My Friend, Coach Larry O. Finch 1951 – 2011

Everyone who knows me will tell you that I bleed University of Memphis Tiger Blue.  There’s a reason for that.

The year is 1972.  A skinny, undersized asthmatic kid, new to Wooddale Junior High, is about to be annihilated in a game called Bombardment, a rather sadistic game thought up by the 9th grade P.E. coach for his personal amusement.  Resembling the movie “Dodgeball” on steroids,  two teams (usually the delinquents on one side and their victims on the other), would line up against both sides of the bleachers waiting for the coach’s whistle.  Then the massacre would ensue.

Sure that I was about to breathe my last, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a kind voice telling me to stand beside him.  I looked up to see the smiling face of Larry Finch, Senior shooting guard on the Memphis State University Tigers Basketball Team.  He had just taken an Internship at my school!

Of course, that was the year that they lost the NCAA Championship to Bill Walton and the UCLA Bruins.  I don’t think that anyone in the nation hollered at their television set louder that night than I did.

Over the semester, we became friends.  I became a Tiger fan for life, eventually receiving my degree there  in 1980 in Radio, TV, and Film.  While there, I had the privilege of calling radio play-by-play for the Women’s Basketball and Men’s Baseball teams.

Larry is also the reason that I went on to play and coach basketball, a 4th grade team and a church team, respectively.  My coaching record is 25 – 4.

But, I digress…

Anyway, I’m writing this story because my friend, the Memphis Legend, Coach Larry O. Finch, has passed away at the age of 60.

From the Commercial Appeal:

Finch, the University of Memphis’ winningest basketball coach with 220 victories, had been in poor health since suffering the first of multiple strokes in 2001. He was 60. He had also had a heart attack.

Finch is perhaps the most beloved figure in the history of Memphis’ basketball program, leading the 1973 team to the national championship game and coaching the Tigers from 1986 to 1997.

Larry was born in the Orange Mound section of Memphis and went on to play for Melrose High School.  He and his fellow high school teammate, 6’9″  “Big Cat” Ronnie  Robinson, decided to play for Coach Gene Bartow at Memphis State University.

This was during the height of racial unrest in Memphis.  Larry had been advised not to go to Memphis State, but he loved his hometown and his hometown university.  He and Ronnie turned out to be 2 of the finest bridge builders Memphis has ever seen.  He graduated as the all-time leading scorer in school history and is presently still in second place on that list.

Larry went on to play professionally with the Memphis TAMs, the Memphis Sounds, the Baltimore Hustlers, and the Baltimore Claws.

Per biographicon.com:

In the 1980s, Finch was an assistant coach for Dana Kirk at Memphis State. Kirk was forced to leave Memphis State after violating NCAA regulations, and Finch was made head coach in 1986 in order to restore order to the program. Finch was head coach from 1986 until 1997.

Finch’s tenure at Memphis State/University of Memphis was successful. He posted 10 out of 11 winning seasons, and seven 20+ win seasons. He recruited and developed such players as Elliot Perry, Penny Hardaway, and Lorenzen Wright. His 1991-92 team led by Hardaway and David Vaughn went to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.

As a player, Finch was known for his shooting prowess, and his skills remained intact throughout his coaching days; he would routinely win games of H-O-R-S-E against his players (including the great Keith Lee, among others) and against assistant coaches in long distance shooting contests after road game practices.

In the company of such renowned coaches as Gene Bartow and John Calipari, Larry Finch remains in second-place for all-time wins in University of Memphis history (behind only Calipari).

In 2002, Larry suffered a stroke, which left him paralyzed and affected his speech.  Later that year, at halftime of the Memphis Grizzlies’ annual Martin Luther King Day game, NBA Legend Bill Russell grabbed the handles of Larry Finch’s wheelchair and wheeled him across a spotlight-lit basketball court.

The entire arena cheered and cried at the same time.

And now, this Memphis Legend is gone.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, how can you consider yourself a friend of Larry Finch?  You only knew him for a short time.

In the early 80s, while Larry was an Assistant Coach under Dana Kirk, I was working at Memphis Cablevision.  I was passing through a front office packed with customers, there to pay their bill.  All of the sudden, I heard a familiar voice shouting my last name at the top of his lungs.  It was Coach Finch!

He grinned that big ol’ grin at me, and hugged me until I thought my ribs would bust.  Then he asked me how I was doing, eager to hear about my life, and we talked as if there was no one else in that lobby.

And now, almost 30 years later, I’m sitting here, trying to write this post with tears in my eyes.

That’s how I know.

Bachmann: Shaking the Halls of Elitism

There was a lot of gnashing of teeth up in the Halls of Elitism in the Grand Old Party yesterday. One of their potential presidential candidates, had gotten his clock cleaned in fundraising by **gasp** one of those Tea Partiers…and she’s a woman! **double gasp**!

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann brought in a combined $2.2 million for the first quarter of 2011. This topped the $1.9 million that GOP legacy Mitt Romney brought in, per politico.com.

