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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • The chill wind blows over Billie Ayers

    Bill Ayers 013
    According to unrepentant domestic terrorist Billie Ayers, McCarthyism lives. That must be the reason that Americans are expressing their opinions in public that they don’t want the terrorist turned teacher to become an icon. According to Matthew Rothchild of The Progressive, life has been tough for Little Billie the last few months;

    You’ll recall that his name surfaced during the Obama campaign as Palin and McCain tried to smear Obama with the old guilt-by-association brush.

    When that failed, I thought Ayers could go back to his life, and we could all grow up.

    So did he. But no such luck.

    “I thought it would end,” he tells me, “but it’s escalated in a very weird way. I was canceled at a University last December, and then at the College of DuPage.”

    Earlier this week, Boston College yanked Ayers.
    […]
    Also this week, Naperville High School, near where Ayers grew up, changed its mind and said no to Ayers.
    […]
    To cap off the week of suppression, Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville cancelled a book signing by Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

    Yeah, let’s put aside that Sarah Palin was “smeared with the old guilt-by-association brush” too. But Obama launched his political career in the living room of poor little Billie, the guy who gloated as he left the court room where he was found not guilty “Guilty as hell, free as a bird — America is a great country.” Would you even enter the house of someone like that?

    The bookstore cancellation “never happened to me before. They were literally in tears when they called,” [Ayers] says. “I always feel bad for people who do the wrong thing.”
    […]
    “I don’t feel like I’m the aggrieved party,” he says. “I’ve got a day job and book deadlines I’ve got to work on. But it’s an attempt to shut down conversation and dialogue, which is the lifeblood of democracy. The real danger isn’t to me. But there’s a sense that if the mob gathers outside the gate with torches and pitchforks, people collapse.”

    Yeah, it always torches and pitchforks when it’s the Right who protests a speaker they don’t like. It’s “free speech” when the Left gets a speaker canceled. What’s Ayers’ excuse for Canada keeping him out? Apparently Americans aren’t the only ones with a McCarthy complex.

    In this case, I’m guess I’m proud I was on hand for the first anti-Ayers protest.

    Normally, I could give a rat’s furry ass about Bill Ayers, but I hate whiners.

    Hat tip to that network of emailers Bev Perlson has formed.

  • North Korea and the community of nations

    Of course, everyone knows that North Korea launched their missile over Japan this morning which has prompted a series of angry remarks (Washington Times);

    North Korea carried out its threatened launch of a long-range rocket over Japan on Sunday, defying international warnings and sparking an angry response from its Asian neighbors and the United States.

    Japan immediately called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, which said it would hold that meeting Sunday afternoon. South Korea decried the launch as a “reckless act.”

    Yeah, so what will the Security Council do? Probably something along the lines of President Obama’s response (Washington Post);

    In a speech grimly punctuated by current events, President Obama Sunday called for a world without nuclear weapons shortly after North Korea defied global warnings to fire a long-range rocket.

    Yeah, that’s the ticket – we’ll all disarm. That’ll embarrass the North Koreans into abandoning their nuclear objectives. Well, the UN has approved the emergency meeting (Fox News);

    Mexico’s mission to the United Nations set the meeting for 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), spokesman Marco Morales said. Mexico holds the 15-nation council’s presidency this month.

    That approval came after Japan submitted a formal letter requesting an emergency session of the United Nations council that handles threats to international peace and security. “We received a letter and there will be a meeting,” Morales said.

    So what can they do? Sanctions? What’s left to sanction? The wind? Dust? That’s all they’ve got left. The North Koreans did it because they know how weak and ineffectual the world is with Obama at the helm of this country – like we were a paper tiger when Carter was president. Is this the test Biden warned us about? Well, it looks like there’s going to be a failing grade.

    Any want-wit knows that if someone on our side had shot the missile down as soon as it left Nork airspace, that would have been the strongest message we could send. Obama missed his opportunity, Japan missed their opportunity. Anything they do now is just farting in a hurricane.

  • Defending bonuses at lending institution

    TSO and I were just talking last night about the world having gone mad. This morning I find more evidence of it. It seems that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae want to pay bonuses to the people who facilitated the biggest fraud on the American taxpayers since, well, the last time (Washington Times link);

    The federal regulator of bailed-out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac defended plans Friday to give $210 million in retention bonuses to employees he said had lost years of savings when the companies’ stock collapsed in 2008.

