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

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Democrats propose extending tax cuts

    The Washington Times’ Sean Lengell reports that Democrats are proposing extending some of President Bush’s tax cuts set to expire in 2010;

     Senate Democratic leaders have proposed extending some of President Bush’s tax cuts for the middle class that are set to expire in 2010, a move that Republicans say is an attempt to appease centrist Democrats.
        Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, yesterday introduced an amendment to the Senate budget resolution that would provide almost $200 billion to preserve middle-class tax cuts and enhance health care coverage for poor children.
        The amendment, backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, is aimed at extending tax cuts for married couples, people with children and those inheriting large estates, among others.
        The tax-cut extensions would have the effect of erasing a $132 billion surplus promised under the Democrats’ original budget. The amendment passed by a vote of 97 to 1. Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin was the lone dissenter.

    I don’t care why they’re doing, I’m just glad they’re doing it. But if they want to see me really happy, and they want to prove to me that Democrats really care about middleclass taxpayers, they’ll exempt the first $35,000 of every worker’s income from taxes. Now, that’s a tax cut, and it’s targeted towards the middleclass.

    According to Washington Post’s Laurie Mongomery the Democrats will have to resort to dirty tricks to balance the budget, though;

    Conrad and his counterpart on the House Budget Committee, Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), resorted to gimmicks in their plans. To achieve balance, the Democratic plans, like Bush’s proposal for next year, would allocate less than $200 billion for the Iraq war over the next two years, low by most estimates.

    Like Bush, the Democrats rely on hundreds of billions of dollars over the next five years from the unpopular alternative minimum tax, which Democrats and Republicans alike have vowed to reconfigure or abolish.

    And while Conrad said his plan leaves room for extending some of the Bush tax cuts, Spratt acknowledged that his relies on the extra revenue that would result from letting them expire.

    Hmmm. Kinda sounds like what I heard in the 1992 election from candidate Bill Clinton promising middle class tax cuts, but within weeks after taking office, and working harder than he had ever worked in his life, he announced he just couldn’t find any tax cuts for working, middleclass Americans. I didn’t finish paying my taxes from his 1993 tax hike until 2002 – when President Bush cut my current taxes enough so I could pay off Clinton’s tax hike.

    So much for Democrats being the party of the working man. I guess they’re only the working man’s party during the election season.

  • Mr Smash and the Moonbats

    If you haven’t read it yet, go see Smash‘s series “Marching with moonbats”.

    This pesky job is getting in the way again today, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to write until this evening. So visit the Blogroll listees.

    Don’t forget to sign up for the MilBlog Conference – notice I’m on the list.

  • Herding cats in the Democrat caucus

    According to the Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman, the Democrats are having trouble wrangling enough votes in their own majority to get their pork-laden Iraq war spending bill;

    One of the Democrats’ chief designated vote counters, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), is actively working against the Iraq war spending bill. The leadership’s senior chief deputy whip, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), spoke passionately against it on the House floor. And one of the whip organization’s regional representatives, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), is implacably opposed.

    The disarray in the House whipping operation ahead of tomorrow’s expected vote on the bill is putting a harsh spotlight on House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who has the task of rounding up the 218 votes needed to pass the $124 billion measure, but who has not even kept his organization in line.

    The article goes on to explain away Clyburn’s shortcoming as being “too nice” for the job. Or maybe it could be that the Democrats have come to the realization that many Americans don’t support their “slow bleed” tactics and their useless spending habits.

    Christina Bellatoni of the Washington Times chronicles the House’s inability to get their agenda to the president’s desk;

    None of the elements of the newly minted Democrats’ congressional agenda have made it to President Bush’s desk, and the prospects of signature bills such as federal funding for stem-cell research or homeland-security improvements becoming law any time soon are doubtful.
        Much of the Democratic agenda — dubbed “Six for ’06” — sailed out of the House with bipartisan support, but all of it has stalled in the Senate as leaders scramble to deal with the Iraq war.
        “I don’t think they’ve gotten anything done,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said of the Democrats. “How many bills have they sent to the president? None? Somewhere around there.”

    So I can guess what’ll happen next; the Democrats will blame the voters for not sending more Democrats to Congress. Just like their excuses for everyting they can’t accomplish, it’s Americans’ fault Democrats are bumbling boobs with a vacant intellect and a dying political philosophy.

