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

Author: Poetrooper

  • ‘Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste’

    That statement by then White House Chief of Staff and now floundering (sorry I just couldn’t resist that) mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, one of the true bully boys of the Democrat Left, is seldom quoted in its entirety and that’s a shame because the wisdom of it is in the follow-on:

    “What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you thought you could not do before.”

    And there, with that concise bit of political wisdom, Comrade Rahm has quite precisely handed the Republican Party the strategy to controlling all the keys to the Capitol after November 2014.

    With many scandals to choose from: Fast & Furious, Benghazi, IRS, and now this latest, the VA debacle, it would seem that Republican officeholders and candidates would have a cafeteria style selection of means with which to attack their Democrat opponents. That would be a mistake.

    In the coming mid-term elections, the Democrats greatest weakness is the ill-planned and not thought through health care legislation which no Republican should ever identify as the Affordable Care Act. It is OBAMACARE, first, last and always. He went to great lengths to make this statutory albatross take wing, so let him bear this fallen bird upon his shoulders to his grave. He and Democrat leaders crammed it down America’s throat, now let him and every Democrat, who in blind party loyalty and against the better interests of his/her constituents, voted for this atrocious legislative abomination, choke on that vote in the coming elections.

    The Democrats’ one defensive position is to claim that they are trying to help the little guy, the uninsured, the worthy vulnerable among us. And therein lies the trap; for who among us is any more worthy than our veterans, many of whom, if not most, come from “little guy” backgrounds, and who have selflessly served on their nation’s behalf? And as soon as any Republican challenger brings this veteran’s issue into the discussion, this failing federal medical system becomes a live grenade for the Democrat, this federal bureaucracy that has demonstrably failed our most worthy warriors since its inception. And the consequences of that failure have recently magnified under an Obama administration that would subject the entire American populace to a similar, bureaucratic, union-protected, under-performing medical model that guarantees American citizens dying before their time, all due to federal, institutional constipation.

    Following Rahm Emmanuel’s dictum, every Republican candidate in America should demand of his Democrat opponent a clear statement as to that Democrat’s position on Obamacare. Should a Democrat foolishly attempt to defend that legislative abomination and the folly it is producing, then the Republican is presented with a truly gotcha moment:

    “So, you’re saying the American people deserve a health care system just like the Veterans Administration?”

    Never let a good crisis go to waste…

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • The Dogs of War

    There’s a great article at National Geographic online about military working dogs and their handlers here:

    War Dogs

    Although I once wrote for Bill Faith’s website, Old War Dogs, may both rest in peace, and visited the dog training facility at Lackland AFB a couple of times on pharmaceutical business, I really didn’t know that much about the dogs’ training and their uses. The recent reading of a police procedural novel, Suspect, by Robert Crais, taught me a great deal more than I had previously known. Crais pairs a PTSD suffering Los Angeles policeman who lost his female partner in a murderous ambush with a PTSD suffering former military working dog who also lost her partner and handler in an equally murderous ambush in Afghanistan. Their partnering makes for a very entertaining read.

    What makes this book unique is how Crais devotes a few chapters to detailing events and perceptions from the dog’s perspective. If you’ve ever wondered how dogs are able to detect and differentiate between so many different smells, you’ll learn by reading Suspect.

    I once wrote a piece for American Thinker where I referenced dogs riding in autos and pickups with their muzzles turned eagerly into the wind with their ears flapping and their tongues lolling happily as they enjoyed the ride far more than their drivers. An editor at AT spiked that piece telling me that his big-city vet said allowing dogs to ride face into the wind was harmful. I responded that I had lived much of my life in Oklahoma, West Texas, New Mexico as well as fifteen years in the Deep South, where dogs riding with their muzzles in the wind were a common sight, and never once had I heard of any adverse effects.

    The AT editor refused to relent, so I didn’t get the piece published; but I did check with my own vet who was raised on a large ranch and whose practice is primarily rural. She, too, said that in her many years as a ranch vet, she’d never seen a single instance of a dog harmed by riding in vehicles except for the occasional mutt who got too carried away with all the fun it was having and fell overboard. She explained that due to a dog’s expansive and hypersensitive olfactory system, a ride with its nose in the wind was the canine equivalent of an LSD trip due to the swarms of scents they were passing through, which explains their exuberant behavior. I reported that to the intransigent editor but he remained unyielding, trusting the expertise of his urban practitioner to that of my ol’ rancher vet.

