The Only Good ‘Redskin’ Is a Deleted ‘Redskin’

Does this man know leftists consider him a bigot?

The Thought Police at the Washington Post are on the warpath once again over the Washington Redskins nickname. In spite of the fact it would cost owner Daniel Snyder heap–big wampum to change the name, they say it is bad medicine and it has to go. They are also angry about calling people who sell their own tickets “scalpers,” but that’s for another time.

What fired up the grievance machine this time was a gripefest on sports nicknames at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. One of the panel participants gave a summary of the ‘anti–Redskins’ argument when he challenged the paleface Washington owner to visit the National Congress of American Indians’ next meeting and start calling the attendees “redskins” and see if they consider it an honor.

That would be equivalent to visiting the nearest university Women’s Studies department during a performance of the Vagina Monologues and making a case for the positive contributions of heterosexual men.

Just because one is surrounded by screaming fanatics does not mean you deserve to be burned at the stake. (Note to Jesuits in the reading audience, I mean no offense with this analogy.)

Frankly it sounds to me like the staff of both institutions have been sampling the firewater. The Red Man has already had his revenge. Indians introduced white eyes to tobacco and that golden leaf is adding to the death toll as I type. The largely imaginary “smallpox blankets” were not even a rounding error compared to Big Tobacco’s body count.

The WaPost cites Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Washington-based Morning Star Institute as a strong supporter of sporting censorship. (Rule of Thumb: beware of experts who use all their names.) She says there are some 900 troublesome nicknames and mascots across the country, down from a peak of more than 3,000.

Harjo is proud of the fact that among the first mascots flayed was ‘Little Red,’ who used to perform at University of Oklahoma games.

I remember ‘Little Red.’ We attended OU at the same time. He was a genuine Kiowa who volunteered to be part of the athletic program. People cheered him during games. Students appreciated the work he put into his authentic costume and his footwork. Plus he didn’t leave a mess in the end zone like the Sooner Schooner. All these accolades were too much for professional Native American outrage intensifiers so they worked to have him fired.

I’m surprised Harjo let the school off so easy, merely stopping with the banishment of ‘Little Red.’ ‘Sooners’ itself is a nickname rife with bigotry. It’s a negative reference to cheaters during the land rush that crossed the border early and is no doubt a slap in the face to illegal border–crossers everywhere.

While we’re at it, how about Notre Dame’s ‘Fighting Irish?’ Doesn’t that imply the Shannons might have a drinking problem? What’s more, nicknames are just the tip of the iceberg for those “who oppose the appropriation of Native American imagery in sports.” Are they casting their gimlet eye on tomahawks, feathers, loincloths, arrows, and buffalo? Where does it end? Must 7/11 stop selling jerky?

But fair is fair. Why do ‘First Americans’ get to hog (no offense to Jews & Moslems) all the outrage? What about all those pagans wearing crosses around their necks? Or Germans and Hispanics wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day? And don’t get me started on honkies that give soul shakes.

What’s more, the Redskins aren’t the only sports enterprise with a ‘hurtful’ name. What about the Cleveland Browns? Isn’t that offensive to Hispanics and people suffering from melanoma? How would you like someone to make fun of your freckles?

Among the worst of the commercial enterprises is the Jolly Green Giant: A continual poke in the eye to tall people and committed environmentalists.

The person I feel sorry for is ‘Skins general manager Bruce Allen. This slang term controversy is déjà vu all over again for the Allen family. First the WaPost goes and lights up his brother for saying “macca” in a campaign appearance, now they are after him and his team for a name that’s been around for decades. Allen no doubt thanks his lucky stars that he’s never used the word “niggardly” in conversation.

Even the ‘conservative’ Washington Times is clinging to this bandwagon. One of their sports columnists asks, “When was the last time you used “redskin” in non-sports discussion? If the word really, truly honored, we’d have a National Museum of the Redskin…” Whoops, Faulty Analogy Alert! Formal names don’t usually incorporate nicknames, this is why the Marine Heritage Museum is not called the Jarhead Heritage Museum.

Frankly, I feel sorry for the agitators. How pathetic does life have to be to support a belief that the nickname of a professional football team is damaging to one’s psyche?

Personally, I don’t harbor any particular affection for the Redskins as you can read here. But I do hope they stand firm in the face of hysteria.

Otherwise I’m afraid my team is in imminent danger, because it will only be a matter of time before vegans come after the ‘Packers.’

Now Soliciting Bids for the G.I. Jane Combat Hall of Fame

Blame Lara Croft for fostering delusions of women in combat

It was a coincidence ripe with irony.  On the same day the main section of the Washington Post was trumpeting Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta’s decision to allow women in combat, the sports section was featuring an analysis of the “epidemic” of torn knee ligaments in women’s basketball and soccer.