    They didn’t tell voters what their plan was before the election and they’ve let themselves be sidetracked by meaningless investigations in their haste to make points with the Bush Derangement Syndrome crowd. Democrats enjoy press conferences more than they enjoy doing their job (not that the Republicans were too much different after the “Republican Revolution” got their Contract with America completed).

    They’re more interested in pandering to the diverse pack of malcontents that put them in office than doing what’s best for the nation. A constituency reminiscent of the bar scene from “Star Wars”.

    But, in truth, I’m damn awful glad they’re ineffective and useless. That means I get to keep more of my own money for now.

  • WaPo’s Eugene Robinson and bumpersticker journalism

    Columnist Eugene Robinson researched for his latest column from ANSWER posters;

    The “mission accomplished” president, once so full of certainty and swagger, isn’t telling Americans that victory is proximate or even inevitable, just that it is still possible.

    When I heard those words, I thought that either the president had decided “can be won” is now the outer limit of public credulity, or — foolish me — that maybe he had finally begun to see Iraq as it is, not as he would like it to be. But then he reverted to form, raising the specter of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the speech sounded like just another attempt at spin control rather than the product of any sort of presidential epiphany.

    Sigh. The White House remains an epiphany-free zone.

    Iraq had nothing at all to do with Sept. 11, as Bush himself has grudgingly acknowledged. Yesterday, Bush brought up Sept. 11 in the context of what would happen if the United States decided to “pack up and go home.” Iraq would become a haven for terrorists and a possible launching pad for attacks on the United States, Bush warned, much as Afghanistan was on that tragic day.

    One thing the president failed to mention was that the al-Qaeda presence in Iraq was zero before the American invasion, which was a big welcome sign for jihadists from around the globe.

    No one ever questions Robinson – it’s like he just allowed to say anything. “Possible to win” means it’s not impossible to win in Iraq, dimbulb. I know that’s tough for you to wrap your peanut-sized brain around, but take my word for it. You should listen to the whole speech rather than cherry-picking bumpersticker phrases. 

    So allow me to arrange for someone to counter Robinson’s idiot blathering - Christopher Hitchens;

    …[T]he presence in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a very dangerous al-Qaida refugee from newly liberated Afghanistan, was established [before the US invasion of Hussein’s Iraq]. The full significance of this was only to become evident later on. 

    The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

    Maybe Robinson should do a moment’s research before he tries to assemble bumpersticker slogans into a Washington Post column. I’d also remind Robinson that Abu Nidal died in his Baghdad apartment just a few months before the invasion. He’d been living there for more than decade. I guess that’s not a terror ist connection is it?

    More Robinson;

    George Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of this administration encountered a dangerous, unstable Middle East and proceeded to make it more dangerous and more unstable.

    Yeah, right. How does a flat tire go more flat? The only thing that makes the Middle East more unstable is weak-kneed and ineffectual handwringing about the US using too much force in the region. Remember how Arafat almost broke his neck rushing to the negotiating table after the first war against Hussein, but by the end of the Clinton years, he was turning down sweetheart deals from Israel. That should be our example – those sixth century clods only understand force, but force without the crybaby intellectualism from braindead idiots on the WaPo’s staff.

  • Courage and resolve

    The President called for courage and resolve to end our fight against jihadists in Iraq according to Jon Ward of the Washington Times;

    President Bush yesterday told the country — on the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — that America can still achieve victory there, while Democrats in Congress said the United States has already failed.
        “Four years after this war began, the fight is difficult, but it can be won. It will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through,” Mr. Bush said in an eight-minute speech from the Roosevelt Room in the White House.
        Mr. Bush, who decided over the weekend to mark the Iraq war’s fourth anniversary, said that his plan to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq and Afghanistan must be given “months, not days or weeks” to succeed.

    Not understanding either word, Dingy Harry Reid ran over three Congressional pages to get to a microphone;

        But Democratic leaders in Congress said they want the roughly 140,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq to begin leaving soon.
        “After four years of failure in Iraq, the president’s only answer is to do more of the same,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat. “To succeed in Iraq, we must have a new direction.”

    So what’s your recommendation, Harry? I haven’t heard any plan other than immediate and unconditional surrender to al Qaida from the Left.

    While Steny Hoyer “slavishly” parrots the party line about a time schedule;

    “Many of the same Republican leaders to plead about time frames were saying we need an exit strategy in Bosnia before we go,” Hoyer said.

