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

Author: Poetrooper

  • Peaceful George… Another Son of Obama

    Here we go again with another unprovoked attack on a white senior citizen by a Son of Obama, this time in that bastion of entrenched conservatism, Connecticut. According to New Haven police, a 71-year-old white man who had just attended a mayoral campaign political rally was sitting on a bench in Goffe Street Park eating a post-rally hamburger when he was approached by Jorge de la Paz, 35. Don’t let that Spanish appellation mislead you –Jorge, as his subsequent actions demonstrated, is a member in good standing of the black thugocracy.

    The police say Jorge approached the white senior and demanded that he leave the park, telling the old guy that, “He shouldn’t be in his park where young black kids are playing.” When the obstinate old coot stood his ground, he promptly got pounded into it by Jorge who reportedly smacked the surly septuagenarian several times in the face knocking him to the ground, according to multiple witnesses. Jorge then allegedly threatened to go get a gun, a witness reported.

    Jorge, demonstrating the usual mental acuity of a Son of Obama, hung around following the assault and only jack-rabbited when the police arrived. When he was apprehended he was reportedly well-prepared for further martial engagement. Police confiscated a 9mm Sig Sauer P239, a magazine containing five hollow-point rounds, a set of brass knuckles, and two voter registration cards in his name. It would seem all those draconian gun control laws they have in Connecticut really made an impression on Citizen Jorge, who is a convicted felon pending trial on charges of illegal possession of a firearm in a vehicle and numerous drug violations. Yep, those strict gun laws really work, don’t they?

    You have to give grudging credit to Citizen Jorge, who is apparently such a devoted Son of Obama that he not only whupped that old cracka who dared come into a black park but he so admires the Black Messiah that he availed himself of the means to vote for him twice. Jorge de la Paz, which, by the way, means George of the Peace, or more colloquially, Peaceful George, will probably organize the other Sons of Obama sharing the slammer with him into a real voter bloc with voting capabilities far beyond their actual numbers.

    Is this a great country or what?

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • The Holder-Hasan Disconnect

    Recently, Attorney General Eric Holder, our nation’s highest legal authority, failed to attend a conference of all the nations’ highest authorities on terrorism. Indeed, a list of the attendees includes everyone who is someone in the War on Terror – except, quite glaringly, the commander-in-chief, the attorney general, and that gray eminence behind the scrim, Valerie Jarrett.

    Of course, if the administration truly believes that terrorism is criminal in nature rather than terroristic warfare – in other words, that Islamic terrorism should be adjudicated in domestic courts as criminal violations of U.S. statutes rather than treated as aggressive acts of war directed against the American people – who better to chair such a high-level conference on terrorism than the very person who sits at the pinnacle of our federal prosecutorial system?

    It truly is not difficult to find motive in these political machinations: plausible deniability leaps first to mind. If I’m not there, I can’t be blamed for any negative consequences of this forum.

    Second observation: We, who wield the executive power in this administration, won’t have to account for our previous comments that al-Qaeda is on the run in the face of this week’s submissive folding of the American flag from the entryways of embassies throughout the Middle East.

    The supposedly defeated al-Qaeda supposedly roared a threat of imminent danger and destruction, and the Obama/Kerry State Department rolled on its back, assuming the universal position of submission. That word, submission, is highly significant to Islamic terrorists.

    Now think about that in light of the highest-profile terrorist event extant in this country: the trial at Fort Hood, Texas of the terrorist killer, Nidal Hasan, an Army doctor, who, while proclaiming his allegiance to Allah, gunned down 43 American soldiers and/or their family members, killing fourteen. The Obama administration had to reluctantly yield prosecution to the system of military justice because the perpetrator was a serving officer and therefore fully under the judicial authority of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. However, the shamefully politically correct governance of the Army, under the mouse-meek leadership of a four-star general whose name rightly resembles dumpster, has chosen to follow the Obama administration’s determination that an Islamic militant, shouting, “Allahu Akbar” as he gunned down the innocent and unaware, constitutes workplace violence rather than the Islamic terrorism it truly was.

    From the perp himself:

    Hasan, a Muslim American, does not deny being the gunman. In a brief opening statement today at his trial, which opened at the fort where his shooting spree took place, he declared: “The evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.”

    Hasan called himself a “mujahedeen,” or a Muslim holy warrior. “We mujahedeen are imperfect soldiers trying to form a perfect religion. I apologize for any mistakes I made in this endeavor,” he said.

