President Obama And His Hasan Problem–UPDATED

How does a man weened on politically correct thought, race grievance, and collective versus individual responsibility deal with this:

American born
Muslim man
Soldier
Psychiatrist
Murderer
Terrorist

Here was the President’s response:

President Obama gave a shout out before his statements about the rampage at Ft. Hood. Does that seem dissonant to you? Bookworm calls it “frightening insensitivity“.

Robert George of NBC in Chicago writes:

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.” Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?

Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That’s the least that should occur.

As more uncomfortable information comes out, information President Obama probably knew even yesterday, it will raise more questions. For example, the killer yelled “Allahu Akbar” while he shot his fellow soldiers. In addition, Hasan gave a weird presentation on the Koran during Grand Rounds. Jimmie Bise of Sundries Shack, said on Twitter:

It is this simple: 12 people were murdered yesterday by a man who holds political views the MSM has guaranteed us aren’t dangerous.

And when Jake Tapper just asked Robert Gibbs when an attack becomes a terrorist attack, the response, according to David Almacy also reporting on Twitter was this:

In an answer to @jaketapper, Robert Gibbs just said that he doesn’t have the theoretical background to define “terrorist attack.” Wow.

When faced with the uncomfortable facts, President Obama and his administration are having a collective psychic break. Reality is not conforming to the fantasy they’ve built.

So far, it seems that this killing spree, this terrorist attack, could have been prevented. This man’s radical Islamist views were widely known. He did not hide them. He did not hide that he didn’t want to go to Iraq. He did not hide that he disagreed with America’s wars. He did not hide his frustration about President Obama. He even praised evil–beheadings and terrorism.

Since it’s politically incorrect to “profile” for terrorists or look for threats proactively, how is one to prevent such events? President Obama’s answer has been to pretend. If he ignores threats, they will go away. But they’re not going away. Neither individual or group or State-sponsoring terrorists are going away. And pretending they don’t exist or aren’t serious and deadly is liable to get a man killed. Or many men.

And so, President Obama’s decision to make light of the Ft. Hood killings by burying the story into a pre-planned press-conference makes sense. This act of terrorism revealed all the lies liberals tell themselves and tell others. There are two choices in this situation, then: One, admit the lie and speak the truth. Or two, continue the delusion.

President Obama has chosen to continue the delusion. If he can, and the mainstream media continues to aid and abet him, he’ll reframe this “unfortunate incident” as the actions of one “troubled individual” who should have “received help sooner.” And it looks like he’ll get help in that regard.

But for normal people, this attack was a terrorist attack by a Muslim man schooled in hate-filled ideology. Hasan would have rather killed his fellow soldiers rather than go to an Islamic nation and help his own country find justice there. That is, Hasan was a Muslim first, and a radical one at that, and a countryman second. And because no one can name Islamism evil, because that might make someone uncomfortable, what is there to say?

So the President and his press people fumble around, trying to find some politically correct verbiage to describe evil. And they can’t. What this man did was wrong and heinous. There are no excuses. He was an individual and he’s responsible. He was an educated doctor, a psychiatrist, and enlightenment did not prevent the taint of radical ideology. And he was also a murderer who intended not just to kill, but terrorize.

He is everything President Obama wants to pretend doesn’t exist. Well. America can’t afford to indulge President Obama and his liberal minions their p.c. fantasies. It gets citizens killed. The Ft. Hood massacre was a reality-check.

Updated:

Michelle Malkin reports that Hasan had “extra weapons training”.

Michael Goldfarb on Obama searching for the “real cause” of the massacre.

Updated:

Shrinkwrapped discusses the psychology:

When the immediate reaction of Islamic spokesmen is to warn everyone of Islamophobia, they too are supporting the projection and externalization that is the hallmark of radical Islam and the “lone, psychiatrically deranged” paranoid.