    And, Slavish Steny, the Democrats also had an opinion counter to the one they hold now on time schedules for withdrawal. Where are the Democrats on a time schedule to withdraw from Bosnia and Kosovo today?

  • WaPo’s Cohen “Wasted Lives”

    For some reason, Richard Cohen thinks it’s OK to call American lives “wasted because he prays at the altar of John McCain and Barack Obama. In the Washington Post this morning, Richard Cohen, runs a piece entitled “Wasted Lives“;

    Back when I was in the National Guard and fearing a call-up for the war in Vietnam…

    Whoa, whoa, wait…one of the members of the press was in the National Guard during Viet Nam? To hear them yammer on about President Bush and Dan Quail, I always thought journalists all spent that entire war on patrol in the Mekong Delta armed with only a spear and living off of field mice turds. Oh, sorry, please continue, General Cohen;

    It is painfully hard to say — and even harder to write — that the lives lost in Iraq were wasted. It sounds like a judgment on the dead when it is meant, of course, as an indictment of the living: America’s political leadership. But some sort of finger has to be pointed at the president and some sort of reminder offered that it is not just a policy that has failed but that people have been killed or wounded. This is the real cost of a war that need not have been fought.

    What is not painfully hard to say nor write, Mr. Cohen, is that you’re an idiot and your life has been wasted. Of course you want to point your finger at the President, but how about pointing a finger at your-damn-self and all of your fellow journalists – just for a change. Wasn’t it the journalists that forced an end to the first war against Saddam Hussein with idiot reports and photos about “The Highway of Death”? Wasn’t it the journalists who trumpeted that Clinton’s asprin factory bombing was a blow against terrorism, and his bravery at firing off a cruise missile at Iraq’s Defense Ministery, how brave and bold Clinton was for withdrawing our troops from Somalia with their collective tail between their collective legs. And now you have the temerity to champion the same strategy that led us to 9-11;

    The way to protect our soldiers is not to double our losses but to agree on a sensible withdrawal policy. Particularly for the Bush administration, all this concern for the troops comes a bit late and smacks of insincerity. The war may not have started with a lie, but it seems it will end with one.

    Yep, the lie told about an honorable exit from Iraq before the job is finished – told by you and your journalist buddies.

    “When members of Congress pursue an antiwar strategy that’s been called ‘slow bleed,’ they’re not supporting the troops, they are undermining them,” Cheney said last week. Bush, who is a softer, gentler Cheney, has said substantially the same thing. “I think you can be against my decision and support the troops, absolutely,” the president said last month. “But the proof will be whether or not you provide them the money necessary to do the mission.” In other words, the only acceptable way to support the troops is, paradoxically, to put more and (it seems) more of them in danger. The present “surge” threatens to become an open-ended escalation. The war goes on.

    What makes this “surge” an open ended escalation is the refusal of the media and the Left to shut up and stop encouraging the jihadists. I’m not saying you should shut up for all eternity, neither is the Vice President. Just shut up long enough to make the jihadists at least think there’s no way out, no way he can win the war.

    Unless, of course you want to “waste” more American lives.

  • Left’s dinghy beginning to leak?

    Janet Napolitano has seen the light, apparently. According the Arizona Republic;

    Gov. Janet Napolitano’s recent statements supporting military operations in Iraq and saying she has no plans to call for a troop withdrawal are drawing criticism from members of her own Democratic Party who’ve lost patience with the war.

    Napolitano made her first visit to Iraq this month at the invitation of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. After two days of conversations with soldiers, military commanders and other officials, she came away cautiously optimistic about the country’s security situation and the potential for success with the recent decision to increase troop strength in Baghdad.

    “People that I met with were cautiously optimistic that they’re at least seeing improvement,” Napolitano told reporters at the time. “I think we’re restoring stability.”

    Ain’t it funny that Democrats who actually GO to Iraq, Democrats who actually TALK to the troops (as opposed to talking AT the troops) come away with a good feeling about the job they’re doing over there. I guess that’s probably why Democrats stay away from Iraq and stay away from conservations with the troops. Why be honest now at this late stage.

    “As a mom whose son is once again going to be asked to put his life on the line, his future on the line, I’m puzzled,” said Bohlen, co-chairwoman of the Arizona Progressive Democratic Caucus.

