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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Clinton gets us a hand full of jack

    Remember a few weeks ago when the Obama Administration threw “New Europe” under the bus by conceding to Russian demands that we end our missile defense plan of Eastern Europe? Remember that we were told that we needed to do that to get the Russians’ support for sanctions against Iran? Well, how’s that looking today?

    Secretary of State Clinton spent four hours with her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Washington Times quotes Lavarov;

    During a press conference with the secretary, however, Mr. Lavrov said that sanctions are “very far” from being inevitable and repeated a position Russia has expressed for years.

    “At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process,” he said. “Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive.”

    Actually, I agree sanctions wouldn’t work – but we were told that’s why we conceded to Russia on missile defense. So what are we getting for giving up our allies? Squat. how’s Putin’s ass taste, Hillary?

    In fact, the Washington Post wrings it’s hands over the vulnerability of the Administration to conservative critics at this point;

    Senior administration officials said that the differences were tactical rather than substantive. Both sides agreed that Iran would face sanctions if it failed to carry out its obligations, a State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    But failure to win a Russian commitment to a set of specific sanctions in advance could leave the administration vulnerable to Republican criticism that it gave the Kremlin what it wanted by overhauling missile defense plans in Europe but got nothing in return.

    Yeah, that should be their concern – conservatives. Never mind that we look like impotent tools in front of the whole world. You’d think that was bad enough, wouldn’t you? But, no it’s not. Fox News reports that Clinton gave the Russians access to our nukes.

    Russia and the United States have tentatively agreed to a weapons inspection program that would allow Russians to visit nuclear sites in America to count missiles and warheads.

    The plan, which Fox News has learned was agreed to in principle during negotiations, would constitute the most intrusive weapons inspection program the U.S. has ever accepted.

    Any mention of our inspections of Russian nukes?

    “We want to ensure that every question that the Russian military or Russian government asks is answered,” she said, calling missile defense “another area for deep cooperation between our countries.”

    But what about the Russians’ nukes, Madame Secretary?

    President Obama — who visited Russia in July — has vowed to “reset” U.S.-Russia relations. On Tuesday, Clinton apologized for missing that meeting because of a broken elbow.

    “But now both my elbow and our relationships are reset and we’re moving forward, which I greatly welcome,” she said.

    Um…Russian nuclear weapons inspections?

    Nuthin’.

  • More Nobel Prize news

    According to the Associated Press, the Nobel Prize jury commented on the prize they gave to President Obama last week – and it turns out that their reasoning is even more intellectually vacant than we thought;

    “Alfred Nobel wrote that the prize should go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year,” Jagland said. “Who has done more for that than Barack Obama?”

    Since nominations were closed on February 1st, the “previous year” was 2008 – you remember, the year that Obama spent campaigning. The last year in which he wasn’t even President. So his campaign brought peace to the world. So we thought he was given the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful inauguration celebration – and we were wrong.

    Of course, the runner-up for the most questionable award of the year, Eugene Robinson, who won a Pulitzer earlier this year for republishing MoveOn talking points and Obama campaign emails in his Washington Post “opinion” column for eight years wants to know why conservatives hate America;

    The problem for the addlebrained Obama-rejectionists is that the president, as far as they are concerned, couldn’t possibly do anything right, and thus is unworthy of any conceivable recognition. If Obama ended world hunger, they’d accuse him of promoting obesity. If he solved global warming, they’d complain it was getting chilly. If he got Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu to join him around the campfire in a chorus of “Kumbaya,” the rejectionists would claim that his singing was out of tune.
    ad_icon

    Let the rejectionists fulminate and sputter until they wear their vocal cords out. Politically, they’re only bashing themselves. As Republican leaders — except RNC Chairman Michael Steele — are beginning to realize, “I’m With the Taliban Against America” is not likely to be a winning slogan.

    Robinson makes me giggle – this from the man who thought Bush would bring back slavery and throw Robinson in jail for regurgitating DNC platitudes. At some point he has to question why he’s at odds with common sense.

    I thought we were done reporting Nobel Prize dementia, but apparently it will continue.

