Casualty Of Peace

The Los Angeles Times/Chicago Tribune ran a rather disturbing story today (HT the Logical Husband" about a mentally ill young man and a years long deception that he ran.

Retired Marine Capt. Rick Duncan carried a list of phone numbers of those in the business of helping veterans. One was for the VA clinic in Colorado Springs, and in 2008 he pressed it upon Mike Flaherty, a young Army veteran struggling with depression.

He understood, Duncan told Flaherty. He'd been to Iraq three times. Attacked in Fallouja, he'd returned home with a metal plate in his head and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Except that "Captain" Duncan was no captain - nor did he serve in Iraq or even the Marines. "Capt" Duncan was actually Rick Strandloff - an anti-war protester and convicted felon who is also bipolar. I want to go on the record now and say that his having bipolar disorder should not be used as an excuse for his bad behavior or thought of as "normal" behavior. I have a very, VERY dear friend back in MN who is bipolar and while she does have some things that she struggles with, this kind of deception is not even close to being this egregious. I have also learned from this dear friend that when you are dealing with bipolar disorder, nothing is "normal" - they are all individuals with individual brain chemistry misfires.

All that said, I live in a military family. My husband served in the Army as does my brother in law. My late father in law was in the Air Force and was buried with full military honors. My father tried to enlist, but could not due to health issues. The list goes on and on. Besides being married to the military, I was employed by the Army as support staff. Needless to say, the military and military issues are near and dear to our household.

The reporter does a fantastic, indepth job of reporting this story and creates, in Mr. Strandloff, a compelling and sympathetic figure. However, buried deep in the story is a brief comment by Mr. Strandloff that belies his claims of "I didn't know what I was doing or why I did it"....

"Any good production has to have a compelling character," he said.

And that in a nutshell shows that he knew a little more about what he was doing then he led on. It should also be noted that this is not the first time that the anti war movement was taken in by a fake. Michelle Malkin has run a number of stories by people claiming to be anti-war veterans. While I have no doubt that there are real "anti-war" veterans out there (heaven knows that no soldier really WANTS to go to war) the sheer number of these stories leads one on the outside to suspect that the anti-war movement wouldn't know the real thing if jumped out in front of them. Either that or...

Yet Strandlof also said that he had a greater effect in his antiwar efforts as Duncan the veteran than he ever did as Strandlof the liberal protester.

Does the end justify the means? And if it does, why have the anti-war protesters been so silent since January 20? If you are against wars after all.....

More Liberal Hypocrisy

From the people who yell at people of faith to "get out of my bedroom" comes this latest level of hypocrisy courtesy of Rick Moran.

For some, it is a question of politics. And after 8 years of hearing the left say that a person's sexual life is not the business of the public and what someone does when he is not doing the people's business should be his own affair, it takes a lot of sand to suddenly become interested in such matters when they involve a member of the opposite party.

There exists a small homosexual clique that has taken it upon themselves to "out" gay Republicans. These vicious slime merchants inhabit "alternative" media including websites, newspapers, and now, Hollywood. Their stated goal; to expose "hypocrisy" by outing conservative politicians, and even more incredibly, those who work as aides for the lawmaker.

You should read the whole thing. Rick has it nailed - it's not about privacy. It's about political agendas...and rank hypocrisy.

Just Another Brick In The Wall

Music is one of the major joys in my life. Life would not be worth living (to me anyway) without music. My tastes run the gamut from Classical to Jazz to Blues but I grew up on Rock. One of the most influential bands when I was growing up was (of course) Pink Floyd. Their sound was unique and uniquely British. I must have played my "Dark Side Of The Moon" LP (and yes I still have it) a hundred times in the first month I had it!

What brought Floyd to mind tonight was the Logical Husband came across VH1 playing their movie "The Wall" while channel surfing. I have not seen that movie in a good 20 plus years so we kept it on for a while. The imagery of both the album and the movie was straight out of Orwell's book "1984" - another voice decrying the dehumanizing nature of an overreaching governmental/corporate oligarchy where the rich get richer at the expense of the proletariat.

