Author: Jonn Lilyea

The above quote is from Representative Alcee Hastings in response to Nancy Pelosi’s decision to name neither Hastings nor Jane Harmon to the House Intelligence Committee.

In 1981, Hastings was impeached as Federal judge for soliciting bribes in exchange for lenient sentences. He was acquitted in his trial, but his co-conspirator,  William Borders, was sentenced to five years in jail – he also was sentenced twice more for contempt for refusing to testify against Hastings in grand jury proceedings in the same matter. Borders was pardoned by Bill Clinton during the final hours of Clinton’s presidential term.

So instead of just saying “No, I’m not going to have an impeached judge in charge of the nation’s most important intelligence. I’d rather have an experienced and proven leader”, Pelosi is just not making the choice between the two. And why? Two reasons; Harmon was reluctant to criticize the Bush Administration during the NSA wiretap dust-up (maybe because it’s legal and ethical?) and because Pelosi has already angered the Black Congressional Caucus once this year by unseating William Jefferson from the ways and Means Committee after the FBI found $90,000 in his freezer – after taping him taking a cool hundred grand in bribes.

See, ladies, Democrats won’t even name women to positions ahead of criminals when it’s a question of race. You’re still second-class citizens. And Pelosi is no leader. In the mold of Bill Clinton, she sticks her finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing before making up her mind. That’s not leadership, that’s a linguine spined coward. Unfortunately for the Left, there are absolutely right or wrong answers – the real world doesn’t compromise. That’s why the next two years are going to provide bloggers with ample subject material.

I always thought Harmon was a reasonable Democrat. She never hesitated to come on Fox News Channel and explain herself, or explain the issue of the day. She wasn’t one of the wild-eyed Bush-haters, but there was no mistaking that she was  indeed a Democrat. I always thought that she put National Security ahead of politics, though.

I guess that’s why there’s no room for her in the next Congress’ so-called leadership.

 

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei told Iran’s Prime Minister Talibani that American forces must be withdrawn from Iraq today.

Americans will absolutely not succeed in Iraq and the continuation of Iraq’s occupation is not a mouthful that Americans can swallow.

Sounds just like Chuck Hagel’s piece in Sunday’s WaPo, huh?

I wonder why a nation that has repeatedly denied that they have anything to do with the incursion into Iraq would worry about the number of Americans being killed in Iraq. Of course we know that Iran is a double-dealing mealy-mouthed bunch of thugs. They’ve, since the Iran-Iraq War, had designs on the Iraqi oilfields and control of the Gulf.

Khamenei went on to say that Iraq’s security forces could deal with the insurgents, although that has been proven to not be the case. For months, recently, the only casualties in Iraq were Iraqi citizens who had the temerity to venture out of their houses, volunteer to be policemen or go shopping.

Iran has been supplying and instigating the violence there since the US invasion of Hussein’s Iraq and these talks with Iran will come to nothing, just give the Democrats something else to quote in their sound bites. If the evil Repblicans would only withdraw troops from iraq, the children can go back to flying kites in Iraq.

 

Those of us who were in the military at the beginning of the Clinton Administration remember that administration balanced their annual spending by slashing military spending. They cut our medical benefits (they even dumped retirees from military healthcare and forced them into Medicare at age 65), they offered early-retirement (as early as ten years of service – then a year later when operational tempo increased, they offered those retirees their jobs back), they cut recruiting goals, they slashed ready divisions, they cut training money, they even cut ammunition. It was reminiscent of the Carter years when Carter had to reinstitute draft registration because morale and readiness had plunged to third world levels.

Yup, the fastest and politically the most expedient way to slash the budget and appear thrifty for the time being is to slash military funding. But when those chickens come home to roost, you get the catch-up spending of the 80’s and 00’s.

Now, there’s Leftist loon Daffy Dennis Kuchinich calling for cutting off funding to the troops and the war against terrorists and using that money for “healthcare, for education, for job creation, for seniors”. Well, the Bush Administration assures us that won’t happen in a Washington Times story by Stephen Dinan.

