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

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • To that Sicko guy

    I’ve never been to Cuba, I’ve known only a few Cubans in all of my travels, but I’ve always been in love with the place. I love the Caribbean culture (the pale white guy from Upstate New York dairy country that I am), I love the music, I love the food, I love the cigars and I love the rum. I can’t keep from dancing (well, my version thereof) everytime I hear Celia Cruz or Tito Puente.

    I fell in love with Gloria Estefan back in the early 80s when it was just the Miami Sound Machine and the only place you could watch her was on that old Spanish-language network SPN – and all of her music was in Spanish. 

    I feel cheated by Castro – admittedly not to the extent that Cuban exiles feel cheated, of course – but cheated nonetheless of steamy tropical nights in Havana with the smells and sounds that accompany my imaginary forays through that magical and historical city. The first thing I do when get out of the US is buy a Partagas Lusitania and a bottle of Havana Club Anejo Especial (most often at the Bodega Mi Amiga on Via Porra in Panama City) and head for the nearest beach with my big straw hat to do my best imitation of a colonialisto.

    Anyway, thanks to the internet, I get to read what life is like in Cuba and what it was like before 1959. So some of my favorite “recreational” blogs are Cuban – pale white guy from Upstate NY dairy country that I am.

    But anyway, today from Uncommon Sense (a great Cuban blog to keep up on Cuban and Cuban-exile politics with some historical perspective thrown in) I read the best refutation of Michael Moore’s latest low-budget-poorly-written-poorly-acted-film-masquerading-as-a-documentary from a recent Cuban immigrant who has witnessed first hand Castro’s healthcare system at her blog Cubanita in Colorado. I don’t want to spoil it for you by quoting from Mailyn – please go read it for yourself.

  • More Think Progress panty-wadding

    I just thought this was funny from Think Progress. Apparently, the “progressives” are in a snit because they think that Brit Hume’s Special Report panel called them names the other night. The headline reads “‘Fox News All-Stars’ Bash Progressive Bloggers As ‘Pungent,’ ‘Profane,’ ‘A Pox’”

    Let’s start with the “pox” comment – from their own transcript;

    MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Well, I think they do. And they are the leftward pressure on the Democratic Party that the right-wing talk show hosts are on the Republican party. And between the two of them they manage to polarize even further an already polarized politics, making it increasingly difficult to get any American problems solved, like health care, or the war in Iraq, or sensible terrorism policy.

    And all of the candidates are pandering to them. I mean, the democratic candidates are pandering to them just as much as the Republicans candidates are pandering to the right. And they were doing it again today.

    HUME: Which group, would you say, is more influential with in their respective party?

    KONDRACKE: No, I think a pox on both their houses.

    Wishing a pox on both Republican and Democrat candidates means that liberal bloggers are a pox, apparently. I don’t know how they arrived at that one – unless it’s just to get the readers pumped up – or they’re fairly illiterate and unfamiliar with the phrase.

    But Charles Krauthammer is the one that really gets their creative juices flowing with this comment;

    KRAUTHAMMER: It is interesting, there are conservative blogs, but I think, at least the ones I read, they are more analytical and restrained. The more liberal blogs are a lot more pungent and profane, but political.

    So to prove Mr. Krauthammer wrong, one commenter in a very reasoned and thoughtful post answers;

    Foxnews has NO CREDIBILITY.

    Except with Nazi azzhole-lickers of MURDEROUS WAR CRIMINAL Bush.

    Just PURE PROPAGANDA, and by the way, Natalie Holloway is STILL MISSING!!!

    Comment by Mr. Bush Goes To Hell — June 20, 2007 @ 12:07 pm

    How could Mr. Krauthammer have been so wrong?

  • That terrible talk radio again

    Remember the “Progressive” think tank Think Progress where Harry Reid went to complain about Joe Lieberman’s opinion that we should strike Iran? Now this “think tank” is advocating reintroduction of the “Fairness Doctrine” – the unfair practice of government regulating free speech on the broadcast industry. According to Think Progress;

    Two common myths are frequently offered to explain the imbalance of talk radio: 1) the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (which required broadcasters to devote airtime to contrasting views), and 2) simple consumer demand. Each of these fails to adequately explain the root cause of the problem. The report explains:

    Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management.

    […]

    Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners, and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.