Reporter Preston Williams wrote: “Young female athletes are two to eight times more likely than young males to tear their anterior cruciate ligaments, according to the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine. Area girls’ basketball players are doing their part to validate a statistic that one local orthopaedic surgeon considers “a national epidemic.”

What’s more, statistics originating with the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine reveal 70 percent of the tears result from “no contact.”

The Fairfax County, VA school system, writes Williams, started tracking knee injuries. After football — an incubator for all problems knee–wise — the three leading sports for complete ACL tears were girls’ lacrosse, girls’ soccer and girls’ basketball. This looks like a trend to me and might point one toward a belief that men’s and women’s bodies are fundamentally different, but what do I know? I’m certainly not a “gender” expert.

Of course those injuries are taking place in a sports setting where women prance around in the equivalent of pajamas or bikini bottoms with nary a jihadi in sight. What possible relevance could those statistics have to combat situations where women are carrying 60–lb. packs and running for their lives?

Can’t ideology overcome physiology? Military brass certainly thinks so. The WaPost says they are on board in a big way. Sounding a lot like Pres. George H. W. Bush after his first encounter with a grocery store scanner, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, enthused: ‘The most eye-opening moment, he said, came in Iraq in 2003. As the commander of the 1st Armored Division, he hopped into an armored vehicle and slapped the gunner’s leg, asking the soldier to introduce himself.

“I’m Amanda,” the gunner said, poking her head down from the turret.

“So, female turret gunner protecting a division commander,” Dempsey recalled, beaming. “And it’s from that point on that I realized something had changed and it was time to do something about it.”’

Of course Dempsey could have been buttering Amanda up in an effort to head off a sexual harassment complaint after groping her thigh. But not to worry, even though female knee ligaments are popping like small arms fire in Fallujah, Dempsey can hardly wait for full integration.

Sen. Carl Levin (D–Never Served Himself) also approves. “The reality is that so many women have been, in effect, in combat or quasi-combat,” he said. “This is catching up with reality.” This is actually lying through inference. What the left refers to as combat deaths for women are in the main deaths in a combat or war zone, which is vastly different. It’s like counting the woman who injures her knee in a fall down the stairs at FedEx Field as one of the knee injuries occurring in the NFL. (Note to professional apology demanders: I am in no way denigrating the deaths of these women. I am instead protesting the left’s exploitation of their passing.)

The problem with women in combat roles is not mental (although I have my doubts about a female who demands to be a grunt) but physical. Women lack upper body strength and aerobic capacity because they basically aren’t men. If a woman’s performance in a combat unit is sub–par then one of the men is going to have to do her job and his, with the resulting decline in the unit’s performance.

Bowling and golf — both pastimes Obama is familiar with — award handicaps to equalize performance during competition. War, on the other hand, penalizes those who handicap themselves through the adoption of personnel policies that only make sense in faculty lounges.

The Marines have already had a field test of women in combat and the women surrendered. Last September they opened the Infantry Officer Course to women. It’s three months of physical punishment that molds Marine officers. Of the 80 women potentially able to volunteer, two did so. On the first day one quit and the other washed out two weeks later for medical reasons.

Marine Capt. Katie Petronio wrote a detailed account of her deployment to Afghanistan titled, “Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal.” Her conclusion, based on personal experience, is that women are not physically able to take the punishment of extended combat conditions in the field.

But facts make no difference in this debate. Women in combat is not a reality–based policy, and reality isn’t going to influence implementation. Panetta says women will be integrated into combat units “expeditiously” So “Damn the Knee Ligaments. Full speed ahead.”

Gen. Robert W. Cone attempts to reassure skeptics when he explains, ““Women do not want standards changed for them. If a standard is valid, they want to be able to meet that standard.” The key word being “valid.” And what is “valid” is going to be subject to strict interpretation, for as an anonymous official notes, “The onus is going to be on them to justify why a woman can’t serve in a particular role.”

In plain language this means if a unit doesn’t have women serving, questions are going to be raised. Pentagon pencil–pushers are going to want to know why those officers aren’t meeting the “metrics” (another word for quotas) for women in combat roles. Come performance review or fitness report time, strict officers and drill instructors are going to be asked why they aren’t team players? Promotion and advancement are going to hinge on the answers.

Even before Panetta announced his policy, Army units — prior to deployment to Afghanistan — were requesting officers based on merit and being told the slot would be filled by a female, based on quotas.

It will only get worse in the future. Too many women will learn too late that “being on the right side of history” puts one on the wrong side of knee surgery. And yet again the elites that impose a destructive policy on unwilling recipients won’t suffer the consequences of their bad decision.

