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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • The Left loves them some Hamas

    The Israelis pounded Hamas pretty good this morning after taking six weeks of rocket attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza. Some reports of dead Palestinians are over 200 dead and 300 injured. And the Left is hatin’ on the Israelis. From Little Green Footballs, I read this from Daily Koz;

    We cannot seriously expect Hamas to end their barrage of rocket attacks on southern Israel until the Israelis make good faith efforts to recognize the legitimate claims of the Palestinian people.

    Keep in mind, this is after the Israelis endured six weeks of rocket attacks without returning fire until the ceasefire ended. Not to mention the other concessions Israel has made over the last several years. And even though readers of this blog knew that counter attacks were imminent, one writer at Firedoglake called it a surprise attack against Hamas;


    Another, calls it a “first strike”;

    Well, so much for peace. Looks like Siun was right, and the deliveries yesterday were just a pathetic public relations ploy. Israel managed to assassinate the police chief, governor, and security chief. A first strike bombing like this can do a fair bit of damage, as it did, but Hamas will now disperse its people and assets, and future bombings will be less effective.

    Of course, this second writer doesn’t mention the Hamas rocket falling short yesterday and killing two Gazan girls. But he does drag out a picture of a dead Palestinian baby from February for his piece;

    I’m sure this writer figures Hamas should be forgiven since they didn’t kill many Israelis;

    Hamas missile counterattacks killed, oh, one person.

    So because they’re bumbling buffoons, they should be allowed to continue firing their rockets into Israel with no response because they don’t usually hit much anyway. Besides, who knows, practice might improve their aim. Oh, and Fatah are apparently the Israelis’ lap dog which might come as a surprise to both parties;

    Israel keeps thinking it’s going to get a cheap peace or that its problems with the Palestinians can be solved with violence. Short of full-scale ethnic cleansing they can’t. Nor can they make peace with their lapdogs in the Fatah, the only people who might be able to enforce a peace are Hamas. You have to make peace with your enemies and it has to be those enemies who are able to enforce peace. Only Hamas can do that. Fatah can’t and Israel can’t, and they can’t bomb or assassinate Hamas into peace either.

    So the Left sees Hamas as the key to peace – the same Hamas that slaughtered hundreds of Fatah Palestinians a while back. The same Hamas that has fire fights with the Egyptian Army. Others on the Left are so tight with the language usage that they attack the Huffington Post for “taking cues from Fox News” because a writer at HuffPo called the strikes “retaliatory”.

    It looks like the American Left is being as obstinate as Hamas and hezbollah. Of course, it’s easy for them to be obstinate as long as the whole rest of the world pays the real price and finally comes up with a solution that they can gripe about.

  • Broder at the Obama Kool Aid trough

    I’ve heard a thousand times how Washington Post’s David Broder is a fair journalist, how he treats Democrats just as he treats Republicans. Well, if that were ever true, it’s not true now. He wrote a piece this morning on Obama’s appointment of Republican Ray LaHood entitled “The GOP Goes South“.  I don’t know how he does it, but he calls Bush’s appointment of Democrat Norman Minetta to the post of Transportation Secretary as a “token Democrat” addition to his cabinet in 2001. However, Obama’s appointment of LaHood to the same post draws praise – all within a few sentences.

    LaHood is no ordinary member of Congress. He has been, as [Mark] Shields pointed out, one of the most widely respected members of the House; a leader in the uphill struggle for comity between the parties; and a throwback to the days of his old boss Bob Michel, the minority leader who resisted the scorched-earth tactics of Newt Gingrich. Such was LaHood’s reputation for fairness that he was the natural choice to preside over the House during the explosive impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton.

    The significance of his accepting Obama’s offer goes beyond the signal it sends of the new president’s seriousness about outreach to moderate Republicans.

    You’d hardly recognize Broder’s LaHood from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial board’s assessment of him;

    Mr. LaHood facilitated the incontinent spending that helped Republicans lose their majority in 2006. And he did so unapologetically, once telling a reporter for the Peoria Journal Star, “The reason I went on the Appropriations Committee, the reason other people go on the Appropriations Committee, is they know that it puts them in a position to know where the money is at, to know the people who are doling the money out and to be in the room when the money is being doled out.”

    Mr. LaHood was also among those who most resisted backbench GOP efforts to curb earmarks. “If people like Ray LaHood and others aren’t able to earmark dollars, that money will be spent by some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.,” he said earlier this year. “And who knows better how to spend money on worthwhile projects than a community and an individual Congressman?”

