Following on the heels of their macabre Afghan war protest at a White House Halloween party that targeted children of military families for psychological abuse, leftist Obama ally Code Pink issued a statement justifying the terrorist attack at Fort Hood as opposition to the war from officers and put out a Veterans Day appeal seeking to raise money off the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

Signed by top Obama funder Jodie Evans, the appeal was published at Code Pink’s website on Veterans Day and sent out the same day to the group’s e-mail list. The terrorist attack at Fort Hood is cited three times in the fundraising letter.

As appalling as cashing in on the mass murder of 14 innocents is, Code Pink tops that by invoking sympathy for the alleged terrorist as a reason to give money to Code Pink–even putting his act of terrorism on the same moral plane as the recent protest resignation of a former officer who left his diplomatic post in Afghanistan over Obama’s war policy:

“This Veteran’s Day, you can support Under the Hood and the soldiers who walk through their doors with a cash or in-kind donation…

“Click here to see how else you can support Under the Hood (in-kind donations accepted too).

“Our soldiers clearly need more care; the last thing they need is to be put into more harm’s way. Even US military officers think so–Matthew Hoh resigned from the Foreign Service in protest of the lack of clear mission and achievable results in Afghanistan, and of course the Ft. Hood shooter was a Major who did not wish to be deployed to Afghanistan.”

Think about that. Code Pink says a mass murder terrorist act against unarmed soldiers is the moral equivalance (sic) of a protest resignation.

I don’t know about you, but this is disgusting. I don’t know how else to categorize it. It is disgusting to equate one man’s respectful resignation to another man’s alleged mass murder. What the hell is WRONG with these people?? If only it stopped there:

Code Pink is even more direct in their justification for the terrorist attack allegedly by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan in a statement posted to their website that they encourage opponents of America in Afghanistan to send to President Obama:

The recent shootings at Ft. Hood and the resignation of top Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh demonstrate how even our military officers are opposed to US strategy in Afghanistan.

Code Pink claims the money will be used to fund a campaign operated out of a coffee shop near Fort Hood called Under the Hood that preys on soldiers and their families. However, the donation link goes to Code Pink’s fundraising page and not to Under the Hood’s website. Note, fundraising links in this story are deliberately not active.

This is some organization with which Obama has aligned himself, isn’t it? I am just thoroughly disgusted. TO read the rest of the story, which includes more about “Under the Hood,” the relationship between Obama and Jodie Evans, and additional articles about Code Pink, please click HERE. Disturbing, just disturbing.

And it makes this Krauthammer piece that much more salient, Explaining Away Mass Murder. Indeed That is exactly what the Code Pink fudnraisers are doing with their despicable fundraising efforts:

– What a surprise — that someone who shouts “Allahu Akbar” (the “God is great” jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre downplaying Nidal Hasan’s religious beliefs.

“I cringe that he’s a Muslim. … I think he’s probably just a nut case,” said Newsweek’s Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time’s Joe Klein decried “odious attempts by Jewish extremists … to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs.” While none could match Klein’s peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Uh huh. And why is it that someone can’t be nuts AND a terrorist? Many people would see those words as not being the least bit contradictory when used in conjunction. Oops - silly me - inserting logic into that ridiculous argument:

They suffered. He listened. He snapped.

Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?

And what about civilian psychiatrists — not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics — who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder?

It’s been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.

But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, whom National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.

And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won’t find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as “compassion fatigue.” The poor man — pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.

I wonder if Dr. Krauthammer would pay a visit to the entire fundraising staff, Obama’s allies, at Code Pink? Now THAT would be a visit I’d like to see, especially since Dr. Krauthammer, like me, thinks this is, well, in my word, obscene:

Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It’s a danger, clear and present.

Consider the Army’s treatment of Hasan’s previous behavior. NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling interviewed a Hasan colleague at Walter Reed about a hair-raising Grand Rounds that Hasan had apparently given. Grand Rounds are the most serious academic event at a teaching hospital — attending physicians, residents and students gather for a lecture on an instructive case history or therapeutic finding.

I’ve been to dozens of these. In fact, I gave one myself on post-traumatic retrograde amnesia — as you can see, these lectures are fairly technical. Not Hasan’s. His was an hour-long disquisition on what he called the Koranic view of military service, jihad and war. It included an allegedly authoritative elaboration of the punishments visited upon nonbelievers — consignment to hell, decapitation, having hot oil poured down your throat. This “really freaked a lot of doctors out,” reported NPR.

Nor was this the only incident. “The psychiatrist,” reported Zwerdling, “said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway saying: Do you think he’s a terrorist, or is he just weird?”

Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague’s religion?

One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.

So many excuses, so little relevance:

What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn’t cry “Allahu Akbar” as they squeezed the trigger.

The delicacy about the religion in question — condescending, politically correct and deadly — is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: “Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center.”

Ah yes, those Jersey men — so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Indeed. Ahem. That organizations like Code Pink are painting this mass murderer of unarmed soldiers in such a sympathetic light, and with such moral superiority, indicates just how far from our moral base we have strayed. At a time when the fallen from that massacre are being buried, for this organization to depict Hasan as nothing more than a victim of US policy, and on the same level as a distinguished war veteran and US State Department employee who resigned with integrity is simply reprehensible.

In other words, the fundraisers at Code Pink, Obama’s ally, have lost their frikkin’ minds. I would say they should be ashamed of themselves, but they clearly, CLEARLY, have no shame at all. And that is most disturbing of all.

One last thing, to the families and friends of those fallen, it breaks my heart that in addition to such a grievous loss, you now have to deal with such outrageous fundraising attempts by a group excusing the actions of this man, Nidal Malik Hasan. I regret that you have to even deal with such additional lunacy an disrespect at this very difficult time. My heart and prayers go out to you all.

The so far left that they forgot what is right wing of the Democratic party has taken a new tact. They have decided that they don’t really have a problem with swiftboating after all. Just as long as the shoe is on the other foot. And Republicans are the ones wearing it. Starting this week they are coming out in droves to paint John McCain, a decorated war hero, as a traitor and a war criminal. And gosh wouldn’t you know it, some people even posted their drivel on Barack Obama’s website.

Here’s a screenshot of one of my favorites. Change you can believe in type stuff if you ask me. Strictly new politics. No doubt about it.

And just in case you couldn’t quite make out the poster here is an enlarged view for your viewing pleasure.

You gotta figure that Obama friend and confident Bill Ayers is having wet dreams over all of this. It’s everything he has “hoped” for since he quit bombing government buildings. He is probably pulling out new American flags to stomp on as you read this.

But placing this crap on Obama’s website was just a start. A trial run you might say. The way out there and completely inappropriately titled blog Americablog took deception to a whole new level.

Some on left target McCain’s war record

“A lot of people don’t know… that McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity,” wrote Americablog’s John Aravosis. “Putting that bit of disloyalty aside, what exactly is McCain’s military experience that prepares him for being commander in chief?”

“Getting shot down, tortured, and then doing propaganda for the enemy is not command experience,” Aravosis wrote in the blog post, entitled “Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?”

I seriously wonder if Mr. Aravosis has ever been tortured. And I wonder if he knows the limits as to what a person will put up with until they crack. He apparently lives in some fantasy world where he believes that people like Jack Bauer actually exist. Maybe Superman is real in Mr. Avarosis’s distorted world but for the rest of us that live in a little place called reality we know with certainty that people have limits despite what the movies tell us.

John McCain’s campaign was understandably shaken by what was said about him. After all, he came to John Kerry’s defense when people from his own party attacked his patriotism.

“The American people know that John McCain’s record of service and sacrifice is not a matter of debate. He has written about and discussed his service as a POW extensively—often in excruciating and painful detail,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. “The American people will judge harshly anyone who demeans or attacks that service.”

In fact McCain has never claimed that he did not crack under torture. He admitted it freely.

“I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine,” he later wrote.

But he later defied his captors by refusing to meet with anti-war delegations from abroad, he wrote, and also refused the most valuable special treatment he was offered: Early release.

“I did not want to go out of order,” he later wrote. He was finally released on March 14, 1973.

But far be it from the fringe left to admit that they are wrong about anything. Their solution to mistakes is to compound them. And what better place to demonstrate how far out they really are but the Huff and Puff Huffington Post.

In a Huffington Post blog, a former editor of Mother Jones magazine, Jeffrey Klein, called—in tones reminiscent of right-wing attacks on Kerry in 2004—on McCain to release elements of his Navy record that the candidate has not made available to the public or the press.

“Some of the unreleased pages in McCain’s Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency,” he wrote. As to why, Klein speculated that “From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals.”

Not to be outdone Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin chimed in too. Unsatisfied just protesting the current war in Iraq, Benjamin wants to refight a war that has been over for 3 decades.

“I wouldn’t characterize anybody who fought in Vietnam as a war hero,” said Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the theatrical anti-war group Code Pink. “In 23 bombing sorties, there must have been civilians that were killed and there’s no heroism to that.”