    See? The problem is “ownership diversity” – those rich, white Republicans own too much stuff while us hippies can barely scratch together enough money to buy used roaches for our morning doobie.

    Then how do they explain that Air America, the Left’s answer to the EIB network, filed for bankruptcy just two years and a half after it was founded by Democrat deep pockets. Is it because the hippies don’t have enough money to buy the stuff that’s advertised on Air America? I doubt it.

    “Fairness” is one of those words the Left likes to use like “equality”. It only applies to stuff they want. I had an emailer tell me that it was “unfair” that the Gathering of Eagles held a counter-protest at “their” protest. But I guess they thought it was “fair” that a small band of moonbats tried to crash the “Veterans Against Kerry” rally in September, 2004.

    Let me explain to these folks what fairness and equality are in this country. We are all born equal – we all have the equal opportunity to succeed. It’s what you do with that opportunity that defines you as a person. Everybody, E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y, came to America with nothing except what was carried on our antecedents’ back – so we all come from the same background. You make your own fairness with the sweat off of your own brow, not with the stroke of a judge’s pen.

    You are NOT guarenteed mulligan’s – if you make bad choices, live with your mistakes, but don’t make your neighbors pay for you own stupid mistakes. You are not guarenteed to live equally with your neighbors if they work while you sit on the front porch whittlin’ your life away.

    We are all individuals – we all do different stuff – that’s why life is not fair. The guy who designs and builds medical equipment in his basement is going to be better off than the guy who designs and builds dreamcatchers. That’s just life. The playing field starts off level, what you do in those first couple of steps determines how well you do when the field isn’t in your favor any longer.

    You can’t make us equal, you can’t make life fair by forcing everyone to be miserable. When the Left understands that, then they’ll truly live up their self-proclaimed label “Progressive”.

    Michele Malkin characteristically does a much better job on the Fairness Doctrine and calls it a “Hugo Chavez approach to the radio airwaves”.

  • Shoot out at Walter Reed

    Remember a few months ago when I wrote that the problems at Walter Reed were more about the civilian contract labor than about the Army leadership, and that was due to Walter Reed’s location in a bad neigborhood in DC? Well, the Washington Post reports just how right I was;

    A security officer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center pulled a handgun and fired 10 rounds at a fellow guard during the morning rush hour yesterday at the hospital’s main gate, striking no one but sending stray bullets into two cars and a utility pole, D.C. police said.

    Police said the incident started on hospital grounds just inside the front gate along Georgia Avenue NW after one officer jokingly referred to an armed colleague as “retarded.”

    Of course, The Washington Post doesn’t see it as employee problem;

    The shooting is the latest high-profile embarrassment for Walter Reed, which has faced scrutiny and criticism over its aging facilities and the treatment provided to wounded veterans. The gated hospital complex is set back from one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.

    The guards involved were contract employees under the supervision of civilians, not military guards. So how can the Washington Post figure this is an embarrassment for the facility? Well, because it sounds better, I guess.

    The only problem I see is that Army decided to use civilians to guard Walter Reed instead of using MPs like they did just after 9-11. But security guards with guns is a problem across DC with the expansion of the need for security personnel at Federal facilities and a decreasingly eligible labor pool.

    My sources at Walter Reed say the argument was over a lady, but my sources are notoriously gossipy, so I’ll stick with the Washington Post’s account – but like I said on Monday, these problems can be fixed by moving the medical facility to Bethesda as determined by the BRAC – if we can get past the Democrat crybabies in Congress who are more worried about traffic jams on Wisconsin Avenue (between trendy Bethesda and trendier Georgetown). 

  • Republicans for Obama?

    Proving that the media doesn’t understand Republicans or conservatives, the Chicago Sun Times ran this bit of wishful thinking as hard news yesterday;

    There is an interesting phenomenon that has arisen over the last few months: a trend of moderate Republicans who want to vote for Barack Obama. It may seem counterintuitive, conservatives supporting a candidate who wants to tax the wealthy and embrace the conventions in the Kyoto Accord, but there is something in Obama’s message about ridding politics of partisanship that is appealing to these Republicans.

    Of course Miss Hunter, the Sun Times columnist supports this contention with tons of evidence – namely three Obama supporters. Let’s look at this crowd, shall we?

