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

Author: Poetrooper

  • Anger Understandable but Cool Headed Thinking Needed

    There’s a lot of understandable anger being expressed here at TAH and other military blogs about the treachery being enacted in Congress against the military community. Believe me, I agree that, once again, America has betrayed its military and the anger is righteous and expected. But as an old soldier in his seventies, I can assure you it’s nothing new. What concerns me, reading the comments here at TAH is the attitude by some of you who say the Republicans are equally responsible; yes, you are correct to a point insomuch as those Republicans we refer to as RINO’s are the ones who sided with the Democrats to stick it to you. But you should keep in mind that it was the most conservative Republicans in the House and Senate who opposed this move.

    I would only caution that those of you who see no difference between the two parties don’t throw out the baby with the bath water by deciding not to vote for Republicans in the future. Just make sure you vote for CONSERVATIVE Republicans. For those of you claiming political equivalence between Democrats and Republicans, I say, “Fine, vote for conservative Democrats if you can find any of that species which for all practical purposes is damned near extinct. And even if a Democrat is personally conservative, he’ll vote with the rest of the donkey herd because of peer pressure and party support at election time.

    As for the sentiment expressed by one commenter about not voting at all, not ever, that’s like throwing away all your weapons in a firefight, troop. It’s a sure way to help your side get overrun in the present battle and to insure your side never wins the war. If nothing else, your voting cancels out at least one vote cast by some low-information scumbag who’s definitely going to vote every chance he gets to make sure the political whores he votes for keep handing out the goodies and screwing the warriors out of what they’ve rightfully earned through blood and sacrifice. It’s a fact Jack that the best weapon you have in this fight is your vote so you should use it effectively as you would your primary weapon in battle: quit re-electing RINO’s because of their seniority and their ability to deliver pork. More importantly, get yourself and other military friends more actively involved in electing the right kind of politicians, conservatives with military backgrounds, the more service time the better.

    I know I can’t possibly be as angry as those of you who, along with your families, will directly suffer financially for this traitorous legislation. But I do have family actively serving who are career, with four deployments and another approaching, so I am understandably angry and intend to do my best to help get rid of the remaining Democrat senator in my state. That will be one less liberal Democrat in the Senate so it’s a step forward on the long march.

    Better yet, my guy is ex-infantry with two combat tours.

  • Biblical Abuse in the Bible Belt

    Dr. Samuel Johnson famously proclaimed that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Here in the Bible Belt that refuge is all too often religion. As a recent immigrant to Arkansas, a truly beautiful place to live in the heart of America, I’m appalled to see one of my senators, Mark Pryor, attempting to hide his liberal support of Obama and the Democrat party behind his bible. It seems that Pryor is understudying another Arkansas scoundrel who when confronted with disgraceful and disgusting sexual misbehavior in the Oval Office, sought cover in staged imagery of him and his scheming spouse attending Christian religious services at the National Cathedral with well-worn bibles in hand. Whenever had Bill Clinton so publicly toted a bible prior to his exposure as a dirty old man? But hey, it worked; even though impeached by the House, he wasn’t convicted by the Senate and removed from office.

    If a disgraced Democrat president caught taking sexual advantage of a young intern in the Oval office can use the bible as a shield, Senator Pryor must see it as an easy means of shielding himself from the price to be paid for supporting Obamacare. And if anything, Pryor is outdoing Bill in the bible business, going beyond a mere photo event where Bill and Hill just toted theirs, to a full campaign video where he waves that bible in his constituents’ faces and embraces it with a fervor not seen lately in the political party to which he swears obeisance. The Democrat party as it exists now supports adultery, sloth, envy, murder, idolatry, homosexuality, etc., all practices condemned by the very bible Pryor waves in that hypocrite ad. If he does indeed believe in that bible then he is much more in alignment with his Republican opponents than with his fellow Democrats, millions of whom are outright enemies of Pryor’s professed faith.

    Pryor’s opponent in the Arkansas senate race is a tall, gangly young congressman with a kind of down-home, aw-shucks aspect, Tom Cotton. But Cotton is actually a very bright Harvard law graduate, a fact which immediately makes him suspect in my mind. But then he also refused an Army assignment as a lawyer and chose to serve two tours as an infantry officer in combat, which is no small decision. It can be, in fact, a true life and death choice, as junior infantry officers get killed or wounded at an unduly high rate in combat. And living in the boonies of both Iraq and Afghanistan with the troops is a far more wretched existence than that of a staff legal officer living in civilian-style comfort in the rear area. That Cotton chose to turn down that cushy legal option and lead troops in combat says much about the man’s character and physical courage, both qualities sadly lacking and badly needed in our Senate.

