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

Author: Poetrooper

  • A lesson in Democracy from Venezuela

    A lesson in Democracy from Venezuela

    The socialist government of Venezuela has just provided American gun owners with an excellent lesson in why it is of paramount importance to never let the government take our guns. Back in 1998 after four decades of the Latin American variety of democracy, military leader, Hugo Chavez, a moderate leftist, was elected president. From that time until his death in 2013, he continued to take Venezuela further left, founding the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in 2007, which has remained the ruling party to the present, inexorably moving the country into a quagmire of socialist poverty. Chavez died in 2013 but one of his last acts is now coming into full play in a way that provides our lesson.

    In 2012, Chavez and PSUV began consolidating their hold on the Venezuelan people by banning guns in public places using the usual leftist excuse of reducing crime and since that first gun control measure those in charge have incrementally, to the point of recent total confiscation, taken away gun ownership rights until the only legally owned firearms are those of the military, the police, and favored security organizations, and they can obtain those only through government sources. The civilian populace of Socialist Venezuela has been effectively disarmed.

    Unless your political views align with the socialist leadership, that is. Chavez’ handpicked, strongman successor, Nicolas Maduro, has decided to hand out military grade weaponry to those civilians who agree with him politically, that is, his hard-left socialist supporters. From an excellent accounting at Washington Free Beacon:

    “A gun for every militiaman!” Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said to uniformed militia members outside the presidential palace, Fox News reported on Tuesday. The Bolivarian militias, created by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez, already number in the hundreds of thousands and are being used to supplement the regime’s armed forces. Maduro is boosting the number of armed supporters in hopes of keeping control over the country from what he labels “imperialist aggression.”

    Therein lies your lesson, American gun owners: The American left constantly pushes for more gun control, never satisfied, slowly chiseling away at our 2d Amendment rights, even to the point that a President Hillary admittedly would have considered the Australian buyback form of voluntary gun confiscation. With the American Left moving ever more radically in that direction, who is to say that a future, dedicated-socialist president like Elizabeth Warren might not stack the Court and get the reading of the 2d Amendment that the Democrats have long wanted: that the only legal guns in America, like Venezuela, are those in the hands of government?

    And who’s to say that an even more rabidly socialist successor to a President Warren might not decide that she feels her position threatened, like President Maduro, and decides to issue arms to her loyalists? Thanks to our recent election victory, we are now enjoying a respite from liberal gun grabs and fears of a liberal dominated Supreme Court. However, as the Democrats have recently learned regarding national power, nothing is forever.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Biggest head in television gets done in by his little head

    FOX News has ousted Bill O’Reilly, the smug, smur-king of evening talk-TV for more than a decade for issues relating to sexual harassment of female employees. The rumors had floated about for years that the supercilious O’Reilly was as big a jerk behind the scenes as he all too frequently was while on camera, allegedly hitting on female employees for sexual favors for much of the time he was a FOX ratings king. The pushy, public persona presented on television made such rumors difficult to disbelieve, leading Ol’ Poe to believe that this day of reckoning was simply a matter of time: another arrogant fool brought to an ignominious fate by thinking with his little head rather than the oversized one O’Reilly possesses. Somehow, to this age- seasoned Scots-Irishman, the term “Big Dumb Mick,” seems to fit quite well here.

    Big Bill has his viewers, assuredly, me being one of ‘em sometimes, but it was always a challenge to get through an entire show without having to be constrained from throwing a drink glass at the tube when the overbearing Son of Hibernia haughtily talked over some guest expert, informing them that they didn’t know what they were talking about within their own field of expertise because he, O’Reilly, knew better; or to stay in the room when he began another shameless shilling session of his popular but poorly-written books. There’s not another Irishmen alive that Ol’ Poe has called a sorry ass son of a bitch more times than Bill O’Reilly.

    O’Reilly’s demise is a victory for the libs who threatened his advertisers with boycotts when talk of his sexual harassment activities began to become more publicly discussed. They have unseated the king, no question. But it’s going to be a Pyrrhic victory for them because FOX has already announced that O’Reilly’s replacement is the far more likable and far better informed talk show host, Tucker Carlson. While O’Reilly treated both friendly and hostile guests with contempt, Carlson saves his devastating verbal flayings for those cocky liberals who try to treat him and all conservatism with contempt. Carlson’s far more politically intuitive as well as being far more entertaining.
    But in spite of all that, you know, I’m really going to….

