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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Talks end on Bergdahl’s release

    The Associated Press reports that the Taliban has ceased negotiations with the US to release Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl who they’ve been holding since 2009;

    In a terse Pashto language statement emailed to The Associated Press, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid blamed the “current complex political situation in the country” for the suspension.

    A U.S. official with knowledge of the talks said the cause of the suspension was not the result of any issue between the United States and Taliban. He declined to elaborate and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

    Yeah, the Taliban can smell the fear, that’s the problem when you’ve put yourself in a position of weakness and try negotiate from that position. This Administration unilaterally declared an end to the war in Afghanistan, but didn’t bother to get the Taliban to agree. The US readily agreed to release 5 Guantanamo graduates, but the Taliban figures they can get a better deal. Got news for the smart diplomacy crowd; if we pull the troops out this year and Bergdahl is still being held by the Taliban or the Haqqani Network, or al Qaeda, or whoever the Hell is holding him, we’re not out. Americans won’t stand for this shit anymore. Grow a pair and get this done.

  • Obama to cut spending for special forces

    The Army Times reports that the Obama Administration plans on cutting the growth of funding for special operations troops, despite the fact that they an integral cog in the robot-ninja-zombie Joe Biden strategy in the war against terror;

    “SOF will be flat” across the 2015 budget plan’s five years, said one defense source with ties to the Pentagon and White House.

    Another source, citing conversations with senior special operations officials, told Defense News that SOF funding will be “reined in.”

    The coming proposal to slow funding for the highly lethal forces follows a decade during which special ops ranks grew substantially to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other missions against al-Qaida and similar groups.

    We were told in 2009, when this administration was deciding whether to fully staff McCrystal’s surge in Afghanistan, that we didn’t need the 60,000 troops he requested because we could use special operations and drones to fill the gaps. The thinking was that, although spending for special operations was greater than for rank and file troops, we got a bigger bang for the buck, resulting from the increased training and advanced equipment. So, I guess we’re abandoning that savings benefit now.

    We’ve seen operations increase, you know, with the bin Laden and al-Libi operations the most visible. So, the folks in Bizzaro World concur that this makes total sense.

    They could make up for the funding cuts by drafting our phonies who pretend to be special operations into those missions, though.

  • Obama restores cuts to COLA

    The Associated Press reports that President Obama restored the planned cuts to future cost of living allowances for widows, retirees and disabled veterans yesterday when bills were flown to California for his signature, you know because he was on a golf weekend there.

    Separate legislation passed in December would have held annual cost-of-living increases for veterans age 62 and younger to 1 percentage point below the rate of inflation, beginning in 2015. The measure was designed to hold the line on the soaring cost of government benefit programs, which have largely escaped trillions of dollars in deficit cuts over the past three years.

    The cuts were enacted less than two months ago, with a projected savings to the government of $7 billion over a decade. Veterans groups and some lawmakers said the cut was a mistake, and they began campaigning to have the benefits restored.

    While it’s good that thy restored the reduction before it could affect anyone, the Congress and the president shouldn’t have done it in the first place. It just demonstrates that the politicians are more than willing to make the easy decisions to screw troops and take the politically expedient route rather than make the difficult choices which might endanger their own pay checks.

    It was the Veterans’ Service Organizations that got this issue the press that it deserved and, consequently, forced the change. The MOAA, The American Legion and the VFW have been very vocal about it in the past several weeks.

  • Questionable Choices: Why Pushing Through the DOJ Nomination Will Alienate Rust Belt Democrats

    The following was written by our friend John Bruhns. John is from Philadelphia where the whole controversy about Mumia Abu-Jamal and his murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner still stings the law enforcement community and the citizens who support them. John sends this to us, because it probably wouldn’t be received well at Huffington Post where he usually writes;

    In case you missed it, last week Debo Adegbile was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee as a nominee to head up the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Not surprisingly, the vote came in along strict party lines, 10-8, Democrat versus Republicans. The gig looks like a slam dunk for the former NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney. More than likely, if they don’t get the 60 votes in the Senate ordinarily needed to push through a vote without a filibuster, Senate Democrats will rule that a simple majority is enough, thus ensuring the confirmation of Mr. Adegbile. It would be a flamboyant exercise of the so-called “nuclear option.”

    This is part of a new trend. After two terms of seeing his key appointments and legislation mired in partisan politics, President Obama has made it clear he supports this more aggressive approach, and separately announced plans to use more executive powers on other initiatives during the most recent State of the Union speech. While I disagree with the Senate invoking the “nuclear option” on political appointments and legislative initiatives, there are times when I can understand why any President along with members of the Senate would want to take more control to get things done and end partisan gridlock. However, if the Senate is going to take the drastic measure of using “nuclear option,” wouldn’t it be better for them to go nuclear on a better job candidate?

