Former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura visited wounded soldiers and family members of those involved in the Fort Hood shootings. The former Commander and Chief thanked army and hospital personnel for their service and the “amazing care they’re providing”. What? No cameras, no photo-op?
Admonition assures us it’s simply a difference in style:
I’m sure the current Commander and Chief will get around to visiting Fort Hood and the families; just as soon as he’s finished wrangling enough votes to ram healthcare through. You know, priorities and all. And of course he’s busy trying to reassure the Muslim world that radical Islam had nothing to do with the attacks yesterday, he’s a busy guy.
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Just a contrast in styles I’m sure, but remember the President’s famous “photo-op” with dead soldiers the other day? Bush used to pay his respects without cameras present, I’m just saying.
Well, Bush just did that because all those deaths were his fault, but Cap’n Hopen’change, he’s not responsible for Afghanistan. After all, he just inherited the situation so his random, few visitations, lugging all those cameras to Andrews Air Force base…well, they’re simply the unjust burden of having to clean up after the other guy.
Meanwhile, Dan Riehl is reporting on our current Commander in Chief’s busy Saturday schedule:
November 7, 2009
President Obama’s Saturday Schedule
11:25AM THE PRESIDENT addresses the House Democratic Caucus - Cannon House Office Building
2:30PM THE PRESIDENT makes a statement to the press on Health Care - Rose Garden
2:45PM THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart The White House en route Camp David - South Lawn
Hmm, Dan got that information from Fox News, so we know it’s probably biased.
Besides, those are crucial moments in Obama’s presidency. Meeting with the Democratic Caucus? Well, he has to be fair, after all. He promised a bi-partisan presidency and all those meetings he's been having with the Republican Caucus gives people the wrong message.
And the weekend at Camp David? Extremely important that our CiC be well-rested. I mean, he doesn’t have to go to Fort Hood. He visited Walter Reed Hospital the other day, isn’t that enough?
As for skipping the launch of the USS New York, the new ship fabricated from some of the steel of the Twin Towers…gosh, he can’t do everything and still play golf. Besides, a fly-by of an empty Air Force One to grab some pictures would do just as well.
That would remind people he’s still around and yet he’d have enough time to get in a few round of golf. First, though, he has to set up the fall guy to take the blame just in case jittery New Yorkers get all wee wee’d up about a low-flying plane.
16 comments:
One word: SCUM.
GoV is a very important source of information for those of us who are worried about islamic encroachment and wish to fight it. I cannot praise the website enough in this regard.
However, I would respectfully mention that the numerous entries on United States local politics is getting a little trite, and in many cases diverges considerably from GoV's mission statement. This time the entry is not completely disconnected from the mission statement in content, but the spirit of it is another installment in a long line of tirades against the current president. I think entries such as this one serve to undermine the credibility of GoV as a source of factual information on islamic encroachment.
Many thanks for the good work, and you may expect considerable material support from me in the future.
MRiggs
mriggs, a short while back, I probably would have agreed with you because I view Islam itself as the predominant and most urgent threat that must be addressed.
However, GoV and many other sites have tirelessly, and too often thanklessly, documented the well-established political campaign conducted by both sides of the aisle to appease and downplay Islam's existential threat to all the ideals that Western culture holds dear.
This sort of treason is both newsworthy and a legitimate adjunct to any and all coverage of Islamic jihad and countering the Muslim threat.
The time is fast approaching where there will little to no moral difference between those who facilitate Muslim infiltration of Western cultures and the Islamic jihadists themselves.
mriggs-
GoV is above all an American site, and my concerns about our commonweal will often dominate my posting, especially in moments of crisis, or in times where political change brings about possibility.
I haven't blogged on the outcome of our recent by-elections, but I would have had not the massacre interfered.
While you complain of "the numerous entries on United States local politics ... getting a little trite" we also get complaints and emails that people don't visit very often anymore because we neglect American issues.
So either way, someone is certain to be displeased. For myself, I will continue to post on those things I find interesting enough to have something to say.
