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

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Webb of deceit

    This morning’s Washington Times is running a commentary by Milton R. Copulos that tears apart a blurb in Jim Webb’s campaign biography that he claims

    In 1982 he first proposed, then led the fight for, including an African American soldier in the memorial statue that now graces the Vietnam Veterans memorial on the National Mall.

    Now, like Mr. plenty of fish site down Copulos, I think Webb’s resume` is impressive all by itself, but if Webb’s campaign felt they had to imbelish this one tiny part of his bio, how much of the rest is manufactured?

    This is especially painful to veterans who’ve had to listen to other pretenders magnify their careers with wild war stories about dropping out of SR-71s behind Soviet lines to poison Andropov in his sleep.

    Stolen Valor is full of stories about Viet Nam generation pretenders – and frankly we’re sick of them. It’s even worse when one of our own uses the bodies of our fallen brothers to climb over political obstacles and wave our bloody stumps – like Kerry, Murtha, and now, according to Mr Capulos,  Webb.

    Why would Virginia veterans want this duplicitous jackass representing them in the Senate?

  • Obama-gazims

    Everywhere I look in the last two days, all I can see is the “news” that Barack Obama may run for President in the next election. On the Chris Mathews show yesterday morning, Mathews was absolutely giddy that Obama might run in ’08 – a half hour before the Illinois Senator announced his intentions on the Russert’s Meet the Press love-fest thrown in Obama’s honor. I thought Katty Kay was going to have to take a cold shower mid-program to get back her British demeanor after talking about the young Senator for five minutes.

    Even local news programs are Obama-gazmic over the news. Local female news readers in DC have had to fan themselves on-air to cool off at the mention of Obama’s name. I guess we can expect two years of this unprofessional behavior leading up to the ’08 elections.

    And who is really surprised at Obama’s decision? Since his speech at the DNC convention in ’04, that’s all the media can talk about on Sundays when asked to speculate on Democrat candidates in ’08; Mathews in particular. Right after Hillary, Barak Obama’s name is second on the list.

    For the life of me, I can’t figure it out. What has Barack Obama done since he’s been in the Senate? What did he do before he was in the Senate? From the reaction of females, I guess he’s good looking. So that’s reason enough for Democrats? That’s the same reason they put that last idiot in office – panting and screaming and promising him oral sex if he’d only keep abortion legal.

    Given the performance of the last four Democrats in the Oval Office, I think they’d better come up with something more substantial.

  • “I know politics better than you do.”

    Yesterday, Maryland’s Republican Governor Robert Erlich campaigned with Baltimore Democrats who are discouraged with their own party’s candidate Martin O’Malley, an ineffective politician at the least. O’Malley has been through seven police chiefs in 7 years and has managed to double the murder rate as mayor of Baltimore. He’s fired everyone who ever made a difference in the inner-city school districts and run any effective bureaucrats out of the city making Baltimore his private fiefdom.

    Further on in the Washington Times story, the quotes from O’Malley supporters at another rally are staggering.

    Mrs. Gladden said she supports Mr. O’Malley’s bid for governor only because it would help his fellow Democrats regain power.
        “I have never voted for Martin O’Malley, never in my life, because I don’t care for him,” she said. “But you know what, I’m wearing his shirt, got his sign on the lawn, and quite frankly, I hope to God and I pray every day that O’Malley becomes our next governor.”

    That’s pretty bad. If I may paraphrase this moonbat’s quote; “Our guys an idiot and an incompetent moron for whom I’d never vote – except for purely political reasons. It doesn’t matter how much damage he does to the State, families or our children. He’s a Democrat so vote for him” But there’ s even more;

    “I know politics better than you do. Support O’Malley,” Mrs. Glenn, a candidate in District 45, told the audience packed into a storefront room.

    Another paraphrase, if I may; “All you stupid idiots just vote the way I tell you.” It keeps getting better;

    “Focus on the seat,” said Mr. Tarrant, who likely will represent District 40. “We need the right Democrat in the seat. He can make the right selections.”

    “The best guy we have is an idiot, but he can pick people who aren’t so much.”

