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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Those who misquote Santayana are condemned to derision

    TSO sent me a sweet new link to the latest Jon Soltz missive at Vote Vets celebrating Bush Derangement syndrome. Soltz is worried that there still might be a Muslim or two in the wilds of Afghanistan contemplating martyrdom because Dick Cheney knows stuff he ain’t talking about;

    Did Dick Cheney knowingly send intelligence officials to Congress to mislead them about the use of waterboarding? Did the Vice President himself?

    We simply don’t know. But we need to know, in light of the explosive report in the Washington Post today, that the Vice President took a very personal role in some Congressional briefings.

    “We don’t know, so he must be guilty”. Of course, this is Soltz and the veteran arm of MoveOn.org blowing a smoke screen up our collective ass for Nancy Pelosi. In fact, if you think this isn’t a veteran issue, Soltz explains in his typical motor pool officer whiny voice;

    Now, why would veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan care about this? Isn’t this a political issue? Maybe, but it has far reaching implications for our troops in the field.

    First – we absolutely have to send the message to the Muslim world that to the degree that we did torture, we fully investigated how those tactics came to be employed (including how it may have been hidden at the time), and held accountable those who were at fault.

    To be clear, President Obama is making great progress by ending the use of torture, and moving to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo. But, it makes it harder for our troops to win hearts and minds, and still serves as a great terrorist recruiting tool, if there is word out there that the United States tortured, and let people responsible walk, without accountability.

    Um, Jon, m’boy, our enemy doesn’t give a rat’s furry ass if we punish people or not. In fact, they don’t even care if it happened or not (remember the flushed Koran story?). There aren’t any folks sitting around the hookah when one suddenly jumps up and screams “I’m so pissed that Dick Cheney didn’t get punished, I’m going to blow myself up, dammit!” Grab a bit of reality, here, Jon.

    Those three months you spent in Kuwait dispatching deuce-and-a-halfs didn’t give you any special insight into the Arab mind.

    But the best part of the whole thing comes at the end of his fist-clenched rant. I had to screen capture it before the whiny little pseudo-intellectual brat changes it;

    The actual quote from Santayana is; Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Solz has not only misquoted Santayana, he’s also changed the meaning of the entire phrase. From some pointy-headed librarian;

    Contemporary Hispanic Biography [1] said that “students of Santayana’s work complain that the maxim has been taken out of context: Originally it formed part of a theory about how knowledge is acquired rather than being a moral exhortation to pay attention to history, and it has a didactic quality that is foreign to the subtle, paradoxical, and occasionally humorous quality of Santayana’s thought.”

    Now, this may seem like nit-picking to many of you, But remember VoteVets wasting column inches and an appearance on Keith Olbermann’s comedy show over Vets For Freedom’s Pete Hegseth who made the mistake of saying it’d been seven years since the invasion of Hussein’s Iraq instead of six – yeah, it’s just like that.

    Oh, so now I see that TSO wrote a post about it, too. Jeez, why’d he send me link? Well, I’m not wasting this research.

  • Was the Little Rock recruiter office the only target?

    Usually, I have Megyn Kelly on the TV with the volume turned down, but somehow I forgot the mute today so luckily I heard her mention that the Arkansas jihadist Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad Bledsoe might have had other targets besides the recruiter office (Fox News link);

    A senior U.S. official tells FOX News that more targets were found on the computer of a man charged in the fatal shooting at a military recruiting center in Arkansas — suggesting the accused gunman may have been part of a larger plot to attack military targets and may not have been acting alone.

    It wasn’t immediately clear how extensive the potential plot might have been or what evidence authorities have suggesting more suspects were involved.

    The source’s information contradicted a local police official’s denial earlier Tuesday that the shooting was part of a larger conspiracy.

    Now that’s kind of important, isn’t it? Shouldn’t someone besides Fox News tell us to keep an eye out for suspicious activities?

    According to the Fox reporter, targets like a Jewish center, a day care center and a Baptist church were on the list – so I guess no Obama supporters are in danger. Maybe he’ll get around to condemning this after another attack or after the D-Day remembrance – whichever comes first.

