I know the title goes without saying generally, but this time it is even more egregious. First off, let’s look at his post:

Zero GOP Votes for Veterans by: Richard Allen Smith Fri Dec 11, 2009 at 16:28:09 PM EST Yesterday, the House of Representatives approved the conference report that contains the budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The budget, as EyesOnly reminded us earlier this week, is already 73 days passed due.  The bill passed by a vote of 221-202.While 28 Democrats have a lot of explaining to do for voting against funding the department that administers benefits and health care to those who have served their country in uniform, they are dwarfed by the entire Republican conference who voted, every single one, against appropriations for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Remember that in future elections when Republicans continue to portray themselves as the party of Veterans and the military.

Well, isn’t that interesting. I mean, *ALL* GOP Members are against Veterans? And some Dems? Let’s start looking at who is against “Veterans and the military.” Well, one of them would be the Chairman of the Armed Services Commitee, Democratic Congressman Ike Skelton. Another is my good buddy Jim Marshall (Democrat from Macon, GA, and member of the Ranger Hall of Fame).

Anyway, I contacted Congressman Marshall’s office this morning and spoke with his Legislative Director. When I told him about the VoteVets discussion about this vote, he sort of sighed, and told me that Congressman Marshall’s vote on the omnibus bill had exactly ZERO to do with veterans. In fact, he didn’t know of anyone that didn’t approve of the veterans portion. I hope later to have up a quote especially for TAH from Congressman Marshall, once it gets sent to me.

For the lamebrained, the ignorant, and VoteVets (which is to say both), the “no” votes were not votes against veterans. This is the same bullshit that I have problems with everytime someone uses a vote on an omnibus bill as a score. I expect it from dicksmith since he knows as much about the political process as I do about showtunes.

So what is in HR 3288? Just veterans stuff as VoteVets reads it. Medical News is better at reading:

The omnibus bill includes the Financial Services (HR 3170), Commerce-Justice-Science (HR 2847), Labor-HHS-Education (HR 3293), Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (HR 3082), State-Foreign Operations (HR 3081) and Transportation-HUD (HR 3288) appropriations bills

Here is the GOP statement on why they voted against it.

Lewis remarked that this huge hodgepodge of spending bills including every remaining Appropriations bill but Defense – is a result of the failure of Democrat leaders to pass the necessary funding for the federal government through the regular Appropriations process prior to the end of the fiscal year in September.

The overly generous funding level in the Omnibus allows virtually every agency and account to benefit from significant increases, and that tough but necessary decisions were not made to maintain fiscal discipline, Lewis stated. The rate of overall spending in the Omnibus corresponds with the Democrats budget blueprint that increases non-defense, discretionary spending by 12% over last year. When all Appropriations spending is combined, the Democrat majority will have increased non-defense, non-veterans discretionary spending by 85% over the last two fiscal years.

There is no question that the era of big government has returned to Washington, DC. I cannot and will not support this package of spending bills because it simply spends too much money and makes a mockery of our legislative process, Lewis said.

Sadly, the misplaced priorities of this Congress have resulted in too much spending, fewer jobs, and bigger government that the public doesn’t want and can’t afford. Some in Washington refer to this unrestrained spending as ‘change we can believe in.  Most people in our country would call it business as usual, he continued.

dicksmith has a child-like understanding of how Approps bills work. To assume that a no vote on this monstrocity reflects an anti-veteran, anti-military view is preposterous. It’s analogous to believing that because I hate the NY Yankees, I clearly hate baseball, all sports, and America. It’s an assinine, 4 year old’s view of reality, and it’s altogether typical of the myopic, ridiculous and misguided political underpinnings and philosophy held by Soltz and his miscreants.

Leave the politics to us, numbnuts, go elect your people and stop claiming to represent vets.

UPDATE: Congressman Marshall sends this:

Our spiraling federal deficits threaten our future national security and our ability to support veterans, active duty military personnel and their families. I would have voted for the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act as a stand alone bill. Unfortunately it was lumped in with other major spending bills averaging 7.32% percent increases, far more than the -0.2% inflation rate for fiscal 2009. Unlike tackling our recession with one-time-only spending, annual appropriations increases are with us year after year. They set a new baseline.

I detest the first vote Congressman Marshall makes each Congress, but I don’t know of any that he makes after that which I don’t approve of. To veterans and active duty, I honestly believe there is no better friend. I know you guys are loathe to believe that at times about a Democrat, but Jim is one of the finest people in public service, and I am proud to help him everytime he has an election.

This one could leave a mark:

Gelbaum also announced he was halting some $12 million in yearly gifts to the Sierra Club Foundation and about $50 million a year that he’s been giving to an organization serving veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hope it is VoteVets and not IAVA, but damn. It’s budget time, you are an office with like 20, maybe 30 employees, and you are told to cut 50 million out of the operating budget?

Wow. Read the whole article.

“Bitches!!!”

I’ve never really understood the method of discourse that revolves around drowning someone else out. I’m certain that somewhere my side has done this as well, so I disavow those attempts as well, but I don’t remember Jonn and I ever showing up at a IVAW rally and trying to chant. It’s just ridiculous. I can’t fathom any disagreement that I would ever side with the group trying to stop the other side from speaking.