Every effort should be made to resolutely maintain a posture that specifically and emphatically denies the use of projection and externalization to the radical Islamists. Groups like CAIR should be confronted by our MSM and government on a regular basis to expose their use of such psychological processes for all to see. Whenever a “lone, psychiatrically deranged” individual commits an atrocity, we must be alert to attempts to shift the psychological impetus for the attack from the attacker to the surround. It is an unhappy reality that confronting a paranoid’s projection and externalization does not work in a therapeutic context. It either convinces the paranoid that you are part of the persecutory conspiracy or, if accepted and internalized, leads to significant depression. However, we cannot treat terror as a therapeutic situation. When Muslims support, in their speech and writing, convictions that reflect the use of projection and externalization, they must be considered potential dangers to the community. This requires a form of “racial profiling” but the alternative is to wait for an atrocity of such significant proportions that “lone, psychiatrically deranged” non-Muslims begin to take things into their own hands.

Posted in America, Isms, Mind, Political Animals | 19 Comments »

Is Yelling The New Spanking? Yes.

Morally superior Gen X moms and dads seem entirely reasonable until they see the limits of “limits” like time-outs, banal blabbing and gentle cajoling. Kids regard their parents with utter contempt. Well, some do. Depends on the kid’s personality. And parents, once exasperated, go there. No, they might not spank their child. They’ll yell. Or arm yank. Or threaten. Or push. Or thump (thwack in the head with fingers). Or pinch. Something, anything, to reorder the disordered relationship–the one where the kid is running the show, and the parent feels drug around by the nose by a two and half foot troll.

The New York Time’s takes on the “overachieving” parents’ angst via Instapundit:

Parental yelling today may be partly a releasing of stress for multitasking, overachieving adults, parenting experts say.

“Yelling is done when parents feel irritable and anxious,” said Harold S. Koplewicz, the founder of the New York University Child Study Center. “It can be as simple as ‘I’m overwhelmed, I’m running late for work, I had a fight with my wife, I have a project due — and my son left his homework upstairs.’ ”

Numerous studies exist on the effect of corporal punishment on children. A new one came out just last month. Led by a researcher at Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy, the study concluded that spanking children when they are very young (1-year-old) can slow their intellectual development and lead to aggressive behavior as they grow older. But there is far less data on the more common habit of shouting and screaming in families.

Something jumps out at me: as the child of parents who viewed spanking as their Christian duty (spare the rod and all that), I can assure the researchers it is not like yelling is new. Yelling happened in the bad old days, too.

Re: parenting styles: Kids are resilient. An occasional “losing it” moment isn’t going to scar a child for life.

However, when a parent creates an environment where he or she is consistently out of control, where he chooses to respond to a child in anger, rather than reason, the child realizes the child is in control. Someone owns the buttons. Either, the parent is controlling the nuke button or the kid is. I would suggest that the kid will grow increasingly insecure when he can’t count on mom or dad to be in charge. He doesn’t want to be in charge. He wants to relax into well-known boundaries.

So, parents need to keep an eternal guard on their emotions. Some kids are very smart and manipulative and get a kick out of mom and dad being as easy as a wind-up toy. Teenage boys seem to especially enjoy spinning old mom like a top. The parent teaches disrespect for both himself and the child.

I hate to burst the bubble of New Agey parenting types who scream at their kids for not eating the lentils, you’re no better than the out-of-control spankers of yore. The key is who is in charge? Screaming just declares your impotence just as reckless spanking indicated a desire for immediate control without thought. In both cases, it’s the easy way.

Parenting is brutally difficult. It is a constant personal challenge. The big picture: What is right for the kid? is lost in a personal haze of fatigue, hormones, blood sugar, emotional misery or whatever. Every parent realizes his personal limitations almost immediately–a crying, inconsolable infant is often the first test of many.

So yellers need to knock it off and grow up. Someone has to be the parent. It should be the parent.

Posted in America, Mind | 6 Comments »

Podcast: Not Hot For Teacher With Jimmie Bise And Tabitha Hale

Jimmie Bise of Sundries Shack and Tabitha Hale of Pink Elephant Pundit join me to discuss the spork incident which morphed into discussing socialism and central educational planning which morphed into talking the Nobel Peace prize. Believe it or not, it all relates.

