The Cold Hard Facts!’s blog

So -- denying the role that militant Islam played in the Fort Hood atrocity is like staring at a shark bite and thinking, "bicycle."

When a fundamentalist kills thirteen innocent people while shouting "Allahu Akbar," Islam isn't just a small player - it's got the starring role.

And now that U.S. intelligence admits Hasan tried to contact al Qaeda, it should make it increasingly hard for anyone to say otherwise.

I say it "should," but it won't.  Just look at the news.

Over at Time, thoughtful types speculate over a "secondary trauma" that could have driven Hasan to kill.  "Never mind terror," - one news network tells us - "and focus more on 'a backlash against Muslim soldiers.'"  On a major website, they want us to ponder the "next McVeigh."  And our very own Homeland Security secretary says she's hard at work preventing "a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment."

And that's the drill: concern over crimes that have never happened, as opposed to the terror that has.

When Americans are murdered in cold blood, the first step in our screwed-up world is to chant, "backlash."  Never mind that backlash concerns may have allowed this massacre to occur in the first place.

Hasan exhibited more signs than a horoscope!  Yet fears over appearing politically incorrect kept him around.

The fact is, in mosques all over the world, the desire to destroy the west continues - and our administration still worries about what you might do.

The PC thing?  Avoid "connecting the dots," but stick to the "square peg in round hole" equation: a troubled man feeling hopeless in a weird world, suddenly snaps and kills people.

But it's more than that.  A defiant Muslim, living in America, with contempt for modern life, your lifestyle, your beliefs.  Add to this a rejection of female equality (which pretty much eliminates any chance for a hook-up) - and you've got a madman on a mission.

I suppose saying all this makes me a right-wing hate monger.  But I guess that's my point.

When a man kills Americans in the name of Allah - and you become a bad guy for pointing it out - then it's time to just accept being the "bad guy".

All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats' idea for fixing it is more government intervention.  This is like trying to sober up by having another drink.

The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple "Genius Bar," is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market.  Yes -- the same free market that has produced such a cornucopia of inexpensive goods and services that, today, even poor people have cell phones and flat-screen TVs.

As a result, it's easier to get your computer fixed than your health.  Thanks, government!

We already have near-universal health coverage in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' hospitals, emergency rooms and tax-deductible employer-provided health care -- all government creations.

So now, everyone expects doctors to be free.  People who pay $200 for a haircut are indignant if it costs more than a $20 co-pay to see a doctor.

The government also "helped" us by mandating that insurance companies cover all sorts of medical services, both ordinary -- which you ought to pay for yourself -- and exotic, such as shrinks, in vitro fertilization and child-development assessments -- which no normal person would voluntarily pay to insure against.

This would be like requiring all car insurance to cover the cost of gasoline, oil and tire changes -- as well as professional car detailing, iPod docks, leather seats and those neon chaser lights I have all along the underbody of my chopped, lowrider '57 Chevy.

But politicians are more interested in pleasing lobbyists for acupuncturists, midwives and marriage counselors than they are in pleasing recent college graduates who only want to insure against the possibility that they'll be hit by a truck.

So politicians at both the state and federal level keep passing boatloads of insurance mandates requiring that all insurance plans cover a raft of non-emergency conditions that are expensive to treat -- but whose practitioners have high-priced lobbyists.

As a result, a young, healthy person has a choice of buying artificially expensive health insurance that, by law, covers a smorgasbord of medical services of no interest to him ... or going uninsured.

People who aren't planning on giving birth to a slew of children with restless leg syndrome in the near future forgo insurance -- and then politicians tell us we have a national emergency because some people don't have health insurance.

The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes: You buy insurance in case your house burns down -- not so you can force other people in your plan to pay for your maid!!  You buy car insurance in case you're in a major accident, not so everyone in the plan shares the cost of gas.

Just as people use vastly different amounts of gasoline, they also use vastly different amounts of medical care -- especially when an appointment with a highly trained physician costs less than a manicure.

