A Failed Test of Compassion: Whatever Ann Coulter has, It's Worse than Ebola

by Nomad

Ann Coulter succeeded in making a spectacle of herself  the other day by calling Africa "a disease-ridden cesspool" and the American doctor who contracted Ebola as an idiot. In the next breath, she dares to mention moral decadence and Christian values.

Like a lot of people, I would like to think I have developed a natural immunity against Ann Coulter and her dreadful attention-seeking declarations. I want to believe that whatever she has- and by the looks and sounds of it, it's quite lethal, I won't catch it.

As any doctor will tell you, reducing one's exposure decreases the chances of infection and subsequent transmission.
So, I do my best to avoid reading or hearing anything from Ms. Coulter. It's not easy. Coulter's the Bird Flu of the Right Wing.  

Three days ago, I read (through a third party) that Coulter scribbled a piece called “Ebola Doc’s Condition Downgraded to ‘Idiocy. "  (That's about as clever as Coulter ever gets, I'm afraid.)

In her article, she criticizes Dr. Ken Brantly, one of the two Americans who has been diagnosed with Ebola. Coulter castigates the missionary for forcing the Christian charities Samaritan’s Purse and SIM USA to pay for him to fly in a private jet back to the U.S. and receive care at “one of America’s premier hospitals.”

American Christians go on “mission trips to disease-ridden cesspools," says Coulter because "they're tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S., tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists and bigots."

American culture is to blame, according to Coulter. Hollywood films, she claims, spread the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence which infects the world.

These do-goers "slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works." Coulter suggests that instead of traipsing into the the jungles of Africa, the doctor could have done so much more good work right here at home.  

 She moaned  “Can’t anyone serve Christ in America anymore?” 

Like so many things that Coulter writes about, this article begins with a false premise and runs wild from that point. Is she trying to claim there are there no Christian charities working inside the US? If so, she needs to do a little more research before picking up her poison pen. 

Here's an easily-found website that offers a list of Christian charities and I assume that most of them work inside the US. (I will not vouch for any of them but that is surely enough evidence to scrap the Coulter article at its inception.)

But perhaps I have misread: is she trying to claim that American-based Christian charities have no business helping the poor outside of American borders? I don't happen to remember Jesus saying anything like that. 

The Bible does say :

To help the poor is to honor God.

For some reason, it doesn't specify the poor of which country or region of the world. A bit vexing, isn't it? There's so many poor people in the world. 

Again the same problem happens in the New Testament. In the Epistle of John, Christians are told that pity isn't enough, We must give help. We must act. Strangely there's no map or border, no advice on how to distinguish who we should and should not be helping.

“If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with action and in truth”

Every Christian must speculate for himself why the Book doesn't tell exactly which brother in need is more deserving of our aid. It doesn't tell us at where the borders our compassion for the poor begin and end.

Why Elaine Chao, Wife of Mitch McConnell, Could Help Sink his Re-election Bid 1/3

by Nomad

In this three-part post, we take a closer look at the career of Elaine Chao, wife of Senator Mitch McConnell. She is one-half of the Washington power couple.

No Trophy Wife

In the last few weeks, the wife of Mitch McConnell, Ms. Elaine Chao, has jumped feet first into the campaign. 

Strategists probably thought what McConnell's flagging re-election bid really needed was a pretty face. Clearly, the public is fed up with looking at Mitch's sour mug.  

However, Ms. Elaine Chao is by no means a trophy wife. Among her many accomplishments, Ms. Chao was the Secretary of Labor in the George W. Bush presidency from 2001 to 2009. 

In that regard, it was perhaps a risky decision to have her make an appearance. 

Cleverly the GOP strategists have thrown a smokescreen over any real discussion of Elaine Chao. Here's how they did it.  In the last few days, the Republicans have attempted to turn the tables on the left by claiming that a left-winger made a rather stupid tweet about the fact that Choa is an Asian and was not born in Kentucky.  The GOP quickly seized this opportunity to charge "racism" -which given the source is perhaps ironic.

To be sure, Ms. Chao has never attempted to hide her background. On the other hand, it's also hard to tell the Elaine Chao story without at least noting her ethnic background. That in itself is not racism. After all, Republicans have used every opportunity to use Ms. Chao's Asian background when it benefited them.  

How Ms. Chao got to where she is today is indeed a fascinating story. A suspect charge of racism shouldn't prevent a careful look at her history and her career.

Chao's Bootstraps

Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is all the rage for conservatives but wise researchers should take all that malarky with a grain of salt. The Christian Science Monitor profiled Chao telling its readers how she "began her life in this country with nothing."

It really depends on how one describes nothing. As any investor will tell you, nothing is something if you have what they call "access. " Being in the right place with a set of diverse and powerful connections in high places is often worth more than gold in pocket.

Hunger in the Heartland: How a Record-Breaking Spaghetti Dinner Could Help Nebraska's Most Needy

by Nomad

Omaha spaghetti fundraiser in September hopes to bring the community together to break records for a good cause. 

Ms. Lin Leahy is a woman with a mission. 

Three missions in fact. 

The first mission?
This 54-year-old professional chef in Omaha, Nebraska has gathered together her friends, neighbors and co-workers in order to break the Guinness World Record. 

How? 

Well, with 3,780 pounds of pasta, 4,000 pounds of meatballs, Leahy aims to set the record for the most people served in one meal. That means, by serving more than 17,000 persons.

But it's much more than just a publicity stunt.