Constituent Service Gone Wild

Football fans everywhere are indebted to Virginia Delegate Joe May (R–Leesburg) whose invention of the electronic first down marker added much needed precision to watching the game on TV. Unfortunately, May’s understanding of the free market is much less precise and is in danger of throwing taxpayers for a significant loss.

According to Liz Essley in a series of stories from Washington Examiner, May wants the state to buy the privately–owned, 14–mile–long Greenway toll road located west of Washington Dulles Airport. He is joined by Randy Minchew (R–Leesburg) and David Ramadan (R–Prince William), who also confuse the role of constituent service in conservative governing philosophy. It’s a troika of Republicans who should know better.

May wants the Commonwealth to issue hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bonds to buy the Greenway from the Macquarie Group. Joe contends this would be good news for commuters because he believes the state will be reluctant to raise the tolls, which is not been the case with private ownership where peak period tolls can run as high as $5.80.

And why not? The government body that runs the Dulles Toll Road doesn’t even bother to bill 90 percent of the drivers who use their pavement but refuse to pay. Let them annex the Greenway and commuter’s troubles are over, as the taxpayer’s are just beginning.

Plus everyone knows overall operations for a government–run toll road will be so much more efficient than in the free market. Just look at the pioneering work done at Metro. During the past twenty years the Metro bureaucracy has discovered that escalators installed outdoors without protection from the elements have a tendency to break down and need replacement. Metro’s study of the effects of failing to conduct even routine maintenance on subway infrastructure led to the discovery that the system will become unreliable and subject to unpredictable shutdowns and track work that will consume most of the coming decade.

And don’t overlook the Smithsonian parking lot where attendants stole over $1 million in parking fees with management none the wiser.

And of course government involvement means low prices, which is why the IRS estimates the lowest priced insurance policy under Obamacare will cost a family of five $20,000 a year. If you want a policy that lets you see an actual doctor, as opposed to a Jiffy Lube professional, that will cost extra.

So what could go wrong with Virginia buying the Greenway? If it becomes too expensive to operate without raising the toll, they can just shut it down on Saturday, like the Post Office wants to do with mail delivery.

Del. Minchew echoes May, “I really want to protect our citizens from having tolls reach higher amounts than they should,” he explained.

And Ramadan wanted to try something called “distance–based tolling,” but says Macquarie was not interested.

And there it stands, constituents complain about the price they pay to speed their commute and they want government to “do something!” Followed to its logical conclusion, this type of activist, meddlesome thinking regarding the role of government lead us to the door of Nancy Pelosi’s office. Conservatives do not rush to meddle in a situation the market is uniquely qualified to handle.

The Greenway has been a troubled project from its inception with wildly inflated traffic estimates justifying too much spending. Fortunately, government wasn’t involved, so the first set of owners took a financial bath on the project and sold the tub, ring and all, to Macquarie.

The cost to taxpayers was zero.

Average daily trips on the Greenway peaked in 2005 with a bit over 61,000 with the average toll was just over $2.00. Proving the economic demand curve is alive and well and living in Virginia, as the price for tolls has gone up, traffic volume has gone down. Until in 2012 average daily trips are about 46,500 and the average toll is $3.93.

Yet with traffic down 24 percent, Greenway management was still able to increase average daily revenue by almost $61,000. So the toll is obviously not too high. Otherwise market forces would mean fewer drivers AND less money. Now the price is obviously too high for at least 14,500 drivers because they are now taking another road to work.

And that’s how the market operates; consumers balance cost and benefit and make their choice. Democrats and confused Republicans run to government and plead with them to intervene.

I wonder if any of the esteemed troika members has priced a rib roast at Wegmans lately? Driving on the Greenway is mere transportation, but eating is life itself.

I haven’t had a rib roast in the last year, because they are too expensive and the Philistines at my house can’t tell the difference from a pot roast anyway. But if the state buys the Greenway, I may start talking about the cattle cartel at the next town meeting.

And what makes those particular Greenway drivers so special? How about, God help them, Metro riders? Or Virginia Railway Express passengers? Everybody has a gripe about something.

Del. May is “optimistic we’re going to find a deal that works for both sides” and believes buying the Greenway could cost Virginia nearly $1 billion (which is $21,500 per current trip or 14 years worth of toll charges), making the road green in more ways than one. Hard–bargain Joe’s $1 billion is an interesting figure, because according to TollRoads News the owners carry the Greenway on their books as a net liability of $490 million dollars, meaning the road is worth almost half a billion dollars less than it cost.

As the reporter points out, Macquarie could PAY Virginia $450 million to take the road off its hands and have the books come out $40 million to the good.

It’s time to throw the challenge flag in front of Del. May. Having the Commonwealth buy the Greenway is a bad idea, bad economics and profoundly anti–conservative. In this case what’s private sector should stay private sector.

