concretebob’s Neighborhood

"We’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like "radical Islam" or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old "radical extremism." But we never make any effort to delineate the line which separates "radical Islam" from non-radical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur the pathologies of a Nidal Malik Hasan incubate... The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else — even in the Army. What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that’s the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas." - Mark Steyn

I slam, you slam, we all slam for Islam.

Muslims are maniacal

Mammaries are magical

Two things happened this past week the left me kind of sad. First, my oldest son, who is seventeen, swam in his last swim meet. He made the regionals which were held in Tallahassee and we were holding out hope that he would make state, but even though his times were good, they just weren't good enough to move on.

My wife and I have known that it was going to be a sad day ever since the swim season first started. We've been going to his meets for the past three years and we have made some pretty good friends with the kids and their parents, not to mention the coaches as well. Donna took tons of pictures and we cut out every article that was in the paper, but when the last meet was finally over it left us feeling empty knowing that it was all done.

Now, he is playing soccer. Again, we are going into it with excitement, but with trepidation too, knowing that it is his senior year. I'm just not ready for another one of my kids to graduate high school.

The second thing that happened was more on a personal level for me. The regional swim meet was on Friday, so the team went to Tallalhassee on Thursday to spend the night. My wife got the day off and went with the team (I couldn't get the day off, but managed to leave work around 2:00 and get there for the finals). This left me and my youngest son, who is thirteen, at home by ourselves on Thursday night.

Every time in the past when my wife had to go somewhere overnight my son would be all excited because he could sleep with me. To be honest, I like it too. I know he is growing up and to have him ask to sleep with me somehow makes me feel like he is still little.

Anyway, when bedtime came around he didn't make mention of sleeping with me. It sounds selfish, but a part of me was crushed over that. In an instant I suddenly realized that my youngest child was no longer... well, a child. When I went to bed that night I went with a heavy heart.

My kids are growing up and I can't do a thing to stop it.     

The families of those killed are first and foremost in my thoughts and prayers.  I am also keeping the wounded and all survivors in my prayers as well.  The days ahead will be difficult for all of them.

There's really nothing more I should say at this time.

Earlier this week, I wrote about the filthy dog Muslim who ran down his daughter and then ran himself. She was gorgeous. She's currently dead. And yesterday, a filthier dog Muslim killed other daughters' fathers.

I haven't heard any of the coverage since I first mentioned this latest terrorist attack because it doesn't matter what's being said, and I certainly don't want to hear any excuses.

And once again, there were warning signs that were ignored.

I did read some headlines that said something about The Fort Hood Scumbag having been harassed, that he was deploying to Muslimland, and that he claimed to be a Palestinian. The accuracy or inaccuracy of any such headlines are irrelevant. All you need to know is that the guy was a Muslim, he attacked America's finest, and that the people who made it possible for him to be in a position to do that were, unfortunately, not among the people he killed.

Interestingly, there was a story yesterday about some scared liberal movie director who made a film in which he's blowing up all sorts of Christian symbols, and he's quoted as saying that he wanted to blow up some Muslim crap in Mecca - you know, on film, but he was afraid - because Muslims do it for real.

It is clear to anyone who can still think that Muslims terrorists, acting alone, are probably now a greater danger than terrorist sleeper cells.

No wonder Muslims won't eat pigs - it would be cannibalism.

You know what they say, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and Muslim terrorist attacks...

12 dead, and the toll will likely rise. A deliberate act by Major Malik Nidal Hasan or some such crap (to be corrected as facts and time allows), "recently" assigned to Fort Hood, and get this - the "attacker' was a mental health professional... a psychiatrist

Which better describes this nation's mental health.

Mental health and Muslim? That goes together like a horse and rattlesnake.

And a Major Muslim? How could that happen?

If this results in Muslims finally being regarded with the suspicion they so richly deserve, then it will have served some purpose.

I mean, was there ever any doubt Muslim attacks would happen again? And bigger ones are being planned?

May God damn Allah!

And let the excuses begin...

None of this is confirmed as I write, much of it is my own speculation. If I'm wrong, I will not apologize.

I finally understand why liberals are so confused... about one thing at least...

Great Moments in Socialized Medicine
Europeans like to think of America as racked by street crime, and also as neglecting its citizens' medical needs. But this story from London's Daily Telegraph suggests there may be an element of projection in this stereotype:

Nearly 170,000 violent incidents take place in England's NHS hospitals each year, data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed.