I worry about the Democrats because they’re so willing to throw the American people over the side for a couple more votes, they’ll do anything. I can see them slashing the stuff our troops need to fight the war that Democrats don’t have the guts to fight so they can call themselves “fiscally responsible”. And the only thing between the American people and their irresponsible political double-dealing is the President’s pen.

Just breezing through the WaPo, I stumbled over this story entitled “Success of Drug Plan Challenges Democrats“. Of course, I thought of several snarky comments that I could make over just the title alone.

Turns out, the story is about the Bush Medicare Drug Plan and how successful it’s been.  I read the story, then I nearly choked on these lines;

The cost of the program has been lower than expected, about $26 billion in 2006, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The cost was projected to rise to $45 billion next year, but Medicare has received new bids indicating that its average per-person subsidy could drop by 15 percent in 2007, to $79.90 a month.

Urban Institute President Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called that a remarkable record for a new federal program.

Initially, he said, people were worried no private plans would participate. “Then too many plans came forward,” Reischauer said. “Then people said it’s going to cost a fortune. And the price came in lower than anybody thought. Then people like me said they’re low-balling the prices the first year and they’ll jack up the rates down the line. And, lo and behold, the prices fell again. And the reaction was, ‘We’ve got to have the government negotiate lower prices.’ At some point you have to ask: What are we looking for here?”

So, of course, instead of telling us this a month ago while Democrats were using it as part of their scare program on seniors, they tell us now that the Republican plan was working successfully – under budget to both the government and the participants (i.e.; seniors).

And of course, the WaPo blames Republicans for not selling the plan well enough. To whom? The choir? Seems that not telling the story is the fault of the News Media which is more content crowning Democrat Kings and Queens than telling the people the truth. 

I used to have a lot of respect for Hagel – he helped my band of brothers (the 82d Airborne Division Association) get August 16th named as National Airborne Day. When I sent him a fax thanking him for his help, an aide called to thank me for the “thank you”.

Doing a little research on him I discovered he had been an infantry squad leader in Viet Nam with the Ninth Infantry Division, and I noticed he doesn’t bring up his service and his Purple Hearts in every breath like some veterans-turned-politicians. So I always though he was a pretty decent guy.

Until this morning. Then I catch this nugget on the Commie News Network site;

“There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq,” Sen. Chuck Hagel wrote in Sunday’s edition of The Washington Post.

Huh? That’s a mighty damn broad statement for a former squad leader to make. Of course, the whole world will read the sentence as “there will be no victory for the US in Iraq” and Hagel should know that. But then he goes on to say more ignorant crap;

“The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed,” he wrote. “We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq.

That’s downright treason. To tell the world that we’ve drained our manpower assets with less than two hundred thousand troops actively engaged? That no number of troops would resolve the conflict? Why not hand over the keys to the country to the Islamofacits right now, Chuck? You claim we’ve already been beaten, you claim that we can’t resolve a little problem in that shithole corner of the world.

Had enough? Well, Hagel hasn’t. From his WaPo editorial;

We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We’ve been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.

Wasn’t Hagel in the last Congress? Didn’t he have oversight responsibilities that were apparently abdicated? Doesn’t he think that all of this bluster and double-dealing weasel words embolden the enemy? Is he waving a white flag?

Doesn’t he remember when he was a squad leader in Vietnam how it felt to have politicians telling everyone how he was losing the war while he was pretty certain he was winning?

Who is Chuck playing to? Certainly not his constituency. Is he making a play to jump ship so he can be in the majority again? Or is he jumping ship and going to announce his conversion to Islam? Or French.

 

Senator Jay Rockefeller, serial leaker for the Democrats, wants to investigate the NSA’s surveillance program and the CIA’s interrogation program according to the Washington Post. I wonder how long it’ll take for the details of these programs to reach the New York Times, and I wonder how many poor, unsuspecting aides will get trampled when they inadvertantly get stuck between Rockefeller and a microphone.

We might as well let John Hinckley out of the mental ward, give him a loaded gun and drop him off in front of the White House while we’re at it. Or give Sandy Berger some “relaxed fit” Dockers and the keys to the National Security Archives.

Sorry, I’m still having trouble believing that the American voters gave these people Congress for two years.