“Anyone who can’t look back and admit how wrong it was to be in Vietnam and be killing civilians deserves to be challenged,” she said, though she stressed that her group is more focused on McCain’s present support for the war in Iraq than on his past.

At least some on the left have a little sense left. Even after all that bad acid. Tom Hayden is one such lone dissenter.

“I know and like McCain,” Tom Hayden, a former California State Senator and prominent anti-war activist, told Politico in an email. “From my own perspective and that of many anti-war activists of that era, the fact that he bombed North Vietnam some 25 times, probably killing civilians, gets blurred with the facts that he suffered through that long prison ordeal, then also went on to promote diplomatic relations between the two countries.”

“It’s like asking a guy that served his jail term here—you’d say he’s done his time so that’s behind him,” Hayden said.

But another supporter of Barack Obama isn’t quite so forgiving. No, you might say she goes a little overboard. But lots of Cultists do that. Please notice the date on her blog. This has been up for nearly a month now. All the while Obama is calling McCain “a genuine American hero” and claiming that he is running a clean campaign. And she uses the same type of line that Jay Rockefeller used toward John McCain. Disgusting words that he had to retract immediately.

“What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground?” he asked. “He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.”

So this is what we have to look forward to coming from the leftist radicals that support Barack Obama. Barky can claim all the new politics nonsense he wants. And he can pretend like he is running a clean campaign. But where is his leadership when his supporters have clearly crossed over a line that we all decided back in 2004 needed to be drawn? What’s that Barky? Perhaps I need a hearing aid.

All fine and good to have noble aspirations but have Obama’s supporters looked at his lack of accomplishments? There is no there. Have you thought about the how? Change is hard work. It is not a series of platitudes. As Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times noted, “we know that we are being fooled, but we kind of like it.” Funny stuff. Your enjoyment of deception risks my world.

When I see a video like this that touts a messianic “We Are The Ones” message, I worry because I yet to see a messiah deliver. To me, I see a cult of wanna-be day dream believers, not tempered by the reality of the world as it exists.

If only you ever visited the trenches, you would see that it takes hard work and experience, a knowledge of policy alternatives, a dedication to see a project through its completion through pratfalls and disappointments. You are asking to me to take a chance a something “new and different”. Frankly, I have seen this all before.

Politics has real life consequences and for Obama supporters to project the change they want to see on a man who has yet to deliver an ounce of change is frankly delusional. Have you asked yourselves why radicals like Jodie Evans and William Ayers find cause to hope in Obama? How does that vision of America square with yours? Are they compatible? Like you, they see what they want to see in Obama. So do Rashid Khalid and Congressman Robert Wexler. One of them is bound to be disappointed because their agendas are radically different. Again, that’s cult-like behaivour to see only your projections, an innocence that tomorrow belongs to you when the reality might be far different than your starry eyed empty glazes of adoration. The question they should be asking is how is he going to do this? And what point do his flaws become self-evident?

Obama has been very coy in trying to be all things to all people and in the first video, people hold noble visions without ever thinking that Obama has not exactly been an agent of change. His record is sparse but there are some indications. Please tell me how voting for the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy is something “new and different.” Please tell me how telling the voting public that he doesn’t accept contributions from Washington lobbyist and then takes contributions from others in the same firms who either are not registered lobbyists or work in a state capital is “new and different.” And then there are questions of judgment galore. The Reverend Wright is not off the table. But you insist on seeing what you want to see. We see a different Obama.

Setting realistic expectations is the first responsibility of responsible leadership. And when one witnesses before one’s very eyes an usurpation of power in an unyielding quest for more and more control, I worry. Now he wants to nominated by acclamation. What is he an Emperor? Is this a Greek tragedy or a Roman farce? I have seen this all before. History is littered with Obama. Authoritarianism has many faces and even well-meaning autocrats trample their opposition. I don’t do benevolent dictators. That’s not the American way. Sorry I must JUST SAY NO DEAL.

There are more of us than you think. And while you wax poetic notions, we will be exposing Obama for who he really is, a danger and a fraud.

From my blog: By The Fault

Flush with cash, Chavez has sent money and material assistance to the FARC–i.e., the Armed Revolutinary Force of Colombia–a longstanding Marxist insurgent group responsible for more than three decades of terrorism in Colombia. The FARC is like a prehistoric bug frozen in amber. They are completely out of touch with the modern world and refuse to acknowledge that Colombia is no longer a nation dominated by a small group of elites bent on plundering the masses. No matter. The FARC believes it is true and therefore, by definition, it must be true.

According to an Associated Press report on Sunday:

Documents that Colombia says it recovered from a slain guerrilla leader give the clearest indication yet that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sought to arm and finance insurgents across the border.