Labour's laws on 24-hour drinking are being blamed for alcohol-fuelled violence in accident and emergency departments in particular.

There have been several murders and rapes at hospitals in recent years and thousands of attacks annually involve the use of knives and other weapons.

Almost one in four attacks results in injury, yet only a fraction of them are ever reported to the police.

The statistics reveal the dangers that doctors, nurses, paramedics, patients and visitors face in our hospitals on a daily basis.

Some hospital A & E [accident and emergency] departments have been described as "war zones" on a typical Friday or Saturday night.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reports that "the decision to designate patients as 'do not resuscitate' is falling to junior doctors in one in five cases, a report has revealed":

Usually a consultant should make the final decision--after talking to the family--in cases where elderly patients are not expected to survive.

But senior doctors were involved in dealing with just one in three patients admitted to hospital shortly before dying, says the report from the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death. . . .

The findings come amid continuing controversy over elderly patients near the end of their lives being assigned to "death pathway" schemes.

Experts claim doctors and nurses need more training in how to care for people who are dying, because wrong diagnoses can result in withdrawal of food and fluids when they might otherwise have survived.

Then again, according to former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, "In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We've all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false."

 

See, it's not "death panels," it's "death pathways" - it's not a final, abrupt  determination, it's a journey. If we want to communicate better with America's dumbest twenty percent, we've just got to learn the terminology!

Now here are a few more Taranto Gems of the Day...

A Scapegoat Alternative
A Sunday Associated Press dispatch from Camden, N.J., give us a mischievous idea:

In a final campaign swing on behalf of the only governor seeking re-election this fall, President Barack Obama on Sunday pitched Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine's bid as a key component for the White House to make good on its political promises.

Once he realizes the Bush well has run dry, maybe the president can blame Corzine's loss for his failure to make good on his promises.

 

And last but best, at least for me...

The Curse, Reversed
We're more of a football fan, but still, as a New Yorker we feel as if things have returned to normal. The New York Yankees last night won Game 6 of the World Series to defeat the Philadelphia Female Horses. It's the first championship for the Yanks since 2000. Of course, just weeks after that series, Hillary Clinton became a senator from New York state, a position in which she served until early this year, when she left to be Barack Obama's low-profile secretary of state.

Turns out we were right: Mrs. Clinton cursed the Yankees. Though reader Jorge Souss has another theory:

Since the Yankees won their first pennant (1921), every Democratic president except Lyndon Johnson has presided over two or more Yankee world championships. And during the past 50 years, the Yankees have won eight World Series in the 20 years in which a Democrat occupied the White House and have not won a single championship in the 30 years in which a Republican was president. During the past half century, the Yankees have won 40% of the time when a Democrat is president and 0% of the time when a Republican is president.

So it should not have surprised you that the Yankees have not won a World Series since October 2000. As Democrats reminded us every time something wasn't exactly as we wanted between 2001 and 2009, "It's Bush's fault!" I believe that you owe Secretary Clinton an apology. And when the Yankees defeated the Phillies, Arlen Specter had had nothing to do with it. President Obama won it for the Yankees merely by showing up (as he did with the Nobel Prize).

C'mon, what could the party in the White House possibly have to do with the Yankees? That's just superstition!

 

Even if you don't appreciate baseball the way you should, The Philadelphia team's name "correction" was the loudest out-loud laugh I've had in ages...

Well, the results of the election are in, and the big winner was... Fox News!

And as expected, the big loser was... anything liberal.

CNN even finished behind it's surrogate, CNN Headline News.

Now THAT'S change you can believe in!

Meanwhile, Bobo said he didn't pay attention to the election results.

I'll pause here to give you time to finish laughing.

So you want a simple test to find out how ignorant a liberal is? Just mention Fox News and see how long it takes to hear a discouraging word. The shorter the period, the dumber he is. One third of the Fox audience is liberal. Granted, half of them are watching so they can find something to criticize, and the other half don't understand what the people on Fox are talking about because it's the first time they've heard about the subject, but a statistically insignificant number of liberals probably realize that Fox is the only place they can get all sides of a story.

In fact, liberals are snowy about the fact that the number of their species watching Fox is greater than the number of liberals watching the other cable news channels combined.

