The Olympics--A Dream Come and Gone

The Olympics--A Dream Come and Gone

The games have begun! Now, let’s call them a wrap!




The Olympics have devolved into a cesspool of international propaganda, intrigue, and cheating–not to mention a subsidized bacchanalian venue for young athletes who could just as well fornicate on their own dime rather than using the 150,000 condoms (15 per athlete) distributed by the United States Olympic Committee.



Sandra Fluke would be appreciative of the USOC condom largesse but are contributors to the USOC aware their dollars are helping pay America’s Olympians to safely do what they would do even without free prophylactics?



The inspiration for the modern Olympics, the ancient Greek religious/athletics festival dating to 776 B.C., was beset with corruption and so, too, is the modern Olympiad. The chief difference is that today we spend billions staging the events whereas the wiser Greeks back then spent little and benefitted from a suspension of city-state wars, conflicts they resumed soon after the games.



Our conflicts continue during the games.



As for contraception, the naked Greek athletes were on their own but, since they were all male, the chance of procreating with their fellow athletes was less than minimal.



Aside from publicity for the host nation, there are few perks derived from hosting the modern Olympics and the potential financial liabilities far outweigh any benefits, a reality which could reach astronomical proportions should Israeli suggestions of terrorist attacks at the 2012 London Summer Olympics come to fruition and Mitt Romney’s negative critique of security preparedness turns out to be accurate.



The admirable goals of the modern Olympiad, of buff, young athletes promoting brotherhood and equanimity, of demonstrating to the world that nations could compete peacefully without destroying one another, were exploded in 1972 when Muslim terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich massacre.



Those unprovoked attacks were neither unprecedented nor the last instances of un-brotherly Olympic behavior. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=27198.)

9/11: Allies and Abusers

9/11 Allies and Abusers

Now that the dusty rhetoric has cleared from Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and Shanksville following the politicians’ commemorative politicking at those sites, following the families of relatives of the 2,977 victims of 9/11/2001 publicly and privately expressing their grief in expectations of to closing memories that defy closure, the rats are leaving their ratholes.

To be sure, not every nation ignored 9/11.

Parts of the world paid solemn tribute to America’s incalculable losses on that day and shared our anguish on the tenth anniversary of the darkest day in American history. One of the most stirring expressions of solidarity occurred in Paris where two forty-foot replicas of the Twin Towers were erected in the shadow of the Eifel Tower displaying in two languages France’s national sentiment, “The French Will Never Forget.”

However, far from everyone abroad and at home expressed that emotion. The vermin emerged.

In London, instead of joining hands with Americans on solemn occasions dedicating memorials to the dead of September 11th, 2001 Muslims in London chose to emulate their fellow Islamists who hatefully exulted in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington ten years ago by spreading more hatred, compliments of Islam.

Members of the “religion of peace” set fire to an American flag outside the American embassy and disrupted a moment of silence declared in observation of that moment when Muslims crashed a Boeing 767 into the North Tower of the WTC.

Not content with Britain’s indulgences for sharia nor with British tolerance for the presence of a people on their soil dedicated to eradicating all remnants of English and Western tradition and law, Islamic crazies chanted “US Terrorists!” and carried signs condemning America and criticizing the Crusades.

One jihadist summarized all feigned Muslim grievances by declaring, “You [Americans?] will always face suffering, you [Western imperialists?] will always face humiliation, unless you [all nations not interested in a worldwide Islamic caliphate?] withdraw your troops from Muslim lands.”

Left unmentioned is any reference to September 11th, to Islam’s bloody history, or to the fact the Crusades ended in 1291 A.D. even if Muslim vengeance lingers on and most malcontented Muslim nations are still mired in the thirteenth century.

The grandson of Jewish immigrants to America, Paul Krugman, is another malcontent. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5429.)

Musings on the Ugly Beauty of the World Trade Center

Musings on the Ugly Beauty of the World Trade Center

Let’s face it, the World Trade Center, actually a complex of seven buildings with the centerpieces the towers which once stood majestically in Lower Manhattan, wasn’t exactly an architectural beauty.

