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

Category: 2012 election

  • Actually Going After a Cartel

    Washington attorney and AT regular contributor, Clarice Feldman, did a masterful job of chopping Eric Holder and his politicized DoJ into mincemeat this past weekend for its many transgressions, with the Fast & Furious outrage being foremost in her article. What follows is an elaboration not on the details of the scandal but on the political motivation behind it.

    When BATF agents first blew the whistle on what is now known as Operation Fast and Furious, the rationale offered by DoJ for such an evidently foolish operation was that it was designed to allow BATF to track and prosecute the leaders of the Mexican drug cartels. As more information surfaced from the Mexican government and the BATF’s Mexican bureau chief that none of them knew anything of this operation, many of us who were paying a bit closer attention to the case immediately smelled the first foul scent of corruption.

    The fatal flaw in DoJ’s explanation was this: if the Mexican authorities had not been brought into the operation, nor even the BATF’s own agents authorized to operate in Mexico, then the proffered DoJ justification made utterly no sense, for the simple reason that once those walked guns hit the south side of that border there was absolutely no process in place to track them to their supposed targets. Therefore, DoJ was patently misrepresenting its motive. Why?
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  • Special Operations Speaks

    The Obama campaign is twisting the truth into political pretzels in attempting to make its candidate appear to be a tough guy in the terror wars. Trying to remake the public image of a pol famous for voting present into that of a steely-eyed, cold-blooded leader of hunter/killer teams of special operators who seek out and destroy those who would bring harm to our innocents is a difficult task that just became more so. That’s because a bunch of genuine tough guys are coming together to combat the sham campaign of that wannabee warrior in the White House.

    Retired Navy SEAL, Captain Larry Bailey, a pivotal player in the debunking of John Kerry’s ego-embellished war record back in 2004, is putting together an election year organization made up of bona fide special operators, past and present, who are not happy with the efforts of our counterfeit commander-in-chief to cloak himself in their special mystique. Unlike the all-Navy Swift Boat Veterans who torpedoed Kerry’s Vietnamese junk, Bailey’s new military organization, Special Operations Speaks, is a multi-service outfit with chapters from the Navy’s SEALs, the Army’s Rangers and Green Berets, the Air Force’s Air Commandos, the Marine Corp’s Force Recon, and the newest group of special operators, USMC’s MARSOC, Marine Special Operations Command. There’s also participation by veterans of all services and their families.

    It is not just Obama’s phony warrior pretensions, however, that have these military professionals organizing this counter-operation, it is the actual and immediate dangers being created in the covert world of their clandestine combat operations by this amateur playing at soldier for political purposes.

    When politicians with no military training or experience get involved with military planning and operations and fail to heed the counsel of the professionals advising them, the results are almost always bad for the troops involved as well as their nations. When community organizers with almost no experience, either military or civilian, are involved, the potential for disaster is compounded. It is akin to some Hollywood fantasy where teenagers suddenly have control of the world’s most powerful weapons and forces. In America’s present situation, that fantasy is almost reality. We have a White House more politically driven than any in memory by a tight inner circle where military experience is non-existent. Suddenly, when it becomes apparent that their guy has an image problem, military secrecy and national security are thrown under the campaign bus to make a lion out of their lightweight. This is Kerry 2004 redux, Democrat militarism resurgent, as it is during election years when it becomes politically useful.

    Add Special Operations Speaks to your favorites bar and drop in to visit and support. It’s still under construction but Captain Bailey will see she becomes shipshape in short order. Shake loose with a few bucks to help a very worthy group of warriors in their very worthy cause.

    In my six years of Army service I was never a special operator although I did serve with a Special Forces detachment in Vietnam for a few weeks on a classified assignment. However, I do share a common experience with all of them: that of looking up and seeing that parachute canopy overhead and below the good green earth between my boots.

    Airborne!

  • VoteVets; Romney and draft

    So, last week, Jon Soltz from the “non-partisan” organization VoteVets was on that show on MSNBC which has that idiot Lawrence O’Donnell hosting. At about 5:38 into this video, O’Donnell mentions that Mitt Romney had four deferments for college and his missionary work during the Vietnam War and Jon Soltz condemns Romney for avoiding the draft.

