Author: Poetrooper

No doubt some reading here will accuse me of wearing a tinfoil hat, but I just can’t help believing that the publicizing of charges against General David Petraeus just before the leak about Hillary’s email problem is more than mere coincidence. Was the Petraeus announcement timed to set the stage so that Hillary’s email manipulations would be viewed as a serious violation of national security punishable by prison sentence and banishment from future federal service? With the revelation of the terms of the Petraeus deal the Obama administration was showing the world that even the mighty can risk jail time and federal banishment. The disclosure that four star general Petraeus had lied to federal investigators can’t but help to set a tone of public distrust of those who serve in our highest offices.

The close follow-on of the leak of the Hillary email affair meant that her problem became public knowledge at a very bad time for her, when comparisons with Petraeus were inevitable. Now that the White House has thrown Hillary under the bus with a public disavowal of any knowledge of her email system and with prominent Democrat strategists like David Axelrod out there on television piling on with talk of the severity of Hillary’s transgressions, there’s a dead rodent effluence emanating not from Denmark but from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Hillary’s appointment to secretary of state was clearly payback for the Clintons throwing in the towel and getting behind the Obama presidential campaign in 2008. The SoS job had to be a sop offered as a way to enhance Hillary’s chances in 2016, or so the Clinton’s would believe. But anyone who thinks there has ever been any true forgiveness from either the Clinton’s or Obama for the animosities of 2008 has to be a real Pollyanna. So all you amateur Machiavelli’s out there see if you can conjure up a better way to fatally backstab the Hildebeast than to let her serve for four years while ignoring her continual and ongoing violation of all manner of national security protocols only to now, when it can do her the most political damage, leak it to the world all while denying any prior knowledge.

Of course, it’s preposterous that the Obama security apparatus did not know that one of their highest ranking officials was ignoring federal laws regarding national security and was a serial violator of those laws. You can almost hear the smug chuckles coming from the White House as Hillary played into their trap. All federal institutions are subject to periodic security reviews so Hillary’s bizarre handling of federal email traffic had to have been noticed and reported at some time during her tenure by security specialists. That it was allowed to continue could only have been authorized at the very highest level of government and we all know who that is. In a way you have to admire the forbearance of the Obama crowd, observing a patience which demonstrates the truth of that old wisdom, “Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.”

That Hillary has had the albatross of General Betrayus draped on her political shoulders can only be described as delicious irony. To believe that it is mere coincidence would require, “The willing suspension of disbelief.”

Why? To make a determination upon entering a cabinet-level government position that you will disregard, that you will in fact violate government policy, and possibly federal laws, by choosing to ignore the secure, encrypted federal email system assigned to you and use a non-secure commercial email system for all your official communications, smacks of prior intent. A Cabinet secretary does not simply, willy-nilly, decide to use a risky commercial means of communicating top secret materials. A military counterpart, a four star general or admiral, doing so would be court-martialed and dismissed from service if not imprisoned for such a breach of security.

You had to have known that and to have weighed the consequences of future discovery, so why? What was so important to you that you determined that it was to your advantage to hide all your government communications from possible discovery? With so many millions of Americans having witnessed the decades of corruption surrounding the political careers of you and your husband, it requires no great intuitive leap to suspect your true motive. There has perhaps been no female political figure in the history of this nation who has so brazenly coveted the idea of being the first woman president. Shameless political ambition has been the hallmark of your life and when I say shameless, I’m saying you set new low standards for that term when you, a supposed feminist, aided and abetted a known sexual predator of young and old to rise to the highest political office in the land that he shamed for all history with his predatory practices.

So you hid your emails, Hillary, all of them. Why? Most of us out here know the answer to that. You wanted to be able to control your record in the highest federal office you’ve ever held so that nothing in that record could be turned against you in your long-planned presidential run. For your own selfish political ambitions you chose to disregard federal security policies regarding frequently top secret communications so that you now can, during your campaign, control the release of revelations from your term as secretary of state to only those favorable and helpful.