    So, as the trial begins, Nidal Hasan, legally representing himself at the proceedings at Fort Hood, describes himself as a mujahedeen, a soldier, admitting that he was, in fact, the shooter. He clearly believes himself to be a soldier in Allah’s vanguard and his murderous actions as the religiously justifiable slaughter of the enemies of Islam. To my way of thinking, that clearly renders laughable, although tragically so, the Obama administration’s claim that this deadly event was “workplace violence,” a designation that, while covering the administration’s politically correct ass, also deprives the victims and survivors of this tragedy of those federal benefits due them as victims of an act of war.

    One can only find it ironic that our federal government, on the eve of the opening of the military trial of America’s most visible and confessed Islamic terrorist, convenes a plenum of the highest order in Washington, D.C. to discuss Islamic threats to our society, and the ultimate authorities on how those threats are to be dealt with, both militarily and judicially, our commander-in-chief and our attorney general, are busy playing golf or pursuing other such imperatives. Were this not merely an action of workplace violence, but rather an act of Islamic terrorism, as the accused is so clearly confessing to, Barack Obama and, especially, Eric Holder, might be viewed as AWOL. That’s “absent without leave” for you civilians.

    In the increasingly Alice in Wonderland world that the Obama administration has become, we are faced with the reality of federal law enforcement being unwilling to accept the at-trial self-characterization of a Muslim terrorist that he is, in fact, exactly that: a Muslim terrorist, eagerly killing Americans in an overt and deliberate act of war. Hasan is the happy warrior, readily confessing to the sacred motives of his murderous massacre. But according to our federal justice department and our commander-in-chief, it’s “Nope, what the hell does he know? It was nothing more than an act of workplace violence.”

    And that, folks, is the Holder-Hasan Disconnect, leaving us to conclude that it has no longer become a question of just how stupid the Obama administration thinks the American people are and how much of their politically correct BS they can make us swallow. Rather, the question has become:

    “Just how stupid is the Obama administration?”

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Hold-out Holder

    Yesterday Rick Moran posted a piece decrying the absence of our prez from a highest level gathering of all of America’s top government experts on combatting terror. While all these top echelon executives, cabinet secretaries, departmental directors, military leaders, etc., were gathered on a Saturday in the nation’s capital to discuss the purportedly most serious security threat to America and her diplomatic picket lines in the Middle East since 9/11, our disengaged supreme leader apparently thought his golf game more deserving of his attention than a seriously lethal (as defined by his own agencies) threat to American interests. Thus our counter-terror first team met without the team’s leader, the only person with the lawful authority to act on any determinations of that team.

    However, that is not the issue I found to be so curious about this gathering of counter-terror mandarins. Rather, I was struck by one particular absence on that list of attendees, that of our attorney general, Eric Holder. In an administration that has declared unequivocally that terrorism directed against American citizens and properties is not an act of war but rather criminal activity to be adjudicated in courts of law by juries of peers, it strikes me as incredibly remiss that in such a high level anti-terrorist conclave, the nation’s ultimate legal authority was not present.

    Think about that: we are informed that America is facing the most serious terror threat since 9/11 and yet it is not apparently severe enough to require the attendance of the two most critical players, the commander-in-chief and the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. What smells like a Detroit dumpster about this scenario?

    Everything…

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Profiling or Situational Awareness?

    Recently American Thinker ran a piece, “Profiling, a Darwinian Necessity,” in which author, Richard Butrick, correctly identified the tendency to observe one’s surroundings and perceive threats to be a survival mechanism genetically hardwired into human brains, regardless of race or ethnicity.

    Butrick’s observation got me to thinking back to my days as a combat infantryman NCO in Vietnam. The truth of his premise allowed me to be here now writing this.

    Looking back to those long-ago years, it’s difficult to pinpoint when, as a private, I first heard some Army officer or NCO use the term situational awareness. Like most young privates, I likely paid little heed to the critical, even mortal, importance of that term.

    But with more experience in the field as an infantryman, it became obvious to me that one of the essential skills of a successful warrior is a finely honed proficiency in situational awareness. That consists of being constantly aware of where you are at what time, of who is with you and where they are in relation to you, of what direction all of you are moving and into what kind of terrain, and most importantly, what potentially lethal threat lies ahead or to your flanks (and sometimes, in really tough times, behind you). An awareness of all that input from your surrounding environment allows a functioning assessment of the risk to yourself and your men and the ability to determine if that risk is reasonable.

    And most importantly, containable and controllable.