    There’s a very good Wikipedia page on war dogs as well with an amusing bit about the Russian Army’s failure in WWII to turn working dogs into antitank weapons against the German panzer units. Dogs were fitted with mines with extended toggle switches designed to be triggered when the dogs ran under enemy tanks. The program failed because the dogs, trained with stationery Russian tanks, were reluctant to run under a moving tank and when they did, they tended to select Russian tanks like those with which they’d been trained. There’s a treasure trove of such information on that Wikipedia site.

    NOT crossposted at American Thinker.

  • We’d Court-Martial the Lot of Them, Stand Some against the Wall

    You want to shake up an entrenched bureaucracy in the Veterans Administration, folks? Start sending your congressional representatives and senators letters, and tell them to demand the right leader from the Obama administration to investigate this corrupt agency. Not a liberal sock puppet like Eric Shinseki, but a genuine, hard-nosed, ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners general like the retired four-star Marine, James “Mad Dog” Mattis.

    General Mattis has in the past demonstrated his confidence in his abilities to accomplish the mission most notably with this quote:

    I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.

    Here’s another quote. The general was referencing Islamic terrorists, but his words could be just as well applied to the bureaucrats in the Veterans Administration:

    The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some a******s in the world that just need to be shot.

    When you consider that secret VA waiting lists resulted in the possibly preventable if treated deaths of American veterans, just so VA higher-ups could collect quota bonuses, you just may agree with the general that there are some such people in the world who just need to be shot.

    But the Mattis quote that I believe would warm the hearts of neglected veterans and their families is this:

    Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U.S. Marine.

    And folks, if that Marine needs to be kicking ass of the enemy of our veterans – a sorry bureaucracy that has been allowed to become the antithesis of its original mission of caring for America’s veterans – then so be it.

    When it comes to clearing out the treacherous self-serving bureaucrat rats who have exploited their offices to deny our veterans their entitled services while enriching themselves, we need a “Mad Dog” who will go into that system and clean it out from top to bottom, ruthlessly and with no remorse.

    I’m an old combat infantryman from the Vietnam War whose ears have been ringing since 1966, when I was exposed to all kinds of explosions going off around my ears. When I sought help at the VA facility in San Antonio twenty-some years ago, I was summarily dismissed by a rather hostile minority female VA employee, who made it quite clear that I was not welcome there regardless of my actual ground combat service. I’ve never been back.

    I told my wife that this should be the epitaph carved into my headstone at the national cemetery for veterans: “Well his ears finally quit ringing.”

    Shame, shame, shame, on a totally corrupt Veterans Administration that callously left this old veteran, and who knows how many others, to suffer the consequences of their combat experiences.

    General Mattis, your old soldiers and Marines need you to get back in the trenches and really kick some bureaucratic ass in this agency that has failed its mission. We veterans know that if these bureaucrats were uniformed, we’d court-martial the lot of them and stand the worst of them against the wall.

  • Just Who’s Getting Clipped Here?

    A vet buddy out in Guam sent me this pearl:

    (CNSNews.com) – The United States Agency for International Development is planning to spend $24.5 million to circumcise an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 male infants and males aged 10 to 49 in the kingdom of Swaziland by 2018.

    Let me try to wrap my old Vietnam Vet brain around this: The medical system established by the United States of America back in 1930, the Veterans Administration, is so overwhelmed by demand for services by those who have worn the uniform and dutifully served this nation, that we are witnessing a daily unfolding of new scandals all across this nation where VA bureaucrats have manipulated the system to deny coverage to deserving veterans.

    I’ll confess up front to never being a fan of the Veterans Administration Medical System. For a couple of decades back in in the last quarter of the 20th Century, I managed a team of regional government sales managers whose primary function was selling pharmaceuticals to the military, with VA hospitals being a secondary market. To a man, my guys hated calling on VA facilities because of the entrenched, and generally intransigent, bureaucracy. Before the VA began modernizing in the 80’s, most of the physical facilities were worn-down backwaters of medical care, a stark contrast to the vibrant, service-oriented atmosphere of most military medical facilities. I damn near had to horse whip my guys to call on the VA facilities in their regions.

    You should understand that with that background, I’m not surprised in the least at the revelations coming now regarding the systemic corruption that likely permeates the entire system, not just the few locations exposed thus far. I spoke recently with another Vietnam veteran who is a nationally-known investigator of military fraud and deception. What he told me regarding rampant corruption in the VA system actually sent me into a depressed funk for a couple of days. After our talk I couldn’t help but think of the Veterans Administration health system as a huge wooden ship of state whose hull has been bored into and weakened to the point of destruction by the bureaucratic worms whose mission is job-preservation, salary and retirement.

    Not patient care.