    Well, maybe you’re puzzled because you’re clueless. Think maybe your son and your governor might have an edge on you because they’ve seen Iraq for themselves? Naw, that couldn’t be it.

    Arizona Democratic Party Vice Chairman Randy Camacho was less pointed but noted just the same that Napolitano “missed a great opportunity to provide a definitive position on the war.”

    Doncha mean she missed an opportunity to kowtow to the intellectually vacant Democrats? That’s OK, she’ll be dragged back to the plantation soon enough. Or hung out to twist in the breeze like Lieberman.

  • Gathering of Eagles wrap up

    Wow! What a weekend. I’d like to thank the people who visited more than 43,000 times since 3pm Saturday and special thanks to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, Curt at Flopping Aces, Michele Malkin, Crotchety Old Bastard and all of the rest of the bloggers who linked me up to their front pages. I’m honored.  

    Mostly, I was truly humbled by the reaction and the traffic. The emails were just wonderful, even if I didn’t answer them all. Thanks so much. But honestly, it was just a continuation of the high I felt from being surrounded by my brothers and having several exhilerating discussions with them on Saturday morning. It was probably one of the best weekends I’ve ever had. Thanks to all.

    I suppose I should mention that I was linked up to less savory websites, too. I deleted the trackbacks, pingbacks and brokebacks because (mostly to my glee) they had some nasty things to say about me and us in general. The worst, though, were over at (surprise, surprise) the Huffington Post. And that’s mainly what this blog entry is about – clearing up some of the misperceptions of this blog and some of the reports I read from the MSM.

    First to the throngs of Leftists who are mad because I didn’t approve your comments, ya’all pretty much said the same things – it was as if you were working off talking points or something (that would never happen, though, would it). So I put up one negative comment that pretty much said everything the rest of you said.

    The same thing was evident in the HuffPo comments. Everyone was just yapping about “why aren’t the veterans over in Iraq if they support the war so much” – mostly the reason we veterans aren’t in Iraq fighting the al Qaida is that we’re too old and the military won’t take us back. Most of us probably would go – but, one thing we all realized looking at our generation all around us at the march – we’re all pretty old. One veteran told me, “Geez, we’re older than the WWII guys were when we came back from Vietnam.”

    But, betcherass, alot of us have our kids over there. So quit wearing out that stupid, ignorant cliche and find something else to bleat incessantly.

    And, yes, the video I took of the protesters’ area could be deceiving – if you didn’t bother to read that I had written that I got there at 8:30 am – 3 1/2 hours before the march started – while the hippies were still enjoying room service in the $600/night hotel room that their parents had paid for. The videos compared the participation early on. I know reading comprehension is problem for the Left who like uber-life-sized puppets and pretty yellow signs with Hitler-Bush pictures, so I’ll give ya’all a pass on that one. It was my fault so next time I’ll put up crayon drawings.

    And, yes, I am worse than Fox News (or Faux News which ya’all think is so clever apparently) – they’re the number one cable news network. We’re all worse than Fox News – that’s why they’re #1.

    But Fox News was just as bad as the other networks in their coverage of this event. All of the news trucks were parked on Constitution Ave – the little “S” part that divided the veterans from the Leftists. They were directly behind me as I filmed the protester’s part of the area. There were no TV news people interviewing the veterans early in the morning. They had thousands of people they could have been interviewing before the parade of clowns and they didn’t take advantage of that opportunity. Now, I know the Left is more spectacular and more flambouyant, but c’mon guys – you missed half of the story this weekend.

    As far as numbers go, I’d say the estimates of 30k veterans is probably right – but I’m no math whiz. If you look at the map of the event I posted from the Gathering of Eagles on Thursday night below, veterans occupied the area from the shaded area right (east) of the Vietnam Memorial all the way west to the Lincoln Memorial – every square inch, with exception of the part that the Park Police had fenced off around the Wall. 

    The Left was pretty much confined to the area west of the “S” portion of Constitution. Granted there were probably more that straggled up at the last minute, but that area was never full the whole time I was there.

    I read some report from AP  (can’t find the original story now, AP’s changed their links so often since Saturday) that claimed some poor hippie girl had her sign torn up and she was crying to reporters that some big biker dudes had accosted her; I doubt that it happened. For one thing, I can’t find the story on the web except where it’s been quoted by bloggers and as we’ve learned from dealing with AP, stories that turn out to be untrue, mysteriously disappear.