    Pryor can wave his bible but he can’t wave his nonexistent DD-214, his record of military service, and as in Cotton’s case, a record that demonstrates qualities of accepting true responsibility under harsh conditions and leading fellow warriors into combat. Not that military service conveys an imprimatur of infallibility upon any and all who serve, but what it does provide is a traceable record of an individual’s performance under frequently difficult circumstances. Pryor, as the privileged scion of an Arkansas political dynasty, has never served, and we therefore have no way of determining how he functions under that most telling form of stress. On the other hand, that he trots out the bible and tries to use it to sell himself to the people of Arkansas is quite telling in another sense.

    Arkansas deserves a senator who has proved himself a leader rather than the follower that Pryor has shown himself to be. I’m not so naive as to have no suspicion that Tom Cotton chose combat infantry as a way to enhance his political aspirations, but it is equally possible that he did it out of an altruistic and patriotic sense of serving his country. Considering those possibilities, as an Arkansas voter, I’m willing to give Cotton the benefit of the doubt. He did go into combat and face the human hardships and tragedies of human conflict the bible describes, unlike his opponent, who toes the Democrat party line but when faced with re-election, waves a book that apparently has little true meaning for him.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • The Night Before Christmas (Cambodian Version)

    Poetrooper sends us his 2004 poem in honor of John Kerry who reported for duty that year;

    Twas the night before Christmas and we were afloat
    Somewhere in Cambodia in our little boat.
    While the river was lightened by rockets red glare
    No one but the President knew we were there.
    The crew was all nestled deep down in their bunks,
    While the Spook and I watched the sampans and junks.
    Our mission was secret, so secret in fact,
    No one else would remember it when we got back.
    When out on the water there arose such a clatter
    I leaped down from the bridge to see what was the matter.
    The incoming friendly was starting to flash
    And I knew that the ARVN’s were having a bash.
    The snap of friendly fire on the warm tropic air
    Convinced me for sure no one knew we were there,
    On a clandestine mission so secret it’s true
    That I’m still convinced only Tricky Dick knew.
    While I huddled for safety in the tub on the bow,
    I thought of a title, “Apocalypse Now.”
    To give to the films I was I making each day
    To show all the voters when I made my big play.
    As I sat there sweating in my lucky flight jacket,
    Spook said, “Merry Christmas!” and tossed me a packet.
    And what to my wondering eyes did appear,
    But a new lucky cap, which I still have right here.
    I keep it tucked here, in this leather brief case,
    Just sharing with the press its secretive place
    As I regale them again with my senate refrain,
    That Christmas in Cambodia is seared into my brain.
    Don’t bother to quibble with history my friend,
    By pointing out Johnson was President then.
    Don’t listen to Swiftees who try to explain,
    For I tell you that night is seared into my brain.
    Down Hibbard, down Lonsdale, and you too O’Neill,
    So you don’t remember? Well it’s something I feel.
    I don’t need all you Swiftvets to support my campaign,
    Cause Christmas in Cambodia is seared into my brain,
    Into my brain, into my brain, into my brain…

  • America’s New Millions of Uninsureds

    As more and more Americans go online to report their experiences with Obamacare, there’s an undeniable truth emerging: the Obama administration and the Democrat party have created a federal program to insure their famously promoted forty million uninsured Americans by uninsuring untold millions of previously contentedly insured Americans. There are endless negative accounts out there from middle class Americans who had been making their way through their lives, many of them self-employed entrepreneurs, who while not perfectly satisfied with their health insurance premiums and their policy limitations, nevertheless found them acceptable and affordable. And what do they say?

    They are stunned by what their federal government has done to them with a legislative mandate that, according to one of the three most powerful Democrats in the land at that time, had to be passed before we could see what is in it. These affected Americans are now seeing what is in it and there is nothing there they would have approved had they been given the reasonable, democratic opportunity to do what their congress should have allowed them instead of cramming down the nation’s throat in a totally partisan vote.

    The entire process of enacting Obamacare was driven by the Democrat’s drummed-up urgent need to insure thirty to forty million Americans who had no health coverage. Totally ignored was the reality that many millions of these uninsured were young people who traditionally have avoided the expensive burden of health care insurance until they married and started families or until they reached an age where the odds became less in their favor to remain uninsured. Also in that cohort of uninsured were millions of people who were in this country illegally, yet availing themselves of our health care systems through hospital emergency rooms that would not and could not turn them away. To fill out that apocryphal 30 to 40 million figure the Democrats and their complicit mainstream media kept throwing at us, add in the millions of people who simply participate in our society at such a disinterested, minimal level as to never make any attempt to obtain any form of health care, except like the illegals, through the emergency room.