I would make a marketplace of ideas argument, but it is fairly clear that this side doesn’t believe in the markets.

I love lefty commenters.  Just love ’em.  Our commenters from the Left come on here, make absurd accusations and then bitch that we aren’t answering their absurd comments.  But, the second brand of trolls are the ones that go on a lefty blog and leave comments like this one:

riggssm [#760]

Sarah Palin may have done many, many things in her life, but writing is not one of them. I doubt she can find Copenhagen on a map, name the country it’s in, or even spell it.

Seriously. How is this aborted fetus of a political joke (gone moldy a year ago now!) still managing to keep herself a story? Short of literally sticking her head into her own gaping vagina and whistling Dixie out the other side, I can’t think how she could be a bigger joke to her party. And to this country.

/rant

12/8/09 Reply

Really? That is acceptible discourse? Where are all those guys who claim that conservatives use callous attacks on women to make a point?

I assume now that discussion of Maureen Dowd’s gigantic penis is back on the menu?

There is no chance that either of these headlines is an accident. I am not sure what this trend toward using words like this is, but I really don’t like it. I long ago stopped believing that FoxNews and CNN gave a crap about the news, but this just seems ridiculous. Leave this sort of crap to the NY Post.

Anyway, which headline is worse, CNN or Fox:

CNN

FOX

Contrary to what some would have you believe, I am not the dogmatic Republican that some keep accusing me of. I have been very careful to spread my campaign contributions around, with equal amounts going to GOP, DEM and Ind (Liebermann.) To save you the looking it up, I kept each of my donations under $200 so that no dumbass would do a FEC search on me and start sending me shit. I am no longer burdened by that though as I am no longer a registered lobbyist.

Anyway, got a missive from Wesley Clark and VoteVets today about a guy running in MO-08 against Jo Ann Emerson. I am pretty neutral on her, and this guy’s bio intrigued me. His name is Tommy Sowers:

A fourth-generation Missourian, Tommy was born and raised in Rolla where his family has lived since his grandfather started the local newspaper. Educated in the public school system, he graduated Rolla High School.

After attending Duke on an Army ROTC scholarship, Tommy began his 11 year career in the U.S. Army, commissioned in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He graduated Airborne, Air Assault, Ranger and Belgian Commando Schools. Tommy led a combat engineering platoon in Kosovo and represented the 1st Infantry Division in the Best Ranger Competition.

From there it actually gets better:

Following graduate studies at the London School of Economics as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar for Missouri District 6080, Tommy attended the Special Forces Qualification Course graduating 1st in his class. At 10th Special Forces Group, Tommy led a team of Green Berets. In two deployments to Iraq, he conducted a wide range of counterinsurgency operations and was awarded the Combat Infantryman’s Badge and two Bronze Stars.

OK, so dude is clearly a stud. If VoteVets is endorsing him though, I pretty much already don’t like him. So, I went to his website to snoop around and see why he is a loathesome degenerate, which is to say why Soltz and his miscreants like him. After a semi-exhaustive search, I can officially state: Damned if I can tell. Dude doesn’t have a position on anything. Go read his issues page. Or, I could save you the time, there isn’t shit on it. He seems entirely focused on the economy, and in that he seems largely focused on limited government, not exactly the hallmark of his Democratic Party.

The only thing I found that pissed me off was this assinine article in Huffpo comparing Sowers to Rush Limbaugh. That piece repeatedly brings up Rush’s infamous boil on his ass that he used to get out of the draft. Now, why Limbaugh matters to this discussion, whether he is from the district or not is completely beneath me. Sowers isn’t running against Limbaugh, and Rush doesn’t live in the district. But Paul Begala wrote this piece of effluvium so, I guess it is to be expected.

(On a side note, this whole Limbaugh thing is so ridiculous. Limbaugh never served, so the libs malign him. Meanwhile, they support every limp dicked retard that signs up and runs off to Canada. Where is the logic there?)

Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on Sowers, and see if he actually puts out some positions. Right now he looks pretty decent, but that VoteVets endorsement is enough to keep my checkbook sealed, that’s for damn sure.

(Although, the picture above from Sowers’ website was labelled “Sowers with machine gun” which doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence that his campaign knows much about the military.)

I hope Jonn will forgive me posting this and sending you over to The Sniper, but my good friend and fellow trigger-puller over there has one of the best caption contests ever:

My favorites that he came up with:

-Snoopy’s Crotch Sniffing Christmas
-That’s A Class III Felony Charlie Brown

Go add your own.

So says this jihadi assclown:

“In 2009, in January or February I met this friend of mine. He said he had come from meeting Sheikh Osama, and he could arrange for me to meet him,” he said.

“He helps al-Qaeda people coming from other countries to get to the sheikh, so he can advise them on whatever they are planning for Europe or other places.

“The sheikh doesn’t stay in any one place. That guy came from Ghazni, so I think that’s where the sheikh was.”

The province of Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan has an increasingly strong Taliban presence.

Large parts of the province are no-go areas for coalition and Afghan forces.

Yeah, my town went to shit after we left, no doubt about it. I don’t think it was anything we did certainly. I sure as hell don’t remember any areas that were “no-go areas” for us. Had they listed any no-go areas you can just about damn well guarantee that our scouts would have lived there.

Either way bad juju.