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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

The Kalashnikov frenzy

The Washington Post reports that which we predicted about six weeks ago – Kalashnikov Concern products including their commercial version AK-47 have been scooped up by buyers after Executive Order 13662 banned their import in mid-July;

Jay Portz, vice president of RWC, said a run on the Russian-made rifles began almost immediately. While the sanctions didn’t impose any restrictions on sales of the more plentiful European or American knockoffs — and even a Russian variant not made by Kalashnikov Concern — Bunting said buyers learned of the ban on social networks and raced to get the real thing.

Of course, it’s the NRA’s fault;

Gun control advocates argue that buying frenzies are often stoked by the National Rifle Association. In a lengthy message to members after the Obama administration’s announcement, the NRA’s legislative organization said: “We of course recognize the important role that enacting sanctions can have in furthering legitimate U.S. foreign policy interests. However, in this instance the extent to which these actions coincide with the stated domestic policy goals of gun control supporters is more than a little unsettling.”

Four days after the NRA’s statement, The Truth About Guns, a popular firearms blog, proclaimed the AK-47 “buying panic begins,” adding, “Once again, the firearms industry owes President Obama a debt of gratitude.”

Hardly, we’ve seen it all before – the so called “Assault Weapon Ban” of the 90s spurred a buying frenzy of scary-looking black guns, so did the post-Sandy Hook threats of legislation. I even have a new rule – when someone tries to take away my own gun rights, I buy three more. That seems to happen once a year.

The gun sites that I visit, Guns America and Gun Broker still offer some Kalashnikov products, but the inventory seems to be drying up. Prices are only slightly elevated. But I’m not a fan of Kalashnikov products, so I haven’t been paying much attention to it. Conversely, it looks like the prices of ARs have dropped a few hundred bucks, so there’s an upside.

It seems to me that if the gun grabbers didn’t want people to buy guns, they’d stopping scaring people by threatening to ban them. Their incessant yammering about banning guns seems to have the opposite effect. They never learn.

I’d only freak if they banned 1911s, but even New York hasn’t completely banned those yet. Thanks to Chief Tango for the WP link.

September 1, 2014
Senators criticize lack of strategy

The Washington Post reports that Senator John McCain is doing his knee-jerk thing again calling for sending more troops to Iraq, you know, like he did when Syria was a problem;

Sen. John McCain said Sunday that President Obama is “either in denial or overwhelmed” with regard to the Islamic State and called for “additional U.S. troops” to help combat the extremist group.

The Arizona Republican, speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” added that U.S. forces should play only a support role.

I’m not sure what more support troops would do to help defeat ISIS, unless we plan to bury them in hand receipt and inventory paperwork for all of the US equipment that ISIS now owns.

The Post also reports that Senator Diane Feinstein says that Obama is moving too slowly in Iraq;

Feinstein also acknowledged that Obama’s description of the Islamic State in January as a “JV team” was inaccurate. “I think it’s a major varsity team,” she said, adding, “I see nothing that compares with its viciousness.”

The senator also suggested that the United States was caught off guard by the Islamic State’s capabilities and its rapid advances in Iraq.

“I mean, they crossed the border into Iraq before we even knew it happened,” she said. “This is a group of people who are extraordinarily dangerous, and they’ll kill with abandon.”

Yeah, we were “caught off guard”. They took Fallujah in February and then spent six months building up their forces while we sat on our hands and made promises to Iraq for equipment we didn’t bother to deliver, and still haven’t delivered with the Islamic State at the gates of Baghdad. So I’m thinking while Feinstein’s and McCain’s criticism is justified, they’re moving too slow, too.

September 1, 2014
Public opinion as policy

The Washington Post publishes a piece in it’s pages today about our really cool president who doesn’t let world events bother him entitled “Obama sets his own pace in a world whirling with crises“.

They fawn over the fellow in the White House who makes decisions based on polling results after weeks, if not months, of taking the pulse of American public opinion. Always making the more popular decision. That practice has led to the worst foreign policy (if you can find a single policy), rampant unemployment, rampant overspending by government, an unsafe world in which we’re surrounded by enemies, further endangering our own economy as well as our national security.

