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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Really Bad News for the Surrender-crats!

    Really Bad News for the Surrender-crats!

    “We are not safer.” Barack Obama

    The Strategy Page, as usual, has an excellent piece up.

    Today, al Qaeda has been shattered, with most of its leadership and foot soldiers dead, captured or moved from Iraq. As a result, al Qaeda attacks have declined more than 90 percent. Worse, most of their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have turned on them, or simply quit. This “betrayal” is handled carefully on the terrorist web sites, for it is seen as both shameful, and perhaps recoverable.
    ………..
    When al Qaeda could not, in 2007, exercise any real control over the parts of Iraq they claimed as part of the new Islamic State, it was the last straw. The key supporters, battered by increasingly effective American and Iraqi attacks, dropped their support for al Qaeda, and the terrorist organization got stomped to bits by the “surge offensive” of last year. The final insult was delivered by the former Iraqi Sunni Arab allies, who quickly switched sides, and sometimes even worked with the Americans (more so than the Shia dominated Iraqi security forces) to hunt down and kill al Qaeda operators.

    Bill Roggio is reporting a similar phenomenon within the Mahdi Army. And he is quoting no less than the Los Angeles Times!

    A common narrative about the war in Iraq is that fighting against the enemy in urban environments creates more insurgents, thus it is fruitless to even try. But today’s Los Angeles Times finally asked Iraqis in Sadr City what they think about the recent fighting and how it impacts their views of the Mahdi Army. The answer: The Mahdi Army has lost significant support from not only residents caught in the crossfire, but from Mahdi Army fighters themselves.

    In fact, some Mahdi Army fighters were so discouraged by the recent fighting that they vowed to never join the ranks again. “I had faith. I believed in something,” a former Mahdi Army fighter told the LA Times. “Now, I will never fight with them.”

    The bottom line: WE ARE SAFER. Sorry about that Barry; wrong again.

    The Democrat talking point that “Killing terrorists creates more terrorists” is an abject lesson in the danger of nuanced thinking.

    The thinking is that killing a terrorist makes the terrorist’s brother join the fight to avenge his brother. This is the kind of thinking at the very heart of appeasement and it NEVER works.

    Do you know why the terrorists are discussing “what went wrong”? Because they got their collective ass kicked, that’s why.

    Obama’s nuanced academic approach is akin to the argument that the death penalty does not deter criminal behavior. Maybe it doesn’t but there is one unassailable fact about the death penalty. When used, it significantly impacts the likelihood of said individual ever becoming a repeat offender.

    This is a fairly simple concept actually; when someone is trying to kill you, anything you do other than kill him first is counter-productive.

  • Playing politics with the troops

    I finished college with the Vietnam-Era GI Bill after I retired. I only needed one year of the benefit because I’d gone to college at night and on weekends off-and-on for my twenty years. It was probably my most important benefit, next to my medical benefit. But if I’d come in the Army three years later, I wouldn’t have gotten the extensive education benefit I did, because the Democrat President and the Democrat Congress lessened the benefit to the Montgomery GI Bill. To save money. And to undermine the effectiveness of military recruiting for our new Volunteer Army. Two years later, Jimmy Carter, that same Democrat President, brought back draft registration because recruiting was failing miserably and threatened out national security.

    Now, having failed at hindering recruiting, the Democrats want to undermine reenlistment by adding an incentive for troops to get out of the military after their first enlistment to get a richer education benefit. Of course, the media doesn’t explain that to the public. They frame it in terms that make Republicans appear opposed to the troops (CNN link);

    The new GI Bill being debated in Congress would expand education benefits for veterans who served at least three years in the military after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

    The bill’s main sponsor, Sen. Jim Webb, is a Virginia Democrat and, like McCain, a Vietnam War veteran. The Senate passed Webb’s bill 75-22 last week. McCain was not in Washington for the vote.

    Barack Obama used the same framing this weekend;

    “I revere our soldiers and want to make sure they are being treated with honor and respect,” Obama said Saturday. “I think the GI Bill is one way for us to do that, and I hope that John McCain and George Bush decide they believe the same thing.”

    This is cheap election year politics designed to undermine the war effort under the guise of supporting the troops – it’s a way to force the Republicans to enact a Stop-Loss program to prevent hemorrhaging combat-experienced junior NCOs and make them even less popular.

    The New York Times, the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, tried to lie about the Administration this weekend, but the Administration shot back (Washington Times link);

    “This editorial could not be farther from the truth about the President’s record of leadership on this issue,” the White House said, adding that Mr. Bush asked Congress to address allowing service members to transfer their GI Bill benefits to their spouses and children, and to expand service members’ access to child care, among other benefits.

