is “redistributive fairness” which President Obama and other liberals in and out of congress favor. The idea is through taxes or financial favoritism to take from wealthier Americans and give to less wealthy Americans and thereby to even out, to some degree, the income people have regardless of whether they have earned it.

The other definition is “meritocracy fairness” which holds that people should receive monetary compensation based on hard work, ingenuity, and innovation – i.e. the money that people make should come as a result of merit.

In his 2010 book, The Battle: The Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future, Arthur Brooks states that inequality is “fair” if it is based on merit and equality would be “unfair” if what someone has earned on merit is redistributed to others who have not earned it. There should be penalties, not rewards, for corruption, stupidity, laziness, and incompetence. Where does the public come down in this? According to a comprehensive survey, 89% of Americans believe in “meritocracy fairness” and only 11% opt for “redistributive fairness.” People in the past, our ancestors, came to the United States for economic opportunity, not for redistribution of wealth.

Those numbers, to me, are staggering, and just completely belie the notion by nearly every Liberal who has ever posted here that they are in the mainstream of American political thought, and it’s Conservatives who represent the kook fringe.  It’s generally accepted that Liberals account for about 20% of the U.S. population, so almost half of those who self-identify as Liberals don’t even agree with redistributive fairness.

I think almost everyone who is paying the slightest bit of attention to this election cycle agrees that it’s one of the most important elections in generations, perhaps, as some contend, the most important since 1860.  November 6th will, I believe, be a referendum on how we as a people view not only the concept of fairness but the overall role, size and scope of government.  We are at a fork in the road, and this election will, I also believe, determine whether we take the road to serfdom or the road to freedom.

Obama Adds His Name Into Official White House Biographies of Past Presidents

Matt Margolis23 Comments

Have you heard this one yet?

Many of President Obama’s fervent devotees are young enough not to have much memory of the political world before the arrival of The One. Coincidentally, Obama himself feels the same way—and the White House’s official website reflects that.

The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on http://www.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t—it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford). Here are a few examples:

Many call it creep, narcissistic, etc. etc… Sure, it’s all that. But I think there’s more to it, than Obama’s ego.

If you Google any president in history, their White House biograpy is one of the top five results. Could it be that this is merely a clever Google-bomb strategy?

Unless, of course, you think Obama is above turning the taxpayer-funded White House website into a campaign device.

The Easiest Prediction in the World: That Liberals Will Fail

Mark Noonan55 Comments

First off, a blast from the past – January 1st, 2011:

…the Californians wanted it. People get the government they deserve, and they usually get it good and hard. California is America’s Greece and when the collapse hits, hopefully a majority will wake up to the fact that liberalism is a failure.

And, now – from the New York Times:

The state budget shortfall in California has increased dramatically in the last six months, forcing state officials to assemble a series of new spending cuts that are likely to mean further reductions to schools, health care and other social programs already battered by nearly five years of budget retrenchment, state officials announced on Saturday.

Gov. Jerry Brown, disclosing the development in a video posted on YouTube, said that California’s shortfall was now projected to be $16 billion, up from $9.2 billion in January. Mr. Brown said that he would propose a revised budget on Monday to deal with it…

Given that this is the New Y0rk Times, you do have to be careful – the budget shortfall didn’t “increase dramatically”; it was built in.  When Jerry and the liberals of the California legislature passed their budget they made a whole bunch of absurd assumptions both as to revenues and expenditures…that they would be, respectively, much higher and much lower than what has actually happened.  Any real analyst would have predicted this right from the start –  or, even, just a moderately informed amateur, like me.

The key to understanding what is wrong with America is to understand three things:

1.  We spend too much money via government.

2.  Our debt is too large to be managed given our current ability to create wealth.

3.  Our ability to create wealth is hampered endlessly by the tax and regulatory system.

All three of these problems are liberal-created problems:  it is liberals who want to spend too much (yes, plenty of Republicans join in, but liberals always lead the way…as is shown by the fact that they increased federal spending by a trillion per year since Obama took office).  Because we spend too much, we end up borrowing too much – and now our debt (federal, State and local) is so large that, given our current base of wealth, it simply cannot be repaid (when you factor in the un-funded mandates).  Our only way out of this mess is to cut spending and grow wealth – but we can’t grow wealth effectively because liberals have erected a positively Byzantine tax and regulatory system which rewards failure and punishes effort and success.

Liberalism must go if America is to survive.  Remember this as we approach November.

 

 

 

::::Sniff:::::

Leo Pusateri97 Comments

So… Ol’ Joltin’ Joe Biden gets taken out to the woodshed for just forcing poor, hapless, Barack Hussein Obama to come out of his closet for gay marriage–earlier than he had planned…

This announcement was so unplanned, in fact, that merely hours after the announcement was made, I get a fundraising email from the Obama campaign:

Image

Which has a link, that takes you to this: Image

Yep… that was no doubt a heartfelt, unplanned, sincere, off-the-cuff, “aw shucks, ya got me” courageous coming out of the closet moment for Barry, wasn’t it?

And “Rufus” is so beside himself-just so— :::sniff::: happy.. brings a tear to your eye, don’t it?

Criminy.