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Posted in America, Isms, Mind | No Comments »

Spanking Lowers I.Q.

Well, that will disappoint some of the readers here. Oh wait! Not that kind of spanking. Here’s the study:

The results of a survey of more than 17,000 university students from 32 countries “show that the higher the percent of parents who used corporal punishment, the lower the national average IQ,” Straus wrote in his presentation.

In looking at spanking just in the United States, Straus and a fellow researcher reviewed data on IQ scores from 806 children between 2 and 4 years old and another 704 kids aged 5 to 9.

When their IQs were tested again four years later, children in the younger group who were not spanked scored five points higher, on average, than did children who had been spanked. In the group of older children, spanking resulted in an average loss of 2.8 points.

“How often parents spanked made a difference,” Straus said in a news release from the university. “The more spanking, the slower the development of the child’s mental ability. But even small amounts of spanking made a difference.”

I think the study writers were beaten as children.

First, when looking across cultures, how does one control for something like spanking? All Australian children eat vegemite, or however you spell it. Does that make an IQ difference? Do spanked children who eat vegemite have higher or lower IQs?

Not to mention, this statement, an obvious one, invalidates the whole study:

Those findings are plausible and make some sense, Briggs said, but she added that it’s difficult to tease out all the other factors that could play a role in IQ scores — including poverty and parental education.

Ya think? How about the parents being morons themselves since IQ is highly heritable?

Second, the presumption is that spanking a child is an out-of-control parenting experience:

Dr. Stephen Ajl, a child abuse pediatrician, director of pediatric ambulatory care at the Brooklyn Hospital Center and medical director of the Jane Barker Brooklyn Children’s Advocacy Center in New York City, said that “spanking and other forms of corporal punishment mean that someone has lost control, and if that goes on on a chronic basis, it may affect some part of children’s psychological well-being.”

And though some people believe that they can use spanking as a form of punishment without losing control, Briggs said that’s very difficult to do all the time.

“When you’re physical with your child, you open that floodgate, and the likelihood that it could veer into where you don’t have as much control increases,” Briggs said. “Plus, if you’re just spanking, you haven’t taught your child anything.”

You can’t tell me the culture of beating a kid with a stick for every response is the same as a parent who spanks a kid for running into the street. Even if the second parent is out-of-control or angry, sometimes it’s not bad for a kid to get “rebooted” now and again.

This study was put forth for political reasons. Liberals don’t like spanking. They think it’s barbaric. They also believe everyone can be rehabilitated. Ironically, the children who never learn consequences as a kid grows up to being surprised, and in jail, dealing with consequences.

Can a child grow up without ever being spanked and turn out fine? Yes. Can a child receive corporal punishment and turn out fine? Yes. The bigger thing is love being the foundation.

Also: Spanking is NOT hitting. There is a huge difference between the two. Beating is another whole level of abuse. Liberals like conflating these things because nuance scares them. They want a rule for parents to follow, but the fact is, every child is different. Family personalities are different. Parents must make different choices with different kids.

Bottom line, libs need to butt out.

Posted in America, Corrupted Culture, Mind | 4 Comments »

Wayne Elise: The Modern Dale Carnegie Explains How To Talk To Women, Tech & Dating, And Sex V. Sensuality

A persistent complaint in the male-dominated political blogosphere is the difficulty getting a woman. Guys like Ace and Allah have made their hard luck in love laments part of their schtick. Well.

Wayne Elise makes his living helping men find women. I suggested to him that we should have a lonely hearts male blogger meet-up, video tape it and see how good he really is. I personally wonder if the male bloggers protest too much and actually have healthy personal lives or if they’re in dire need of his services. Wouldn’t it be fun to find out?

Anyway, we also talked about the culture and how it’s affecting dating. He noted that women are getting much more aggressive, that sex is talked about more but there seems to be less of it, and that mystery is gone, too.

At the end I discuss Obama v. Palin. Hope you’ll listen!

