baldilocks

President Obama's Remarks at Fort Hood

Transcript.

As we face these challenges, the stories of those at Fort Hood reaffirm the core values that we are fighting for, and the strength that we must draw upon. Theirs are tales of American men and women answering an extraordinary call — the call to serve their comrades, their communities, and their country. In an age of selfishness, they embody responsibility. In an era of division, they call upon us to come together. In a time of cynicism, they remind us of who we are as Americans.

We are a nation that endures because of the courage of those who defend it. We saw that valor in those who braved bullets here at Fort Hood, just as surely as we see it in those who signed up knowing that they would serve in harm's way.

It was a good speech, well-delivered even.  And the First Lady was properly turned out for the occasion this time.

No sniping today, if you'll pardon the monstrous word usage.

Godspeed to the Martyrs of Fort Hood.

(Thanks to Hot Air; photos belong to the Washington Examiner)

Two Sides, Same Coin

Lots of things going on today, but two of them seem to demonstrate one of my convictions that there is no such thing as a coincidence.

John Allen Muhammad--the lead Beltway Sniper--is scheduled to be executed today at 6PM 9PM EST in Virginia.

Muhammad is set to die by injection Tuesday night at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. His attorneys had asked Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison because they say he is mentally ill. The U.S. Supreme Court turned down his final appeal.

"I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury and then imposed and affirmed by the courts," [Virginia Governor Tim] Kaine, who is known for carefully considering death penalty cases, said in a statement. "Accordingly, I decline to intervene."

Muhammad was sentenced to death for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a three-week spree that left 10 dead across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

The Virginia Pilot features biographies on two of the victims of Muhammad and his then underage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo.

Dean Myers

Linda Franklin

But before earthly justice is served for the 2002 series of cowardly acts, the victims of another Jihadist are being memorialized with the president and the First Lady in attendance.

During their planned four-hour visit to Fort Hood, the Obamas were scheduled to meet first with the families of those who were killed Thursday in the shootings at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, then with wounded soldiers and their relatives.

Obama later planned to address the Fort Hood community at a memorial service scheduled to start at 1 p.m. Central time, giving him another opportunity to express outrage over the deaths and to tell the nation that the government is taking steps to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

After the service, the president and first lady were scheduled to meet with wounded soldiers at Fort Hood's Darnall Army Medical Center before flying back to Washington. 

Remembering the time period from September 11, 2001 to March of 2003, there seem to be a spirit of threat over the US and the West.  Is that spirit returning?

But the spirit of fear is not from God, so rebuke it in the name of Jesus Christ...if you dare.

Happy Birthday to the United States Marines

and Semper Fidelis, older brothers and sisters.

Reviewing the Evidence

Cassandra gives me a Villainous Company-lanche with a fine (lack of) character study on our military’s Commander in Chief, such as he commands.  She also reminds us that the First Lady Michelle Obama once made a big show of concern with regard to the well-being of military families.  Well, guess what, Mrs. Obama.  Many military families down Texas way need you now.

There’s a memorial service scheduled tomorrow at Fort Hood in honor of its fallen and the president and First Lady are scheduled to attend.  I hope they don’t speak because I don’t think that either of them will be able to restrain from making the event about them.  And if the First Lady dresses the same way she did when the First Couple met the parents of deceased Congressional Medal of Honor recipient U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti (1975-2006) during the MOH ceremony at the White House in September, you will know that none of the callousness displayed by the Obamas and the Obama Administration toward the military is accidental.

 But I think you know that already.

Berlin Wall Tumbled Down

I can’t believe it has been 20 years since I sat here in the USA watching my friends on TV as they scale a previously untouchable Berlin Wall.  I had left what was then West Berlin not a month before.  Talk about the worst timing in the world!

President Obama isn’t in Germany this time—perhaps he thinks that he has traveled to Europe enough for one year—but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is there and appears to be getting on quite well with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (a former East German physicist).