    Heh, bet you thought Ol’ Poe was gonna say he’s gonna miss the jerk. Nope, he’s just another pompous prick done in by his little prick.

  • Heroes

    Ol’ Poe has asked Jonn to post this video to remind all of us how completely helpless we are when it comes to competing for women with those select few among us who have somehow slipped the surly bonds of earth to become the surly chick magnets that every single one of them believes himself to be.

    Of course, the proper sunglasses selection is essential.

    Firefighters among us are to be forgiven for murderous thoughts and truly nasty comments.

    Hero1

  • Where do we get such men?

    The San Diego Tribune is reporting that a Navy SEAL Chief petty Officer has been hitting more than just the bad guys for several years:

    Navy Chief Special Warfare Officer Joseph John Schmidt III has been living dual lives.
    As a member of the Navy SEALs, the 42-year-old boasts a chest of ribbons and medals during his 23 years in the military, including a valor citation for combat overseas. To his East County neighbors and Coronado shipmates, he’s been the married father who has given pep talks to special-needs children in Los Angeles and toured the country recruiting for the elite Naval Special Warfare teams, even serving as the face of the SEAL program on its website.

    Schmidt is also Jay Voom, the actor in at least 29 porn flicks during the past seven years, from “Apple Smashing Lap Dance” to “Strippers Come Home Horny From the Club.”

    He has spent most of his time in front of the camera engaging in sex with his wife — porn megastar Jewels Jade — for her website and film-distribution service. But he also has coupled with XXX actresses Mena Li and Ashden Wells, according to marketing materials found by The San Diego Union-Tribune and confirmed by Jade.

    Schmidt declined to comment for this story.

    OK, let the wisecracks begin…

  • Justice delayed is sure as hell no justice…

    Well pardon me dear readers, but Ol’ Poe’s skeptimeter is pegging out right now at the announcement by the Feds yesterday that an arrest has been made in the shooting of Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, who was murdered Dec. 14, 2010, with what was later determined to be one of Barack Obama’s notorious Fast and Furious weapons. Mind you, I’m not at all unhappy with the fact that the rat bastard cartel member who gunned down Terry is in custody, it’s the timing of the event that has my skeptimeter red-lining.
    Think about it for a moment; Obama and his justice department had six years to track down and capture a Mexican cartel member for the murder of an American law enforcement officer on American soil but, somehow, with all the law enforcement resources of this country at Obama’s beck and call, they just couldn’t make that happen. Yet with less than a mere three months of a new administration, we suddenly know exactly where to look for this perp badly wanted by American LEO’s everywhere?

    Ponder that for a moment and then tell me that you believe that Barack Obama, his justice department, and his Democrat party truly wanted this killer in custody. Let me help you out a bit: Fast and Furious was one of the greatest embarrassments of Obama’s reign because it exposed the willingness of the Democrat party to see innocent people murdered as long as it furthered their aspirations to negate the provisions of the 2d Amendment for the citizens of this country. Once it had been halted and exposed for what it actually was, Democrats wanted it forgotten as quickly as possible and RINO Republicans in Congress, which is to say most of them, couldn’t accommodate them quickly enough, despite the efforts of a brave few in the House.

    The last thing in the world that the Obama regime wanted was the arrest of the cartel killer who executed our Border Patrol agent and all the publicity that would go with it in a trial during a period leading up to a presidential election. Who knew whether or not criminal trial testimony might reawaken the Fast and Furious scandal and possibly even reveal details of that criminally misguided political operation that would prove troublesome for the Democrat candidate in 2016?

    As I said, I’m glad that Mexican rat bastard cartel member is finally going to face justice for killing an American Border Patrol agent. I just wish the sorry rat bastard from the Chicago Cartel, who handed him the weapon and then let him run free for six years, was going to do the same. He’s every bit as culpable as that hijo de puta sicario who pulled that trigger.

  • A new sheriff in town

    The world now knows that when it comes to America, it is dealing no longer with an indecisive community organizer, but with a proved business leader who will not dither when bad guys act badly whither. Our new president just put those bad guys in Syria, North Korea, and Iran on notice that they are definitely screwing around with a different brand of cat from that puss in shorts who played games with little white balls while the real world turned and too frequently burned.

    To say that Donald Trump hammered home his message is a bit inadequate when one considers the hammering of several dozen cruise missiles upon the very site from which the Syrian government stores and launches (in crude fashion) the chemical weapons it uses upon its own populace. Bashar Assad thought he was dealing with a new American president beset with many domestic problems, and likely Bashar felt he could test the limits of chemical warfare without too much fear of serious blowback.

