This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Obama; US forces only “air-raiding” Afghan civilians

    I wonder what was going through Barack Obama’s mind Monday when he decided to declare that US forces in Afghanistan were “air-raiding” Afghan villages.

    “We’ve got to get the job done there,” he said of Afghanistan. “And that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.”

    First of all, I’m not sure “air-raiding” is even a word – I know it’s not a word anyone I’ve ever met would use. It must be one of those pseudo-warrior words that pin heads use to make other pin heads think they might know something about air strikes.

    And if all we’re doing is “air-raiding” villages and homes in Afghanistan, what is the 10th Mountain Division (the Army’s premier light infantry division) doing in Afghanistan? I’ll grant that they have 10th Aviation Brigade for support – but only inasmuch as it aids the infantry battalions with lift and fire missions. 

    I think Obama is just painfully inexperienced in military matters, even more than most Senators. I wonder when the last time he was in Afghanistan, and I wonder where he gets the idea that the US is only “air-raiding” Afghan homes – probably from his equally ignorant staff weinies.

    Now, our air attacks on Serbia – that was problematic, i wonder where he stands on that fiasco?

    I get the distinct impression that Obama thinks he’s getting elected to President based purely on the color of his skin, because he hasn’t really made an effort to learn anything about the job, or the matters involved in being President. From the Washington Examiner;

    The flap comes three weeks after Obama promised that if elected president, he would meet without pre-conditions with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. That pledge was called “irresponsible and frankly naive” by rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    Eight days later, eager to rebut Clinton’s charge, Obama said that as president, he might send U.S. troops into Pakistan to fight terrorists not targeted by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

    “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” he vowed.

    Critics called this overly hawkish, prompting Obama to modulate again the next day by ruling out the use of nuclear weapons to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” he told the AP before pausing.

    “Involving civilians,” he added. “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

    That’s the backpedaling of a campaign that’s unprepared to advance their candidate on anything more than his visage. It’s clear to me that the people in Obama’s campaign staff would prefer that he just stand on stage silently while supporters throw money and votes at him. And you know you suck if Hillary Clinton calls you stupid.

    It’s equally clear that Obama never had any intention of doing anything towards cultivating his image as leader – like John Kerry and Al Gore before him, he just felt he deserved to be President and we ought to just give it to him.

    Here’s a candidate that’s obviously a Class I Dullard – when will the media begin to portray him as such? If he were Republican, it’d already be a foregone conclusion.

  • Who’s watching the gatekeepers?

    Sara Carter of the Washington Times reports that USCIS agents are aiding islamic terrorists;

    A criminal investigations report says several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees are accused of aiding Islamic extremists with identification fraud and of exploiting the visa system for personal gain.

    The confidential 2006 USCIS report said that despite the severity of the potential security breaches, most are not investigated “due to lack of resources” in the agency’s internal affairs department.

    “Two District Adjudications Officers are allegedly involved with known (redacted) Islam terrorist members,” said the internal document obtained by The Washington Times.

    The group “was responsible for numerous robberies and used the heist money to fund terrorist activities. The District Adjudications Officers made numerous DHS database queries to track (Alien)-File movement and check on the applicants’ status for (redacted) members and associates.”

    Of course, the government blames the problem on a lack of funds and manpower – the real problem is that they’re hiring potential criminals. It seems to me that there would be some indication that a person will cooperate with terrorists before he or she is hired. I have no idea what that might be, but I’ve got some ideas (that I’ll just keep to myself).

    It also seems to me that no one person can sidestep the law alone – it takes an accomplice (knowing the redundancy in the US government like I do). No, it’s not money or manpower, it’s the laziness, both physically and intellectually, of management that there’s no way to monitor these rogue agents of the American people.

  • Finally, some reality for Iran

    According to Robin Wright at the Washington Post, the US government is planning on designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a “terrorist organization”;

    The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.

    The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran’s nuclear program, officials said.

    Well, it’s about-damn-time. The Post goes on to explain some of the US’ options on dealing with Iran;

    The order allows the United States to block the assets of terrorists and to disrupt operations by foreign businesses that “provide support, services or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorists.”

    […]

    “Anyone doing business with these people will have to reevaluate their actions immediately,” said a U.S. official familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced. “It increases the risks of people who have until now ignored the growing list of sanctions against the Iranians. It makes clear to everyone who the IRGC and their related businesses really are. It removes the excuses for doing business with these people.”

