Impeach?

            Some 420 pages of previously classified documents on the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack have finally been released.  These documents are the transcripts of secret testimony before Congress by high-level military personnel who had intimate knowledge of the facts surrounding the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Stevens.

            This testimony establishes incontrovertible evidence that President Obama and key members of his administration knew that this attack was planned and executed by terrorists, and not the result of a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islamic video.  Defense Secretary Panetta and Joint Chief Dempsey, in fact, told President Obama of the nature of the attack less than two hours after it began. 

            One obvious conclusion can be drawn from this crucial testimony: blaming the attack on an anti-Islamic video was a lie.  The lie was uttered (perhaps unknowingly) by Ambassador Susan Rice five days later on five different Sunday talk shows.  It was repeated by Secretary Clinton not only on camera in a message to the American people, but also in the most disgusting way to the parents of the deceased as their caskets were being received on American soil.  As we all remember, the lie was repeated by the president on several occasions, including in a speech to the United Nations.  And Jay Carney, the president's smirking toady, regurgitated the lie to the press corps without a hint of shame, then and now.

            It is more than mere speculation that the purpose of this lie was purely political.  The truth would have shown how wrong the president was when his campaign speeches proclaimed that Osama bin Laden was dead, that al-Qaida was on the run, and that terrorism -- thanks to him -- was no longer a threat.  Had he told the truth he might have lost the election.

            Questions still remain.  Why did Dempsey and Panetta remain silent when they knew Obama, Clinton, Carney, and Rice were lying?  Of the two, Panetta is more culpable because he was a civilian and not in the military chain of command like Dempsey.  Anyway, who came up with the idea of blaming the video? 

            I remember pundits early on saying that if President Obama is ever proven to have lied about this, he should be impeached.  Now we have the proof.  Will he be impeached?  Of course not.  Republicans know that even if they succeeded in impeaching the president in the House, he would not be convicted by the Democratic-controlled Senate, and Republicans know they would pay a political price for that defeat, as they did with Clinton's impeachment.

            The repeated lies, the multiple scandals, the political shenanigans, the extra-legal actions, the disregard of the Constitution, all these violations of his oath of office define this president as a tyrant who places his personal power above the good of the country.  He won't be impeached, but he deserves to be.   We'll just have to wait for history to render the final judgment.   

I, Troglodyte

            The other day I marveled at my son Marc's ability to put together a  superb Power Point sales presentation.  Although I spent the major part of my career in Marketing, I never possessed the computer skills that he enjoys almost as a second nature.  Even now I know I am way behind the times.  I keep a Tracfone in my car for emergencies, and I do all my writing on a desktop, but I don't carry a fancy phone on my hip, nor do I have a laptop, a tablet, or any device beginning with the letter "i".  When my son asked me what word might describe my backwardness when it comes to modern electronic conveniences, I said that I may very well fit the definition of a troglodyte.

            Well, I might not quite be a caveman or a Luddite, but as someone who learned how to type on an old Remington 55 years ago, I might qualify as a curmudgeon when it comes to comparing today's customs and values to the ones I acquired growing up. 
            Sometimes it's just the little things, like holding the door open for my wife as we enter a restaurant, or holding her chair as she sits down.  I never wear a hat in a restaurant, much less with the bill on backwards or to the side.  And I never wear shorts or jeans in church.  I resent the ones who use parking lots to empty their car ashtrays.   Or who dump their trash along roadways.  Last week I even saw a young man drop a bag out his driver-side window before he had even left McDonald's driveway on Ehringhouse Street.
            I don't mind drivers who exceed the speed limit a little -- I used to do that myself when I was young -- but I do mind those who pull out onto the left lane of a highway and stay there, especially if they drive under the speed limit.  In my old commuting days I kept my distance from the guy with a newspaper spread across his steering wheel.  Now, I fear becoming the victim of someone texting while driving.
            I was born before Pearl Harbor, so I inherited my values from the Great Generation.   But times have changed.  Teenagers in my day might have engaged in necking, but never sexting.  Every kid I knew had two parents at home, but hardly any had a TV, and we played our games outdoors, not in front of a screen.  Few kids failed to graduate high school, and, with only the rare exception, girls put marriage and pregnancy in the right order. 
            Yet, looking back at the decades since, I have to marvel at the advancements in the fields of science, medicine, and technology.  We only dreamed of the luxuries that most people now take for granted.  But perhaps there are dormant seeds of corruption in all this abundance.  It's the growing sense of entitlement among people today that makes me worry about the future.  The spirit of self-reliance and hard work has been replaced by the right to free food, free housing, free medical care, and welfare; independence and free enterprise by dependence on government largesse; and equal opportunity by the demand for income equality. 
            Let's HOPE that this New Year will bring CHANGE for the better.

