June 1, 2010

First, let me welcome all of you to my new website!  I think the most difficult part of the launch was deciding on which topic to choose first.  There’ve been so many stories in the news lately which have me shaking my head and saying, “I don’t get it,” but I had to make a decision.  It might be a bit long.  I’ll try and keep it shorter in the future but I’m new at this and I’m just getting started….

One of my favorite authors, Bernard Goldberg, uses the term, “lamestream media” (LSM), quite often and, to me, no recent news story epitomizes that sentiment better than the coverage of the Times Square terrorist, Faisal Shahzad.

Let me start out by saying I have absolutely no – that’s zero – compassion for terrorists.  I couldn’t care less if their mothers didn’t breast feed them, they were potty trained too early, they were bullied at school, or they had funny haircuts which traumatized them.  Their goal is to kill Americans, that’s you and me, and our family and friends.  Period.

Since 9/11, we’ve had not one, not two, but now three terrorist attacks on American soil – all since President Obama took office.  In May 2009, there was the Little Rock attack, in November 2009, there was the Fort Hood attack, and, now, we have Shahzad who just last month failed to kill innocent men, women and children, when, thank God, his car bomb did not explode – but the intent and potential to kill was there.  This list of attacks doesn’t include the would-be underwear bomber on Christmas who was fortunately stopped in mid-air.

That being said, it made my head spin watching the LSM reporters trip over themselves trying to dance around the fact that the Times Square bomber was an Islamic terrorist.  They would’ve preferred anyone – someone upset about health care reform, a tea party movement member, a right-wing militia guy or even their next door neighbor – to be the guilty one but not a radical Muslim.  I expect that kind of craziness from left-wing websites like Daily Kos who asked its viewers who the Times Square bomber would end up being.  After 785 votes, only 136 said it would be an al Qaeda terrorist.  84 votes said an American sympathetic to al Qaeda, 7 votes for a war protestor, 147 for a “militia whackjob,” 258 votes for a tea partier, 49 votes for a “religious whackjob” and 104 votes for a mentally ill guy with no connection to anything.  Again, it’s predictable from these extreme websites but we shouldn’t come to expect it from our media.

This one’s priceless.  CNN, Contessa Brewer, lamented the Muslim connection:  “…there was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country because there are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way.  I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry.”  Is this woman for real?  Can someone tell me why she has a job?

CNN reporter, Jim Acosta, said, “it can be confirmed that his house was foreclosed on in recent years.  I mean, one would have to imagine that that brought a lot of pressure and a lot of heartache on that family.”  My first reaction to this ridiculous analysis was to think of all the Americans who’ve lost their jobs and homes and are having difficulty making ends meet, paying their bills and putting food on their tables, and wondering to myself how many of them, right now, are planning to kill innocent men, women and children in Times Square.  I’m guessing the number is zero.  Let’s look at all of Bernie Madoff’s victims who were completely ruined by him;  how many of them have attempted to blow up innocent people in Times Square?

I’m sick and tired of the political correctness.  I’m sick and tired of everyone tip-toeing around reality.  In March 2009, Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, in a German magazine, Der Spiegel, said the word “terrorism” would no longer be used but rather “man-made disasters” because “it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.”  Can you get any more politically correct than that?  How can you head Homeland Security and fight against an enemy when you can’t even name him?  Surprisingly, Attorney General Eric Holder actually said this was a “terrorist plot” when responding to the Times Square attack.

Unlike the LSM which attempts to “humanize” evil by trying to find out why someone does what he does, this is one time when I’m not interested in motives.  The NY Times, wants to depict Shahzad as your ordinary “suburban dad” with “money woes.”  CNN reported his attempts to keep his home in Connecticut.  Well, maybe if he hadn’t taken 13 trips to Pakistan since 2003, he might’ve handled his finances better.  But, did he really have “money woes” when he paid for the Pathfinder with 13 $100 bills, $700 in cash for his seat on the airplane when he was trying to escape, and paid his $1150 rent on time according to the Daily News.  How many working Americans today have that kind of cash reserve?  I doubt very many.  The story is still breaking and the Feds are following the money trial.

What I don’t get is the LSM’s misplaced compassion in trying to justify Shahzad’s and other terrorists’ behavior.  He’s a terrorist:  no matter what the reason, he hates  America and wants to kill me, you, our family and friends.  That’s all I need to know.  I doubt that the thousands of family members who’ve lost loved ones and thousands who’ve been injured fighting the war on terror take any comfort in the fact that Shahzad had “money woes.”  His ability to achieve the “American dream” is of no concern to me.

What ultimately almost caused my head to explode was Chris Cuomo’s reportage on ABC news about who Shahzad was and how he changed over the years.  Cuomo reported on Shahzad’s family life, his arrival in the U.S., his education and his initial positive outlook: “even his signature seems to suggest optimism, a heart is dotting the “i” in “Faisal.”  I can’t make this stuff up – check it out for yourself.

And if you get, God bless you, because I sure as heck don’t.