    Yeah, I guess we know the real reason Obama chose LaHood now – because he’s one of those old Republicans who couldn’t take over Congress in the 80s and one of the ones who lost Congress in 2006. In other words, he’s one of those dreaded RINOs that the Washington elite (i.e., Broder) love to drag out occasionally as an example of what the rest of us should become.

    Here’s screen shot if they move it again

  • Generals plot against Obama [Jonn]

    There’s an article floating around the Left side of the web written by a goofball named Gareth Porter in which he claims that the generals are plotting against Obama’s (and Bush’s, by the way) to withdraw combat troops from the cities and towns of Iraq to isolated posts in the countryside.I found a linkable copy of the story in the Asia Times.

    Apparently the plot is to redesignate combat forces as non-combat forces to get around the wording of the status of forces agreement between the US and Iraq.

    By redesignating tens of thousands of combat troops as support troops, those officials apparently hope to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Obama to insist on getting all combat troops of the country by mid-2010.

    General David Petraeus, now commander of CENTCOM, and General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, who opposed Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan during the election campaign, have drawn up their own alternative plan rejecting that timeline, as the New York Times reported on Thursday. That plan was communicated to Obama in general terms by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen when he met with his national security team in Chicago on December 15, according to the Times.

    First of all Professor Porter, the goal is to remove the troops by the end of 2011, not the middle of 2010. Please pay attention. Secondly, the generals are subordinates of the President, they are required by law to obey his orders, not find a way around his orders. And believe me, if the job is done, the generals want to get out of Iraq as badly as we want them out. Why would they want to sit around on their dead asses directing public works projects when they can be somewhere else killing jihadists? We are not an Army that likes occupation duties.

    Porter writes that Petreaus and Odierno opposed Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan without mentioning that Obama first started that blather 21 months before the election. In the nearly two years of the Obama campaign, Patreaus’ and Odierno’s efforts changed the events on the ground for a 16-month withdrawal schedule to be possible. Time marches on, Gareth, situations change and they don’t remain static.

    So what’s Porter’s evidence that the Bushites are plotting to keep combat troops in cities and town of Iraq?

    The determination of the military leadership to ignore the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and to pressure Obama on his withdrawal policy was clear from remarks made by Mullen in a news conference on November 17 – after US ambassador Ryan Crocker had signed the agreement in Baghdad.

    Mullen declared he considered it “important” that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq “be conditions-based”.

    Gasp! Condition-based!? Ya mean, if there’s a war going on, we want to be part of it? Of course we do, ya dumbass. This isn’t a withdrawal for the sake of withdrawing. This isn’t an evacuation under fire, it’s not a retreat. I know you idiots on the Left aren’t used to it, but this is what victory looks like, Gareth, m’boy.

  • Populist, class warfare drivel

    I found this in my inbox last evening;

    See that?

    In the past, presidential inauguration events have too often focused on wealthy donors and Washington lobbyists.

    This year, every American will have a chance to be part of the inauguration.

    I’m not a wealthy donor or a lobbyist, but I’ve been to the last two inaugurations. Granted I didn’t have the best view and I froze my behind off but so did everyone no matter what their station in life is. It’s just populist bullshit.They even let the stupid protesting hippies and their stupid placards into the inauguration.

    The Secret Service and DC cops estimate that 4 million people will be here next month for inauguration. People are offering their spare rooms to out-of-towners at 2-5000 bucks for the weekend. In a city that loves gouging tourists, we’re gearing up to really gouge tourists. Yeah, all of that Hope and Change BS will end at the city limits. As soon as a resident catches the smell of tourist on you, you’ll be picked clean in no time.

    You can be wearing all of the Obama hats, the Obama jackets, the Obama earmuffs that you want, you’re still going to be walking miles from the nearest Metro station they leave open and stand in the throngs waiting to get through the metal detectors, dogs and bag-searches on street corners so you can stand behind a mile-long line of cops in the freezing-ass cold just like the rest of us. Oh, and then Obama will whip by us all at about 30 miles an hour on Pennsylvania Avenue – and you’ll be wondering “I went through all of that for this?” – just like the rest of us. And he’ll be followed by a line of limousines carrying the Washington lobbyists and wealthy donors on their way to the White House.

    If you think one of those limos is going to stop and take you to the White House, you’re gonna be real disappointed.