    Bonuses, some as high as $1.5 million, will go to 7,600 employees at the two federally established home mortgage companies that lost more than $100 billion last year. They are needed to restrain the best talent from leaving in the midst of the economic crisis spawned when the housing bubble burst, said James B. Lockhart III of the Federal Housing Finance Agency in a letter to Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Senate Finance Committee’s ranking Republican.

    Mr. Lockhart argued that the companies’ previously strong stock prices, now worth less than a $1, were used to woo and pay talent that is now needed more than ever.

    Um, that’s a little like paying a bonus to the plumber who flooded your house fixing a leak so he won’t leave. If these goofballs are so damned talented, why are we in this mess? Why was it so wrong for AIG to pay their people bonuses, but not the Mae and Mac?

    But wait until you read how many of the crooks and liars will get bonuses from the Washington Post;

    The maximum bonus for any employee will be $1.5 million, the regulator said. Freddie’s bonuses are going to 80 percent of its employees, while Fannie’s are going to 61 percent of its employees.

    Ninety-two Freddie employees will receive $100,000 or more in 2009 and 121 Fannie employees will get bonuses of $100,000 or more. The FHFA declined to name the recipients, citing privacy concerns.

    How jacked up do you have to be to miss getting a bonus? But Senator Grassley is on the job;

    Grassley criticized the bonuses yesterday.

    “It’s hard to see any common sense in management decisions that award hundreds of millions in bonuses when their organizations lost more than $100 billion in a year. And, it’s an insult that the bonuses were made with an infusion of cash from taxpayers,” he said in a statement.

    And, oh, yeah, I lost a lot of money in the stock market, too. A. Lot. Of. Money. In fact, I lost so much, that I didn’t even both to check out how much until the other day. Instead of me getting a bonus to make up for my losses, I’m asked to pay for bonuses at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Apparently, by a retarded imbecile.

    But how much of a retarded imbecile does that make me if those bonuses are paid?

  • Org Wars

    We here at This Ain’t Hell, because we’re a military blog of sorts, tend to focus on the disingenuous organizations like IAVA and VoteVets and their slavish adherence to Democrat policy. Well it seems that some of the other organizations of the Left are beginning to notice that their fellow orgs are suffering the same malady;

    I guess these guys are beginning to believe that they’ve been manipulated by MoveOn. Of course, they might have noticed how the Democrats didn’t bother to end the war when they took office after the 2006 midterms. Or how they didn’t bother to impeach President Bush – that the anti-war crowd were just held at arm’s length. They were even convinced to stop their public antics during the electoral process.

    I’d add here that VoteVets falls under the direction of MoveOn.org. John Bruhn, the former Army sergeant turned anti-war activist, left VoteVets a few years back because they seemed to be more pro-Democrat than they were anti-war. I’m just sayin’.

    This David Swanson who wrote the above piece, is a pretty radically Left guy;

    Swanson is Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ProsecuteBushCheney.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace, a convenor of the legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice, and chair of the accountability and prosecution working group of United for Peace and Justice.

    I guess he’s just plain fed up with watching donor money going down the tubes at MoveOn and merely supporting a Democrat continuation of Republican foreign policy.

    Swanson was also an advisor for the Kucinich campaign in 2004. And do you remember the proposal for a Department of Peace? Well, Kucinich has submitted a bill (HR 808) to force Obama to create the depatment. You can find the text of the proposed bill at Thomas.LOC.gov, but here’s some pretty wild stuff;
    (more…)

  • Pentagon: Ban on Press at Dover ends Monday

    Here comes that Hope and Change and the Obama Administration making friends with veterans, the troops and their families (Stars and Stripes);

    For the first time in nearly 20 years, members of the news media will be allowed starting Monday to cover the solemn arrivals of American flag-draped coffins holding the remains of U.S. troops at Dover Air Force Base, Del.

    Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued an instruction last week to reverse the two decadeslong ban on media coverage, The Associated Press reported Tuesday, noting that a written memo is expected later this week.

    I hope that Gates and his staff have planned for the elephant parade and the clown car antics of the media when they get to the Air Force Base. Remember that when you let them in, you’re a slave to their self-important behavior – having been shoved aside myself a few times by anxious media types more worried about getting the picture than any semblance of decorum.