Insurance plans that force everyone in the plan to pay for everyone else's Viagra and anti-anxiety pills are already completely unfair to people who rarely go to the doctor.  It's like being forced to share gas bills with a long-haul trucker or a restaurant bill with Michael Moore.  On the other hand, it's a great deal for any lonely hypochondriacs in the plan.

Now the Democrats want to force us all into one gigantic national health insurance plan that will cover every real and mythical ailment that has a powerful lobby.  But if you have a rare medical condition without a lobbying arm, you'll be out of luck.

Even two decades after the collapse of liberals' beloved Soviet Union, they can't grasp that it's easier and cheaper to obtain any service provided by capitalism than any service provided under socialism.

You don't have to conjure up fantastic visions of how health care would be delivered in this country if we bought it ourselves.  Just go to a grocery store or get a manicure.  Or think back to when you bought your last muffler, personal trainer, computer and every other product and service available in inexpensive abundance in this capitalist paradise.

Third-party payer schemes are always a disaster -- less service for twice the price! If you want good service at a good price, be sure to be the one holding the credit card.  Under "universal health care," no one but government bureaucrats will be allowed to hold the credit card.

Isn't food important?  Why not "universal food coverage"?  If politicians and employers had guaranteed us "free" food 50 years ago, today Democrats would be wailing about the "food crisis" in America, and you'd be on the phone with your food care provider arguing about whether or not a Reuben sandwich with fries was covered under your plan.

Instead of making health care more like the DMV, how about we make it more like grocery stores?  Give the poor and tough cases health stamps and let the rest of us buy health care -- and health insurance -- on the free market.

So President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which by some weird circumstance also includes hate crime legislation.

Now, I'm no fan of hate.  Hate, in all forms, is ugly, even when performed by beautiful people.

But here's what I don't get: if I kill someone, I'm a killer.  But hate crime law says that I also broke a new law - one that has to do with my thoughts when I committed the crime.  So it's a thought crime more than a hate crime.

Now, I'm not into semantics, and I can barely read, so I don't want to get too deep into this.  But if I were to kill Bill Maher, whether I hated him or not, that's a crime.  But, if we find out later that he was a sequential hermaphrodite, one might say it could be a hate crime.

Now compare that to black on black crime.  According to the Bureau of Justice, in 2005, murder victim rates for blacks were 6 times higher than rates for whites.  In that same year, offending rates for blacks were 7 times higher than rates for whites.

According to hate crime law, all that death means less because there was no bigotry behind it.  To me, murder is murder, no matter the identity.

And, what of terrorists?  Does the fact that they hate us make their crimes worse?  Of course not, and it shouldn't alter the punishment either.  That's the real truth about hate...  Hate crime laws won't stop hate, or crime.

Fact is, focusing on the killer's outlook diminishes the victim.  It's no longer "Bill Maher is dead", but "Bill Maher, the sequential hermaphrodite, is dead."

Humanity should come before identity.

See, we need to see people as people, not as part of groups.

We know bigotry is bad.

But murder - in any form - is so substantially worse that it needs no footnote.

Have you been following this House election in upstate New York? The Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava has some stiff competition, and it isn't from the Democrat candidate. It is from Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman. Republicans Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty have thrown their support behind Hoffman in what is turning out to be a clash of principles ... what does it mean to be conservative versus Republican?

This Scozzafava woman has some positions that don't sit all that well with the Republican base. Truth is, she's probably running as a Republican only because that area has a history of voting Republican in congressional elections.

But wait until next year. The midterm elections of 2010 may be our last chance to save this Republic.  No...  I'm serious.

With the anti-capitalists we have running the show right now the time is short.  It may be next year ... or never.

Watch the Republicans though.  Despite what's at sake, Republicans are going to engage the idiotic abortion litmus test. Candidates are going to be judged primarily on whether or not they want to use the police power of government to force women to continue with pregnancies they want to terminate.  This one question will be the beginning and the end of all deliberations as to whether or not to support particular Republican candidates.  Makes sense, doesn't it?