According to Bachmann adviser Andy Parrish,

Bachmann raised $1.7 million for her congressional committee, and another $500,000 for her leadership PAC.

The delicious thing is, most of her donations are reportedly small checks.

What is it about Michele Bachmann to has caused Rush Limbaugh to say about her and Sarah Palin:

The gonads on our team happen to be wearing skirts.

From her website:

Elected in 2006, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is the first Republican woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota. From the beginning, Congresswoman Bachmann has demonstrated bold reform, pushing to fix Washington’s broken ways. Every day she puts her constitutional conservative values to work as she represents the people of Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District, a district which contains parts of six counties, stretching from Stillwater past St. Cloud, including suburbs of the Twin Cities.

Congresswoman Bachmann is a leading advocate for tax reform, a staunch opponent of wasteful government spending, and a strong proponent of adherence to the Constitution, as intended by the Founding Fathers. She believes government has grown exponentially, with ObamaCare being the most recent example of its uninhibited growth. Congresswoman Bachmann wants government to make the kind of serious spending decisions that many families and small businesses have been forced to make. She is a champion of free markets and she believes in the vitality of the family as the first unit of government. She is also a defender of the unborn and staunchly stands for religious liberties.

Prior to serving in the U.S. Congress, Bachmann served in the Minnesota State Senate. She was elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 2000 where she championed the Taxpayers Bill of Rights.

…Congresswoman Bachmann also led the charge on education issues in Minnesota calling for the abolishment of Goals 2000 and the Profiles of Learning in its school. She recognized the need for quality schools and subsequently started a charter school for at-risk kids in Minnesota.

…As a mother of five children and 23 foster children, she has a deep appreciation for that portion of the Oath of Office in which members of Congress vow to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

In July 2010 Congresswoman Bachmann hosted the first Tea Party Caucus meeting because she saw the need for Tea Partiers to have a listening ear in Congress. She is seen as a champion of Tea Party values including the call for lower taxes, renewed focus on the Constitution and the need to shrink the size of government.

Congresswoman Bachmann is a graduate of Anoka High School and Winona State University. She has been married to Marcus for more than thirty years and they live in Stillwater where they own a small business mental health care practice that employs nearly fifty people. The Bachmanns have five children, Lucas, Harrison, Elisa, Caroline, and Sophia. In addition, the Bachmanns have opened their home to 23 foster children, which has inspired Congresswoman Bachmann to become one of Congress’ leading advocates for foster and adopted children, earning her bipartisan praise for her efforts.

But hey, what about Mitt?

Per thehill.com:

Romney sources said that the potential 2012 presidential candidate raked in the money while dispatching over $400,000 to Republican candidates and conservative causes.

There was no indication as to the breakdown in the haul between Romney’s federal PAC, Free and Strong America, and his state-level organizations in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan and Alabama.

From biography.com:

Born Willard Mitt Romney on March 12, 1947 in Detroit, Michigan. Raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Mitt Romney attended the prestigious Cranbrook School before receiving his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in 1971. He attended Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School and received both a law degree and an M.B.A. in 1975.

The son of George Romney, Michigan governor and Republican presidential nominee (he was defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968), Mitt Romney began his career in business. He worked for the management consulting firm Bain & Company before founding the investment firm Bain Capital in 1984. In 1994, he ran for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts but was defeated by longtime incumbent Edward Kennedy.

In 1999, Romney stepped into the national spotlight when he took over as president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. He helped rescue the 2002 Winter Olympics from financial and ethical woes, and helmed a successful Salt Lake City Olympic Games in 2002.

Mitt Romney parlayed his success with the Olympics into politics when he was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2003. After serving one term, he declined to run for reelection and announced his bid for U.S. president.

Mitt Romney married Ann Davies in 1969; they have five sons, Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben and Craig. He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. Romney is the author of the 2004 book “Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games.”

And, of course, he happily signed off on the state of Massachusetts’ own version of government-run Health Care, RomneyCare, in 2006.

 With America besieged by enemies, foreign and domestic, enabled by a feckless Federal Government, who seems more interested in the rights of Muslim fanatics halfway across the world that the economic suffering of Americans, the Republicans had better wake up and realize that November 2nd, 2010 was not just an aberration,  flash in the pan, Bigfoot-sighting type of event.  No matter how they wish to deny it, the pendulum of American politics has swung back to embrace Reagan Conservatism. 

The next Presidential Election will not be won by anything less.

Our Southern Border: An Acceptable Level of Control?

It appears that Colorado Senator Michael Bennet had a little help from his friends in the Midterm Elections.

According to thehill.com, Republicans on the House Administration Committee are calling for a severe tightening up of voter registration rules. Unexpectedly, a Colorado study has found as many as 5,000 non-citizens in the state voted on November 2nd, 2010.

The Committee Chairman, Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.),called the study “a disturbing wake-up call”:

We simply cannot have an electoral system that allows thousands of non-citizens to violate the law and vote in our elections. We must do more to protect the integrity of our electoral processes.

Gee, DiNozzo.  Ya think?

According to Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, his department’s study showed that nearly 12,000 people who were not citizens, were nevertheless registered to vote in Colorado.