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Posted in Corrupted Culture, Entertain Me, Isms, Mind | 1 Comment »

Podcast: Defending The American Dream, The Tea Party Movement, And Why Are Women Unhappy?

Erik Telford discusses becoming an empowered activist. John Hawkins and I debate why Maureen Dowd and her ilk are unhappy. Also: My defense and criticism of feminism.

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Posted in Mind, Political Animals | 1 Comment »

Forced Abortions: Majority Of American Women Feel Coerced To Abort

Many women experience pressure, abuse, and coercion when faced with a surprise pregnancy. This is bearing out with research reported by LifeNews:

Elliot Institute director David Reardon, co-authored a Medical Science Monitor study of American and Russian women with the 64 percent figure.

His new report, Forced Abortion in America, documents cases of violence against women who refused to have an abortion.

It also highlights cases like the one in Maine, which saw a couple charged with abducting their pregnant daughter in an attempt to force her to have an abortion, and another in Georgia, where a woman forced her pregnant daughter to drink turpentine to cause an abortion.

Reardon says the cases are just part of an epidemic of coerced and forced abortions in the U.S.

Reardon said that cases of women being pressured, threatened, or subjected to violence if they refuse to abort are not unusual.

He pointed out that studies have shown that homicide is the leading killer of pregnant women in the U.S. and that women in abusive relationships are at risk for increased violence during pregnancy.

“In many of the cases documented for our ‘Forced Abortion in America’ report, police and witnesses reported that acts of violence and murder took place after the woman refused to abort or because the attacker didn’t want the pregnancy,” he said in a statement LifeNews.com received.

“Even if a woman isn’t physically threatened, she often faces intense pressure, abandonment, lack of support, or emotional blackmail if she doesn’t abort. While abortion is often described as a ‘choice,’ women who’ve been there tell a very different story,” he added.

It has been the rare woman in my practice who sought the abortion and feels no guilt years later. Most women were either pressured to abort or chose the abortion and feel guilt later and remorse later. It is the rare woman who truly “chose”. It is a rarer woman who has no regret over her choice.

Posted in Body, Corrupted Culture, Mind | 4 Comments »

About Obama’s September 8th Ground Breaking Speech….To The Children

Some thoughts on President Obama’s teachable moment [more at Bookworm and Michelle Malkin]:

The best predictor of human behavior is past behavior.

Obama will be:

1. Glib
2. Boring
3. Professorish

He will say:

4. One or two outrageous things
5. Mixed in with bland banalities

Teachers will dutifully talk about the glories of diversity. The wonderfulness of the president. The hopefulness of his plans.

Children will want to “help the President” and be “good stewards” and “save electricity” and “save the children” and “study hard”. Well, the last one not-so-much.

The message won’t matter. The fact that the President is speaking to them, unfiltered, with no parent is what I object to.

And I live in the most conservative of conservative school districts. Many teachers don’t even know when they are passing bullshit pap along.

My kids came home from school worried about global warming and the world ending.

Our mind numb society didn’t happen in a vacuum.

Anyway, not everyone agrees with my take–they want to give the President the benefit of the doubt. But I can only predict his future actions on past performances. He has done very well at gracefully talking around a controversial subject and making all who hear it believe he’s agreeing with their take.

Children want to believe authorities. They DO believe authorities. Depending on the child’s developmental level, he cannot discern that a President would mislead. Heck, many adults have been baffled by Obama’s b.s. They are shocked, shocked! I tell you, at how President Obama has presided.

But let’s assume the substance is benign. I still don’t like it. The President being beamed directly to children is unprecedented. It has never happened and for good reason. The authority in a child’s life is his parent. A teacher has a teaching role but it is subservient to the parent.

When I think of leaders going around parents to talk to children, I think of Elian Gonzalez. Over at TheRealCuba blog here’s what it says:

Poor Elian!

For the last six years, after he was forced to return to Cuba to become another slave, Elian Gonzalez had to celebrate his birthday with his real father, Fidel Castro. But now, the Cuban dictator is half dead and unable to attend his young slave’s birthday party.
However, that doesn’t mean that Elian would be able to celebrate his birthday as a normal child. Not in Castro’s Cuba!