    Yet, rather than authorizing a commission with a $25 million budget to investigate this broken corrupt system and provide recommendations as to how we save this worm-eaten, rotten-hulled ship and make it the institution needed to serve our veterans medical needs, we send that same amount of our taxpayer provided funds offshore to Africa to circumcise the male infants of Swaziland.

    Just where is the justice in this yet another Obama folly? Just who is truly getting clipped here?

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • The swaggering bravado of Iran’s ‘Gunboat Admiral ‘ Ali Fadavi

    Once again the world is being treated to an outburst of swaggering bravado by another Muslim military leader, this time an Iranian admiral who seems naïve in the extreme when it comes to the realities of modern combat. According to Military Times:

    Fadavi was quoted Tuesday by the semi-official Fars news agency as saying the immense size of the U.S. carriers makes them an “easy target.” He said contingency plans to target American carriers are a priority for the Guard’s naval forces.

    Fadavi is Revolutionary Guards admiral, Ali Fadavi, and we can probably forgive him for his foolish braggadocio which arose out of an explanation of the huge, mock-up carrier the Iranians have been busily constructing at Bandar Abbas, apparently for target practice. Less forgivable is Military Times’ gullibility in describing the Admiral’s Guard as “powerful Revolutionary Guard,” and “hard-line guard’s naval forces,” reminding us of how the breathless Western media predicted that coalition forces might meet their match in Iraq in Saddam Hussein’s “powerful” and ‘elite” Republican Guards. Yeah well, if memory fails you, do what the Admiral seriously needs to do and Google, “What happened to Republican Guards?” Here’s but one example.

    This gunboat admiral should spend some time reviewing Web images of Iraq’s elite forces after a few days of being the primary targets of the coalition air forces. Before the ground war even commenced, the Air Force was claiming that it had destroyed or degraded beyond fighting capability all but a couple dozen of the Guard’s 800 plus tanks. It’s seriously doubtful that the admiral has anywhere near 800 gunboats and even if he should, gunboats on the water can’t be hidden in towns, under bridges or parked among innocent civilians the way Saddam’s Republican Guards so futilely tried to save their tanks. Those gunboats are hanging out there fully exposed.

    Should they pose the slightest threat to the heart of a carrier strike group, the Hornets’ nest, so to speak, Admiral Fadavi and his “elite fleet” are going to learn the bitter lesson that the admiral’s characterization of U.S. carriers as “easy targets” might be a bit off-target and that they themselves have become the easy targets of the thousands of lethal stingers pouring into them from not only the dozens of angry Hornets but also the bristling, protective firepower of the other naval vessels securing the carrier’s perimeter. Even the smallest of these ships carry lethal arrays of missiles and mount computerized weapons like Phalanx Close-In Weapons System, a 20 millimeter Gatling gun which can chop a gunboat to pieces at a rate of 4500 explosive shells per minute. Phalanx is also a tested defense against any anti-ship missiles the soon-to-be-gone gunboats might launch before they’re obliterated.

    The overly optimistic admiral might want to consult one of Saddam’s Republican Guards’ generals about such public preening and posturing before the battle:

    If he can find one still around…

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Here Comes the Judge…

    I don’t believe there’s a conservative spokesperson in America whose commentary is any harder hitting than that of Judge Jeanine Pirro, legal analyst and show host at FOX News Channel’s Justice with Judge Jeanine. Watch this one video of the judge’s latest Saturday night broadcast and tell me this woman isn’t saying precisely what millions of us believe to be the truth when absolutely none of our elected Republican representatives have demonstrated the cojones to speak so honestly and straightforwardly.

    She’s female; Lebanese; an accomplished prosecutor; a deliberative judge; an accomplished television legal consultant and show host.What the hell is not to like? Why isn’t this exceptional woman being courted by the Republican Party for political office, if not the Senate then Congress? The Democrats send comedians, both professionals like this loser, as well as their many unintentional laugh getters, to the Senate and the House, so why can’t we promote a tough-as-nails ex-judicial officer like Judge Jeanine to give our deliberative bodies something to truly deliberate?

    If you haven’t yet, then watch this video and tell me that any other person in America has more clearly and concisely stated the case of our president’s failure to uphold his oath of office. And, as she says, that was just her open.

    If you like straightforward speech in this era of weasel-worded political speak, Judge Jeanine is someone you really should consider getting behind as the perfect bomb the people can loft into that comfortable chamber called Congress to blow those too-long turkeys out of their smug, self-lined roosts We’ll know she’s successful when all those serial seat-warmers are crying,

    “Oh no, here comes the judge.”