Of those illegal alien voters, nearly 5,000 took part in the 2010 general election in which Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet narrowly defeated Republican John Buck.

And all the state of Colorado had to do to find out about it was to compare the state’s voter registration database with driver’s license records.

Gessler said:

We know we have a problem here. We don’t know the size of it.

Now, that’s reassuring.

Meanwhile, there has been a law enforcement bulletin issued that states that members of drug cartels have been overheard planning to kill federal agents and Texas Rangers who guard the border.

The bulletin, issued in March, said that the cartel members are going to use AK-47 assault rifles to murder agents and Texas Rangers from across the border. It did identify the cartels involved.

This bulletin was discussed at a hearing before a panel of the House Committee on Homeland Security named The Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management. The topic for discussion was “The U.S. Homeland Security Role in the Mexican War Against the Drug Cartels.”

Our role? How about keeping these murderous thugs from crossing the border?!

Well…there seems to be a little problem with that…

Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office, Richard M. Stana told the Senate Homeland Security Committee yesterday that the federal government can actually prevent or stop illegal entries into the United States along only 129 miles of the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.

That leaves 1,825 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border where the Border Patrol cannot prevent or stop an illegal entry.

This professional bureaucratic bean counter’s office is responsible for “auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively”

Stana proudly told the committee that the Border Patrol itself says it has established “an acceptable level of control” along 873 miles of the 1,954-mile-long southwest border. This is because of the way the Border Patrol defines “an acceptable level of control” of the border.

Acceptable? To whom???

Well, it certainly is not to Arizona’s Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever. He told FoxNews.com that an U.S. Border Patrol supervisor let him know as recently as this month that the patrol’s office on Arizona’s southern border was under orders to keep apprehension numbers down during specific reporting time periods.

According to Sheriff Dever:

The senior supervisor agent is telling me about how their mission is now to scare people back. “He said, ‘I had to go back to my guys and tell them not to catch anybody, that their job is to chase people away. … They were not to catch anyone, arrest anyone. Their job was to set up posture, to intimidate people, to get them to go back.”

The sheriff said that he had been talking to several federal agencies concerning this subject over the last two years. Dever will be telling the powers-that-be all about it when he testifies under oath next month before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

I will raise my hand to tell the truth and swear to God, and nothing is more serious or important than that. I’m going to tell them that, here’s what I hear and see every day: I had conversation with agent A, B, C, D and this is what they told me.

Of course, a commander with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection vigorously denied Dever’s charges.

Why would the Border Patrol not be arresting illegal aliens coming into our country?

Four words:  President Barack Hussein Obama

According to Scooter, he cannot sign an executive order to stop deportations. However, he did pledge to push for changes because he wanted to see students succeed rather than be deported.

Obama was speaking at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington D.C. in a Townhall Event, sponsored by the Spanish-language television network Univision.

When the meeting got started, student Karen Maldonado, via Skype, held up her deportation letter and asked him:

Why is the government saying that deportations have stopped,or the detention of many students like me, why is it that we are still receiving deportation letters like this one?

I wonder if this illegal alien is going to one of America’s Universities on American taxpayers’ money?  But, I digress…

Scooter answered:

We have redesigned our enforcement practices under the law to make sure that we’re focusing primarily on criminals, and so our deportation of criminals are up about 70 per cent.

Our deportation of non-criminals are down, and that’s because we want to focus our resources on those folks who are destructive to the community.

And for a young person like that young woman that we just spoke to who’s going to school, doing all the right things, we want them to succeed.

Respectfully, Mr. President, what part of the word illegal do you not understand?

Obama: Flip, Flop, and Bomb?

Read this and guess who said it:

Now, let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

… After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don’t oppose all wars. … What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

Back in the day, this politician said that deposing Saddam militarily was not necessary, because Iraq posed no “direct threat” to the United States. He also used Iraq’s weakened economy as a reason to leave Saddam alone.

He stated that we could still handle the militaristic despot and claimed that the Bush administration’s statement that Saddam posed too great a threat to American interests and his own people to be left in power was a bunch of political hyperbole.

That was the current President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, serving as an Illinois State Senator in 2002.

Scooter was giving his politically correct opinion concerning President George W. Bush’s planned invasion of Iraq. The murderous dictator that he was speaking of was Saddam Hussein. Obama was speaking at an anti-war rally in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002.  Back then, his stance was, that while Saddam was a brutal tyrant, that alone was not enough to justify using military force to remove him from power.

My, how his opinion has changed in 9 short years.

On March 28, 2011, in a speech to the American people, desperately attempting to justify attacking the government of Libyan leader Moammar Kadhafi, Obama brought up Kadhafi’s record of atrocities. But in this instance, our flip-flopping president tried to make the case that letting Kadhafi continue his genocide was not an option:

Kadhafi declared he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people. “He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day.

Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that if we waited, if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.

According to Scooter, Kadhafi had to be stopped because he would slaughter his own people in order to keep his throne. Per the president, this somehow constituted a threat to America’s “interests and values:

But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.

