Four Outrages

24 May, 2010 by Kathleen McKinley

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So much to be disgusted about today.

Let’s start with Texas. The WaPo has an article written by Michael Birnbaum about the “controversial” cirriculum adopted by the Texas Board of Education. Since the article didn’t link to the text they referred to, Ann Althouse decided that she would research it. Turns out there was a good reason Birnbaum didn’t link the text of the curriculum he was writing about…he was inaccurate in portraying what the text actually said. Read all about it here.

This seems to be happening more and more. Liberal writers write in outrage about what a law (the Arizona law) or a curriculum says, and it turns out that it doesn’t say what they say it says, at all.

Here’s a suggestion to the WaPo. How about just linking to the actual text, and let the readers read exactly what it says. We no longer live in an age where we need writers to tell us what laws and such say. With the internet, we can easily go and read them ourselves. Sucks for liberal writers because they like to distort things of a conservative nature, but lucky for the rest of us who enjoy truth.

Second outrage. Joe Sestak admitted awhile back that the White House tried to bribe him with a job to not run against Specter in the primary. Sestak won’t say what job, but it’s speculated that it was the Sec. of the Navy, given his long career with the navy. Since then the White house has continued to stonewall when asked about it.

Is it criminal? I think that needs to be answered. Is it ethical for the White House to try to bribe a sitting member of Congress out of a race? I think we all know the answer to that one. But what is more disgusting is the continued double standard of the press. Imagine if this has been the Bush White House. We all know it would have been front page news and these questions would have been forced to be answered.

The third outrage. Speaking of the double standard between the Bush and the Obama administrations. Remember the OUTRAGE of the left that occurred with wireless wiretapping? Well, Obama kept that, and the left hardly uttered a peep, but that is not the double standard I’m referring to here.

Over a week ago the New York Times did a story on the Obama-approved program to assassinate U.S. citizens named as terrorists. That’s right. Not wiretapping them…killing them. And once again I find myself in the strange position of quoting Glenn Greenwald as right on this. He is specifically referring to how Keith Olberman on MSNBC practically wanted Bush tried as a war criminal over the wiretapping, but can’t seem to gather the same outrage over American citizens being targeted for death. Here at Salon:

What’s most striking to me about all of this is that — as I noted yesterday (and as Olbermann stressed) — George Bush’s decision merely to eavesdrop on American citizens without oversight, or to detain without due process Americans such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, provoked years of vehement, vocal and intense complaints from Democrats and progressives. All of that was disparaged as Bush claiming the powers of a King, a vicious attack on the Constitution, a violation of Our Values, the trampling on the Rule of Law. Yet here you have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping on or detaining Americans without oversight, but ordering them killed with no oversight and no due process of any kind. And the reaction among leading Democrats and progressives is largely non-existent, which is why Olbermann’s extensive coverage of it is important. Just imagine what the reaction would have been among progressive editorial pages, liberal opinion-makers and Democratic politicians if this story had been about George Bush and Dick Cheney targeting American citizens for due-process-free and oversight-less CIA assassinations.

Well, I imagine the reaction of the left had this been Bush would have been an all out snarling spittle filled gnashing of the teeth with hair pulled out at the roots and the left holding the bloody strands in their curled up purple fists.

But with Obama they simply continue to sip their pinot grigio and hope for cap and trade to pass.

Fourth outrage. And it’s a doozy. Last Sunday 14 buses full of SEIU union members descended upon the Bank of America’s general counsel Greg Baer’s home to protest “greed.” I’m not talking on the sidewalk in front of his house either. I’m talking right up to the front door. Only problem was that Greg Baer wasn’t home. His teenage son was home though. 500 screaming morons scared the poor kid and he locked himself in the bathroom.

Despicable.

The irony is that Baer is a life long Democrat. But the outrage is that this was allowed to happen at all. You want to protest? You go to the business. But you don’t terrorize a person’s home. I know this was done by a small number of pro life groups in the past at abortionist’s homes, in far fewer numbers, and not on the actual property, but I disagreed with it then as well. It’s unacceptable. What kind of people are we turning into? Sure you can talk a few folks into doing just about anything, but 500 union members??? Do they not have families? Do they not have friends??? What kind of people do this????

This is not the best way to start the week, is it? I guess we can take comfort in the fact that the government, the politicians, and the unions can no longer get away with the things they used to, thanks to the new media.