    For weeks, the Bush administration has been debating whether to target the Revolutionary Guard Corps in full, or only its Quds Force wing, which U.S. officials have linked to the growing flow of explosives, roadside bombs, rockets and other arms to Shiite militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Quds Force also lends support to Shiite allies such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and to Sunni movements such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

    It’ll also give the US the option of using force to shut down the Iran/Iraq border.

    I can’t remember where I read it now, but PPK terrorists in Turkish Kurdistan derailed a train last week that was delivering rockets and arms to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon from Iran. This wasn’t discovered until Turkish investigators searched the freight on the overturned train. How strangely silent the media has been on that little discovery.

    But really strange is discovering that Reuters has writers that can actually spell the word “terrorist“.

    I expect the Democrats, and especially Nancy Pelosi, our new diplomat to the Near East terrorist organizations,  to condemn this as being counter to the Iraq Study Group’s proposal that we talk with Iran until we’re blue in the face.

  • So why are we still buying from Asia?

    The latest product recalls of Chinese-made products (it’s toys this time) makes me wonder how much Americans will take before we wake up and start boycotting all of that cheap plastic crap and inferior food products and rolling crap boxes (otherwise known as Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc…) from Asia. All of the local news shows are absolutely giddy that they report shoddy merchandise – it fills every one-hour news broadcast at 6 and 11 and the standard ads “Why your child is turning purple – details at 11”.

    I’ll grant that if your child is sucking the lead paint out of his toy cars, you probably have bigger worries than lead poisoning right now, nonetheless….

    I’ve written before that my grandfather wouldn’t buy anything that said “Made in Japan” on it – but it was more than the fact that he still remembered Pearl Harbor. Everything that came out of Japan was crap. Toys made there broke before the first day ended, tools were absolutely useless and would strip bolts before they’d loosen bolts, their cars were tin cans on wheels that stalled every time they came to a traffic light.

    If you want to see what Toyotas and Hondas used to be, go to Central America – the cars they sell there are still crap boxes. The equivalent of a Corrolla sells for about $9000 new compared to the $15,000 price tag here – but it’s little more than a thin metal shell on four wheels with indoor/outdoor carpet strips glued to bare metal floor boards and barely enough power to get up to 45 mph.

    Hardly a day goes by that I don’t read about or hear about our huge trade deficit with Asia. Mostly from people who are driving those overpriced Toyotas and Hondas (called Lexus and Infinity) in their parking spots. “But”, they tell me, “most of those are made in the US.” Oh, yeah? Then why is it when I’m at Miami Beach I see these huge cargo ships with “Honda” and “Toyota” painted on their sides pulling up to the dock with a new shipment of crap boxes? If most of the cars with those brand names are made in the US, why is it profitable to bring more by boat?

    Cough syrup from China killed 60 Panamanians in 2005 because they put antifreeze in the cough medicine. Anti-freeze. Toothpaste from China was found in Dollar Stores in the US with anti-freeze in it. Anti-freeze. Was there someone in China that thought anti-freeze was safe enough to put in cough syrup and toothpaste?

    Wheat imported from China killed several pets in the US this year. Wheat? Why are we importing wheat? Don’t we grow enough wheat in our country that we have to import it from a third world backwater?

    Just last month it was discovered that China was putting anti-biotics in their shell fish exports. The danger there was that taking the anti-biotics made us resistant to the anti-biotic working when we really needed the anti-biotic to defens against disease later down the line. In other words, the Chinese were making sure that a biological attack would be more successful against us. Hyperbole? Perhaps.

    Ever read “The Sum of all Fears” by Tom Clancy? The 1995 book ended with a Japanese pilot flying an airliner into the Capitol Building during a Presidential address – prophetic enough for you? But the book was about a war between the US and Japan that began with product defects – cars the Japanese were importing here were killing people – and Americans got angry that inferior products were being imported and a trade war turned into a shooting war.

    Well, that’s fairly far-fetched, however, we’re apparently numb to the thought of intentionally defective and potentially dangerous products being inflicted on the American marketplace. We’re outraged at the thought that American companies would engage in business with these economic roques, but how about if we hold entirely responsible the actual cuprits and not accept the occasional “suicide” of various Chinese CEOs as proof that they’re cracking down on quality control. How many people will die in the next defective import disaster?

    The world sees the US as a huge cash register, how about we hold them to the same standard we hold domestic companies? It’s not our government’s fault that defective merchandise makes it to the shelves – it’s the fault of the consumer for not holding manufacturers and improters accountable – with our wallets.