Back in 2002, Illinois Senator Scooter proclaimed that, America should fight Saddam Hussein through Democratic reforms in neighboring countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia instead of force. He also called for stronger international nuclear safeguards and nuclear independence:

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join – the battles against ignorance and intolerance, corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

But now, the worm has turned (Oops. Can I say that?).

Obama is endorsing his Kinetic Military Action in order to enforce America’s “responsibility as a [global] leader”. He proclaimed that the United States was “different” from other countries and therefore had no other choice but to attack Libya:

To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and, more profoundly, our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.

There goes Barack Hussein Obama Antoinette again.  Wanting to have his cake and eat it, too.

We’re All Extremists, Now.

At least, according to Sen. Charles (Chuckie) Schumer, D-N.Y., we are.

Chuckie, a member of the Democratic Senate leadership, got caught giving marching orders to 4 Democratic Senators about the budget stalemate yesterday morning. Schumer was unaware that reporters were listening in.

This upstanding public servant told this non-musical quartet, composed of Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Tom Carper of Delaware, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, to tell anyone who would listen that the GOP is refusing to negotiate.

He then reminded the Senators to be sure that they call the propsed GOP spending cuts “extreme.”

When caught red handed, Schumer’s feeble response was:

I always use extreme. That is what the caucus instructed me to use.

One of his aides must have told him that reporters were listening in, because he ended his instructions midsentence.

According to Susan Ferrechino, of the Washington Examiner, Chuckie said the following, during his instructions to the quartet, about House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio:

The main thrust is basically that we want to negotiate and we want to come up with a compromise but the Tea Party is pulling Boehner too far over to the right and so far over that there is no more fruitful negotiations. The only way we can avoid a shutdown is for Boehner to come up with a reasonable compromise and not just listen to what the Tea Party wants.

Schumer also said that Boehner was “in a box,” over the budget negotiations.

The Senatorial Quartet started contributing to the conference call after they realized that reports were listening in.

Chuckie’s conference call is a continuation of a Democratic Party theme begun before the Midterm Elections, labeling the Tea Party Movement as Extreme, because the American public are daring to call for a fiscally-responsible Federal Government.

Oh, the horror!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev.), two weeks ago, blamed “tea party extremists” for standing in the way of a compromise to allow Congress to keep the government running through September.

Dinghy Harry whined that:

Some Tea Party extremists seem to think ‘compromise’ is a dirty word, and have said that they would rather shut down the government than work with Democrats to find a common-sense, bipartisan solution.

He went on to plead with “reasonable Republicans” to

break from tea party extremists and join Democrats to find a responsible, bipartisan solution free of extraneous riders.

Or will they sacrifice American jobs to appease their base?

Harry, your shoving of Obamacare down our throats and your Democratic Congress’ fiscal mismanagement of the Federal Budget cost Americans jobs.

And the Conservative base is composed of the majority of Americans.

A coordinated message released by either Political Party is certainly not uncommon.  However, at this crucial juncture in the budget negotiation process, this will certainly not help avoid a shutdown.

The meme of Tea Party Extremism is certainly nothing new.  Remember this?

or how about this charming young lady (and I’m being kind):

Merriam-webster.com defines the phrase ad hominem as:

1: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect

2: marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the contentions made

Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, whatever you wish to call these out-of-touch imbeciles, are having a problem:  They are stuck in a reverse-Midas situation.  Everything they touch turns into garbage.

Their president’s poll numbers are tanking, as his Smart Power! Foreign Policy appears to the public to have all of the well-thought out logistics of a Three Stooges short. (Hey, Moe! Nyuk, nyuk!)

Meanwhile, his domestic policies have resulted in 1/6th of Americans being on Food Stamps and a horrible employment situation, as Americans live in dread of the start of the unwanted monster called Obamacare.

So, as their political reality is collapsing around them, all Progressives have left are ad hominem attacks, or, name-calling.

Like the bully on the playground, whose false bravado masks a deeply-set insecurity, Democrats are now lashing out at the Tea Party Movement and the rest of Conservatives, in an attempt to protect their phony-baloney jobs and their acquired power.  All their carefully crafted schemes and long-term plans are turning to ash in their hands, as Christopher Lee did at the end of The Horror of Dracula.

On July 16, 1964, American Senator Barry Goldwater said the following during his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination:

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

And, if you go further back in American History, I suppose that these namby-pamby passive-aggressive Progressives would have labeled our Founding Fathers as Extremists, also.  Lord knows, they said some pretty Extreme things.  Like Patrick Henry, who said:

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Is wanting a fiscally-responsible Federal Government an act of Extremism?  No.  Therefore:

We’re all Extremists, now.

When is a War Not a War?

When President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama says it is not, evidently.

Speaking Monday night from the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., Obama claimed that [by his command] the United States started a Kinetic Military Action against Libya in order to prevent a slaughter of civilians that would have stained the world’s conscience and “been a betrayal of who we are.” 

He then stated that he ruled out removing Libyan leader Moammar Kadhafi because trying to oust him militarily would be a costly mistake.