    Mr. Adegbile may seem like a fine civil rights lawyer on paper, appearing to check every box for leading an office that enforces anti-discrimination laws, but it’s impossible to overlook the fact that he has made some questionable choices that disqualify him for such an important job and will result in some serious political fallout for Democrats, who have seriously underestimated the passionate opposition to this appointment by key a voting bloc.

    Debo Adegbile took up the cause of Mumiu Abu-Jamal, decades after he was tried and convicted for gunning down a police officer on the streets of Philadelphia, and getting his death sentence commuted to life in prison on a technicality. Supporters of Mr. Adegbile, and Mr. Adegbile himself, have argued that he was simply exercising his duty as a defense lawyer, because in this country everyone has a right to due process, whether or not a lawyer likes the defendant. But this is a specious argument at best, because the murderer in question already had his day in court and his conviction was previously upheld on numerous appeals.

    No one aware of the facts in this case (video link) has a shred of doubt that Mumia Abu-Jamal shot policeman Daniel Faulkner, at point blank range, including once in the face from 12-inches away. The young traffic cop, a married U.S. Army veteran, had been lured down a one-way street and was ambushed and killed by Abu-Jamal who was later overheard admitting to the murder. In addition, Abu-Jamal has never denied killing Daniel Faulkner.

    Interestingly, Mr. Adegbile more recently has attempted to downplay his role in this case as if it somehow just happened to fall on his desk leaving him with no choice but to provide Abu-Jamal with representation. This effort to further distance himself from the case is also questionable. Why would a director of litigation for the NAACP give away hundreds of hours of his time and expertise on a case that was forced on him? That kind of commitment takes a passionate belief that you are somehow taking up a just cause. Otherwise, Adegbile could simply have quit, joined a top legal firm and gotten well paid for his time.

    Look, I don’t profess to know why Mr. Adegbile wouldn’t choose to spend his time representing one of countless African-Americans on death row who may actually be innocent, instead of someone who is undeniably guilty. Maybe he regrets his decision, maybe not. Either way, he made a choice that puts him far out of the mainstream, and his later justifications before a Senate panel seem disingenuous at best.

    Meanwhile, a good number of Democratic members of the Senate who vote in favor of this radical nomination may very well get slammed in the midterm elections. Many blue collar swing voters in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey who are familiar with the facts of the most notorious police murder in the country tend to lean left. But they are also huge supporters of law enforcement, and the nation’s police see this nomination as an insult to the men and women who risk their lives every day to protect and serve the American people. A number of major law enforcement organizations representing more than one million police officers nationwide have sent protest letters to Washington over Adegbile’s nomination. Sadly, it appears as if the grievances of our nation’s law enforcement community over this particular nominee may have fallen on the deaf ears of most Senate Democrats.

    At the very least, pushing through this nomination demonstrates the same level of questionable decision-making that led Mr. Adegbile to defend an unrepentant cop killer in the first place.

    – John Bruhns

  • Fitton: McRaven ordered bin Laden pics purged

    Bomb thrower, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch has a FOIA of emails that were whizzing around the White House and the Pentagon after bin Laden was killed and he found one from Adm. William McRaven sent 11 days after the operation directing his subordinates to delete any photos of bin Laden from their computers, according to NBC;

    Previously, the Associated Press had requested access to photos and other documents “sent from and to the U.S. government account or accounts” of McRaven referencing bin Laden who was then vice admiral.

    Government agencies are required to preserve material sought under the Freedom of Information Act, even if they later refuse to release the documents.

    Special Operations Command’s Freedom of Information Office told the AP it could not find any McRaven emails “responsive to your request.”

    Now, I don’t need to see the picture and I think that the government doesn’t have any reason to release the photo, that the media doesn’t need to see it, mostly because the grotesque thing will be all over my Facebook feed, and I just don’t need to see anymore dead people. But those are my personal feelings about it.

    The government still has to abide by the laws and this isn’t really the most open government in history like we were promised. And, I’m thinking that McRaven is about to take the fall for this.

  • Waving a Hero

    I’d like to introduce a new term into the political lexicon: waving a hero. For that is precisely what America’s commander-in-chief, Barack Obama, did last week at the conclusion of his State of the Union speech. As an old infantry sergeant, I was watching that young Ranger NCO from the time he entered the chamber, taking note of the fact that he was seated next to the first lady. I told my wife right then, “He’s there as a prop, they’re going to use him.”

    Unfortunately for me, and the young sergeant first class, Cory Remberg, we all had to sit there through the entire boring speech for both of us to be validated. He received his sorely earned tribute with an extended standing ovation by all present in the chamber. However, being the cynic that life has made me, I knew that the duration of the ovation was largely based on the fact that both parties feared being the first to sit down. I’m just an undergraduate cynic; those duly elected members in that chamber have advanced degrees in that finely honed sense of distrust, disbelief, and “do whatever it takes.”