There’s just one problem, Hillary. Somewhere out there in a mother’s basement is an advance degreed but serially unemployed and very unhappy young nerd who sees you as a wealthy establishment sell-out not nearly as far to the left as he believes his future president should be. To him Fauxahontas is a far more appealing embodiment of his growing socialist views and he wants to help her campaign. Of course, unemployed and all, he can’t help the senator financially but hey, he has considerable computer skills honed during the many years of his $150,000 leftist brain-washing. So Pajama Boy begins to drill down into those email communications that, fortunately, don’t carry the prohibitive risk of hacking into secure government communications systems and invoking federal prosecutorial wrath, nor are they as securely encrypted as those government accounts.

Multiply Pajama Boy by a few thousand, Hillary and I’ll ask you again: Why?

Crossposted at American Thinker

In a blog piece at American Thinker yesterday, Michael Filozof, warned readers that Obama is using executive agency powers to make an end-run on the 2nd Amendment by banning a form of ammunition that the government fears most, the 5.56x45mm, 62 grain, M-855 military round. Mass-produced for use by our military, it is quite popular among American gun owners due to its relatively low cost. Ammunition manufacturers producing billions of rounds for military use have no problem in turning out an extra billion for civilian shooters. The ready availability of 5.56mm leads many American shooting enthusiasts to purchase very large numbers of the civilian versions of the military rifles that fire it.

Therein lies the problem for a government that fears its own citizens. Millions of military veterans, many of them combat veterans, have been trained in the effective use of the M-16 rifle and the M-4 carbine, both of which fire the 5.56mm round, with the M-16 in widespread military use since the mid-sixties. Pause for a moment to consider how many millions of soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen have been trained in the use of the M-16 in the half century since it was first issued to our troops.

If you’ve never considered that number before, others certainly have: the left-wing progressives in the Democrat party, the Alinskyites who are slowly but surely eliminating any vestiges of moderation in that party. A major obstacle to the ultimate implementation of their socialist programs is a heavily-armed populace resistant to being subjects of an all-powerful central government. Democrats have tried repeatedly to pass laws to begin the process of disarmament through gun registration, but conservative forces, fearing that registration is but the first step to owner identification and ultimately confiscation, have successfully fought back and limited passage of such laws to states controlled by Democrats. With most of their efforts thwarted, this ever devious administration, unable to disarm us outrightly, thinks it can turn our millions of guns into useless clubs if they can cut off our supply of ammunition, thus these machinations of the BATFE.

A comment on yesterday’s article said simply, “Join the NRA,” and I said to myself yes, yes, yes! I was shamefully reminded of my own failing in waiting so late in life to become a member; but I rather imagine there are millions out there like me, who didn’t wake up to the threat from the left to disarm us until this president took office with his promise of fundamental change. Barack Obama was the catalyst that made an NRA member of me and tens of thousands of others. Yet there are still millions of you out there who haven’t availed yourselves of this very inexpensive but very effective way to have your voice heard and your gun ownership rights ferociously defended in courtrooms and legislatures throughout America; all that for only $25.00 per year, including a subscription to their excellent monthly magazine, American Rifleman.

No other organization has stood taller and fought harder against liberal incursions on the 2d Amendment than the National Rifle Association through its Institute for Legislative Action, NRA-ILA. I hope these few paragraphs I’ve written will inspire you to get off your duff and join the National Rifle Association now. In an America governed by our constitution, our citizenry would need no organization like the Institute for Legislative Action to guard against government encroachment upon our right to keep and bear arms. But under the increasingly socialistic, centralized rule of Barack Obama and the Democrat party, we should be thankful the ILA is there for us. For $25.00 a year you get top-notch, legal representation throughout Washington, D.C. as well as in every statehouse, legislature and courthouse in this nation.

Try finding a lawyer who can match that.

The author has absolutely no connection with the NRA other than as a dues-paying member.

Crossposted at American Thinker

The Huffington Post has run a hit piece on the military service claims of freshman Iowa Senator, Joni Ernst, claiming that she has repeatedly overstated her role as a combat veteran. That opinion emanates from an organization notable for a staff that generally avoids military service and specifically, combat zones, with the focused circumspection one would normally apply to travel to Ebola outbreak areas.

