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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Hagel: the beatings will continue until morale improves

    Speaking to about 300 Department of Defense employees at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina, Defense Department Secretary Chick Hagel told the assemblage that furloughs for about 800,000 DoD employees are likely to continue next year unless Congress halts the cuts, according to the Associated Press;

    On the heels of the department’s first furlough day, and in three days of visits with members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, Hagel played the unenviable role of messenger to a frustrated and fearful workforce coping with the inevitability of a spending squeeze at the end of more than a decade of constant and costly war.

    The fiscal crunch also lays bare the politically unpopular, if perhaps necessary, need to bring runaway military costs in line with most of the rest of the American public that has struggled economically for years.

    Like I said the other day, this plan for sequestration was engineered by the White House, the president told America during his debates with Mitt Romney that sequestration wasn’t going to happen, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made no actual plans for sequestration during his tenure declaring that the plan would never be instituted. So when the deal that administration struck with Congress did actually happen because no one could spend the political capital to make a decision on how to cut the budget, they simply targeted personnel costs which are easier and impact fewer voters while each side blames the other.

    Like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey the other day when he blamed Congress for the Defense Department being unable to meet it’s national security goals. Or maybe it’s Dempsey’s fault because he’s just dutifully cutting personnel costs without doing the hard work finding actual waste and abuse that could be cut without injuring national security.

  • Dempsey; cuts hurt national defense

    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey, told a Senate Committee yesterday that deep budget cuts in the Defense Department are damaging our ability to respond to threats around the world, according to Reuters;

    Dempsey told lawmakers that if the across-the-board cuts, which are known as sequestration, continue as required by law at a pace of $52 billion a year for the next decade, it would continue to erode military preparedness.

    “We will not be able to find the money we need to achieve the level of sequestration cuts without a dramatic impact in our readiness,” Dempsey told lawmakers.

    He said reductions in the size of the military force eventually would help lower costs and enable the services to improve their readiness. But at that point “you’re dealing with a smaller force … I think too small.”

    Well, I have a couple of things to say about that; first, well, duh! Secondly, the President during the debates before the election assured the American people that sequestration wasn’t going to happen – those were his exact words. Yet, here we are, staring down the maw of massive cuts.

    In fact, as late as March, Leon Panetta, then-Secretary of Defense, was telling the media that he wasn’t making any preparations for sequestration because he was certain that it wasn’t going to happen. I guess if the Defense Department had started planning for this instead of just taking big last minutes whacks at personnel cuts, they might have been able to save some essential spending – but at the Defense Department, their first knee-jerk reaction to budget cuts is to cut personnel costs. It’s always been that way, it’s not a recent occurrence, Personnel is the easiest thing to cut without putting much thought into it.

    During the Clinton Administration, they started paying people to get out of the military. After a year or so, they realized that they’d let too many people go, and started sending out letters asking us to come back. Yeah, fat chance.

    So where was Dempsey when all of this coming around the corner? Smiling and nodding his head along with the civilians. And he’s still doing it. He can go to his beach house on Nag’s Head and smile and nod at the seagulls for all the good he’s doing the Defense Department now.

  • Dempsey: US considering force in Syria

    Well, really that shouldn’t surprise anyone – it’s the wrong thing to do, applying US military force in Syria at this juncture, so of course this administration is considering it. Screw finishing the war in Afghanistan, let’s get mired down somewhere else in the Middle East. From the Associated Press;

    Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, said during congressional testimony that he has provided President Barack Obama with options for the use of force in Syria.

    Speaking about what he termed “kinetic strikes,” Dempsey added that the “issue is under deliberation inside of our agencies of government.” But he declined to provide further details, as members of the Senate Armed Services Committee pressed him for greater clarity on the strategy for ending the war and removing Syrian President Bashar Assad from power.

    No matter what we do, we’re going to get blamed for whatever turns out poorly – look at Egypt, FFS.

    “The decision on whether to use force is the decision of our elected officials,” Dempsey said. “It would be inappropriate for me to try to influence the decision with me rendering an opinion in public with what type of force we should use.”

    Yeah, who needs a military adviser to actual provide advice to the civilians, that would be out of his area of expertise. the civilians are just better off making completely political decisions while US troops spend their blood and their lives for the next presidential election. Way to bow-up there, Marty, you spineless POS.

  • The Biden defense

    KOIN reports that a man in Vancouver, Washington was arrested for discharging his firearm in his neighborhood. He says that he only did it because he was taking Joe Biden’s advice. You remember when Vice President Biden advised women to scare off prowlers around their house by going out on their balcony and fire a double-barreled into the air, right?

    Jeffery Barton, 52, pleaded not guilty to one count of illegal aiming or discharging a firearm at his arraignment in Clark County Court.

    Barton reportedly admitted to deputies that he fired his weapon while chasing away people who he thought were breaking into his vehicles at 5804 NE 124th St. in the early morning hours Monday.

    Deputies are investigating whether a large teen party that got out of control at a neighbor’s home may have been linked to the shooting. However, at this point, deputies have said there was no evidence of prowlers on Barton’s property.

    Outside the courtroom Wednesday, Barton cited the vice president in defense of his actions.

    “I did what Joe Biden told me to do,” Barton told KOIN. “I went outside and fired my shotgun in the air.”

    Well, anyone taking the Vice president’s advice, about anything, deserves what they get. But he should subpoena Biden for his trial as expert testimony.