For example, had I felt better, I'd planned to do a whole post devoted to the USS New York, from its building to its launching in New Orleans to its trip to New York City. I was going to discuss how the shipyard workers felt, how moved the NY politicians were, etc. No doubt the whole thing would've bored you no end, but to me it's a compelling story.
It's a good thing I'm not able to post more often or you'd really be unhappy. But other readers and emailers would've told me how glad they were I was finally devoting some space to my own country.
C'est la vie, mriggs.
MRIGGS, there are two priorities right now: (1) return the United States to its Constitution and all it stands for, and reassert its PROPER role in the world (2) protect Geert Wilders in Europe - because without those two elements in place, Europe will never recover from its self-inflicted damage. And you'll be dead, or a dhimmi slave.
Zenster-
A rare time when I disagree with you.
Two words- SCUM BAG.
Wake Up - I whole-heartedly agree with the first part of your first point. The return to constitutionality is very important. I am so proud of what American patriots are doing right now, I can't tell you. If 2 million people could come to Washington DC, then human spirit is not dead yet.
However, I equally strongly disagree with the second part of your first point, i.e. America assuming its "proper" role in the world. Oh, no. No more neo-con thinking. No more expansionist dreams. I find an isolationist foreign policy much more congenial and healthy. It chimes much better with my idea of justice. Let Iraqis, Afganis, and the like live how they want. I would try to cut them off from all sources of Western knowledge and know-how (to the extent that it is possible in this day and age). If they plan something against us, I would bomb them from the air. But no more foreign adventures and trying to spread democracy, unless absolutely necessary.
The danger of Islam to the U.S. and danger to the U.S. of the "outreacher" to (appeaser of) Islam occupying the White House = same thing.
Félicie---
I think you will find an isolationaist America even more of a global problem than the nation who saw its job to keep everyone safe.
Russia and China will control the seas and the oil. Iraqi's oil for example, is being sold to China.
Our nuclear armaments will disappear. So the Continent of Europe will have to take up the slack of its own defense after years of not having to put out much in the way of money or personnel for self-defense. America will be a no-show unless we're there to chat.
India will be preoccupied with its own problems with Pakistan. And Pakistan will get swallowed by the Taliban, as will the Afghans.
The Middle East will be so scared they'll start calling on Israel for help.
It will be an interesting new world. And America will be bad for not interfering.
This won't happen next year, but it's definitely coming. Ask the Eastern Europeans.
Obviously it is up to the owners of the blog what they publish on it. I don't want to get into an acrimonious debate about it, I have said my piece.
A more important point, which I have made before, is this:
The fight with the islamist infiltrators is a battle for survival; a fight to the death. If we, who have the will to fight the enemy, at the same time appear willing to fight other sections of society (such as "the left") on similar principles, we will drive them into the arms of the islamists. They will conclude that we intend to annihilate them and that their fate is thus tied to the success of the islamists and join with them in an unbreakable alliance. That is a battle we cannot win, and the armed forces of the nation at stake in each instance will side against us.
To win this war we need to be at least as smart as the enemy. They are careful to only engage a tiny portion at a time of the society they are trying to destroy. Let's not be stupider than that by trying to take on everybody at the same time.
Dymphna, I do hear you. These are dangers. This is why, I believe, righteous nations should join forces (in a defensive way). I understand that, in order to be defensive, you must sometimes act offensively. But no more grand schemes of exporting democracy. An iron curtain in the spread of knowledge would be a sane policy, IMO. Let them re-invent the wheel.
I hope that Russia will eventually join the right side. As for China, I don't believe in China, in the long run. Yes, I know, they have a high IQ. But despite the millenia of uninterrupted civilization, they can't hold a candle to the West. Something is missing there.
What's missing in China is property rights. Part of the success of western thought is that it protected property rights, including the right to consider your own body as property in extremis. The sanctity of the individual only makes sense if that individual is the total owner of his own self.
in China, the individual is a difficult concept. They just don't see people the same way we do and it shows up in the casual brutality displayed throughout China's history. It's not a surprise that communism stuck so well in China, sharing the common belief that the individual is the property of the state. If anything, Maoism is less brutal than the system it replaced, not that it says much.