    Learning to be situationally aware is the bedrock of being a successful warrior. It is an absolutely indispensable requirement for infantry officers and NCOs who are looking to bring their troops home safely. The key to being skilled at situational awareness is the ability to learn from experience so that one recognizes patterns of both physical situations and human behaviors and is able to sort out those that are risky from those that pose a true deadly threat. And the more refined your warfighting missions become, the greater the requirement for situational awareness skills. Those who have it perfected to greatest degree are those who make up our special operations forces. Some of those people have situational awareness honed to such an extent as to seem clairvoyant.

    But this is a skill that is not limited to soldiers on the ground. Every aviator, civilian and military, has to be constantly aware of absolutely everything occurring in the environment surrounding his aircraft. I can imagine that this is magnified a thousandfold for combat helicopter pilots and crews. All first responders must have well-developed situational awareness skills, and that is why, when injected into emergency environments, they are asking a steady stream of rapid-fire questions: to enhance their awareness of what is happening and what has happened. Finally, there is probably no greater demand on any human being for top-notch situational awareness skills than on a ship’s captain, especially those commanding war vessels. Ship captains probably have better situational skills when sleeping than most fully-awake civilians.

    So what does all this have to do with profiling? Well, first of all, profiling just happens to be the application of situational awareness skills to our everyday environment. The process of assessing that environment and our position in it and the potential dangers present is in full and constant operation for those who must deal with the threats to that society.

    Since it is the police who seem to come in for the greatest criticism from the lefties with regard to profiling, let’s look at how situational awareness is an essential skill for any police officer. Consider for a moment how we train young rookie cops; we pair them with veteran officers so that they can benefit from the latter’s experiences. And just what are those experiences conveyed to the rookie? They are patterns of circumstances and human behaviors that are fed into the rookie’s brain to help form an accurate assessment of his true situational awareness, which can have lethal consequences if ignored.

    I have many times seen Texas state troopers out in the endless miles of Interstate 10, between San Antonio and El Paso, involved in roadside pullovers of large BMWs, Mercedes, and Escalades with California or Florida plates, driven by black or Hispanic males. Are they, the cops, profiling? Bet your butt they are. But why is that? How about because the history of major drug busts on I-10 in West Texas, the primary conduit between Southern California (read: Tijuana) and Florida, involves the very types of drivers the Texas troopers tend to pull over.

    Those troopers are guilty of employing nothing more than situational awareness in their patrolling of those endless miles of Interstate 10. There is a great likelihood that black or Hispanic males driving luxury vehicles have a high correlation with cross-continent drug-haulers. In that process, do some innocents get stopped and temporarily inconvenienced? Sure they do. But is that of any greater import than the inconvenience we all suffer in the security measures associated with contemporary air travel? In every airport, we meekly submit because it’s for the greater good of America. Isn’t halting the ground flow of drugs between Tijuana and Miami equally beneficial to the well-being of America?

    I’ve used a rather specific example here (which I’m sure will be denied by the Texas Department of Public Safety), but the truth is that profiling is practiced by them and all other law enforcement agencies on a regular basis across America. And for good reason: profiling helps put away bad guys. Liberals can scream in protest all they want, but the simple, incontrovertible truth is that such profiling helps take bad guys off the street and out of circulation. I realize that truth means little to people such as this one, who laments the fact that crime is going down because we’re locking up those bad guys. Such ignorance can only be described as sad.

    Try to comprehend the liberal mind…

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • The Green Sheen on This Weiner

    Living many years as a bachelor, I learned early on that when taking the last couple of hotdogs from a package in the fridge, it was wise to scan them closely for any iridescent signs of spoilage, which usually presented as a tell-tale, greenish, and sometimes, when in an advanced state of putrefaction a purplish sheen. That tint of taint was enough to warn me off and prevent my eating such a suspect substance. Even then, young and dumb as I was, I had to question what poisonous consequences might arise from the ingestion of such a fluorescently fouled frank?

    Unfortunately, it appears that too many voters in New York City are oblivious to this florid, tell-tale tint of taint on one of their current candidates and are willing to swallow whole, a truly toxic Weiner in their upcoming mayoral race. Little Anthony, as I came to view him in his former incarnation as a corrosively combative congressman, is attempting to sell himself to New York voters as a political hotdog when he is, in fact, a poisonously green wienie, who, with his dangerous, risk-taking proclivities could expose the city to all sorts of financial liabilities through his attempts at Internet intercourse.

