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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • The TOTUS Who Can’t Look America in the Eye

    Not once — not even once — did the man who claims to be the legitimate leader of our nation ever look me, and all the other watching citizens of this nation, in the eye during his State of the Nation speech. He was a dash-top bobble-head, swinging back and forth from prompter to prompter.

    Good grief! The man can’t uncouple himself from his comfort-zone technology for even a moment to look Americans in the eye just once, and give us some sense of our comfort that he is sincere.

    For those of us who endured the entire speech, it was painfully obvious that our nation is being led by a man who lives and dies by the teleprompter — Teleprompter Rex. It would be exceedingly interesting to see what would transpire should that teleprompter technology crash in the midst of a major speech like this one. Perhaps America would be treated to the real Obama, without the technological defenses that wall him off from we, the unworthy.

    Reality is, this affirmative-action president, a man elevated far beyond his capabilities by those who would use him for their own ends, has failed. He’s failed himself, and he’s failed America. Deliciously, he’s failed those who put this puppet into the role of power. He’s failed them because he hasn’t been able to enact their great socialist takeover of America.

    Sadly, we as a nation will be required to endure three more years of executive ineptitude — unless we take the Senate in 2014, which would afford America the means to rid itself of this aberration and restore some semblance of responsible leadership.

    And yes, it still irks the hell out of me when my president can’t look me in the eye, even over a television network. What a clueless, classless political weasel. Think about that, America: the guy who leads you and the world won’t look you in the eye.

    Crossposted from American Thinker

  • Obama to declare end of Afghanistan War

    The Associated Press reports that President Obama told the nation last night that he may leave troops in Afghanistan after this year (generals are asking for ten thousand), but he’s still going to declare an end to the war;

    President Barack Obama says a small U.S. military force may remain in Afghanistan next year, but he’s promising to declare an end to the 12-year war there at the end of 2014.

    Obama said during his State of the Union speech Tuesday that Afghanistan will take responsibility for its own future after the end of the year.

    Afghan President Hamid Karzai won’t sign an agreement for US troops to remain there, so, it’s really just speculation that troops will remain. Karzai has also accused the US of perpetrating the worst terrorist attacks in his country, so he’s not even taking responsibility for it’s present, let alone it’s future.

    Just declaring an end to the war will only make the Obama supporters feel good about themselves, the Taliban haven’t returned my calls about whether they agree to ending the war this year or not. The Left declared that the Iraq War was ended, too, and how well has that worked for the Iraqis? By the way we’re selling some Apache helicopters to Iraq next month. I wonder how many Americans will accompany the helicopters to Iraq.

    President Clinton promised that we’d end our involvement in the Balkans back in 2006 1996, how’s that doing? But, hey, we all feel better, right?

  • SFC Cory Remsburg earns longest applause of SOTU address

    No, I didn’t watch the president’s speech last night. I’ve heard it all before and throwing things at the TV screen isn’t going to fix anything. But Fox News reports that Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg earned the longest applause last night;

    Obama described how he first met Remsburg in 2009, at ceremonies commemorating the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France. The president described Remsburg as a “strong, impressive young man [who] had an easy manner [and] was sharp as a tack.”

    A few months later, Remsburg was nearly killed by a roadside bomb near Kandahar, Afghanistan. his fellow soldiers found face-down in a canal, underwater, with shrapnel in his brain.

    “The next time I met him, in the hospital, he couldn’t speak; he could barely move,” Obama said to the now-silent crowd in the House chamber. “Over the years, he’s endured dozens of surgeries and procedures, and hours of grueling rehab every day.”

    Obama said that Remsburg remains blind in one eye and struggles to move his left side. But he’s slowly learned to speak, stand and walk again. He’s been awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

    “Like the Army he loves, like the America he serves, Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg never gives up and he does not quit,” Obama said.

    He earned the applause, but the sergeant didn’t earn those benefits that have made the rest of us independently wealthy. It’s pretty disingenuous of Congress to give SFC Remsburg a standing ovation, while they hike the cost of his healthcare and cut his cost of living allowance. Remsburg didn’t give up and doesn’t quit, but the President and the Congress have no problem with failing him and the rest of the disabled vets who have given the last full measure.

  • Pentagon to depend on 19th Century technology to protect DC

    So, we’re going to blimps, huh? What with all of the surveillance technology that the government uses, the pentagon is planning to use blimps over the capital “detect any low-flying missiles or enemy aircraft that might be headed to the capital”. Yeah, I believe that. From Fox News;

    Raythoen, a defense contractor, said last year that these aerostats can carry powerful surveillance systems capable of tracking people and vehicles from miles away, the report said. The Army, though it did not rule out the possibility of mounting these cameras, reportedly said it has no current plans to install them.

    The Washington Post reported that the Army said in a letter to the newspaper that it did not conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment because there is no intention of collecting any personally identifiable information.

    “The primary mission .?.?. is to track airborne objects,” the Army said in the letter to The Post. “Its secondary mission is to track surface moving objects such as vehicles or boats. The capability to track surface objects does not extend to individual people.”