     “From a philosophical point of view I still see myself as a Republican,” says Kenneth Wehking, 38, a Denver man who works for a software company. That means being fiscally conservative and moderate on social issues, Wehking believes.

    At one time he supported John McCain for those very reasons, but now he is attracted to Obama and belongs to a group called Republicans For Obama. He likes Obama’s philosophy: the need to rid the country of the red/blue divide that has made it impossible to move forth legislation in immigration or health care.

    “Obama is one of the first candidates who truly seems to embody a spirit of working together and moving forward,” he says.

    Yeah, who cares that Obama is diametrically opposed to every Republican and conservative issue – he wants to move forward while we’re working together. Never mind that we’re moving forward in the wrong direction and working together to bankrupt the nation.

    Randy Cooper, a 60-year-old lawyer from Eaton, N.H. — not a member of Republicans for Obama — says he grew up as an Eisenhower Republican. He supported George Herbert Walker Bush and John McCain. But Cooper began to feel that George II and his acolytes, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were being disingenuous about the reasons for going into Iraq.

    At first Cooper supported the war “based on what the president told us.” But then he began to ask questions: “I absolutely feel we were lied to. There were other reasons [Bush] wanted to go into Iraq. It wasn’t just about weapons of mass destruction.”

    And Cooper became so disillusioned that in 2004 he voted for John Kerry.

    Yeah, this is the guy the media loves – he swallowed every bit of their red meat and voted for Kerry – cuz Kerry was just like Bush only not Bush. Did you know John Kerry had been to Vietnam – that fact is seared, seared in my memory.

    “I went to India last February,” recalls Chicagoan Dian Eller, who works in philanthropy. “And the first thing my driver asked was if I had voted for Bush.” Eller did vote for Bush the first time around, but not the second because she “was angry and disappointed about the war.” But the pointed questions from the Indian driver made Eller very uncomfortable. “I am so upset about the way people feel about our country.”

    Yeah, it upsets me that an Indian cab driver thinks poorly about my country, too, so much so that I’m willing to vote for a socialist just to appease those ignorant third-worlders who so badly want a say in how our country operates.

    Those three folks accurately portray the entire Republican party, though – in the Bizzaro land of media. By the way, I found this article while perusing the Leftist blogs and they seemed pretty excited that you’re going to vote for Obama.

  • So Bloomberg was a Republican?

    My local news station woke me this morning as it always does (if you’re interested, I listen to Grandy and Andy while I fight the urge to hit the snooze button – yes, that’s Fred “Gopher” Grandy) and I heard the lead story was that Michael Bloomberg had left the Republican Party. I shot straight up in bed! Who knew Bloomberg was a Republican?

    That French Press Agency led their story with the headline “Bloomberg deserts Republicans, stirs talk of 2008 run”. Deserts? When was he ever “with” us?

    “I have filed papers with the New York City Board of Elections to change my status as a voter and register as unaffiliated with any political party,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

    “Although my plans for the future haven’t changed, I believe this brings my affiliation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead our city,” said Bloomberg, who was elected as a Republican, and is an ex-Democrat.

    That’s a pretty murky statement – his non-affiliation now aligns him with no one so he can lead everyone? Lead them where? Into obscurity?

    The only reason Bloomberg became a Republican was so he could cash in on Rudy Giuliani’s wave of support after 9-11. I doubt the Wall Street crowd could’ve carried him to victory without the Republican mantle of the previous popular mayor. So who gives a tiny rat’s ass that Mr. Smoking Ban left the Republican Party?

    Michael Scherer in the Washington Post described the exit as;

    New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg abruptly left the Republican Party yesterday, declaring himself free of a “rigid adherence” to ideology and stoking speculation that he will use his multibillion-dollar fortune to mount an independent bid for the White House.

    Got news for ya, pal; Michael Bloomberg abruptly left the Republican Party before his right hand reached his side after taking the oath at his inauguration. And to what tenet of Republican ideology did Mr. Bloomberg rigidly adhere? Name one?

    But it was cute chasing links in Technorati that proclaimed that this marks the end of the Republican Party – followed by whoo-hoos and assorted other incoherent drivel. Oh, and high hopes for his campaign as President – apparently the nutroots think that if Bloomberg ran it’d drain off Republican voters – from who? (I’d link up some of the nutroots, but it only encourages them to send me dorky threatening email and drives up their traffic)

    I will admit, though, a three-way race between Kucinich, Ron Paul and Bloomberg would give me material to last well into my retirement. (I’ve been trying to think of a way to get Ron Paul’s name in one of my posts so I could bump up my traffic some).