Obama Takes Dick Cheney’s Position on Gay Marriage

Matt Margolis78 Comments

So, Obama announces that he’s for gay marriage (did anyone really believe otherwise) with the caveat that states on to decide on the issue. Okay. Hardly a gutsy move, especially when you consider the fact that the the position he’s taking on gay marriage is basically the same that former Vice-President Dick Cheney took… three years ago.

(June 1, 2009) Former vice president Richard Cheney waded into another simmering public debate today, suggesting he supports legalizing gay marriage as long as the issue is decided by the states rather than the federal government.

Cheney, whose youngest daughter is a lesbian with a longtime partner, said during an appearance at the National Press Club that “people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish.”

He said he does not support federal action allowing gay marriages, however. “Historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level,” Cheney said. “It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis.”

Cheney has long departed from conservative orthodoxy on the issue of gay marriage, saying during the 2000 presidential campaign that the matter should be left to the states. He also prompted an uproar during the 2004 race when he appeared to distance himself from a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which was strongly supported by his boss, George W. Bush.

I don’t recall Cheney getting any praise from those pretending that Obama’s position is so groundbreaking.

May 8th Primary Election Open Thread

Retired Spook166 Comments

In honor of the MASSIVE victory (61-39%) of Indiana State Treasurer, Richard Mourdock over 6-term U.S. Senator Richard Lugar in yesterday’s primary election, an open thread to discuss how the various 2012 campaigns are shaping up around the country. Less than 30 days before the recall election in Wisconsin, Governor Walker will go up against the mayor of Milwaukee, whom Walker beat in 2010 by 5 points.

Did Obama Wait Nearly A Year To Take Out Bin Laden for Political Reasons?

Matt Margolis229 Comments

Talk about karma… Obama isn’t just experience backlash for politicizing the death of Osama bin Laden, but new details are emerging that contradict the White House version of the story. This week we learned of a memo indicating Obama has preemptively assigned blame to the military had the raid gone bad, and other details about how Leon Panetta had actually issued the order the take out bin Laden, and that Obama was essentially “overruled” in taking action.

Now retired Top General Jack Keane reveals that Obama knew of Osama bin Laden’s location for nearly a year before he was taken out.

One has to ask why would Obama hesitate to act for nearly a year? Was it really about confirmation of the target? Doubtful. I think the answer is obvious, based on Obama’s current reelection strategy to take credit for the raid. Obama wanted to hold off as long as possible in order to gain the most political advantage from bin Laden’s death. He did get a measurable, but short-lived bump in the polls, but Obama is now trying desperately to keep the event in the voters’ minds, which is a hard task when they are preoccupied with losing their jobs or trying hard to afford to fill up their gas tanks.

Obama is lucky that his hesitation didn’t result in bin Laden’s whereabouts being lost again.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:  Looks like Obama blew the cover of a Brit intelligence asset in order to score a political point.  Liberals, of course, were outraged when the non-covert Plame was “exposed”…bet we won’t hear a peep from them about this.

The Crusades, Reconsidered

Mark Noonan44 Comments

From an excerpt of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, Tyranny of Cliches’:

…Until fairly recently, historically speaking, Muslims used to brag about being the winners of the Crusades, not the victims of it. That is if they talked about them at all. “The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineff ectual re­sponse to the jihad—a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war,” writes Bernard Lewis, the greatest living historian of Islam in the English language (and perhaps any language).  Historian Thomas Madden puts it more directly, “Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: The cru­sades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.”…

You can, of course, bring up some bad things which happened during the Crusades – most notably the massacre of the both the Muslim and Jewish population of Jerusalem when the Christians took the city in 1099 as well as Richard the Lionheart’s massacre of 2,700 Muslims at Acre during the Third Crusade.  Bad things.  Should not have been done.  No decent person in 2012 would ever contemplate doing any such thing.  But, by the standards of 11th and 12th century warfare, not at all remarkable.  And any Muslim who wants to whine about it is directed to what Muslims did when they took Constantinople in 1453…many centuries later, when we were all supposed to be much more civilized.

So, I leave aside such complaints – war is always nasty and the hard men of the 11th and 12th centuries, on both sides, did many a cruel act.  But the main facts cannot be disputed:  the Crusades were a counter-attack.  The Muslim attack upon Christianity began, entirely unprovoked, in 634 when some rapacious Muslim barbarians from the Arabian peninsula launched what was at first no more than a large scale plunder raid in to Christian Syria.  Quickly noticing how weak the Christian forces were (the Christian government of the area – the Byzantine Empire – was greatly weakened by a recently concluded, 20 year long war with Persia), the Muslims just poured in to a military vacuum.  For centuries thereafter, Muslim armies conquered Christian lands, massacred and enslaved Christians, treated Christians like dirt when they didn’t murder or enslave them and generally acted like pirates.  Europe was weak from the 7th to the 10th century as the new, Christian civilization developed upon the debris of the old Greco-Roman civilization…and that build up was hampered by the “barbarian wars” which absorbed the energy of Europe often over a period of centuries.  Because of this, the Christians could do no more than hold on…once Europe recovered a bit, there was a chance to push back…and it wasn’t just a push in to the middle east (though that was by far the more famous part), but also a push against the Muslims in Spain.

The only thing bad about the Crusades was that they ultimately failed – they did not extirpate the Mohammedan heresy.  And it is high time that people started to learn the truth about the Crusades.