Author: Poetrooper

In what is surely to be seen on the right as a victory over political correctness, ESPN, the ever more left leaning sports network, has announced that country boy, Hank Williams, Jr., and his rowdy, booming country rock anthem that welcomed viewers to Monday Night Football for more than two decades, will be returning this season. ESPN fired Williams six years ago for his sin of failing to worship at the altar of Obamanism. For a single on-air comparison of Obama to Hitler, an offense that would go largely unremarked in this time of vile, scatological profanities aimed at our president by even anchor personalities, Hank’s longtime association was ended with a terse announcement of termination. That may not have signaled the beginning of ESPN’s decline into political correctness but it surely marked a waypoint on the leftward course that has continued, losing them millions of subscribers year after year.

ESPN reverted back to their previous musical intro for MNF but it failed to welcome you into the game with the boisterous enthusiasm of good ol’ Bocephus and his driving anthem to you, everyman, who, blue or white collar, loved feeling for that short while, like one of his rowdy friends as you sat back and cracked open a cold one, waiting for that opening kickoff. That Williams off-air is a solid Republican and 2d Amendment supporter provided a small bit of additional comfort when you knew that some smarmy ESPN talking head might berate you with some leftist agitprop before the game ended.

So is this return to the country meme acknowledgment by ESPN suits that their preferred, chardonnay sipping, enlightened liberal audiences simply aren’t sufficient to pay the bills much less to generate a profit? Are they finally recognizing what all those departing subscribers have been telling them loudly by the tens of thousands, “Keep your damned politics outta my sports!” Could it be that some common sense has soaked through those skulls marinated in urban elite political correctness? The decision makers at ESPN, from executive suites and corporate board rooms down through every production facility would do themselves well to listen to Hank’s militant ode to conservative independence, “A Country Boy Can Survive” where Williams lays out a defiant code of self-reliance that, while most Americans can no longer live up to, they still firmly embrace the sentiment.

I live back in the woods, you see
My woman and the kids, and the dogs, and me
I got a shotgun, a rifle, and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk ’til dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke, too
Ain’t too many things these old boys can’t do
We grow good old tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

It would appear to this ol’ small town boy that country boy, Hank Williams, Jr., most assuredly has.

Crossposted at American Thinker

Actually that’s not what the article says but we know instinctively that Ol’ Poe is right with his title. AL.com, an Alabama website, is reporting that when authorities reinstated work requirements for able-bodied persons to receive food stamps, the number of recipients fell dramatically. From AL.com:

During the economic downturn of 2011-2013, several states – including Alabama – waived the SNAP work requirements in response to high unemployment. It was reinstituted for 54 counties on Jan. 1, 2016 and for the remaining 13 on Jan. 1, 2017. As of April 2017, the highest jobless rate among the 13 previously excluded counties was in Wilcox County, which reported a state-high unemployment rate of 11.7 percent, down more than 11 percentage points from the county’s jobless rate for the same month of 2011.

Ending the exemption has dramatically cut the number of SNAP recipients in the counties.

As of Jan. 1, 2017, there were 13,663 able-bodied adults without dependents receiving food stamps statewide. That number dropped to 7,483 by May 1, 2017. Among the 13 counties, there were 5,538 adults ages 18-50 without dependents receiving food stamps as of Jan. 1, 2017. That number dropped to 831 – a decline of about 85 percent – by May 1, 2017.

Statewide, the number of able-bodied adults receiving food stamps has fallen by almost 35,000 people since Jan. 1, 2016. Each recipient receives about $126 a month in benefits.

Do the math: That’s almost $4.5 million a month statewide the taxpayers were paying to feed people who apparently didn’t want to eat badly enough to meet the minimal work requirements; yep, more than $50 million a year to keep all those Alabamans voting Democrat as Lyndon Johnson boasted fifty years earlier. He may not have known how to fight communists but he sure knew his Democrat constituents it seems.

Most of you have likely heard that the University of Missouri, whose administration completely caved in to demands from black student activists over largely disproved campus racism, has suffered declining enrollments as a consequence. What most of us don’t take into account are the real costs in human misery those lower freshmen enrollment numbers carry with them. UM had already shuttered several freshmen dorms last year, the first year after the protests, due to smaller incoming classes, but as the trend continues with another 14% freshman enrollment reduction expected this coming fall, the Missouri legislature has hit the university system budget with a 6.6% reduction in core funding, necessitating the elimination of close to 500 jobs with more than 300 of those at that notoriously “racist” flagship campus in Columbia.