  • How the inmates began running the asylum

    What a nutty week, huh? We have Palestinians from the Gaza Strip begging the Isralis to let them into Israel so they can get away from other Palestinians and human rights organizations demanding that Israelis treat injured and ill Palestinians. From the AP by way of the Wall Street Journal;

    Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army on Wednesday to allow into Israel any of the hundreds of Gazans holed up at a fetid crossing who might desperately need medical treatment.

    A teenager with leukemia was on his way through shortly after, the military said. Additionally, Israeli officials allowed all foreign nationals in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to cross over to Israel.

    In related news, Israel’s Supreme Court was hearing a petition Wednesday by a human-rights group, demanding that Israeli authorities offer immediate medical treatment to 26 critically ill Palestinians hospitalized in Gaza.

    Israeli aircraft, meanwhile, fired missiles at two rocket launchers in northern Gaza, in the first aerial attack since Islamic Hamas militants took over the coastal strip late last week. No injuries were reported. Earlier in the day, Israeli tanks entered southern Gaza, and four people, including at least two militants, were killed in an exchange of fire, Palestinian hospital officials said.

    And of course, Jimmy Carter, being the dumbass country hick playing diplomat, blames the Bush Administration;

    Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, also said the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ 2006 election victory was “criminal.”

    “Criminal”. And, of course, Carter doesn’t stop there. He claims that the murderous Hamas organization, a group of thugs masquerading as politicians (although that’s very thin line to begin with, I suppose) were elected fairly and democratically – by other terrorists;

    Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas’ moderate Fatah movement.

    Except that Hamas has been terrorizing the Fatah government, and dragging it’s opponents into the street and gunning them down – I guess that’s a more effective way of winning the next election – would Jimmy call that fair? All of Hamas’ opposition in the graveyards?

    Here’s a story of Carter’s heroic Hamas from Conflict Botter;

    They surrendered. A Hamas gunman shot one of the 12 soldiers in the leg and told the rest to run away. As they fled, they opened fire, Iki said, shooting them all in the legs as they tried to run away. A Hamas gunman came up and executed each wounded soldier, continued Iki. Iki was lucky, the execution bullet hit him in the side of the neck and he didn’t die. He lay semi-conscious on the street for an hour and a half bleeding. The bus driver who had driven the Hamas militants to the fight checked his pulse at one point and found he was alive. He started to help him.

    “Leave him or we’ll shoot you,” a masked militant said.

    Ya hafta wonder what is going through Carter’s head (if anything at all). Everyone (and I mean everyone) agrees that Jimmy Carter was a walking abortion as President, but everyone always qualifies that with “but he’s a good man”. How does this statement fit into the category of “a good man”? He’s actually encouraging Hamas to continue their murderous rampage through the streets of Gaza – and he calls that “more organized than Abbas’ moderate Fatah”. I very rarely use the expression, but this warrants it – WTF? 

    Here’s the conflict that Carter is having with his own statements; if the US has no business interfering in Palestinian politics, why should what we give the Palestinian government have any impact? I mean, all we did was not give them money and weapons. If I don’t like Walmart, am I still required to give them my money? 

    It’s like Carter’s other idiot cause – Cuba. If communism is so great, if Cuba is such a paradise why does it need trade with the capitalist US in order to survive? It’s trading with the whole rest of the world – why should trade with one nation out of 170 impact it so?

    To quote Investors Business Daily’s editorial (h/t Blue Crab Boulevard);

    The statement was so malevolent and illogical as to border on insane. Carter wasn’t honest enough to say he was rooting for terrorists who started a terrifying new war in the region and trashed what little democratic rule the Palestinians had. Instead, he tut-tutted the West for being insufficiently sensitive to the fact that Hamas thugs were democratically elected in 2006 in an “orderly and fair” vote.

    When one party has started a civil war, democracy isn’t exactly the issue anymore. Just being elected does not justify making warfare on your fellow citizens. 

    But everything Carter says conflicts with itself – I found this great article in the Jerusalem Post that calls Jimmy Carter “Father of the Iranian Revolution“;

    The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.

    Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”

    The shah was terrified of Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”

    Who knew that Carter would still be unleashing his calamities on the world thirty years later? The JPost goes on;

    In his anti-war pacifism, Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).

    Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.

    Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”

    What was holy about the murderous rampage that was carried out in Khomeini’s name throughout Iran? What was holy about the 444 days our citizens spent in captivity? And remember why the hostages were taken? Because Carter gave sanctuary to the shah and his family from being murdered by the Islamic Revolution.

    Remember why we propped up Saddam in the 80s? Because we were afraid of the murderous Islamic Revolution spreading – and so were the Gulf States which plowed money into Saddam’s war. Which is why Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 – he was deeply indebted to Kuwait and Gulf States and figured the Kuwaiti oil fields would give him some fiscal relief by eliminating one debtor and gave him cash to pay off the others.

    Now Carter has deepened the conflict by allowing Chavez, who rules by decree these days, to seize power in Venezuela with his petrodollars and form an alliance with Iran. And he still doesn’t get it;

    Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas’ new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an “effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples.”

    I guess murdering the opposition in the street doesn’t have the effect of dividing the Palestinians into “two peoples” does it? Although, this Hamas government is a demonstration of how voters get the government they deserve. Palestinians voted for Hamas because Hamas hates Jews and thinks they have a mandate from God to kill Jews – so anything they do in the space of time before they get to kill all of the Jews should be OK with God, too. And with Jimmy Carter as well, apparently.

    In other related news, Aunt Agatha at Bloodthirsty Liberal mirrors my thoughts on Ahmed Yousef’s piece in the NYTimes explaining to us poor, ignorant Zionists and those guilt-ridden Leftists looking for an excuse to continue supporting the bloody Palestinians “What Hamas Wants“.

    Boker Tov, Boulder reports that the peaceful Palestinians fired off two more Kassam missiles into Israel.

    Israel Matzav tells us that the New Hamas “government” (for the want of a better word) warns that the new Sharia Law in Gaza is going to apply to the dhimmis still in Gaza. That should be a warning to dhimmi-wannabes here in the US, but, I guess it probably won’t.

    I figured that I’ve been spending too much time on that buck-toothed, shriveled up, has-been-that-never-was moron, Jimmy Carter, so instead of repeating myself over-and-over, I created a Jimmy Carter category and ya’all can just go click that link on your right and it’ll take you to all of my brilliant thoughts about that dull, little POS Jimmy Carter and I swear I’ll never type his name again. Cuz Don Surber and I share a common shame – we both voted for Carter once.

  • Haditha story wrapping up

    I’ve wanted to write about all of the good news coming out of the Haditha investigation, but there’s no way I could do as good a job at it as Robin, my bestest new buddy, at Chickenhawk Express (who recently added me to her Blogroll – thanks, Robin).

    Robin, who also writes at Newsbusters, has been churning out really good updates on the Haditha Article 32 investigation (equivalent to a grand jury) of Lance Corporal Justin Sharrat over the last week or so here, here and here.

    For my part, I’ve been diligently calling John Murtha’s office every morning to ask when Murtha is going to apologize for calling LCpl Sharrat and his fellow Marines cold-blooded murderers. Every morning, I get the same answer – Representative Murtha hasn’t heard anything about the investigation.

    I think that’s funny because he was so sure about the information he had before the investigation began;

    Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that “there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

    So, why doesn’t he have information that been publicly available? A year ago, he told ABC News;

    Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., told “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in an exclusive appearance that reports a group of U.S. Marines may have killed 24 Iraqi civilians following an IED explosion in Haditha, Iraq, was “worse than Abu Ghraib,” calling their actions war crimes committed “in cold blood.”

    Murtha, a Marine veteran who six months ago called for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, added, “There has to have been a cover-up. There’s no question about it.”

    Wouldn’t a rational person, who staked their reputation on such an damning statement, want to keep up with the story? I guess we’re not talking about a rational person here, though, are we? We’re talking about a hateful little pussbag, fatass who gives not a moment’s thought to this nation’s security or the lives of the people who defend it. I think it’s time Murtha signed his Form 180, too. I have trouble believing that this coward spent even a minute in the Marine Corps.

    And where are the headlines in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the LA Times admitting they were wrong in their initial accusations?