  • Eugene Robinson; hyperpartisan bitter hack

    I’ve never hidden my disdain for Eugene Robinson, probably the worst columnist ever hired by any media outlet in the history of western civilization, and today will not be any different. His unmitigated drivel appears every week in the Washington Post  – it’s poorly researched and poorly written. And entirely partisan – right down to the punctuation.

    Today he tried to formulate a case against Karl Rove. Besides beginning the piece with childish bitterness and what he probably thought was a down-home witticism about the door hitting Rove in his behind (which came off like playground taunt more than witty), Robinson couldn’t help but play to the ignorant Democrat stereotypes of Republicans;

    Rove’s reputation as the great political thinker of his era took a severe beating in November, when, despite his confident predictions of a Republican victory, Democrats took control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

    But let’s give the man his due. Karl Rove managed to get George Walker Bush elected president of the United States, not once but twice. Okay, you’re right, the first time he needed big assists from Katherine Harris (speaking of lipstick) and the U.S. Supreme Court, but still. Honesty requires the acknowledgment that Rove was very good at what he did.

    Yeah, that pesky Supreme Court always ruling with the law instead of with the Democrats, and so what if Katherine Harris followed procedures – she should have just done what Robinson wanted her to do. How dare that woman wear lipstick!

    For crying out loud. Did hack Robinson have to troll through Democratic Underground archives to rekindle his misbegotten anger at the rule of law?

    The problem, of course, is that what Rove did and how he did it were awful for the nation.

    Rove announced he was quitting as White House deputy chief of staff in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, saying that while he knew some people would claim he was just trying to elude congressional investigators, “I’m not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob.” That’s the man, right there in that quote: Benighted fools who don’t blindly trust his honesty or fully appreciate his genius are nothing more than “the mob.”

    Hey, Eugene, notice how awkward that first sentence sounds? Was your editor taking the day off?

    And if you ever took the time to look at the Left from a nonpartisan perspective (that’ll be the day, huh, Genie) you’d see they look like a mob. They want to investigate legal activity by the Republicans, they want to impeach a President for doing his job within the confines of the law, they want to subpeona law abiding citizens to appear in front of their kangaroo committee hearings for no other reason than to please goofballs in pink boas – and goofball columnists at the Post. They waiting in drooling anticipation for Scooter Libby to go to jail and whine like two-year-olds when he doesn’t.

    When the same Constitution that has served us so well for more than 200 years gets in their way, they declare that we should rewrite it to suit them. When the Supreme Court rules against their nefarious sidestepping of the rule of law, we have to change the Court. Have you seen the weirdos and goofballs that show up at these leftist “rallies”? They’re a fricken’ mob, Genie.

    Rove didn’t invent “wedge” politics, but he was an adept practitioner of that sordid art. When Bush was campaigning in 2000, he proclaimed himself “a uniter, not a divider.” But the Bush-Rove theory of politics and governance has been divide, divide, divide — either you’re “with us” or “against us,” either you’re right or you’re wrong, either you should be embraced or attacked without quarter.

    No he didn’t invent wedge politics – that was your boys that did that. When Republicans won the 1994 midterms, it was the Left that was screaming that children were going to starve to death in their school seats, that Black churches were going to be burned in the South, that old people were going to be cast out into the street and forced to live on cat food.

    And I remember a time when George Bush tried to be a uniter – I remember him and Teddy Kennedy smiling while he signed the “No Child Left Behind Act” – and within days Kennedy was condemning the very same act he’d written himself. I remember nearly every Democrat in Congress voted for the PATRIOT Act, and then condemned it. I remember when every Democrat thought Hussein had weapons of mass destruction – but how many admit it now?

    Don’t hand me that crap, Genie. If Rove did anything, he made it politically costly for Democrats to propagate their lies. Grow the hell up, Junior.

    Yesterday, in remarks on the White House lawn, Rove praised Bush for putting the nation “on a war footing” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But that’s precisely what Bush failed to do. Rather than try to foster a spirit of national solidarity and shared sacrifice, he persisted with tax cuts designed to please his wealthiest supporters. Rather than engage critics of the war in any meaningful dialogue, Bush accused them of wanting to “cut and run.” Rather than actually practicing the bipartisanship he disingenuously preached, Bush governed with a hyperpartisan political agenda.

    A hyperpartisan agenda? I guess the word partisan has lost it’s currency with overuse so we have resort to fabricated superlatives now. Since when is letting working Americans keep their own money dividing America. And how is Democrats wanting to protect Iraqis from Diego Garcia not cutting and running? How is “Bring the troops home now” not cutting and running? What is there to discuss about that? Other than just caving into partisan hacks like yourself. 

