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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Mindless Asinine BS

    The Senate is apparently coming to grips with the fact that the stuff they want to inflict on us is going to cost us real money eventually and they’re “weighing” ways to pay for their healthcare unicorn…er, reform. (AP link)

    The final package is likely to include a mix of tax increases and spending cuts in federal health programs. Among the possibilities: tax hikes on alcoholic beverages, tobacco products and sugary soft drinks, and restrictions on other health care-related tax breaks, such as flexible spending accounts.

    Yeah, what was that thing I kept hearing during the election about no tax hikes on families with incomes below $250,000? If a family is currently paying for their own healthcare with no help from the government with their own flexible spending accounts, the government is going cut their tax break – that means their taxes will increase.

    I don’t how much higher they can raise taxes on tobacco – seriously. I think it’s about $7/pack in Maryland now since we get it from the liberal state and federal government. It was just a few years ago that I paid that much for a carton.

    Sugary soft drinks? I wish. There hasn’t been a soft drink sold in the US with sugar in it for decades. But, guess what? That’s a tax hike on families. Are they going to include juice boxes in that tax? If they start taxing the food we eat (read that: the choices we make ostensibly to control our behavior) where do they intend on stopping? Are they going to bust in our houses and shoot us on the spot for hiding an untaxed Snickers bar under the floorboards?

    Oh, and another campaign promise falls by the wayside;

    On the controversial question of taxing health benefits, Baucus is staking out a position that could put him at odds with Obama.

    The president adamantly opposed such taxes during the campaign, arguing they would undermine job-based coverage. Obama’s aides now say he’s open to suggestions from Congress, even if he criticized Republican presidential rival John McCain for proposing a sweeping version of the same basic idea.

    Imagine that. So why did you 52% vote for Obama again? Because he wasn’t like McCain how? Well, besides the obvious reasons that we know you really voted for him – that which can not be spoken.

    Many experts say that Congress won’t be able to come up with the kind of money needed to provide coverage for all unless limitations on the health care tax break are part of the mix.

    So why are we even going through this horseshit? Do away with tax breaks and incentives for those who are already paying for their own health care – the responsible people – to GIVE it to people who refuse to pay for it.

    And this is better for the country how?

    Added: And we’re going to get our healthcare from the people who are already doing a bang-up job;

    Medicare is in even worse shape. The trustees said the program for hospital expenses will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year and will be insolvent by 2017, two years earlier than the date projected in last year’s report.

    The trust funds — which exist in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va. — are bonds that are backed by the government’s “full faith and credit” but not by any actual assets. That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government. To redeem the trust fund bonds, the government would have to borrow in public debt markets or raise taxes.

    At what point do we join together, give them a failing grade and shoulder the responsibility ourselves?

  • Venezuela’s economy failing, plan to seize more foreign assets

    Just as an illustration of how twisted and confusing this whole big government concept is, take a look at Venezuela as it’s run by Hugo Chavez. Last year Chavez seized much of the oil and gas industry from foreign investors when oil was selling at $4/gallon here in the US. Now that the price has fallen to half of that, Venezuela is suffering from that decision according to the Washington Times;

    The price of Venezuelan crude has shrunk by 55 percent during the past year, and the debt accumulated by government-run oil enterprise PDVSA has grown by 146 percent.

    “The oil price is very low; about half the price we budgeted. That is hard and difficult for Venezuela,” said Mr. Chavez.

    The National Assembly passed a law Friday allowing the government to take over oil-service contractors, including several American and British firms that are owed up to a year in back fees.

    Last week they seized a Tulsa-based company’s assets in Venezuela;

    Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state oil company known as PDVSA, said Monday it took over three gas-compression facilities from Tulsa-based Williams Cos. on May 8, one more than Williams had previously announced.

    PDVSA will absorb 163 workers at the facilities, it said Monday in a statement.

    The plants, two of which pump natural gas into the ground to increase oil output, are “associated” with about 500,000 barrels of oil production a day, PDVSA said.

    Also last week, the rubber-stamp legislature authorized Chavez to take over more industries in addition to the sugar, milk and lumber industries he’s nationalized since last year.

    The 39 companies currently providing services to state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA will be brought under government control under a resolution that took effect Monday after being published in the Official Gazette, the official Bolivarian News Agency reported.

    It said the companies affected include Zulia Towing and Barge Company, Gusteca, Premeca, Seatech, and Terminales Maracaibo. The companies provide transport boats and other oil-related services on Lake Maracaibo in western Venezuela.

    Chavez claims that taking over these companies will allow him to cut energy costs – the government taking over industries doesn’t cut costs for consumers, which Chavez should have learned by taking over the oil industry. Of course he blames Venezuelans for the failure of the oil industry to turn a profit, so he fires them and brings in foreign labor;

    Mr. Chavez ordered his military to seize paralyzed installations, and he brought in oil workers from India, Libya and Iran to restart drilling rigs and refineries as he fired more than 17,000 PDVSA employees.