  • Just ignore terrorists, maybe they’ll go away

    In case you missed it yesterday, Carlos Bledsoe, or whatever he’s calling himself today, pleaded not guilty yesterday in a Little Rock courtroom. But CNN reports he made a video taped confession to the murder of PVT William Long;

    Before the not guilty plea, authorities said Bledsoe waived his Miranda rights after the shooting Monday and gave a video statement indicating that “political and religious” motives were involved.

    He “stated that he was a practicing Muslim … that he was mad at the U.S. military because of what they had done to Muslims in the past,” homicide detective Tommy Hudson said in a police report.

    Bledsoe told police “he fired several rounds at the soldiers with the intent of killing them,” according to Hudson’s report.

    The New York Times reported that Bledsoe said he would have killed more soldiers if there had been more;

    “Mr. Muhammad stated that he was mad at the U.S. military because of what they had done to Muslims in the past,” an arrest report filed by the Little Rock police said. “Mr. Muhammad further stated that he would have killed more soldiers if they had been on the parking lot.”

    But the strange part is that there has been nothing from the White House, from PVT Thomas’ boss – the President. As if the incident never happened.

    Well, on the day before, an Air France flight from Brazil went down. Drudge throws up a link to an article from last week that reported that an Air France flight was threatened by terrorists. Here’s a screen capture of that article in case it disappears;

    So I guess our new strategy against terrorism is to just ignore them and they’ll go away. Brilliant. I can’t foresee any problems that might cause, can you?

    Added: Blackfive has an interview with PVT William Long’s father and Marine Daris Long from Little Rock’s KATV. It’s pretty hard to watch.

  • John McHugh, the new Army Secretary

    President Obama has picked a new Secretary of the Army, Republican Congressman John McHugh;

    Obama said that Rep. John McHugh, who has represented upstate New York, is committed to keeping America’s Army “the best trained, the best equipped, the best land force the world has ever seen.”

    The president said that in his new job, McHugh will make sure the country’s troops can handle the new kinds of combat in the 21st century, including nonconventional warfare. McHugh has been a key member of the House Armed Services Committee.

    I know a little something about McHugh, since he was my Congressman for several years in Upstate New York while I was both active duty and retired. His district included Fort Drum which he took very good care of while he served that area. He covered for them every time the base came up for dismantling. However his interest was more in the counties he served. Fort Drum was a boon to the area and rescued a wavering economy.

    There is no military hospital to serve the ten thousand troops stationed at Drum – they’re forced to use a civilian facility in downtown Watertown, so Army dollars pay for a facility that civilians use. Military housing is spread out across two counties in order to spread the Army pay checks around to the smaller communities. Anyone who has tried to navigate that area in the winter knows what a stupid idea that was. They get an average of about 120 inches of snow every year. Some soldiers spend more than an hour on the Army’s Blue Bird buses each way to work.

    I’m not saying this is all McHugh’s fault, but he spent all of his time trying to keep Drum open and didn’t have an opportunity to take care of the troops and rectify those shortcomings. He ended up maintaining the status quo.

    He was probably the most conservative member of the New York caucus and he was a stalwart supporter of the military, and he’s probably a better choice than anyone else Obama could’ve picked, but he bears watching.

    Some of this may have changed since I left the area a few years back, but knowing the area like I do, I doubt much has changed.

  • Seen Sandy Berger lately?

    Just yesterday I warned that the government is the greatest threat to our cyber security. Rurik sends me this article as an exclamation point (Breitbart link);

    The US National Archives offered a cash reward of up to 50,000 dollars Friday for the recovery of a missing computer hard drive containing sensitive personnel data from the Clinton administration.

    Described by the archives as a “Western Digital MY BOOK external hard drive” with a 2-terabyte storage capacity, it contained copies of backup tapes from the White House dating back to president Bill Clinton’s tenure in the 1990s.

    The drive was discovered missing on March 24 from an archives processing room in College Park, Maryland.

    The disappearance of the drive, which included social security numbers and other personal information of White House employees, is being investigated by the US Secret Service.

