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

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • End the war; raise the taxes

    A bridge collapses in Minnesota and everyone automatically assumes the only answer is to raise Federal taxes. Well, except Barney Frank – he has a two-point plan. End the war in Iraq (he’s careful to say Iraq specifically, otherwise someone might think he’s a crackpot who wants to end the war against Pakistan) and raise taxes.

    LibertyPost records some of the mooniest/battiest internet posts from the Democrat Underground while Bob Parks, of Black and Right, ventures into the Daily Kos. 

    Can someone tell me why a taxpayer in Arizona should pay money out of his earnings so someone in Minnesota doesn’t have to drive around a body of water? Why should we abandon our worldwide struggle for national security to repair potholes in South Dakota?

    Well, of course, the real answer is that any straw the Democrats can grasp they use. They blamed the Republicans for two hurricanes, I guess they blame them for bridge collapses, too. Just so long as the people who vote remember that Federal government isn’t the answer to every-fricken-question-ever-asked.

    I remember in 1992, the Democrats blamed the President’s father for Hurricane Andrew and when he expanded the capabilities of FEMA (which was little more than a phone bank), the Democrats accused him of “growing government” in the election.

    Any group of people who thought that Al Gore and John Kerry were the best choices for the last two presidential races certainly don’t have the answer to two difficult questions – especially if the only answer they can come up with is “end the war and raise taxes”. A two-year-old could have think that one up.

  • Hypocrisy round-up

    The word hypocrisy gets thrown around alot recently, but there are several new examples that jumped out of the internet pages at me this morning. For example, John Edwards who recently condemned Fox News, a subsidiary of News Corp. and declared he’d not appear at a debate hosted by the successful cable news channel. Well, the New York Post discovered that the former senator, shyster lawyer who channels dead babies on command, hedgefund advisor who learned about poverty by stealing from his investors, and charity manager who funnels off tax-free donations to secretly fund his campaign expenses, took $800,000 from HarperCollins, another News Corp. subsidiary;

    John Edwards, who yesterday demanded Democratic candidates return any campaign donations from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul’s companies.

    The Edwards campaign said the multimillionaire trial lawyer would not return the hefty payout from Murdoch for the book titled “Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.”

    The campaign didn’t respond to a question from The Post about whether it was hypocritical for Edwards to take money from News Corp. while calling for other candidates not to.

    In addition to a $500,000 advance from HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corp., Edwards also was cut a check for $300,000 for expenses.

    Edwards claimed $333,334 in royalties from last year’s release of the book, according to media accounts. The campaign said last night that those funds were part of the advance.

    Of course he claims he gave the money to charity, but he refuses to offer proof of his benevolence.

    The other day, I wrote about Barack Obama’s naive threat to Pakistan to invade with US troops unless Pakistan passes his test of an acceptable level of violence against al Qaeda in Pakistan. With all of the evidence we have that Iran is involved in war against us, why isn’t Obama beinging just as intolerant of Iran’s sheltering of terrorists, al Qaeda or otherwise?  Well, probably because admitting that Iran is a threat justifies our involvement in Iraq and the naive and inexperienced Obama doesn’t want to piss off the anti-war-at-any-cost whackos at Daily Kos.

    Speaking of Daily Kos, EJ Dionne of the Washington Post decided to defend the vulgar, hate-filled Daily Kos today. Comparing Marko’s internet playground for the mentally unstable to Rush Limbaugh, Dionne wrote;

    Personally, I dislike the use of obscenity on the Web, and many online posts are way too nasty. But the right wing, suddenly so concerned with the niceties of political discourse, did not worry much about what its militants said about Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry. Limbaugh even blamed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on a president who had been out of office for eight months. I’m still waiting for his apology.

    George Bush and Dick Cheney have heaped praise on Limbaugh (“Well, Rush, you’ve got a great show, as always,” Cheney said during one of his many interviews) because he’s an effective organizer for the right — even if Limbaugh has, of late, become disenchanted with some of Bush’s policies. Limbaugh desperately needs a Democratic president. Another Clinton would be perfect.

    Um, EJ, Kos made obscenity on the internet an acceptable part of the debate. And resorting to obscenity on the internet makes the left look childish and immature, well, more childish and immature since most of the Left’s charges against president Bush are just ridiculous. So the Democrat candidates are aligning themselves with the extra-chromosone Left and you’re proud of it? And it hardly compares with Rush Limbaugh’s crowd at all.

