Is it wrong that I have hope for Iraq and I don’t want to see it become Iran’s pet?

Here’s what Governor Perry said about Iraq:

“I’m deeply concerned that President Obama is putting political expediency ahead of sound military and security judgment by announcing an end to troop level negotiations and a withdrawal from Iraq by year’s end. The President was slow to engage the Iraqis and there’s little evidence today’s decision is based on advice from military commanders.

“America’s commitment to the future of Iraq is important to U.S. national security interests and should not be influenced by politics. Despite the great achievements of the U.S. military and the Iraqi people, there remain real threats to our shared interests, especially from Iran.

“The United States must remain a firm and steadfast ally for Iraq, maintaining an ongoing diplomatic, economic, and military to military partnership with this emerging democratic ally in the Middle East.

“As a veteran and commander-in-chief of national guard forces, I cannot express enough appreciation for our military service members who have protected and defended American interests in Iraq. Our Iraq war veterans made enormous sacrifices to make our nation and world safer, and I know all Americans will welcome them home with great pride and appreciation.”

Mitt Romney’s opinion here. Herman Cain’s statement here.

Newt Gingrich had an interesting statement:

The former U.S. Speaker of the House said he was critical of Bush’s decision to stay in Iraq after the initial 2003 campaign toppled Iraq President Saddam Hussein. Since then, he said, he has tried to support a solution, but none came.

“We won the first Iraq war in 1991 and very effectively, in four days driving them out of Kuwait. We won the second Iraq War in 2003 in defeating Sadam in 22 days,” he continued. “And then for reasons I don’t understand we tried to occupy and try to change Iraq and that eight-year campaign is now ending in failure. The fact is the Iranians are now stronger in Iraq than we are.

“This is not about Obama,” he continued. “This is about the general effort that far trensends Iraq. That we have to really reassess our strategies in the region and what we think we’re accomplish. The president is right. You can’t just leave 3,000 or 5,000 troops there. They would simply become targets. If you’re not going to occupy the country, you have to withdraw.”

Gingrich said he feels the same way about America’s effort to occupy and attempt to bring stability to Afghanistan, and said the same lessons “apply to the whole region.”

“We need to think very carefully about what we are doing there,” he said of Afghanistan.

His comments also came after new reports about Gadhaffi’s death suggested he may have been summarily executed by rebel troops.

“Vicoius dictators who torture and kill people are not in very good position to ask for mercy,” Gingrich said.

I don’t feel like Iraq is a failure, do you? It just seems like it could be more successful. It seems like the little sapling needs time to grow.

I’m curious about what Iraq vets feel about the draw-down. Do they feel like it’s the right thing to do? Informal survey for everyone. If you are a veteren, please share your opinion.

I’ll admit it: I cried when I heard Steve Jobs died.

No, Steve Jobs is not related to me. Nor did he appear to me some warm, fuzzy humane figure, though he appeared to be a good friend. It’s none of that that moved me.

I cried because I feel greatness died, in its prime and it’s a rare and beautiful thing to behold. The products Steve Jobs created were borne of a spectacular mind and singular ability to make his imagination manifest.

Because his creations were so transcendent, so empowering, so elegant, useful and beautiful, he became rich. It was a result, not a cause. The love came first.

Love always comes first. Well, love and hard work and singular vision.

Think of those who have done well in the marketplace: Henry Ford, Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Jonas Salk. Ultimately, their innovations benefitted people.

Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Sam Walton: “I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been.”

Bill Gates: “We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.”

Jonas Salk: “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.”

Anyway, it’s not wrong to recognize greatness. It’s right to mourn its passing.

America is still a place of amazing ideas and innovation. Right now, someone is toiling away with artificial intelligence (we’re very close to creating nearly “conscious” robots). Right now, someone is toiling away unravelling a cure for cancer. Right now, someone is imagining how to make teleportation possible (hey, an invisibility cloak already exists, don’t laugh).

The thought of all these innovations and a future that I cannot even imagine (who ever imagined an iPod?) gives me hope.

I sit here and type on my Mac i7, listening to music through iTunes (don’t have to buy the whole crappy album!), with my iPhone sitting next to me. My kids are fighting over my iPad. My blogging is made infinitely easier with my whisper-light, purse-carried MacBook Air. I love elegance, beauty and the minds that imagine what I cannot.

