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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Why Barry wouldn’t visit Landstuhl (UPDATED)

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    Folks have been emailing me the story about Obama foregoing a visit with troops recovering from their injuries at the Landstuhl medical facility in Germany.

    Sen. Barack Obama scrapped plans to visit wounded members of the armed forces in Germany as part of his overseas trip, a decision his spokesman said was made because the Democratic presidential candidate thought it would be inappropriate on a campaign-funded journey.

    Of course he did. There was no winning way to look at it from the stand point of a political campaign. Either he took cameras with him or he did the reverent thing and forbid the media to follow him. Why would he waste his time doing something he couldn’t make into a photo-op? And if he let cameras in, he’d be accused of using the wounded as props (I’d have been the first to say it), and why would he want a photo op with someone who’d draw the viewers attention away from the Messiah.

    From a political standpoint, there was no up side. And we all know that Barack Obama doesn’t deviate from the politically expedient decision. AFP points out why he couldn’t make the visit;

    Pentagon officials said the restrictions were in keeping with Defense Department guidelines aimed at avoiding the appearance of military support for any particular candidate.

    “Because his visit is official only, Senator Obama may not be accompanied by members of his campaign staff,” a Pentagon memo seen by AFP said. “He may only be accompanied by one member of his Senate staff, and the appropriate number of security personnel.”

    Only one handler with him? What if one of the troops asked him a question about the surge and Obama’s failure to support it? Who would be there to whisper the answer in his ears? Rush would have had another 2 minutes of “uh” to add to his unscripted Obama tape.

    Nope, there was no up side for the politically adept Obama…no up side except for the troops he would have had to make a personal sacrifice to visit. I guess that was asking too much of the messiah.

    UPDATED: Zero Ponsdorf emailed a link to a Free Republic article by Kristinn (a local FReeper whom I’ve met a few times) that pulls together a bunch of articles and sources;

     This explanation by the Pentagon that Obama’s plane would be allowed to land and his staff and press taken care of leaves a big question as to what was so objectionable that Obama cancelled.

    It couldn’t be the media restriction as some have speculated. Obama visited wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center last month without the press. He visited troops in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq without the media. The military released official photos of the war zone visits, the only exception being of Obama’s visit to a military hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

    Read the rest.

  • Oh, goody, the Germans like us again

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    No, I didn’t bother watching Obama’s speech yesterday, just like I haven’t watched any of his speeches. Too much hyperbole for my tastes, and as I suspected, the Germans, who are historically easily swayed by empty, populist oratory seemed to gobble up the staged show (Washington Times Christine Bellantoni);

    Just like crowds at his American rallies, these fans erupted in chants of “Obama, Obama,” and “Yes, we can.” One person led the crowd in a chorus of the “Obamagirl” song, getting dozens to sing along that “I’ve got a crush on Obama.”

    Of course, the Left in the US all peed themselves a little when the Germans accepted Obama. That’s what the Left needs, someone from Europe, especially one of the more socialistic countries like Germany, to validate their candidate. The rest of the United States, not so much.

    John Kornblum wrote in the Washington Post;

    I was standing on a raised platform about 25 yards from Obama yesterday. Most of the audience — a sea of young people shouting “Obamaaa!” and “Yes, we can!” — were not native speakers of English, and some perhaps didn’t understand English at all, but they didn’t seem to care. The young people seemed to feel that he was speaking to them.

    I get the same feeling sometimes, only different – I am a native speaker of English and I’ve never felt as if he was speaking to me.

    Half of my antecedents left Germany around the end of the 19th century, I don’t know why exactly, but I’m sure they had their reasons. They certainly didn’t care what the “left behinds” thought of them, so I guess I shouldn’t either. Most of us come from European ancestry, people who left the chains of serfdom and constant war to build a new nation on this side of the Atlantic. The United States has rescued Europe from itself on more than one occasion. Why would we seek approval from the world that we call “the developed countries” (but they’re really not developed like we are at all – most are racist, sniffing backwards snobs)?

    Ask any American GI who spent any time in Germany if the Germans are really as smart as the Left likes to portray them – or anyone who spent time in any part of Europe. Any GI who longed to return to the “Land of the Round Doorknobs”.

    So why would Europe embrace the likes of Obama? Because they long for the days of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter when we were a laughing stock. When our presidents showed up with bags of money and on their knees to pay tribute to the sons of kings of Europe. The same reasons that Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, al Qaeda, FARC and all the rest of the world’s thugs support Obama – for what they anticipate they can hornswaggle out of the US taxpayers.