    See, I was under the impression that VoteVets didn’t have a problem with deferments from the draft because they helped Harry Reid’s campaign in the last election and Reid had successfully avoided the draft while he enjoyed deferments. But suddenly, when someone who is not a Democrat got college deferments for the draft, it’s a big deal.

    By the way, O’Donnell tells a whopper during the discussion. He says that the draft ended before he was old enough to face the draft. The last draft round was in 1972, the year I turned 17 (I was born in 1955). O’Donnell was born in 1951 according to Wiki, which means that O’Donnell was 21 years old the year that the draft ended, which also means that he got deferments for college (you were eligible for the draft when you turned 18 years old), and yet here he is criticizing Romney for it. Wiki says that O’Donnell graduated from high school in 1970, so he got at least two deferments before the draft ended.

    So, I’m guessing that the word hypocrisy isn’t in their vocabulary around that network or whatever they call that show.

  • The Bumper Sticker

    An old Army buddy sent me an email this morning with a proposal for a bumper sticker that as soon as I saw it, I said to myself, “That’s it!” It is succinct and directly juxtaposes our side’s main cultural weakness against their side’s primary disadvantage overall. It is pithy and almost alliterative while hitting hard at the Democrat candidate’s increasingly obvious greatest weakness. It offers the reader a rather clear choice:

    EDITOR’S NOTE: Mark sends us this updated version;

    Editor note:Another entry from Amy J;

    Since we know the mainstream media, faced with an increasingly possible Obama loss, are going to attack Romney at what they perceive to be his weak point with mainstream Americans, his Mormon religion, why not seize the initiative and get out in front of them by turning what they perceive as a negative into a positive? I don’t usually put bumper stickers on any of my vehicles. For this one, I will make a three-vehicle exception.
    Front and back…
    Someone should start cranking ’em out.

  • Obama targets vets for votes

    The Washington Post‘s Amy Gardner reports that which we already know from reading the Reuters piece yesterday, that the Obama campaign is pressing veterans for their votes.

    “There’s a different face of the American veteran now,” said Lauren Zapf, 30, a Navy veteran who served in the Persian Gulf and who spoke recently at a gathering in Northern Virginia for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Timothy M. Kaine. “The president’s stance on social policies, his work with military families, what he was doing with policy in both Iraq and Afghanistan — I appreciate that.”

    Republicans concede the group’s new battleground status. “Veterans are truly a cross-section of the population,” Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said in a recent interview. “I appreciate the fact that the president is engaging our warriors and their families.”

    Yeah, well, the President did his best, when he was a Senator and before that to undermine the war effort, and now that he’s slipping among his 2008 voters in the polls, he thinks he can make up for that with veterans. And as we saw yesterday, the media is more than willing to help him out.

    Like a discussion I had at the Carpool the other night with a young man who was trying to solicit my support for his particular organization, where were these people eight years ago? generally, they were giving hope to the enemy that all they had to do was wait us out and the Democrats would give them an easy victory.

    For me the evidence of that was when the Democrats won the Congress in 2006 and George Bush started the surge. When the Iraqi resistance had thought that they had the US beat with the Democrat victory, instead, Bush sent more troops, proving that the Democrat’s bullshit talk about ending the war was coming from a position of weakness. Barack Obama was among them, voting every time the issue came up in the Senate to cut off funding for the war and leave the troops stranded. It was their only strategy against a successful conclusion for the war, because the troops were just their political pawns.

    Remember, Harry Reid telling us that the surge had failed before it even began? Any complaints for Senator Obama?

    While most veterans are older and more conservative, younger veterans who served more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan include more women and minorities. Politically, they are more reflective of the nation overall: independent-minded, less socially conservative and more supportive of the winding down of the two wars the president inherited.

    In other words, he’s trying to attract the Ron Paulian veterans. Any that would jump over to Obama are lying to themselves. Like the soldier in yesterday’s discussion who said he likes his guns, but is supporting Obama. How long does he think his guns will last in an administration that doesn’t have to run for office again – not to mention the aging and ailing Supreme Court judges who will replaced in the next four years.

