Displaying posts published in

February 2013

CLAYTON CRAMER: FIXING OUR MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM

http://pjmedia.com/blog/fixing-our-mental-health-system/?print=1

The recent tragedy in Newtown has finally woken Americans up to the pitiful state of our mental health system. We have had many dozens of these tragedies over the last three decades, and certainly, the pattern has been clear since at least 2000: people with recognized serious mental-illness problems are about half of these mass murderers [1], and it seems likely that much of the rest had unrecognized or perhaps merely undocumented problems. (What sane person murders a bunch of complete strangers, then commits suicide?)

I have been banging the drum on this for several years, and each time, someone asks, “How are you going to pay for all this?” Mental hospitals are expensive to build, especially because so many states have either closed or demolished their state institutions. Once built, operating costs are substantial. In an era when many state governments are already in financial trouble, where is the money coming from to create a safer and more humane society?

We are already spending the money; we just aren’t spending it very efficiently, because we are spending it on cleanup. Drawing chalk marks around bodies, having medical examiners do autopsies, assigning extra police to schools across the country after each disaster — these aren’t free.

Many of these mass murderers do not commit suicide, and trying them is expensive. The public defender costs alone for capital murder trials [2] in Clark County, Nevada, for 2009-2011 were $229,800; for non-capital murder cases, $60,100. It seems quite believable that including prosecution costs, time spent operating the courts and investigating the crime, and the inevitable appeals a non-capital murder trial can easily cost the government $500,000, especially because mentally ill defendants are almost always indigent, and thus receive public defenders. I almost forgot: because these are mentally ill murderers, the costs of experts to evaluate the defendant’s mental competency for trial almost certainly drives these costs up even higher.

South American & Mexican Hezbollah Jihadis Threaten the United States by ALAN KORNMAN

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/south-american-mexican-hezbollah-jihadis-threaten-the-united-states?f=puball The Iranians and their terrorist proxy Hezbollah has been building forward operating bases in the Tri-Border area of South America and Mexico for the last three decades. Venezuela’s uranium deposits have been an important and rarely reported on component fueling Iran’s efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people in Latin America […]

ALAN CARUBA: WITNESS THE DECLINE

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/witness-the-decline

Listening to Obama deliver his State of the Union speech was painful, considering that he promised that his agenda would “not add a dime to the deficit” while spelling out twenty-nine new programs involving the expansion of government to further extend its tentacles into everyone’s life. And, of course, the only way to pay for this is more taxes.

If one were to try to identify the decline of the American society and system of governance, it would be tempting to say it began with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, but it began much earlier. I am inclined to believe it began in the 1960s when the nation’s educational system was taken over by the teacher’s unions and when education-a word that does not appear in the Constitution-became a federal government department in 1979. The systematic dumbing down and indoctrination of several generations of Americans began in earnest.

One could go back further to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected four times (1933-1945). FDR vastly expanded the federal government, offering many of the same failed programs to “solve” the Great Depression that Obama put forth in his first term. FDR actually prolonged the Depression which ended with the advent of the nation’s entry into World War II. It mobilized America’s manufacturing sector and, after the war ended, was the basis for a booming economy in the 1950s.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: AFTER AFGHANISTAN *****SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

IT IS VERY INSTRUCTIVE TO REVISIT THE KOREAN WAR WHICH WAS NOT WON BUT ENDED BY EISENHOWER LEAVING THE BRUTAL KIM DYNASTY IN PLACE. IT WAS THE BEGINNING OF WARS NOT WON BY AMERICA…AND WHAT FOLLOWS IN THE ABSENCE OF TOTAL VICTORY AND SURRENDER…..RSK

Some wars are lost in a matter of moments, others stretch on indefinitely. The defeat in Afghanistan crept up silently on the national consciousness and even though we are negotiating with the Taliban, the “D” word is hardly used by anyone.
According to Obama, in one of his interminable speeches which all run together and sound the same, there really isn’t a war, just a mission, and the old mission is now becoming a new sort of mission, and the missions, all of them, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, have been successful which is why we are wrapping them up, except that we aren’t really. And that’s about as clear as the message from the big white building with the neatly mowed lawn out front gets, except for the part about how its occupant singlehandedly parachuted into Pakistan, killed Bin Laden, and then stopped off for some curry and a humanitarian award.

