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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Code Pink declares victory and folds tent

    I just picked up from Weasel Zippers a story that Code Pink has succeeded in running the Marines out of Berkeley. WZ cites sources here and here.

    After a year of protesting the military recruitment office in Berkeley, CodePINK has won its battle: operations at the Marine Recruiting Station have ceased.Celebrate this accomplishment at CodePINK’s one-year “End Recruiting” commemoration, where you can hear testimonies from the peace activists who drove the recruiters out.

    CodePINK and our allies have prevailed!

    Major protest operations at the MRS have been ended, one year since covert military recruiting operations were first uncovered in Berkeley!

    Our coalition is now engaged in dis(as)sembling and deconstructing the U.S. military, making the world safe and secure!

    Our city and our coalition are proud of these accomplishments!

    Of course the media dutifully reported this unsubstantiated press release from the clowns at Code Pink. Well, it sounded a little funny to me, so I called the recruiting station in Berkeley and talked to the young captain commanding the unit and he told me that Code Pink had held a victory celebration today outside the building (Protest Shooter was there and has the story and the pictures) but that the Marines aren’t going any where. He said they still have a 3-year lease on the office and they’ll continue recruiting there until the lease expires.

    So Code Pink unilaterally declared a victory and left. Sorta like what they want us to do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  • New fantasy book available on Amazon.com

    I’ve always been more partial to George RR Martin and David Gemmell, but it seems there is a new fantasy writer on the scene and he’s coming loaded for bear.

    It’s about a bunch of disgruntled dwarves who join a military unit and go off to fight, but they see things other don’t see. So, they are fighting an actual enemy, and also a supernatural one that no one else around them can see. I haven’t read it yet, but from the excerpts, it just doesn’t sound all the realistic, even for a fantasy novel. For instance:

    “I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”

    Now, why the character didn’t just use a sidearm to down this threat, or tell her to stop before using the grenade machine gun to obliterate her isn’t entirely clear. It reads like a Schwarzenegger film where everyone is running pell mell around and the good guys never get hit. I mean, really, when you hit a lady and a bag of groceries with numerous 40mm rounds, I don’t know that you could identify the contents of the bag all that well.

    Here’s another passage:

    “One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation…One of the snipers replied back, ‘Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?’ The lieutenant colonel responded, ‘You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.’ After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment.”

    See what I mean? He’s sacrificed believability for a good yarn.

    I hope it ends with Charlie the Unicorn making it to Gum Drop Mountain.

  • How Daily Kos remembered 9-11

  • Code Pink on defense

    Apparently, Code Pink is suffering some popular backlash because of their antics recently. One of them wrote an especially loooonnnngggg post in their blog this morning (at 4:35 AM….jeez maybe their problem is a lack of beauty rest) entitled “To The Haters…” in which they disparage us for pointing out they’re ugly, shrieking harpies;

    You like to say that we’re “ugly” and we’re “scum.” You like to disparage our intelligence and patriotism. Sometimes you make threats: “If I see you agian I’ll stop you,” and “If I see you bitches I will do something horrible to you.” More than one of you suggested we should be “hanged.”

    Nice.

    (Just who are supposed to be the “ugly” ones here?)

    Take a good sober look over some of your recent posts… Most of them are about wounding, involving crude sexual references, misogyny, bigotry, and hate… there’s hardly an American sentiment in the bunch.

    Do you really want to sound like some hick counterpart to the Taliban, with your hatred of women, intolerance of views with which you disagree, and your threats of violence?

    Do ANY of you consider yourselves Christians, I wonder? How so… by what definition? (Ku Klux Kristians? That variety?)

    Sweet. Tell people to stop calling them names while calling their detractors names. Here’s a few reasons I call them ugly;
    DSC_0034
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    DSC_0081

    I have more pictures, but I think you get the idea. I call them ugly because…well…they’re ugly.

    They go on and explain why they’re “flamboyant”;

    Because we’re flamboyant and because we refuse to be silenced, we sometimes get results.

    And those results are? Fundraising? Inflated egos? The war is still going on…you’ve accomplished nothing except proven yourselves buffoons and tools of your communist masters.

