Chapter 21. Nothing More Than Feelings

On the May 2 edition of ABC's Sunday morning This Week show, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was asked by host Jake Tapper how concerned she was that the Times Square car bomb attempt of the evening before was not an isolated incident, after Tapper pointed out the obvious similarities between it and previous attempts in Great Britain.  Napolitano smoothly stated:

"We have no evidence that it is anything other than a one-off..."

This despite the events of the so-called "underwear bomber" only four months earlier, of which Napolitano said "the system worked."  It is as if the Secretary is a drone that is occasionally re-booted and rolled out to spout the ridiculous, so that more favored Obama cronies like Eric Holder can correct the misstatements, as the Attorney General did today when he announced what everyone besides Napolitano already knew:  this was another terrorist with Middle Eastern training and funding.  One must wonder why the "Napolitanobot" is kept in perpetual patsy-mode.  Her job seems to be to soft peddle the bad news that we're still in a war on terror, er, overseas contingency operation.  The same day she even tossed out that the Times Square attempt was amateurish.  Wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of all those professional man-caused disasterists out there.

CNN got into the act in the intervening week between respective interviews, when anchor Jim Acosta suggested that Times Square terrorist Faisal Shahzad's home foreclosure must have put a lot of pressure on him and the family.  The President was probably kicking himself for not having the Napolitanobot lead with that theory, since the financial and foreclosure crisis can be so readily linked back to George W. Bush.  At any rate, the manic suggestion that Shahzad, and those like him, may have been a victim is becoming a pattern of the left that reveals an increasing distance from common sense reality.  Not hurting the feelings of jihadists is not going to spare us any violence, and may in fact get us killed.

In a different example of feelings on display, just-deposed Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) had his feelings hurt in a big way, when Utah's GOP convention delegates voted him third behind two newcomers on Saturday.  No doubt the tears summoned as he thanked supporters and family were real; he had just seen his meal ticket torn up and tossed into the air by voters tired of career politicians bedding their nests for life.  Bennett called the political atmosphere "toxic":

"The political atmosphere obviously has been toxic, and it's very clear that some of the votes that I have cast have added to the toxic environment."

What Bennett calls toxic a lot of other folks simply call democracy.  Bennett's conservative credentials are more than respectable, but three terms in office is enough, and sometimes voters get it.  Eighteen years in a public office can corrupt just about anyone, and our political system is awash in corruption.  There will be more on term limits in upcoming posts.

Napolitano, CNN anchors and Bennett have one vexing thing in common:  the attempted shielding of the truth from the public, and all of them look silly trying it.

Quotient out.