    So who are these new uninsured? They’re the folks posting all over the Internet about their health insurance premiums doubling or tripling all while their deductibles have also increased to the point where virtually none of their previously covered routine medical needs are now covered. Think about that: In order to insure the uninsured young, illegals and irresponsibles, these responsible Americans have effectively lost their own coverage all while being victimized by this federal knockout. Lost their insurance? They’ve lost their insurance because the new, higher deductibles mean that virtually all of their routine medical coverage is now their responsibility, not their insurers.

    For millions of them, their previously acceptable health care insurance has been converted without their consent, or even any opportunity to express their concerns, into a catastrophic insurance policy that would have, prior to Obamacare’s passage, been available to them at a fraction of the premiums they will now have to pay. The hard, cold actuality is that Barack Obama took health care away from these folks to give it to those he favors. The bitter, cruel reality is that these previously satisfactorily insured Americans have been de-insured by this legislative craziness imposed on this country by the Socialist Democrat party. These newly dispossessed citizens should found an activist organization and call it:

    America’s New Uninsured…

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • You Shouldn’t Keep AARP. Period.

    Among the many businesses that ultimately may be harmed by the disastrous Unaffordable Care Act is one that couldn’t be more deserving: AARP. Founded more than half a century ago as a non-profit advocacy organization for senior Americans, AARP has been taken over and completely corrupted by leftist propagandists, who have gradually converted it into a huge money-making advocacy machine for the substantial socialist wing of the Democratic Party. That was glaringly evident in the way AARP shilled for the passage of ObamaCare from the outset of the legislative process. Far less obvious to the public was that AARP was positioning itself and its lucrative billion-plus-dollars-a-year insurance business to profit from the changes to be imposed upon the nation by this government health care takeover.

    So, as someone who long ago severed his ties with this leftist organization, I was not surprised by an article at the Daily Caller last week revealing that AARP and one of its lesser-known partners, the Herndon Alliance, a truly leftist group, weren’t just cheerleaders for ObamaCare; they were planners and developers, responsible for the now infamous and deliberately deceitful sales pitch so oft repeated by our clueless chief executive that “if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance.” The concluding and definitive “Period!” was likely an imprudent, slapdash attempt at sincerity added to the message by the sock-puppet president to make himself appear more credible. In any case, it is now apparent that the big lie was indeed a monumental lie, calculatingly contrived by a messaging organization to sell the American public a pig in a poke. Follow that pig link and tell me if you don’t suspect that the self-admitted dog-eater in the White House didn’t try to sell Americans one big sack of canine crud.

    Now, according to the Daily Caller report, many of AARP’s members are angry with the organization for helping Obama peddle that sack of purulent pooch. They should well be angry, because their so-called watchdog organization sold their interests down the river to further the political interests of Democrat leftists, not to mention AARP’s own bottom line. So we should all hope that seniors realize they’ve been had and leave AARP for less politicized senior advocacy organizations. They’re out there and growing as more folks wake up to the true intentions of AARP.

    And please, you diehards, spare me the argument that AARP is a beneficent non-profit organization that exists to aid seniors. That, like their overpriced insurance, is as big a lie as “If you like your insurance you can keep your insurance.”

    And you can put a big fat “Period!” on that.

    Crossposted at American Thinker.

  • Could the Lure of a Pulitzer Trump Obama’s Nobel?

    There is growing speculation among conservatives that many Democrats may be looking to distance themselves from their once infallible leader. It appears that even some of Obama’s former true believers are finding in this ObamaCare boondoggle that that there is less truth than they originally were led to believe when it comes to this prevaricating president. While I definitely agree that there is growing discontent within the liberal ranks, I believe there’s another threat coming for Obama that may be even more devastating than being deserted by his fellow Democrats and the voters who put him in office.

    Remember, this unknown, inexperienced, Chicago politician only survived the primary against Hillary Clinton and the subsequent general election because the supposed watchdog media refused to do their jobs and investigate a résumé containing so many black holes and lack of substantiation that it would never have made it through the routine vetting required in the usual corporate hiring process. What America didn’t know about young Barack far outweighed what we did know but the liberal media was far more consumed by the liberal dream of a Black president than they were by the possibility that he might not be qualified for the job. They were so obsessed with their politically correct vision that they even turned against their previous liberal love interest, Hillary Clinton. Through four years of Obama’s first term and through re-election, the media stubbornly refused to do their jobs and find out for their viewers and readers just who this man really is.