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Bungling Bundy

    Bungling Bundy

    Bundy

    Through the past week we have witnessed events that should be viewed as our dead canary in the mine shaft. The bird who bit the dust was that not-quite-defensible old rancher out in Nevada, Cliven Bundy, who got chewed into a mess, not just by a demonstrably dishonest New York Times, but by a pack of media minds eagerly seeking to prove to the reigning media elites their politically correct bonafides:

    Bill O’Reilly

    Sean Hannity

    Glen Beck

    Without questioning the accuracy or completeness of a quote attributed to Cliven Bundy, the rancher under assault by the Federal Bureau of Land Management, all three seized firmly in their powerful jaws the deviously doctored Milkbone the Times threw out to the slavering pack of worshipful media that considers the Times a Manhattan version of the Oracle at Delphi.

    Despite an overwhelmingly negative response from their watchers, readers and commenters, which can be verified by any cursory examination of the comments sections on virtually every conservative website, all three of the above-cited adherents to the worship of Political Correctness, continue to defy their bases, the very Americans who have made them what they are.

    Inexplicably they continue their clearly uninformed, hip-shooting, media assassinations of an old western rancher who doesn’t even begin to understand the eastern elitist kneejerk reactions to his admittedly fumbling attempts to express his beliefs about social issues that had nothing whatsoever to do with his mano-a-mano confrontation with an overreaching federal bureaucracy. We all know the old guy was set up by a conniving reporter from the Times, one Adam Nagourney and the issue of race was the Times Bomb selected to destroy a man defiant to over-reaching, overwhelming federal enforcement. Had the Times editorial board instead dispatched a mafia hit man to Nevada to silence the old rancher with a bullet to the brain, they could not have violated his humanity more.

    Or so they so smugly thought. Surf the Internet and read the comments: they are running as a very strong tide against their supposed spokesmen, about 98 to 2, maybe even 99 to 1. I can’t recall any past event where these so-called conservative spokesmen were so out of touch with those who have made them who they are. Like so many of those Americans who feel we have been deserted by those we thought shared our beliefs, I am filled with a combination of anger, disappointment and contempt for those three men who chose to cowardly and ignorantly bow at the altar of political correctness when, were they genuine, they would have expectorated upon it.

    From me, all three have lost a huge measure of trust; from how many millions of others, who knows?

  • Obama Sandwiches Himself

    Last week our president chose the setting of Ann Arbor, Michigan and a youthful audience at the University of Michigan to defend his argument for increasing the minimum wage from the current $7.25 per hour to $10.10 by 2016. In an obviously staged, pre-speech lunch, the prez had a Reuben sandwich at Zingerman’s Deli. He then used that luncheon experience to springboard into his argument for a higher minimum wage by noting that Zingerman’s pays its employees a fair wage, the implication being that Z’s nobly pays more than the minimum wage.

    Well that’s all well and good until you get curious, as I did, and find Zingerman’s menu online. Talk about sticker shock. Were I, like most Americans, to walk into this place off the street and open that menu, I’d most likely be heading for the door, looking for an eating place more in line with my budget.

    Now, I love a Reuben, and I’ve had them in delis and restaurants from coast to coast, but I have to tell you there is absolutely no way I’m paying more than sixteen bucks for one, except maybe at the now sadly defunct Stage Deli in Manhattan. If you go here, you’ll see that’s pretty much the situation with Zingerman’s. Eat there, and you’re gonna get zinged.

    How those clever planners who set up these presidential stunts could not have foreseen this obvious trap they let their boss walk into is beyond me. For crying out loud, you vacuous fools, the single strongest argument against raising the minimum wage is that it will result in higher prices to the public and reductions in employment. Yet you let your boss go through his pre-speech prepping in a place that proves exactly the truth of that? And then you let him use it as his springboard? It’s fine that Zingerman’s shares its largesse with employees, but irony all but drips from this presidential lead-in: “Hey, I had a great sandwich at a place that fairly compensates its employees.”

    Yeah, well, Mr. President, you got your sandwich in a place that charges prices that most Americans in flyover country would find unbelievable, unaffordable, and damnably near to being un-American. Hey, Barry, you were in flyover country, not on one of the coastal enclaves where such egregious price-gouging is accepted as standard practice. And we Americans are required to allow this clueless president and his out-of-touch advisors to represent us on the world stage?

    Too bad Zingerman’s couldn’t have served Barry a 21st-century variation of the Reuben, such as a Putin – a much meatier concoction, with a hint of bear flavor, definitely tougher to chew and damned near impossible to swallow.

    Crossposted at American Thinker