    The veterans stayed south and east of Constitution. The only Leftists that ventured over to our side were trying to provoke veterans. They paraded through our ranks waving their signs and shouting at the top of their lungs – even calling us “baby killers”. I guess some platitudes never get old. And most of them were tiny hippie girls. I never saw any of them get physically abused or their signs taken away – although I can’t vouch for any comments that might have been sent their way. All-in-all, veterans remained fairly civil. I guess, generally, they just wanted to protect the Wall, like they said – and they respect free speech. A concept lost on the Left.

    But I will admit, I saw one 60s-era hippie (who’d probably been at the Lincoln Memorial since 60s in a pot-induced state) get his sign mishandled on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The sign was something clever like “End the Bush-it” or a reasonable facimile. A burley biker-type grabbed the pole the hippie had holding up his sign. Immediately, three other burley biker-types forced the first to release the guy’s sign and the old hippie went merrily on his way – uninjured and feeling safe deep in veteran territory – waving what he thought was a clever slogan. Veterans policed their own ranks – and they aren’t so pleased as the Left to get thrown in jail, or have their own thrown in jail. They have jobs.

    And I’d like to know which part of my original report could be considered spewing hate. Sure, I don’t like ya’all on the Left, but the only thing I really “hate”, per se, is wet toilet paper. So I don’t know where ya’all got that.

    I guess none of ya’all see the irony in claiming that my videos and photos are somehow misleading, while at the same time you claim that you put more trust in the national news organizations’ pictures and videos. We all took pictures and posted pictures that would appeal to our particular audiences – to say one set is more trustworthy than the other is just lying to yourselves. I never claimed that the media’s pictures or videos were false – merely that they didn’t bother to show both sides. I, at least, showed both sides. I guess that’s spewing hate, huh?

    But what really gets me ta-gigglin’ is the email I got that claimed I somehow manufactured the number of veterans in my pictures. I guess if you weren’t there and your only frame of reference was that you saw the shoddy coverage by all of the networks, you’d doubt the numbers. But, please don’t tell me what I saw and filmed, OK? I’ll admit that I own a copy of Adobe Photoshop – but that damn thing keeps me confused. I’ve just recently figured out the cropping thing. Thanks for thinking I’m more adept at this computer stuff than I really am, though. I guess it’s like the “Bush is an evil genius/Bush is an idiot” paradox ya’all have goin’.

    And Michele Malkin’s prediction that the Left would put up the Washington Post’s one picture of a veteran in full blown insanity mode came to fruition on a leftist blog called “The Populist” (which seems to have a partner bog called DC Direct both written by someone in Michigan. Editor’s Note: The hardcase just sent me a comment and announced he’s not from California, so I’ve adjusted the entry to reflect what his IP address said. I’d post the comment, except he accused me of doing things with the President I’ve never been close enough to him to accomplish. I just broke the links to his websites because he doesn’t deserve the traffic) who wrote a piece called “Gathering of Eagles, and Just a Right Wing Nutjob Concert” which used the stereotype of mean biker-dudes who “flexed their collective testosterone stoked muscles and fists at those concerned about this so-called War in Iraq.”

    But on the other hand, several Pro-War rally participants stooped to destroying other people’s personal property. A sign was ripped up, by a Pro War Attendee. Which shows the new low that this Pro-War, Right Wing nut jobs will go to. To further their cause. 

    So this person who didn’t bother to attend, succumbs to the stereotypes and linkless news reports. I’d like to see some proof that some Leftists’ signs got destroyed. I didn’t see it and I walked the whole area about 10 times during the 4 hours I was there. That’s why my pictures are of the whole event, not some little corner of it like most of the media’s pictures.

    I resent being called “pro-war” – no one is more anti-war more than those who have to fight the wars. However, we’re not intellectually crippled by the fact that, in some cases, war is a neccessary evil. If you fool yourself into thinking that all wars can be avoided with a few kind words, you’re more a danger to yourself than anyone else.

    And you don’t try to make yourself sound more intelligent by insinuating that Michele Malkin and Ann Coulter are secretly lesbian lovers, gumball.

    YouTube has a video of one protester who tried to get to Wall – she was stopped by the Park Police and a companion with more commonsense. So, she flips off the vets.