    Who cares what Europe thinks? Only the people who’ve forgot why this country was founded in the first place care…that’s who.

    Personally, I’m most trusting of the Europeans when they fear us and respect us.

  • A fish doesn’t know he’s wet

    By now, you’ve probably all seen this video from the John McCain campaign that claims the media is all a-twitter about Obama;

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    So James Taranto on WSJ’s Best of the Web provides a transcript of the discussion about this video and the media’s over the top treatment of Obama on CNN with Wolf Blitzer moderating…the discussion gets interupted for breaking news.

    CNN interrupts a discussion of whether the media are in the tank for Obama for a news bulletin that Obama’s plane has landed safely–a dog-bites-man story if ever there was one.

    Come to think of it, it’s even less noteworthy than a dog-bites-man story. Obama’s plane landing safely is literally an everyday occurrence. If a dog bit him, that would newsworthy–especially if it were the toothless watchdog that answers to the name of MSM.

  • Democrat Avoidance

    America is coming around to the conclusion many of us reached years ago as an answer to the energy shortage in this country – drill here, drill now. So what will the people’s representatives in Congress do to meet America’s realization? Since Congress is run by Democrats, it’ll avoid it’s responsibilities to the American people according to the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board;

     Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other liberal leaders on Capitol Hill are gripped by cold-sweat terror. If they permit a vote on offshore drilling, they know they will lose when Blue Dogs and oil-patch Democrats defect to the GOP position of increasing domestic energy production. So the last failsafe is to shut down Congress.

    Majority Leader Reid has decided that deliberation is too taxing for “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” This week he cut off serious energy amendments to his antispeculation bill. Then Senate Appropriations baron Robert Byrd abruptly canceled a bill markup planned for today where Republicans intended to press the issue. Mr. Byrd’s counterpart in the House, David Obey, is enforcing a similar lockdown. Speaker Pelosi says she won’t allow even a debate before Congress’s August recess begins in eight days.

    When Democrats have an chance to actually help to solve a real problem, they’d rather Americans just suffer for cheap political gains.

    If Barack Obama were truly concerned about jobs and the working man, he’d lay aside his political allegiances and call for a new energy policy that takes us away from the last thirty years of failed politics and policy and lead America in a new direction…towards prosperity and away from pure political rhetoric. But, I’m not holding my breath.

  • Behind the pictures

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    Rurik emailed me this link from Blackfive who posts a letter from a captain in Afghanistan. Here’s an excerpt;

    As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off and didn’t say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service.

    Obama is uncomfortable around the troops because he knows that, as a bloc, he doesn’t have their vote. He won’t waste his time trying to earn their voteso Obama will focus his energies where he has a better chance – among the independents in the US, the folks he’s playing to in the media. So screw the troops – they’re just props for his campaign’s backdrop.

    Obama is mainly still playing to his anti-war base and that base has been busy bashing the troops. Pat Dollard documented a spitting incident here and here for posterity. The military is undermining their efforts to defeat Republicans by actually winning the war instead of sacrificing themselves for the Democrat cause.

    Yeah, I throw IVAW into that mix. Look at the piece TSO did this morning from Sleeping Gas Montalvan. Mantalvan finally decided that his “testimony” at Winter Soldier wasn’t at all damning, so now he’s changed it and tried to spice it up for media consumption and it still falls apart under a cursory examination.

    So things are going to get worse for the troops before it gets better. Either way the election goes, they’ll end up with the shitty end of the stick.

  • Campaigning in a time vacuum

    The press is all a-twitter because the Iraqi government seems to agree with foreign policy dunce Barack Obama that a 16-month timetable withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq seems to be the best solution. From the Washington Post;

    But as political theater, the events of the past few days have played unfailingly in the Democrat’s favor. On Friday, a day after Obama left for Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush administration officials announced that the United States and Iraq had agreed on a time horizon for removing troops. Then, twice in three days, Maliki embraced a withdrawal timeline similar to Obama’s.

    And you know what? I might even agree at this point…the difference between me and Barack and the Washington Post is that I’ve taken events over the last year and a half into account to arrive at my conclusion, while the Post and Obama act like they were right to call for the withdrawal for more than two years, absent the success of the surge. So the Post and Obama are actually saying that Obama has special powers that let him see into the future and make determinations based on his special transcendental knowledge.