    But what if that should change? As the Obama White House comes under more frequent and pointed criticism for its arrogant treatment of the media and more revelations of continuing, systemic dishonesty come to light, just how long will it be before some enterprising editor wakes up to the opportunity that his very own equivalent of the Pentagon Papers or Deep Throat/Watergate could be staring him right in the face? All he need do is assign an investigative team to find out just how extensive the dishonesty surrounding this, up until now, unexamined president really is and how deep into his past it goes. If you review the past winners of The Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, you will discover that, unlike other categories such as international reporting, many of the awards have gone to smaller newspapers, not just the dominant liberal publications like the NYT, WaPo, the Chicago Trib and LA Times. Yes, the big papers still dominate the category but lesser lights also have a chance to grab this gold ring of journalism and sometimes succeed. And every editor and reporter out there knows that once bestowed, Pulitzer Prize Winner is a lifetime honorific that confers professional esteem and career benefits right up until it features prominently in your celebrity obituary, a tempting lure for sure.

    Do you not suppose that thought already may be percolating in the minds of some of those who decide the course of those smaller, but still significant, publications? And can you not imagine that the grating, high-handed manner in which the White House is attempting to control all media coverage isn’t fueling at least a few such mutinous thoughts? Journalists are supposedly ingrained with an eagerness to expose the unseemly, especially if they are the first in their field to do so, to scoop the story. It can’t have been easy for some of the less liberal among both reporters and editors to have been forced to tamp down their professional curiosity for five years or more so as to protect America’s first black president, especially in less politically doctrinaire news organizations scattered about flyover country.

    So while Obama’s downfall might originate there in the hinterlands he so disdains, it is exponentially more dangerous for Barack Obama that there may be a publisher and editor in New York, Washington, Chicago, or Los Angeles, at one of the titan organizations with the requisite resources, who’s tiring of the growing arrogance of the administration in its media dealings. It is not completely far-fetched to consider that as the outright dishonesty and stonewalling of this supposedly most transparent of administrations continues and expands, some publishing mogul may be weighing the prestige awaiting his newspaper should it be the first to expose the truth of Barack Obama’s too-good-to-be-true political ascent. And in an age of declining readers and ad revenues, an ongoing series of blockbuster revelations about the greatest fraud ever perpetrated might be a way to change that trend.

    As for the investigators themselves, I’ll wager there are already some disenchanted reporters who are beginning to envision themselves as future Woodwards and Bernsteins, but on an even grander scale. And unlike those two reporters of an earlier era, any investigators of Obama’s mysterious past would have far more avenues of enquiry and who knows how many potential Deep Throats who, upon learning that the media is finally interested in listening to them, might reveal all sorts of information about Obama’s past that could disprove the official version and explain why there are so many blank areas in Obama’s résumé. And why he should never have been president. It will be interesting to see if the lure of a Pulitzer can trump a Nobel.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • You lie!

    When that charge was yelled out during Obama’s address to Congress, the liberal media were in lockstep in their condemnation of the South Carolina congressman, Joe Wilson, who admittedly violated congressional protocol in defensible defense of his constituents and his country. Likewise, author, Jack Cashill, has for years been publishing growing evidence here at American Thinker that the man who calls himself Barack Hussein Obama is not what he appears to be. A Cashill piece posted yesterday elicited a comment with a link to a telephone interview from a black radio talk show to a woman in Hawaii who admits she knew Obama only peripherally in his formative years after his return from Indonesia. But her peripheral observations are damning if true.

    Most striking is her attestation that Barry, as she calls him, was a pathological liar, one of those that we’ve all encountered, who lies gratuitously, but most especially when the lie enhances the worth of the liar. Six years into the Obama administration it is easy to see that what that female teenager in Hawaii observed as self-serving, adolescent behavior is now being manifested on a national and global level as a continuing quest for self-aggrandizement by a man who has already achieved the political pinnacle.

    As Cashill noted, just this week we were served up another example of blatant dishonesty by this pathological president when his minions admitted that he did in fact know his previously disowned, troubled African uncle in Massachusetts. Not only did Barry have contact with the uncle he had earlier professed not to know, the White House now admits he actually lived with the man. The clumsy admission and attempted dodge to protect the president from yet another provable lie is so farfetched as to be laughable. How on earth does Jay Carney sleep at night? Their contention is that when they said the president had never known his wayward uncle it was because the media staff issuing that statement had not checked with the president to determine its validity. What an absolute crock! Sure, an uncle of the president, in this country illegally, is arrested on drunk-driving charges and faced with deportation and the White House press office issues a statement of total denial of contact with the perp by the prez without consulting said prez. Folks, they are so arrogantly supreme as to believe you will accept this crap.