I’m sorry to see Steve Jobs passing. He represents all that is good about America. He was adopted. He wasn’t rich. His smarts carried him to college and beyond. His imagination and hard work created a future that no one else could see.

America will produce more innovators. No one will be like Steve Jobs. He said it best:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Only a unique individual vision can innovate like this. Group think and doing what’s been done has never changed the world. America needs more rugged individualists, more people with more unique vision. She has them. Now, to let them have the room to do what they do best.

Finally, some Jews have had it.

In NY-9, a mostly conservative Jewish enclave in Brooklyn that voted reliably Democrat all the way back to the 1920s, just fell to the Republicans in a special election. Jews were eager to vote against the Democrats. And Obama.

Does this spell the demise of the left’s historical relationship with American Jews? Maybe. Please listen to Evan Pokroy go through the history of the American – Israel relationship and the changing landscape of Judaism and the conservative movement in America. I found his perspective fascinating.

This topic takes on added significance as Republican presidential hopefuls like Rick Perry sponsor events to woo Jewish voters. American conservatives are staunchly pro-Israel.

Please listen to Evan share his thoughts with me!

Link to the podcast here. Please subscribe to my weekly podcast at iTunes here.

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.

Today, we learn that America lost to the Swiss as the world’s most competitive economy.

Consider, too, MaxedOutMama‘s take on unemployment (read the whole thing):

At this point one must interpret a bit. One could, if one were to be polemical, argue that the self-employed worker expansion means that the economy is improving so much that contracting jobs are easier to get and highly lucrative. However, I find that completely implausible in view of the massive drop in wage and salary employment, which has never in our experience been a sign of an improving economy. If wage and salary employment were stabilizing, one might indeed expect to see casual contracting picking up, and indeed, at some point this will happen. Companies are extremely loathe to hire in first stages of economic recoveries.

Instead, what I think we are seeing is the first group of long-term unemployed who are losing unemployment benefits and scratching a living. You only have to be employed one hour of one day of the reference week in order to be classified as employed.

A further comment about the government employment – because of the steadiness of government entities, these numbers are generally pretty reliable in both surveys. It is, however, a rather large drop in view of expanded federal employment, especially the census workers, and likely indicates the depth of the state and local combined tax/retirement problem. The combined impact will only increase for years to come.

So, I wonder what you think. Is America going through a downward cycle or is the downward economic trend spelling doom? Is America declining and diminishing, never to rise again? As a cultural, economic, political and military influence, is America over?

All Girls Named Tonya, the title of that childhood memoir no publisher will ever pay me to write, derives from a principle of human psychology first postulated by a genuinely evil little bastard who became one of my dope buddies in 10th grade. That title is 67% of what I call Art Hembree’s Law:

All Girls Named Tonya Are Sluts.

If your name is Tonya, I apologize on my old friend’s behalf, but as a lowlife trying to score some easy action circa 1978-86, I can testify that Hembree’s Law proved amazingly reliable.

Well, he swapped momentary, if unfulfilled pleasure with Tonya, for a lost lifetime of love with Amy, but I say he got lucky.

If all girls named Tonya are sluts, then all girls named Amy are mean gossips. Now, I’ve lived long enough that the rules have had too many exceptions to be valid, but I’m still suspicious when I meet an Amy. She has a threshold of niceness that she must scale that Anns (they’re smart) just don’t have to.

Don’t forget Susans. To a person, they’ve all been smug, self-righteous smarty-pants. Is there a Susan who is a C-student? I don’t think so. Is there a Susan who isn’t a competitive-better-than-you ball of high achievement? Haven’t met her yet.

My sister says all Melinda’s are fat. That’s not true.

I like John’s. They are unoffensive.

Have to be careful with Michael’s. They can go either way–mean or nice. They are usually smart.

Do names determine behavior? I wonder.

I know a Chiropractor named Dr. Bone. I know a Proctologist named Dr. Butts. No, I don’t know a Gynecologist named Dr. Vagina, but you get the idea.

Anyway, Stacy needs to let it go. He dodged a name bullet. I hope his wife’s name isn’t Amy.

The Clintons’ “two for the price of one” shtick was always pretty weird. Hillary Clinton’s one great career move was marrying Bill, a political genius. But she often seemed to be burning with rage because her own equal, if not superior, merit was going unrecognized. That’s never really changed, even though Hillary has gone on to enjoy her own career in recent years.