Fast forward a couple decades. The year is 2007, the place Giants Stadium in New York, the event - Live Earth. Now conserving the environment is a laudable goal, but the goal of Live Earth was to draw attention to the evils of Anthropogenic Global Warming. The stated goal of Live Earth was "to ensure that Live Earth inspires behavioral changes long after 7/7/07." One of the behavioral changes that Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection is to enact Cap and Trade and carbon offsets. These offsets are sold by a company named Generation Investment Management owned (in part) and chaired by former VP AL GORE! So the former VP profits from the sale of carbon offsets that he is trying to mandate - OK. Now before you say "but the businesses are the ones being charged for this", do you really think that any business is going to eat that cost? No - they are going to pass those charges on to the consumer - just like the charges imposed by Cap and Trade are going to be passed on to the consumer!

Duke Energy says Carolinas electricity rates would rise by at least 13 percent under President Obama's plan to address climate change by auctioning off carbon credits.

Obama would set the nation's first limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas linked to global warming. Under an approach outlined in his proposed budget last week, industries and utilities such as Duke would be able to trade allowances to release the gas.

But Duke CEO Jim Rogers, who supports the carbon cap, says Obama is wrong to insist that those allowances be initially auctioned to carbon emitters. Rogers calls an auction a “carbon tax” that would be passed on to consumers, with most of the burden placed on coal-dependent states such as the Carolina.

Getting back to "The Wall". One thing the Logical Husband commented on is that it always seems to be the ones that decry the fascist tendencies of overreaching government are the first ones to LINE UP to be dictated to when the dictators are of the same political values as themselves. It is one of the many hypocrisies of the left that they need to be more aware of if we are ever going to have honest discussions on our differences.

Even More Tolerance

Jazz and I spoke a little bit this afternoon (on our weekly show) about the Prop 8 fall out against the Mormon Church. What neither one of us knew was as we were speaking, the HazMat Unit of the Salt Lake City Police were just blocks away from where I sat at the scene of the latest attack on the Mormon Church.

The FBI was testing an envelope mailed to the Salt Lake City LDS temple Thursday to determine if the white powder it contained was dangerous.
At 4:05 p.m., a recorder's office employee working in the temple's annex opened a manila envelope that contained a smaller envelope with powder in it, said Salt Lake City Fire Department spokesman Scott Freitag.
"As soon as he saw it he put it down," Freitag said.
LDS security was summoned and put the envelopes and powder into a plastic bag. Security officers called 911 and the Salt Lake City Fire Department's Hazardous Material crew and FBI agents arrived.
The man who opened the envelope and two other employees were kept in the annex for more than an hour. Their clothes were washed on site. Only the man who opened the envelope got a small amount of powder on his hand, Freitag said. It was determined the employees were not injured and later went home.
HAZMAT crews used a bleach-like product to sanitize the annex just to be safe, Freitag said. The annex office is in a separate building near the temple. Temple Square was not evacuated while HAZMAT crews were there.
Two FBI agents left the temple grounds about 5 p.m. with a black plastic trash bag containing the envelopes and powder.

This has gone beyond protests and into the realm of terrorism. Is the GLBT community so devoid of solutions that the only thing that they can do in response to their electoral defeat is to threaten and attempt to intimidate?

So tell me....is this the way that ADULTS handle set backs or is this the way that spoiled CHILDREN handle set backs????? I mean really....

Tolerance In Action

The tolerance of the left rears it's ugly head again. This time in response to a resounding rejection by the voters. As a result of the passage of Prop. 8 by California voters, the GLBT community has gone off....on Mormon Temples across the country. Whether it is here in Utah, or California, or Seattle or in Colorado the people who demand that the rest of the world accept their "alternate lifestyles" are now engaging in the very same type of activity that brought hate crimes legislation to the lexicon. The following story was related to me by a friend. This happened to someone he knows who was in Los Angeles on Election Day.

As additional information for those who missed the news, I was at the temple assisting in the security efforts and it was quite an experience. Our temple is safe and no damage was done on the grounds.It was a site I never expected to see. At one point we had let in about 20 police vehicles through the gates because they were afraid their vehicles would be damaged as civilian cars were being vandalized. I removed the Utah plates from my truck just so I could drive through the mess and park blocks away. Two full squads of LAPD in riot gear set up their base inside the temple grounds while SWAT vehicles and hundreds of officers followed the crowds run up Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards. I've heard that the crowd was estimated to be over 2,500. The officers inside the temple grounds made a line on the front lawn by the fence. At one point, with 7 news and police helicopters overhead, the crowd began to climb the fence and it looked like there was going to be a lot of trouble.