    Now, I’m not paranoid or anything, but it’s odd that they’ve decided to use this now that I’m retiring (next Friday) and they won’t be able to track my movements and blogging from my government computer. But, they’ll be able to track me with this blimp thing from DC, so I’m sure they’re only spending this money to keep an eye on me. But, like I said, I’m not paranoid, nor do I place an irrationally high value on my blogging.

  • More of not balancing the budget on the backs of Veterans

    Several folks have sent us this link to Stars & Stripes about the Department of Defense’s plans to close down a number of commissaries (run by the Defense Commissary Agency or DeCA) in an effort to save more money.

    “If DeCA’s budget is cut to such a magnitude, it would ultimately require DeCA to close stores or change the way it delivers the commissary benefit,” a source with knowledge of the proposed cuts told Military.com. “But those options would mean military families would have to pay more for their groceries, significantly reducing the non-pay compensation benefit provided through the commissaries. Once again, military families are being forced to sacrifice their hard-earned money to achieve deficit reductions by having their benefits reduced or eliminated.”

    DeCA’s $1.4 billion annual budget funds employee salaries, utilities and pays for food to be shipped overseas. A congressionally mandated 5 percent surcharge on all commissary sales pays for other operation costs such as construction and building maintenance.

    A recent study by DeCA found that using the commissary saves shoppers an average of 30.5 percent annually when compared to other stores off base.

    You know, if it was just the commissaries, I’d probably say ‘meh’, but if you add this to cutting COLAs, cutting the pay increases and bonuses of active duty troops, cutting overall manpower, adjusting the retirement plans, raising healthcare out-of-pocket costs for veterans, I don’t see how the president could say that he’s not balancing the budget on the backs of veterans. I guess if you like your commissary, you can keep it, unless you can’t.

  • Syria gas attacks; White House data faulty

    Richard sends us a link to a McClatchy article which reports that weapons experts have determined that the GRAD rockets used in the chemical attacks in Syria last year couldn’t have been launched by the Syrian government, given the range of those rockets and the distance from the target of government forces;

    In the report, titled “Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the question about the rocket’s range indicates a major weakness in the case for military action initially pressed by Obama administration officials.

    […]

    To emphasize their point, the authors used a map produced by the White House that showed which areas were under government and rebel control on Aug. 21 and where the chemical weapons attack occurred. Drawing circles around Zamalka to show the range from which the rocket could have come, the authors conclude that all of the likely launching points were in rebel-held areas or areas that were in dispute. The area securely in government hands was miles from the possible launch zones.

    […]

    “I honestly have no idea what happened,” Postol said. “My view when I started this process was that it couldn’t be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I’m not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct.”

    But the Obama Administration was in a “rush to war” to prop up flagging approval ratings, they really didn’t have time to worry about those pesky facts-thingies. Of course, McClatchy has to mention the Bush “rush to war” which took more than a year-and-a-half, and the “faulty intelligence” that led to the Iraq War in 2003. But there’s no real comparison. The whole world thought that Hussein had a chemical weapons capabilty, and there has been NBC material removed from Iraq that hardly gets a mention in the media. The Obama Administration wanted to bomb Syrian government forces real bad, but being the incompetent boobs that are advising this bunch, they ignore evidence all of the time and they arrive at the wrong solutions every time. But then they’ve got Joe Bite Me and John Kerry to lead their way – the most incompetent boobs on the planet.

  • Senate: Benghazi attack was preventable

    The Washington Post reports that the Senate released a report which states that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was preventable. They blame the State Department, mainly;

    The [bipartisan Senate Intelligence] committee determined that the U.S. military command in Africa didn’t know about the CIA annex and that the Pentagon didn’t have the resources in place to defend the diplomatic compound in an emergency.

    “The attacks were preventable, based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya — to include prior threats and attacks against Western targets — and given the known security shortfalls at the U.S. Mission,” the panel said in a statement.

    The report also notes, chillingly, that the FBI’s investigation into the attacks has been hampered inside Libya, and that 15 people “supporting the investigation or otherwise helpful to the United States” have since been killed in Benghazi. The report says it is unclear whether those killings were related to the investigation.

    Funny how the Post is suddenly interested in the Benghazi attack when they spent the first weeks leading up to the election ignoring the facts of the story.

    The report says that on Sept. 18, 2012, the “FBI and CIA reviewed the closed circuit television video from the Mission facility that showed there were no protests prior to the attacks.”

    But it took six more days for intelligence officials to revise their chronology of events and say that “there were no demonstrations or protests” at the diplomatic compound “prior to the attacks.”

    I hope the Senate Committee cleared their report with the editorial board of the New York Times who seem to be the experts on the story.

    Thanks to Paul for the link.

  • Obama staff were briefed that Benghazi was an attack not a protest

    Paul sends us a link to Fox News which reports that when AFRICOM commander, General Carter Ham briefed the president’s staff on the events at the consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012, he told them that it was an attack, not a protest over a video;

    “In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta,” McKeon asked, “was there any mention of a demonstration or was all discussion about an attack?” Ham initially testified that there was some “peripheral” discussion of this subject, but added “at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. [Sean] Smith, unaccounted for.”

    Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that “the nature of the conversation” he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that “this was a terrorist attack.”