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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Obama’s not divisive?

    I was stunned when I saw this headline at Yahoo/Associated Press;

    The first paragraph reads;

    Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush’s unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government.

    When in the last week has he not been divisive? He defends his Treasury Secretary for not paying his taxes. Obama signed an Executive Order that freed up taxpayer money for committing abortions overseas. He signed an Executive Order to close Guantanamo. He forbids the hiring of K Street lobbyists and the next day hires one.

    There’s a more complete list at William Teach’s Pirate Cove and more at Blatherings.

    How are none of those things divisive? They’re the most controversial subjects in today’s discourse and he took a partisan and ideological stand on each issue.

    The AP ends the article like this;

    In one Oval Office ceremony, Obama went through each executive order as he signed them, reading parts of each and methodically explaining them. He even halted a few times to ask for clarification from his White House counsel. That sort of deferral to someone else in a public setting and admission of a less-than-perfect command of the facts was never Bush’s style.

    Or maybe it’s because Bush knew what he was signing before he went out in public. Whereas Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing from moment-to-moment. Can you imagine how the AP would have written the incident if President Bush had asked his counsel questions about the document he was about to sign in a public ceremony?

    AP sucks.

  • The Salute to Heroes dust up [Jonn]

    For those of you who are still interested, the post I wrote the other day about the President skipping out on the historical Salute to Heroes Inaugural Banquet & Ball took on a life of it’s own. We got linked to more than 50 other blogs because of the single link I put on Little Green Football’s Link Viewer. Those 50 blogs were little ones and HUGE ones.

    The first guy to pick up on the post was Mr Wolf at Blackfive who also wrote about it at Pajama Media from there it took on a life of it’s own (about 300,000 hits here in two days). On a story I sat on for 18 hours while I decided whether to post it or not.

    Before I posted it, we were actually getting hits from search engines that were asking if President Obama had attended the Ball based on TSO’s first post of that day about his stalking of MOH recipients – so folks were wondering. Finally I decided to run with it.

    Immediately, the first wave of believers applauded, the second wave was the unbelievers. They fanned out across the internet and attacked the story wherever it popped up. Some leftist bloggers accused us of deleting comments (not realizing that I don’t sit here 24 hours every day monitoring the spam and spam-like comments) then the doubters did their superficial Google searches and determined 1) the ball was canceled so we were lying, or 2) the ball was merged with another one so we were lying, or 3) Obama did come to the ball so we were lying, or 4) so what?

    First thing Thursday morning, the American Legion put up an article about another ball. The VFW took down their article about the Ball. This only confounded me because I was trying to prove it actually happened the way I reported it. So my only alternative was to point people to the hotel to prove it had indeed happened. Unfortunately there are two hotels with the same name a few blocks apart and I pointed people to the wrong one – further confounding the process.

    In the interim, other bloggers were dealing with the unbelieving trolls. Finally, I got a frustrated email from Mr Wolf this morning. Eventually, he called the American Legion and he’s now updated his post at both Blackfive and Pajamas Media with what he gleaned from the good folks in the PR office at the Legion.

    Here on this blog, I finally got the right hotel and the right phone number at about the same time as a reader David Bell posted his own email from the Legion. The thread at Little Green Footballs grew to over a 1000 comments, and our thread is over 300 comments long. At PJM, someone even called us the “Scott Thomas Beauchamp of the Right”. Well, I don’t see any apologies from the doubters, so I won’t apologize for my missteps. In fact, the doubters have all fled.

    My regular readers know the extent I will go to for the truth, and newer visitors might not, so I forgive them for doubting me this time. There’s a real interesting story behind all of this confusion that I can’t relate right now. Maybe if you get me drunk at the April get-together.

    But, it demonstrates what we’re in for every time we post something that makes Obama look bad, even if it’s true. And as big a story as this was on the internet, the MSM still hasn’t picked it up. So we have the responsibility to post nothing but the truth and to have a defense lined up before we hit that “send” button.

  • So this is how it’s gonna be, huh?

