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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Foreign Policy is not for Amateurs

    Senator Barack Obama is still seething over the “Appeasement” issue.

    Today in a stump speech from Montana he defended his position of holding direct “talks” with the terror supporting regime in Iran by citing other events where, in his view, direct talks saved the day.

    To illustrate his point, he cited the successful “diplomacy” that averted a nuclear showdown with Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Time for another history lesson for the junior senator.

    President Kennedy’s first public statement on the crisis occurred on October 22, 1962. This was a statement to the world, nationally broadcast. There was no direct communication between he and Russia.

    “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

    That’s not negotiation Senator, that’s called “Cross this line and I’ll kick your ass!”

    In the same statement Kennedy said:

    “To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation and port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers.”

    A “quarantine” is a blockade senator. A blockade is not a negotiation, it is a military operation. And don’t go “lawyer” on me; a “quarantine” IS a “blockade” and a blockade IS a military action and an overt act of war.

    This is not new doctrine either. It traces back further than the Spartan blockade of Athens following the Battle of Aegospotami in 404 BC or more recently during the Egyptian blockades of the Straits of Tiran prior to the 1956 Suez War and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. All of these resulted in wars.

    Kennedy then immediately increased air surveillance and established complete air superiority over the sovereign nation of Cuba. That too, senator was a military operation and an act of war.

    In that same statement, Kennedy also “directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities”.

    This was Kennedy’s flavor of “negotiating” in a situation where, as threatening as it was, not one American had been killed.

    Iran has directly caused the deaths of hundreds of Americans and is without a doubt the most threatening regime in the Middle East and like Cuba has raised the stakes internationally on the nuclear issue.

    So senator, when are you going to issue a Kennedy-esque “Cross this line and I’ll kick your ass!” message?

  • Obama is a babe in the woods

    Barack Obama just lost any chance to be president. This clip will haunt him from now until November;

    [youtube kda4_5lFkZM nolink]

    The jist of it comes from Curt of Flopping Aces;

    OBAMA: You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.

    And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

    Now, I know what vacuous point he’s trying to make; because of the war in Iraq, our troops’ resources are stretched too thin, but let’s look at this thing.

    First of all, An Army captain running a platoon must be one dicked-up captain. A platoon sergeant lets a second lieutenant pretend to run a rifle platoon, not a captain.

    Secondly, a rifle platoon (my full Bradley rifle platoon was 35 men with a forward observer and a medic attached, so I’m wondering about the 39-men thing) would NEVER split it’s troops to different theaters – something about command and control, small unit leadership and unit cohesiveness just makes that stupid right from the git-go. What would the Army have to gain by sending parts of units to different missions hundreds of miles apart instead of just sending one intact unit of the size it needs?

    The “using Taliban weapons” story is a crock, too. Maybe they used the weapons they captured for a myriad of reasons (the AK is virtually indestructible and impervious to dirt, the distinctive sound can confuse the enemy as to who they’re exchanging fire with for a moment, the AK makes a good club, etc…) but not because they couldn’t get supplies.

    Obama makes it sound like the Army just swaps out rifles when they run out of bullets. Now it may be possible someone in an extended exchange grabbed up an AK when they burned through their basic load (about 200 rounds in my day), but that’s not the fault of poor supply – that’s an over-abundance of targets.

    A commenter at Flopping Aces makes the excellent point that if Obama is so concerned about supplying our troops in theater, why did he vote against supplying them?

    Honestly, this sounds like the old Viet Nam war stories I used to hear from people who repeated stories they heard from other people who weren’t “there” either.

    But, then, we can’t expect Obama to know a thing he’s talking about because he’s never been fitted for a pair of combat boots, he’s never fired an AK or an M16 and he probably couldn’t spot a Humvee unless it was alone in a parking lot of BMWs. He wouldn’t know how First Sergeants and Sergeants Major turn over rocks looking for the stuff their troops need to survive in combat.

    And no mission even starts if the troops don’t have what they need to win the day.

    Obama is a babe in the woods – a very stupid, gullible, ignorant babe in the woods.

    Confederate Yankee writes;

    This leaves us with two possibilities.

    Barack Obama is a liar. He (or someone he plagiarized) simply made the tale up out of the whole cloth.

    Barack Obama is a rube. Anyone with any sense of how the military works at all would immediately sniff this out as a series of false stories. Perhaps Barack Obama, the man who would be Commander in Cheif, is so ignorant of all matters military that he could be easily fooled by a fraud.

    Neither possibility says anything good about Obama.

    Crotchety Old Bastard gets his licks in;

    He is either a pathological liar or dumb as a frigging stump. In either case, he is totally unfit for any office and especially the Presidency.

    Stuart Koehl at The Weekly Standard Blog;

    Overall, I think Obama would be better sticking to his “message of hope”–hope that nobody will ever ask him to make any substantive statements on military affairs, ever again.

  • WaPo and Maryland Dems celebrate screwing taxpayers (Updated)

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    Photo from Washington Post

    Yeah, I know what you’re thinking as you look at the photo above of Marty O’Malley celebrating his victory over Maryland taxpayers yesterday. I’ll bet you all can caption it real well, especially after you read this adoring piece from the Washington Post entitled “O’Malley Increases Influence With Wins on Taxes and Slots“;

    Gov. Martin O’Malley emerged from a grueling special session of the Maryland General Assembly with big wins on tax and slot machine legislation, praise from lawmakers for his willingness to tackle the state’s most vexing issues — and greatly increased clout in Annapolis.

