Burt Prelutsky
Monday, June 29, 2009
Back in 2008, New York Times correspondent David S. Rohde, along with Afghan reporter Taki Luden, were abducted in Pakistan by the Taliban. Because they felt it might adversely affect hostage rescue efforts, the Times requested a news black-out. The Associated Press and other news agencies respected the request and only broke the story recently, after Rohde and Luden had scaled a wall and made their escape. It would be nothing other than a story with a happy ending, except that the Times has time and again ignored the government’s requests that it not report the specific ways in which we were combating Islamic terrorists.
It’s enlightening to know that so far as the New York Times is concerned, censorship is not only moral, but mandatory, when the life of one of its employees might be at risk, but is not to be condoned when the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians might hang in the balance.
However, when it comes to hypocrisy, the Times isn’t alone. For instance, when George W. Bush fired eight U.S. attorneys, the outrage voiced by the media would have had you believe that he’d personally ripped the Constitution into a thousand tiny pieces. Compare that to the silence that greeted Obama’s dismissal of Inspector General Gerald Walpin. It had been Walpin’s responsibility to oversee government-subsidized volunteer programs, such as AmeriCorps. Walpin’s team of investigators discovered serious irregularities at St. Hope, a California non-profit run by former NBA star Kevin Johnson. It seems that an $850,000 grant, which was supposed to go towards tutoring Sacramento students and supporting theater and art programs, instead was used to pad staff salaries, meddle in a local school board election and pay AmeriCorps members to perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, including washing his car.
When Walpin recommended that Johnson, an assistant and St. Hope, itself, be cut off from federal funds, he was fired by the president. Did I mention that Mr. Johnson is a friend and was an early supporter of Barack Obama? I guess you can take the man out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the man. Not even when he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
Some of us have been puzzled by the personal animosity that Obama has shown towards those, like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who oppose his radical left-wing agenda. Clearly, the man is so narcissistic and thin-skinned that he can’t conceal his contempt for anyone who doesn’t openly adore him. I don’t entirely blame him, though. Like a little brat who is never disciplined by his parents when he misbehaves, Obama is the inevitable result of a media that has mollycoddled him ever since he came on the scene.
Frankly, I can’t figure out what it is that people find admirable about the president. I, myself, was profoundly upset that he couldn’t even muster up a few inspirational words for those brave souls in Tehran who were standing up to the murderous mullahs and their hand puppet, Ahmadinejad. But, on further reflection, it occurred to me that maybe he just didn’t want Americans to get any funny ideas about freedom and liberty.
In fact, I found myself wondering if the spark that ignited the demonstrations in Iran wasn’t supplied by the example of democracy taking hold in nearby Iraq, in much the same way that the French revolution was inspired by our own.
Some people have suggested that the reason Obama kept silent during the popular uprising is because he is a Muslim. The truth is, I have no idea how much he was influenced by his early years in Indonesia or by the wish to please his absentee Islamic father. I figure it’s bad enough that he calls himself a Christian, but attended a racist church for his entire adult life, spending a thousand Sundays listening to a creepy minister heap curses on Jews, white Christians and America. While I don’t know what the man believes in his heart, I do know that he would have heard the exact same message if he’d been kneeling on a prayer mat for all those years in a Baghdad mosque.
It appears to me that Obama is bent on destroying our economy, our military and our missile defense system; while, at the same time, he promotes socialized medicine, hires a racist attorney general and nominates a Supreme Court nominee who parrots the party line of La Raza. This is a man who brags about nonexistent Muslim accomplishments, while taking every opportunity to denigrate America’s character, her sacrifices and her awe-inspiring achievements.
Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city upon a hill. President Obama sees it as a slum that needs to be torn down as part of a massive reconstruction project.
If there were ever a site like Mt. Rushmore, dedicated not to heroic leaders, but rather to those who were unfaithful to their nation’s highest ideals, Barack Hussein Obama could take his rightful place alongside the likes of Vidkun Quisling, Henri Petain and Benedict Arnold.
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