Jesus, Another Innocent Man Wrongly Convicted

Few pastimes are more entertaining than witnessing a smug, non–orthodox Jew giving instruction on New Testament theology to Christians. Last Saturday the most reverend Lisa Miller in her Washington Post ‘Belief Watch’ column asked readers, “Is gun ownership Christian?

This puts believers at an immediate disadvantage because Christ did not spend much of his ministry discussing consumer goods. He mentions the odd cloak, fragrant ointment, sword and widow’s mite, but one would not confuse Him with Ralph Nader or other marketplace stalwarts.

Besides, since Miller picks and chooses what she believes in regard to her own faith, she has no problem distorting the Gospel in an effort to draft Jesus into Code Pink.

She begins by completely misunderstanding the significance of Jesus on the cross. Miller writes, “The Christian Lord allowed himself to be crucified rather than fight the injustice of the death sentence imposed on him.” To co–opt Mark Twain; this is an inability to distinguish between lightning and the lightning bug.

On the contrary, it was not a miscarriage of justice. The sentence was the fulfillment of divine justice. Christ willingly substituted Himself on the cross in place of a sinful mankind. God did not alter the terms of the first Covenant with Abraham. There was a price to be paid for man’s rebellion and he decided to pay it Himself. (This refusal to “evolve” on the part of the creator, should give pause to modern “Christian” leader’s attempts to revise and soften the New Testament, but it doesn’t.)

Consequently, Christ was not the earliest recruit for the left’s anti–capitol punishment movement. Christ died for our sins. He willingly paid the price we could not pay and ushered in the New Covenant.

There would be no Christians without Christ’s death on the cross. Even if the Jerusalem chapter of the Innocence Project had tried to get Him off the hook, He would have refused the offer, because to do so would have rendered His work pointless.

After that inauspicious beginning, Miller moves on to the point of her column, “How do such Christians reconcile their stalwart commitment to the Second Amendment with their belief in a gospel that preaches nonviolence?” And then she quotes Matthew 5:39 – “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

This leads me to believe Miller was also not a fan of the excellent movie “Machine Gun Preacher”

Then it left me wondering if I had missed a recent development on the violence front, so I did an online search on “strike AND cheek AND gunfight” to see if there had been a rash of concealed carry permit holders (CCW) lighting up people who slapped them.

That search string was a bust, so I tried “strike AND cheek AND shoot” with the same result. Evidently there is no problem with Christian gun owners initiating violence. Miller’s goal appears to involve persuading Christians to join the ranks of the defenseless. This decision, however, would not be made in a vacuum. Should a Christian head of household decide to disarm because he believes guns are inherently evil, like cigarettes or 16 oz. sodas, his decision would not affect him alone. His wife, his children and mom in the basement would all instantly become draftees in the War for Pacifism.

And the family would be misguided draftees at that. As Adam Clarke points out in his commentary on the passage, these “exhortations belong to those principally who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Say for example, an orthodox Christian that leftists like Miller slap up the side of the head for refusing to support homosexual marriage. Following Matthew, the Christian would turn the other cheek as he said he does not approve of the homosexual lifestyle either.

The verse is most certainly not directed toward ancient or modern Christians with a desire to defend their persons or their family.

Then Miller snidely intimates that “conservative Christian leaders are not falling over themselves to proclaim in public their pro–gun theologies.” But then Miller proceeds to list various Christians who are doing just that.

She takes issue with Richard Land, a former Southern Baptist Convention official, who said during a December interview on National People’s Radio (NPR) that he supports arming teachers. And Miller concludes with David French, senior counsel for the American Center of Law and Justice, who told her “Turn the other cheek does not mean turn your wife’s cheek or turn your children’s cheek.”

Miller — who works for an organization sporting guards who check commoners before they are allowed to enter — replies, “Provocative, but unconvincing. Jesus identified with the weak, not the strong; with the victims, not the shooters (or the people with the guns).”

Wrong again. Jesus praised a Roman centurion who controlled his own sword and 90 others — for his faith, saying, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” What’s more, Jesus reached out to the weak and the victims, but unlike leftist community organizers, He considered Himself a shepherd and the shepherd doesn’t hand the wolf a napkin as he approaches the herd.

There is another verse that’s very germane to this discussion, although Miller manages to overlook it. Luke 6:42 advises, “Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

Miller would do more to protect the innocent life of children if she would worry less about the imaginary threat of “assault weapons” in the hands of Christians and more about the real threat of “assault doctors*” who are responsible for the deaths of over 1 million innocents each year during abortions.

*Thanks to my wife, Janet, for this inspired term that aptly describes a depraved occupation.