    What is the Pentagon going to do the first time a young spouse of a fallen service member finds out about the death of their loved one from some media clod calling them to get permission to snap pictures of the body coming off the aircraft in Dover?

    Gates BOFOs and military families are burdened with the responsibility of a decision that the Pentagon gracefully accepted years ago. Now the buck stops over there.

  • Conyers to investigate ACORN?

    The Washington Times reporter S.A. Miller writes this morning that far-Left Congressman John Conyers is contemplating investigating charges that “community activist group” ACORN engaged in voter fraud in the last election;

    Opponents of the liberal activist group ACORN have found an unlikely champion in House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., who is clashing with his own party to pursue hearings on accusations that the group has committed crimes ranging from voter fraud to a mob-style “protection” racket.

    “I still want to do it and I probably will,” Mr. Conyers, Michigan Democrat, told The Washington Times on Tuesday.

    He dismissed the argument made by fellow Democrats that accusations of voter fraud and other crimes should be explored by prosecutors and decided in court, not by lawmakers in Congress.

    “That’s our jurisdiction, the Department of Justice,” Mr. Conyers said. “That’s what we handle – voter fraud. Unless that’s been taken out of my jurisdiction and I didn’t know it.”

    Of course, this is the same John Conyers who promised his far-Left constituency that he’d pursue impeachment charges against George Bush and strung them along for more than two years.

    Jerrold Nadler, often referred to here often as The Waddler, is against any probe, but says he’ll go along with Conyers;

    “It’s not our business to say ACORN is terrible or ACORN is wonderful. That’s not a congressional job,” Mr. Nadler said. “The evidence – I’ve listened to it – I think most of it is nonsense. If it’s true, it’s a law enforcement matter.”

    Of course, I think this is just Conyer’s way of burying the truth and preventing a Justice Department investigation. It’s also pretty odd that when a Republican wins an election, there are charges and investigation of electoral fraud, but when Democrats win, suddenly the process is fair and equitable. I wonder why it always turns out that way?

  • Levin: Expect painful defense cuts

    To go along with all of my other warnings of cuts in Defense spending (here, here, here and here), TSO sends the latest;

    It happens every time the Democrats get control of Congress and the White House. They take money from defense and put it into social patronage programs. They win elections without the military vote, so what can it hurt them? Then when a Republican gets into office and tries to fix defense, they (and the media) scream to High Heaven about their spending. Reagan had to fix Carter’s neglect of the military, Bush had to repair the damage done by the Clinton years. Think there were shortages during the Bush years, you just watch – the difference now is that our troops are under fire (despite their best attempts to change the language so it doesn’t seem so). What happens when there’s no ammunition for training now? What happens when there are no more cruise missiles this time?

    And you have to ask yourself why Levin isn’t being specific about the cuts. More than likely it’s because there’ll be some major cuts in personnel expenses. Things like pay, bonuses, recruiting, retention and training. That will place a drag on manpower needs. Lucky for Obama, Jimmy Carter brought back draft registration after Nixon ended it. Then watch the cuts to veterans’ benefits. BOFO.

  • Terrorists threaten man-created disaster

    See how easily I adapt to the new administration’s lexicon? The Associated Press reports that they got a phone call the other day to warn us that we’re going to be in the midst of a man-created disaster (you can call them terrorist attacks if you want to be a gun-clinging wingnut. Me? I’m enlightened);

    Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S., said Monday’s attack outside the eastern city of Lahore was in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.

    “Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone. He provided no details.

    I don’t understand how this can happen. The North Koreans are getting ready to launch rockets, the Mahdi army and al Qaeda in Iraq are staging a comeback, Hugo Chavez is trying to undermine the dollar with a proposal for an oil-based currency and calls Obama an ignoramus. We’re still trying to figure out how to fight piracy. Russia is planning on stationing bombers in Cuba and Venezuela.And, oh, did I mention that Iran thinks it has a role in determining our troops strength in Afghanistan? British police arrested five under the Terrorist Act.

    Shouldn’t all of this stuff ended on Inauguration Day? Or is it just beginning now that we’ve had a change in the government that indicates to all of the thugs that we’re soft and weak? And where’s my damn unicorn?