    In reference to the post I put up yesterday about the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball; are we going to have to listen for the next four years to these kind of excuses from the Left? “There was no such Ball and if there was, Obama was there, and if he wasn’t so what?” Multiple choice answers.

    Yeah, the American Legion isn’t helping by posting an article about the C-i-C Ball on their front page instead of the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball. I guess they figure they have to work with the new administration so why piss them off. I understand, but I don’t agree.

    Just so everyone knows, we sat on that story for eighteen hours. I typed it Tuesday night around 5:30 and it didn’t go public until just after noon on Wednesday. The main reason we went with it was because we were getting search queries in regards to the subject for hours before we posted it – people wanted to know the truth. Also, I left my usual comments out of the post – just the facts. If you think there’s something racist about posting inconvenient facts without commentary, you need to take a look at yourselves because it’s more of a reflection on you than on me.

    I’m no journalist, but I play one on the internet.

    But, the Left is acting like they did when we asked why Obama hadn’t gone to Iraq. They gave the same kinds of excuses for him when he didn’t go to the Landstuhl hospital. Campaign’s over, folks. He doesn’t have to do the right thing every time, but YOU don’t have to be dishonest/ignorant about what he does.

    Oh, and I want someone to tell me how pointing out that Obama didn’t go to the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball is racist? Is pointing out an inconvenient truth now racist? Like I said, the campaign’s over. Time for your guy to bat.

  • VFP begs for coward

    Remember Robin Long? Back in August he was sentenced by a military court to 15 months in jail for deserting and absconding to Canada. Long was the first deserter to be deported from Canada. In November, after the election, Long wrote a long, windy letter to Barack Obama asking for clemency and to avoid the remainder of his sentence, just like he avoided the service he committed himself to when he joined the Army.

    In his letter to the President-elect, he demonstrated his ignorance of laws, both domestic and international by claiming that the war in Iraq is illegal because we didn’t declare war on Iraq using some nebulous steps required by the Geneva Conventions. Typical shit-house lawyering we hear from the Left all of the time.

    A reader in Nevada sent us this opinion piece in the California-based North Country Times written by VFP member Dave Patterson entitled “Do The Right Thing; pardon vet”;

    I take umbrage at the fact that an absconder, out of cowardice, takes flight in the face of his duties, for which he volunteered, and gets to be called a veteran. There are millions more Americans who completed their terms of service without breaking their promises, laid their lives on the line without running to Canada who are REAL veterans.

    An organization that has the title “Veterans” as the first word should be able to understand that.

    Patterson begins the piece tugging at our parental heart strings;

    As parents, we all hope that our children will do the right thing and follow their conscience when the line between right and wrong invariably becomes blurry. We hope that they will have the courage to step away from the crowd, even if that means being ostracized, denounced or even imprisoned.

    Dave, also as parents, we hope our children “cowboy up” and accept responsibility for their actions and honor the commitments they make to society. Oh, and Long was a man when he decided he’d ignore his obligations, not a child. Although, his actions were those of a child.

    A jury of his peers found him guilty of violating laws, just because you don’t happen to like the law he violated, that doesn’t make the sentence any less valid. If President Obama were to give the pile of weeping dung the clemency he desires, the result would be disasterous for Obama and every president after him. Jimmy Carter was able to turn every American veteran against him the day after his term began with a grudge that lasts until today by giving amnesty to draft dodgers. I would hope that President Obama would have a bit more sense, even though his supporters don’t seem to have any sense.

  • My Call to Service

    Well, it’s still a week from the Inauguration, but Michelle Obama is calling me to service;

    She writes in the email;

    Volunteers of all ages and backgrounds are committing to renew America together, one community at a time.

    Whatever service activity you organize or take part in — cleaning up a park, giving blood, volunteering at a homeless shelter, or mentoring an at-risk youth — you can help start this important journey. But this is about more than just a single day of service, it’s the beginning of an ongoing commitment to your community.

    Um, aren’t all of those things reasons they give me to pay my taxes? Every year I pay tens of thousands of dollars of my earnings to the State and Federal governments because they think they can do those things better than I can do those things. Now they’re admitting that my money goes down a black hole and I need to do those things in addition to pay my taxes on time?