    “The President specifically supports the GI Bill legislation expansion proposed by Senators [Lindsey] Graham, [Richard M.] Burr, and [John] McCain because it allows for the transferability of education benefits and calibrates an increase in education benefits to time in the service,” the White House said. “Though readers of the New York Times editorial page wouldn’t know it, President Bush looks forward to signing a GI bill that supports our troops and their families.”

    The New York Times did not respond to a request for a response to the White House’s criticism.

    Of course they didn’t respond – they have nothing to say. The New York Times hopes the controversy disappears. The troops know that when Democrats do something for them, there’s a political angle, a political benefit for the Democrats. Democrats don’t do things solely for the troops anymore.

  • Kerry: Talk with Ahmadinejad

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    John Kerry, the fellow who won’t sign his Form 180, wrote in today’s Washington Post an opinion piece entitled “The Wisdom in Talking” that Barack Obama isn’t an appeaser for wanting to sit down with that throwback to the Dark Ages, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His defense?

    Bush engages in self-deception arguing that not engaging Iran has worked. In fact, Iran has grown stronger: continuing to master the nuclear fuel cycle; arming militias in Iraq and Lebanon; bolstering extremist anti-Israeli proxies. It has embraced Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and spends lavishly to rebuild Afghanistan, gaining influence across the region.

    Actually, John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, we had Iran shaking in their boots after it took us less than two weeks to whip the Taliban and one week to over run Baghdad. They were sure they were next – in fact, Libya’s Qaddafi was sure he was on that list of “Next” as he immediately surrendered his weapons of mass destruction. Nothing before that had budged either, except the Gulf War.

    The reason Iran had continued it’s march towards nuclear weapons is they know that all they need is time. They’ve engaged in talks with the UN, they’ve engaged in talks with the EU and they’ve been running out the clock. They know that they can rattle sabers and talk about the rise of the Mahdi and the extermination of Israel because pussies and pseudo-intellectuals like you and Obama will protect them from the inevitable GBU sent up their tailpipe.

    For years, the Left has been running a screen for Iran, just like they’ve been protecting North Korea for some stupid reason. The Left applies bandaids to serious problems in the world hoping that some Republican will come along and save the world without the Left getting it’s hands dirty. Then the Left can blame the republican for being a warmonger and for budget-busting military spending and they still come out of the debate squeaky clean.

    Kerry writes;

    By engaging Iran, we reclaim the moral high ground — no small feat. If Iran refuses to budge, we have new leverage to expose it as a threat whose bad intentions cannot be explained away.

    What good is “moral high ground”? How many nukes will “moral high ground” stop? So what if we feel better about ourselves while we’re looking down the dorsal fins of a D-31A Chinese long range missile with a lunatic like Ahmadinejad at the trigger?

    There is no common sense or logic in being a Leftist or a Democrat, and that certainly applies to anyone who thinks that talking with iran will lead to tangible results and will make us safer. There is no wisdom in being played like rented fiddle.

  • This is as good as Obama gets

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    Shamelessly lifted from An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings

    Now that he thinks Hillary is out of the way, I guess Obama figures he can be himself again. DrewM at Ace of Spades recounts his speech today trying to whip up some Latino ire in south Florida;

    “A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia.There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year,” Obama said. “If you have people like Lou [Dobbs] and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen.”

    Way to unite America, Obama. What’s “ginning things up” is the flood of illegal aliens who come here and then fly Mexican flags in their protests against the folks who built the economy they’re enjoying well enough to take a day off from work and protest. I must be one of those xenophobes – with my legal immigrant wife and my brown children.

    Gateway Pundit has the actual crime statistics, by the way and it’s hardly “doubled”;

    Obama obviously knows something the rest of us don’t.
    The 2007 hate crime statistics have not been released yet.

    The 2006 hate crime statistics were released in late November 2007:

    Anti-Hispanic Incidents in 2005 – 522
    Anti-Hispanic Incidents in 2006 – 576

    This showed a 10% increase.

    If you want to find a way to unite Latins in south Florida, try doing the way that guy you refer to as a divider did yesterday as recounted by Val Prieto at Babalu Blog;

    There wasnt a dry eye in the place. Some of us began crying before even the first note was played. I felt it build up as President Bush began his introduction. And the moment Chirino stepped up on that stage – right there in the East Wing of the White House – everything hit me all at once. The whole DC-White House trip and its purpose smacked me dead on in the face and turned me into a weeping basketcase.

    Yeah, try that instead of trying the way Liberty Pundit‘s Private Pigg reports;

    Obama wants to push towards “normalization” (which will make for some good propaganda – see, we are a normal, legitimate country!) and allow American cash to flow into the island (which will strengthen the regime by giving it money).

    The Illinois senator called for direct diplomacy with the communist island and, without saying whom he would meet with, pledged to lead that charge as president.