    New Yorkers would do well to look westward to San Diego where another mayor with Anthony Weiner’s unzipped urges is about to unleash an avalanche of sexual harassment litigation against the citizenry who elected him. The mayor likely will never pay a dime of his own funds, but the already overtaxed people of San Diego can count on coughing up the big bucks for the simple offense of electing a lecher who used the power of his office to further his sexual depredations.

    The office of the mayor of New York City is one of the most powerful elected offices in the world. To hand all that power to a man who has clearly demonstrated his inability to control his sexual impulses should give thinking New Yorkers pause for thought. If ever there were a wienie with the green sheen of spoilage on it, that arrogant hotdog seeking renewed political power in New York is it. And considering little Anthony’s ongoing, continued, sexual predations, he may have advanced his own wienie’s spoilage to the purple stage.

    And that could cost New Yorkers a lot of green…

    Crossposted from American Thinker

  • Politics Disguised as the Fog of War

    That title is not mine; it’s taken from an excellent article by Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal titled The Inconvenient Truth About Benghazi. Noonan went a little wobbly back in the 2008 campaign when she, like so many others, let her emotions overrule her commonsense judgment about Barack Obama. This latest posting at the WSJ shows she’s stable and clear headed once again. In fact, it is the best explanation I’ve read yet as to why there was no effective military response by American forces.

    Quite simply, there was no aggressive response because, as we’ve long suspected, a political decision was made early on not to respond. It was not that we didn’t have forces available, both air assets and troops, ready and able to intervene; despite all the excuses made by the administration and even our dishonorable military commanders, it wasn’t that we couldn’t do something, it was because a decision had been made that we were not going to do anything.
    As Noonan explains, the truth that this was a terrorist attack was politically inconvenient to the Obama 2012 re-election campaign. The Democrats, including their leader, had been gloating that with the demise of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda was dead, no longer a serious threat to American interests. An Al Qaeda led attack on a sovereign American possession, even on foreign soil, put the lie to that boast. More importantly, such aggression by Al Qaeda required an aggressive response by our military forces.

    On the other hand, and this is where Noonan nails it, a mere out of control demonstration by angry Muslims, outraged over a sophomoric You Tube video, would not require a military response. In fact, an American military response to a mere riot would be a clearly inappropriate intervention into the sovereign affairs of Libya. And right there, folks, is the answer as to why the orders to stand down were issued. In order to meet the political needs of the Obama re-election campaign, this event could not be seen as a terrorist attack so it was hurriedly morphed into a deadly demonstration incited by an American-made video.
    The political decision to remake this Al Qaeda attack into a demonstration didn’t come from the military, even though the current command structure is clearly carrying water for the Obama administration; nor did it come, as the White house has claimed, from the intelligence community. The recent congressional whistleblower testimony makes that clear. So that leaves Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Obama’s White House, most likely working in collusion, to create the false narrative. Their motive seems fairly simple: maintaining Democrat control of the executive branch.

    That’s cold, really cold; a political decision is made that a terrorist attack must be presented to American voters as a demonstration and therefore no military response is possible, no matter how dire the consequences may become for those under attack. As we now know, it was a death sentence for four Americans, one of whom was our ambassador to that country. What we don’t know is who the scheming, calculating politicos were who made that cold, deadly decision.

    Not yet anyway…

    Go read Noonan’s entire article for the best dissection of this political scheme to date.

    Crossposted at American Thinker.

  • The President Who Can’t Shoot Straight

    Millions of us out here in flyover country have long been of the opinion that Barack Obama is not a straight shooter. This weekend he proved it. During the White House Easter Egg Roll, the handlers gathered the kids around the half-court to watch the Prez, whom the press has led us to believe for several years now is quite skilled in the game, shoot some free-throws and layups.

    Bad move, handlers. Much to the dismay of all those who have worked so hard to create this faux image of our chief executive as a skilled athlete (skeet-shooting comes to mind) it became apparent rather quickly that this Prez can’t shoot straight. Out of 22 attempts, the Prez managed two, count ’em, two, baskets. Hell I’m a 72 two year old white guy who, like all white men, can’t jump, and I’d bet some solid money I can do better than 2-22.

    Know what I think? He choked. After missing the first couple in front of his young audience, he became so unnerved he lost his cool and flubbed the rest away. Other than providing those of us not among his admirers with something to chuckle about it, adds to the mounting evidence that this guy is not, and never has been genuine in any way, merely a construct of the liberal media and the Democratic political machine. As we have long held, he’s a lightweight in over his head and trying to perform above his limited capacity in both politics and basketball.