    A Washington Times editorial alerts us to another impending CAIR lawsuit;

    Another week, another threat of lawsuit by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. This time, the group behind the Minneapolis “flying imams” lawsuit are targeting the Young America’s Foundation, the nonprofit that owns President Reagan’s Santa Barbara Ranch. YAF’s “offense”: Inviting author and terrorism analyst Robert Spencer to speak at a conference yesterday afternoon for a lecture titled “The Truth About the Council on American-Islamic Relations.” Among other things, the real CAIR story features less-than-flattering facts, such as the “unindicted co-conspirator” label CAIR earned in June in a Hamas terror-funding case, and the several people in the group’s orbit who have been indicted on terrorism-related charges. CAIR would rather try to frighten its critics than debate them.

    As CAIR’s lawyer warned YAF Wednesday: “Our clients have instructed us to pursue every available and appropriate legal remedy to redress any false and defamatory statements that are made at the session.” This comes from a group which claims to “encourage dialogue.”

    This is an outrageous bid at intimidation. A more normal advocacy organization would seek to debate its opponents. Sadly, this litigiousness is commonplace for CAIR, whose activities could be scarcely more different from its mission statement. CAIR claims to strive to “be a leading advocate for justice and mutual understanding” and to “enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.” It could scarcely do less of each. 

    It seems you can hardly mention hypocrisy these days without including CAIR in the discussion. I’ll let the Washington Times editorial stand on it’s own without my comments – they always do it so well.

  • Why Hillary shouldn’t be President

    This guy Ron Hilderacker is one of my minor heroes. He lives back in my old stomping grounds in Upstate New York in a depressed county called Wayne County, named after “Mad Anthony” Wayne of Revolutionary War fame on the southern shore of Lake Ontario.

    But let me tell you the little bit I know about Ron – he started a small weekly newspaper from scratch in a cash-strapped community a few years back. He does most of the research, photography and writing himself as well as personally driving the newspapers to the post office to be mailed to his subcribers.

    He’s a real force in the community because of his paper and he doesn’t hold back on local politicians who’ve been getting away with murder and spending taxpayer money with wild abandon.

    Ron also publishes the mug shots of nearly everyone arrested in the county – bringing shame back to crime. Sometimes he even makes fun of the more stupid criminals – like the mother/daughter team caught shoplifting in the Dollar Store.

    Holderacker brought real journalism back to Wayne County and he reminds me of why I wanted to be a journalist when I was younger.

    My mom turned me on to the paper’s website and I immediately became addicted – so much so that I subscribed. I guess it’s my small way of contributing to Ron’s passions and causes. When subscription price is $40/2 years it really is a “small” contribution.

    Well, imagine how happy I was to see his politics are close to mine (many brilliant people share my ideology, though, so it’s not that rare). His editorial this week is a well-reasoned piece about why New Yorkers should not vote Hillary for President. Here’s a teaser but please go and read the rest for yourselves and even though you might not be from Wayne County, just sit back, relax, read the rest of the paper and remember what journalism used to be;

    Let’s forget for a moment that Hillary Clinton is a woman. Her gender should not be a reason for garnering any sane votes for the Nation’s top post. Let’s forget that Hilary Clinton was not even a real New Yorker since there has been a long history of opportunists who have moved into state to seek a public office as a stepping stone to higher ambitions.

    Hillary Clinton is a liar. She boldfaced stood in front of the news media after her husband, former President Bill Clinton lied to the American people about his marital indiscretions while in the White House. Hillary said she believed that her husband was telling the truth and that she trusted he did not have an affair.

    This flew in the face of years of philandering by Governor Bill Clinton that was not one of the best kept secrets in Arkansas . Hillary was either the dumbest wife on the planet Earth, or a woman who knew the truth would not benefit her own political career path.

  • Rumsfeld denies coverup in Tillman death

    Pat Tillman was a great American for the way he lived his life, his family is in pain over his loss, and to a lesser degree we’re all in pain over this, but I don’t think there was a intentional plot afoot to misinform anyone. But you can’t tell Henry “Nostrilitis” Waxman that;

    “You’ve all admitted that the system failed. The public should have known, the family should have known earlier, whoever was responsible,” Mr. Waxman said as the hearing ended. “None of you feel you personally were responsible but the system itself didn’t work. ‘The system didn’t work, errors were made’ — that’s too passive. Somebody should be responsible, and we’re trying to figure that out,” Mr. Waxman said.

    Why? Why just this case of friendly fire? Does anyone have any idea how many friendly fire deaths there have been since 2001? I don’t – but I know that this isn’t the only one. Yet, it’s the only one Waxman is concerned enough about to have public hearings. And guess what – it’s not the Army’s fault, it’s not DoD’s fault, it’s not even the fault of whoever the young Ranger was that shot him.