It's a fundamental difference in their culture. On top of which, whilst their average IQ is higher than the west, they have a much narrower IQ spread. We get more dunces but we also get more geniuses. The factor of lack of individuality, a culture that disdains theoretical study and the non-appearance of "super-genius" IQ is why they stagnated for a thousand years whilst we powered ahead.
mriggs said:
The fight with the islamist infiltrators is a battle for survival; a fight to the death. If we, who have the will to fight the enemy, at the same time appear willing to fight other sections of society (such as "the left") on similar principles, we will drive them into the arms of the islamists. They will conclude that we intend to annihilate them and that their fate is thus tied to the success of the islamists and join with them in an unbreakable alliance. That is a battle we cannot win, and the armed forces of the nation at stake in each instance will side against us...
Have you failed to notice that the alliance between Islam and the Left is already accomplished? Did you not follow, just to name one small item, the fact that Yale Press dishonorably reneged on its contract with an author whose book was already written, a book on the Mohammed cartoons? They refused to allow any of the illustrations to be included. They wouldn't even permit a famous, respectful image of Mohammed to appear in the book.
Sir, we have to take on the whole cabal because they have already joined forces. The Muslim Brotherhood have infilitrated our government. They are in our schools. They have the media trained to say things like "backlash" and "moderate Muslim" and to refuse to print the Muslim names of criminals until they can no longer avoid it. Or to print the cartoons, for that matter.
Read Time magazine's sympathetic portrayal of this latest Jihad monster as someone who was overworked and whose caseload of men with PTSD caused him to snap.
Good heavens, haven't you been paying attention? Has CAIR managed to pull the wool over your eyes, too?
Archonix--
The Chinese are some of the most adaptable people on earth. If they found some instrumental value in individualism, they would adopt and adapt it for their own uses, just as the Japanese have.
It won't be Western individualism but right now they are a third way, the one between our extreme individualism (which has brought us our own set of problems in its current secularized and attenuated form) and the tribalism of Islam.
The Chinese did stagnate, as did the Muslims. The Muslims continue to stagnate while China adopts Western classical music and Christianity -- especially Catholicism, with its emphasis on the individual (a different emphasis than that of the Protestant Enlightenment which has Catholic roots). It has also attempted to adopt a form of market capitalism and is learning from its nearly mortal mistakes.
We won't be here in a hundred years to see it, but I expect a Chinese Pontiff a few generations from now. And a married clergy, thanks to the stone wall Benedict just kicked over.
The Russians are tired. The price of a continued desire for imperialism is exhaustion. That may be America's price, too.
A Chinese pontiff would be a turn-up for the books.
Don't get me wrong, the Shinese people are as you say, adaptable. But, there's an element of their psyche that still leans towards conformism and collectivism. In fact conformity as a cultural artefact seems to be one of the foundations of Chinese cultural identity. Japan is similar. "The Individual" means something very different in that part of the world. Here, the individual is a radical effect, something set apart from nature and others, bearing identity by virtue of itself. Even in catholic thought where the concept of the body of christ is much more powerful than in protestant thought, the individual is still indivisible and unique, and set apart for individual attention from God even as it takes its place in the body of the church. Over there they take the concept of the body to the other extreme in the Tao, where all identity is only in relation to other identities and where nothing can exist without relation to something else. Nothing is truly unique. In some ways we can learn from this, but in others it directly conflicts with the western essence of the individual.
Interesting times, as they say.
Dymphna - the alliance or pact between islamists and "the left" is current, but it is informal and has many inconsistencies which can be exploited to break it up. That is the main goal for the short term, and is best accomplished with a page out of M.Gandhi's book - let the enemy reveal his violent nature (this is happening in Britain as we speak via anti-islamic rallies and demonstrations, provoking islamists into violence). If we engage both columns at the same time in open battle then this alliance becomes unbreakable and all hope of victory, at least in europe, is lost.
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