    “It is time to pursue direct diplomacy, with friend and foe alike, without preconditions. There will be careful preparation. We will set a clear agenda,” he said. “I would be willing to lead that diplomacy at a time and place of my choosing, but only when we have an opportunity to advance the interests of the United States.”

    Obama said he would maintain the Cuban embargo but would offer to start normalizing relations with the communist country if it released all political prisoners…

    Now didn’t we think of that?

    But Obama wasn’t done alienating Floridians yet – from Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs;

    Obama is spinning ………… how desperate are the Jews to believe? Apparently there is resistance: Obama’s Support Lags With Jewish Voters

    Obama Makes His Pitch

    Jennifer Rubin, Commentary

    Barack Obama went to a Florida synagogue and made his pitch for Jewish support. He faced a skeptical crowd that did not exactly give him a hero’s welcome. But what was most striking were comments like this that are breathtaking in their audacity:

    “Don’t judge me because I have a funny name. Don’t judge me because I am an African American. People are concerned about memories of the past. … That is exactly what I am fighting in the African American community when I hear anti-Semitic statements. We are bigger than that.”

    First, the insinuation, which he has made more than once, that Jews oppose him because of his name or his race (or because another African American made anti-Semitic remarks) is insulting and condescending. He should drop it from his repertoire and address the real concerns Jewish voters have expressed.

    “Why Me” at An Inconvenient Document tracks down one of the reasons Americans mistrust Obama – and it has nothing to race or color or names or snotty attitudes. It has to do with people who say things like this for the New York Times;

    Mr. [William] Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ”Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at,” is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

    While Don Surber reports on the confusion of whether Obama would meet with Ahmadinejad or not, my favorite Luo-American, Baldilocks, reminds us that this remains on the Obama website;

    Direct diplomacy without preconditions. How do you put more direct pressure than we do already? Pointless blather.

    Someone emailed me today that he is unsure about support for John McCain and to bolster his stance he sent a post from John Hawkins of Right Wing News who announced he would no longer support John McCain. I agree with DavidL at Bits Blog on this point-given the alternative, how could they not?

    This is as good as Obama gets – this how he goes to the right to attract center-right voters to his campaign for the November election. This is Obama the uniter.

  • That’s why they can’t vote here

    I like Canada – I lived right next to that place for years, first in Vermont and then in New York. Socially, Canadians are great people to hang out with. But politically, they’re not Americans. For example, take a look at this from Darcy at the Canadian blog Dust My Broom (which generally leans right);

    Wow – U.S. Republican John McCain’s name gets a mention in the Canadian media:

    Barack ObamaDemocrat Barack Obama would crush Republican John McCain in the U.S. presidential race by an almost four-to-one margin — 56 per cent to 15 — if it were up to Canadians.

    That’s the conclusion of a new Canadian Press-Harris-Decima poll that, for the first time, gauges Canadian opinion on a head-to-head contest between the Republican candidate and the presumptive Democratic nominee. […]

    While some of that antipathy toward the incumbent Republican could explain Canadians’ overwhelming support for the presumed Democratic nominee, Mr. Anderson says Canadians like Mr. Obama for other reasons.

    He says the candidate’s three main promises are in lock-step with Canadian public opinion. His public declarations that he would renegotiate NAFTA appear, so far, to have ruffled few Canadian feathers.

    See? That’s why we only let Americans vote in our elections. I know foreign journalists ask these questions to influence the whatever-philes in the US to vote the way they want us to vote just so everyone in the world will like us, but it only influences the majority of us to vote the other way. We’re not Canadian, we’re not Brits or French or Germans or Kenyans…that’s why we have our own country.

  • The Election Will Be Stolen, Again!

    With Hillary’s Quixotic quest refusing to face the naked reality of defeat and Obama limping toward the Democrat nomination, the MSM is left to make excuses for the very possible November defeat.

    Just on cue, MSNBC leads the charge.

    NBC’s Mitchell Suggests GOP Officials May Cheat Obama in November During MSNBC’s live coverage of the Kentucky and Oregon Democratic presidential primaries on Tuesday night, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell seemed to take seriously suggestions by Hillary Clinton campaign members who argued that Republicans in control of the election process in some red states Barack Obama hopes to carry may deny him a “fair vote.” Mitchell: “Other people, I should point out, other Clinton loyalists, but realists, say that that electoral map is a stretch in one regard: There are…Republican Governors and Secretaries of State, if you will, Katherine Harris-type election officials in those states….he has to go up against the establishment, which would be Republican, and he has to figure out a way to get a fair vote if he’s the nominee in those red states.”

    This logic is like the Truthers and conspiracy nuts out there. If the evil Bush-Cheney cabal had developed some evil inside plan to execute 9-11 and had the ability to keep it a secret for so long; what is to prevent them from sneaking down to your mother’s basement and offing your sorry ass?

