Janet Napolitano In the Middle Of Gulf Oil Spill Crisis

Paraphrased by the New York Times in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Disaster as saying:

'she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful'. (They did...and have for years).

Lesson - This is why politicians have no business in these kinds of positions -- Director of Homeland Security, FBI director, FEMA director, TSA chief, OSHA chief, EPA chief, CDC director, HHS Secretary, FDA director, Consumer Product Safety Commissioners (CPSC), director of MMS, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Secretary of Defense, etc. These are crucial positions that involve emergency management & response, public safety, and national security/defense. They require leaders to have a clue about what the Hell is going on. Heads of these agencies and departments should have some level of expertise and experience in the kinds of work that they are directing.

This is one of the big reasons why I didn't care for her selection for DHS director. She's a politician. Not a national security person. Not an emergency manager. Not a public safety person. Not a law enforcement person. Not a security expert. Not a first responder. You should have some practical experience in at least one of these areas if you are going to be the Homeland Security chief.
There were tons of more qualified individuals (including some Black Americans... although I don't have a racial litmus test) who could have been chosen for this position.

God Has His Ways of Getting a Nation's Attention

When Old Testament Israel strayed from following God, Yahweh had unique and painful ways of getting the Hebrews’ attention. His first line of attack was to send in His prophets—who were not the shiny, happy-clappy, cliché-spewing, aphorism-addicted mega church pastors who are more interested in hawking their books than bearding the priests of Baal.

No, the prophets were wrecking cranes to wayward Israel’s facades. They were imperfect, difficult dudes who called a spade a shovel for a perfect God. They didn’t give a crap who you were, who your mommy was, if you were the King or Pastor Whoop-Dee-Frickin’-Do. They were fiercely devoted to God and His ways. Janet Napolitano would call these truth-tellers “terror threats” because they loathed godless governments and butt-kissing priests and had no problem whatsoever letting those entities have it verbally.

Yep, if you were out of sorts with God because of practicing whacked stuff or preaching Oprah instead of Obadiah, you were about to be publically roasted via the prophets’ sizzling invectives.

Need a mental image? Imagine Rush, Beck, Coulter, Miller or O’Reilly on steroids.

This skewering, to be sure, was about as fun for the rebel recipients as watching Nancy Pelosi do an interpretive dance of “Riders on the Storm” (the extended version) would be for Simon Cowell.

A humiliating open rebuke, however, was a mere love tap when compared to an eternity of misery and the coming decades-long national butt kicking Israel was in line to receive should they remain contumacious.

The prophets’ messages were never complicated. These gruff and holy critters offered God’s people two choices: turn or . . . burn. If Israel obeyed, they’d be blessed. If they disobeyed, well . . . let’s just say things didn’t go that well for the next four decades.

You see, if Israel turned from their profane BS (belief systems) and back to God, Yahweh would chill and relent from the attention-grabbing calamities He was heatin’ up on heaven’s back burner. The prophet, unfortunately, was officially out of a job if the Hebrews went the repentant route. Yep, Amos had to go back to fig picking.

However, when Israel blew the prophets off by condemning the messenger, categorizing the message as hate speech, jailing the prophet(s) or, as in some cases, killing the prophetic salvo, God would in turn switch to plan B to get His insubordinate group’s good ear.

God, not the one to run out of advanced repentance techniques, would allow Israel’s economy to go to hell, plagues to ravage their land, nature to convulse, and enemies the ability to pulverize them.

Yep, unless I’m reading the Bible upside down, it seems that when the nation went astray from God’s law and wouldn’t listen to the prophets’ calls to repentance and instead vilified the saving voices, God allowed one (or more) of the four aforementioned hammers to pound them until Israel became all ears.

This is, at least to me, a plain prophetic pattern within the Scripture. The $64,000 question you gotta ask yourself is this: If there is a God, and if the Bible isn’t a bunch of fairy tales written by a stack of whack jobs, then does God still roll today like He did with Old Testament Israel as He interfaces with 21st century nations that spurn His values to His face?

I’m guessin’ God hasn’t had an extreme makeover and that He is the same yesterday, today and forever, which could mean in our current culture—where evil is good and good is evil—that we might be in line for grave negative sanctions because, apparently, America’s new favorite pastime is whizzing on that which is holy, just and good.

WRITTEN by Doug Giles for TownHall.com and published there on May 10th, 2009

The Castrated States of America

In just 100 days Obama has moved us from a war footing to a wuss footing. Yes sir, from a foreign policy/national defense standpoint, Barack is making Jimmy Carter look like a full-on badass. The President is dead set on taking off our rowdy body armor and replacing it with a petite glittered bustier; he's insisting that our General Pattons become generally passive. A one-eyed, myopic circus freak can see this.

Yep, forget the G.I. Joe, Johnny Get Your Gun image America used to tout. Obama would rather us morph into a chatty Jiminy Glick before those who want us dead.

You just know Osama and his boys are in some Pakistani cave smoking a hookah piled high with blonde Lebanese hash as they praise Allah and laugh their butts off at how stupid and soft we've become in just a few months while they plot their next "manmade disaster," as Janet Napolitano would call it.

I'm certain that this recent transition from bold to bland is making all the "progressives" feel smarmy as they imagine in their warm and fuzzy heart of hearts that they have just climbed up a couple rungs on the evolutionary ladder.

However, no matter how chuffed the daft Left feels about our metamorphosis from strength to slop, millions of implacable Muslims and rogue dictators around the planet will continue to abhor us regardless of whether or not we go metrosexual. They do not believe in evolving and are currently fetching some C4 to blow up the ladder the Left pretends we are ascending.