The Leader of the Free World then announced that NATO would assume command over the entire Libya operation on Wednesday. While this action symbolically keeps his ideologically driven promise to allow the other countries in his Coalition of the Unwilling to take over command authority, it does nothing to illuminate when the end of our involvement is or what the endgame of Obama’s KMA is supposed to be.

Carefully avoiding calling the Libyan offensive a WAR, Obama desperately attempted to justify why he involved America in his international coalition.

According to Scooter, his brilliant move had stopped Kadhafi’s advances and halted a slaughter that could have shaken the stability of an entire region:

To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

Obama also said, during his address to the nation, that:

For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom. Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.

Waitaminute, Scooter.

Per reuters.com:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Libya was not vital to U.S. interests but the broader Middle East was, arguing that instability in Libya could undermine democratic transitions under way in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

“I don’t think it’s a vital interest for the United States. But we clearly have interests there,” he told NBC in an interview taped on Saturday and broadcast Sunday.

To further muddy the waters, an Administration official said yesterday that it was not any sense of precedent that guided President Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya.

Denis McDonough, the administration’s deputy national security adviser told a bunch of reporters, away from the cameras, that:

We don’t make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent. We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region.

He went on to explain that there were compelling reasons to get involved in Libya as opposed to Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, four other countries in the Middle East where pro-democracy crowds have battled authoritarian governments.

White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked by a reporter on Monday about an interesting report:

There was a report out of West Point in 2007 about the people going through Syria to get into Iraq to fight U.S. troops, and that report had about a fifth of those going in to fight U.S. troops from Libya.

There was also a Libyan opposition group that was affiliated with al-Qaeda. And my question is, how concerned is the administration about the possible presence within this broad group of Libyan opposition figures that there are those who fought jihad against the United States in Iraq, or are affiliated with al-Qaeda or affiliated groups?

According to Carney, the administration had

obviously spent a lot of time looking at the opposition in Libya and speaking with opposition leaders.

What we have seen in Libya is something that’s national and organic ( like Iran in 1979?), where, as we’ve seen in other countries, the people of Libya have expressed their desire for greater participation, greater voice in their government, more representation. But beyond that, I don’t have anything specific on elements of the opposition that would be of concern.

Something smells fishy here…and it’s not the Potomac River.  Can you say Caliphate?

So how much is Obama’s Odyssey costing Americans?

Per George Stephanopoulos at ABC News:

One week after an international military coalition intervened in Libya, the cost to U.S. taxpayers has reached at least $600 million, according to figures provided by the Pentagon.

U.S. ships and submarines in the Mediterranean have unleashed at least 191 Tomahawk cruise missiles from their arsenals to the tune of $268.8 million, the Pentagon said.

U.S. warplanes have dropped 455 precision guided bombs, costing tens of thousands of dollars each.

A downed Air Force F-15E fighter jet will cost more than $60 million to replace.

Our Best and Brightest are in harm’s way, 1/6th of our fellow Americans are on Food Stamps, gas prices have risen 50 cents per gallon since the first of the year, and the man who is supposed to be our country’s greatest advocate is more interested in being a part of an international coalition, intervening in a civil war in Libya, and telling Brazil to Drill, Baby, Drill!

What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is a-goin’ on here?

KJ UPDATE 7:15 AM CENTRAL:  NATO just announced that there will be a delay in their “takeover” of the Libyan KMA.

I’m shocked, I tell you.  Shocked!

We, the Unwilling, Led By the Unknowing

Have you ever taken your car to a garage, having been told it should only take a couple of hours, and been stuck without your car for several days?

Well, it looks like President Barack Hussein Obama sold us a lemon.

Secretary of Defense Gates was asked on ABC’s “This Week” by Anchor Jake Tapper, subbing for the feckless Christine Amanpour, if there will be a U.S. military commitment in Libya until year’s end, Gates replied:

I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that.

The fact that everyone’s covering up faster than a garage that doesn’t know how to fix your car, has Congress up in arms (no pun intended,…well, maybe). They want to hear some sort of logical explanation from the president and his administration as to why America is in the middle of another Muslim conflict and what the endgame is.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Gates told anyone who would listen yesterday that the objective was limited to protecting civilians, even as they hoped (and prayed) that the pressure of United Nations international penalties and isolation might be able to make Kadhafi’s remaining loyalists and cause the nutjob to be thrown out of power.

Gates said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

One should not underestimate the possibility of the regime itself cracking.

One Libyan ex-patriot is watching in anticipation.

Dr. Abdulmonem Hresha, a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, watched Kadhafi hang a political opponent at age 10. The Libyan Government made him and his classmates go watch the execution in order to scare them into submission.

He now lives in London, having taught at Tripoli University, and having escaped to Canada.  Dr. Hresha believes that the Muslim Brotherhood could become an important player in a post-Kadhafi environment, as it has in Egypt and Tunisia.

According to Hresha, the West has nothing to fear from the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya.

Yep.  I’m sure Anwar Sadat would agree about how harmless The Muslim Brotherhood is…if you guys had not murdered him.