Elian, who today became a teenager, still had to “celebrate” his birthday party in the presence of two “viejos cagalitrosos,” the new dictator-in-chief and Ricardo “Watermellon Head” Alarcon.
Can you imagine? A teenager having to salute these two sinister characters on his birthday, after having been forced to do the same with Cuba’s mass murderer for the last six years?
Poor Elian! I wonder if Janet Reno remembered to send him a birthday card.

I don’t want an entire generation of Americans getting a universal message from ANY leader or politician. I want a generation of children to be inspired by big dreams–like going to the moon or exploring Mars. A free country can do big things. A free country, lead by a visionary, can demonstrate greatness. The leader doesn’t have to use empty words.

Let President Obama’s personal example of education, hard work and achievement speak for themselves. It is enough…and it’s very American.

Posted in America, Corrupted Culture, Mind, Political Animals | 12 Comments »

Why Preventative Care Won’t Save Money

My practice consists of people who want to stay healthy and those recovering from some malady–often of the structural kind, but sometimes of the sub-clinical but bothersome kind. That means, people coming to my office hope to get back to doing what they want or make it so they’re always healthy.

These people are highly motivated. Since my practice is 90% cash, the patients seek out my services, value them so highly that they’ll pay money for them, and they will often be compliant. We have tough talks in my office. I have had this conversation many times:

Me: Here is what we need to do, but it will require a change of behavior on your part, a whole new lifestyle.

Patient: Okay…..

Me: If you are not interested in making these changes, you will not get the health benefits you desire. I do not want to waste your money and my time if you’re not ready for these changes.

Patient: Okay….

Me: How do you feel about (significant change in diet, new exercise regimen, changing sleep habits, changing exercise, at home rehab options, etc.)?

Patient: Well, I…..

And then, the patient thinks about it and decides. Even with paying for care and being self-selected to come into my office, only about 50% are willing to do the changes they need. Some don’t come back until they are ready. Some decide on symptomatic care and admit they don’t really want to change. I had one patient tell me, “I’d rather die than stop drinking Coke.” He was an alcoholic and diabetic. That’s good information to have–I can give him nutrition to supplement his horrendous lifestyle choices, but just the preventative care alone is not going to significantly help him if he won’t help himself. He will be in the hospital, eventually, and have a limb amputated or go into a diabetic coma. Those will be huge expenses.

So, while my practice centers on people taking control of their health and it’s profoundly satisfying because people are self-motivated, this is not the majority of American health care consumers. From the Washington Post:

Using data from long-standing clinical trials, researchers projected the cost of caring for people with Type 2 diabetes as they progress from diagnosis to various complications and death. Enrolling federally-insured patients in a simple but aggressive program to control the disease would cost the government $1,024 per person per year — money that largely would be recovered after 25 years through lower spending on dialysis, kidney transplants, amputations and other forms of treatment, the study found.

However, except for the youngest diabetics, the additional services would add to overall health spending, not decrease it, the study shows.

As an aside, I strongly question the $1,000 price tag for diabetes education and prevention. That seems awfully low. Since one doctor’s office visit alone is around $100, I wonder what else is being covered here. Are meds included? Counseling? What?

Most people, if given a choice, will go to the doctor and want to be “fixed”. That is, they’ll want a drug or surgery that enables them to continue on their path without having to change their behavior. Should socialized medicine come to America, that impulse will be reinforced. Health care costs will soar.

Preventative care only works when a patient is motivated, and even then, it’s challenging. Those under Government Run health care will have less incentive, not more, to take control of their health care.

Do I think that preventative care saves money for my patients? Absolutely. A healthy person over his lifetime, will likely need less health care intervention. Since nearly 90% of chronic disease is preventable, steps to prevent them make a huge difference. A person who never develops heart disease or diabetes or employs dietary ways to prevent cancers makes for a very nice health care cost risk long-term.

