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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • American locked up for handing out legal items in workers’ paradise

    We all remember how in recent months, the Raoul Castro government in Cuba made a big deal out of legalizing cell phones and laptops for Cuban citizens. Well, the Washington Post reports that an American citizen was arrested for handing out laptops and cellphones, normally priced right out of the budget of an average Cuban family;

    The contractor, who has not been identified, works for Bethesda-based Development Alternatives. The company said in a statement that it was awarded a government contract last year to help USAID “support the rule of law and human rights, political competition and consensus building” in Cuba.

    Consular officers with the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, the capital, are seeking access to the contractor, who was arrested Dec. 5. The charges have not been made public. Under Cuban law, however, a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of “dangerousness.”

    So much for access to electronics for Cubans. Since the items were free, the Cuban government wasn’t able to make any money on the deal.

    But the really disgusting part of the whole story is in the comments section of the Post. It rivals a Democratic Underground thread in their hypocrisy. With no evidence to support it, the Washington Post’s readership accuses the contract employee of being CIA, they accuse the US of “meddling” in Cuban politics – anything to avoid facing the facts that the guy was handing out legal items to Cuban citizens.

    Speaking of Democratic Underground, they’re absolutely giddy about it. I guess it’s some kind of Hillary plot to make Obama look bad (like he needs help in that regard).

    So I’ve come to the logical conclusion that Liberals call themselves “progressives” these days because there is nothing liberal about them when it comes to human rights.

    Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu Blog (my first stop for Cuban perspective) writes;

    The fact is that the Cuban regime may not have enough hotel rooms to handle all the American tourists if the travel ban were lifted, but they certainly do have enough jail cells to hold any that stray off the Potemkin village.

  • “…Not only stupid, it’s not worth a peace prize”

    Twelve Republican congresspeople held a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court this morning to protest sending Kalid Sheik Muhammad to New York City for trial. They were Congressman Steve King (R-IA), Andrew McCarthy (Former Federal Prosecutor), Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Charles Stimson (Former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary For Detainee Affairs), Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC), Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Congressman John Shadegg (R-AZ), Frank Gaffney (President, Center For Security Policy), Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO), Congressman John Fleming, M.D. (R-LA), Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ).

    Here’s the video of some clips from the Washington News Observer;

    Uncle Jimbo of Blackfive was there, too;

    The press conference for H.R. 4127 that would amend the Military Commissions Act of 2009 to make it mandatory that all alien unprivileged enemy belligerents stand trial in a constitutionally established military commission rather than a civilian court, was this morning at the Supreme Court.

    Go see Jimbo’s video of Cully Stimson.

    Fat chance that it’ll pass, but your congressman needs to know how you feel about it so he knows why he won’t get your vote next year.

  • Obama DOJ subpoenaed

    black-panthers

    The Washington Times reports that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is sick of pussy-footing around with DoJ lawyers and has decided to subpoena them to answer questions about the New Black Panther Party case;

    David P. Blackwood, the commission’s general counsel, said Tuesday in a letter to the Justice Department that efforts since June to obtain an explanation had proceeded “without any success” and the “dearth of cooperation” had prompted the commission to issue subpoenas.

    “We are both mindful of the sensitivity of the subject matter involved and aware that, in response to similar requests, the department has raised various concerns and matters of privilege,” Mr. Blackwood said. “While such considerations carry weight, cooperation with commission investigations is a mandatory statutory obligation.

    “Moreover, due to the unique investigative role of the commission – akin to that of a congressional committee – disclosure to the commission of the information sought is both proper and required,” he added.

    It’s amazing to me that such a blatant case of voter intimidation is so completely ignored by the media and by the Justice Department, especially.

    loretta-kingjpg

    The department’s Voting Rights Section was in the final stages of seeking the judgments when Loretta King, who was serving as acting assistant attorney general, ordered a delay.

    She issued the delay after meeting with Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, the department’s No. 3 political appointee, who approved the dismissal, according to interviews with department officials who sought anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

    Yeah, the DOJ seems so interested in the rights of terrorists, but screw our voting rights.