They were even called ugly.

The two primary towers, one rising to 1,368 feet, the other to 1,362feet, dominated the landscape and were a source of boundless pride and tributes to the supremacy of American commerce for politicians and builders even as most New Yorkers regarded them as impressive but essentially unattractive oblong boxes reaching into the skies.

My family and I visited the World Trade Center in 1988 along with an aged uncle from Ireland. My uncle, terrified of heights, stood petrified against the back wall of the Top of the World observatory and understatedly remarked that the view was “very nice.”

Soaring a full hundred feet above the Empire State Building, the WTC did indeed provide a “very nice” panorama, remarkable, breathtaking views for miles in every direction, in fact, even if the design of the towers was less than pleasing. Those vistas and the pride New Yorkers and all Americans felt for the World Trade Center fully compensated for the towers’ stark severity, described by one architect as “glass-and-metal filing cabinets.”

Despite all their architectural and aesthetic flaws, I still miss the strange, symmetrical elegance of those “filing cabinets” and, despite the passage of ten years, I freely admit that I still weep over the events of September 11th, 2001.

None of us could have anticipated the devastation wreaked on America by Islamic terrorists on that brilliantly-bright morning.

What happened that day didn’t simply involve the destruction of of human life and of buildings. It didn’t merely represent a shocking, unprovoked attack on our homeland. It involved much more than the resultant phenomenal costs, disruptions, and upheavals.

Obviously, the greatest loss was the 2,753 lives snuffed out but not to be forgotten either was the loss of Americans’ illusory senses of invulnerability and indestructibility, the loss of our collective national innocence.

Those attributes were barely shaken by the failed Muslim attempt to knock down the towers in 1993 primarily because they failed. Eight years later they succeeded. What could never happen, happened.

The incomprehensibility of 9/11 was perhaps best illustrated in the reaction of a WTC survivor. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5387.)

Sub-Humans at GITMO

Sub-Humans at GITMO

I’ve never been in jail or prison although I have known a few people who have and I do occasionally watch A&E’s “Lock Up” series which depicts convicted felons in various jails and prisons so I know a very limited tad about how inmates act and react during their incarcerations.

Many act abominably, in ways that would make average citizens retch in disgust at their behavior but few act like the miscreants living on American taxpayers’ dime at the detention facility located on the Guantanamo Naval Base, GITMO. Four of those miscreants have committed suicide, which must count as a blessing for the facility and their Marine guards with the only regret being that the hundreds of others who reportedly attempted but failed to kill themselves didn’t succeed.

That would be a harsh commentary in most circumstances except for a notable distinction: Many of the GITMO detainees could readily be labeled more animal than human although such a description would constitute a grave insult to residents of the animal world; no zoo I know of would accept them.

A prison by definition is not a happy, fun place. A prisoner by definition is incarcerated because he has been convicted or accused with serious reason of being involved in a crime. Guantanamo prisoners are believed to have engaged in reprehensible terrorist conduct relating to efforts to maim and kill Americans, to destroy American property and infrastructure, and to effect the collapse of American society and institutions.

They have also been aptly characterized as a sub-human species. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4833)

Ethical Murder

Ethical Murder

. . . On a much smaller scale is the ethical issue of killing one man or a group of men who you are reasonably certain are plotting to decimate cities and commit mass murder. Today we have the ability to accomplish such precision acts of war without risking the lives of the guys with boots on the ground or of the pilots in the sky.

Some are calling the use of very successful predator drones in the Afghani war as unethical, others call it a great advancement in the conduct of modern warfare. Pinpointing a high value target certainly seems to beat the destruction of large swaths of real estate tenanted by unknown numbers of innocent non-combatants.

And, yes, there will be drone mistakes, casualties that occur in the fog of war described with the sanitized term ”collateral damage” which happens no matter the military tactics employed but do those mistakes constitute unethical warfare?