My old Berlin friends and I plan to have our reunion this February, but I think that an adult beverage of choice should be lifted today in honor of those who helped shake the foundation of the Wall and bring it down—including, most notably, one Ronald W. Reagan who, in his famous 1987 visit, exhorted last USSR head of state Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear Down This Wall.” President Reagan seemed to speak the Wall’s destruction into reality. 

It says in the Bible that believers can do that.  I just report.  You decide.™

UPDATE:  President Obama gave a video address for the celebration in Berlin.  Appropriate considering present events, but he was unable to resist making it about him.

“Few would have foreseen … that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it,” Obama said.

Conundrum

When you live in a country which holds freedom of religion as one of its founding principles, what do you do about adherents to a religion whose founder exhorted the faithful to impose that religion on others at the point of a sword?

Or at the muzzle of a gun?

Or at the flashpoint of a weapon of mass destruction?

Answer: when their freedom of religion threatens your country's survival, you do what you have to do to make sure the country survives. 

We're not there--yet.  But some people want us there.  And I believe that one of them sits in the Oval Office.

UPDATE:  Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood Shooter, tried to contact al Qaeda months ago and the FBI knew about it.  Hasan also attended the same mosque and at the same time as two of the 9/11 hijackers.

I suppose that it is mere coincidence that this mosque, Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, VA, nurtured jihad so fervent in at least three of its congregants that they felt compelled to produce such high body counts for Allah.

(Thanks to Stacy McCain and Hot Air)

In Memoriam

A Commander-in-Chief Visits the Fort Hood Wounded

The only thing is that it isn't the current Commander-in-Chief.

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) ― Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, visited wounded soldiers and their families near the site of the worst mass shooting on an Army post in the United States.

The Bushes made their private visit to Fort Hood's Darnall Army Medical Center on Friday night. Bush spokesman David Sherzer said in an e-mail that the couple thanked Fort Hood's military leaders and hospital staff for the "amazing care they are providing."

Instead of comforting his troops, President Obama decided to spend the weekend at Camp David.

11:25AM THE PRESIDENT addresses the House Democratic Caucus - Cannon House Office Building

2:30PM THE PRESIDENT makes a statement to the press on Health Care - Rose Garden

2:45PM THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart The White House en route Camp David - South Lawn

Even if one were inclined to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume that he had asked Former President Bush and Mrs. Bush to visit the wounded soldiers because the Bushes live in Texas, why would he ask this of his predecessor and not get on Air Force One overnight to get down there himself? 

Why would he not go to be with those whom he is charged to send into battle and who were so horrifyingly betrayed by one of their own?

Because he doesn't give a rat's backside, that's why not.

I bet Former President Bush told him to get his narrow a** down there stat and he ignored it.  No awards were being given to him so he said "Screw all that blood and drama.  I'll be chillin at Camp David."

He. Does. Not. Care.

(Thanks to Hot Air and Riehl World)

Interview (UPDATED)

I'll be on The Ed Morrissey Show today at 12:15 PST to talk about Tale of the Tigers.  Go to Hot Air or to UStream.

UPDATE: (12:10) On in Five!

UPDATE: If you missed the show, you can listen here. Start at 18:40.

Backstabber (UPDATED)

Well.  I had planned to keep the Tale of the Tigers post at the top for a couple of days longer but yesterday’s Fort Hood, Texas murder spree perpetrated by Major Nidal Malik Hasan demands commentary—especially since I sort of predicted that such events would occur and are, in fact, being encouraged by the president’s vacillation regarding Afghanistan.

Hasan, 39 and a military psychiatrist whose medical education was paid for by the U.S. Army of which he is a member, is a native-born American and a Muslim.  According to reports today, he walked into a Readiness Center at the fort, got up on a table and began firing.  This Readiness Center is the place where soldiers who are about to deploy get counseling to assure that their home affairs are in order before they go to places like Afghanistan, or anywhere out of the country, for that matter.  Fort Hood’s Readiness Center has cubicles in it, so when Hasan was shooting, he was firing at the tops of heads.  The result:  12 dead yesterday, one more dead today and 30 wounded. Some of the dead and wounded were shot in the back.