    While Bloomberg reports that Venezuelan bond prices fall. That should be helpful for the economy – he’ll pay foreigners low wages while Venezuelans sit on unemployment lines. In the meantime, the rhetoric continues. At Flopping Aces, Curt posts a video of Chavez telling a crowd of laborers that “The rich are evil….The rich aren’t human. The rich are animals in human form.”

    The way things are going, the only rich in Venezuela will be Chavez and his inner circle. Oh, and did I mention that Hezbollah has a presence in Venezuela? And that presence includes running some of the drug trade in the area?

  • Obama: Keep those stinkin’ tourists away from me

    Rurick emailed me this link to a Big Hollywood story about the State Department demanding that France keep those pesky tour buses away from the Normandy landing memorials while he’s there next month. You know, those tour buses that might contain actual veterans of the conflict who don’t have that many visits left in ’em. Well, I had some thoughts on it, but Deebow at Blackfive did a much better job than I could have done. But I’d add this from the Big Hollywood story;

    Compare that with 2004. Security was tight as President Bush and other world leaders were in attendance, but the event was still open to all. A friend relayed the story of waiting in line to use a port-a-potty (a French port-a-potty no doubt, yuck, believe me.) She looks to her left and who he is in the next line waiting patiently? President Bush. Sure he had Secret Service nearby, but he waited like everyone else.

    Some of us miss President Bush – but I will enjoy the excuses the Obama crew make up for this one. Completely blog-worthy, I’m sure.

    While you’re at B5, check out the post Uncle Jimbo did about the Best Ranger Competition (he’s been doing them all weekend, if you hadn’t noticed).

    In the latest post, Jimbo writes;

    On a lighter note it will amuse many of you that the two Special Forces guys driving around in their pink Hummer spent approx. an hour and a half cruising Victory Drive incapable of finding the front gate of Ft. Benning or a BBQ joint. We are complete muppets.

    That reminded me of Mech Week at ANCOC (coincidentally at Fort Benning, too) when I tried to warn the SF and Rangers in my squad that reading a map from a moving M113 is different than when they’re on their feet. They laughed me off and told me to get my mech ass in the track and let the pros do the map reading. After driving in circles for an hour, they finally handed me the map.

    While I’m posting links, go read about tankerbabe’s day with Evan Pertile. Make sure you leave a comment so she’ll stop accusing us of not reading her blog.

    It’ll take your mind off of that arrogant prick in the White House.

  • Veterans/Troops become a political force

    We are living in historic times. We finally have a Democrat president and a Democrat Congress that supports veterans and that, at least in some small way, support our troops while they’re engaged with a foreign enemy. Returning troops are getting the medical attention they deserve in the president’s new budget. Of course, the vacuous, specious argument I read at some so-called “nonpartisan” veteran organizations is that Democrats care more about the troops than Republicans. While that may be true at the moment, it’s only become true in the last few months.

    This morning, the Stars and Stripes trumpets the DoD’s $500 billion budget;

    The proposal – part of President Barack Obama’s $3.4 trillion budget for fiscal 2010 – includes cuts to major weapons systems detailed last month and was billed as a “reform budget” by defense officials.

    But it also has new increases in troops Basic Allowance for Housing (6 percent) and Basic Allowance for Subsistence (5 percent) to go along with a 2.9 percent pay raise for all military personnel. House and Senate leaders have already promised to bump that to 3.4 percent.

    The plan also promises more money for wounded warrior support and no cuts in military health care services.

    “This is a long-term commitment by the department to take care of our people,” said Vice Admiral P. Stephen Stanley, director of force structure for the Joint Staff. “Those people who have gone forward and been affected, been injured, we’re going to take care of them. We’re going to take care of our families.

    That’s good news – pay raises, housing allowance increases, living facility improvements. That’s quite a difference from when my son was born in a forty-year-old wooden World War II hospital that had been intended to be temporary when it was built. That hospital was so bad that it made an appearance on “60 Minutes” the following year.

    So what has changed that Democrats have finally started paying attention to the needs of the troops suddenly? Because veterans have become a political force. While many veterans of WWII and Koreas sat out the Vietnam War on the sidelines for whatever reason, the Vietnam War veterans have refused to sit by while this wars’ troops get the same treatment.

    Instead of watching what the news organizations feed them on TV and standing by while old hippies and new anarchists spit on the troops, call them babykillers and allowing twisted, untrue stories to circulate about our troops’ behavior in combat, organizations like Patriot Guard Riders, Gathering of Eagles, Band of Mothers and Eagles Up use the same tactics of the Left to squelch behavior that had been tolerated in the ’60s.