Mental Health

            Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has granted an injunction against the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate.  It is only temporary, but it prevents for now the requirement that religious institutions buy coverage for contraception and abortifacients.  Forcing nuns running charitable organizations to promote what they consider sinful is even sillier than making seniors buy coverage for pediatric care.  I cannot imagine that an appeal to lift the injunction has any chance of succeeding.

            Such is the wisdom embedded in ObamaCare.  Another one is the mandate to cover mental health care.  It's a fine idea, but unrealistic.  A person seeking the care of a psychiatrist, for example, would have little chance of getting it under the payment provisions of ObamaCare.  The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that nearly half of psychiatrists will not accept insurance payments; they will only treat patients who can pay cash.  That's fine for entertainers, professional athletes, and Wall Street tycoons, but not for the average citizen who can't afford to lay back on a couch to the tune of $1,000 an hour or more.
            The effective treatment of the "mentally-challenged" cannot be delivered by ObamaCare.  There are people roaming the streets today who should be in psychiatric care institutions.  But committing such people these days is almost impossible since the official government policy of deinstitutionalization has closed so many of these facilities.  There simply is no place for them to go for treatment and to keep themselves and the public safe. 
            In 2007 Seung-Hui Cho, a Korean college student suffering from severe anxiety, selective mutism, and a major depressive disorder, killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech.  His treatments had been discontinued.  In December of 2012 Adam Lanza , a severely deranged and possibly schizophrenic young man, killed 28 students and teachers in Sandy Hook Elementary School.  His murderous obsessions were never recognized or treated.  In just the last three years there have been 99 shootings resulting in 160 fatalities in schools alone, most of them by individuals with mental disorders.  Yet, anti-gun zealots scream for more gun control instead of focusing on the consequences of deinstitutionalization and the inaccessibility of psychiatric care.
            If we're going to stop these slaughters in our schools and on our streets, we need to get serious about fixing our broken mental health system. Well-intentioned laws and regulations will not do it.  They are no more effective than spitting in the wind.

           

Today's Religious Persecution

            In the year 313 Roman Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan.  It legalized Christian worship and effectively ended an era of  Christian persecution that had included, among other atrocities, circus entertainment featuring rather non-competitive contests  between Christians and lions.  

            Several centuries passed during which Christianity spread throughout Europe as well as parts of Asia and North Africa.  The movement suffered temporary setbacks caused by invasions from Norsemen, barbarians, and Muslims, but it flourished with the colonization of the Americas and Africa to become the world's dominant religion.  Persecutions were not unknown during this period, some, like the Inquisition, perpetrated by Christianity itself. 
            Now, one would expect that with the advent of modern civilization religious persecutions would cease altogether.  Yet, that is not the case.  To be sure, we have seen Christians slaughtered in Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, and Eritrea by radical Islamists, but that doesn't explain, for instance, the ferocity of the eradication campaign against Christians in North Korea.  Nor does it explain the attacks against Christianity in this country.
            With few exceptions, like church burnings, the assault against Christians in America has not resulted in fatalities.  But it is real nonetheless, only in a different guise.  The barbarians of today take the form of atheists whose billboard in Times Square pronounces that we don't need Christ in Christmas,  the self-proclaimed champions of religious freedom who would prohibit Christmas carols in schools or Nativity scenes on the public square, and the secularists who would excise all expressions of Merry Christmas in favor of the inoffensive Happy Holidays.  They would in effect replace our constitutionally protected freedom of religion with freedom from religion.
            Christmas proclaims Joy to the World and Goodwill toward Men.  Perhaps there are some among us who need to be reminded that the reason for this proclamation is the message of universal love brought to us by the one whose birth we celebrate in this most joyful of all seasons.

The Slavery of Debt

            Martin Bashir is finally gone.  He said he resigned from his job at MSNBC, but we all know he was fired for the vile on-air attack he made on Sarah Palin.  He suggested someone defecate in her mouth, a method of punishment used by some slave owners.  Why would Bashir attack Palin in this disgusting way?   Because she had said that America had become enslaved to debt.

