Red Hot Visas, Y’all!

The latest narrow miss in the US war with radical Islam was announced in Lubbock, Texas last week with the arrest of Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, a Saudi student who obtained a visa through Condoleezza Rice’s State Department, to wage his jihad on America. This time possibly on her former boss.

This is visa scrutiny at its finest.

Visa applications in Islamic countries have always been carefully screened; there is a box on the bottom right that says, I WANT TO COME TO AMERICA TO:
a) go to university, b) attend commercial jet pilot’s school, c) bomb infidels? Khalid answered a).

The FBI would have closed in on Khalid sooner but they were waiting for him to shave his body and go on a strip club binge. That and he was a member in good standing of SEIU Local 722.

Hey, here’s a thought—just until the war is over mind you—why not put CLOSED FOR BUSINESS signs on US visa offices in Islamic countries? This is smart on two counts: it will undoubtedly save on attempted terrorist attacks, and secondly it will cut down on dorm room curry sauce fumigation costs.

Understand this is only a suggestion. It shouldn’t even be at the top of Homeland Security’s list; that should be X-raying US Army psychiatrists for bomb vests.

What is it about these people the United States government doesn’t get? This guy was quite possibly on his way to whack George W. Bush for God sake. What do they have to do to prove that they intend to destroy America, open Honor Killings R Us franchises?

Isn’t it bad enough that the southern border leaks like a sieve and Janet “Big Sis” Napolitano thinks we’re snug as a bug in a rug, without actually inviting extremists to come bomb us? These attempted attacks are coming with such frequency that they are barely make headlines. It is becoming difficult to discern which is most dangerous, the Muslim plot to establish a worldwide caliphate, or the media conspiracy to cover it up.

Think about it. The brain trust of Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar are the established leaders of the intelligentsia on all things Muslim. Hello?

Lubbock is yet another almost-event in which America but for the grace of God dodged a bullet.

According to FBI sources Khalid had been planning as early as high school to win a scholarship to the US, to study explosives and to prepare bombs. Not only was he awarded the scholarship and granted the visa but the university was helping him obtain the knowledge to blow us up!

Yet the singularity of purpose of the radical Muslim ideology seems lost on US military, law enforcement and intelligence services.

“Our investigation continues, however, the criminal complaint contains no allegations that he received any directions from any other persons, or was under the control of any foreign terrorist organization,” said Special Agent Mark White, a spokesman for the FBI’s Dallas office.. “We are confident that we have eliminated the alleged threat posed by this person.”

Somehow that fact is less than comforting when one considers that the pool of potential bombers could number as many as 110 million.

Perhaps Secretary Napolitano is right about the border after all. Why worry about illegal entrants into the country, when those who wish us harm have simply to fill out a visa application?

A Question of Strategy

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“Hence the import of the current moment – its blinding clarity. Here stand the Democrats, avatars of reactionary liberalism, desperately trying to hang on to the gains of their glory years – from unsustainable federal entitlements for the elderly enacted when life expectancy was 62 to the massive promissory notes issued to government unions when state coffers were full and no one was looking.”

How do you top a line like that? Charles Krauthammer is brilliant.

It is no longer that clear to me, however, that the Democrats in Wisconsin or anywhere else are simply trying to hang on to their glorious past. At this pivotal moment—and if ever America faced a pivotal moment this is one—one must be tempted to at least entertain suggestions by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh that this group of miscreants is deliberately trying to collapse the government, ala Cloward-Piven-Alinsky.

Here is truly blinding clarity for you. The recent labor unrest—and I use the term ‘labor’ loosely when referring to teachers—in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio is clearly being orchestrated by the White House. What we are witnessing is unequivocally classical radical organization, from the top down.

Neither am I as keenly optimistic as Charles that the public in Wisconsin or across the country understands what is at stake. Tip O’Neill was not being condescending when he said, ‘All politics is local.’ Yes the Democrats are taking bad press but they have also, as Charles points out, been masterful at changing the focus of the debate.