    It’s the fault of the laws of physics – steel jacketed bullets travelling at 2000 feet per second penetrate skulls – when you put a number of skulls and a large number of steel jacketed bullets in a relatively confined area, the two are bound to meet with predictable results eventually. Especially if the owners of those skulls lead from the front.

    Even the Washington Post sees a conspiracy (surprise!), and of course it’s the Bush Administration’s fault;

    Tillman was killed just as the U.S. military was becoming increasingly bogged down in Iraq and as horrific allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison were emerging. The Bush administration initially portrayed his death as an act of heroism against the enemy.

    Horrific allegations of penis-pointing at Abu-Ghraib inspired by the evil Bush cabal caused a friendly fire accident.

    The incident happened at night, and some misoriented soldiers who ended up in the wrong place. I saw it happen with even more devastating results when a platoon of Bradleys got turned around in a night attack on a dug-in Iraqi armor unit – three Bradleys were destroyed by US M1 tanks which inflicted a number of casualties.

    I watched an Apache put some Helfire missiles on a friendly Bradley and M113 APC one night – two were killed in that, too. The guncamera video of that incident is here. So I know that friendly fire happens alot – it’s an ugly creature of war, but a fact nonetheless.

    Immediate announcements of deaths are usually intentionally wrong, to protect people until the incidents are investigated thoroughly. That’s only fair.

    But I guess we can’t expect Waxman and his cronies shucking and jiving for the CSPAN cameras to understand that people in the military have rights, too.

  • Well, so much for being a chickenhawk

    The Army just sent me an email asking me if I’m still interested in going back on active duty. Durn tootin’ I am.

    Details to follow. I’ve got to get in shape.

  • Stop me before I buy Chinese

    The populist Senate Banking Committee moved to punish the Chinese for manipulating their capital without real evidence that they’re doing it. The Wall Street Journal’s John McCary writes;

    Efforts to sanction China over trade policies seen hurting the U.S. gained steam on Capitol Hill as a second congressional panel approved legislation aimed at pressuring Beijing to revalue its currency.

    The Senate Banking Committee, in a 17-4 vote, moved to tighten the government’s definition of currency manipulation and close an exemption that has allowed the Bush administration to avoid taking that step against China because of an apparent lack of intent. The action follows Senate Finance Committee approval of a bill to address the same problem, but with a different solution: allowing companies claiming to be hurt by currency manipulation to seek antidumping penalties on imports from the offending nation.

    Stupid, stupid, stupid. This will only trigger a legislative war worldwide. And it’s only to buy votes. Americans seem concerned about China’s economic growth (12 1/2% last quarter) yet we still buy all the cheap little plastic crap they dump in our stores.

    It’s just like those stupid Japanese cars that have flooded our highways. Everyone is worried about our “trade deficit” yet the same boneheads who complain about it are buying some over-priced version of a shitbox Toyota or Honda. Yeah, I know, the saleman told you that it was made in the United States with American craftsmanship. But if that’s true, why is it every time I lay on the beach in Miami I see these ships with TOYOTA on the side pulling up with another load of shitboxes? Don’t you feel like a tool?

    And of course we can all count on Chuck Schumer to act like a two-year-old;

    One senator said it was incorrect to raise the threat of retaliation by China as a reason to oppose the legislation.

    “If we manipulated our currency, then China should go after us. But we don’t,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

    Detroit wants Congress to put tariffs on imported cars, Congress wants to manipulate China’s currency, the FDA wants to advise China on food safety. We don’t need government to do these things – we have control over our spending, our wallets, our lives don’t we? Then why do ya’all buy that crap?

    See, the problem isn’t that the government won’t regulate trade, the problem is that Americans have allowed salesmen to tell them what they should buy. I remember my grandfather and my father wouldn’t buy anything that said “Made in Japan” on it (fifteen years after Pearl Harbor). Neither will I. It’s that simple.

    Congress is only doing this for votes. People who don’t want to think about what they buy, people who don’t understand how protectionism triggered the Depression and our involvement in World War II are just happy to see Congress do something – anything that might help tomorrow, but will desvastate us next month. Does Congress care? Nope. The Democrats and Republicans both can blame the president for our economic woes in the next election.

  • Naive Obama; invade Pakistan

    In a stunning display of naivete`, Barack Obama, according to the Associated Press, would invade Pakistan to kill “terror leaders” without local permission;

    Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted — an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

    Well, if that’s not naive personified, I don’t know what is. Of course, the Democrats all think that the goal of our war against terror is to “get” bin Laden, as if all the terrorists in the world would just cease activities as a result. We’ve all seen how quickly terrorist leaders are replaced when we’ve removed them from their operations, well, all of us except the Democrats apparently.