One of the wounded is local civilian police officer Kimberly Munley, who exchanged fire with Hasan and stopped the increase of his body count.   Both survived, but Hasan is unconscious and on life support. According to reports this morning, Hasan yelled “Allah u Akbar” as he fired.

It’s difficult to fight the impulse to hatred and vengeance for this one.

More than that, this incident takes us back to when another Muslim called Hasan turned on his fellow soldiers.  Recalling that, I began to wonder how often U.S. military have turned their weapons on those who trusted them most.

I can’t recall any others but these two incidents but I would appreciate it if someone would point them out.

In the meantime, I hope that this particular Hasan lives to face those whom he has betrayed--those who survived, that is.

UPDATE:

Patterico:

[A retired colonel who worked with Hasan at the Fort Hood psyche ward] heard Hasan say that “maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor” in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also heard Hasan comment that he was “almost sort of happy” about a shooting at a Little Rock recruitment center.

The colonel confirms that Hasan was about to be deployed but did not say whether it was to be to Iraq or Afghanistan.

UPDATE:  Sergeant Kimberly Munley, civilian police officer, Heroine.

Munley, who had been trained in active-response tactics, rushed into the building and confronted the shooter as he was turning a corner, [Lt. General Bob] Cone said.

"It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer," Cone said.

Munley was only a few feet from crazed Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan when she opened fire.

Wounded in the exchange of gunfire, Munley was reported in stable condition at a local hospital.

Someone at Ace's mentioned that it's a bit of poetic justice that this particular Islamist (yes) was taken down by a woman.  I concur.

Tale of The Tigers

Leftists say that we on the right make things up.  Well, some of us do.

My new novel is entitled Tale of the Tigers!

 

(Click the Image)

I'm taking pre-orders at discount price of $20.00 for the moment--available in 4 to 6 weeks--and I will autograph the first one hundred copies ordered.  It should be available at Amazon by mid November.

Yes, this is the project that has been in the works for longer than I've let on.   But, yanno? There's no time like the present to live one's dreams.

(Thanks to Lamar Powell, author of Bad and Worse: A Tale of Men)

UPDATE:

Thanks for the link, Don Surber.

A Little Family Competition

If you have noticed the right-most, uppermost corner of this blog, you've seen that it is Project VALOUR-IT time.  VALOUR-IT is the Soldier's Angels project formed to raise money to purchase special voice-operated laptops, Wii Video Game Systems and personal GPS devices for our heroes who have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the program's fourth year.

Four of the services—the Air Force, the Army, the Navy and the Marines—have, as is usual, split into fund-raising teams and of course that knuckle-dragging Army team, lead by Blackfive, is taunting the Air Force.

That the Air Force can raise plenty of money for the heroes without getting our hands dirty isn't a bug--it's a feature!

(It's all love!) Donate on behalf of the United State Air Force Team here.

You can also donate by snail-mail:

Soldiers' Angels
Project Valour-IT Fund
1792 E. Washington Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91104

Inciting Attack

This is what he has planned for all those who love and protect America and, ultimately, for America itself:  failure…

KABUL – Eight American troops were killed in two separate bomb attacks Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, making October the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.

In one of the insurgent assaults, seven Americans were killed while patrolling in armored vehicles, U.S. forces spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said. He said an Afghan civilian died in the same attack. The eighth American was killed in a separate bombing elsewhere in the south, also while patrolling in a military vehicle, he said.

…and demoralization.

[L]ast month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, [Foreign Service Officer Matthew] Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter [pdf] to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

Mr. Hoh is also a former Marine captain who served in Iraq.

When President Obama stated that he would continue until November to dither about General McCrystal’s request for an additional 40,000 troops, a child could have predicted that such an announcement would embolden both the Taliban and al Qaeda. 

Does anyone remember that we went into Afghanistan to clean out the nests of terrorists who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11?

It’s easy to see that the president is trying to lose Afghanistan.  But the loss would simply be another stab at the old America that the president wants to smother and would assist in making way for the America he wants to shape in his own image.

Will this wake America up?

President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

Helmeted, body-armored feds knocking on American doors—would that do it?