    For the Post and Obama, the surge never happened, it’s still 2006 and we’re still taking scads of casualties daily in Iraq. They discount the fact that Obama has taken every opportunity to vote against funding the troops, to vote against giving them the equipment they’ve needed and he opposed the surge. Obama, for his own political benefit, did his best to make sure that troops were still suffering massive casualties in Iraq when he assumed the Presidency, just so he could surrender and then Democrats could point at George Bush as a failure.

    Last week, I wrote that William Arkin was still trying to convince Post readers that all was lost in Iraq and that the troops were coming home so they could save their honor. I also wrote about the members of Congress who wrote a letter to the President calling on him to withdraw the troops from Iraq. Robin, my supposed alter-ego at Chickenhawk Express, wrote this weekend that Dahr Jamail, the terrorists’ best friend in Iraq, is still calling Fallujah a quagmire. It’s as if the Left stored it’s collective consciousness in a jar over the door jamb for two years and just uncorked it last week.

    Although Obama may be right on his timetable withdrawal today, he was wrong when he first mentioned it, he’s been wrong on it for two years. Just because events that he had nothing to do with have made him right (what’s the old saw about a broken clock being right twice everyday? Or a blind squirrel finding a nut?), it doesn’t change the fact that he was wrong…dangerously wrong…in the beginning.

  • NY Times red pencils McCain’s opinion

    I read it first at Little Green Footballs and then clicked over to Drudge to read the whole thing, and it’s pretty startling. It seems that the New York Times is now rejecting people’s opinions based on style issues. Obama’s opinion piece a few weeks ago in the Times is apparently the style guide.

    ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’

    Let me ask this question of the NYT’s editors…how do you think you can get away with presenting one politician’s opinion and then dictating to another what his rebuttal will be?

    NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’

    I’d be damned if I ever gave the New York Times anything that’d be beneficial to their traffic or their circulation, if I were John McCain – but he probably will.

    The Times says they want “new information” to publish. Well, how about this line from McCain’s piece;

    Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

    Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

    It must all be new information because Obama doesn’t know it – or the American public doesn’t know it and Obama is lying to them.

    Of course the Times doesn’t want to have to publish this, it makes them look bad…but not as bad as they look because of this rejection notice. I guess they figured that McCain wouldn’t tell the rest of the planet about the New York Times trying to deceive the American public.

  • Losing Afghanistan?

    Last week in Afghanistan, in one engagement with the Taliban, nine US troops were killed and 15 wounded. The press and Obama jumped on the news as proof that we’re losing in Afghanistan – because we can’t be completely successful. If we’re winning in Iraq (against the predictions from the Left) we must be losing elsewhere. Then to compound the tragedy of the engagement, Times Online reported later in the week that the unit “abandoned” the untenable position.
    Well, Zero Ponsdorf sent me this article from Stars and Stripes on Saturday that he found over at the Free Republic.

    But the attack is not a sign of conditions worsening in the country, he said.

    The battle occurred just after dawn at a temporary vehicle patrol base near Wanat. A platoon-sized element of Chosen Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne) soldiers and a smaller Afghan National Army force were occupying a hastily built area as they had done many times over the 15 months they’d been in country, [Brigade Commander, Col. Charles “Chip”] Preysler said. The soldiers were there on a reconnaissance mission to establish a presence and find a good location to connect with the local government, populace and Afghan National Police, he said.

    The small outpost had been built just days before the attack and consisted of protective wire and observation posts surrounding strategically placed vehicles. “That’s all it was, a series of vehicles that went out there,” Preysler said.

    “People are saying that this was a full-up [forward operating base]/combat outpost, and that is absolutely false and not true. There were no walls,” Preysler said, latter adding, “FOB denotes that there are walls and perimeters and all that. It’s a vehicle patrol base, temporary in nature.”

    But that doesn’t mean the soldiers were not prepared to take on the enemy, he said.

    “Now, obviously when you halt, you start prepping your defenses, and in this case we had [observation posts] and protective wire, we had the vehicles deployed properly to take advantage of their fields of fire, and we set up like that all over the place, and we do it routinely,” he said.

    The Army did not “abandon” the base after the attack, as many media reporters have suggested, Preysler said.

    But that won’t stop the incident from being a bloody shirt for Obama to wave. In fact, everywhere I looked yesterday, that one incident has made the fact that we’re losing in Afghanistan a foregone conclusion in every discussion. Funny, but the troops don’t think we’ve lost.