Andrew Reinbach, a so-called* journalist, and whose HuffPo bio shows him to be a financial writer, seems to have embarked on a sugar-coated witch hunt for Senator Ernst, offended (you just know how easy that is for liberals to be) by Ernst’s campaign claims that she is a combat veteran. Worse, he fumes is that Joni allowed her husband, a retired Ranger Sergeant Major, to claim twice that she led troops into combat when she led a deployment of her Iowa National Guard transportation company into the Iraq war zone. Reinbach quotes other veterans’ opinions to buttress his argument:

This gets scant respect from serving soldiers. Asked what a soldier should do in a case like that, Lt. Col. Alayne Conway says, “You’d clarify, and say ‘Sure, I had friends who were in firefights every day, and those are the guys you should roll out the red carpet for.’” Lt. Col. Conway serves in the Army’s Press Office in Washington.

But interestingly there’s an update at the end of Reinbach’s piece from that same LTC Conway which seems to say otherwise:

From Colonel Conway:

Alayne Conway · Media Relations Division Chief at Office of the Chief of Public Affairs (OCPA)

Senator Joni Ernst is a combat veteran. Period. Andrew Reinbach manipulated my words, and I am angry and embarrassed that a *so-called journalist would deliberately take out of context a small portion of our 15 minute discussion. I never questioned Sen. Ernst’s service, or that of my brothers and sisters in arms; to allow the Huffington Post’s readers to think otherwise is not only a disservice to Sen. Ernst, but to all those who wear the uniform of the United States. In a cheap attempt to besmirch the military service of Sen. Ernst, the Huffington Post instead has insulted all the men and women of the Armed Forces who have deployed in service to their nation. LTC Alayne Conway.

Also interesting is that I happen to know that Reinbach phone-interviewed a web acquaintance of mine for almost an hour trying to gain material for this hit piece. My colleague, a former combat infantry NCO in [Afghanistan] who earned the Combat Infantryman Badge and who also was an embedded combat reporter for a major U.S. service organization, offered Reinbach no red meat and therefore his supportive remarks for Ernst remained unquoted. Reinbach claims that he did not misquote LTC Conway, which is doubtful since she’s a PR pro. Perhaps finding veterans critical of Ernst during Reinbach’s little witch hunt was so unfruitful as to require a bit of liberal colorization of Conway’s actual remarks. But it’s just so hard to imagine an author at HuffPo doing that.

If you insist on a definitive, legal description as to what constitutes a combat veteran, here’s the applicable U.S. Code as used by the Veterans Administration to determine who is eligible for care as a combat veteran:

Title 38, United States Code (U.S.C.), Section 1710(e)(1)(D) states that a veteran who served on active duty in a theater of combat operations (as determined by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense) during a period of war after the Persian Gulf War, or in combat against a hostile force during a period of hostilities after November 11, 1998, is eligible for hospital care, medical services , and nursing home care for any illness, even if there is insufficient medical evidence to conclude that such condition is attributable to such service. For purposes of this policy, such veterans are considered to qualify as “combat veterans.” Treatment provided under this authority is not subject to copayment requirements.

Now by this old combat veteran’s reading that makes Joni a statutory combat veteran and entitled to refer to herself as such whether for political purposes or not, even if it causes an old hippie Huffpo journalist to get his panties in a twist. The only way I see Ernst straying into the weeds on this issue is if she says she led troops into combat with that into being the operative term because, while remaining technically true, it suggests leading troops into actual battle. I say it’s technically true because young Captain Ernst did in fact lead a unit into a combat zone. A much safer description of her service is to say she led troops in combat which is a certifiable fact. She led a unit of the Iowa National Guard which was serving in a combat zone when she led it; therefore she led troops in combat service in a combat zone.