    “Before 2008, nobody talked about military families,” said Rob Diamond, who served in Iraq and is the Obama campaign’s vote director for veterans and military families. “Military families have become part of the national conversation. Americans realize that when you have an all-volunteer military, the sacrifice is not just by the service members but their families, too.”

    Yeah, nobody talked about military families, well, except the Bush Administration who mentioned almost every day since the war began. And since Obama didn’t mention them in 2008, no one talked about them, I suppose, because nothing happens without Obama doing it. Like that “Got Your 6” bullshit that I caught flack for not supporting this weekend. Yeah, sure, I’m all for some support for the troops and their family, even at this late date, but where the hell were these jerkwads for the last ten years? And they had to wait for the president to tell them it’s OK to support the troops? Please. Stop urinating on my leg.

    Just like IAVA morphed from their anti-Bush website OpTruth, a leopard can’t change it’s spots, and a skunk can’t change the fact that he stinks.

  • The Mother of us all

    Yeah, I just got this in my email. I guess Michelle Obama is mother to 300,000 people. Well, in their minds.

    Is there anything that’s not a campaign opportunity?

  • Naw, Paulians aren’t nuts at all

    Streetsweeper sends us a link to the Examiner (Not the Washington Examiner) which tells us about an Adam Kokesh podcast in which our buddy, Adam, reads an email from a fan. Rather than post yet another Adam Kokesh YouTube video, here’s how the reading went from the Examiner;

    “There is a way the nomination can be given to Ron Paul,” the email read by Kokesh said.

    “Romney needs to die,” the letter continued.

    According to the allegedly anonymous 19-year-old author of the email, the idea is more about saving America and innocent lives than ensuring a Paul nomination.

    “I don’t get a lot of emails like this,” Kokesh said, adding that he has been “privileged” to hear “various forms of this proposal put forth.”

    He went on to say that he has never endorsed or suggested such action.

    “But, I cannot deny that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, as well as so many other libertarians and Ron Paul supporters of late,” he added.

    “Is Romney’s life equal to 500,000 innocent Iranian civilians he wants to kill,” the email asked, calling Romney a “terrorist.”

    The email’s author claimed to be planning a video highlighting the assassination of Romney “and the turn of events it could cause.”

    “The true patriot,” the email added, “would execute the ones who put the Patriot Act into place.”

    Yeah, except that Romney was never in Congress, so he had nothing to do with the Patriot Act.

    Of course, then Kokesh launched into a history lesson for his listener (singular on purpose) about how World War II could have been prevented by assassinating Hitler, because, you know Romney would be like Hitler if he was president and annex Austria. Or something.

    But, I guess the upshot of this is that Ron Paulians are perfectly rational Americans who never vocalize the incessant voices in their head. And they’re not crazy enough to broadcast their compatriots’ idiot emails on the podcast. Because, that would trigger a Secret Service investigation, wouldn’t it? I mean, Romney has a Secret Service detail, right?

  • Texas inmate closes in on Obama in WV primary

    Yeah, even my Democrat neighbors don’t like Obama, apparently. A guy serving a term in prison, Keith Judd, in Texas won 40% of West Virginians’ votes in yesterday’s Democrat primary according to UK’s Daily Mail;

    Judd is housed at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Texarkana, a low-security facility for male prisoners. It is located in northeast Texas near the Arkansas border, 175 miles east of Dallas.

    Attracting at least 15 per cent of the vote would normally qualify a candidate for a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

    But state Democratic Party Executive Director Derek Scarbro said no one has filed to be a delegate for Judd.

    Yeah, I know, it’s West Virginia and it’s not an indicator of a national trend. My neighbors are generally dumber than a post (they think I reverse-engineer alien technology for our missile program), but they’re also scared that someone is going to come for their guns. My weapons training class last year was like an Obama hate fest. We’re only five electoral votes, but I’m pretty confident that they’ll all go to Romney.

    But I might be voting for a Democrat for the first time since Jimmy Carter for a national office. I’m pretty happy with Joe Manchin, somewhat. He introduced the National CCW bill to the Senate which probably has about as much chance as me running for Manchin’s seat. We’ll see.