In my own life, the life insurance guy was shocked: I have low blood pressure, low cholesterol, I’m on no meds, I’ve had no surgeries. And, yes, I’m overweight, but that doesn’t mean, necessarily, unhealthy. My own grandma who is 92, has spent a lifetime of living preventatively. She is the picture of health–mentally and physically. Prevention does matter. But the individual must be motivated and must take the steps himself to be healthy.

No government can force an individual to have motivation. But they can force behavior…and that’s what they’ll try to do, eventually. In that case, the cure is worse than the disease.

Posted in America, Body, Corrupted Culture, Mind | 2 Comments »

Self Will Vs. Social Will

How much of our behavior is determined by external expectations? How much of our behavior is driven by free will? How much of our future is destiny?

It seems that one day can turn into a week which turns into a year which turns into a life and before a person wakes up, time has passed and a person is down a road he never thought he wanted to travel. The Anchoress wrote a post around this video by Ellen DeGeneres. It’s insightful and I’ve had it on my mind ever since:

The Anchoress says (the whole post is a gem):

And too, I think she spoke a great deal of plain truth. Polonius advised his son, “to thy own self be true” but Degeneres spells out the loss and pain that can come from doing exactly that. The truth – the whole truth – is one part courage, one part discipline and two parts sacrifice; the great paradox of life is that one must be willing to sacrifice one’s very self in order to wholly own who one is. Rather like the gospel admonition: “who would lose his life will save it.”

There comes a moment in all of our lives when we get a sense of what we are born for. Degeneres got it when she wrote that letter to God. Whether she realized it or not, she had a blessing at that moment; a revelation. In her exquisite pain she wrote the whole, honest truth; she revealed herself or, in another sense, gave herself up. And in response she got the truth back at her, an answer, in the form of a “showing” (or a knowing if you will) of what her life would be.

I’ve heard many people talk about the crystalline moment when they suddenly “knew” something or “envisioned” something in their lives and it turned out precisely as it was seen or known. In fact, something very similar happened in my life, when I -also in a moment of huge pain and confusion- spoke to God from the depths of my heart, and rose to my feet knowing with certainty that my life had a plan and a purpose; that plan and purpose began unfolding within hours, and continues to unfold, instruct and reveal itself to me.

To repeat: “the great paradox of life is that one must be willing to sacrifice one’s very self in order to wholly own who one is.” Yes. That is life.

An intentioned life means pruning out producing branches and discarding them so that other branches can produce more. Pruning causes pain, but also growth. So the tree of life is sort of a bonsai tree and can end up being fairly odd-shaped.

Or life can be an unpruned bush, producing little, no shape, no special quality, unrecognizable, anonymous and filler on the world’s landscape.

And how much of an individual’s shape is constrained and/or recognized by others? That is, some people look anonymous except to those who see beauty where others see the banal. And, like the physicist who changes the properties of the experiment he studies, the love of the admirer changes the quality of previously unremarkable individual.

There is individual influence and then there are social influences–the nuns in grade school, the Fraternity at college, the self-selected trade group, the work culture, the movies, Twitter. Each group exerts a pressure to bend and shape and most people seem to underestimate the power of the systems they’re a part of to manipulate their life.

Shaming works, of course, but there are subtler ways to shape a person. Messages are filtered and framed and people accept the messages because it is a lot of work to question every single one and ferret out the truth.

That is why, in the end of the day, people must be intentional. A person who wants to die somewhat satisfied should take time out and consider his ways. A person must seek the truth and attempt to live it. One person’s path is not another person’s path and if it’s the right path for him, it will be narrow. Choices must be made. Well, choices are made, whether conscious or not. At least with intentional choices, they result in fewer regrets.

Perhaps the most challenging part of a well-lived life comes from being awake and choosing. It causes pain and by necessity, loss. There is also this paradox: a person must surrender to purpose in order to be free.

All of this involves pain–the excruciating, dull achy bone-crushing kind. Truth is not easy, but once it’s recognized and chosen, a unique life takes shape.

Posted in Mind | 3 Comments »