How much more foreign policy leg-spreading and domestic forging of tyranny does the president have to perpetrate before we see that we’ve been had?

Wait a minute.

If we flake out in Afghanistan, it won’t just embolden Islamists overseas…it will embolden those living here.

When the Mumbai terrrorist attacks happened, most observers concluded that such a thing would never occur here because too many American citizens go about armed—even in leftist utopias like my home state.  In Mumbai, armed Islamists ran wild for days.  Here, the duration would be roughly eight hours, max (about two in places like Oklahoma).

But what if Islamist did try a Mumbai-style attack here?  Would that give President Obama the excuse to create his SA…er…National Police Force? (Godwin can bite me.)

Is this what Vice President Biden was talking about last October?

Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough - I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. [snip]

[I]t's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they're made if they work, then they weren't viewed as a crisis. If they don't work, it's viewed as you didn't make the right decision...

(Maybe it's what the then vice president-elect only thought he was talking about.)

Pretty soon all such questions will have their answers.  I think that most of them do already.

(Thanks to the Drudge Report and to Instapundit)

PREVIOUSLY:  Told Ya So

UPDATE: One supposes that this is mere coincidence:

KABUL – Gunmen with automatic weapons and suicide vests stormed a guest house used by U.N. staff in the heart of the Afghan capital early Wednesday, killing at least seven people including three U.N. staff, officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility, saying it was meant as an assault on the upcoming presidential election.

No, I don't think so either.

Happy Autumn

Each year, as a result of the first LA rainstorm of the fall season, the good people of my neighborhood are treated to a power outage and last week's storm yielded no different outcome.  Well the power is back on but my land line remains dead, so there has been no broadband or wifi at the crib since Thursday.  (No text either since someone is playing games with my cell service.) And yes, I'm trying not to misbehave in reaction--especially since I have a lot of things to do on line in the next few weeks.

So it is that I have made a daily sojourn to the Starbuckses in the area, to one of the LA Public library branches and now I'm at Whole Foods.  And it's nice to feel as those I'm doing my duty for freedom and the free market by patronizing the latter.

Ha Ha! Try the lemon kale.  And the arugula. Heh.

BTW, I think that the world is about end too. Read this blog and ignore the punctuation.

Poor Baby

Last week I came perilously close to cursing at a friend of my great-aunt’s--a woman in her seventies who has known me all of my life and for whom I sometimes run errands.  (Both ladies had enough marbles and enough humility to give up their driver’s licenses when the time came to do so; therefore I am often the driver.)  I’ll call her Mrs. Sampson

Anyway the slip almost happened when Mrs. Sampson said that her church was praying for President Obama.  Now before you folks who are prone to jumping to conclusions make that leap, know that I pray for him also. I pray that he is called to repent of his sins and accepts the Lord Jesus Christ—the real one rather than the abomination--as his savior and that his decisions are guided by the Holy Spirit.  I presume that Mrs. Sampson and her church’s other congregants pray the same thing since Christians are exhorted to pray for their leaders.

However, Mrs. Sampson’s actual words regarding the reason her church was praying for the president got to me.  “Oh they’re criticizing him so.  It’s just horrible!”

I didn’t say what I was thinking, but those thoughts did contain the f-bomb.

After biting my tongue—almost literally—I pointed out that if he didn’t want to get criticized that he should not have run for president.  She agreed, then pointed out that Jesus had been criticized(!)

I quickly asserted that, contrary to some opinions, he was not Jesus, and then took the conversation to the place that had initiated my anger.

“President Obama is the Commander-in Chief of the Armed Forces.  There are many young men--teenagers some of them--who are sleeping on the ground, who haven’t had showers for weeks and they are doing so under his orders.  Many of these men have seen their friends blown to bits and some may have that happen to them or may come home minus a body part.  If they can put up with that, don’t you think that their Commander-in Chief can put up with a little criticism?”

“You’re right, he can.”

“Is your church praying for any of them?”

Why are all of these people treating the putative Leader of the Free World as if he’s a puling infant?  Oh wait.  He is.