When I was attending college in the 60s, I spent one summer on a work exchange program when I was assigned to work in a German factory and live with a German family. I had to learn some degree of the German language rather quickly, as only 2 people in this German business had any command of English: the owner and a lady in the office, neither of whom I saw much. Referencing the dual language dictionary I brought along saved many misunderstandings. I could tell that they also enjoyed my German enunciation errors as I tried desperately to fit in and be accepted. We had our differences, one lonely American among scores of Germans, but not one person ever considered it discriminatory that the owner just let me make it on my own.

America used to be proud of the melting pot stew we created, where all ethnic groups desired to be known as Americans sharing a common language. It worked. We learned. We mingled. We grew. We gave. America was blessed. And gee whiz, the people did it without self appointed community organizing zealots crying discrimination at the drop of a hat.

That was life 40 some years ago. Now nonsense prevails.

The Atticus book store in New Haven is where the employer wants his people to speak only English while on the floor waiting on customers. The “New Haven Workers Association (NHWA), said the group plans to demonstrate Saturday in front of the bookstore. She said the policy is discriminatory.” Saying also that“diversity is a strength of this country.”

Atticus owner Charles Negaro issued a statement saying his business appreciates and accepts all languages and offers free English language classes to employees.

“We encourage the use of English because it’s an appropriate way to be most helpful to our customers,” Negaro said. “To continue to provide the best service possible, we try to help those employees who speak English as a second language by helping them improve their use of English.” Read it all. . .

First of all, the bookstore is privately owned and certainly the owner has the right to set his own rules of employee behavior. Right? It’s his business. He’s not GM and is not able go to the feds to get bailed out. It’s his money at stake, and it’s sink or swim.

A neighboring business owner says “He’s entitled to do what he wants.”

I can’t say it more emphatically, but truck loads of baloney to this discriminatory stuff. These activists take it right out of the playbook of the community organizing ideology. If the discrimination label is not enough, then these off the cliff liberal activists devoid of common sense would say his English only policy is motivated by bigotry. And if that won’t work then they’ll say the owner hates Hispanics. Inventing a cause makes liberals feel so compassionate. It gets those ideologues out of the office. They get to see themselves on the nightly news. They feel important.

But where are the cries of discrimination for the newly immigrated French, Russian, Polish, Arabic, Chinese people who struggle to understand English? Why pick on only the Spanish speaking immigrants? This is insulting to the Hispanic immigrants as the implications of the NHWA is that the Hispanics are not capable of learning English.
Could the motivation of the NHWA protesting against the bookstore be because he’s not unionized? Hmm…

There was a saying I often heard when I was growing up in the 50’s.  Digging into the Shakespeare play of Hamlet in which the phrase originated, the quote we oft abbreviated is: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. It carried the meaning that the fish is rotting from the head down—all is not well at the top of the political hierarchy.

When C-Span must go the length to ask the democrats for permission to televise the actual final negotiations over the Health Care reform package, then something is rotten in the state of our Congressional leaders.  In response to the request Harry Reid had this to say:

“We will continue to ensure that the Congress and the public will have ample opportunity to evaluate the bill before it moves to final passage.”

How much time did Reid give the public to read and review the stimulus package that passed in February ’09?  Reid himself said he did not have time to read the bill before voting on it. So much for that transparency pledge. The fish is rotting.

The final text of the stimulus bill was posted on the Web site of the House Appropriations Committee late on the night of Thursday, February 12.  Both the House and Senate voted on the 1,071-page bill the next day–not providing enough time for members to actually read the bill.  CNSNews.

Presidential candidate Obama had this to say 3 months before his election:

“…what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”   Link

But wait, there’s more rotten fish:

Going back even further to 2007 when the Democrats regained power in congress they increasingly did not send bills through the regular conference process. “We have to defer to the bigger picture,” explained Rep. Henry Waxman of California. So the children’s health insurance bill passed by the House that year was largely dumped in favor of the Senate’s version.