Jules Crittenden says, “She’s BAAAAAAACK”:

It’s the Hill we all know and love from the campaign. Upstaged by Bill, with Obama and Biden out there on the road, doing her job, the last straw was in Kinshasha today when some hapless Congolese university student asked her, “What does Mr. Clinton think, through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton …” CBS has the vid. She looks around, a little stunned, then commences operations on Joe College, with big scary eyes. Money quote follows:

“Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not secretary of state, I am.”

AP has the story, how she’s been out of circulation, plus the history of this “complicated couple.” OK, rest of the quote:

“If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

Isn’t Ms. Clinton so very diplomatic and dignified? Restart button, indeed.

While this is very much about Barack Obama personally–his whole life was made for this moment when he would be in the position where he could “remake America”–it’s even more about the American people.

Do American citizens want America remade?

During the campaign, I wrote often that people generally like the idea of change, but not the actual implementation of change and all that it means. Change is a very dicey word and can be a rhetorical double edged sword. The wielder of the “change” mantra must take care not to cut himself. And when executing change, care must be taken that the transition doesn’t descend into chaos. People are used to certain things, and they keep the status quo because it works on some level.

The energy and faith it takes to remake a whole system, requires significant planning and sure-handedness. That is something that has not been existent with the changes coming from Congress and the Administration. But that’s process, the way things are done. What of the actual intended change?

President Obama campaigned on tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans. The upper 5% of Americans were in pretty big trouble, though. Americans were okay with that. Essentially, class warfare worked. That is, the majority of Americans who produced less than the minority of Americans who produced the most were content to take from the minority to meet the needs of the majority.

That sounded wonderful in theory, but now, the same thing, but on a grander scale is being expected of Americans with health care. That is, say 60% of Americans have stellar health care while the rest of the citizenry is underinsured or uninsured either by choice or by circumstance. The American who have insurance are being asked to underwrite the insurance of those who don’t have it either through coverage cuts of their own care or higher taxes.

Americans are being asked to voluntarily redistribute their wealth. While it sounded great when taking from the rich, top 5%, it doesn’t sound so great when it means more taxes for people who already see themselves as struggling. The old Margaret Thatcher quote comes to mind, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Americans are being asked to trade in a known, but flawed, health care system, for an unknown, and by all accounts, equally flawed health care system. The benefits don’t outweigh the negatives, so Americans wonder why change at all? The benefits should be self-evident and the system should simplify. As with all things government, though, the health care proposals are a litany of rules and regulations seemingly designed to compete with the IRS.

Americans are also being asked to suspend disbelief. So when the Cap and Trade legislation is delved into or receives an even cursory reading, scary proposals like retrofitting ones home to sell it come to the fore. And of course, a person sees that his home or his business would be subject to taxation due to energy use. It is another tax. Far from being part of the lucky 95%, the tax scheme seems to penalize everyone and the poor most of all.

A new portrait of America emerges: Everyone drives a Prius made by unproductive unions, lives in old, small homes with special lightbulbs, waiting in lines for health care a bureaucrat decides a person needs, and being taxed for the privilege of all of the above.

Where are the hot rods? Where are the dreams of a home and a pool? Where is the specialist when you contract a rare form of cancer? Where is the exuberant individual pursuing his dreams?

Please go read the whole thing. There are so many great columnists at American Issues. T.J. Brown discusses a health care system Without Doctors.
There’s much more.

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Tabitha Hale has a great blog post about the czar differences. Go look at her list. She concludes:

Let’s talk a little more about this. Know how many Czars Reagan had? One. Bush 41? One. Clinton? Three. Dubya? Four. Obama has already QUADRUPLED that. And since most of these positions are already covered by Secretaries, the overlap is wasteful. And some are just inane (seriously, A GREAT LAKES CZAR? What is a Great Lakes Czar? Overlord of the Catfish? I don’t understand). Scariest part? Czars have no one to answer to but Obama. Know how much they are in control of? $1.7 TRILLION. Yeah.

And I really hate the term Czar.

Me too. What are we Russia?

Why yes, America is now turning into a state-run place. A guy on Fox said something that struck me: When it’s not about contracts and competence and it’s about connections, you have a society that is running on different rules. [That is a gross interpretation of what he said.]

Essentially, when the state owns everything, it’s not what you know, it’s WHO you know. How connected to czar or czarina are you? That will determine the success of your endeavor. Influence and corruption become the order of the day.

Welcome to America, just like the Old Country!