More than a Pretty Plate
With a board of directors made up of volunteers, Leahy's non-profit tax-exempt organization the Power of O.NE will also attempt to raise $100,000 for the Food Bank for the Heartland. 

But then, it's not just about the money. 

Her third goal is more far-reaching. The organization wants to raise awareness of food insecurities and also to remind people that a sense of community is formed when neighbor helps neighbor.

So, on Sept. 21, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., she plans to serve 20,000 plates of pasta, sauce, meatballs and green beans for $5 each at various local locations. Nobody will leave hungry, even if they can't pay. They hope people who can afford it will give more.

According to an article by Betsie Freeman, staff writer  for  the Omaha World-Herald,

So far, the group has found donors for all the food. The volunteers have reached out to area high schools and secured 13 serving sites in every corner of the metropolitan area. They estimate they’ll need 500 volunteers, and several groups already are interested in helping.

Is This Finally the End Of Issa's Benghazi Witch Hunt?

by Nomad

While the mainstream media looks the other way, a newly declassified report from Congress seems to exonerate the president and his administration in the tragic Benghazi attack on the consulate in September 2012 in which four Americans died.

The report clears the White House of any intentional or conspiratorial wrong-doing, blowing up the wild claims made by Republicans.

A report that the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee voted to declassify its completed Benghazi report last week has made a Hindenberg of the Benghazi investigation. It had all started so nicely too. With Mitt Romney inappropriately sneering in a midnight press conference. And when the Republican- led Congress decided to investigate claims of mismanagement and a cover up shivers of delight up the spines of die-hard conservatives.

It's all over now, Baby Blue. The report concludes that there was no clear advance warning of any organized terrorist attack, and that there was no "stand down" order issued to any American rescuers. Despite Republican claims to the contrary, the report also concludes that there was no attempt to clean up the site of the attack for the sake of politics. Finally, it finds that there was no conspiracy by the Obama administration to hide the facts or to cover up wrongdoing.
Basically every one of the allegations have been shown to be fictional. 

Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa owes the American taxpayers a  millions dollars- up to over $14 million by some estimates- as well as apologies for his the baseless claims against the Obama administration.

Most of all, Issa and others who followed him, especially owes an apology to the victims of the attack. Back in May, at a Florida fundraiser, Issa clearly attempted to exploit the tragedy in Libya. He told his audience:

It takes very little time and very little committees if the administration wants to tell the truth. If the administration wants to continue delaying, denying and lying and covering up, it takes a long time.

There was a lot of time and a lot of money spent on Watergate to eventually get to the truth about the wrongdoing of Richard Milhous Nixon.

Wait.. Nixon, you mean, the Republican president? (But then he might well have cited the Republican President Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal too.)

Many on the Left knew these allegations were ridiculous and would lead nowhere.

But there is one thing this investigation has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. This fiasco of a scandal investigation  is solid evidence that the Tea Party Republicans would rather waste time and money on baseless witch hunts than actually doing the work they are being paid to do.

Here's a syndicated post from the group, Americans Against the Tea Party

Obama vs. The Cheneys: A Question of American Values

by Nomad

When President Obama admitted that the CIA had, in the years after 9/11, committed torture, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice-president blasted the president, calling him an "utter disgrace." The interrogators, she said, were "patriots" and "heroes."

She failed to understand that the torture debate wasn't a matter of patriotism. It was a question of American values and what America stands for.

The Unseen Trap

In itself it was a fairly obvious thing to say. Last Friday, President Obama admitted that the CIA had committed torture. But what was surprising was his use of the pronoun "we." 

After handing over a report to Congress about an investigation into “enhanced interrogation techniques," President Obama said the CIA had “tortured some folks” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

What gives? I wondered. Presumably he was referring to the CIA during the Bush administration. If he were attempting to show solidarity with the CIA then it seemed a politically dangerous and needless thing to say. Indeed, many headlines from the so-called liberally-biased media simply read "We tortured folks, says Obama."

Now it is clear what he was doing: It was a bait for conservatives.

In short order, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, erupted with indignation about Obama's remarks. The venue was, predictably enough, Sean Hannity's show on Fox News.  

Hyperbole, like you never saw.

"..This president is an utter disgrace. He’s got a situation where... you’ve got crises erupting around the world."

A classic non-sequitur and a distraction. Obama wasn't there to talk about the problems of the world and she knew it.  Cheney, (Liz , that is) went on to say:

“And he is expending more time, more energy, more passion, more aggressive activity in targeting and going after patriots, heroes. CIA officers and others who kept is safe after 9/11."

Of course, Cheney's explosive rhetoric is aimed at dividing Americans, a lame attempt to stoke fears one more time. The Cheney apples do not fall far from the tree.

Additionally, there is a very real question about the accuracy of her allegation. Did torture actually keep anybody safe, either in the short or long term?

That's a statement that requires Cheney to prove and she is clearly not willing to attempt it. However, the unreleased U.S. Senate report, according to one source, is purported to conclude that the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques following 9/11 attacks was ineffective and yielded no critical intelligence. 

That's bad news for the Cheney family.

Actually, President Obama never said that enhanced interrogation didn't save lives. He said only that these techniques were contrary to our values. Perhaps the moral question -which is what the president was referring to- is simply not something a daughter of Mr. Dick Cheney could possibly grasp.

Not in a million years.

And that is the trap that Obama set and the one into which Liz Cheney - clearly speaking in defense of her father's policies- unwittingly tumbled. It is a question of values, a question whether the ends justify the means. 

Just because we can find a rationale for doing it and a legal means to escape second-guessing, does it make it right?