Had McCain won in 2008, we would no doubt he hearing a lot about the “D” word and the quagmire in Afghanistan. But the “Q” word doesn’t really get mentioned either. No war has been lost. Only a mission is ending. And missions, unlike wars, can be defined in so many creative ways that it’s hard to know what to make of them. It’s easy to tell when a war has been lost, but a mission can never be lost, only renamed. And renaming is what Obama did to the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan. Those wars weren’t lost; they’re only hiding out in the history books under new names and identities.

SUSAN RICE: THIS WOMAN COULD HAVE BEEN SEC. OF STATE? DANIEL GREENFIELD

EVEN MADELEINE HALFBRIGHT IS SMARTER….RSK

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/rice-investigation-into-lies-about-benghazi-worse-than-murder-of-four-americans/print/

It’s a tradition now that whenever any member of Obama Inc. wants to say something horribly self-centered and inappropriate about Benghazi, he, she or it goes on the Late Show to deliver a line about it being “not optimal” or a “bump in the road” to the sympathetic smirk of Jon Stewart.

Now it was Susan Rice’s turn to explain that the investigation into her lies about Benghazi was worse than the murder of four Americans. And from her perspective, it no doubt was.

“There’s always confusion when you have a tragedy of that sort and Americans are killed,” Rice told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show on Thursday. “The bigger tragedy, Jon, is we’ve spent all of these months trying to figure out the origin of some talking points, which were cleared at the highest levels of the intelligence community and, in my opinion, not enough time doing the service that we owe to our fallen colleagues.”

The bigger tragedy is apparently not the crime or the coverup, but the investigation of the coverup. Note also how Rice uses the passive voice and ambiguous language. Rather than discussing a murder or a terrorist attack, she talks about a tragedy in which Americans were killed by person or persons unknown.

Just think. This woman could have been Secretary of State.

BRUCE BAWER: POLYGAMY AND OPEN BORDERS FOR THE VIKINGS?

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/swedes-propose-open-borders-polygamy/ No matter how much jaw-dropping news of dhimmitude one may read from day to day, originating in virtually every corner of the Western world and bringing shameful and outrageous tidings of virtually every imaginable type of capitulation to Islam, it seems that one always ends up exclaiming: “Those crazy Swedes!” Here’s the latest bit […]

JOSEPH KLEIN: JOHN KERRY’S PECULIAR PRIORITIES

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/secretary-of-state-john-kerrys-alarming-priorities/print/ Al Qaeda and its affiliates are running all over North Africa and the Middle East while remaining a serious threat to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Approximately 70,000 Syrians are dead in a civil war exploited by Iran, Russia and Islamist jihadists. Egypt is an economic basket case, ruled by an increasingly unpopular authoritarian Islamist regime. […]

JOHN BRENNAN’S ISLAMIC CONVERSION MOMENT/ ON THE GLAZOV GANG

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/rubios-watergate-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

John Brennan’s Islamic Conversion Moment? — on The Glazov Gang

Posted By Frontpagemag.com On February 21, 2013 @ 12:31 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 33 Comments

Editor’s note: The graphic on the left is created by our IllustWriter Bosch Fawstin. Visit his site here.

“Dallas” star Morgan Brittany joins PolitiChick warrior Ann-Marie Murrell and Hollywood actor Dwight Schultz to discuss John Brennan’s Islamic Conversion Moment? The discussion occurred in Part II and focused on whether Obama’s CIA nominee converted to Islam while he was stationed in Saudi Arabia. The discussion included an analysis of why Islamists and the radical Left hate Valentine’s Day. In Part I, the Gang focused on the Left’s demonization of Rubio’s water-bottle-moment, the lies in Obama’s State of the Union Address and Dr. Ben Carson’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. To view both parts of this Blockbuster two-part Glazov Gang episode, see below:

Part I:

Part II:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: GILDED CLASS WARRIORS

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-496658-tax-facebook.html In his first term President Obama was criticized for trash-talking the one-percenters while enjoying the aristocracy of Martha’s Vineyard and the nation’s most exclusive golf courses. Obama never quite squared his accusations that “millionaires and billionaires” had not paid their fair share with his own obvious enjoyment of the perks of “corporate jet owners,” […]

ANDREW HARROD: DANGEROUS LIAISONS…SEX AND THE MILITARY IN THE AGE OF OBAMA

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/02/dangerous_liaisons_sex_and_the_military_in_the_age_of_obama.html The Academy Award-nominated documentary The Invisible War examines the scourge of sexual assault in the modern American military. As presented by the New America Foundation (NAF) at Washington, D.C.’s E Street Theater at a February 13, 2013, screening and panel discussion, appropriately combatting such horrific crimes has become a serious concern for America’s defenders. […]