The Racism Charges

In an effort to deflect and shut down criticisms, the Obama Administration has sent out high ranking surrogates this week to declare that the opposition to the Administration's policies are rooted in an unwillingness to accept a black man as president. In other words -- racism.

The label of racist is, rightly or wrongly, the most damning one that an American can be given. It immediately shuts off discussion of the issues as the heart of the alleged racist is examined.

Because Joe Wilson of South Carolina got a little too excited during the Presidential address to the Congress and uttered out "You Lie," Jimmy Carter and others have resorted to the unfounded charge that this only happened because it was a black man that was president. Ridiculous! Like conservatives would just smile and look the other way as we see the radical changes being enacted and proposed for this nation. Conservatives loudly objected in 1993 and 1994 as Bill Clinton attempted to enact health care reform.

Ironically, while racism allegations were tossed around with no basis in fact this week, an ugly incident on a school bus where a bunch of black kids beat up a white kid on a bus was quickly brushed off as a mere bullying situation. R-I-G-H-T...! So, the Congressman who expresses policy differences is a racist while a bunch of thugs who beat up on a kid are not racist. Come on! Let's get real, here! They didn't beat him up because of the color of his skin but because of the content of his character, to paraphrase MLK, Jr.?

Ralph Peters 9/11 Column

Ralph Peters' September 11, 2009 column:

"Eight years ago today, our homeland was attacked by fanatical Muslims inspired by Saudi Arabian bigotry. Three thousand American citizens and residents died.

We resolved that we, the People, would never forget. Then we forgot.

We've learned nothing.

\Instead of cracking down on Islamist extremism, we've excused it.

Instead of killing terrorists, we free them.

Instead of relentlessly hunting Islamist madmen, we seek to appease them.

Instead of acknowledging that radical Islam is the problem, we elected a president who blames America, whose idea of freedom is the right for women to suffer in silence behind a veil -- and who counts among his mentors and friends those who damn our country or believe that our own government staged the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

Instead of insisting that freedom will not be infringed by terrorist threats, we censor works that might offend mass murderers. Radical Muslims around the world can indulge in viral lies about us, but we dare not even publish cartoons mocking them."

Hit Counter Accuracy

Although there has been a lot of news to comment upon this Summer, I did not do a lot of posting here on my politics blog. I spent a lot of time getting familiar with Facebook. Sometimes, I engaged in a bit of political discussion on my Facebook page. I try not to do that, but a few times I posted links about the Cash for Clunkers plan or President Obama's health plan. I also could not always resist the temptation to disagree with some of my Friends' comments.

So, I have not been very active here and yet imagine my surprise when I came by here yesterday to write about 9-11 and saw that the hit counter had gone from about 250 to almost 12,000! How could that possibly be accurate when I have done no publicity on this and have mentioned the site address to just a few close friends?

Given that none of my posts have inspired anyone to comment, I am inclined to believe that the hit counter is inordinately high because of some type of robotic spam effort to harvest e-mail addresses or something. I don't know how that is done, but getting this many hits on this site makes no sense.

If I am indeed getting real visitors to this site, then I hope they will leave a comment here.

9/11 Anniversary

Some quick thoughts about the attacks that took place eight years ago today.  In the news today was a report about efforts to develop a curriculum for teaching about 9-11.  Since I home school our kids, I thought it a worthwhile site to look up. It is learnabout9-11.org .  Although I did not yet purchase the curriculum, my 12 year old daughter and I did view the 12 minute video which summarized what happened on that day.  She was only four when it happened, but she does remember so much of that day as we were getting ready to check out of an Illinois motel and drive to our Maryland home.  We had the TV on in the motel room as the terrible events transpired and we packed up our stuff for the long drive ahead.  She remembers our discussing the wisdom of driving to Washington as we traveled on near desolate highways contemplating the attacks that had been going on that day.  Here we were, in the middle of central Illinois, far from any targets, and we were headed straight for the Washington DC metropolitan area.  No one could say for sure what would happen next, so why not stay in the midwest for a few days?  Well, we just kept on going and got home and thankfully, no attacks have been committed on U.S. soil since that day.

Today, I was reminded of how it felt to watch that first tower collapse to the ground at 10:00 AM.  The plane crash and fires and explosions were bad, of course, but somehow the pancaking of the entire tower brought the true nature of this awful and devastating tragedy home.