    But I’ve been “enabled to serve”;

    Don’t worry, if fewer people than expected want to serve, more of us will be “enabled”, I’m sure.

  • Celebrate the last day of BDS

    As we all know, January 19th is President Bush’s last full day in office. It’s also the last day that those poor souls who’ve been suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome since before the President took office to blame him for their ills (well, that’s not true, is it?). So taking full chronological advantage, they organized a “Shoe Bush” (or “Boot Bush“, depending upon which website you land) event that forms about eight blocks from the White House in DuPont Circle (a place TSO knows well) and plans to get near the White House. I doubt that very much, judging from the construction activity I saw there yesterday in preparation for the Inauguration.

    But anyway, the whole idea is to toss shoes at President Bush;

    (more…)

  • Putin and Chavez shut off heat

    Does anyone else think it’s odd that Putin shuts off gas shipments to Europe the same week that Hugo Chavez shuts down the Joe-4-Oil program shipments to the US. and it all happens in January, just a week after Russian warships made a call to Venezuelan port?

    Let me be clear; I’m glad Chavez shut down the free or cheaper heating oil program – not only was it taking food from the mouths of poor Venezuelans, it was a huge propaganda ploy for the pudgy little red-shirted cholito. And it gets that mouthful of teeth, Joe Kennedy, off of my television. I guess no one thinks it’s funny that the program ends just as the Bush presidency ends, too.

    While the Russian Navy conducted exercises in our hemisphere, they’re reminding Europe who keeps them warm at night. All of this in the middle of a global economic “crisis”.  I’m pretty sure it all has something to do with Obama beginning his term and the little fellas are trying to put their own strengths on display for the world to see.

    It looks like Joe Biden’s prediction that the world will test Obama will come to pass a lot sooner than Biden thought. We’ll see how all of that bi-partisan feel good bluster and flourishes play in a theater production orchestrated by Russia, Venezuela and China.

    Updated: Kate tells me that Citgo started the cheap oil program back up. I guess I missed the news.

  • Panetta? Are you kidding me? [Jonn]

    Barack Obama has chosen clintonista Leon Panetta as his CIA director. Can anyone tell me why? Seriously. The Wall Street Journal writes;

    The pick was unexpected because many of the names discussed for the job had been intelligence professionals. Mr. Panetta, whose background is in politics and government, has not worked for an intelligence agency.

    With a war raging across the globe, do we really need a poltician with no intelligence experience running our intelligence service? A guy who is going to consider the political impact of every decision instead of the welfare of the nation and the American? And where’s this damn change we were promised?

    Of course, the Washington Post defends the choice;

    In choosing Panetta, Obama, appears to have opted for a fresh start at an agency plagued by numerous scandals during the Bush tenure. Obama bypassed several candidates with CIA backgrounds for a politically savvy manager with personal ties to Obama and to Congress.

    Officials familiar with the choice noted that Panetta, as Clinton’s chief of staff, participated in the daily intelligence briefings in the Oval Office and had intimate knowledge of the interaction between the agency and the White House. Panetta also was a member of the Iraq Study Group.

    “He has sufficient gravitas to ensure that CIA equities are going to be protected, and the agency continues to have a strong voice,” said a former senior CIA official told of Obama’s choice.

    Isn’t that dandy? He sat in on briefings eight years ago. Then I guess I’m qualified for a lot of stuff I know nothing about, because I’ve sat in on tons of briefings over the last 53 years. If he was going to be Agriculture Secretary, I’d expect him to have grown a plant at least once in his life. Why can’t I expect the CIA director to have some intelligence experience.

    Oh, and who was the guy apologizing for the Clinton Administration’s pilfering of the famed FBI records? Um, Clinton chief-of-staff Panetta. Imagine the fun he can have with CIA files. Of course, it could have been worse. he could have named failed super spy Sandy Berger.

    Added: My buddy, Kate dropped off this video in the comments. I’ve never watched MSNBC, and this is why. They call Obama’s cabinet “over qualified” and mention “fat resumes`” twice;