The Berkeley City Council, after passing a resolution calling for the resettlement of detainees released from Guantanamo in the United States, voted against inviting such persons to live in their fair city, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Earlier, an organization called “Move America Forward, proposed in a statement that Berkeley City Council members ‘go live in GITMO where they can hang out with hundreds of terrorists.’ The group said it would pay for their air fare.”
Meanwhile, Nir Rosen, who scoffed at Lara Logan’s assault in Tahrir Square, was fired from his position as fellow at the NYU’s Center on Law and Security. Jim Geraghty at the National Review says he never thought to see the day, but is glad the Center on Law and Security did it anyway....
Why the outbreak of reason? A succession of recent events, from the financial crisis to the wave of unrest sweeping the Middle East, has created a new sense of mortality in everyone. Dick Morris, in an article titled “The Damage Obama Has Done,” presents a table, which while not entirely the best source for identifying the various factors which went into causing the change, nevertheless gets the point across: reality hurts. For all its shortcomings, Morris’ table best explains our new psychological world.
Things look different to frightened, 60 something year old people facing an uncertain future than to 18 year olds at Yasgur’s farm on their way to Paradise. The idea of actual terrorists living down the block from the drugstore and the idea that a newspaperwoman can be raped like an animal being eaten alive by wolves terrify them.
Add to this the specter of European leaders unanimous in their opinion that the left's multicultural vision has failed them and you have the perfect recipe for some belated insight.
It is the sort of insight one achieves in a near-death scenario, unfortunately; and to make the most of the new awareness, the first step in not to die. Wretchard thinks that those who still "haven't caught on, soon will"; but I am not as optimisitc.
This evening I watched two leftist women from Planned Parenthood on O'Reilly justify the bizarre Moveon.org ad staring Cuddy from House, M.D., which is insisting that the Republican party has "launched an all out assault on women’s health". The women debating O'Reilly refused to consider any of the economic factors that might justify cutting off Federal funds for abortion, even as they fiercely rejected any other possible way that abortions might be funded for those who desire them. O'Reilly offered several reasonable suggestions, none of which seemed to penetrate the thick ideological skulls of the pro-abortion women he was interviewing/debating. For them, abortion without the money from the Federal government was simply an "assault on women's health."
Next, there is the incredible obtuseness of President Obama in bringing forth a budget so out of touch with reality that even members of his own party appear to be stunned. Yet he threatens to veto any spending cuts they might come up with in Congress and generally behaves as if he can avoid dealing with reality forever. But, the reality is that It's Tuesday in America right now.
Then there is this depressing news about how multiculturalist ferver is alive and well--in the U.S. Military:
They came at a fitting moment, just as Americans had been handed a report providing the fullest disclosures so far about the multiculturalist zeal that had driven Army and medical school superiors to smooth Nidal Malik Hasan's rocky way through training, promote him, and, despite blatant evidence of his unfitness, raise not a single concern. Maj. Hasan, U.S. Army psychiatrist, would be assigned to Fort Hood where, in November 2009, he opened fire, killing 12 fellow soldiers and a civilian employee, and wounding 32 others.
In this report, titled "A Ticking Time Bomb" and put out by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, there is a detail as dazzling in its bleak way as all the glowing misrepresentations of Dr. Hasan's skills and character, which his superiors poured into their evaluations of him. It concerns the Department of Defense's official report on the Fort Hood killings—a study whose recital of fact made no mention of Hasan's well-documented jihadist sympathies. Subsequent DoD memoranda portray the bloodbath—which began with Hasan shouting "Allahu Akbar!"—as a kind of undefined extremism, something on the order, perhaps, of work-place violence.
This avoidance of specifics was apparently contagious—or, more precisely, policy. In November 2010, each branch of the military issued a final report on the Fort Hood shooting. Not one mentioned the perpetrator's ties to radical Islam. Even today, "A Ticking Time Bomb," co-authored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) and Susan Collins (R., Maine), reminds us that DoD still hasn't specifically named the threat represented by the Fort Hood attack—a signal to the entire Defense bureaucracy that the subject is taboo.
The time bomb exploded, of course, when Hasan went on his Islamic killing spree; just as the decades-old time bomb of Islamic cultural and institutionalized hatred of Jews and of women exploded in a telling moment in Egypt.
I will only mention in passing the clueless Clapper of "largely secular" fame. The idea that Obama's top man for national intelligence is a moron is too painful to dwell on for more than a nanosecond.
I could go on, case after case of total and complete psychological denial of current economic reality; of the reality that Islam is not a religion of peace; of any reality that counters the left's carefully constructed bubble.... I imagine that you can understand my lack of optimism about being optimistic.
Perhaps the "common" folk are finally having their reality moment, since as Wretchard suggests, it is all starting to become more personal; but our leaders, especially in the Democratic party (and including a few Republicans) are still oblivious and impermeable to what is happening at home and abroad.
So, if moments of truth and awareness are occasionally breaking through; if "the feelin' is gettin' so intense, that the young Virginia creepers have been huggin' the bejeepers outa all the mornin'-glories on the fence", then things must indeed be coming to a flashpoint. Let us hope that the Messiah who was going to push back the tides and bring hope and change etc etc to the world will have a stark moment of clarity before it is too late for the insight to do much good.
Maybe by June?
[from the musical "Carousel"]
March went out like a lion
A-whippin' up the water in the bay.
Then April cried and stepped aside,
And along came pretty little May!
May was full of promises,
But she didn't keep 'em quick enough for some,
And a crowd of Doubtin' Thomases
Was predictin' that the summer'd never come.
[Men]
But it's comin', by gum!
Y' ken can feel it come,
Y' ken can feel it in yer heart,
Y' ken can see it in the ground,
[Girls]
Y' ken can see it in the trees,
Y' ken can smell it in the breeze
[All]
Look around, look around, look around!
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