  • White House more worried about Fox than Taliban

    Last week, we were treated to a Jimmy Carter Redux when the White House announced that the Taliban was someone they could deal with in the war against terror. This week, they signal that Fox News is their biggest enemy. From Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz on his interview with Anita Dunn, the White House communications director;

    I had thought Dunn might try to smooth things over with the country’s highest-rated cable news network, as guests often do in front of a television camera, but instead she was determined to ratchet things up: “The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. . . . Take their talking points and put them on the air. Take their opposition research and put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”

    I don’t think she was freelancing; there are meetings in every White House about what message to put out on the Sunday shows.

    Dunn acknowledged that the president had intentionally stiffed Fox for this reason when he did that Sunday morning blitz a few weeks back, but added: “Obviously he’ll go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. . . . When he goes on Fox, he understands that he is not going on — it really is not a news network at this point. He’s going to debate the opposition.”

    Engage people who throw acid in the faces of preteen girls, ignore the half of the country that oppose him ideologically. Makes sense. From Fox News;

    But last week, Fox News was informed by the White House that Obama would grant no interviews to the channel until at least 2010. The edict was relayed to Fox News by a White House official after Dunn discussed the channel at a meeting with presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs and other Obama advisers.

    So the millions of people who get their news from Fox won’t have to listen to the incessant whining of the Administration – that’s a plus. The REALLY funny part is that Fox wasn’t all that biased during the election;

    …a study by the Pew Research Center showed that 40 percent of Fox News stories on Obama in the last six weeks of the campaign were negative. Similarly, 40 percent of Fox News’ stories on Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, were negative.

    On CNN, by contrast, there was a 22-point disparity in the percentage of negative stories on Obama (39 percent) and McCain (61 percent). The disparity was even greater at MSNBC, according to Pew, where just 14 percent of Obama stories were negative, compared to a whopping 73 percent of McCain stories — a spread of 59 points.

    Since the election, Fox has peeled off from the pack that reads the news from White House press releases and covered things like the ACORN hooker scandal, the tea parties, the czars – ya know stuff that’s happening which the rest of the media won’t cover.

    If I sat here all day and did the same thing 90% of bloggers are doing, how long would you read this blog? So Fox gets punished by the Administration for pursuing the news no one else will – if no one was interested, they wouldn’t watch and Fox would tank. But who is really getting punished here? Obama has voluntarily left millions out of his loop – he won’t reach millions with his message because his ignorant staff wants to throw temper tantrums instead.

    Of course, this is the same path Hugo Chavez took, too.

  • Joe Rocha revisited

    I’ve been getting my ass handed to me in my email from Ace of Spade’s Gabriel Malor and doubleplusundead‘s AliceH for not doing my homework on the Washington Post opinion piece I quoted yesterday. I should add that I’m getting my ass handed to me in a very genial manner.

    I’ll concede I was a bit rushed because my wife wanted to see the West Virginia mountains before the leaves all fall off of the trees (like they did last year and like they will again next year).

    Gabe wrote to say;

    Contrary to your commenters who claimed Rocha is a “failure at life” and your suggestion that he’s just “weak in the knees” and “looking for an excuse”, it appears that something went on over there and DADT played a part. Is it as bad as he says? Is he exaggerating? We don’t know (yet), but dismissing him outright avoids the facts.

    If, as you say, it’s bullshit then you have nothing to fear from pointing your readers at the investigation. On the other hand, if something did go on, you just libeled a good man (and encouraged others to do so) based on nothing but your gut.

    Either way, your post didn’t do a bit of good for any involved. Doesn’t make the Navy look better. Doesn’t rehabilitate DADT. It certainly doesn’t get us any closer to getting past the counterproductive status quo.

    So I went to digging and found a Navy Times article which said;

    In January [2007], Rear Adm. David Mercer, the commander of Navy Region Europe, Africa and Southwest Asia, sent a team of senior officials to review the working dog unit and others at Naval Support Activity Bahrain.

    Mercer subsequently added personnel to Bahrain, he said.

    Master-at-Arms Senior Chief Michael Toussaint, the man implicated in the investigation, works with SEALs in Virginia. He reaches his 20-year point in the Navy this coming January.

    It’s unclear if anyone was disciplined in the wake of the 2007 investigation.

    One sailor implicated in the probe, Master-at-Arms 1st Class Jennifer Valdivia, committed suicide in January 2007, the same day the investigators forwarded their report to her commanders.