The American people are boobs – there are 300,000,000 million people acting in their own interest. That’s human nature and it’s the same across the globe. What we need is a leader to lead us, not one more boob acting in his own interests. If we needed a government that made policy based on the popular opinion, Gallup would be the president.

Because we’ve been geographically removed from many of the problems in the world, we want stuff that makes us comfortable. Sending our troops to war makes us uncomfortable, as it should, but our short-sightedness and our need for immediate comfort makes us end conflicts before the enemy agrees that the war is over. And so, we’ve sent troops to Iraq three times in the last twenty years when all we really needed to do was finish the job the first time.

It will be the same in Afghanistan;

With a schedule for Iraq withdrawal already set, he developed policies for ending the then-faltering war in Afghanistan. In a pattern that would repeat itself on other issues, he deliberated for months, and then split the difference by simultaneously announcing a surge of troops and the timing of their departure.

But as he tried to engage the world on his terms, Obama quickly found out that the world had thoughts and plans of its own. Far from the reset Obama sought with Russia, President Vladimir Putin sought a new balance of power through aggression in Ukraine. While Obama offered a fresh start for the United States in the Muslim world, the Arab Spring headed toward destabilization rather than democracy.

Six years later, events seem to have spun out of his control, and Obama must react to the actions of others. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has sparked the greatest East-West crisis since the Cold War. Islamic State advances have swallowed up a large swath of the Middle East and threaten a global upheaval far beyond the shock of al-Qaeda’s 2001 attacks.

It’s no coincidence that the world seemed to fall apart soon after Obama’s decision to half-ass the surge in Afghanistan – he sent a message to the world that we weren’t really committed to anything anymore and the fear and respect for the US that George W. Bush had fostered in his eight years had dissipated and from the four corners of the world came chaos.

That’s why there is no strategy for Iraq, or any other place in the world, for that matter – the White House is waiting to see what Americans want to do, before they do something that we might consider “stupid”. Because the Obama Doctrine is “don’t doing anything stupid”, and it ends up being “don’t do anything”. That’s why the President can play golf and fiddle while the world burns around him – he’s waiting for Americans to make policy – the best political answer – the answer that is popular. And most likely wrong.

George W. Bush ignored public opinion in 2006, when Congressional Republicans lost in the mid-terms, and Bush brought relative peace to Iraq. You’d think someone might have noticed that if they weren’t so busy trying to get elected rather than doing the right thing for the country.

August 31, 2014
President Live at the American Legion Convention (Updated)

The word is that he’s going to mention someone who we all know.

Thanks to David for the link.

UPDATED: If you missed it, here’s what he said about the VA improvement. You’ll notice he has replaced “I” and “me” with “we”.

UPDATED Again: Here’s the whole 36 minutes;

August 26, 2014
Holder to investigate Foley murder

Fox News reports that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has announced that he’s going to lunch an investigation into the beheading of journalist James Foley.

“This is more nonsense,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., an Iraq war veteran, said in a statement to FoxNews.com. “What’s most aggravating is that either in Foley’s situation, or the other Americans in captivity, the Defense Department is being forced to take a backseat to the FBI and DOJ.”

Charles Krauthammer compared this to FDR announcing that he’s going to launch an investigation to bring the Japanese pilots at Pearl Harbor to justice. I guess when you’re a lawyer, everything looks like a nail (mixed metaphor acknowledged), but this is an act of war, not a legal issue.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Obvious is not up to the task of waging war, which makes him a perfect fit for this administration, but neither is Eric Holder able to wage war.

What no one is acknowledging is that Foley was executed because the Obama Administration wouldn’t facilitate the ransom exchange, which is proper, we don’t negotiate with terrorists, but they did meet the demands of the Haqqani Network for the release of Bowe Bergdahl – paid a high price for the exchange, so they sent a mixed message to our enemies. The murder of Foley was to get their attention again.

I think it’s cute that Secretary Obvious thinks that we can destroy the ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State by attacking them in Syria – that group is fighting against the Syrian government and towards our own goal of removing Assad from his presidency. It’s all pretty confusing – we’re arming the Syrian rebels who are intermixed with the ISIS folks. A year ago we were ready to launch air attacks in support of ISIS in retaliation for chemical attacks that we perceived to have been committed by the Syrian government.