    Less clear, as O’Malley (D) and bleary-eyed legislators celebrated at a bill-signing ceremony yesterday, were the wider political ramifications of pushing through $1.4 billion a year in tax increases during a frantic three-week session called to solve the state’s chronic budget problems.

    “How it plays politically is still up in the air,” said Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery). “Will people recognize it as hard choices that had to be made or as government run amok? But by any measure, the governor did an incredible job pulling it together. He was buttonholing people. He was schmoozing people. I don’t know if he was threatening people. At points, it was ugly, but it was certainly an impressive effort overall.”

    A grueling session. How grueling is it to tell people bound by law to pay more of their own income? And guess what? The tax increase is to fund NEW spending – not a budget shortfall. the only shortfall is in the Democrats’ agenda to tie votes of non-working Marylanders to their little red wagon.

    O’Malley was bound and determined to get a tax hike – he threatened to cut off essential services to communities (fire, police, rescue…) if the legislature wouldn’t fund his unneccessary spending increases. O’Malley has just become Maryland’s Mario Cuomo – the governor that drove Upstate New York into the dumper from which it hasn’t emerged.

    UPDATE: I was finally able to get into the Washington Times this morning and Tony Lobianco has even more insane Democrat quotes about the process that took place behind the backs of Maryland taxpayers;

    “This is the boldest move, the boldest action of any governor I have served with,” said Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., Southern Maryland Democrat.

    Bold? It’s bold to threaten to shut down essential services to raise taxes? Bold would be cutting waste and cutting programs, not jacking up taxes to further ensconce Democrats in power in Maryland.

    “I’d like to thank all of you who were here for three weeks, which felt like three months, sometimes even three years,” said Mr. O’Malley, who called the session for lawmakers to consider his package of tax increases and his slots proposal to resolve a budget shortfall of between $1.5 billion and 1.7 billion, and for additional state spending.

    I’m waiting for them to all recommend each other for a damn Medal of Honor for sneaking up behind taxpayers in the middle of the night and stabbing us in the back like the greedy criminals they’ve become.

    So what was in the tax bill?

    Mr. O’Malley increased the sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent, the corporate income tax from 7 percent to 8.25 percent and the tobacco tax by $1. He also reworked Maryland’s personal income-tax structure to increase exemptions for low- and middle-income earners and increase taxes for upper-income earners.

    A pack of cigarettes in Maryland is already nearly $5/pack. Jack it up to $6, you fools – most Marylanders only need to drive a few miles in almost any direction and buy them cheaper. Raising the price $10/carton more makes it much more attractive to buy them out of State. How much revenue ya got then, chump? The same with sales tax.

    Well, ya’all voted for them. I’ve already started looking for a place in Virginia – maybe West Virginia.

    Crossposted at Red Maryland

  • Rakkasan: SGT Aguina is mentally ill

    Robin at Chickenhawk Express sent me this link to the comments section of the Daily Kos  from the Angry Rakkasan, otherwise known as Brandon Friedman, one of Jon Solz‘ strokin’ buddies in the VoteVets front organization for attention-starved former Army captains who couldn’t make the Majors’ list.

    Freidman accuses the young buck sergeant, David Aguina, who confronted “Lil Mac” Clarke and his half-witted poodle Jon Solz with the facts of the surge at the YearlyKos Convention, of suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome because he doesn’t stand with Rakkasan, Clarke and Solz on the facts of the “surge”;

     We need to get to the bottom of this.  This is a soldier who needs some help–whether it’s more training in military bearing and discipline or treatment for complex PTSD, we just don’t know yet.  Either way, he’s being exploited by the right-wing blogs.

    Yeah, like the Left wing blogs aren’t using Friedman, Clarke and Solz  – at least their mental problems are more easily recognizable – penis envy. Now I haven’t seen a picture of Brandon, but I think Solz and Clarke must’ve got waivers for their height and weight in order to join the military – they’re the shortest little peckerheads I’ve ever seen to have worn a uniform. Since I can’t find a picture of Freidman, I gotta guess he’s the tall one – he has to be.

    As far as Aguina’s bearing and discipline, I think you’d better start with that gelding Solz. Aguina acted entirely professional, his bearing and discipline were just fine. It’s that pussy Solz that needs to be taught how to be a leader and not some power-starved lap dog for a retired diminutive general. If I had been in SGT Aguina’s shoes that day, the maintainence crews would still be picking pieces of Solz out of the ventilation system.

    Robin also tells us that Friedman gave the opposing response to a presidential radio address back in July. I guess he doesn’t think the Left is using him like a two-bit whore for that, huh? Those fat cows over at Code Pink must be falling all over their worn out udders to get seen with him. 

    And Friedman apparently plans on stalking young Sergeant Aguina;

     I would like to get contact information for Sergeant Aguina, if anyone has it.  I’m also working through VoteVets.org to get it.  I want to speak with him, Iraq veteran-to-Iraq veteran without any consideration of rank.  I’m willing to listen to him, as well as to give him some advice.

    Yeah, Brandon, I’d like to get your contact information, too. You ain’t worth listening to, but I’ve got some advice for you. Probably the same advice your first platoon sergeant had for you.