    Her suicide was likely tied to the investigation, according to her family and Navy investigators.

    AliceH wrote to tell me about the circumstances surrounding Valdivia’s death;

    Petty Officer 3rd Class Jake Wilburn, who received a dishonorable discharge, told the newspaper he felt as though he became a scapegoat. He said Valdivia failed to stop the hazing after Toussaint’s departure.

    “Once he left, everybody had been used to being ruled by fear and intimidation,” Wilburn said. “She didn’t know how to lead any other way. Everybody completely walked all over her, and she just lost control. No one paid her respect, so she tried to overcompensate.

    As I learned my lesson about research, I chased down another Navy Times article;

    Master-at-Arms 1st Class Jennifer Valdivia’s apparent suicide came on the same day the investigators forwarded their report to the commander of Naval Support Activity Bahrain.

    “They told her to pack her bags; she was going to the brig. They were going to strip her of everything she ever got in the Navy,” her father, Chris Young, of Alpha, Ill., told Navy Times.

    Valdivia had been promoted to the kennel’s leading petty officer after Toussaint left Bahrain in March 2006, Young said.

    The Navy official familiar with the investigation confirmed that Valdivia was leaving the Navy but her commanders halted that move as a result of the investigation. It’s unclear whether her suicide was connected to the probe, the official said.

    So, apparently, something very wrong was going on at the Navy’s Working Dog Unit in Bahrain. Does it change my mind about Rocha? Nope. He blamed his supervisor at the Working Dog Unit for his PTSD and his decision for announcing his sexual orientation to his supervisors, but that’s not what he told the Navy Times reporter;

    While in Rhode Island, Rocha decided to tell his command that he is a homosexual because he disagreed with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. He said he wanted to pursue a career permitting him to acknowledge his homosexuality.

    He claims he made a political decision unrelated to his treatment. Valdavia was blamed for the same things that unit members said that her previous supervisor had done. And who were the witnesses about the behavior – Joe Rocha the politically motivated activist and Jake Wilburn, a sailor who has been dishonorably discharged.

    Rocha says DADT was the reason he couldn’t report the hazing to which he claims he was subjected, yet he had no problem taking his punishment at the prep school.

    Am I the only one who sees the flaws in this story? Having been railroaded by military subordinates a few times myself, I recognize the pattern.

    Might I be wrong? Yes, it happened before. Once. As I told Gabe, I made it clear that my opinion is based on nothing except my gut feelings. Since we’re only treated to one side of this story, (there’s nothing anywhere that I can find quoting Master-at-Arms Senior Chief Michael Toussaint) we have to assume we’re missing something.

    I haven’t changed my mind from yesterday, though. And if “getting past the counterproductive status quo” rests solely on my shoulders, I’m pretty sure this post doesn’t help.

  • DeMint reports on Honduras

    South Carolina’s Senator Jim DeMint went on a fact-finding trip to Honduras despite John Kerry’s opposition and writes about it today in the Wall Street Journal;

    In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.

    When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a “coup,” he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh’s report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied.

    Now, we’ve seen how huffy the Democrats get when a Republican Administration won’t publicize a legal opinion – why the hypocrisy? We can only assume that the opinion which the Obama Administraion is hiding from us is legally vacuous. The Obama Administration decided to back Zelaya (read that: Chavez) before the opinion was written.

    Honduras is scheduled to have presidential elections is just six weeks and the whole problem will be resolved – unless the kiss-asses at the US State Department and the OAS find a way to screw it up. Of course, they will.

    Fausta writes that Roberto Micheletti, the interim Honduran president of Honduras took an opportunity to school OAS reps the other day;

    “First, I wish to express unending thanks for the good will that you are showing . . . but we must speak out about something: the truth. You do not know the whole truth and, at times it appears that you do not want to hear it. Why don’t we begin to investigate what happened before the 28th of June?

    And Micheletti told the OAS reps what’s what. Let’s see if they listened.

  • NASCAR Names Obama ‘Rookie Driver Of The Year’

    Daytona Beach, Florida (AP) – In a stunning move, and mirroring President Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, officials at NASCAR’s headquarters in Daytona announced today that they would be awarding the president the racing organization’s ‘Rookie Driver Of The Year’ award. A spokesman for NASCAR was quoted as saying, “Considering what the president has done for the American auto industry this past year, we felt he deserved this honor”.