            Here in part is what she said:  "Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China.  When that money comes due...it'll be like slavery...We are going to be beholden to the foreign master."
            Liberals, who care nothing about spending this nation into oblivion, went nuts.  When Ron Paul echoed Sara Palin's words by saying "Ultimately, debt is slavery," Salon Magazine called him a racist.  Al Sharpton, who is well known for his own brand of racism, slammed Palin.  He screamed, "Our federal debt is like slavery?  Slavery was a horrific, vile, a vile practice explicitly based on race.  So it's hard to avoid sounding racist when you make comparisons like that."  The Reverend might have remembered that his Bible says, "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender's slave." (Proverbs 22:7)
            Let's look at some facts.  Our national debt is 1700% higher today than it was in 1971.  The debt is now over $17 trillion, and, if we include unfunded liabilities, it is over $70 trillion.  Individual Americans are also enslaved by debt.  According to the Federal Reserve, household debt, which includes credit cards, mortgages, car payments, medical debt, and student loans, averages $75,600, or 154% of personal income.  Credit card debt alone totals $798 billion, more than $15,000 per household.  Meanwhile, our government, oblivious to the impending catastrophe, is strangling our economy by taxing us to the hilt to fund runaway entitlements  and disastrous programs like ObamaCare. 
            How did we get so far into debt?  We had virtually no national debt 90 years ago.  Calvin Coolidge, who was president then, explained why.   He said, "A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny.  It condemns citizens to servitude."  He knew something about economic slavery even back then.  I wonder what he would say today.   

           

Write, Write, Write

            I recently wrote that thinking is what I did for a living.  Of course, that's only half of it.  If you have acquired the habit of clear and logical thinking, you then have to develop the skill to apply it.  More than likely, this will involve communications.  My career was mostly in Marketing, a field in which good communications skills are absolutely essential.

            The best advice I could give kids today to improve their ability to communicate is to learn how to write.  And like any other facility, this one depends on practice.  Lots of it.  I'm not talking about texting your friends every minute of the day.  I'm suggesting a daily practice of putting your ideas down on paper.  You did it in school, so continue to do it even when your formal education is over.  Keep a diary.  Write letters.  Start a blog.  Anytime you get an idea, write it down.
            Learn how to write, but also learn how to write better.  Start with simple instruction books like E.B. White's Elements of Style and perhaps a book on editing.  Better still, find a mentor, an accomplished writer who is willing to look at your scribbles and suggest improvements.  I did it for my son Marc and I'm proud to say that his excellent writing skills have been a key to his success in business.
            My first mentor was my father.  He happened to be a linguist, perfectly bilingual in French and English, but also conversant in Spanish and Italian, with a smattering of Vietnamese and Arabic he picked up while working overseas for the State Department.  His best advice to me when I was in high school was how to expand my vocabulary.  He said, "Always have a dictionary at hand.  When you see a word you don't know, look it up immediately.  Write it down.  Then use it in three different sentences.  Do that, and this new word will be yours forever."
            Just as an aside, a couple of weeks ago I stopped at a used-book store and picked up a copy of Winston Churchill's "History of the English-Speaking Peoples."  I hadn't read two chapters when I ran into three words I didn't know, all three oddly beginning with the letter "e": exiguous, effulgence,  and ebullition.  I looked them up and wrote them down, along with their definition.  I doubt I'll ever use any of these words in a letter to the editor, but at least I'll know what they mean if I ever run into them again.  I won't give you the definitions here...you'll have to look them up them up yourself.

Thinking

            Some years ago, when I was still working for a living, I happened to be gazing out the window one day when a friend came by and saw me through the open door of my office.  He was a sales manager based in Kansas City, so I didn't get to see him or him to see me very often.  He said in a loud voice, "Now I know what you do.  You think."  The comment was made half in jest, but I took it as a sincere compliment.  Because thinking is indeed what I did for a living.  It is what I've done all my life.  So this article is about thinking.

            What we do with our lives must be driven by thought, serious thought.  To drift aimlessly through life is pointless and likely unsatisfying.  So many young people push away from the shores of their formative years and embark on the vessel that will take them through adulthood without a destination in mind and, of course, no idea how to get there.  Without a thought to how they want to spend the rest of their lives, they are bound to drift aimlessly without the satisfaction of ever having accomplished anything of value.  Which brings me to education.
            The habit of serious thought begins in school, but more specifically in high school and even more so in college.  Education introduces students to the thoughts of others, be they related to science, history, the arts, religion, or philosophy.  It is by learning how others think that we learn how to think for ourselves.  Indeed, I've always maintained that the object of a school, in its purest Socratic meaning, is to teach students how to think.
            Once the habit of thinking has been formed, it must be pursued throughout life.  The writer Paul Theroux once said that when he is between books, he feels superfluous. Exactly right.  When one's mind is not engaged, it's as if one's life is suspended.  Now, you don't have to be an Aristotle or an Einstein to be a thinking person.  Technicians, craftsmen, builders, care givers, engineers, waiters,  clerks, homemakers, and even politicians think about the results they want to achieve and take pride in their accomplishments.  Thoughtful people can bring value to any walk of life, from the extraordinary to the mundane.
            I shake my head at the time wasted by today's kids who spend hours texting or playing video games, or staring vacuously at a big screen TV, when they could be reading  a good book or engaging their minds in so many other ways.  I look at these kids and ask myself: Whatever happened to intellectual curiosity?  But that's a topic for another day.