The future of this country is at stake and these abortocentrists are going to be doing the work of the Democrat party.

Cross-dresser

So a dude at the UN named Martin Scheinin filed a report calling for a trashing of our current counterterrorism policies. The new plan, he believes, should "abandon the 'war paradigm'" and "enshrine the principles of gender-equality and non-discrimination..."

Among his odder proposals: rethinking security checks that "focus attention on male bombers who may be dressing as females to avoid scrutiny [and] make transgender persons" - who might also be crossdressing - "susceptible to increased harassment and suspicion."

Translation: checking for dudes who conceal bombs via crossdressing hurts the feelings of men who crossdress as a lifestyle choice.

Okay.  Fine.

I can't figure out if this is the worst story ever, or THE GREATEST STORY ever...

I mean, in terms of revealing what the UN does best, this report takes the transgendered cake: simultaneously undermining the war on terror while making a mockery of common sense. When the UN isn't trying to minimize mass murder, this mishmash of maniacs is trying to commit it themselves.

The war on terror is not a lab for social engineering. The war on terror cannot be guided by hurt feelings or the politically correct desires belonging to someone who fried his brain on Oprah. The war on terror is meant to protect innocent individuals from terror – be these innocent folks gay, straight, transgender or half man/half unicorn.

If America were to take this UN report seriously, we would put everyone at risk, including the dumbasses at the UN.

But it should be no surprise that the UN would put the feelings of a cross dressing, transgendered person before the safety of millions of airline passengers.

I would hope that the gay, lesbian and transgendered community would find this equally as ludicrous - and that such thinking risks the lives of everyone, including their own.

But if they don't, I don't care.

I'll still be wearing my floral caftan in first class.

It has embroidered sunflowers.

And if you disagree with me, then you're probably a racist.

In the quiet suburb of Peoria, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, two women, aged 20 and 43, were purposefully run over by a car in a local parking lot on Tuesday.

Police in Peoria are looking for the suspect, whom they believe is the 20 year old woman’s father, 48 year old Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, an Iraqi national living in the United States.

The 20 year old victim, Noor Faleh Almaleki, of Surprise, Arizona, remains hospitalized after the hit, with life-threatening conditions. She was with her friend at the time, 43 year old Amal Edan Khalaf, who was also stuck by Almaleki’s car, but suffered only non-life threatening injuries. According to police reports, the women were roommates.

Though Noor’s father, Faleh, has yet to be picked up by police, officials believe he ran the women down because he felt his daughter was becoming too ‘Westernized’ and was not living according to the family’s traditional Iraqi values.

If indeed guilty, perhaps it is time Mr. Almaleki realizes that he is living in the West, and that, here, his daughter is not considered property to be handled; she is a valuable human being.

In the United States, where we are all privileged to live, women are equals with the full right to act as ‘Western’ as they want, without having to worry that their unapproving father will run them down with his car and get away with it.

Welcome to the West, Mr. Almaleki.

I've been arguing for years that our tax dollars are being flushed down the toilet fighting this ridiculous, asinine War on Drugs.

So the Obama administration issued new legal guidelines yesterday, and guess what? I actually agree with him! This is everyone who gives me this line about "You are against EVERYTHING Obama says or does." Not true. I am against stupidity, and often times that comes cloaked under the guise of government.

But back to these guidelines ... federal drug agents will no longer pursue pot-smoking patients or suppliers in states that allow medical marijuana. Justice Department officials say, " ... it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law." Ghee, ya think?? This should have been a no-brainer, folks.

So which are the lucky states? Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

By the way, my hatred for our War on Drugs is not based purely on the fact that I like to stir the puddin'. There is evidence and studies to support the fact that legalizing or decriminalizing drugs can actually been a good thing. Take Portugal, for example. Back in 2001 it decided to decriminialize all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. There was no spike in usage. There was no public health crisis. In fact, the rate of drug usage is less in Portugal than it is compared to other European nations. The CATO Institute can give you all the hairy details.