A related ethical question has arisen in conjunction with Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1685)

The War in Our Streets, Part One

The War in Our Streets, Part One

There’s very definitely a war in progress on America’s streets, a number of wars, really.

Some could be termed skirmishes such as the ongoing war against crime, particularly in our cities and more particularly within our inner cities where minorities continue to commit mayhem and murder almost with impunity.

Another is a more recent series of battles involving patriotic and God-fearing Americans who cherish our country and who dearly hope for its survival in the face of an invasion across our southern, swiss cheese-y border.

As serious as those struggles are, the most dangerous at the moment is the war that our commander-in-chief refuses to concede even exists, the war against Islamic terrorism.

The title of a Pat Buchanan article, “Is the War Coming Home?” poses what must be a rhetorical question since surely Buchanan is well aware that the undeclared war with Islam “came home” years before the unsuccessful effort to murder thousands in Times Square on May 1st. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1680)

Petition Urging AG Holder to Remove KSM Trial from NYC

PLease sign the petition to remove the 9/11 terrorists' trial from New York City: http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1421

Terrorism 101, Semester One

Terrorism 101, Semester One

Having the Obamians in charge of the America’s security is like a teacher appointing the wimpiest kid in a class full of rowdies to take names during the teacher’s brief absence. The kid will be lucky to escape with a bloody nose and a broken limb or two.

So will we.

When the boss man refuses to acknowledge that there’s a worldwide war in progress with Islamic jihadists pitted against Western civilization, with the United States designated as the epicenter for another Ground Zero, there’s not much hope for the good guys.

(Note to the Obamians: We are the good guys!)

To be fair, on Thursday, with his back up against the obvious, the president did finally say, “We are at war, we are at war against al Qaeda.” As CNS added, that was ”a departure from the administration’s move in 2009 to discontinue the phrase ‘Global War on Terrorism’ from U.S. policy:” http://bit.ly/8hKF39

So, the new policy simply materialized as a result of Umar Farouk Abdulmutellab’s flubbed Muslim present to Americans on Christmas Day, whereas Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan murdering 12 and wounding 30 at Fort Hood while screaming, “Alahu Akbar” is still untrelated to al Qaeda?

Pardon me, Mr. President, but that doesn’t make any sense and if it does in your mind, why didn’t you connect the Fort Hood dot with the NWA dot when you declared this war which has been going on for years?

I repeat, the boss man refuses to acknowledge that there’s a worldwide war in progress with Islamic jihadists. . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1413)

Obama's Insecure Last War Doctrine Part II

Obama’s Insecure Last War Doctrine Part II

One of the great yogi-isms and far more perspicacious than “You can observe a lot by watching,” is Yogi’s classic, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” That should be obvious in baseball as well as in war.

Our supremely-confident president felt that America’s War on Terror was over with his ascendancy to his office, that is, if that war ever existed. Perhaps influenced by his Muslim roots, Obama doesn’t believe in any such thing as worldwide Islamic terrorism so how can we have a war against it?

This allegedly brilliant man could learn a great deal from the wisdom of the very uneducated Yogi Berra who might have appended another word for Obama to his quotation: ”It’s not over til it’s over, Dolt!”

And, don’t try to feed me the lie that “Obama just sent 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan so that proves he’s serious about battling terrorism!” Those troops, whose numbers suddenly grew to 40,000 according to some Democrat Party hack on Fox News Wednesday, are a charade.

At best, they will save some American lives but with Obama’s 2011 deadline for a political miracle in that sorry nation, the Taliban and al Qaeda are gleefully waiting until Obama’s troops come marching home so they can pick up where they left off in 2001.

These terrorists, as well as being a blood-thirsty lot, are a smart and patient lot.

Meanwhile, Commander-in-Chief Obama is failing to fight the most proximate last war, George W. Bush’s War on Terrorism launched on October 7th 2001 and amazingly concluded by Barack Hussein Obama in short order on January 20th, 2009.