Back when those first dorms closed, few of us likely even paused to consider the associated job losses. But large buildings require maintenance and with these being domiciles, likely numerous housekeeping jobs as well. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to how many of those jobs were held by blacks or other people of color? Since many of the incidents that caused all this grief were found to be hoaxes and the charges of widespread campus racism were found to be largely unfounded until the protests inspired them, this contrived incident drummed up by black Social Justice Warriors clearly has cost many blacks and other people of color their jobs. Once again, the unintended consequences of rampant liberalism has harmed the very folks these rabid liberals say they want to protect.

But now the damages go deeper since concerned parents, white and black, have decided to send their freshmen children to less racially troubled schools. The resultant declining enrollments and tuitions have caused the legislature to enact budget cuts to save $100 million, forcing the UM administration to axe almost 500 positions. Consider the fact that black organizations frequently complain that in layoffs blacks are the first to go. Even if that is not the case here, of 474 jobs on the chopping block, how many of those are likely to be blacks and other people of color, multiple dozens at the least? And what about all those other folks, whites, Asians, Jews, Muslims, who are going to lose their jobs? Were they all mean spirited and racist, deserving of the life crises they will now face?

It is a sad truth, an inconvenient truth, so to speak, that liberals have a tin ear for this sort of irony. One definition for inconvenient is “embarrassing” which certainly is applicable to those whose bad behaviors set in motion these sad events for their people. There’s just one problem with that: Liberals seem to live in a state beyond feeling normal human embarrassment for their screw-ups; they are so steeped in dishonesty and hypocrisy that even when shown the spoiled fruits of their folly they are utterly unfazed and unrepentant, but most importantly, blithely unaccountable.

Crossposted at American Thinker

For as long as I can remember, United Services Automobile Association has been operating in my life, in the peripheries during my early pre-Vietnam days in the Army when NCO’s grumped about the low cost insurance and financial services being offered exclusively to officers, until our time, decades later, in and out of San Antonio, the institution’s home. In those years we had multiple accounts, banking and investing, with the behemoth it had become. In our two decades around and about San Antonio, we had many friends who worked for the growing financial services company who had nothing but praise for the family-friendly corporate culture. In the years I worked in community relations for a United Way agency in San Antonio, I was frequently on the huge corporate campus of USAA as they were a major source of funding and support for non-profit, community support agencies. During that period USAA opened their doors to enlisted military personnel, earning further admiration from this old soldier.

Last week USAA corporate leaders deliberately and decisively drove that great company off the long road of patriotic service it had so long followed and went headlong into the murky ditch of political correctness. by pulling its advertising from the Sean Hannity Show. Worse, they quite deliberately did this at an opportunistic time, when the conservative FOX Network, a respected alternate source of America’s news for the active, retired and veterans’ military communities USAA serves, is being besieged by liberal forces seeking to silence its conservative voice. FOX is, and has been since its inception, a popular favorite with the troops and their families, a voice which reverberates throughout and resonates within the lives of millions of patriotic Americans who wear or once wore the uniform, the overwhelming majority of whom rejected their use as the petri dish of social experimentation imposed on them by their Democrat recent commander in chief and the media monopoly that overwhelmingly supported his liberal aims. What’s more, as The Daily Caller points out, USAA’s excuse that it dropped Hannity because it does not support “opinion” shows is pure hogwash

Leadership at USAA, if you can call it that, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the “S” in their name stands for services, and not services in the sense of providing financial products and securities, but Services in the sense of Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard. Those entrepreneurial officers who founded the company back in 1922 with the express mission of serving the military officers’ community would be horrified by this craven collapse of its long-standing devotion to military culture and cowardly capitulation to the pernicious threat of political correctness. The military community should bury our White House in letters of objection to this move reminding our president that Sean Hannity was likely his single greatest media supporter during the recent campaign and still is. And, yes, Tweets to the Commander in Chief are fine, to encourage him to reach out to USAA to advise them that as the troops are unhappy with USAA’s caving in to liberal craziness and overreach, he as their commander, is by necessity, unhappy as well and suggests a wiser course of action is called for. SecDef Mattis should be copied on absolutely every such communication with the Commander-in-Chief. He might wish to save them for his bedtime reading.

Perhaps a soundly-sleeping General Mattis could keep a few of those left-leaning USAA execs awake at night…

Added: It seems that USAA has reinstated their advertising policy with the Hannity show, according to USAToday.

The San Antonio, Texas-based company said Tuesday it will also start advertising again on other programs where it had suspended ads, including “Hardball” and “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, and Jake Tapper’s “The Lead” on CNN.