    If you watched and listened to Reverend Manning’s radio interview with the woman in Hawaii, you could not help but note her multiple references to Barry Soetoro’s propensity for telling self-promoting lies. Supporting her charge is his behavior that has never changed in the five years of an Obama presidency that have left a trail of lies across America’s political landscape never before seen. Through Fast and Furious, the Benghazi treachery, IRS corruption and most of all, Obamacare, we have seen this is a morally-deficient, mendacious man with absolutely no compunctions about lying large to what he sees as a gullible, passively accepting nation and world, a core quality of a too-confident confidence man. Why is he so self-assured? Perhaps a good example is when a corrupt media and a dishonest Democrat party circles the wagons and covers for him when a sincere congressman yells the honest truth:

    You lie!

    Crossposted at American Thinker.

    Poetrooper encourages you to listen to the radio interview linked above.

  • What You Lose with NBC News

    As someone who wouldn’t watch NBC Nightly News even if held at gunpoint by a crazed Brian Williams fan (ditto for Today) I must rely on the reporting of Brent Bozell’s network watchdog website Newsbusters.org, which usually gets it right, for the truth of this statement:

    After going 72 hours without even mentioning ObamaCare on its air waves, NBC’s continued refusal to cover the disastrous policy on Thursday’s Nightly News or Friday’s Today brought that total up to 96 hours. Amazingly, Friday’s Today had the audacity to include two segments about Vice President Joe Biden buying lunch at a Washington D.C. sandwich shop rather provide any Obamacare updates.

    Think about that folks: Here our nation is embroiled in the biggest government-created domestic mess it has experienced in decades, perhaps ever, and one of the supposed top three broadcast network news shows in the country and its morning counterpart have not even mentioned the subject in 96 hours? That’s four full days for the math deficient. And who knows what that figure will be by the time you read this. Apparently the term news means something elitely different in New York City Speak. Worse, what can their nationwide audience perceive as current news when the main issues of the day are being kept from them by the very folks they trust to provide it? You simply could not find a more on-point application of the expression misplaced trust if you searched forever.

    What is really sad is that this is the most watched of the three major network evening news shows, likely in part to superficial soccer-mom fascination with William’s lantern-jawed and carefully-coiffed good looks. That’s probably true as well for the audience of Matt Lauer, the urbane morning metrosexual on Today. My soccer-mom hit may be a tad unfair but female viewers do dominate, especially for morning news shows, which may mean NBC sees their viewing audience as being as shallow as their broadcast content. Before you ladies berate me in the comments, kindly note those mays. Recall that a majority of those soccer-moms voted for another charming metrosexual, Barack Obama, not once but twice.

    But a certainty it is that NBC’s content will remain shallow and limited in scope as long as NBC’s vacuous viewers accept this ideological censoring of what they are permitted to know about national affairs. And in this case, those are affairs of major health consequences to them and their sniffling, little red-nosed rug rats and croupy, coughing curtain climbers.

    This is not just some legislative kerfuffle that NBC is ignoring; it is the largest, most comprehensive package of legislation since LBJ’s War on Poverty, affecting a sixth of our still unrecovered economy. And it’s in big, big trouble, so much so that it is in serious risk of repeal before it can crater the health insurance industry and bankrupt millions of Americans. Yet NBC considers this historic liberal overreach not worthy of their broadcast time? I saw, while looking for broadcast figures, that NBC is devoting significant airtime to the Kennedy assassination this week. But of course, hours of adulation can be allocated to the continuing canonization of another Kennedy, another skirt-chasing, lionized liberal icon fifty years dead, who set the standard for future Democrats, both presidents like Bill Clinton and pretenders like John Edwards. But no, not a minute was available to cover the worst liberal legislative clusterfark in the same five decades. We all know that had this been a Republican act, poor JFK would have been hard pressed to get an occasional mention this week at NBC amid all the scenery-chewing, mouth-frothing outrage spewing from Rockefeller Center. Do you suppose NBC might stand for Network Butt Covering for Obama? Here’s some advice for those of you who daily follow Brian and Matt:
    If you form your views from NBC News, you’re a loser in multiple meanings of the term. Try FOX.

    Crossposted at American Thinker in an edited form.