    Let me tell you, you half-witted buffoon, if its at all possible for anything to be “hyperpartisan”, it’s policizing the war, it’s placing our national security, our standing in the world in jeopardy for a few votes, and a few kudos from the pink boa-wearing hags. It’s refusing to believe that there is a danger in the world that’s greater than the opposing political party.

    Hyperpartisanship could probably be personified by three Democrat Congressmen standing on the roof of Saddam Hussein’s palace and declaring that Saddam Hussein is a more honest broker than the President of the United States. Hyperpartisan, indeed.

    Rove’s new job will be to put lipstick on Bush’s hideous legacy — and, in the process, freshen up his own.

    History will do that, without Rove’s help. However, you and your ignorant, ranting shit-for-brains friends might want to ask Bill Clinton if he knows anyone at Revlon that can get you a deal on lipstick in bulk.

  • OK, here he is (Updated twice and Bumped)

    Meet Velo;

    OK, Gramps is tired after 14 hours of labor. See ya’all in the morning.

    UPDATE: Here are his stats; His name is Velo Bartholome and he was 8 lbs. 7 oz and 22 inches long. His first jump was a little after 2100 hours (ZULU) last night (August 13th – five days before their third annivesary) after his mother had been going through pre-jump since about 0730. I tried to take him out to a strip club for a beer, but his parents wouldn’t sign the waiver. 

    UPDATE II: Well, back three or four months ago, I met Robin from Chickenhawk Express (electronically) while we were both working on research for the same story. 

    We discovered something in common aside from politics and the fact that her husband used to be a bouncer at my favorite bar on River Street in Savannah, GA. Our youngest daughters were both expecting baby boys this week. Her grandson, Boston James, arrived yesterday, so stop by and give the proud grandmother your best wishes.

  • Slackin’ off

    I may be a bit delinquent in my posting over the next few days – my grandson is scheduled to debut sometime today, so stand by for cute baby photos and doting grandfather posts.

    The last time we saw him, he looked like this;

  • “What you are” versus “Who you are”

    Early last week I wrote about Barack Obama declaring to a conference of some racist organization that calls itself The Race that people of color are involved in some nebulous “Struggle” (apparently the “one Struggle” thing doesn’t translate well to baseball, though). This week I see the conversation is still about inconsequencial things like skin pigmentation.

    CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux asked Hillary Clinton if she is “black enough” to be the Democrat Presidential candidate;

    This campaign moment occurred Thursday before the Las Vegas convention crowd of the National Association of Black Journalists. CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux pinned back the former First Lady to explain how she could “sustain black support ” while running against an African-American. Ironically, thanks to Sen. Barack Obama’s mixed white and Kenyan parentage and campaign mischief, it is he who usually gets to field the “black enough” question.

    Malveaux is one of the most racist journalists to ever have her words read. And apparently fairly shallow – since she thinks that an accident of birth is the only qualification worthy of discussion in a presidential campaign. Clinton dodged the question – completely in character, too.

    Earlier in the weekend, Obama declared that he is indeed “black enough” to be president.

    With puzzlement and a touch of humor, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama weighed in Friday on a question posed by some in the black community about whether he’s ”black enough” to represent them in the White House.

    Clinton says she’s qualified to be President because she’s a woman, Obama says he’s qualified because he’s Black, Richardson says he’s qualified because he’s Latin, the media says Romney isn’t qualified because he’s a Mormon. What the Hell is going on here?

    Article II Section 1 of the Constitution list only these qualifications;

    No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

    No where does it mention race, sex or religion. So why is the media and particularly the Democrats so interested in these superficial qualifications? 

    What a person is is more important apparently than who a person is. Obama has lied in his campign book about events he claims shaped his poitical personae, Hillary is a congenital liar as we’ve seen from those dark years she spent in the White House, and Richardson couldn’t even run the Energy Department let alone the whole country – none of that has to do with race or gender – but we’re supposed to overlook these personality disorders because they’re members of a special protected class – protected by the laws of probability and the biology of birth.

    All of the Democrats, with the possible exception of Richardson, want to raise our taxes  (they say they only want to raise taxes on the rich, but we know from the 1993 tax hike that Democrats think even retirees on Social Security are “rich”), all of the Democrats want to sacrifice our national security for purely political reasons. Hell, Obama prefers to threaten our allies instead of our enemies. Hillary wants government to take over negotiation for our mortgages.

    But I guess all of that poor judgement takes a backseat to skin pigment and genitalia.