  • White House statement on Zimmerman acquital

    So, here’s the text entitled simply “Statement by the President“;

    The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities. We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.

    Really? Are we going to turn this into a discussion about gun control? And what about the legislation that failed in Congress earlier this year would have prevented George Zimmerman from defending himself? He legally owned a gun, which means he jumped through the background check hoops, he had a permit to carry the gun, again legally. He had no violent or criminal history. He fired one round, so magazine capacity isn’t an issue, there was no bayonet lug or grenade launcher on his pistol. No flash suppressor, the magazine was inserted into the pistol grip, so it wasn’t on Dianne Feinstein’s list of forbidden guns.

    What does the Zimmerman trial have to do with gun control? Other than the fact that it provides an opportunity for various members of the Left to call me a coward on Facebook because I legally own and carry a gun today.

    Restricting the sale and possession of hoodies would have had a greater effect on the outcome of that encounter in Florida than restricting the sale and possession of guns.

  • President’s remarks complicate military prosecutions

    The New York Times makes the case that President Obama’s recent remarks regarding military sexual assault cases will alter the outcome of those trials by causing “unlawful command influence”;

    “Unlawful command influence” refers to actions of commanders that could be interpreted by jurors as an attempt to influence a court-martial, in effect ordering a specific outcome. Mr. Obama, as commander in chief of the armed forces, is considered the most powerful person to wield such influence.

    The president’s remarks might have seemed innocuous to civilians, but military law experts say defense lawyers will seize on the president’s call for an automatic dishonorable discharge, the most severe discharge available in a court-martial, arguing that his words will affect their cases.

    “His remarks were more specific than I’ve ever heard a commander in chief get,” said Thomas J. Romig, a former judge advocate general of the Army and the dean of the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan. “When the commander in chief says they will be dishonorably discharged, that’s a pretty specific message. Every military defense counsel will make a motion about this.”

    And of course, civilians won’t understand the military culture and therefore, demonize the whole process when someone gets to walk free because this President doesn’t understand the military culture. And we’ll have Congress trying to alter the UCMJ because they don’t understand.

    Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

  • Big Sis resigning

    It’s really not all that important, but I guess it deserves some notice, but Janet Napolitano is moving on from the Department of Homeland Security to be the president of the University of California system, says the LA Times;

    “I think she loves working for President Obama and serving the American people, but at the same time, this is a unique opportunity,” he said. Napolitano knows “UC is probably the premier institution in the country. She is motivated by the fact that being a part of UC, she will be a part of educating future leaders of tomorrow and be part of a state that sets so much of the agenda nationally.”

    Yeah, well, she peaked when DHS released their scary veterans memo in my opinion. So what worries me is who will replace her. Knowing this administration it will be Daryl Johnson, the guy who wrote that report (or more accurately, copied and pasted it from the Southern Poverty Law Center report) and has been trying to sell it to us ever since he got his little pencil-necked ass fired.

    Looking at recent cabinet picks (John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, etc…), I’m not real hopeful.

  • Policy on auto-pilot

    You may have heard in the last few days about our Secretary of State, John Kerry, who decided to take a cruise on his yacht while Egypt burned. Of course, as we’ve seen from the State Department on most issues, they denied that was the case initially, even when confronted with photographic evidence of the contrary. Finally, the State Department admitted that their boss was on a float while the Army tossed out the elected head of Egypt’s government.

    Today, Israeli media are complaining about Kerry’s focus on negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, an impossible quest, while other issues, like Egypt and Syria, demand his attention;

    Ynet News’ Hagai Segal’s angle: Why is Mr. Kerry trying to hard to facilitate a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, when Egypt and Syria are in utter chaos?

    Even The New York Times wonders this question, Ynet said. And his work to bring about this deal is only “placing American foreign policy in a ridiculous light,” the Israeli paper opined.

    “The U.S. cannot make peace between Arabs and other Arabs, yet it believes it can make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. … Is it possible that John Kerry is more talented than all the American mediators who came before him? Not at all.”

    Or maybe working on Syria and Egypt is too hard for the silver spoon Secretary of State. It might even involve staying in a a three or four star hotel. Of course, our foreign policy isn’t the only thing on cruise control, The Hill noticed that Democrats in the Capital are complaining about a lack of leadership from the White House;

    Supporters and critics of President Obama are looking for leadership on many pressing issues from the White House, but many believe they are not getting it.

    On Monday, Obama held a Cabinet meeting and spoke about his effort to modernize government databases.

    He avoided public remarks on several matters seen as more pressing, such as turmoil in Egypt and the wider Middle East, faltering efforts to reform immigration in the U.S. and the rocky implementation of ObamaCare. Instead the president spoke to a small group of reporters about his efforts to improve databases and make government more efficient.

    “We’re working to make huge swaths of your government more transparent and more accountable than ever before,” Obama said at the White House.

    Well, if you guys were looking for leadership, you should have run someone else in 2008, I’ve been saying since then that Obama isn’t a leader, he’s a community organizer. A leader tells you what’s best for you and then convinces you that what he’s doing is right. A community organizer does stuff that makes the people around him smile, whether it’s the right or wrong thing to do. A leader takes on the toughest issues first, a community organizer does the easy things first so people smile at him.

    Does Obama have some grand plan to make the world right again? Maybe, but he’s not telling us about it, like a leader would. All we get from the White House is lies and obfuscation.