    Oh, and their analysis of the “surge” shows how keenly they grasp the whole concept;

    You poor schmucks actually believe that the troop Surge is behind the drop in violence in 2008 Iraq!

    But here’s the straight dope, regarding the Surge: There’s no question that the ethno-sectarian cleansing and walling up of Baghdad helped somewhat (the very bloody first phase of the Surge), but the real key to the drop in violence, per most American military officers on the ground, was putting 100,000 members of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) on the U.S. payroll — giving them each $300/month, arms, and U.S. training to chill out for a while…

    Notice she didn’t say that we pay the Iraqi Army or the Iraqi police, she says we pay the INSURGENTS, that we pay AL QAEDA. But they add the proviso;

    It’s no reflection on our brave troops, but rather a poor reflection on our dismal politicians….

    Yuh-huh. Those brave troops they refer to are the folks who are coming back and telling us how the surge has worked. Those brave troops are the folks who bear the brunt of your ill-reasoned criticism. I guess we should get some pleasure that they’ve admitted that there is indeed a drop in violence in Iraq…small pleasure.

    Well, if Code Pink is really nonpartisan, and they only want to stop the war with their “flamboyance” (a term I usually reserve for the gender-confused), why didn’t they interupt Barack Obama’s speech to the DNC? He’s admitted that he’ll continue the current administration’s policy in the war against terror. Why didn’t they interupt Joe Biden’s speech? He voted for the use of force in Iraq and had been advocating for dethroning Hussein for more than half-a-decade before the latest war in Iraq.

    Since we know that Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink. is a top bundler of contributions for Obama (on the same level as Hollywood moguls), we all know how non-partisan Code Pink really is, don’t we?

    The same goes for Code Pink’s beard, Adam Kokesh – our future Democrat Presidential candidate in the mold of John Kerry. I know the excuse of IVAW for not interrupting Obama’s speech will be that he accepted their list of demands…in reality, SOME GUY who said he was from the Obama campaign took thier letter, while no one in the McCain campaign was willing to pretend to take their list of demands. Yeah, big difference you wantwit dorks.

    Thanks for playing our game.

  • The aftermath of the RNC

    The poor protesters. Imagine. They gave it their all and they were virtually ignored at the Republican National Convention. Protesters weren’t beaten by the police or biten by police dogs for the cameras. So the next best thing they can do is complain that their First Amendment rights were violated. What more legitimate organization make this charge than the Socialist Worker, the reigning queens of hyperbole?

    THERE WAS a criminal conspiracy engulfing Minnesota’s Twin Cities during the Republican National Convention (RNC)–but it didn’t involve masked anarchists, as mainstream media outlets warned.

    The real conspiracy was a plot by 30 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to repress dissent and protests under the rubric of “national security” and the “war on terror.”

    The repression caught in its wake antiwar protesters, environmentalists, pacifists, anarchists, socialists and reporters–in short, anyone who might show (or report on) signs of dissent against a government waging two barbaric wars while it can’t even provide health care to its own people.

    Got that? A criminal conspiracy. How much more dramatic can it get? How dare the government wage wars against our enemies who would like every last one of us dead. How dare the government not tax the living crap out of it’s citizens to pay for the healthcare of people too lazy to pay for their own.

    How do you crank up the venom from that point? Well, you can get a quote from an anonymous Iraq War vet to support your hyperbole;

    According to the Wall Street Journal, police responded to protests with “pepper spray, tear gas, smoke canisters and what they call ‘distraction devices’ that give a loud bang and a flash of light…” A member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) who witnessed some of the violent police attacks told reporters that police were “treating [U.S.] civilians like you would Iraqis.”

    Of course, US troops don’t treat Iraqis like that…Iraqis generally comply with authority when it’s in their best interests.

    Now, I watched videos of some of the confrontations between police and “peace activists”, and from what i could see, the activists got off easy. I saw police who used only their bicycles to defend themselves from assaulting “peace activists”. The “activists”  would’ve been shot dead for those assaults in most every other country in the world.

    The “activists” should count their lucky stars…if the police hadn’t been there and private citizens were left to defend their own property and families, the “peace” movement would be burying countless of their friends today. The police protected them…you’d think they’d be grateful, wouldn’t you?