I’ve lived for many years in Canada and the UK, and that’s exactly the political system that we want.

Hresha says that if his organization forms a political party, it would seek to legislate according to Koranic principles (aka Sharia Law).

Why shouldn’t we be able to press our point of view — we are humans too.

Hresha said the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood welcomes airstrikes in Libya:

I salute and am very grateful to the Americans, French and British governments for stopping the killing. I will never forget this.

Hresha said he hopes a post-Kadhafi Libya will be a close friend to the West.

We’ve been working secretly till this moment.

Meanwhile, unrest continues in Syria  as the Middle East implodes.

In interviews concerning Syria, Obama’s administration claims that the uprising appears to be widespread, involving different religious groups in southern and coastal regions of Syria, including Sunni Muslims usually loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

American officials are torn between the fear that Syria will turn on Israel and Lebanon, and the hope that this unrest will work in America’s favor.

61 people were confirmed killed by security forces on Saturday, as Syria’s status remains uncertain.

In an appearance on CBS’ Face The Nation, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the U.S. will not intervene in Syria as we have in Lybia.

Jordan is experiencing civil unrest as well.  However, King Abdullah II appears to have things under control…at the moment.

Israel is preparing to defend itself.  Per google.com:

Israel on Sunday stationed the first batteries of its “Iron Dome” short-range missile defence system in the south of the country, but stressed the initial deployment was experimental.

The unique multi-million dollar system was stationed outside the southern city of Beersheva, days after it was hit by several rockets fired from the Gaza Strip amid a rise in tensions and tit-for-tat violence.

But officials were quick to point out that the system, the first of its kind in the world, could not yet provide complete protection for the hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel.

“Israel has been under missile threat for 20 years, since the (1991) Gulf War. I do not want to foster the illusion that Iron Dome, which we are deploying today for the first time, will provide a complete or comprehensive answer,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet.

“Iron Dome is still in the experimental stage and we do not have the possibility of deploying batteries to protect every home, school, base and installation.”

So far, Israel has acquired just two batteries and no decision has been made yet on where to deploy the second unit.

So, with current regimes on the verge of falling in the Middle East and the Muslim Brotherhood rising, United States President Barack Hussein Obama takes the National Stage at 6:30 p.m. Central in an attempt to assure Americans that he is on top of the situation, and that there was a logical reason that he bypassed Congress and involved us in an International Coalition of the Unwilling, carrying on a Kinetic Military Action with all of the coordination and advance planning of a Three Stooges Comedy.

Obama said that the Libyan action was going to take days, now it is going to take months.  Is his planned endgame, the same as Dr. Hresha’s?  After all, Obama’s State Department called the Muslim Brotherhood, a secular organization

I don’t know, but I have a bad feeling as to how this is all going to turn out.

A “Punishment” Gladly Taken

Sitting here on this Lord’s Day morning, I was thinking about my 3 year old grandson, Robert.  I was recently informed by my bride, that Grandma and I will be keeping him Friday night.

I began thinking about the miracle of my own special daughter, who will be 24 in July, and Robert, whom we almost lost, due to his mother’s diabetes, which almost ended my daughter-in-law’s life as well.

I have trouble wrapping my head around the thought processes of those who do not understand the sanctity of human life.  Like, for instance, President Barack Hussein Obama and his Science Czar, John Holdren.

Remember this little heartfelt speech?

Holdren holds similar views.

Holdren’s official title is Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Holdren co-wrote a 1973 book, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions, with infamous population control advocate Paul Ehrlich.

On page 235 in the book in chapter 8, titled “Population Limitation”, Holdren and his partner wrote:

To a biologist the question of when life begins for a human child is almost meaningless. To most biologists, an embryo (unborn child during the first two or three months of development) or a fetus is no more a complete human being than a blueprint is a building.

…The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being. Where any of these essential elements is lacking, the resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.

Obama’s Science Czar also wrote that legal scholars don’t view unborn children as human under the U.S. Constitution until “it is born”.

From this point of view, a fetus is only a potential human being

Historically, the law has dated most rights and privileges from the moment of birth, and legal scholars generally agree that a fetus is not a ‘person’ within the meaning of the United States Constitution until it is born and living independent of its mother’s body.

Holdren co-wrote another book with Ehrlich in 1977, Ecoscience

In it, they argued that

Human values and institutions have set mankind on a collision course with the laws of nature. Human beings cling jealously to their prerogative to reproduce as they please—and they please to make each new generation larger than the last—yet endless multiplication on a finite planet is impossible. Most humans aspire to greater material prosperity, but the number of people that can be supported on Earth if everyone is rich is even smaller than if everyone is poor.

Also, in Ecoscience, Holdren and Ehrlich argue that America should be de-developed. In other words,countries like the U.S. should have their economies destroyed and their wealth redistributed to the poor at home and abroad.

Sound familiar?

He and Ehrlich go on to say that

The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.

Holdren seems to be in agreement with the Princeton University “ethicist” (and nutjob) Peter Singer, that infants up to the age of two or so are not really human beings, and so can be aborted post-natal.