The documents — more than a dozen internal rebel messages — detail several years of close cooperation between top officials in Venezuela’s government and military and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, including the construction of rebel training facilities on Venezuelan soil.

They also suggest Venezuela was preparing to loan the rebels at least US$250 million (euro190 million), provide them with Russian weapons and possibly even help them obtain surface-to-air missiles for use against Colombian military aircraft.

Most importantly, they outline a joint strategic project between Venezuela and the Colombian rebels, with Venezuela even seeking rebel training in “asymmetrical warfare” in preparation for a feared U.S. invasion.

This information is true. It is not fabricated. It is not planted. I also know, firsthand, from conducting undercover investigations in Colombia in the northeast Guajira peninsula, that a significant community of merchants with ties to Hezbollah, who lived and operated in Maicao, Colombia, have moved across the border and set up shop in Venezuela. I am not suggesting they are preparing terrorist attacks. These muslim merchants with strong family ties to Hezbollah in Lebanon are worried first and foremost about making money. A substantial portion of their wealth is obtained thru smuggling and grey market activities. They are willing to send money to Hezbollah but, so far, have shied away from supporting terrorist attacks on this continent.

Oh, and did I mention Hamas. A minority of the muslim merchants that moved across the border into Venezuela are tied to Hamas.
And Chavez, not missing a beat, rolled out the welcome mat for Hamas:

Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez looks decided to go ahead with his self-denominated “anti-imperialistic” foreign policy despite Washington’s open and shady threats. This week, Caracas made public two moves meant to help US foes in Middle East. Hamas leaders will be received by Mr. Chavez “with pleasure”, as the South American oil-rich country confirmed that counts Iran as “great ally of brothers”.

“If they come, it will be a pleasure,” Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters when asked by reporters whether the government would receive a Hamas delegation. What is the problem with that? Aren’t they going to be received by Russia, Brazil and Argentina? And what’s more, they have a majority with the Palestinian people; they just won an election.”

So what does this have to do with Barack Obama. Let’s start with Bill Ayers again. You know, the guy Barack barely knew but also the same guy who named Barack as President of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative (The Annenberg Challenge). Ayers is a frequent visitor to Venezuela and also enjoys a relationship with Chavez. Here is part of what Bill Ayers said in November 2006:

President Hugo Chavez, Vice-President Vicente Rangel, Ministers Moncada and Isturiz, invited guests, comrades. I’m honored and humbled to be here with you this morning. I bring greetings and support from your brothers and sisters throughout North America. Welcome to the World Education Forum! Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana!

This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I’ve come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle—I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane. Thank you, Luis, for everything you’ve done. . . .

Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and militarism – turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life.

Education contributes to human liberation to the extent that people reflect on their lives, and, becoming more conscious, insert themselves as subjects in history. To be a good teacher means above all to have faith in the people, to believe in the possibility that people can create and change things. Education is not preparation for life, but rather education is life itself,an active process in which everyone— students and teachers– participates as co-learners. . . .

Let those of us who are gathered here today read this poem as “The Teacher’s Obligation.” We, too, must move in and out of windows, we, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation. This World Education Forum provides us a unique opportunity to develop and share the lessons and challenges of this profound educational project that is the Bolivarian Revolution.

That, boys and girls, is classic marxist bullshit. Capitalism, baaaaddd. Communism. Goooood. The “Revolution” lives.

Oh, did I mention that one of Barack’s big fundraiser also hearts Chavez. Jodie Evans, bundler for Barack, also made the pilgrimage to Caracas to engage in the verbal equivalent of buttocks smooching.

So here is the question for Barack–many of your followers, fundraisers, and longtime advisors believe that Hugo Chavez’s revolution is something superior to the capitalist model followed in the United States. Do you agree with them or disagree with them?

Here’s another question. Hugo Chavez is using his money to support terrorists that are attacking democratic nations and is welcoming the representatives of terrorist groups to come to his country. At the same time, your former boss, Bill Ayers, and one of your key fund raisers, Jodie Evans, are embracing Chavez and praising his leadership. Will you repudiate their actions and return the Code Pink money you have received?

And what about Venezuela’s subversion in Colombia? Will you insist that Venezuela respect Colombia’s borders and end its support to the FARC?

I am guessing that Barack will say no to the first two. I don’t know his position on the last question. What do you think?

Oh, and one last item. A significant portion of the oil we consume comes from Venezuela. What happens when Venezuela tries to use oil as a weapon against us? Saudi and Iraqi oil has little relevance to our daily lives. Not so with Venezuelan crude. But that’s a topic for another day.