Can you say, naïve? I knew you could.

Conservative commentators are taking Obama to task, stating that Barack is putting us in a pre-9/11 mindset. A pre-9/11 mindset? I think you boys and girls are being too nice. Forget pre-9/11... this is pre-7/11. And from a security standpoint, sooner or later his policies are going to make life in the US, let's say, really inconvenient.

Now, should Charlie Gibson ever interview you non-Kool Aid swillers on TV and in the course of the interview lower his tortoise shell reading glasses and contemptuously ask you with that oleaginous look on his face, "So, Mr. or Ms. Conservative, exactly what is the Obama Doctrine?" From what BHO has said and done in the last 100 daze, you can tell Chuck's tacky backside it's this: The Obama Doctrine is the systematic emasculation of those aspects and entities that, heretofore, have kept us safe. It is the politically correct castration of our nation's cojones, or tomatoes, or testicles or whatever you want to call 'em.

Yes, according to our Gelding-In-Chief, everything is our fault, our strongest allies are to be dissed, bows are to be given to Saudi Kings, high fives go to Hugo, Ahmadinejad gets a bromance vid from BHO via YouTube, and talks are conducted with Cuba about burning a Cohiba with the Castro brothers. In addition, Obama's administration says Israel is the pain in the middle east, the US should throw billions at rogue nations, we ought to nuke our nukes . . . all the while blaming everything on GW, telling the world Islam doesn't spawn terrorists, and forbidding our interrogators to interrogate those who wish us dead. What's next, BHO? A détente with el Diablo?

Yeah, what I've deduced from Obama's teleprompter is this: The Obama Doctrine is, essentially, that America sucks. Everything is our fault. And to go forward, we must castrate everything that has kept us secure, because, y'know, we wouldn't want to continue to be safe and strong anymore, right?

WRITTEN by Doug Giles and posted at ClashRadio.com on May 4th, 2009

Tolerance Is Becoming Intolerance

Modern America preaches the value of tolerance. This says you have the right to your opinion, and I have the right to mine. We can agree to disagree. While this level of tolerance for all viewpoints has never been completely achieved, those on the left certainly preach it when they are vilifying those who hold traditional values, and attempt to label them as intolerant. In recent years, and culminating in the election of Barack Obama, we are entering a new era where you have only the right to agree with the modern liberal view, or else be ostracized as an extremist.

Upon Obama's election, he promised to usher in a new era of post-partisan politics. No more conservative and liberal -- just hope. On abortion, he said he wanted to move past the tired old politics. Translation: he wants to repeal all restrictions on abortion, but expects pro-life supporters to drop their disagreements and support him. Obama said it's no longer about whether government is too big or too small, it's about how effective it is. In reality, Obama has ushered in the largest expansion of federal government in any 100-day period in United States history. This period of censorship of disagreement goes well beyond Obama to many of the liberal elites.

Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano joined the thought police by allowing her department to issue a report labeling any person holding a conservative political viewpoint a potential terrorist. This is the same Department of Homeland Security that said from now on, terrorism will be called man-caused disasters. Napolitano will tolerate Islamic terrorists, yet she has no tolerance for pro-life individuals. People who favor a smaller federal government are considered dangerous enemies of the state. This type of discrimination against opposing viewpoints is becoming rampant in our society.

American "enemies of the state" took to the streets to show their support for fiscal responsibility by attending tea parties. Because this view was not approved by the liberal elites, these protesters were mocked incessantly on CNN, NBC and CBS. The worst case of disdain for tea party participants came from Janeane Garofalo. Speaking on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," she said, "Let's be very honest about what this is about. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don't know their history at all. It's about hating a black man in the White House.This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that." Garofalo proceeded to claim that conservatives suffer from a mental disorder. None of this was refuted in any way by host Keith Olbermann. Evidently, hate speech is only allowed when it is against Christians or conservatives. There are allegations that the FBI was spying on these very peaceful demonstrations.

Another example of this suppression of traditional thought occurred at the Miss USA pageant. Celebrity judge Perez Hilton, a famous gay blogger, asked Miss California if she supported gay marriage. She very politely and graciously said that is up to the different states but she personally opposes it. The Miss USA contest strongly disagreed with Miss California's position, and after the show Perez Hilton launched a diatribe calling the young lady a "dumb B" and later called her the C-word. These hateful attacks would certainly be repudiated if it were a conservative saying them. However, Perez Hilton and his far-left cohorts are free to say whatever they want as long as they are attacking conservatives.

This same principle applies as the left pushes the fairness doctrine and attempts to pass hate-speech laws that will silence Bible-believing Christians. If you disagree with them, then you have no right to speak your beliefs.

America is founded on the principles that all men are created equal and have inalienable rights protected by our Constitution. These rights and protections are what separate our free society from authoritarian governments that have no constraints on government power. Yet Alexis de Tocqueville warned about coercion of thought in his classic book, "Democracy of America." He cautions us, saying that democracies can become even more oppressive than other forms of government when conformity is pushed in the culture. This conformity is being shoved on our society at an alarming rate. Christians and people who hold conservative viewpoints are demonized and mocked in schools, in the media and now by the Dept. of Homeland Security and the Obama administration. Those who hold traditional viewpoints had better speak out; otherwise, in the near future they may be forced to keep their lips zipped.

WRITTEN by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown and published by Townhall.com on May 1st, 2009 and viewable by clicking on the title of this posting.