    “So what? The guy got rattled,” will say his supporters. Don’t know about you but in this very dangerous world, I’m not real happy about strategic, command decisions being made by a commander-in-chief who gets rattled when his short-comings become obvious to a bunch of kids on an Easter Egg Roll. You tell me that Putin the Stud isn’t sitting there in the Kremlin chuckling as he watches the ever-repeating video loop of our hapless commander-in-chief proving the myth of his vaunted athletic skills for a world audience. And there have to be scores of Republicans on Capitol Hill thinking, “See, we told he’s not a straight-shooter!” Kim Jong Un is probably sitting in his war room in Pyongyang thinking, “Hell, I can whip that wimp!”

    They, Putin, Kim and a whole lotta folks out here in flyover country and around the world have to be thinking that instead of spending a weekend trip to Florida to pick up golfing tips from Tiger Woods, the Prez could have better spent that time in Miami with LeBron James, learning some basics. One also can’t help but wonder if this lackluster performance might not be a portent of what’s to come in B-Ball Barack’s second big tournament: lots of dribbling, trash talk and flashy shooting, but minimal scoring.

    It’s becoming ever more obvious, with every week that passes, that to the watching world Barack Obama is the Prez who can’t shoot straight.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • A Tragic, Vicious Irony

    Mark Kelly, retired Navy fighter pilot and former astronaut, husband of former Congresswoman, Gabby Giffords, is much in the news right now as he pushes for stricter gun control across the country. He’s popping up on the tube everywhere and Internet stories about his gun-purchasing activities abound. While he’s the ideal spokesman for liberals, a former warrior who espouses stricter gun control legislation, there’s a good deal of criticism building out there in the blogosphere.

    Much of the negativism has to do with Kelly’s suspicious recent purchase of a .45 semi-automatic pistol and his truly suspicious attempted purchase of a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. The former was consummated under the eye of a camera concealed on Kelly’s person; the latter was thwarted when the gun shop proprietor reasoned that Kelly would have to lie on the federal firearms form in order to complete the purchase. That proprietor wisely returned Kelly’s purchase money and announced the gun would be auctioned off and the proceeds, about $1,500, donated to charity.

    Once Kelly’s presence in the gun shop got into the news, he responded that he was simply trying to prove the weakness of our existing gun laws and that he never intended to keep the AR-15, as he did so obviously intend to do with the handgun as his own video revealed. However, there are many of us who smell a rat in there somewhere because Kelly did not surreptitiously video the rifle purchase nor did he mention it at all in his video. That issue likely will never be resolved.

    However, another incident involving Kelly this past week, has many bloggers pointing out it makes Kelly a poor spokesman for the gun grabber crowd. While walking with his family on a California beach, a family dog, a pit bull, attacked and killed a baby seal. The video of the event is gruesome and tragic; when the dog is finally pulled away from its victim the sight of its bloody jaws is a bright, scarlet reminder of just what an out-of-control canine is capable of doing.

    While reports vary as to who actually owns the dog, the Kelly-Giffords or one of their children, the dog is a member of their family and was on the beach with them with Kelly present as the presumed alpha male. It is also disputed as to whether the dog was allowed to roam freely or broke away from someone’s grasp. The breed of the dog is also disputed with the Kelly’s reportedly calling him an English bulldog, which he obviously isn’t and the media referring to him as a pit bull which is my own observation.

    Whatever, bloggers are pointing out that the dog clearly demonstrated that in incapable hands it was assuredly capable of lethal violence. And therein lies the criticism of Kelly: A man whose family brings a potentially lethal canine to a public beach and then fails to maintain control with the result being the death of a helpless baby seal is hardly the man to be lecturing the rest of us on how to better control our own lethal weapons. And just as liberals always blame the weapon, meaning guns most usually, many of them are blaming the dog in this case.

    Wiser folks are pointing to the truth that many things in life can bring tragic consequences but usually not when they are in the hands of those who know how to handle them responsibly. Just as dogs with a propensity to attack other animals or even humans, need to be managed by owners who realize and respect the harm they can do if not handled properly, gun grabbers should focus less on inanimate guns and more on the propensity for vicious and lethal use of guns by those like the mentally ill young man who shot Kelly’s wife.

    Jared Loughner was a suspected threat, yet because of too-liberal watchdog laws restricting law enforcement, educational institutions and society as a whole from reporting suspected mental illness, as well as the failure of his parents to seek help for the obviously ill young man, he was allowed to roam free and lawfully obtain weapons until he carried out a brutal and deadly attack like an out-of-control pit bull.

    What a tragic, vicious irony…

    Crossposted at American Thinker