The question is whether or not the denizens of urban Madison and Milwaukee will take up tea party signs and join the march when the weather warms this spring and teachers in the inner city schools are being laid off in droves. Will they appropriately blame the Obama administration and Democrats when gas and food prices skyrocket? Or will they accept the party-line shuck ‘n’ jive the Left has so successfully used on them for decades?

Because layoffs and skyrocketing prices are coming.

For the past week and a half I have been severe on Scott Walker and Mitch Daniels, but I am not ignorant of the fact that the nation is soft on collective bargaining, whether in the private or public sectors. The public has not yet felt the sting of the price tag in their pocketbooks, or at least it has not associated that sting with the enormous costs of school teachers’ and firefighters’ benefits packages.

Government unions will survive, that is a given. We can neither afford them nor do they fit into any rationale of a free society, but the Democrats slipped them in, in the early 1960s, and we are stuck with most of them.

What is far more disconcerting is how the Democrats have chosen to approach the same kind of defeat that the GOP faced in the Pelosi House during the ObamaCare fiasco. Instead of standing their ground and taking up the debate they have walked away and deliberately crippled the government. That is just about as radical a move as we have seen in the 230-plus years of this nation.

Are we to expect the same behavior when the GOP retakes the Senate in 2012? Will the elected Democrats in the House and Senate simply disappear and allow the opposition to stew in its juices?

Charles concludes:

“We have heard everyone – from Obama’s own debt commission to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched Greece self-immolate. We can see the future. The only question has been: When will the country finally rouse itself?

“Amazingly, the answer is: now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin – Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at the congressional level – a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?”

I sincerely hope that Charles is right in his optimism; we need to turn this corner fast if we are to stabilize the economy. But I am more than mildly concerned that the Democrats are simply better chess players than the Republicans and that they are still thinking two moves ahead.

Hollywood, Stop Helping Charlie Sheen, You’re Killing Him

While it comes as no surprise that CBS has halted the taping of “Two and a Half Men” sitcom starring Charlie Sheen for the remainder of its eighth season, why they have made the decision temporary is disturbing.

It is incomprehensible to think that the agents are currently shopping Sheen for another multimillion-dollar payday, should this hiatus prove to be a cancelation, yet that is the rumor.

For three decades Charlie Sheen’s family and friends have rushed to his side whenever he shifts into self-destruct, only to see him relapse, again and again. They have all been valiant but it is time to let him go.

It is difficult to recall anyone who has received more chances in Hollywood, unless it would be Robert Downey Jr. We have seen Charlie go from brat packer to A-list star to Hollywood bad boy, from born-again Christian to Truther and finally one of the highest paid stars in television.

During all of that time he has been sporadically dry but never truly sober and it is hard to imagine that those closest to him have not known it. In a business that can be notoriously unforgiving of public indiscretions, his associates have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep him viable. Their help, whether well intentioned or self-serving, has only proved to keep him on his road to oblivion. Charlie is a classic alcoholic-addict and, as with all members of that increasingly common species, success has served only to insulate him from the help he so desperately needs.

To call this, Charlie’s latest triathletic escapade of self destruction, drug and alcohol induced would be, I believe, missing the truth by the proverbial mile; drugs and alcohol are mere props in Charlie Sheen’s spiral to the bottom. Had he not had them he would have use razor blades or arsenic or something else.

These episodes are the theater abusers stage to play out their destruction, until either the descent is arrested or the “ultimate bottom” is achieved. Addiction is a progressive disease; it picks up where it left off the last time. Like all addicts Charlie prearranged the mise en scène for this act, as he has all of the others. It would be banal to suggest that someone should have recognized the signs, because in a town where substance abuse is the norm rather than the exception, someone obviously did.

The man who wrote the novel, “Leaving Las Vegas,” which Mike Figgis went on to produce as a Hollywood blockbuster of the same name staring Nicholas Cage, was living the story as he pinned it. He did not survive to see the movie; his father called the book his suicide note.

We can only pray that what we are witnessing now is not Charlie Sheen’s suicide note, but it is time to let him go. Helping Charlie “get well,” so he can get back on the treadmill yet another time, will only serve to deprive him of the slim chance that remains. Whether Charlie survives is in his and God’s hands now, and they alone can decide his ultimate outcome.