    When questioned on the fact that President Obama doesn’t race in NASCAR and isn’t even a fan of the sport, the spokesman noted, “If them Nobel people can give the president a medal for peace when he’s getting ready to send more troops into harms way, we see no reason why we can’t make him rookie of the year even if he thinks we’re all a bunch of Confederate flag waving racists.” When contacted for a response, the White House issued the following statement:

    “President Obama is honored to accept the NASCAR award for Rookie Of The Year. As a close personal friend of Ricky Bobby, the president is well aware of the embedded American values of competition and wholesome recreation that NASCAR represents. Additionally, President Obama shares many of the same tastes as the fans of the sport and has even sipped on a PBR once when the local convenience store was out of his usual imported brand. Over the years, NASCAR has shown the ability to change with the nation and the president recognizes what a singular honor this award is. In fact, one of NASCAR’s greatest influences on the president can be summed up in the following; go fast, turn left.”

    Fan reaction has been mixed. One man from Charlotte stated, “Well hell, if they’ll let that queer Jeff Gordon race a car, I guess it don’t make no nevermind that they give rookie of the year to some colored guy who don’t even drive him own self around.” Another NASCAR fan disagreed, saying that she thought that the president probably doesn’t even realize that NASCAR isn’t a community organization. “Maybe if NASCAR hired a few hookers and some undocumented day laborers, it might be better, but I don’t think the president understands what NASCAR is all about.”.

  • Obama wins peace prize for being not-Bush

    So the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Obama the Peace Prize for 2009. Their reasoning according to the Washington Times is;

    …for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

    In other words,”Obama is not George Bush”. He hasn’t actually accomplished anything, but he campaigns well. So much for any bit of credibility the prize might have had after awarding it to Yassir Arafat or Al Gore. I guess this is the committee weighing in on troops increases in Afghanistan.

    I’ll bet Bill Clinton is angier than anyone else on the planet about this though. Clinton actually campaigned for the medal. Like everything else, Barack Obama has won it for doing nothing more than talking.

    What could make this even more stupid? Nominations for the prize closed in February. Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the prize because he brokered peace between Russia and Japan. Woodrow Wilson was awarded the prize because he established the League of Nations. Barack Obama wins because he had an Inauguration.

  • Vote Vets: Sure let’s bring back the Taliban

    Yeah, dicksmith is a rocket surgeon. The Times Online reports that President Obama is contemplating involving the Taliban in rebuilding Afghanistan.

    Mr Obama appears to have been swayed in recent days by arguments from some advisers, led by Vice-President Joe Biden, that the Taleban do not pose a direct threat to the US and that there should be greater focus on tackling al-Qaeda inside Pakistan.

    And, surprise, dicksmith thinks it’s brilliant;

    This makes sense. Often in America, the Taliban is conflated with al Quaeda as if they are the same organization. They aren’t. The Taliban were a group of fundamentalist Islamic scholars who took power in the vacuum that ensured following the withdrawal of the Soviets. Needing money to fund their regime, the Taliban turned to a Saudi-born oil heir named Osama bin Laden and agreed to allow his organization to operate training camps within their borders in exchange for financing.

    See? It’s not their fault that they became entangled with terrorists. Dicksmith fails to mention that these “fundamentalist Islamic scholars” are the guys who now throw acid in the faces of young girls for the unforgivable crime of going to school.

    And, oh, has anybody bothered to mention that the Taliban, who the US Left credits for eradicating poppy production and the resulting drug trade in Afghanistan are currently involved in the drug trade?

    But dicksmith isn’t done apologizing for the Taliban;

    Yes, the Taliban were complicit in attacks on American, but they did not perpetrate them.

    For six years we got to hear the Left complain that Iraq wasn’t complicit in world-wide terrorism. Now we get to hear them eliminate yet another group of enemies with their pathetic, intellectually shallow excuses. Besides, the Taliban says that they’re not a threat to us. they’ve never lied before, right?

    What’s next? Are they going to tell us that Osama bin Laden didn’t know about the 9-11 attacks? How could he? He was all the way in Afghanistan.

    The fact that welcoming the Taliban into the community of Afghans is a Biden plan should have warned everybody off – but not dicksmith, bless his tiny black heart.