    When Code Pink decided to protest outside of Walter Reed when wounded troops arrived there, it took only a few days for Free Republic to assembled a larger number of supporters to drown out the hippies. When ANSWER marched on the Pentagon, within a few weeks, thousands of veterans descended on Washington to steal ANSWER’s stage and demonstrate to those serving overseas that they weren’t alone.

    We now have websites like Blackfive, The Long War Journal and Michael Yon who have put people on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan who brought us the stories to our living rooms that the media with it’s Democrat-leaning agenda refused to tell America. That was especially important in the last two years when the media went dark on the success of the ‘Surge”.

    Also, in the 60s, some of the more traditional Veterans Service Organizations like the VFW had denied membership to returning Vietnam veterans. During this war, the VSOs have taken the lead in the proper treatment of returning veterans. The American Legion, especially, has led the VSOs in turning back legislation from this administration that would harm returning troops and is actively lobbying for better treatment. The VSOs have become more than a cheap place to drink PBR and swap war stories.

    In short, veterans have come into their own as a political force to be reckoned with – we always knew it was possible with the millions of living military veterans and the millions more who lay at rest as a testament to our dedication to this country.

    However, we know how the party which currently controls the purse strings would rather treat veterans and how they’d rather take our earned benefits to pay off welfare queens and drug addicts for their votes instead, so even though we have arrived, it will take continued vigilance so that we don’t lose the voice we’ve built over the last decade.

  • Vouchers in DC

    You’ve probably heard that one of the first things Democrats did to the District of Columbia was end vouchers for students to escape the corruption-, crime-, and drug-ridden inner city schools and actually get a shot at a decent education. Two months ago, the Washington Times wrote about the decision;

    Democrats such as Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, as well as teachers’ unions, voiced concern that the vouchers take federal funds from the public schools.

    Mr. Durbin said in response to Mr. Ensign on Tuesday that the General Accountability Office looked at the voucher schools and found some “world class” schools as well as some below average schools, explaining his reasoning for examining the program further before reauthorization.

    But this last week, President Obama gave an option to inner city parents complete with government funding (again the Washington Times);

    President Obama called for overturning a decade-old ban on publicly funded abortions in the District as part of his budget proposal Thursday, but did not overturn the national ban on federal funding, thus angering advocacy groups on both sides of the volatile issue.

    Under his proposal, the District for the first time in more than a decade would be allowed to pay for abortions with the money it raises from its own taxpayers.

    So, if DC’s prospective parents are worried about the education their unborn children will get in the District, they can always end their unborn children’s lives with tax payer funds. It all kind of evens out doesn’t it?

    Funny how there’s always money for the irresponsible to continue making bad choices, but there’s never money for those who want better choices.

  • Pelosi aide knew of EIT use in 2003

    You really have to dig this morning to find the Washington Post story by Paul Kane which reports that Nancy Pelosi’s top aide, Michael Sheehy, was told by the CIA that Enhanced Interogation Techniques were being used on certain detainees;

    Pelosi has insisted that she was not directly briefed by Bush administration officials that the practice was being actively employed. But Michael Sheehy, a top Pelosi aide, was present for a classified briefing that included Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking minority member of the House intelligence committee, at which agency officials discussed the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida.

    Previously, Pelosi claimed that the legal ramifications of techniques, but that she hadn’t been told the EITs were actually in use. In yesterday’s post, I wrote that the techinques were used before the briefing, and that it was unlikely she wasn’t told at that point. now we have a record that her top aide was told directly. Think he forgot to tell her?

    A Democratic source acknowledged yesterday that it is almost certain that Pelosi would have learned about the use of waterboarding from Sheehy.

    Yeah, me neither. of course, Pelosi use the language that she wasn’t told directly – but then why send aides to briefings? Pete Hoekstra is seeking any notes the CIA may have in regards to those briefings;

    In a letter to Hoekstra, CIA Director Leon Panetta said the classified memos describing what was said at each briefing would be available at CIA headquarters for review by congressional staff, according to an agency official.

    I’m pretty sure Hoekstra won’t find anything after the Panetta CIA gets done doing a Sandy Berger on those notes. CNN quotes Pelosi statement released to the press yesterday;

    “As reported in the press, a cover letter from CIA Director Panetta accompanying the briefings memo released this week concedes that the descriptions provided by the CIA may not be accurate.”

    Sneaky damn spies, taking inaccurate notes knowing that they’d need to beat up Pelosi four years before she became the Speaker.

  • Where does Vote Vets get these clowns?