    At least we’ve got the Democrats recorded as being Democrats. They’re not so worried about putting the right people in office as they are about putting Democrats in office – whether they think those Democrats can do those jobs or not. It makes you wonder about the other seats across the country doesn’t it?

    It seems that Democrats are just running photogenic candidates who can talk sweet and stroke the crowds. But then, that’s nothing new, is it? This inside look of what Democrats are telling their party-faithful should pretty much wake up those indecisive independents, and it should drive the Republican voters to the polls who’ve vowed to sit this one out.

  • Deja vu all over again

    Sitting here watching the Sunday morning shows, I was struck dumb listening to Democrats discussing options for the Iraq War. Specifically, it was on Fox News Sunday that I heard Joseph Biden posit the option to allow the Iraqi military to conduct a coup d’etat and unseat Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki whom Biden considers weak and not up to the task of leading Iraq. I immediately flashed on the 1963 coup in Viet Nam that the US State Department facilitated by looking the other way. It became the bloody shirt the Left waved through the later years of that war to illustrate the imperialist ambitions of the United States – fickle and blood thirsty ambitions.

    Now, here’s a child of the 60s, Joe Biden, endorsing the same type of policy that the Left told us was wrong with this country. Well, at first I shrugged it off – until Juan Williams, a scant few minutes later endorsed the same option.

    So now, having learned nothing from history, the Left, the party of the status quo, is promising us a return to the same types of programs that led to the downfall of their President Johnson who continued the policies and programs of  John Kennedy in regards to Viet Nam.

    Democrats have been comparing the war in Iraq to the Viet Nam War since the opening shots in 2003, and now they want to follow the same failed policies that embroiled us in Viet Nam – and all the while preaching to us about “quagmires” and “Tet of ’68”. Add this to their alternating calls for more troops in Iraq while, in the same breath, calling for troop strength reductions. Telling us how they support the troops, but they don’t believe our troops can get the job done. Democrats hamstring our intelligence efforts which are clearly preventing attacks against the US.

    Is this the kind of delusional, bipolar “plan” we’re being asked to support in the mid term election? 

  • The minimum wage fallacy

    Nancy Pelosi has declared that she’ll raise the Federal “minimum wage” her first 100 hours in office as Speaker of the House. Sounds good doesn’t it? All of those hard-working people will be lifted out of poverty by increasing their $5.15/hour a buck. Of course, who are those people that’ll be lifted from the depths of despair with an extra $40  every week?

    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, out of 75,609,000 workers in 2005, 1.8 million are working at or below the minimum wage. Of those, 1.003 million are between 16 and 24 years old – high school and college aged. adobe creative cloud . So there are less than 800,000 people over the age of 25 working at or below the minimum wage.

    What kind of work are these people doing? BLS says that the large majority of these people are working in “Food preparation and serving related occupations” at 1.13 million in 2005. That’s over half of all minimum wage earners and it includes waiters, cooks, dish washers, bag boys – well, you get the idea.

    Here in the DC area, most of the restaurants pay minimum wage to their wait staff, but those waiters take home a coupla hundred bucks in tips every week – which is their incentive pay. Their employers guarantee a minimum wage, but if the employee works extra hard, they get a fat tip – more than Democrats would get them with a minimum wage increase. Sounds capitalistic doesn’t it?

    So there’s no breakdown by age by occupation, so we can only speculate on how many of those 800k people over the age of 25 (1.16% of the entire work force) actually make minimum wage, but I tend to believe that its statistically insignificant.

    Democrats are only appealing to their base to assuage their guilt about the way they feel the rest of us are doing.

    There’s probably very few Americans who are looking for a new house and car because the Democrats are finally putting those items within reach with their promise of a minimum wage increase.

    And if you include the tax increase the Democrats want to hit us with, how much will minimum wage earners really get in the end? When George W. Bush cut taxes in 2001, minimum wage earners didn’t have to pay their 15% income tax bill any longer – that has the effect of giving them a $30.90/week raise – $.78/hour – the effect of raising the minimum wage to $5.93/hr. And it didn’t cost employers anything – that’s probably what pisses off Democrats more than anything.