    But blowback he got, in the form of several thousand pounds of high explosives directed at his means of inflicting chemical attacks on his own people. This writing is an early response, so I have no idea as to the extent of damage inflicted on the targeted airbase, but that is immaterial. What matters is that President Donald Trump reminded the world that America is once again a geopolitical force to be factored into all military planning and all political treachery, especially within the hotbed of religious and political upheaval that is the current Middle East.

    What is particularly courageous in Trump’s action is his willingness to accept the risk of Russian casualties from the missile attacks and the consequences that could devolve from that hazardous probability. Yet he was not deterred by that possibility, as was his pusillanimous predecessor, whose skill set was geared more to drawing meaningless red lines than actually being a world leader.

    The libs will no doubt scream that this was a reckless endangerment of our place in the world. Let them scream; let them whimper; let them finally collapse in tears when they see the rest of the world respond positively to an actual American leader, a true world leader, who has that singular quality to lead that their guy was lacking in spades: balls.

    There’s a new sheriff in town.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Don Burgett, Airborne Author and Historian, 1925-2017

    Don Burgett, Airborne Author and Historian, 1925-2017

    NRA’s American Rifleman has posted this:

    In 1967, one man single-handedly established the narrative of U.S. Army airborne forces fighting in the European theater of World War II with the publication of a single book. Twenty-five years before Band of Brothers was first printed and 35 years before it was turned into an HBO mini-series, Donald R. Burgett’s Currahee!: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy (1967) described the experience of fighting the battle of Normandy as an American paratrooper—and it did so with a clarity and frankness that quickly made it a bestseller. The gritty, no-nonsense writing style of Currahee! brought the Battle of Normandy alive in a way that official histories never have—and it did this from the worm’s-eye view of a 19-year-old rifleman.

    Those of us who were and are Currahee’s owe a huge debt to Don Burgett for making us most likely the best known regiment in the United States Army. May all of us in the Airborne Brotherhood pray that Don had an easy landing on his last jump into that great unknown.

    All you Currahee’s, sound off:

    Poetrooper, Bravo and Headquarters Companies, 2d Bn, 506th Airborne Infantry, 2004-2005 1964-1965.

  • NFL teams taking a knee on Kaepernick

    It was all so blatantly predictable that a blind referee could see it coming. A young, dumb, idealistic professional football player decides to put his politics ahead of his game, and worse, ahead of his team, and then gets manipulated by the cynical leftists who now control sports broadcasting so as to support their own leftist views. Can anyone guess the result? Of course you can because common sense would lead anyone to the conclusion that the manipulated kid is in big trouble.

    Colin Kaepernick had his seasons and it is likely this last one will be his American twilight. For some as yet undisclosed reason, this talented young quarterback decided to disrespect his flag, his national anthem and his nation – a nation that had readily taken him in as a young refugee from a war torn area of Africa and given him the opportunity to rise to the summit of professional football as a Super Bowl (losing) quarterback of the San Francisco Forty-Niners.

    Then he chose to spit in the face of our nation by defiantly refusing to stand for the national anthem when it was played during the opening ceremonies of the NFL games in which his team played. Whatever he was hoping to achieve, it blew up in his face like a Rachel Maddow exclusive. Kaepernick immediately became the most hated football player in the NFL and very unfortunately for him, at the same time his personal image was going into the toilet, his on field performance was right behind, tanking ungracefully.

    Now, unloved and unneeded by the Forty Niners, Kaepernick confidently offered himself up to the NFL as a free agent, meaning that any team can hire him if they are willing to compensate the Forty Niners for his contractual obligations. Guess what? No takers—no NFL team wants the terrible publicity issues that accompany Kaepernick wherever he might land. Were he playing top-flight, NFL quarterback football, some team might take the risk, but that’s clearly not the case. Kaepernick has done a real number on his career and he may as well pack his bags for offshore play somewhere, Europe perhaps, but he’s finished here; no NFL team wants the liability that comes with this young fool.

    There should be a lesson here for athletes and movie stars and others whose livings are paid for by ticket purchases and TV remote selections but it would assuredly fall on deaf ears. Like Kaepernick, far too many of these performers feel compelled to belabor the nation with their unsolicited, personal political views, making themselves champions to hard core lefties but alienating the tens of millions who might otherwise have purchased a ticket or clicked on their game or movie.

    Seriously, can anyone out there fault the NFL teams for taking a knee on Kaepernick?

    Crossposted at American Thinker