While all of the liberal media and, unfortunately, most of the conservative media as well, have their knickers in a real twist because the Republican candidate in a special congressional election in Montana decisively knocked a mouthy Brit reporter on his ass for the sin of being a mouthy reporter. As FOX News is at this moment reporting, all the media brouhaha will likely amount to nothing for the simple reason that in Montana knocking a mouthy Brit reporter on his ass is likely considered to be an act of patriotic public service right up there with Custer fighting the surrounding hordes of savages with hand to hand upon expending the very last round of his ammo.

My thinking is that maybe aspiring conservative congressman, Greg Gianforte has set a new level of proving conservative bonafides that all Republican candidates will henceforth be required to satisfy: To convince your voting public that you really, truly feel their pent-up anger at all these bat-sh*t crazy liberals and their oh so cozily supportive media, you just gotta let it go, Bud, and smack one of those suckers hard enough to put him down for the count. And this is important, really important: Don’t apologize. Look straight into those cameras and say calmly, “I was merely acting on behalf of my constituents.” And then, if you’re really smart, you will say, “And my campaign coffers could really use some contributions to continue this sort of representation of my constituents’ wishes. Then just sit back and watch the money roll in.

Right now I’m mentally picturing my Airborne Ranger, Combat Infantryman Senator, Tom Cotton, knocking some smug, liberal media moron flat on his smarmy ass and contemplating how big of a check I’ll be writing. Note to Cotton: the snottier the target, the bigger my check. Make it Chris Matthews and I’ll probably have to take out a second mortgage to cover it.

With Donald Trump’s decision to call Kim Jong Un’s bluff by sending the U.S.S. Carl Vinson task force steaming in the direction of the Hermit Kingdom, there have been multiple articles out there repeating the possible dire consequences of actually engaging the belligerent little bully militarily. The obscure North Korean functionary and propagandist who years ago first threatened to turn his country’s southern sister state into a “Sea of Fire” in response to some minor provocation, may have seemed a bit of a ham-handed saber-rattler at the time, but he most assuredly created a lasting and wearisome media cliché that surfaces in Western publications every time there’s a new dustup with North Korea.

Moreover, almost every article referencing this “Sea of Fire” explains that term to readers by pointing out that Seoul, South Korea’s largest city, lies so close to the border between the two nations that it will likely be destroyed in the opening artillery salvos from the North should the balloon go up. This they point out is almost certainly due to the fact that North Korea has positioned countless thousands of artillery pieces and rocket launchers along their side of the demilitarized zone for just that purpose. They usually quote some military expert that any American attack on North Korea unavoidably will sign Seoul’s doom.

This old soldier ain’t buyin’ it. For one thing, if Seoul is 30 to 35 miles from the closest Nork artillery placements, a quick examination of the map shows that from that narrow southernmost point the North Korean border swings back north, both east and west from that closest point, so that there could only be but a few hundred artillery pieces and rocket launchers, not the thousands quoted by Western media pundits, that are actually that close. More importantly, there are damned few artillery pieces in the Nork army that have a range of 30-plus miles. And for those that do, American and South Korean defensive artillery forces have counter-battery radars in place that are so advanced they not only can direct effective defensive fire to destroy incoming rounds, they can pinpoint the precise firing location of the offending artillery pieces so quickly that our own artillery fire and airstrikes can be directed on them within seconds. As Saddam’s Iraqi forces learned quickly, to fire your artillery at the Americans was to invite your own violent, concussive death mere moments later. And those American radar detection systems and the counter-battery tactics have just kept getting more sophisticated and deadly since we used them in Iraq.

Another fact we hear ballyhooed about the mighty North Korean Army is that it is the fourth largest in the world. That might count for something if they were properly fed, properly clothed, properly trained and properly armed. The Nork annual military budget is a mere seven billion dollars (slightly more than Mexico’s) which doesn’t go very far when you are trying to field the fourth largest force on the planet. It’s telling that sites which rank nations by their military capabilities don’t seem too impressed with the Norks. The globalfirepower.com algorithm places them at number 25, right between Saudi Arabia and Algeria. In Business Insider’s survey of the world’s 35 most powerful militaries, guess who’s dead last?

Those ratings don’t say much for the fighting capabilities of the world’s fourth largest army, do they? A major factor in this negative ranking is that the Nork army is largely a vestige of the Soviet era, without sufficient funds to modernize. That Soviet aspect is clearly captured in the many pics and videos of the recent Day of the Sun celebration in Pyongyang. Look at those visuals and if you’re old enough, tell me they don’t look exactly like Soviet Union output in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It’s one thing to fill a public square with smartly dressed formations of goose-stepping troops to impress the folks; but it’s quite another to send those troops out to fight the most technologically advanced fighting forces in the world. And some sharp-eyed observers, even among their allies, are even saying the Nork missile displays may be a bit off center and wobbly.