    So how many minimum wage earners will be pouring out in the streets to vote for Democrats so they can get their big wage increase? How many are buying new suits in hopes of landing that fat $6/hour job? More than likely, there’s only some pimple-faced kid hoping to get his new PSP a few weeks earlier thanks to Nancy (drain the swamp) Pelosi.

  • Islamic extremists campaigning for Democrats

    75 US troops have been killed this month so far. The average has been 70/month since the US attacked the Hussein government in 2003. US and Iraqi troops are prying al Qa’eda combatants from nooks and cranies in Baghdad. The Iraqi town of Amarah briefly fell into the hands of Shi-ite militia combatants yesterday - just a few miles from the border with Iran. That pudgy butterball with a novelty beard glued to his face al-Sadr is kicking up dust again. You have to ask yourself why this upswing all of a sudden?

    Easy answer – the Iranian government (the real enemy here) want to influence our elections. They want it to look as if the Republican Administration is losing the war. They want the Democrats to win the election, so the Iranians will win in their Islamic Revolution in Iraq. It’s the reason they launched missiles against Israel this year, its the reason Kim Jong-Il test-launched his sorry excuses for missiles and faked his nuclear explosion (I’m still convinced it was just a “dirty bomb” -type explosion). It’s the reason Hugo Chavez has been shooting off his big mouth lately – again.

    The enemies of this country, the enemies of our way-of-life and our relative tranquil existence know that they can defeat us only if Democrats have a say in our foreign policy. They saw what happened after Tet ’68 when the Viet Cong were reduced to the combat effectiveness of an understrength Boy Scout troop, yet they chased the world’s greatest Superpower from the continent.

    Our enemies saw a crude crowd in loincloths with little more than peashooters chase us from Somalia. They saw the crowds of Haitian teenagers chase our Navy from their port by simply waving their cane knives and machetes at the sea.

    And Democrats are more than willing to offer them peace at any cost. Not peace for Americans, by any measure, but rather peace for the enemies of freedom. In my 51 years, I’ve learned that the solution to any problem that seems the easiest, is always the wrong solution. The solution that always seems the most difficult, the one that requires the most investment of time, money and labor from me always has the longest lasting favorable effect.

    Cutting and running is an emotional response, and it’s a short term solution. If Americans put Democrats in charge of the House and Senate next month, it will be a cheap, emotional response to a complex problem. The same kind of cheap, emotional responses that have gotten us wrapped up in this war against islamic extremists in the first place. And it will only lead to greater, more expensive confrontation in the future.

  • Dems “appalled” that Reps protect “Secret” information

    Peter Hoekstra, R-M, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has suspended an as yet unknown Democrats staffer on the suspicion that he/she released the “Secret” classified document to the New York Times. Of course, the al Qa’eda wing of the Democrats party is outraged. California’s Jane Harmon, ranking Democrat on the Committee wrote Hoekstra that she’s “appalled” that Hoekstra would not allow the staffer near classified information while an investigation continues.

    Doesn’t this just sound like Democrats? They want to close down the Guantanmo Bay detention facility because someone spreads some rumors that our troops are being mean to thugs and murderers (prompting Senator Dick Durbin to compare our troops to SS concentration camp guards).

    They’re more upset at Reservists pointing at gentalia in Abu Garaib than they are upset at thugs and murderers cutting off the gentalia of our troops when they fall into the hands of our enemies.

    They don’t want intelligence agents to listen to the phonecalls of people who call from the US to known terrorists’ phone numbers.

    And now they don’t want a suspicious staffer to have his access to classified intelligence curtailed while he’s being investigated.

    What exactly will Democrats let us do to protect our National Security?

  • Democrat lies; how to lose an election

    Yesterday, I got an email from the VFW to support one of their latest causes. I always send the email, sign the petition and slip ’em a coupla bucks – the VFW has been good to me, so I’m good to them. Anyway, they sent an email in my name to my Congressman Chris VanHollen. Within a few minutes (maybe it was an hour), I get a reply with the standard “veterans are gods” kind of stuff you get from every elected official these days – especially from the guilt-ridden Left who cut their activist teeth by spitting on vets.