    Someone asked yesterday if that had been Kokesh at the McCain speech. Yes it was;

    [youtube OmntuKvlytY nolink]

  • Update on Code Pink’s RNC Insurgency

    My original post yesterday;

    An emailer sends this about the woman who tried to rush the stage;

    Woman who rushed RNC stage last night during Palin’s speech is Code Pink founder and Obama fundraiser Jodie Evans. Person who gave her the credentials is probably Fort Wayne Realtor Ann Eckrich

    Jodie Evans is a top OBAMA FUNDRAISER….with extreme radical ties

    Jodie Evans, co-founder of the radical group Code Pink, rushed the stage while Sarah Palin was speaking.

    Code Pink has a Flickr account which includes this photo of Jodie being interviewed earlier in the day wearing a name tag “Annie Eckrich, Indiana”

    Code Pink’s press release says they were given tickets by a GOP delegate;

    Co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, who were given their tickets to the speech by a Republican delegate who was frustrated with the Republican party and Sarah Palin, caught the attention of Palin with their banners and shouting about 15 minutes into her speech. Palin stopped talking for a moment to turn to look at them. (Read a Washington Post description of the incident).

    Ann Echrich is an alternate delegate and RNC contributor

    Founding Bloggers, who got a whiff of my post this morning, took it a step further and called Ms. Eckrich;

    We just got off the phone with Annie Eckrich from Indiana.
    She was at the convention each day.
    She DID NOT GIVE CODE PINK PERMISSION TO USE HER IDENTITY!
    CODE PINK STOLE HER IDENTITY!!!

    Founding Bloggers, one of whom is Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, promises audio and video of that conversation.

    Also, by way of Free Republic, Newsbusters‘ Mark Finkelstein writes;

    There is another much more intriguing explanation out there. According to Shay at Booker Rising, which describes itself a newsite for black moderates and black conservatives [emphasis added]:

    I took the shuttle bus back to Minneapolis, and I overheard a convention organizer named Phil telling a convention delegate that the protesters on Wednesday night got through because of media credentials that were traced back to MSNBC (he told her that each credential has an individual bar code for each convention invitee). They suspect MSNBC this time as well.

    What a tangled web…theft, media conspiracies, subversion. Stay tuned.

    UPDATED: Michelle Malkin links William Amos‘ video post to Medea’s false explanation for how they got the passes.

    UPDATED AGAIN: Here’s the audio of Founding Bloggers’ telephone interview with Ms. Eckrich.

  • Today’s Profligate Hysteria of the Day award goes to:

    Douglas Carpenter of Democratic Underground, COME ON DOWN! You are the inaugural recipient of my semi-often Profligate Hysteria of the Day award! Your award winning post brings credit on you, Democratic Underground, and the United Peoples of Moonbatistan!

    Whatever the result of the November election, Sarah Palin is the scariest politician to appear on the national scene in a generation…

    Like many demagogues she has demonstrated an ability to wrap a right-wing extremist message in the language and imagery of working class populism to Orwellian levels – and she and her handlers are very, very good at it – so far, anyway.

    MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT!! This is a VERY dangerous development, whatever the result of the November election!!

    She can also make some killer flap jacks!! (note the use of 2 exclamation marks, which denotes actual fear, excitement or psychosis not properly signified by the use of only 1)

    Again it is entirely possible that the whole thing could fizzle or implode. For the sake of the country and the world and the future of humanity, I certainly hope so.

    For the sake of the country, the world and the future of humanity? What about animals, Gaia, the Romulan Empire and Charlie the Unicorn? Would they not also be threatened by a VP Palin?

    And seriously, are you telling me that Palin strikes more fear in your heart that Cheney? Thank you Douglas Carpenter, now go do that voodoo, that you do so well!!! (Three exclamations this time as I am up in cheering in my office, tears unashamedly streaming down my face at the patriotic dissent of this valiant man.)

  • Minnesota clown show

    Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit reports the bus he was riding in was bombarded by bags of cement as they went under an overpass on the way to the Excel Center. He has pictures and videos at Founding Bloggers. Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has pictures of battles between anarchists and police.

    From Associated Press;

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