My hands are shaking as I post the following garbage from the mind of Peter Singer.  He was asked:  Would you kill a disabled baby?

Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole. Many people find this shocking, yet they support a woman’s right to have an abortion. One point on which I agree with opponents of abortion is that, from the point of view of ethics rather than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby.

Human babies are not born self-aware or capable of grasping their lives over time. They are not persons. Hence their lives would seem to be no more worthy of protection than the life of a fetus.

About killing a baby with Down Syndrome, he said:

We may not want a child to start on life’s uncertain voyage if the prospects are clouded. When this can be known at a very early stage in the voyage, we may still have a chance to make a fresh start. This means detaching ourselves from the infant who has been born, cutting ourselves free before the ties that have already begun to bind us to our child have become irresistible. Instead of going forward and putting all our effort into making the best of the situation, we can still say no, and start again from the beginning.

Charming, isn’t he? 

It should be noted that Holdren now disavows everything that he co-wrote with Paul Ehrlich in those two books. 

Notwithstanding Holdren’s denial of his long-published opinions, the fact that Obama chose this man to be in his Administration speaks volumes.

Psalm 139:13-14:

13  For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.

Couric Gone. Palin Still Here.

Formerly perky, flaming Liberal CBS News Anchor Katie Couric will be leaving the network this June when her contract expires.

The faded Media Darling’s 75 million dollar contract will not be renewed by  new CBS News Chairman, Jeff Fager.

Couric took over the legendary anchor seat at the CBS Evening News, after bolting from NBC’s Today Show in 2006.

She replaced disgraced former anchor, Dan Rather, who was fired after falsifying National Guard Documents in an effort to keep President George W. Bush from being re-elected.

Sources say that Couric is testing the waters in an attempt to land her own nationally syndicated program.

Veteran CBS anchor Scott Pelley, currently a “60 Minutes” correspondent, is the odds-on favorite to replace her.

Couric’ extraordinary journalistic endeavors include having a colon/rectal exam on national TV (Now, there’s an image I did not need.) and, of course, the edited interview from September of 2008 with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, which Liberals still salivate at the mere mention of, and hold up as some sort of Edward R. Murrow moment.

Ms. Couric, in obtaining my degree in a Radio, TV, and Film, I studied Mr. Murrow.  Sweetie, you ain’t him.  Not even close.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is doing quite well for herself.  On 3/23/11, she did a great interview with Greta van Susteren on Fox News where she reflected on her trip to Israel and Obama’s Kinetic Military Action in Libya.

Just for fun, I conducted a purely unscientific survey, in order to calculate all the horrible damage Liberals claim that Katie Couric’s little interview did to Sarah Palin.

I went to their individual Facebook pages, because if Ms. Couric is so wonderful, that should be reflected in the national barometer of popularity known as Facebook, shouldn’t it?

Well, now that I’ve stopped laughing, here’s how the numbers stacked up, in terms of Facebook fans:

Katie Couric  58,016

Sarah Palin  2,846,468

Now, let’s get scientific.  According to mediabistro.com, the evening news ratings for the week of March 14, 2011, were as follows:

NBC                 ABC                   CBS

• Total Viewers:   9,140,000    7,950,000     5,990,000

• Ages 25-54:        2,810,000    2,240,000      1,890,000

At the same time, in the world of Cable News , for the fourth straight week, Fox News Channel was the number two channel in all of cable in primetime, behind only USA network, averaging 2.114M total viewers.

The fact that Katie Couric failed to live up to expectations at CBS is not entirely her fault .  It is the fault of the political ideology which she shares with every other broadcast news anchor.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator magazine, wrote the following in an editorial on February 21, 2011:

Over the past two years the Democrats showed their true colors. Faced with an entitlement crisis, they actually rang up additional trillion-dollar deficits. We now face the entitlement crisis and a budget crisis, and the Liberals have no answer for it beyond tax and spend. They still have support in the media, but even here they are faced with opposition from Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet. Even the Europeans are facing up to the cost of the welfare state, but the Liberals can only spend and tax, though their taxes appear futile against our towering debt.

As a political movement Liberalism is dead. Its acolytes do not have the numbers. They do not have the policies. They have 23 seats in the Senate to defend in 2012 (against the Republicans’ 10) and Republican control of still more state houses and legislatures will give them even more seats in the House of Representatives in the future. Liberalism, R.I.P. Even Liberals do not call themselves Liberal today. They identify themselves as Progressives. It is fooling no one.

And yet, Liberals, anonymously identifying themselves as ” Moderates” or  “Fiscal Conservatives”, still continue to infiltrate every Conservative Internet Website that they can, in order to try to  stop America’s Political Pendulum from its enevitable swing back to the Right.

Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty commission wrote the following in a March 4, 2011 article titled Americans Don’t Want a ‘Truce’ on Social Issues, posted on wsj.com:

Consider recent polls from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). They reveal that tea party supporters, while motivated by the fiscal crisis, are also overwhelmingly socially conservative: Sixty-three percent oppose abortion, found PRRI, and 64% oppose same-sex marriage, found Pew.