Precisely what war, if any, . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1397)

Obama's Insecure Last War Doctrine, Part I

Obama’s Insecure Last War Doctrine Part I

All the hullabaloo over the Obama administration’s original laissez faire attitude toward the Christmas Day near-catastrophic event in the Detroit skies is bewildering to my simple mind.

First, DHS Secretary Janet “What Threat?” Napolitano says it’s all good, that the “system worked,” after it didn’t work, then says the system sucks, then says it was an isolated incident.

Three days later our vacationing president chimes in with a call for action to forestall any repetition of such isolated incidents.

Isolated? My foot! Is anyone in charge here?

The pols on both sides of the aisle are shocked, shocked, I tell you, at the ineptitude and complacency of our . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1396)

Rally Against NYC Terror Trials!

Rally Against NYC Terror Trials!

. . . Those opposed to this farcical show are planning a massive demonstration at noon next Saturday, December 5th in Foley Square, Manhattan.

The 9/11 Never Forget Coalition, http://defendourdefenders.org/, consisting “of 9/11 survivors, family members, first-responders, veterans, and active-duty and reserve military” in conjunction with its “partners, TheBravest.com (a site maintained by New York firefighters remembering the fellows they lost on September 11, 2001), 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, and Keep America Safe“ will stage the rally: http://bit.ly/7soYrU .

Foley Square, in the heart of N.Y.C., is accessible by various bus and subway lines.

The rally will be the first, and maybe the last, chance for Americans to be heard in opposition to Holder’s asinine and dangerous call to give Khalid and al-Qaeda what they’ve wanted all along. Within weeks, this crew will be regurgitated on the doorstep of what once was the World Trade Center. . .

(Read the rest at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1348)

Terrible Terror, Terrible Terrorist: Part Three

Terrible Terror, Terrible Terrorist: Part Three

This final installment of “Terrible Terror, Terrible Terrorist” was postponed in deference to the obsequies for the casualties conducted at Fort Hood and the commemoration of Veterans Day. I chose not to pollute either with the evolving, sickening details surrounding the senseless Muslim murders in Texas which made the Texas Chainsaw murders almost child play.

That evolution becomes more sickening by the day.

Our president, with wife Michelle in tow, made a duty-appearance at those services on Tuesday appearing very somber as he read the names of the 13 dead, declaring them heroes, promising “the killer will be met with justice–in this world and the next.”

Obama incorporated brief and touching biographical notes on each victim, including a newlywed and a pregnant mother, whose death brought the body count to fourteen.

He lamented “the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know: No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts.”

His very presidential speech omitted 2 significant references. There was no mention of the dreaded T-word, Terrorism, nor of the suspected perpetrator of those “murderous and craven acts:” http://bit.ly/XBMIE

Obama out of pique had passed on attending the celebrations in Berlin remembering “the fall of the wall” and had postponed his jaunt to China in order to squeeze in his trip to Fort Hood but his omissions of the T-word and any reference to Hasan’s Islamic-terrorist connections were very telling.

They were in line with his efforts to play those connections down even as the facts continue to pile up. . . .

(Read the rest at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1318)

Terrible Terror, Terrible Terrorist: Part One

Terrible Terror, Terrible Terrorist: Part One

Though it was in full swing prior to 9/11/2001, few Americans paid much attention to the reality of terroristic activity around the globe.

In the intervening 8 years, after a flurry of outrage and alarm, and two ongoing wars, many of us–too many of us–have retreated into a comfortable cocoon of terrorism-denial.

With mushrooming unemployment and with so many other personal and domestic problems on our plates, why bother worrying ourselves over something we can’t individually do anything about?

That denial, that gut refusal to come to terms with the truth that America is engaged in a worldwide struggle against the Islamic jihad, is almost as dangerous as the terrorism itself.

One individual who has adopted a blase’ demeanor toward the all-important issue is our terrorism-averse president who also happens to be the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, our chief line of defense from enemy attack.