    American Thinker had a recent post by a young Marine officer who tried to defray the charges of cynicism being leveled at the Obama administration for its callous exploitation of a grievously wounded combat veteran. This Marine wisely noted that Pericles had eons ago explained why young warriors must sometimes be sacrificed for the good of a virtuous state. But, and that is a huge but, the essence of Pericles’s observation is that the nation being defended must be one of virtue and truth, and therefore worthy of defense and the resulting sacrifice of its brave warriors.

    As someone who fought in ground combat in Vietnam, I agree with that. At no time in my service there did I feel like I was fighting to protect hearth and home back in America from invasion by Asian hordes. I accepted that I was a small cog in the vast machine that my country, my supposedly virtuous country, had employed to counter the machinations and threats of those other superpowers, China and Russia, on the chessboard of their Southeast Asian strategy.

    I would wager that if you surveyed surviving veterans of all the wars this country has fought since WWII, you would find that the two most prevalent emotions are first pride in service and then, most disturbingly, a disillusionment that they will carry to their graves that they were somehow used — simple pawns moved about to protect the political queens and kings. Yet we look at the larger battlefield and realize that no matter if our service and sacrifice were misused in certain campaigns, what we fought and died for was the particular mission assigned us by this greatest nation the world has ever seen. That is the Pericles justification for sacrificing our young warriors. We believed in America — and I’m certain that that is still the driving force within those who now serve.

    No pity wanted here, though; we’re not looking for that. We are that proud few who stood when called and served — and as such, we do not look favorably upon a so-called commander-in-chief who uses one of our own’s badly battle-battered body as a political prop to shore up his piss-poor performance as a leader of America’s fighting forces. I would hope that future commanders-in-chief would have the decency to refrain from making a prop of such a grievously injured warrior.

    This nation has done an acceptable job of honoring and recompensing those who fought on its behalf: G.I. Bill benefits enabled millions of us to get college degrees and buy homes. I availed myself of both. The health benefits promised us are an entire book unto themselves, a tome filled with grievance. The one thing our country seems to have done well is to establish beautiful national cemeteries where our remains can rest among our fellow veterans.

    But please, no more waving of heroes for political drama.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Obama; GI Bill is welfare

    The President did an interview with Bill O’Reilly, in case you missed it, in which he used the example of the GI Bill to defend government benefits as building the middle class not part of the nanny state. Here’s the video and the discussion they had on Fox this morning;

    This is from the text of the interview;

    So, the, uh, so my point is is that that’s not a nanny state. That’s an investment in the future generation. G.I. Bill — is that a nanny state? My grandfather came back for World War II, you’re about to write a book on World War II. Smartest thing we ever did was make an investment in the American people. When those guys came back from war, that’s what created our middle class. We-we suddenly trained up and created skills for folks. We gave ‘em subsidies so they could go out and buy homes. Through the FHA, those things weren’t giveaways. We-we understood that what that would do would create a base middle class of folks who were able to, uh, work hard and get ahead.

    He’s right in that it wasn’t a give away. It was earned, earned in a way that most Americans aren’t willing to earn their college education. Most would rather have their parents pay for it at great sacrifice from their parents, as opposed to the sacrifice that a service member must make to finish their education.

    Yeah, I wouldn’t have a college degree if I hadn’t joined the Army. I went to college at nights and earned my Associate degree entirely while I was assigned to infantry units (not an easy way to do it). I wrangled an ROTC assignment out of the Hoffman Building and knocked out another year that the university paid for and then finally did three semesters on the GI Bill, while I went to school full time, had a full time job and a part time job – because no one was giving me food stamps.

    But no one handed it to me like a welfare benefit. I worked for it. No one gave me a loan or a grant. And I know most of you did the same thing. I had some professors who said the same thing as the President. I set them straight. Someone should set the President straight, too.

    Thanks to Twist and John for the link.

  • Veterans’ care is killing vets

    According to this report from Anderson Cooper on CNN, at least 82 veterans have died as a direct result of the Veterans’ Affairs Department failing to schedule screening procedures for veterans, despite promises from the president and his administrator of the department, Eric Shinseki to correct the department’s shortcomings and to become more responsive.

    CNN claims in the video that attempts to interview Shinseki and Obama have fallen on deaf ears, requests denied or ignored.

    Now, I remember the first four years of Obama’s term, him and his little group of propagandists told veterans how much he cared about our concerns, how much him and Shinseki had done to improve the VA, but, I guess the first term is over and he won, so he doesn’t need us anymore. These re veterans who already went through the long and grueling process of getting claims approved and were admitted into the system, now they’re waiting to get the treatment to keep them alive. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they’d rather that we all die.

    You’d think that a wounded veteran who went through the VA would make a good VA director, wouldn’t you?

    Thanks to reader, ohio, for the link.