What is most curious to me is Reinbach’s contention that Ernst’s claim is invalid because her unit never came under fire or encountered an IED. That is a curious distinction to me for it would prevent a number of general officers and admirals of many wars from claiming that they were combat veterans of those wars since they never came under direct fire. And the fact that convoy operations in Iraq were exceedingly dangerous is demonstrated by the experiences of PFC Jessica Lynch, who was badly injured, then captured in an ambush of her convoy and brutalized by her Iraqi captors until being freed by a special operations hostage rescue team. Perhaps Reinbach should have considered that every time Captain Ernst led those convoys she was exposing herself to the same risks and hazards that befell PFC Lynch.

It so happens that I’m now reading Liberation Road, a WWII novel by David L. Robbins which relates the exploits of the Red Ball Express, the Army truck convoy system set up in August 1944 to ferry supplies from the Normandy beaches and the captured port of Cherbourg to the rapidly advancing allied forces across Europe, after their breakout from the beachhead. While a few of those almost endless truck trains occasionally came under fire from strafing German fighters, most didn’t. Nor did they actively engage in ground combat. They simply drove.

So I’m really curious as to how Reinbach would characterize those drivers and their service. Were they combat veterans? Somehow I suspect ol’ Andy might have a different take on those Red Ballers for a very politically-correct reason: 7,500 of those 10,000 truck drivers were black. But poor Joni is southwest Iowa-white, which is about as white as white gets in this country. Does anyone really think Reinbach would have written his article with a much more serious violator, Senator Richard Blumenthal, as the subject? Blumenthal, who did serve in the Marine Reserves during the Vietnam War but only in Washington, D.C., and then only because he’d run out of college draft deferments, told audiences that he was disrespected when he returned from Vietnam. That’s not a semantic distinction like Joni’s but rather an outright lie meant to bestow an undeserved honor on a dishonorable politician. Yet even after being exposed for his Stolen Valor claims his party organization stood behind this phony combat veteran and helped him get elected. And he’s still serving, Reinbach. How about a story on this true phony? Oh, that’s right; Dickie boy is a Democrat senator so he’s off limits to liberal rags like HuffPo.

Finally, I would offer this cautionary statement to the bearded, balding, greying, and professorial looking Reinbach who’s lacking only the defining ponytail: Senator Joni is a Harley-riding, pistol-packing farm girl who used to castrate hogs that were much harder to manhandle than your usual beta-male HuffPo writer.

Oh, and she’s a combat veteran, Andy.

The author was an NCO in the 2d Bn, 327th Airborne Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, Vietnam 65-66

Crossposted at American Thinker

Don’t get me wrong: the game itself was very good, lost in the last minutes by horrendously stupid play-calling on the part of the Seahawks. But as a Cowboys fan, I had no dog in the hunt, so I couldn’t care less who won. And it wasn’t the game that put me off, but rather the incessant drumbeat of political correctness in the commercials.

It’s too late in the evening to cite precise examples, so let me cite some themes. From car commercials, no less, came repeated preachments to males regarding their responsibilities as fathers and family heads. I have a suspicion that this advertising was targeted at young black males, who watch and wager on the Super Bowl in large numbers and who have a well-recognized and well-deserved reputation for fathering without any follow-up. However, in keeping with the current politically correct standards followed by the advertising industry, the ads would make it appear that white fathers were the culprits.

You know what? If I were a black male, I would be thoroughly pissed at NBC for using the major sporting event of the year to target me in such a fashion. Call it ambush advertising.

I’m one old football fan who does not like to be preached to by holier-than-thou liberal jerks when I’m trying to watch a game. I resent such indoctrination attempts to the point of questioning if I’m going to continue to allow myself to be insulted by an advertising industry that appears to be several degrees left of the New York Times.

Don’t misunderstand me here: I fully recognize the distressing lack of male responsibility in parenting. My gripe is that when I sit down at the end of the football season to watch the Super Bowl, I do not consider my living room the proper venue for the slobberingly eager left to preach to me about America’s social ills. But then, that’s liberals for you; they seem to have a knack for taking human joy, happiness, and appreciation out of absolutely any event that the rest of us view as a form of entertainment. They have thoroughly corrupted Hollywood and television, and now they are damned well getting their big left foot in the door of sports, through the not so subtle control of the advertising messages accompanying those sporting events. And of course they have their intestinal worm: Bob Costas.

Crossposted at American Thinker