  • Told ya so

    A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the Democrats pushing for a 25% spending cut in defense. Today TSO sent me an article (without a link) about our favorite Congressman, John Murtha, who thinks a good place to start cutting expenses in the Defense Department is military bonuses;

    “What I’m saying is, there’s going to be less defense spending,” House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., said in a speech at the Center for American Progress on defense priorities. “I’m not going to predict how much of a change we’ll see in the coming years, but I do know that defense spending is going to be under severe pressure.”

    […]

    Murtha said the Army and Marine Corps spent about $2 billion on enlistment and re-enlistment bonuses since 2007 — incentives lawmakers and service officials deemed necessary to help meet recruiting and retention goals.

    But Murtha said bonuses were one area that could produce savings as forces are drawn down in Iraq. “If we draw down, we ought to be able to get rid of the bonuses,” he said.

    I wrote before the election that when Democrats talk about cutting defense spending, it’s code for cutting personnel costs. They passed a great big GI Bill this year that encouraged people to leave the military, and now they’re talking about cutting the incentives to stay.If I didn’t know better, I’d think Murtha is planning to reduce the effectiveness of the military. But that can’t be it, can it?

    You’d think they’d cut back on useless weapons programs, wouldn’t you? But not when Murtha controls the purse strings and needs to send that money to his district;

    But he said the military could find savings by reforming its healthcare system, addressing military compensation, and reducing operations and maintenance costs.

    All personnel cuts. It’s always the troops who pay for the social programs the Democrats need to buy votes. Murtha has proven time and again that the military doesn’t affect his success in his district. He can call them murderers and criminals, heck, he can even call his constituents a bunch of redneck racists and they’ll still vote for him as long as he can keep dragging Federal dollars to his district. So why shouldn’t he cut bonuses, healthcare and eventually the troops pay – there’s no incentive for him to stop.

    Remember back during the Winter Soldier hearings when Maxine Waters told Kristopher Goldsmith that he was braver than the troops who are fighting in the wars right now, and that she is going to get the same benefits as someone who served their full tour without misbehaving? Where do you think she’s going to get the money to pay for Goldsmith’s college education?

  • Dems urge Obama to keep pledges

    The Washington Times runs an odd story this morning entitled “Van Hollen urges Obama to keep promises“. Now, why would Democrats have to remind Obama about his campaign promises a month after the election and a month before he takes office – unless they know something we don’t;

    Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a point man in Democrats’ policy and political shops, said his party recognizes it is now fully responsible for the performance of the federal government and must deliver on President-elect Barack Obama’s long list of campaign promises – or else.

    Making good on those promises – specifically reviving the faltering U.S. economy – likely will determine whether Democrats gain or lose seats in Congress in 2010, he said.

    “I do think the most important thing for the Democrats in the Congress is to find a way to follow through on what the American people expect us to do,” the Maryland Democrat said.

    Topping the must-do list Mr. Hollen laid out Wednesday with editors and reporters at The Washington Times was an economic stimulus packed with New Deal-style public works projects followed by energy, health care and education reforms.

    I’m guessing that they know all of those big-ticket items are somehow getting thrown under the bus for more short-term needs like tax cuts. Of course, VanHollen has never had the country’s best interests at heart – he’s a bitter, partisan, BDS-sufferer. Oh, and my congressman. His constituents are a reflection of his own ignorant, self-serving politics. Well, the constituents of his that are eligible to vote.

  • Post: Jackson, Jr tied to Blagojevich?

    The Washington Post speculates this evening about Jesse Jackson, Junior’s connection to Rod Blagojevich;

    “Senate Candidate 5,” an aspirant to President-elect  Barack Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat mentioned in FBI tapes of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, appears to be  Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., his attorney said at a press conference here this afternoon, but he said Jackson “has made no illicit approach to the governor.”

    Although Blagojevich (D) was captured on the tapes saying that an emissary from Candidate 5 had offered to raise $500,000 for Blagojevich’s campaign treasury, lawyer James Montgomery said Jackson knew nothing about that.

    “Politicians and fundraisers do some funny things from time to time,” said Montgomery, who told reporters that Jackson does not know the unidentified emissary. “I wouldn’t put it past someone to claim they were representing congressman Jackson.”

    Here’s a screen shot of that in case it changes by morning;

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  • IAVA, VoteVets and AFGE “very excited” about Shinseki

    I hope they didn’t mess themselves when they heard about Obama’s choice for VA Director, but Todd Bowers, the governmental affairs director of IAVA, the “nonpartisan” organization that tried to turn veterans and troops away from Republicans with their VERY PARTISAN scorecard for the past election, declared that his band of merry fellows are “very excited”;

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