    But there was line that got my attention; “Unfortunately, sweeping tax cuts promoted by President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress have resulted in drastic cutbacks in VA services.  It has gotten so bad that at one point, VA officials in Washington were instructing VA hospital administrators to stop publicizing their services to veterans.  That is disgraceful.”

    If true, it certainly is disgraceful. So I emailed the Congressman’s office and asked them for the source of this directive from “VA officials”, I got a snippy email telling me that the Congressman gets too much email for him to answer them all (despite the fact that they had just answered an unsolicited email from me with a fairly lengthy response). Would I please call the office. So I called the office and got some little weasel intern (who kept reminding me that he is “only an intern” during the course of our discussion) who, despite the bustle in his office which I could clearly hear behind him, couldn’t find anyone to answer my question. Would I please leave my number. Since it’s been my experience that a convenient time for people to call me back is never convenient for me, I said no, I’d call back. And that’s what I’ve been doing this morning.

    Now I was able to get a Veterns Affairs public information person on the phone who assured me that no such directive was ever issued. And after scrolling around the DVA website, I discovered that it’s an invaluable source of information on programs and benefits available to veterans – how these “VA officials” were able to “stop publicizing” their services as long as this website is up is beyond me. And since I’ve been in the system (I have a minor service-connected disability) for 13 years, I’m pretty sure the story is false. Especially since the Congressman’s staff is reluctant to give me a straight answer. But I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    I’ve emailed them again and explained the situation and I even offered to walk the three blocks from my office to their’s to get any hardcopy of evidence that they have to prove that “VA officials” are hiding benefits from veterans. If it’s true, I want the world to know. Wouldn’t you?

    But the truth is probably that Democrats are trying to force a wedge between Republicans and their constituency, even if to force that wedge means telling totally fabricated fairy tales about Republicans. There’s only one way to stop them – the truth. And keep riding them until the truth comes out.

    The actual truth is that President George W. Bush has expanded the budget of the DVA six-fold in the last six years. Not to mention that his father made the DVA an independent agency (severed from the Interior Department) back in 1992. I’ve seen a vast improvement in the DVA’s services on the few times I’ve been to the facilities since this administration took over operations. And I’m pretty sure that anyone stopping by a VA hospital would be impressed by the facilities and the professional staff – many are much better than their civilian counterparts.

    I’ll be updating this entry as the story progresses. So far, Van Hollen hasn’t answered my emails and my phone calls get dumped into a voice mail box. But, I want the truth – just like the rest of America wants the truth.

    UPDATE: Well, a legislative staffer sent me this .gif file of a four-year-old memo; my respose to his email;

    Dear Mr. Alperson;
    Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter. The memo you have forwarded to me is more than four years old – before the last Presidential election and three Congressional election cycles old. The lawsuit appears to be that old, too. They all happened before the last several tax cut bills, they also happened when revenues were substantially less than current tax revenues. It was more than a year before the war against Hussein – so you can hardly tie this to our military efforts there or to the tax cuts, for that matter.
    I am a disabled veteran and I’ve noticed a marked increase in the quality of care at our DVA facilities over the last eight years. I’ve also noticed that there has been a marked increase in outreach to veterans. That’s the story here.
    Thank you for your time. Your “evidence” will be included in my update to the article I’ve already posted. 

    I neglected to mention how the document is incomplete, and there’s no signature block so there’s no telling who wrote document although an untitled news article that was included named DVA’s then-Secretary of Operations and Management Laura Miller as the author. I’ll admit he sent me two articles about the lawsuit brought against the VA in 2003. One included a quote from DVA’a then-secretary Anthony Principe that his intent was to divert funding from outreach to treatment.

      

    What with the advancement in internet communications, that seems almost reasonable to me. So I retract my “totally fabricated fairytale” statement. The story seems to have some basis in fact, but there’s no way this event should have an impact on this or any future election. The people have voted since this occurred and was made public.