Obama campaigned against the Iraq War, banned “harsh” interrogation techniques to elicit life-saving information from prisoners, promised to shutter GITMO, and banned the use of the term War on Terror.

Mr. President, point of information: Ignoring the threat of continuing terrorism and, worse, minimizing it to the point of absurdity, won’t make it go away.

I’ve long suspected the motivations of President Obama . . .

(Read the rest at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=

An Open Letter to President Obama II

An Open Letter to President Obama, re: Terrorism (Part II)

Dear Mr. President:

I trust you had the opportunity to read Part I of my letter which detailed some of my concerns over your administration’s handling of what President Bush termed the War on Terror: http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1219.

I’m aware you don’t take kindly to either the word “war” or the word “terror” but that doesn’t make war and terror any less a reality.

We are, regrettably, engaged in that undeclared, worldwide war and have been so engaged for decades. September 11th, 2001 was merely the day it arrived in all its sickening glory on our shores but it dates back, at least, to 1972.

Should you have any doubts as to the worldwide nature of the Islamic threat, for your edification, here is a list of previous “battles:”



• 1972 The massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes–Germany

• 1974 The bombing of TWA Flight 841–over the Ionian Sea

• 1977 Subway bombing–U.S.S.R.

• 1981 Assassination of Anwar Sadat–Egypt

• 1983 Bombing of the American Embassy–Lebanon

• 1983 Bombing of Gulf Air Flight 771–United Arab Emirates

• 1983 Bombing of our Marine Barracks–Lebanon . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)

9/11

“Another story concerned a friend of a friend, a married immigrant from Poland who jumped to his death from one of the World Trade Center towers. His young wife spoke little English and was still grieving when she hurled herself off her Brooklyn apartment building roof a few weeks later. Her husband is included among the two-thousand nine hundred and seventy-four fatalities in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania on 9/11. That distraught woman and countless others like her are not included in that tally. She deserves mention because she and her fellow ancillary victims should be remembered. Their stories accentuate the misery that resulted from our failure to prevent those unprovoked assaults on the United States. They also should serve as reminders, warnings of what could happen again.” (Excerpted from An Immodest Proposal for Ending and Winning the War on Terrorism,p. 11.)

Eight years ago tomorrow, on September 11th, 2001, America was attacked. There’s no need to recount the details of that attack by mostly Saudi Arabian Islamic terrorists.

Or, is there?

It’s very normal for people to try to forget horrific events in their lives or to shift them onto the backburners of our consciousness. That’s probably beneficial for our mental health, especially if those people witnessed the horrors first hand.

It’s also very dangerous.

Our president was probably busily organizing communities in Chicago on September 11th, 2001 and/or preparing for the next session of the Illinois State Senate. He was far removed from New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, PA and perhaps that distance from the scenes of destruction accounts for his blase’ attitude toward the very present danger that is terrorism today.

Out of duty, no doubt President Obama will say a few words tomorrow commemorating the eighth anniversary of the worst assault on America in our history, but only out of duty.

It seems our president, one, fails to perceive the ongoing and possibly imminent threat of Islamic terrorists and, two, wants Americans to honor that day although not in remembrance of what happened.

President Obama may or may not be a Muslim in his heart but he definitely discounts the terrorist threat from rabid Muslims and has abandoned the use of the word “terrorism,” as if ignoring it will make it go away. It doesn’t work that way, Mr. President.

Obama has also minimized the sacred nature of 9/11 by declaring the day should be recognized as a “day of service,” suggesting that serving our communities would be tantamount to honoring the thousands of innocents who died.

Please take a few moments to visit http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/. That website, (with which I am not affiliated in any way), features photos, videos, and other other pertinent information on 9/11/2001. None of it is cheery, all of it is important to remember.

To paraphrase George Santayana, those who forget the past may rue the day when it re-occurs. And maybe it will re-occur closer to home.

Fly the flag tomorrow!