Wait, there’s one more example of a fishy stench:

In February of last year, Tom Price, chair of the Republican Study Committee said.

“It’s now noon on Wednesday. I’m standing outside the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The door is closed. We just heard news break there’s been an agreement between the House and the Senate on the non-stimulus bill.”

Those negotiations amounted to a whopping $789 Billion closed-door democrat final wrap up.

“Something’s rotten in the State of Denmark Washington”

The Center For Individual Freedom sumarized Obama’s response to the C-Span request:

The President on Tuesday (Jan 5th) held a White House meeting with Senate and House Democratic leaders, details secret, to plot proceeding as fast as possible, in secret, with negotiations among only White House and Senate and House Democratic leaders to avoid conventional procedures and “ping pong” ObamaCare to passage.

Then, to make sure all Americans get the message, the President on Wednesday held another White House meeting with Senate and House Democratic leaders, details secret, to plot proceeding as fast as possible, in secret, with negotiations among only White House and Senate and House Democratic leaders to avoid conventional procedures and “ping pong” ObamaCare to passage.

Obama responded in the news conference on Wednesday night as reported by The Washington Post:

“Most of the time, you guys have been in there taking pictures, so it hasn’t been a secret. … These have mostly been at least photo sprays, where you could see who was participating.”

. . . all is not well at the top of the political hierarchy. Transparency now means that this particular scripted teleprompted speech on television the president, or the leaders in congress is now giving, is transparent and open to the public, and . . .  photo ops count toward fulfilling their transparency pledge.

Related posts:

1. Two-Face Obama
2. FREE SPEECH TV: Obama's Health Care Reform Plan Stinks in Every Nostril
3. Obama's political affairs director tied to ACORN

Is there any relationship between ice caps, polar bears and terrorism?

The National Center for Public Policy Research has discovered that the CIA is diverting intelligence agents and funds to the exploration of icebergs.

Washington, DC – As terrorists continue to infiltrate America, the Obama Administration is tasking some of our nation’s most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming.  Read more. . .

For this average American, I’ve got to wonder why specially trained agents for the gathering of intelligence working within the CIA are spending time studying the polar caps and icebergs.  Has the CIA discovered a very innovative way that Islamic terrorists may use as a route to destroy the American way of life? Are terrorists planning to blow up icebergs to rise the sea levels so that Manhattan floods and the coastline of America goes underwater? Hmm? As a tactic of terror, using children as walking bombs was more than we would have imagined, so getting cooperation with the environmentalists could be a tactic that perhaps our intelligence agencies are seeing as a possible new way to initiate terror upon the US.

President Barack Obama’s initial 3 days later reaction to the Christmas day terror plot was to call the Islamic radical trained by Al-Qaeda in Yemen “violent extremists who threaten us”.

That’s all it is. Al-Qaeda is just another extreme organization. It’s not really a big threat fueled  a religious people with over a billion members and a holy book that declares infidels must be defeated, destroyed or made subservient. The thinking goes that there are extremists in every group, so why get so uptight about a radical extremist going on a rampage, except for the fact that he could have succeeded in bringing down the plane and close to 300 innocents.  His religion is irrelevant, right?  It would have been another one of those disasters caused by an extremist.

Now, do you see where I’m going with this?

Obama has erased “the words “Global War on Terrorism” to the benign “Man Caused Disasters”. Global Warming, or the more all inclusive term of “climate change,” is thought to be more serious than terrorism, so in the eyes of Obama, diverting all those resources of our intelligence agencies to the study of  the polar ice caps would be a very presidential thing to do for protecting America.

That’s the way the President, his supporters, and his inner circle think: The threat of icebergs melting is on the same plane as the threat of violent extremists.

Related posts:

1. Palin, Polar Bears and Cheap-Shots: How the Left Ignores the Economy, Fraud and Facts in Pursuit of Their Agenda-Driven Science
2. Is the Obama Administration’s Inability to Define Terrorism Putting Us at Risk for Further Terror Attacks?
3. Enough with the Teddy Bears, Time for the Cheney Bears