  • The definition of insanity

    So, while his popularity falls because unemployment is rising (against his promises), manufacturing continues to decrease, the President decides that he must be doing something right so he proposes more of the same unrestrained government spending;

    President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to “spend our way out of this recession” until more Americans are back at work.

    “Spend our way out of a recession”. That’s like killing off a few million people to lower the rate of suicide.

    OK, he inherited a bad economy – just like George Bush inherited a bad economy – but he hasn’t done anything to fix it except drive us deeper in debt and our currency (and ability to borrow) is now in danger because we’re about to lose our AAA bond rating. SO let’s spend some more.

    Voters should remember this line from today’s speech when they go the polls next year “And we were forced to take those steps largely without the help of an opposition party….”

  • 300 casualties in Iraq bombings

    The Washington Times and Associated Press report a series of four coordinated attacks in Baghdad which has caused at least 300 casualties this morning;

    At least 103 were killed and 197 wounded in the worst wave of violence in the capital in more than a month, authorities said.

    A total of four attacks, which also included a suicide car bomb on a police patrol, showed the ability of insurgents to strike high-profile targets in the heart of Baghdad and marked the third time since August that government buildings were targeted with multiple blasts that brought massive bloodshed.

    It also was another embarrassment to Iraqi forces in their expanding role as front-line security as U.S. forces plan their withdrawal.

    I’m pretty sure this attack was intended to embarrass the Iraqi government and to prove that terrorists in Iraq have more staying power than the US. USAToday reports a bomb which killed 12 detonated near a Pakistani intelligence office;

    The bombing in Multan signaled a relentless determination on the part of the militants, who — despite being pressured by a major army offensive in one of their Afghan border havens — have sustained a retaliatory campaign since October that has killed more than 400 people. On Monday, bombings elsewhere in the country killed 59 people.

    I’d say these bombings are directly related to the Obama Administration’s 94-day decision period on the Afghan Surge and ultimately the president’s weak response to his generals. If the bombers didn’t think they see an opening and a chance to win the wars, these bombings wouldn’t have happened.

  • The Obama Surge a week later

    Despite the Washington Post trying to equate the Obama Surge to the Bush Surge this morning, in ways that really matter, Obama is a far cry from Bush. Last week, Bush-sounding Obama announced an anemic introduction of 30,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan with a proviso that they’d begin withdrawing next year.

    But yesterday, the Obama staff started backing away from the withdrawal (New York Times);

    The Obama administration sent a forceful public message Sunday that American military forces could remain in Afghanistan for a long time, seeking to blunt criticism that President Obama had sent the wrong signal in his war-strategy speech last week by projecting July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal.

    In a flurry of coordinated television interviews, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top administration officials said that any troop pullout beginning in July 2011 would be slow and that the Americans would only then be starting to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces under Mr. Obama’s new plan.

    The television appearances by the senior members of Mr. Obama’s war council seemed to be part of a focused and determined effort to ease concerns about the president’s emphasis on setting a date for reducing America’s presence in Afghanistan after more than eight years of war.

    His exact words;

    And as commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

    After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

    What? One squad at a time?

    This strategy, for want of a better word, sprang from McChrystal’s briefing in June as reported by Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades from a WaPo article last Saturday in which the National Security staff discovered what McChrystal envisioned as his mission;

    His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a PowerPoint slide: “Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population.”

    “Is that really what you think your mission is?” one of the participants asked.

    I’d be more interested in what the Obama thought McChrystal’s mission is. Gabriel Malor writes;

    What is this bullshit? “Oh, I told him to kill the Taliban, but I didn’t think he’d take it so literally.” What. The. Fuck.

    What could it possibly have meant except “kill the Taliban.” I mean, with Obama, you never know, maybe he meant “hug the Taliban.” But he wouldn’t use the military for that, he’d go himself, right?