We had, it seemed, a good fourth of a Polynesian ward there so it could have gotten very interesting very fast. While I was there, I was not aware of anyone actually breaching the fence, but we were asked to move far across the parking lot as they were anticipating the need to shoot tear gas canisters. I never thought I would see the day when police officers would sit perched on the spire of our temple as lookouts.

All of this happened at about 7:30 PM. It should be remembered that most likely many of the law enforcement were not in favor of our stance on Proposition 8, but nevertheless, the men and women were there doing their duty and protecting our property. For that we are grateful. And yes, there was an incident with some of our members who had gone to remove the protest signs from the front fence. One of the protesters did initiate physical contact with one of our sisters so the details are uncertain as to whether the response was fully justified. The lesson to be learned is that it's important to anticipate and avoid such confrontational situations.

Remember the world is watching our reaction and the media is everywhere. In the end, when we keep our cool, the video footage speaks the truth regarding which side is really intolerant and appears hateful when we simply do not respond or do so in a loving and controlled manner.

No matter your feelings about the Mormon Church (and I am no Mormon so I have no "dog" in this fight) they have the same rights to preach issues to their flock as the Catholic Church, the Baptist Church (where I belong) or any other church has. IF their flock goes out and acts on that teaching that is also their rights! As long as the Church is not advocating for or against a specific candidate they are well within their rights do to what they did.

If the GLBT community wants to be upset they should be upset at the voters of California. WE THE PEOPLE in California spoke - if the GLBT community does not like that maybe they should move to Massachusetts or something. But taking out their electoral loss is just as hate filled as anything they accuse others who do not approve of their "alternative lifestyles" of being.

Consistently Inconsistent

I had the following forwarded to me by a dedicated reader.

Parents don't even know their child is having a newborn screening test - so you want to tell them that their DNA "might" be used against them -- give me a break! I can't believe you privacy nuts. You want parents to opt in to something that most parents don't know anything about - and they will do so at the expense of their child....do want to have the death of babies on your hands? I surely hope when a child DIES because of your ignorance of a public health initiative that will help research and HELP CHILDREN IN THE LONG run.....that the parents know that YOU WERE THE ONE THAT CHANGED THE LAW. I'll for sure let them know if you get away with this craziness!
GOD HELP YOU IF YOU DO!

The two emphasized lines jumped out at me. Remember way back in 1973 when lawyers argued before the Supreme Court that the government had no business interfering in the PRIVATE decisions being made by a woman and her doctor? You might not as it was a rather obscure case that went by the name Roe v. Wade.....Remember a couple of years ago when the Minnesota Legislature was considering the Defense of Marriage Act? Remember the hue and cry that went out on how government had no business interfering in the private actions that take place in bedrooms of American citizens? Remember how we, as a nation, have been arguing over the last two years about how the government has no right listening into PRIVATE phone calls of citizens and non-citizens alike? Remember who the "privacy nuts" were in those discussions? Why I do believe that they are the SAME PEOPLE that are today advocating that the government can take - AT THE MOMENT OF BIRTH - the most basic of private material...a person's DNA.

One could say that this is yet another example of the top down control that the government is trying to impose on us - by stripping away our individual rights to control our own DNA...and they would be correct.

Personally, I see this as yet another example of the selective logic of politicians. A minor girl has to get parental permission to get her ears pierced, but not to get birth control or an abortion. Government can't force HIV testing in at risk populations because of "privacy" issues and yet the government is ok mandating that parents allow their child's DNA be warehoused for "research". It's not OK to take and warehouse DNA from non-violent criminals, but it is ok to take and warehouse DNA from newborn babies without parental consent.

On this issue Rep. Ron Paul was absolutely correct (and consistent) when he said "It seems like everywhere you turn there's another government attempt to accumulate more information about us." If it is SOOOO important for the government to have DNA "for research" then it is certainly important enough for the government to take a couple of minutes to explain to parents WHY it is sooooo important. To take it by stealth and without parental consent is simply yet another way for government to spy on you.

For all of you on the left who claim that it is wrong for the government to get in the middle of a woman's health care decision, why are you advocating for this when it goes directly against your rationale in support of abortion? It's all about control.....