    The goal of this war is to deny these heathens an unassailable training and operational base like the al Qaeda enjoyed in Afghanistan – it’s not to kill their leaders. That’s something out of the Middle Ages. Since Napolean, Grant and Sherman, the rest of the world understood that the only successful way to defeat and enemy is to deny them resources. Hitler’s Russian campaign failed because he targeted cities instead of seizing the Soviet Union’s resources first and strangling the Soviet Army.

    And can you imagine the howl we’d hear from the Left if George W. Bush had said this? Harry Reid would be trampling Congressional pages rushing to get to the microphone to condemn this plan as “expanding the war” and he’d probably throw in some Nixon and Cambodia references for good measure.

    Reuter’s gets the big money quote on Obama’s plan for failure;

    Obama also criticized President George W. Bush’s emphasis on al Qaeda in Iraq and said as president he would end the war in Iraq and refocus efforts on the al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    “The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda’s war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al Qaeda in Iraq — which didn’t exist before our invasion — and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan,” Obama said.

    So, simply by denying that there’s a war against al Qaeda in Iraq, that’ll solve the problem. The war against terror isn’t about revenge for 9-11, Barack, no matter how hard you want that to be so. It’s about our future and making terror attacks too expensive in terms of lives and treasure for our enemies. And we don’t do that by making enemies out of our few allies in the war.

  • Fake Veterans and fake stories; how to avoid an asswhoopin’

    This is what brought this piece to mind today; an article about a former soldier who posed as a former Marine captain;

    For pretending that he was a decorated U.S. military veteran, 59-year-old Reggie L. Buddle of Puyallup must tend to the graves of those who really were.

    U.S. Magistrate Kelly Arnold in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on Monday sentenced the counterfeit Vietnam vet to two years’ probation and 500 hours laboring at Tahoma National Cemetery for posing as a decorated U.S. Marine captain and military chaplain in 2005 and 2006.

    Buddle, who never was in the Marine Corps, pleaded guilty in April to unlawful wearing of U.S. military medals and decorations. That followed an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    After the hearing, Buddle, who served two years as an Army enlisted man but never in combat and never earning any of the medals he wore, apologized in court Monday and said he was ashamed, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle.

    Now, that’s just silly – this fellow had apparently served in the Army, yet he wanted to pose as a Marine. Why didn’t he join the Marines, then? The judge probably thinks he dealt out an appropriate punishment, but I disagree – Buddle shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near our honored dead – because he tainted every veteran with his BS stories.

    There was a book by BK Burkett called “Stolen Valor” that was published a few years back that chronicled some of the more heinous veteran impersonators and their eventual “outing”. There are websites that specialize (or at least partly specialize) in busting fake veterans. SOCNET, ArmyRanger, and VeriSEAL are just a few (it seems that no one poses as an Army cook or a Navy postal clerk).

    The gamut of fake stories range from John Kerry’s secret squirrel mission into Cambodia with a CIA spook who had too many hats, apparently, to Jesse MacBeth (fake Ranger) who claims to have committed atrocities because George Bush told him to do it. Most recently, of course, we have Scott Thomas Beauchamps, who appears to have written at least parts of his war stories before he even arrived in theater.

    By the way, if John Kerry is reading this, you still haven’t signed your Form 180.

    Of course the media is willing to believe almost anything they’re told because most journalists haven’t served, many politicians haven’t served, and only a few bloggers have served (outside of the milblog community).

    But, see, what torques my chain is that many of these fake veterans actually did serve in the military – but they’re disappointed that they didn’t do anything they consider worthy of their potential. That’s just horseshit. Anyone who serves in the military is a better person than those chickenshit little turds who call us “chickenhawks”. The military can’t make everyone in uniform a Ranger or a SEAL or a Force Recon Marine – there aren’t enough slots. But all of those guys have to eat, they need new equipment in the field, they need water, they need medical care – that’s what the rest of us are for, ya see.

    Be proud of your military service, even if you did only “shovel shit in Louisiana” (to borrow a Patton quote) – you contributed at a time when the country needed someone to step up. If you feel guilty that you didn’t feel you contributed enough, go volunteer at the local VA facility and associate with and help this country’s heroes – listen to real war stories, and pass them on. Be a hero today to yesterday’s heroes.

    And keep the BS to a minimum – then I won’t have to take a baseball bat to your monkey ass.