I’ve said nothing about the air component of a war with North Korea but I’d bet the farm that if the Norks keep pushing it, they are in for their own coming version of Shock and Awe, a display of our combined modern airpower capabilities that will send a memorable message to Trump-taunting tyrants around the world: “Don’t ever take it as far as that Korean dipshit did.” In the decades we’ve had to plot and monitor North Korea’s air defenses, I would wager almost every single site sits clearly in the crosshairs of one very effective and deadly American or South Korean weapons system or another, with its continued existence, and that of those Norks manning it, depending entirely upon the lack of a command to “commence firing.” Quickly destroyed or degraded they are thus helpless to protect the remainder of the Nork forces, including their vaunted tank divisions, again mostly aged, Soviet hand-me-downs, from a relentless and deadly air onslaught. Are you beginning to see why I don’t buy into all this frantic, lefty media hype about these fearsome Norks?

I close with what will undoubtedly be recognized and lauded by knowledgeable journalists as the best triple-decker cliché of the year:

There’s a new sheriff in town, and at the end of the day, he won’t allow the Norks to rain fire upon Seoul.

Crossposted at American Thinker

Since the ordinary folks won in November, the crazies on the left have gotten crazier as they come to realize that we finally elected someone who keeps at least some of his campaign promises. Of course, that has caught the Democrats totally by surprise – a politician who actually does what he says he will – and the novelty of that is serving to fuel both their expanding insanity and their determination to undermine him. One possible way to do that in their schizoid playbook is to concentrate their resources on congressional elections taking place out of the normal cycle.

The first was in Kansas, to fill the seat vacated by Republican, Mike Pompeo, who was recently appointed by Trump to head the CIA. The Dems smelled blood in the water with a weakly polling Republican candidate, Tom Estes, so the sharks gathered, to the tune of $8 million in out-of-Kansas campaign contributions, much of it rumored to have come from deep pockets in Hollywood. The mainstream media got on board as usual, touting this election as a major opportunity for Democrats where their victory would definitely demonstrate Trump’s weakness as a party leader. They kept it up right until the truth was too obvious to be denied anymore: Estes won by a comfortable seven-point margin. Even then, the liberal media kept slathering lipstick on that dying pig of a decisive Democrat defeat, claiming somewhat correctly that the results were much closer than they should have been. Of course, they failed to mention that the race was close because of the extreme efforts and money ponied up by the Democrats.

Now the Democrats are up to the same game in another special congressional election in Georgia’s 6th District, necessitated by Trump’s appointment of Representative Tom Price to head up the Department of Health and Human Services. Once again, the Democrats believe they have a chance to turn this Republican seat blue and have fielded a candidate who, while having local roots, appears better suited to represent San Francisco than suburban Atlanta. If you were to Google the term metrosexual, you might pull up Jon Ossoff’s picture. He attended an expensive private school in Atlanta that’s progressive enough to observe some Jewish holidays but none Christian. He then matriculated at Georgetown and the London School of Economics. He cut his political teeth working for members of the Black Caucus, including Georgia congressman Hank Johnson, the congressional authority on possible archipelagic inversions. But to really buff his bona fides, Jon is a filmmaker, which must surely endear him to Hollywood.

So Ossoff is the Democrats’ fair-haired boy (30) for this contest in a district they again feel confident they can swing. In the just held election with a widely divided Republican field of eleven candidates, Ossoff failed to close the deal by attaining one vote over 50%, bringing in only 48.1% and forcing a June runoff between him and the Republican leader, former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel, a solid conservative who was the vote leader for the Republican field. Once again, the Dems are marshaling their forces, aided and abetted as always by the national media, and bringing in out-of-state Hollywood money to turn this district blue as an affront to Trump’s presidency.

If rich actors throwing their money and weight around in local elections offends you like it does me, here’s your chance to pop those smug left-coast limousine liberals right in the old kisser by making small donations, but a helluva lot of them, to Karen Handel’s race to counter their support for Ossoff. It is the one way we little folks have to stand up to the Sean Penns and Michael Moores who would have us living under a Venezuela-style tyranny. We did it with Trump and can do it again wherever they attempt to impose their will with their ill gained lucre.

Here’s Handel’s website: KarenHandelforCongress.

Crossposted at American Thinker