    The archives said it had not yet determined whether the drive had been lost or stolen.

    Funny that this is released the day after the President warns us about internet and identity crimes. They should check Sandy Berger’s underwear drawer.

  • Making up threats

    Last week, it was credit cards, this week it’s cyber security – it seems like we have a new crisis pop up almost everyday that President Obama feels a need to protect us from. I don’t have any crisis in my life – I pay my credit cards, if I ever use them – when the credit card companies try to raise my rates, I threaten to close the accounts and they magically change their minds. My computers work just fine with the software I bought myself. But somehow, the Obama Administration thinks I need to let their camel’s nose under my tent corner. (NY Post link)

    “We’re not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country,” he said, calling cyber threats one of the most serious economic and military dangers the nation faces.

    He said he will soon pick the person he wants to head up a new White House office of cyber security, and that person will report to the National Security Council as well as to the National Economic Council, in a nod to the importance of computers to the economy.

    While the newly interconnected world offers great promise, Obama said it also presents significant peril as well. The president declared: “Cyberspace is real, and so is the risk that comes with it.”

    We don’t seem to be prepared for anything these days. The solution is always more government. With more government comes more taxes, more regulation and more intrusion. Remember Jimmy Carter’s Energy czar, who became part of the new (then) Energy Department that was going to make us energy independent? Of course, they’ve had thirty years to make us energy independent, so…any minute now.

    The internet, on the other hand, is working just fine – that probably won’t be the case after the government gets it’s crap-smeared fingers in it. Of course, Obama says that corporations aren’t taking care of us. Why wouldn’t they? They have a financial stake in the internet – if something breaks, they lose money. I’ve been conned on the internet – Amazon made me whole when some fraud sold me something that didn’t exist. Another person who sold me a fake signed first edition of a Frederick Forsythe book is being prosecuted by Ebay – sentencing is in September.

    When a previous bank I had found that my bank card number was stolen during a computer-looting of Western Union a few years back, they had a new card in my hands before I knew what had happened. The only reason I’m not with that bank is because they were seized by the FDIC when banks first started collapsing in 2007 because they’d made a bunch of bad mortgage loans in Atlanta.

    I pay money for fraud protection that also includes insurance if I do get burned. Yet, twice in the last few years, government employees have had their laptops stolen from their homes and those laptops had my Social Security number in them – that’s why I purchased fraud protection – to protect myself from government buffoonery.

    Yet everyone is ready to support this latest brainchild from the Obama Administration. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t trust the Bush Administration either – the anti-Federalists taught me to be wary of government.

  • DOJ won’t prosecute voter intimidation case

    I’m pretty sure you all remember the case of Black Panthers intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling station last election. Well, The Washington Times reports this morning that career prosecutors at the Department of Justice were ready to drop the hammer on three men involved in the incident, but they were prevented from prosecuting by their superiors;

    Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

    The incident – which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube – had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

    Yeah, it was a slam dunk – they were caught on video declaring “A Black Man will win today” and intimidating voters. Not like those unfounded cases we heard about in the 2000 and 2004 elections that the EEOC investigated and couldn’t prove happened, yet blamed Republicans anyway.

    This is a bigger scandal than the Bush Administration firing a few lawyers at DOJ – the Obama Administration has decided that they won’t prosecute voter rights cases as long as the voter rights being violated are those of Republicans. So we can expect the New York Times and the Washington Post to be all over this, huh? Eric Holder will be named Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person of the Week, right?

  • Heh. Now he goes to Landstuhl?

    Remember last year, during the campaign that candidate Barack Obama blew off the wounded troops at Landstuhl hospital while stumping across Europe? Well, Stars and Stripes is running a teaser headline (no story yet) announcing he will go to Landstuhl hospital and he will visit wounded troops there this trip to Europe. I took a screen capture since it’s sure to change sometime in the next few hours;

    Factcheck.org wrote at the time that it wasn’t a snub last year, but I tend to concur with Blackfive.

    I guess Obama is taking a Mulligan.

    ADDED: Here’s a link on the current story from USAToday.