    So, you really have to wonder what is going on here. They didn’t know that McChrystal actually thought he should be killing Taliban and after telling America from West Point that the surge would end in 14 months, they’re saying that ‘no, it won’t’ now.

    Whether you liked George Bush or not, when he told you he was going to do something, he did it and his plan didn’t change with news reports and public opinion polls. That, coupled with the devotion of the troops to the mission, is what won in Iraq. How can the troops win when the mission and the perception of the mission changes every-damn-day?

    The troops are even fighting against Obama’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eickenberry. In a phone conversation I had this morning, someone told me that the military officers in Afghanistan are calling my former platoon leader “Douchenberry” – I like that. We called him “Dingleberry” – so some things haven’t changed much in 34 years. But what does he expect when, as a politician, he undermines the military solution in public?

    Our military wins when they’re given the equipment and political support for which they ask – when everyone understands the mission and the Administration stands fully behind them. I guess it’ll take a few years for that to happen, though. Say 2013.

  • Rewriting the history we watched

    The Washington Post’s Anne E. Kornblut, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung try to portray President Obama as a pragmatic leader on the issue of the war in Afghanistan in their total tonguebath of the president in the Post entitled “Obama pressed for faster surge” subtitled “AFGHAN REVIEW A MARATHON; ‘What was interesting was the metamorphosis’. Interesting? Hardly.

    As everyone (and their grandmother) predicted, the “metamorphosis” began with his trip to Dover AFB;

    On the evening of Oct. 29, Obama flew to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to meet a returning C-17 cargo plane. In its hold were 18 flag-draped “transfer cases” carrying the remains of soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents. He stepped inside the plane for a few minutes with the caskets.

    October was the deadliest month in Afghanistan for U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion. Fifty-eight troops died, more than three times the toll during the same month last year. A senior administration official said Obama “always believed it was important for him to acknowledge the sacrifice” at some point in the review.

    Yeah, we all knew that the trip was orchestrated even to the point of teaching Obama how to salute properly just so he could appear to be weighing the costs of his decision. Ray Charles could have seen through it from space.

    But the part that gets me is the last meeting supposedly on November 29th, in which the Post tries to make it look as if Obama is a consensus builder;

    Obama then went around the room asking one question: Do you support the strategy?

    “If they didn’t support the decision, he was going to issue another decision” until there was unanimity, a senior administration official said. “But it was his assessment that everyone could and should get behind it.”

    No, he wasn’t building a consensus. He setting up everyone in the room for the blame in case the plan fails. Now we know, thanks to the Post, that all of the President’s advisers approved “the surge”, so, if for some reason the plan falls apart in Afghanistan, it’s not Obama’s fault-all of those clowns are going under the bus.

    Oh, and, by the way, it makes him look weak that he couldn’t make a decision based on the information that every department of the government presented him. A leader doesn’t build consensus – a leader makes a plan and then convinces everyone that it’s a good plan. Building consensus is how weak-kneed pussies operate.

  • It worked for the DHS report

    DrewM at Ace of Spades writes that the the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which unleashed a firestorm last week when they announced that women between the ages of 40 and 49 don’t need breast examinations, has retracted the statement.

    “The recommendation about breast cancer screening for women 40 to 49 did not say what the task force meant to say. The task force communication was poor,” insisted Dr. Diana Petitti with the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
    The panel also backpedaled by saying it won’t recommend against screening.

    Petitti said, “We need to immediately figure out how to get that statement off the website.”

    Sound familiar? It’s kind of similar to what Janet Napolitano told the Washington Times about the DHS report which they pulled when veterans’ groups went ape shit;

    “The wheels came off the wagon because the vetting process was not followed,” Ms. Napolitano told the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday.

    “The report is no longer out there,” she said. “An employee sent it out without authorization.”

    It didn’t say what we wanted it to say – it’s not our fault, it’s that damn English which is so imprecise that we can’t hide, er…get our point across. What are all of these people doing, anyway? Do they all have so much time on their hands that read every word we write or something?