PRRI also found that 22% of voters identify with “the conservative Christian movement” but only 11% identify with the tea party. This dovetails nicely with the fact that 32% of voters in the 2010 election described themselves in exit polls as pro-life, pro-family conservatives. They voted 78% for Republican candidates, delivering House Republicans their new majority.

…The millions of social conservatives and tea party voters firmly believe that Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. They expect pro-life, pro-family legislation and they want deep cuts in federal spending, including an end to ObamaCare and its replacement with pro-life, free-market health-care reform. They expect commitments to this effect from their presidential candidates.

Take a quick look at this from gallup.com, posted on 12/16/10:

Political Ideology of U.S. Adults -- Detailed Responses, 2009-2010

…While the political pendulum in Washington can swing widely, Americans’ political ideology, like their party identification, tends to shift more gradually. Such a shift has been underway in recent years. While the changes are not large, they are unmistakable. Moderates are growing fewer in number while the percentages of conservatives and liberals have expanded. Conservatism has gained ground among Republicans and independents, while the growth in liberalism is strictly among Democrats.

And that, gentle reader, is why Katie Couric has gone down in flames and Sarah Palin is still standing.

As Rush Limbaugh always says:

Conservatism wins.

The Power Behind the Throne

What made President Pantywaist go from chicken to chickenhawk last week and decide to enter into a war, err, excuuuse me, Kinetic Military Action, against Libya? Speculation is running wild that it is all because of Samantha Power.

Who?, you ask.

Samantha Power was first heard of nationally during her tenure on Obama’s Presidential Campaign, when she called the future president’s then-opponent Hillary Clinton “a monster”.

She must know Bill.

Anyway, Power is Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs of the National Security Council (since January 2009) and an advisor to President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm). She also just happens to be married to Cass Sustein, Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in his 1993 book The Partial Constitution that:

A restriction on access to abortion turns women’s reproductive capacities into something to be used by fetuses. … Legal and social control of women’s sexual and reproductive capacities has been a principal historical source of sexual inequality.

…Restrictions on abortion, surrogacy and free availability of pornography are troublesome.

…I do not mean to oppose equality to liberty. … Liberty does not entail respect for all ‘choices.

But, I digress…

It has been reported in the New York Post and elsewhere that Power was extremely instrumental in convincing Obama to authorize the Kinetic Military Action against Libya.

Power and others in last Tuesday night’s meeting told the president that the United States couldn’t stay on the sidelines as Kadhafi committed genocide while putting an end to his people’s revolt.

Power joined now-Secretary of State Clinton in that view.

In opposition to the ill-planned WAR were strange bedfellows National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Power’s boss and a staunch Liberal, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush Administration.

What seems to have pushed Obama to, in his mind, man up, was not some heartfelt concern for our national interest, but, was instead, being the president of the world that he is, an allegiance to a concept put forth at the United Nations euphemistically titled “responsibility to protect,” or R2P.

This is a wonderful decree from the hypocrites at the UN, calling for the creation of a new international moral standard to prevent violence against civilians.

There’s been one for thousands of years already, you international idiots. It’s called Christianity.

Where Power fits in to this moral crusade comes from the fact that she has a background in genocidal studies.

Per whorunsgov.com:

The journalist, activist and former Harvard professor burst onto the foreign-policy scene in 2003 with her book “A Problem from Hell”, which accused the United States of intentionally ignoring genocides. The work helped make her one of the foremost thinkers on human rights.

Of course, her book held America responsible for the world’s genocidal tragedies, including the 1915 attempt by the Turkish government to kill off the Armenians.  Here are a couple of quotes:

The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred. – Preface, xv

America’s lack of response to the Turkish horrors established patterns that would be repeated. Time and again the U.S. government would be reluctant to cast aside its neutrality and formally denounce a fellow state for its atrocities. Time and again though U.S. officials would learn that huge numbers of civilians were being slaughtered, the impact of this knowledge would be blunted by their uncertainty about the facts and their rationalization that a firmer U.S. stand would make little difference.

The Northwest Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Ethnic Education in the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University offers this summary of Power’s book:

Ms. Power starts by elaborating upon history and etymology of the term “genocide” and then examining several genocides starting with the Armenian genocide at the beginning of the twentieth century and ending with the atrocity in Kosovo in 1999. Chapters are devoted to the Holocaust, the fate of the Armenians, the Genocidal Convention, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Srebrenica and Kosovo. Final chapters carefully examine the failures of American foreign policy.

Power is a huge advocate of R2P. As a member of the National Security Council, she has been

trying to figure out how the administration could implement R2P and what doing so would require of the White House going forward.

Evidently, Hil has jumped on the bandwagon.

And, since Scooter is her boss, she may not have had any choice in the matter.

However, the question remains: Why did Obama dither around so long in making his decision, as he did in sending troops to Afghanistan?

I guess, going on vacation on the American public’s dime is easy. Actually doing your job as the President of the United States is hard.