    Using the same logic, what were all of the evil Republicans doing in 2006? Or was it part of a brilliant conspiracy to expose the unbelievable incompetence of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi?

    Just how has that “Sweeping Change” in 2006 worked out so far?

    1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high
    2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon
    3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%

    Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen:

    1) Consumer confidence plummet
    2) The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon
    3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase)
    4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses)
    5) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars

    America voted for change in 2006, and we got it!

  • Foot-shooting Democrats

    Ed Morrisey at Hot Air and Jim Geraghty at National Review Online have noticed a trend in recent Democrat strategies. They think they can attack John McCain’s military service to pump up their candidate and downplay McCain’s experience. From Geraghty;

    One: * * *

    Two: * * *

    Three: * * *

    From Morrisey;

    If the Obama campaign wants to continue its denigration of military service, let them. It’s going to be difficult to sell McCain as a man who got a free ride through a distinguished naval career and attempt to turn a real war hero into a dilettante. That effort will reveal the anti-military animus that surrounds Team Obama and its supporters on the hard Left better than any ad the Republicans can produce.

    Redstate‘s Erick asks;

    When will Barack Obama publicly say attacks on John McCain’s war record are off limits?

    They missed Wesley ‘Little Mac’ Clark‘s attacks (although Clark was a Hillary supporter at the time – who knows who he supports today).

    Since he thinks he havsthe moral high ground on this issue, Obama won’t put McCain’s service off limits. After all, this campaign is about things candidates ARE and not about what they’ve DONE. Just like Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama thinks he deserves the presidency just because he’s running. He’s put every negative aspect of his life off limits and left everything about his opponents open for derision, but it’s going to blow up in his face.

    John McCain hasn’t made his whole campaign about his time as a POW – sure it’s come up from time-to-time, but his whole campaign doesn’t revolve around it – like John Kerry’s did. And all of the wrong people are sent out to attack him – Jay Rockefeller, who never served, Tom Harkin who famously lied about his service. These are the only people they’ve got. They can’t send John Kerry out, because we’ll just ask for him to sign his Form 180. AGAIN.

    If they keep trotting out their critics of McCain’s service it is only going to end up reminding voters how the Democrat Party is populated with America-haters and troop-bashers.

  • Racism vs sexism

    Even though Democrats are proud of the fact that they’ve got a black candidate and woman candidate running for the presidential slot on their party’s ballot, it seems no one can be a winner in the Democrat Party.

    This morning Hillary “decried sexism” during her campaign according according to the Associated Press;

    Hillary Clinton called sexist attacks on her campaign “deeply offensive” Tuesday, as female supporters sprang to her defense, saying she speaks for all women and should stay in the Democratic race to the bitter end.

    […]

    “I believe this campaign has been a groundbreaker in a lot of ways. But it certainly has been challenging given some of the attitudes in the press,” Clinton said of the contest that will crown either a black or a female presidential nominee for the first time in history.

    While Hillary was railing against sexist Democrats and the misogynist press, the Chicago Tribune discovered that Clinton was benefiting from racism in Kentucky;

    “They won’t vote for a black man,” Rife said of the people he has lived around all his 57 years. “That’s all there is to it. They just can’t bring themselves to do it.”

    A walk around this central Kentucky town of 1,500 supports Rife’s opinion. Whether in the Dairy Queen or the dollar store or along the sidewalks of a courthouse square ringed with shuttered business, people speak freely of their dislike for the lanky senator from Illinois.

    Terry Jordan, 47, who runs a year-round garage sale in front of an old filling station on Main Street, put it simply: “It’s his color.”

    […]

    “Right now it’s not that Hillary attracts the white vote,” said Jack Bunnell, 79. “It’s that Obama’s black.”

    Seems to me that Democrats have a problem. They’ve wrapped themselves up in these half-witted rants about victims and voting for people because of WHAT they are instead of WHO they are, the rank and file aren’t getting the message that they’re the party of inclusion. They can’t blame Republicans for this one, can they?

    It’s Vintage, Duh found Politico worried about racism before the votes were even counted this morning;

    And though Kentucky voters may also factor race into their votes, they also might be more reluctant to admit it to exit pollsters, said Laurie Rhodebeck, an associate political science professor at the University of Louisville.

    “Voters get a little prickly here if you say race” drove their choice, she said. “They’ll say, ‘It’s more that we’re concerned about his church ties or his lack of military experience or that he seems so young and untested.’ Those may be socially acceptable ways of saying they’re uncomfortable with a black candidate.”

    If I were a Democrat, I’d be ashamed to admit it at this point, because no matter who I support, I’m considered a hater at this point. In which group of haters are you?