But who can argue that with liberals when they say Fox is biased? No one, that's who. Because Fox IS biased... in favor of presenting all the facts, free speech, allowing both sides to be heard, and they don't understand that the reason Fox airs more conservative views than liberal views is because conservative views make sense. In fact, I get angry at Fox because they air too much liberal nonsense.

Liberals, of course, don't see their views as nonsense - because they never carry them to their logical conclusion. There's always a leap... "We want the public option so that... people can live forever!"

FAME!

That's the liberal mind at work... and "work" is probably a mischaracterization as well as a statistically insignificant number, because most liberals are either unemployed or they "work" for the government! And of course, their jobs were all just saved - and many even got raises thanks to the stimulus. For joy!

Now here's something I found more interesting that the enormous Fox lead in viewers... it's the enormous Fox lead in the coveted 25-54 age group. There too, Fox handily beat the other networks combined, but what's so significant there is that if you're 25 and watching Fox, it's very unlikely you'll be able to watch the other networks with a straight face. I mean whenever I turn on MSNBC, it takes milliseconds to overwhelmed by the stupidity, the hate, the desperation that's being conveyed by the anchor of the hour.

So Nancy Pelosi thinks "we won!?!" I wonder, could other liberals think that as well? If so, keep on keepin' on, bro...

Before we get to all the saved jobs, here are two Items of interest and amusement...

"As if hoping to avoid the outcome," FoxNews.com reports in a postelection roundup, "the White House issued a statement after the GOP win in Virginia saying the president was not watching election returns and would not be making any remarks on the results."

He's president of the United States, after all. What are mere governors' races to him? He just doesn't care. True, he doesn't not care enough to refrain from putting out a statement letting you know how little he cares. So he cares a little. He's only human; it hurts to lose. But he's got it in perspective. He's focusing on himself right now.

Man, is he ever focusing on himself! NewsBusters.org reports on what he was doing last night when he was ignoring the election returns:

During the 10AM ET hour of America's Newsroom on Fox News Channel, fill-in co-host Martha Maccallum told viewers what President Obama watched on election night while Democrats suffered big losses in New Jersey and Virginia: "Robert Gibbs said, well, he was actually watching, you know, the HBO special about his year-long campaign and how it all went."

Good Lord, we've gone and put Norma Desmond in the White House. He is big. It's the elections that got small.

 

Next is a great moment in Canadian health care...

Vial Antibodies
If you want a swine flu shot in Canada, you may be out of luck, Toronto's Globe and Mail reports:

Bulk shipments of the main component of the H1N1 vaccine made at a Quebec plant are being exported to other countries, as Canadians line up for hours for the scarce influenza shots.

GlaxoSmithKline, which has the sole contract to supply Canada's flu vaccine, says it can produce more antigen than it can expeditiously put into vials for Canadians, and has been exporting excess amounts overseas.

This reminds us of the time a restaurant was unable to fill our order for an elephant ear sandwich on rye because it had run out of rye bread.

 

And now the main point...

Close Enough for Government Work
"President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan," the Associated Press reports.

Hey, great news! Just one little problem: "Only 508 people work there." The story continues:

The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved.

You read that right: Civil servants got pay raises, and the Obama administration claims credit for "saving" their jobs:

Officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.

"If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.

Aren't you excited to think that these people may soon be in charge of your health care?

WASHINGTON – The most common deals under the government's $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program... replaced old Ford or Chevrolet pickups with new ones that got only marginally better gas mileage.

The single most common swap (8,200 times) involved Ford 150 pickup owners who traded old trucks for new Ford 150s. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The fuel economy for the new trucks were an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the clunkers.

Owners of thousands more large old Chevrolet and Dodge pickups bought new Silverado and Ram trucks, also with only barely improved mileage. Those deals helped the Ford 150 and Chevy Silverado — along with Ford's Escape midsize SUV — climb into the Top 10 most-popular vehicles purchased with the government rebates - totaling at least $911 million.

In scores of deals, the government reported spending a total of $562,500 in rebates for new cars and trucks that got worse or the same mileage as the trade-ins — in apparent violation of the program's requirements. The government said in some cases they were probably entered incorrectly by dealers or based on outdated fuel economy figures.

The new data, obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act, include details of 677,081 clunker trade-ins. More than 95,000 of the new vehicles purchased under the program — or about one in seven — got less than 20 mpg, according to the data.

More...