But all of that will be clear, because the Justice Department will now be driving our strategy in the region. The only thing that could screw it all up is if they put Bite Me in charge of getting answers – remember Biden was the fellow responsible for the collapse of talks with the Iraq government for keeping US troops in Iraq which caused this whole mess in the first place.

August 22, 2014
Hagel: IS is bigger threat than AQ

Secretary of Defense Chuck Obvious told the Pentagon press that ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State is more dangerous than al Qaeda ever was according to Stars & Stripes, that was in case no noticed that al Qaeda never had an army with tanks and jeeps and stuff.

The Islamic State, which has taken over much of Iraq since June, “is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen. They’re beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology [with] a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. Oh, this is beyond anything that we’ve seen,” Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday.

The Pentagon chief described the group as an “imminent threat” and warned Americans not to be complacent just because the militants are fighting far from the United States.

“I doubt if there were many people that would have thought there was much of a threat [to the homeland] the day before 9/11,” he said.

So, the US is less safe because of the way this administration has fought the war against terror? See, we were told that for every terrorist we killed ten more popped up in their place. this administration has done it’s best to stop killing terrorists and that plan isn’t working.

“Jim Foley’s murder was another tragic demonstration of the ruthless, barbaric ideology” of the Islamic State, [Secretary Obvious] said.

Boy, he sure has his finger on the pulse of this whole thing, doesn’t he? This is the guy who called the second war against Saddam Hussein the biggest mistake in US history. So, apparently, he’s bound and determined to make his own history. The whole point of his little information campaign, alongside Marty Dempsey was to ease us into the boiling water of increased military participation in Iraq.

August 22, 2014
GAO: Bergdahl rescue was illegal

Auntie Brat sends us a link to a Fox News story which reports that those vile right wingers at the Government Accountability Office who have determined that the rescue of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was accomplished in contradiction of the law that governs those kinds of things;

The Government Accountability Office, in a legal opinion issued at the request of congressional lawmakers, said the Defense Department violated the law by failing to notify key Capitol Hill committees at least 30 days in advance.

Further, the report said the Pentagon broke another law by using funds that were not technically available.

The GAO said the law in this case is “clear and unambiguous.”

Well, as you all know, I’m glad that Bergdahl is back in the US and I’m glad that I didn’t have to make the decision on how to get him back, but either we have laws or we don’t. I know that if I broke a law that was “clear and unambiguous” this administration would have no problem hauling my ass into court.

I’m definitely not calling for an impeachment or anything – the only thing worse than an Obama Presidency is a Biden Presidency.

August 21, 2014
More boots on the ground in Iraq

Pinto Nag sends us a link from MSN which announces that the President is considering sending more troops to Iraq;

According to a senior U.S. official, the number of additional troops currently under discussion would be fewer than 300, but there has been no final decision yet by Pentagon leaders. Officials said that the forces, if approved, would mainly provide extra security around Baghdad.

[…]

Currently there are about 748 U.S. forces in Iraq, in addition to the approximately 100 troops that have routinely been assigned to the Office of Security Cooperation in Baghdad. Under the current war powers resolutions sent to Congress, Obama authorized up to 775 U.S. troops for security assistance, assessment teams, and advisers at two joint operations centers in Baghdad and Irbil.

Anyone else feel like a lobster sitting in increasingly warmer water? It seems to me that the President is using the murder of James Foley to take advantage of public sentiment against the terrorist scum. Of course, if he been serious about the war against these scum bags in the beginning, we might not be doing it now. He had thousands of US troops in Iraq when he took office but they were inconveniently patrolling the country in relative peace at the time.

Meanwhile, according to Reuters, the ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State folks are planning to attack us here, somehow;

They hinted that attacks on American interests or even U.S. soil were possible through sleeper cells in Europe and the United States.

“The West are idiots and fools. They think we are waiting for them to give us visas to go and attack them or that we will attack with our beards or even Islamic outfits,” said one.

“They think they can distinguish us these days – they are fools, and, more than that, they don’t know we can play their game in intelligence. They infiltrated us with those who pretend to be Muslims and we have also penetrated them with those who look like them.”

Yeah, I just peed myself a little out of unbridled excitement at the thought. But, I don’t get that lucky.

I guess they’re saying that if we won’t fight them over there, they’ll come here. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

August 21, 2014