The Bad, the worse and the foolish: A frustrated look at recent events

Maxine Waters aided the sub-prime crisis

You might consider Rep. Maxine Waters’ funneling of TARP money to her husband’s friends and business associates at OneUnited Bank an abuse of both her office and the public’s trust. Not so for her California constituents.

Arturo Yrbarra, a director at the Watts Century Latino Organization, praised Waters’ for persuading banks to increase lending, thus increasing home ownership. Translated that means she helped pressure banks into approving mortgages they otherwise wouldn’t have touched with ten-foot poles. Excuse me, but wasn‘t that the cause of the economic downturn, which led to high unemployment and the exponential growth of our already enormous national debt? For this she receives praise from her constituents?

Waters is far from alone. Her actions are part and parcel to the Democrat Party platform, a platform congressional Republicans have lacked the courage to identify, much less oppose. Small wonder our fiscal house is out of order.

Bad news from the Gulf

Since the Deep Water Horizon oil spill we’ve been treated to one doomsday scenario after the other. The Louisiana bayous would be flooded with oil, with the advancing crude ruining the delicate wetlands. The Gulf Stream would pick up the oil, spread it across every inch of Florida’s beaches and deposit tar balls and sludge from Georgia to Maine. Fisheries would die and the entire Gulf of Mexico would become a giant dead zone. Communist organizers and their empty-headed zealots called for the federal government to seize British Petroleum.

That was then; this is now.

The marshes are healing and the gulf is cleaning up the crude, essentially eating the oil. Marsh grass is growing through the dead plants and new growth is evident in the mangrove trees. Only a month ago both were given up for lost.

This isn’t the word of Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity or some other “anti-environment” conservative pundit; it’s the word of scientists. And it’s bad news for environmentalists who’d hoped the BP spill would spark the public outrage necessary for them to forcibly implement their “green” agenda.

So, the earth is addressing a perfectly natural substance that has escaped its proper place, much like our bodies deal with infection. Is it just barely possible that God, the Creator of both crude oil and the Gulf of Mexico, knows a little bit more about how the two interact than does the Sierra Club and Greenpeace?

Tyranny gets a makeover

A New Zealand teenager was stripped of her beauty pageant title for conduct the pageant director considered unruly. There appears no evidence the young lady posed nude or sent compromising photographs to her boyfriend via her smart phone. She doesn’t appear to be a budding Lindsay Lohan. Her transgression is far more severe; she dyed her hair. Director Barbara Osbourne confronted the girl, Olivia O’Neil, on Facebook.

“You’re not going far in this world,” Osbourne raged, “Hand over your crown.”

O’Neil merely returned to her natural hair color. It’s not like she dyed her hair the colors of the rainbow and joined the gay and lesbian liberation front (bet you wouldn’t have heard a peep from Osbourne if she had). And shouldn’t beauty pageants have more important worries, like their winners engaging in the aforementioned unbecoming activities?

Yes, rules are rules. But petty tyrants are petty tyrants, too. They are every bit as evil as other tyrants, save on a smaller scale. Barbara Osbourne is the one with the problem. For her to lash out at a teenage girl over such a trivial matter indicates a person with one foot outside the plane of reality and the other seated firmly in Adolf Hitler’s boot.

A new purpose for the Supreme Court

Despite attempts to rally opposition, no one realistically expected Elena Kagan’s judicial nomination to fail. She was presented by a Democrat president, reviewed by a Democrat Senate and had public support from four Republicans, meaning a filibuster was out of the question. With the confirmation secure, President Obama was free to speak candidly concerning his desire for Kagan to be a judicial activist.

A White House press release expressed Obama’s pride in how Kagan would make the SCOTUS “a little more inclusive, a little more representative, more reflective of us as a people than ever before.”

May I remind Obama and Kagan that the Supreme Court’s job isn’t to be inclusive, or to be “reflective of us.” And we have the House to represent us, in theory at least. Those qualities aren’t prerequisite to sit on the Supreme Court. Justices are to apply the U.S. Constitution to the cases brought before them; no more and no less. But, admittedly, that notion’s a little quaint these days.

Harry Reid is at it again

Does anyone remember when Harry Reid complained about visitors to Congress smelling of body odor? He’s at it again. Reid said, “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK? Do I need to say more?”

No Mr. Reid, you’ve said plenty. Let me talk for a while.

Frankly, I don’t see how anyone with the requisite mental capacity to tie their own shoes could be a Democrat. I don’t know how anyone could vote for a man who rammed a mammoth, unread healthcare bill down our throats and then bitched about its contents. That would be you, Senator Reid.

I don’t know how any poor person could be a Democrat when the party’s policies have ensured a perpetual underclass the sole purpose of which is to ensure Democrat electoral victories. I don’t know how any poor person can be a Democrat, Sen. Reid, when you and your ilk have robbed the poor of their independence and their self-esteem.

I don’t know how any urban black person can be a Democrat when the problems urban black people face--drugs, blight, illegitimacy and family decline--are as bad, or worse, as when your party first promised to fix them.

I could go on, Mr. Reid. Do I need to say more?

From Islam, peace by upon it

Everyone knows about the brutal execution of ten Christian medical missionaries in Afghanistan (peace by upon it). Essentially, these people were treated with less respect than the cattle at your local abattoir. Not only were they executed, their bodies were unceremoniously dumped in a wooded area.

The Taliban (peace be upon it) claimed responsibility for the killings. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid (peace be upon him) said the Christians were killed for “preaching Christianity.”

Well, at least there was good reason to systematically shoot these dangerous, although unarmed, subversives. And if that’s not enough reason to kill the infidels, they were found in possession of Bibles translated into the local language. Hmmm? Perhaps shooting was too good for them after all.

This is done in Afghanistan (peace be upon it still) in the name of Islam (peace be upon it) while the American Left (no peace be upon them) gives itself a collective pat on the back for its tolerance and open-mindedness in approving construction of a mosque within spitting distance of Ground Zero. We wouldn’t want Muslims (peace be upon them) to soil their prayer rugs (on them, too), hijabs (once more) and burkas (ditto) during a long trip to spit on our 3000 incinerated countrymen, would we?

It’s a good thing Islam (peace be upon it once more), is a religion of peace. Otherwise, Muslims might get ugly about this infidel thing.

A parting dose of tolerance

Regressives claim that conservatives never say anything positive about the Obamas. Well, when you can’t think of something nice to say it’s better to remain silent. Therefore I’ll say nothing about Her Royal Highness Michele Obama’s trip to Spain, the taxpayer funded entourage that accompanied her, or the Spaniards who were shooed from their beaches so Her Highness could frolic in the surf. Consider my silence an act of tolerance.