    I chased a link from our stat counter today over to Vote Vets, you know those ass clowns who worship at the altar of Jon Soltz, the master truck dispatcher. It was a link from a Richard Smith (dicksmith?) article in which Mr. Smith quotes an obviously insane sports writer at CBS;

    CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty has gone off the deep end, or at least he thinks American Soldiers have. Check out this quote from Feherty in the April issue of D Magazine:

    [I]f you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.

    Somehow, the semi-literate Mr. Smith finds this an opportunity to call This Ain’t Hell “the right-wing attack machine” and wonders why we don’t get our dander up at Mr. Feherty. Well, here’s his explanation;

    Where were the Legion and the right-wing spin consortium on a prominent sportscaster slandering American Soldiers. The answer: AWOL. Why? Because the conservative smear establishment doesn’t actually care about Soldiers and Veterans. They use Veterans and Soldiers (including the Legion) as a prop, along side their lapel pins and car magnets, to protect their own desires, which is the destruction, by any means necessary, of those who have truly supported us in the past eight years. This is the modus operandi of the right-wing, radical, anti-troop, anti-veteran agenda.

    Here’s my explanation for the tone-deaf Mr. Smith; who the Hell cares what a golf analyst writes? Who the Hell reads D Magazine or Media Matters? Hell, I didn’t even know he wrote that article until you linked to our blog with your drivel (Dick didn’t have the guts to name the blog to which he was linking). I can’t even find the original article, so how do I know what the context was of Ferehty’s article?

    And last I checked, a CBS golf analyst doesn’t write policy which affects the troops and veterans – as opposed to a president and a DHS secretary. Numbnuts.

    If you had stopped for a moment before you hit “publish” and thought about it for a moment, you’d have noticed how ridiculous you sound. Smith drones on;

    Rumor has it, Feherty’s comments may make an appearance on tonight’s episode of Countdown with Keith Olbermann (MSNBC, 8PM EST).

    Rumor has it, my ass. Vote Vets have their collective head so far up Olbermann’s ass you probably know what’s scheduled for next year (since that’s where he pulls his programming from anyway).

    If Feherty still has a job by the time that show airs, after slandering the professionalism and mental capacity of American Soldiers and Veterans, he will have gone too long without being fired. Feherty needs to go. And every second he continues to be employed by CBS Sports is a second too long.

    It’d be nice if you got this upset about someone who is dealing dirt to the troops who isn’t a CBS golf editor – someone like John Murtha or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or Rahm Emanuel. Someone who matters.

    I’m waiting for one of your dorks over at the Jon Soltz Hate Machine Motor Pool to prove me wrong on anything that I’ve “attacked” the President on, by the way.

    Nice commie patrol cap, dick;

  • American Legion takes on ACLU’s FOIA

    This is exactly why I joined the American Legion last week. David Rehbein, the national commander of the American Legion writes a fiery missive in the Wall Street Journal today in regards to the ACLU’s FOIA filing for photographs of alleged abuse of detainees at the hands of US forces in Iraq. Mr. Rehbein’s piece is titled “Photos that could cost lives“;

    Releasing photographs of alleged or actual detainee abuse in the War on Terrorism is not worth the life of a single American. Of course, as some have noted, the incidents at Abu Ghraib have already endangered our troops. So did any orders and policies that may have led to those incidents. But what is to be accomplished by continuing to provide ammunition and provocation to the enemy?

    ACLU’s filing is nothing more than a transparent attempt to turn the world against us. That world that riots at the sight of political cartoons and unfounded rumors about Korans flushed down the toilet. Al Qaeda claimed that their beheading of Nick Berg was in retaliation for the last photos that were released in regards to supposed torture. Two American soldiers held captive were also beheaded in retaliation. How many lives is ACLU willing to sacrifice for the next round of scandal?

    Mr Rehbein continues;

    I was deeply disturbed by the images of Abu Ghraib. The military, however, has investigated the abuses and punished those involved. Moreover, the photographs that are now about to be released are already being used for investigative purposes. Other than self-flagellation by certain Americans, riots and future terrorist acts, what else do people expect will come from the release of these photographs?

    At least the American Legion is willing to stand up for troops and says what needs to be said. In fact, the American Legion has led the VSOs in standing up for the troops since the war against terror began, they’ve been especially vigilant over the last few months when we’ve need them most. Mr Rehbein explains why;

    As commander of the nation’s largest veterans service organization, I have had the honor to present Blue Star Banners to military families, with the Blue Star signifying the deployment of a service member. It is always a moving experience. But it is the Gold Star Banner, the star that signifies the death of a service member in war, that I never hope to present. I fear that there will be many Gold Stars as a result of this misbegotten policy.

    Next month, I proudly join the ranks of Blue Star families as my only son gets deployed to Afghanistan and it’s reassuring to know that the folks at the American Legion are checking his six.